Along the length of the patio garden, each room was lit like a bright stage. In some, the occupant was reading or watching TV; other rooms were empty, though residents had left lights burning while they came to the social hall. Dillon came to stand beside Joe, leaning against the back of the couch, stroking him, but her attention was on the far room.
He hadn't expected to see Dillon again after finding her bawling in the woods, after the nurse booted her out. He'd figured she was done with Casa Capri, that she'd give up looking for Jane Hubble, but here she was, fascinated by that far bedroom, her brown eyes fixed intently on the action behind the curtain.
Suddenly, everyone moved at once. Dillon fled past him out the sliding door, leaving it open to the wind. Mae Rose took off in her wheelchair toward the front entry and the hall beyond, moving faster than he thought that chair could move, Dulcie balanced in her lap, stretching up to see. Eula followed behind Mae Rose's wheelchair, hobbling along in her walker as fast as she could manage.
Joe delayed only a moment, then nipped out the glass doors behind Dillon.
The kid stood across the patio beneath an orange tree, pressed against the glass, shielded by the partially open draperies, looking in, her hands cupped around her eyes. Joe, slipping along beneath the bushes, rubbed against her leg. She looked down and absently scratched his ear with the toe of her jogging shoe. She must think, with the patio darkening and the room so brightly lit, and the flimsy drapery to shield her, that she wouldn't be noticed. He sat beside her in the shadows, watching the three white-uniformed nurses within. One was setting out some books on the dresser, another was filling the dresser drawers with folded garments: neat stacks of lacy pink nighties, quilted satin bed jackets, and what appeared to be long woolly bed socks. The closet door stood open, but the space within did not contain hanging clothes.
The closet was fitted with shelves, and the shelves were stacked with cardboard boxes, wooden boxes, plastic bags, small suitcases, several small flowered overnight bags, and two old-fashioned hatboxes. Dillon seemed fascinated with the jumble; she peered in as if memorizing every item. She looked away only when a fourth nurse entered the room, wheeling a patient on a gurney, a thin old lady tucked up beneath a white blanket, her face pale against the white pillow, her body hardly a puff beneath the cover. The nurse positioned the gurney beside the hospital bed and set its wheel brakes.
Two nurses lifted the patient. Working together they settled her onto the taut, clean sheets of the hospital bed and tucked the top sheet and blanket around her. She squinted and murmured at the light from the bedside lamp, and closed her eyes. A nurse turned the three-way bulb all the way up, forcing a moment of bright glare, switching on through to the lowest, gentle setting. For an instant, in that brief flash of harsh light, something startled Joe, some wrong detail. Something he could not bring clear.
He had no notion what had bothered him, whether some detail of the room, or something about the patient, but soon the feeling was gone. If something was off here, he didn't have a clue. Probably imagination. Annoyed at himself, he lay down across Dillon's feet, watching the room as the nurse pushed the gurney out into the hall.
Another nurse attached an IV tube to the patient's wrist where a needle had already been inserted, and hung a bottle on the IV stand. The old lady was dressed in a lacy white nightie with a high, ruffled collar, and on her hands she wore little white cotton gloves.
"The gloves," Dillon whispered, looking down at him, "are so she won't scratch herself. Wilma says their skin is like tissue paper when they get old. Mae Rose's skin is thin, but I don't remember Jane's being like that."
He wondered if a cat's skin got thin and fragile in old age. Old cats got bony. Old cats looked all loose-hinged, their eyes got bleary, and their chins stuck out. Old cats had a lot of little pains, too. Maybe arthritis, maybe worse.
He didn't think he wanted to hang around after he got frail and useless; he'd rather go out fast. End it quick in a blaze of teeth and claws, raking the stuffings out of some worthy opponent.
Slowly Dillon backed away from the glass. "It's not Jane," she said sadly. She picked him up, buried her face against him. But soon she moved closer to the glass again, peering in as if the sight of that poor old soul fascinated her. He still couldn't figure out what was off about the scene-the old woman looked comfortable and well cared for; the room seemed adequately appointed.
The old lady was very pale, but so were a lot of old people. Her white hair fanned out in a halo onto the white pillow, hair so thin he could see her pale pink scalp beneath. Her wrinkled cheeks and mouth were drawn in, her pale blue eyes were rimed with milky circles. Her lids were reddened, too, and at the corners of her eyes liquid had collected. Dampness shone at one side of her mouth in a small line of drool.
A nurse bent to wipe her face, taking such gentle strokes she seemed hardly to touch the old woman. Behind the nurses in the hall, two visitors appeared, figures robed in black, stepping heavily into the room, two square and hefty old women dressed all in black like two Salvation Army bell ringers.
Their gray hair, frizzed close to their heads, formed little caps as kinky as steel wool. Their shoes were black and sturdy, their black skirts reached nearly to the floor. They seemed as ancient as the bed's occupant, but of a different breed. These two ladies looked indestructible, as if they had been tempered perhaps by some demanding religious sect. Or maybe the vicissitudes of life, alone, had toughened them, just as old leather becomes tough.
The shorter of the two carried a brightly flowered handbag of quilted chintz, its yellow and pink blooms screaming with color against her sepulchral attire. The taller lady bore in her outstretched hands a small bowl covered with a white napkin. Adelina Prior moved behind them, shepherding them inside. She wore beige today, a tailored suede dress that showed less leg, and she wore less makeup, her eyes almost naked, her lips a flesh-colored tone.
The women paused uncertainly by the foot of the bed, watching the patient. She lay with her eyes closed, whether in sleep or out of shyness or bad temper was impossible to tell. The two black-robed ladies leaned forward, peering.
"Mary Nell? Are you awake? It's Roberta and Gustel."
"Mary Nell? Can you hear us? It's Cousin Roberta and Cousin Gustel."
When the patient didn't open her eyes, Ms. Prior took the ladies' arms and guided them to a pair of upholstered chairs that had been drawn up at the side of the bed, the backs to the wall and facing, across the bed, the glass doors. The black-clad women sat woodenly. The shorter lady leaned forward. "Mary Nell, it's Roberta. Are you awake?" As she leaned, she deposited her flowered handbag on the floor. The tall lady remained silent, clutching her bowl in her lap.
Joe, dropping down from Dillon's arms, slipped behind the orange tree, then leaped up into its branches. The sky had grown darker, and the clouds were moving fast. A damp wind scudded through the branches, shivering the leaves. He settled in a fork where he could see out between the moving leaves, directly down upon the bed, upon Mary Nell Hook and her two sturdy cousins. He could see, as well, beneath the bed, Dulcie's two hind paws and the tip of her twitching tail.
Dulcie's view was restricted to the floor, the bed legs, a corner of the blanket hanging down, and the high-topped black shoes of the visitors. Each woman, when seated, kept her feet flat on the floor as if to assure adequate balance. Above their ankle-high shoes, two inches of leg were encased in thick, black corrective stockings- a sharp contrast to Adelina's silk-clad ankles and creamy pumps, her sleek narrow foot tapping softly beside the bed. The two ladies smelled of mothballs, a strange mix when combined with Adelina's perfume and the sweet aroma of vanilla from the bowl that Gustel held. These, with the strong air freshener that had been sprayed earlier, left her nose nearly numb. But she did catch a whiff from the bed above, of nail polish remover. This seemed a puzzling aroma to be associated with a frail, bedridden lady. But maybe she liked nice nails-though one couldn't see them beneath the white cotton gloves.