Tips for Living(46)

Aunt Lada and another white-haired woman were playing cards near the window. Even from across the room, I could see that Lada had a “tell.” She looked so much like my mother in that moment that I had to stop and catch my breath. It wasn’t just that Lada and Sally Levervitch had prominent Russian foreheads, feline eyes and similar wavy hair (though my mother dyed hers strawberry blonde to hide her ethnicity, while Lada had lived to see her brown hair go completely gray), it was the astonishing height to which Lada’s left eyebrow could arch when she disapproved of something. My mother had the same ability. Lada’s eyebrow was aimed at her cards, and it said, “I don’t like the hand I’ve been dealt.”

“Nora!” Lada exclaimed, lighting up when she saw me. “I told you she’d come,” she said to her card-holding friend.

I didn’t recognize Lada’s companion—a handsome Asian woman with unusual ethnic bracelets and earrings that complemented long silver hair she wore twisted into a bun. She must be a new resident, I surmised.

“Nora, this is Ann Kogarashi. She took a one-bedroom on the third floor. She’s an anthropologist.”

Ann looked me over and smiled.

“Anthropologist, long retired. Lovely to meet you. Your aunt raves about you,” she said. There was no hint of her having seen me on the news, either. Was she just being discreet out of respect for my aunt?

A whirring sound came from behind as Mort pulled up. Mort, who was eighty-nine, had a tube running from his nose to an oxygen tank strapped to the back of his wheelchair.

“How are you, Mort?”

“Woke up on the right side of the dirt, so I can’t complain,” he answered, smiling.

Mort used to be a Madison Avenue ad man. He was still mentally sharp and plugged in to current events.

“Sorry to hear about your troubles with the law, Nora,” he said softly. “You doing all right?”

I glanced over at Lada, certain that this would start a conversation about the murders, but she was smiling, oblivious. Ann just looked at me with concern. I nodded at Mort.

“Maybe you’ll come with us to the film today? Take your mind off things,” he said. “They’re showing Hairspray. John Travolta plays a woman. Wears a fat suit.”

I’d gone to see No Country for Old Men with Lada and Mort a few weeks back; The Cedars screened movies in the downstairs lounge. The two of them fell asleep about twenty minutes into the film. Holding hands.

“Sorry, Mort. I’ve got to work after lunch.” I gave my arm to Lada. “I have to steal my aunt away for a little bit. Nice to meet you, Ann. See you soon, Mort.”

I fully expected Lada to bring up the murders as soon as we were out of earshot, but she didn’t. She really seemed to be off in another world.

“I’m so happy to see you,” was all she said as we ambled down the hall to the elevator. She was walking slowly but still walking, thank God.

We had a salad bar lunch in the dining room, but Lada didn’t bring up the murders there, either. She flitted from topic to topic: “Here’s something Ann told me. Did you know Vladimir Putin is a very rich man? Ann says he’s worth billions. And still he acts like a baboon thumping his chest!” Seconds later: “Mort’s daughter is a social worker. She was so upset about a case. A couple put a lock on their refrigerator. They made their fourteen-year-old daughter pay for her food using money she earned babysitting.” Lada looked distraught. “They’re worse than the Stalinists. What’s wrong with them?”

I remembered Stokes’s story of his in-laws presenting him and Kelly with their grocery bill.

“I don’t know, Aunt Lada,” I said, patting her arm. “There are some very sick individuals out there.”

After finishing lunch, we went back to Lada’s apartment, and I shampooed her hair in the sink. She always said, “It comes out so much better when you do it, Nora.” But I knew the real reason. She liked being touched. She purred while I massaged conditioner into her scalp. Her silver hair turned soft as corn silk. I set it with curlers made from empty orange juice cans—a recession-proof method as effective and about three hundred times cheaper than a Brazilian Blowout.

While Lada’s hair dried, I made her some tea and then returned to the closet in the entrance hall where I’d hung my coat. The large, cellophane-covered cardboard box sat on the shelf above the coatrack. On every visit, I’d think about what to do with it—a carton full of mementos of Hugh. Things I hadn’t been able to throw away, but couldn’t live with anymore. When I started over in Pequod, I’d left them in Lada’s care.

I looked up at the box, reviewing the seemingly endless hurts Hugh inflicted. Helene’s pregnancy. A painful and public divorce. Moving to Pequod with Helene and reopening the wound. Now I was a suspect in his murder investigation. What was there to debate? I pulled out the stepladder from the back of the closet.

Lada stared at the cellophane-covered box as I set it down on her kitchen table. There was enough tape on it to wrap a mummy, as if I’d been afraid the detritus of my marriage would claw its way out and hunt me down.

“Nora.”

Suddenly present and mentally alert, Lada was looking at me fretfully.

“Tell me about your talk with the police,” she said.

“The police . . . yes.”

I thought I’d escaped this conversation. Damn. It was probably best not to tell her the whole story. Why stress her? I wasn’t under arrest.