every minute of the day. She hadn’t slowed down even after the kids moved out and her husband’s dairy farm started turning a profit, working dawn ’til sundown canning, mending, cleaning, and helping with chores. Her husband had been a solid man, no great romantic but a stable Swedish farmer who paid the bills and didn’t yell at his wife. Mrs. Berns had completely fulfilled her hausfrau duties right up until her husband’s death by heart attack a decade ago.
Legend had it, that’s when Mrs. Berns underwent The Change. Her husband’s body was barely cold when she put the farm on the market and moved to town. With a population under eight hundred in the winter and more bars than churches, you’d think Battle Lake would have welcomed its newest resident, but her sudden penchant for going braless combined with her willingness to say whatever was on her mind didn’t go over well with the more conservative members of the community. When Conrad, her oldest son, got word of his sweet mother’s out-of- character behavior, and specifically her newspaper-documented fistfight at the Rusty Nail over a man of questionable reputation (“Granny Goes Gonzo”), he promptly checked her into the Senior Sunset on threat of getting her declared mentally incompetent if she didn’t comply.
On the surface, she bowed to his command. Behind the scenes, though, Mrs. Berns got right down to the business of circumventing the rules of the nursing home, sneaking out after hours to do as she pleased. Before long, she was the don of a profitable black market operation fencing cigarettes, airplane-sized bottles of liquor, and Tom Jones posters to those on the inside. After a near mutiny when he tried to crack the whip against these illicit antics, the director of the Senior Sunset chose to turn a blind eye to Mrs. Berns’ behavior on her word there would be no more public brawling.
Mrs. Berns likely had her fingers crossed when she made that agreement. That’s about when I met her, all fluffy-haired, bobby-socked, capgun-toting (don’t ask), four-feet-eleven inches of her. Since then she’d taught me how to dirty dance, defend myself using moves not widely practiced outside of a pig-castrating shed, and live without regret. To be honest, I was still working on that last one. But as much as I loved her, she had a mischievous streak as wide as the Mississippi, and I smelled her fingerprints all over Johnny’s invitation.
I signed in at the front desk. My lunch break was prime visiting hours and the check-in sheet was almost full. I smiled nervously at the nurse behind the desk, concealing the cloth bag I was carrying behind my back. It contained the secret to prying the truth out of Mrs. Berns: dark chocolate and a miniature bottle of red wine. I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that nursing home residents were not officially allowed liquor, which was the crime of the century as far as I was concerned. My visiting privileges would be revoked indefinitely if I got caught with it, but it was a risk I was willing to take to get the Oracle to speak.
I wasn’t sneaking toward Mrs. Berns’ room, but I did stop when I heard the whispering inside. Followed by a giggle. That’s when I noticed the cross-stitched, “Bless this Home” circle hanging off the doorknob, the signal that if this was a van, it’d be rocking so don’t bother to come knocking. Glancing at the clock on the wall, I realized I didn’t have time to wait. Buying the chocolate and wine had eaten up almost half an hour, and I needed to reopen the library at one o’clock. I knocked at the door, delicately and with more than a little fear.
The giggling stopped. “You knock like a girl.” This was followed by a rustle of fabric and light footsteps. “This better be an emergency,” she said on the other side of the door.
Her orange-shaded head popped out looking inconvenienced.
“Hi, Mrs. Berns.”
“I made him write the invitation, it’s a surprise so I can’t tell you more, and it’s not what you think.” And she slammed the door in my face.
She must have a steamy number in her room or she wouldn’t have passed up an opportunity to make me squirm, but curiosity was the one vice I consistently entertained. I knocked again, firmly.
“That’s better, but it still doesn’t get you in.”
I turned the knob and stepped inside.
“
“I need to talk to you.”
“I presume you do,” she said, employing a slight British accent to mock my serious tone.
“It’s really important.”
She dropped the accent. “It’s not about Johnny?”
“Well…”
“Ach.” She turned to the man lounging on her bed. “Bernard, I need to talk to Mira. Shouldn’t take more’n a minute.”
I stepped to the side so he could exit and leave us to our conversation, but he just loafed deeper into the bed, cranking the sound on the Discovery Channel, which was airing a show about the ancient mysteries of the Maya.
“I’ll take a cherry cola while you’re out,” he said. “Not the barbaric kind. Thanks.”
I wrinkled my nose at Mrs. Berns, but she shooed me out without making eye contact. In the hall, I asked, “Since when do you let someone kick you out of your own room? And what exactly is ‘barbaric’ soda?” That’s when I noticed that she was wearing creepily traditional grandmother clothes: a Branson T-shirt sent to her by one of her kids which she’d used as a dust rag until recently, elastic-waisted slacks sans her low-slung holster, and fuzzy slippers. She looked, well, old.
“He means ‘generic,’ and I needed to go to the cafeteria, anyways,” she said.
“Stop.” I grabbed her hand and rotated her toward me. “I’m sorry I haven’t been visiting regularly the last couple weeks. I’ve dropped the ball. I miss you. Now what is up with these clothes and that guy?”
The uncensored Mrs. Berns broke through the grandma garments. “You didn’t drop nuthin’, and frankly, I haven’t missed that mopey need-to-get-laid look in your eyes. I’ve got to appear professional for a little while, is all.”
“Why?”
“Can’t tell you.”
“Is it because your son is around? Johnny told me.”
“He’s a girl for gossiping. And it’s none of your business.”
I knit my brows. “Since when?”
“Since you should be busy worrying about whether or not you need to shave your legs for tonight.” She cackled at the expression on my face.
I didn’t want to get off topic that easily, but there was no point in pretending I wasn’t outgunned. I sighed. “Do I?”
“When it comes to being ready for lovin’, I think the Boy Scouts got it right: always be prepared.”
“I don’t think that’s what they were referring to.”
“Nevertheless.”
I crossed my arms. “You’re not going to tell me anything more, are you?”
She changed the subject as gracefully as a fish flew. “Nice T-shirt. Is that new?”
“Thank you, and no.” I blew out angry and drew in happy. It sounded like an asthma attack. “When’re you coming back to the library?”
“Don’t know that I am. Come here. I’ve got something to show you.” She detoured into the Sunset’s communications center, which she’d raised local money to outfit. It housed three desktop computers with word processing, scrapbooking, and desktop publishing software on each, plus a color printer, a fax, a scanner, and a copier. She’d talked me and a handful of others into teaching basic classes on using e-mail and “spoofing the net” as she called it, and now most of the residents were more computer-proficient than me.
All three work stations were empty, so she plopped into the nearest chair and pulled me next to her. Clickety- clack, and she pointed proudly at the screen.
“What am I looking at?” I asked.
“My registration. Check out the evidence of Alexandria Technical College’s newest student.”
“Johnny mentioned that. Good for you!”
“Jesus, he’s weak. You sure you wouldn’t rather sleep with a real man? Whoops, didn’t mean to give anything
