Brenda followed them, afraid to look down, sure snakes followed people, that you weren’t safe once you were on land because snakes followed. She moved behind the two, watched the ground, the old woman’s sodden, dragging nightgown.
“Just your luck showing up when I’m out in the road, doing my thing.”
“It’s all right,” Brenda said. “Let’s get her inside, and you can make your call.”
They reached the garden. The mother seemed unaware of gravel underfoot. Quickly the three passed up the incline, along the pool cage.
“Weird, I know,” the daughter said. “No chance of a hurricane until June, but that’s Dad for you. He sees too much news, all this crime. He has a remote, he closes the shutters every day before dark.”
They went inside. A voiceover was shouting somewhere. Big kitchen to the left, a long, dark hall ahead. As the woman led her bare-footed mother down the hall, Brenda looked to her right. A man sat in the dark, in one of two BarcaLoungers. He was backlit by a huge TV, and gave no sign of hearing that people had entered. Ahead, the woman was still moving her mother forward, marching with her, snapping on overhead lights.
Brenda followed. The closed shutters had sealed off the interior from any moonlight. Walking over plastic, she felt the house, cold and dry, smelling of bleach. An eerie flashback put her for a moment two hundred feet below ground, in the paranoid sculptor’s studio.
The woman reached the end of the hall and disappeared. A light came on as Brenda followed her into a large living room heavy with shadows. On her left, the mother was now seated on a couch covered with more plastic. The hem of her nightgown and muddy feet were already forming a puddle on the floor. Like the furniture, the carpet had been covered in plastic. The daughter stood looking down at her mother, making up her mind about something. All the furniture seemed part of a dated pop-art installation, because of the plastic. The walls were bare.
“Could I use your phone now?” Brenda handed it over. “What a nightmare,” the woman said, tapping buttons. “I don’t see where we can take it…” Hand on her hip, she waited. “Where do you think I am?” she said. Looking at Brenda, she mouthed my husband. “That’s right, and she went into the pond. I had some help, this nice woman helped me get her back to the house, but their phone’s out…”
She turned away. Feeling like an intruder, Brenda stepped back into the hall. It was gray, identical to the color of her apartment before Thanksgiving. “Don’t you blame this on me,” the woman said. “If you hustled more, we’d have money to get some help…”
The husband would want to know his wife was safe. Brenda’s wet boat shoes sounded like squeegees as she slicked her way down the plastic carpet runner. As she neared, the familiar, demanding voice of a Fox News talking head came again from the lighted opening. She reached it and looked in, knocked on the frame. “Excuse me—” Nothing. “Excuse me!” The man turned in his chair. “I thought you might like—”
“Where’d you come from?”
“Your daughter stopped me for help, she—”
“No you don’t—” He rocked forward and stepped free of his chair, swung to face her and raised his arm. “You think you can just walk in here and take what you want—” He held a handgun. “Not here you don’t, not in my house you don’t, not yet.”
“Dad!” Feet slapped down the hall. “Wait!”
Brenda held herself motionless as the TV voice went on shouting. As he watched television, the old man had held the handgun in his lap. It’s how he lives, she thought, facing the backlit black cutout of a man with a gun. Every day.
“No, Dad!” The woman stopped next to her. “She’s not a thief, Dad, she’s with me, she let me use her phone.”
He lowered his arm. “Please let me have it,” the woman said. “Come on, Daddy, this is no good, you could really hurt someone.”
She moved to him. “Please,” she said. “Do it for me.” He looked at her a moment before handing it to her. “Thank you.” The man watched as she stepped back into the hall. Now Brenda heard the two dogs panting, maybe in the kitchen. The woman motioned for her to follow.
Once outside, she looked at the gun. “I’m real sorry about this—” She dropped her arm and faced Brenda. “He has four or five around the house. Maybe more. He started buying guns just before we made him stop driving. I hope you won’t file anything.”
sunday
In her TV tabloid days as WDIG’s Lightning Rod reporter, three people had pointed a gun at Brenda. A confused cop, a drug dealer, and a crazed commuter during a live-action report on a road rage incident.
Maybe that explained why she hadn’t run from the old man. The pond was different. Anything with snakes on TV, she changed channels immediately. As she drove back to Naples in wet boat shoes, it was all she could think of. She kept shivering in the cold car, seeing herself wading to the woman, feeling something touch her leg. More than once, driving, she reached down to her ankle.
By the time she got back to Donegal, the few moments spent in the old couple’s house fit perfectly with what Marion Ross had said: Naples is where you come face to face with old age. Yes, there were golf courses and beaches and cocktail parties. But also fear, sickness, and madness. And All Hands on Deck.
◆◆◆◆◆
Up early, seated again on the deck in front of her laptop, she entered the password for her email account, then typed out the address for her editor at Esquire. In the subject box she typed BALL-DROPPING BY BRENDA CONTAY:
I hope this won’t mess up your scheduling—you said my boomer piece would run in Oct/Nov but I can’t write it. Yes, I’m a putz, but if
