HUMAN MEMORY CRUSADE INTERNAL REPORT.
APRIL 30, 2010
Subject: Lane Eliza Idle.
Priority: One.
Critical key word(s)/patterns recognized. Close monitoring advised. Do not yet terminate this subject.
Chapter 12
It is both endearing and tragic to be taunted by someone sucking periodically from an oxygen tank.
“Your cell phone is older and less functional than my liver.”
That is how I am greeted at Magnolia Manor’s recreation center. The taunter is Midnight Sammy, a retired professor of pop music and a softie at heart who is the most outwardly belligerent of Grandma’s inner circle. Midnight Sammy can express darkness whatever the hour.
He’s bald, and so thin that the narrow black ties he wears most days look of relatively normal width. He moves his cataract-glazed stare from my Verizon phone to my battered backpack.
“You should try buying something made this century,” he says.
“You should get new hips,” I respond.
It gets a giggle from Betty Lou, a towering woman whose son is the highest-ranking African American at the Federal Reserve Bank. Betty Lou has a gravelly voice I suspect came from chronic lung infections. The tenor lends to her regal demeanor, and so do the colorful necklaces she wears. Today’s is made up of clamshells and blue stones.
“Nathaniel, did you fall asleep here last night?” she asks me.
“No. Why?”
“Because that means you’re showing up two days in a row. And that’s miracle territory,” she says, and laughs. “Jesus lives.”
“Hallelujah,” Midnight Sammy says. “No resident here has had a consecutive-day visit since the earthquake of ’eighty-nine.”
I lean in close to them. “We don’t come by more often because old people smell.”
Sammy, Betty, and Harry Teelander — soft-spoken and observant, I always feel like he’s quietly studying me — belong to Grandma’s book club, the Bifocal Yokels. They haven’t actually read a book in more than a year, having gotten stuck on
I am trying to maintain a civil, even playful, tone with the Yokels. If they sense alarm from me, it’ll shoot through the gossipy group like sugar through a nine-year-old. But it’s an understatement to say I’m anxiously seeking Grandma.
The center has a small dance floor, easels, a piano, bongo drums, and bingo sets, and a dozen computer stations that have become the center of the home’s recent influx of capital to fund the Human Memory Crusade.
Today, the stations are filled with residents. Some talk into microphones. Others play games. I see one woman with bright orange hair navigating the mouse with great alacrity as she plays what looks to be a fast-paced version of the word game hangman.
Grandma sits in a cubicle at the end. As I get near, I peer over her shoulder. On the monitor is a question: “Why did your brother decide to leave home?” In front of Grandma is a microphone, but she is not speaking.
Next to Grandma sits Harry, the quietest Yokel. As I approach the pair, he turns to me. His hair is cropped tightly like the day sixty-five years ago when the war ended and the Navy let him go. His shoulders remain broad but the chest and arms that must have once been imposing, even in an era before weight lifting and protein shakes, have shrunken. Grandma turns to me too, tracking Harry’s movements.
She wears a mellow smile.
“Hello, old friend,” she says.
I kneel so that my face is the same level as hers. She’s got sleep crystals in the inside corner of her right eye, but she’s made an effort to put herself together this morning. Her lips glisten with light pink lipstick, a smudge of which trails off the corner of her mouth.
“Hello, favorite grandmother.”
“I’m using the computer,” she says.
“She’s tired today,” Harry says. “Maybe not the best day for a visit.”
I feel a jolt of anger that catches me off guard.
“What’s not good about it, Harry?”
He clears his throat, and lowers his head.
“I don’t think she slept that well.”
“Sorry, Harry. I didn’t either. I shouldn’t have snapped.”
“Your clothes need washing,” Grandma says to me.
She’s stares at my blue T-shirt, which has dirt on its sleeve. It must have smudged when G.I. Chuck tackled me. Speaking of which, I haven’t heard from the excitable venture capitalist. The car chase must have ended unsuccessfully and, I hope, he’s overcome his macho instincts and sought medical care. Grandma picks up that I’ve left the moment.
“Nathaniel?”
“Grandma, can we go to your room and have a little chat?”
She looks at Harry, as if for his permission. Maybe she’s just lost in her own world.
“I’d like that, grandson.”
From my backpack, I pull an oatmeal energy bar, unwrap it and hand half to Grandma. I feel oddly like I’m rewarding her, as if she were a child, or simply sustaining her with every possible measure. She takes the snack with a smile, which is sufficient payoff to turn down the volume on my over-analysis.
En route to Grandma’s room, I feel buzzing from my pocket. It’s coming from the phone Chuck gave me.
“Chuck’s phone,” I answer.
“I lost him,” says Chuck. “Or, rather, I never found him in the first place.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“Pay phone.”
“Did you call the police?”
“I did.”
“Despite your warnings that I not contact them?”
“I left them an anonymous tip about a drive-by shooting at your address — and the make and year of the vehicle,” he says. “Did you find shell casings?”
I tell him that I did. I ask what he suggests I do with them.
“Put them somewhere safe until we get together. I’ve got meetings on the Peninsula and I want to do some more digging. I’ll be in touch to coordinate.”
I swallow this. What is the point of the super-secret phone if we’re not using it to talk?
“How is your leg?”
“I’ve gotten into worse scrapes in the schoolyard.”
“You should get it checked.”
“Gotta run,” he says.
Good luck with that, I think. We hang up.
I check the clock on Chuck’s phone. It’s 9:50. I’ve still got half a day to get to the mystery meeting in San Francisco’s low-rent district. It doesn’t feel like enough time to reconstruct Grandma’s shattered memory. But it’s worth a try.
I open Grandma’s door and inside I find a surprise: Vince. He looks equally surprised; he is kneeling next to
