There Was an Old Woman

Chapter Seven


“Right, I’m the other one.” The girl stood and collected herself.

She seemed to Mina to be so . . . vexed wasn’t quite the right word. More like at wit’s end. Well, who wouldn’t be, given the ungodly mess her mother’s house had turned into? And so fast.

When Mina first spotted the girl—or woman, as they liked to be called these days, though the reasoning escaped her—maneuvering a mattress up against the side of Sandra Ferrante’s house, she assumed it had to be Ginger. But the minute the girl looked up, Mina realized this was the younger sister. The taller, ganglier one. Not the one who sold Girl Scout cookies but the one who kicked around a soccer ball and skinned her knees.

“I’m Evie,” the girl told her.

Eve. Now there was a name that didn’t go out of fashion. Not like Harriet. Or Freda. Mina had always been the only Mina anyone had heard of, except for every once in a while when vampires came back into fashion and people remembered the Mina who, despite Count Dracula’s attentions, had been saved and gotten married, as if that were preferable to an eternity of pure passion, forever and ever with no “death do us part.” Mina wondered where she’d put her copy of that book. She wouldn’t mind reading it again.

“I had an older sister, too,” Mina said, and wondered why on God’s green earth she’d offered that up.

“I didn’t know that.”

Well, of course she didn’t. Annabelle had moved in with Mina a few years after the girls next door went off to college. Then—for what? Six years? No, eight—Mina and Annabelle been widowed sisters living in the house in which they’d grown up. And even with Annabelle gradually fading, like those early colored photographs in the album that lost their vividness even though they were rarely exposed to light, life was quite lovely really. So much simpler and less fractious without men around to make a mess and have opinions.

Annabelle had been growing increasingly forgetful, even difficult at times, when the doctors confirmed their worst fear. Dementia. Progressive and unstoppable. Mina had been so determined to take care of her at home. All that changed a few years later when Mina was woken up in the middle of the night by a knock at the door. The nice young fellow who’d taken over running the store was standing on the step with his arm hooked in Annabelle’s, like he was escorting her home from a dance. Only instead of a prom gown, Annabelle was wearing her thin nightgown with a white lace collar. She was also barefoot, her toes blue with cold.

Finn said he found Annabelle shivering on the store’s front steps. It was a miracle she hadn’t gotten lost, or worse.

The next day, Mina had started looking into nursing homes. She found one that was just a twenty-minute drive away. Annabelle lasted there for two years more, finally succumbing to pneumonia. Mina was so grateful she’d been there when Annabelle passed, holding her hand.

“Did you call my sister?” the girl asked, bringing Mina back to the present.

“Yes. Your mother asked me to. She said to call Ginger and tell her . . . tell her . . .” Mina frowned. She had repeated the words Sandra Ferrante asked her to convey, over and over to herself. Written them down, even, on the same slip of paper where the EMT wrote Ginger’s phone number.

But when she made the call, Ginger hadn’t been there. She’d called again and still no one answered. Mina usually refused to talk to machines—it made her feel ridiculous and unseemly—but she’d swallowed her distaste and left a message, telling Ginger that her mother had been taken off in an ambulance. She took so long explaining what happened that before she could repeat Sandra Ferrante’s message the phone gave a long, insulting bleat. Even Mina knew what that meant. Time had run out.

Now she had no idea where she’d put that little piece of paper, and just as she’d known they would, Sandra’s words had slipped from her grasp.

“Well, I’m sure your mother will tell you herself, won’t she? God bless her. How is she doing?”

“I’m going over to the hospital later today.” The girl gave her a twisted, shaky smile. “I’m so sorry. Must be difficult living next door to all this.” She gave a helpless wave toward her mother’s house.

“I try not to notice,” Mina said. The Ferrantes’ had never been House Beautiful, but lately it had become especially run-down. Though Mina often lost track of time, it seemed to her that it hadn’t been in nearly this appalling of a state even two or three months ago. No wonder the girl was chagrined.

To make her feel better, Mina added, “Fortunately, if I take off my glasses, everything looks lovely. When you can’t see dirt, it makes cleaning so much simpler. Just like when you can’t see your own wrinkles.”

The girl gave her a thin smile. In return, Mina offered a sympathetic cluck and added, “It must be overwhelming coming home to this.”

“Completely. Honestly, I don’t know where to begin. I’ve been here all morning, and I’ve barely made a dent. I never thought it would be this bad.”

The poor thing in her tight jeans and leather boots did seem spectacularly out of her element, like a prairie chicken washed up on Coney Island. Clearly she was overmatched to the task at hand. Well, who wouldn’t be?

“I know you’re not asking for advice,” Mina said, “but that’s never stopped me from offering it. Take one thing at a time.” She poked her cane into the tall weeds that began just past her property line, pushing aside a tangle of knotweed and a burgeoning tree of heaven, then waded over to the girl. Reaching up and putting her hand on the girl’s shoulder, she said, “You know, anything looks less daunting after a sit-down and a nice cup of tea.”