called him. No wonder Carter bailed. Shit,’ she says, listening at the bottom of the attic stairs, ‘he’s not up there either.’
‘I told you . . .’
‘Right.’ Her face fragments like a bad transmission and snaps back into focus: resilient kid. Big, getting-down-to-business sigh. ‘Guess I’ll go get Grammy over with.’
‘Do what?’
‘At the old folks’ hatch. It’s my Sunday, we take turns.’ She is busy brushing schmutz off her pink dress. ‘It’s not so bad, except for the smell. Lysol or some shit, like, they even disinfect the food. So. Was my mother hitting on you?’
Now it is his turn to be surprised. He gets to the answer in stages. ‘Not really. I’m sorry. Yeah, pretty much. What are you doing?’
‘Calling a cab.’
‘Don’t bother. I’ll take you.’
‘It’s out in west hell.’
Church, he thinks. Then the club. They won’t be home for hours. ‘Come on,’ he says. Whatever he thought he was doing here is over now. ‘I’ve got nothing but time.’
‘Awesome!’ The crafty look she gives him is a masterpiece. ‘Would you mind coming in with me? Grammy doesn’t talk much, and it’s a lot and a lot easier with two.’
40
Walker
It’s not unpleasant, sitting here in the car outside Golden Acres, although after a day spent stalking, he’s sick of being in the car. Grief has taught him patience; he’ll live. He always does.
Meanwhile, it’s pretty out here on the bay, at a point that’s a little too close to the end of the world, given the function of this place. Low-lying Spanish stucco apartments and a handful of cottages sit in the landscape like Herman Chaplin’s dream community compressed by the exigencies. Some people say he started this miniature village as a demo model, some say the grand old entrepreneur was planning an amusement park, but the compound went up so long ago that nobody is sure. When the Methodists bought the property from Herman’s estate, several problems were solved. Fort Jude society had a place to stash its frail and unpredictable parents when they got too old or too crazy to take care of themselves. They were installed at Golden Acres well before the likes of Wallace Pike came to town with his pregnant wife and first-born son – not crazy yet, but there were intimations. Generations of oldsters had passed through by the time Anna Pike ran away from her husband and, with Pop the way he was, six-year-old Walker understood he was in charge of everything, including Wade.
Pop was good enough at what he did, running the garage and taking care of the bills, but daily life dumbfounded him. By the time Walker was old enough to worry, he thought that sooner or later, he’d have to make the money so Golden Acres could deal with Pop. When the old man set the shop on fire in Walker’s first year at MIT, he and Wade checked into it, even though old Wallace swore it was an accident. He was erratic, forgetful. You never knew.
Walker came down from Cambridge during term to scope the place, and this was after he’d vowed never to come back to Fort Jude. He and Wade went around with the girl from the front office; she was new. Golden Acres looked pleasant enough, with an activities director and a pianist in the dining room every Sunday. They even had a little pool. There were parties in the Health Center for every hundredth birthday, of which there seemed to be a lot. You could see they took good care of people, photos of hundredth birthday parties lined the halls. Fragile guests posed for the photographer in wheelchairs and on walkers, all dressed up and smiling bravely in their party hats. The aides and social workers Walker met were all nice enough, but when they met the director, everything changed. Odd that in an establishment depopulated by death on a regular basis, there were no vacancies. Walker was still in college but he was already earning, and Pop was slipping fast. Together he and Wade could cover it somehow, but the woman in charge took one look at them and said with the nicest smile, ‘Your father wouldn’t be comfortable here.’
It’s a cool afternoon for April and Walker has the windows down. He is parked in a spot the shade will protect until late afternoon. As Sunday is the world’s official visiting day no matter what the institution, he won’t be noticed in this crowd. Everybody in town seems to be out here, visiting