The Paper Palace(76)

Peter is drinking his coffee, reading the paper in the kitchen of our East Village walk-up. “Can you get that?” he calls out. “It could be the office.”

I’m hating Peter most of all. The apartment stinks of cigarettes; there are newspaper fingerprints on the walls, on the light switches, on the backs of the chairs. We had plans to go upstate this weekend for my birthday, but Peter had to cancel. Too much work. And yet somehow he has time for the Sunday paper and coffee. His dirty underpants lie in a heap next to the bed, waiting for me to pick them up and throw them in the laundry. He bought skim milk. I hate skim milk—its thinness, its blue-vein color.

I let the phone ring twice more, just to irritate him, before reaching over to answer it, but the machine gets there first.

“Eleanor?” a small shaky voice asks, confused. “Eleanor? Is that you?” I grab for the phone.

“Granny, I’m here,” I shout, afraid she is already hanging up the receiver—as if my voice can catch her hand midair.

Now that my grandfather has died, my father and the Bitch have decided to move Granny Myrtle from her Connecticut farmhouse into a nursing home. Not a nice one, with a big circular driveway lined in sweet-smelling privet and reassuring nurses who tuck you in with a bowl of hot soup and read to you. Just some shithole in Danbury that smells of urinals, with a bunch of underpaid nurse’s aides—cinder-block institutional, dirty floors, windowless puce hallways.

I’ve given her my word that I won’t let it happen. She will stay in her own house. She’s already told my father and Mary that they won’t have to pay for round-the-clock nurses, if it comes to that. She’s fit as a fiddle. She can look after herself. There’s a local girl who can bring groceries in, do light cleaning, carry the mail in from the box at the bottom of the hill. She’ll manage. Because that’s what the Bitch is worried about: spending any of their potential inheritance on private nurses. My father has promised me they won’t move her if I can figure out a solution that makes everyone comfortable. They are worried that she will fall, he says, and unless I’m willing to spend every weekend with her to spell the girl. “I’ll do whatever it takes,” I say.

“Eleanor,” she says now, her voice quivering. “Is that you?”

“It’s me, Granny.”

“I’m frightened.” She is crying. I have never heard her cry before.

“Granny, what is it? What’s happened?”

“I don’t know where I am.” She starts to sob.

“Don’t cry, Granny, please don’t cry.”

“They’ve put me in this place. It’s cold here. I can’t find my reading light. Where is everyone? I’m scared, Elle. Please come get me.”

A rage rushes through me, crimson-red fury. “Wait. Where are you, Granny? Who moved you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. They came and brought me here.” Her voice is frail, childlike.

“Who came?”

“Mary and her friend. She said my blood pressure had spiked. She said I had a doctor’s appointment at the hospital. I called Henry. He told me to go with her. I don’t know what to do. Where are my blankets?”

“Granny, I need to call Dad. I’ll sort this out. You’ll be out of there by tonight. Don’t worry.”

“It’s dark here. There’s no window. I can’t breathe. You must come now!” She sounds confused, panicked, like a tethered horse in a burning barn.

All I want to do is hug her frail, bony Granny self. “I’m going to fix this. I’m coming to get you.”

“Who’s there?” she says.

“I’ll be there in a few hours. Just try to stay calm.”

“I don’t know you,” she says.

“It’s me. It’s Eleanor. I’m calling the nurses’ station right now. I’ll make sure they move you to a room with a window.”

“I don’t know you,” she says again.

Now I hear a man’s voice in the background, telling her to stay still. The phone drops, but I can hear her thrashing in her bed. “Get away from me,” she screams. Whoever it is hangs up the phone.

When I get to Avis, there’s a line. The woman behind the counter seems to think she works at the post office. A manager wanders in from a back office and we all breathe a collective sigh of relief. But instead of opening up a second line, he taps some override code into her computer, says something that makes her give a nice, round fake laugh, and then disappears into the back.

“Excuse me?” I call out. “Can you get someone else to help?”

“Ma’am, I’m working as fast as I can.” As if to underline this point, she gets off her stool and, slow as mud, walks over to the printer. Waits for a contract to spool out.

“Sorry,” I say, hoping to get back on her good side. “I need to get to my grandmother in the hospital. I don’t mean to make a fuss.”

“We all have places we need to be.” She turns to the man in front of her and gives him a long-suffering smile, rolls her eyes. She’s on his side, she wants him to know, just not on mine.



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I arrive at the nursing home with fifteen minutes to spare, grab my purse, and run. I’m breathless when I get to reception.