“So Alice is around him a lot?”
“Never,” Margie whispered. “He’s paranoid. He doesn’t want anyone in his private chambers but that scarecrow, Mrs. Shaw. Those two are cut from the same cloth. The cook hardly ever sees him, either. Mrs. Shaw collects the food and serves him or him and his guests,” Margie said with a pointed glance, “in the dining room.”
Emma sighed. “Well, if this Montand guy holds any animosity for Cristina, he’s doing us all a favor by steering clear. I’m only interested in him if Cristina wants to—or needs to—see him during her last days.”
“That’s why I believe in Alice’s opinion that he’s the devil,” Margie insisted before noticing Emma’s cautionary glance and nod toward the bedroom. She quieted her voice. “Cristina says her stepson is the last person on earth she wants to see.”
Both women blinked when Emma’s cell phone buzzed where it sat on the desk.
“The tech nerd?” Margie asked, grinning.
“Yeah,” Emma said, reading the message from her boyfriend, Colin. “He says he’s so smoking Amanda’s butt at Modern Warlord.”
Margie rolled her eyes and grabbed her purse. “They hang around together even when you’re not around?”
“All the time. They’re both video game–aholics,” Emma replied, rapidly texting Colin back.
She glanced up and caught Margie’s sharp glance. “And here I thought your sister was cool,” Margie said before she headed for the door.
The next night, Emma sat in an upholstered chair near Cristina’s bed and read out loud from a 1986 version of Vogue. Cristina had chosen the reading material, and then grinned the biggest smile Emma had seen on her yet when Emma discovered the article featuring Cristina. It turned out that Cristina had been quite the fashion maven in her day. She’d twice been declared one of the best-dressed women in the world. She had owned a posh, renowned secondhand designer retail store in downtown Kenilworth. Fashionistas from all over the world used to throng to her shop not only to buy one-of-a-kind, barely used designer shoes, handbags, and apparel, but also to empty out their own closets—presumably so they could be filled all over again.
“I love it,” Emma said, setting aside the magazine and standing to pull down the covers. Cristina had broken out in a sweat while Emma’d read. Her regulatory mechanisms were going haywire. Poor woman was freezing one second, boiling the next. Emma picked up a cool, damp cloth and pressed it to Cristina’s forehead and cheeks. “I can’t imagine having wardrobes like those women must have owned.”
“They were bored,” Cristina rasped. “I was bored. What else did we have to do but recycle our wardrobes? We couldn’t change our lives, so we changed our clothes . . . and our makeup and our hair. It didn’t work, of course, but doing it made us forget that. For a little while. How much does my stepson pay you?” she suddenly asked sharply.
Emma blinked as she set down the cloth. “Your stepson doesn’t pay me. The hospice does. Are you asking me my salary?” she clarified amusedly as she stripped off a soiled pillowcase.
“Yes. I suppose. How much do you make in a year?”
Emma stated a figure, inclined to respond candidly to a candid question.
“That’s not much.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Emma replied dryly.
“Still, you told me you’re not married and you have no children. You have no excuse for dressing like a camp counselor every day.” She peered closer at Emma’s outfit. “A boy camp counselor, at that,” Cristina added raggedly before she began to cough. Emma held up a cloth beneath her patient’s mouth, laughing at the woman’s parry. She understood Cristina’s reference. Cristina had commented on Emma’s attire yesterday when they were introduced—jeans, a fitted T-shirt, and her favorite pair of red high tops. Her hospice was pretty good about letting the staff wear whatever they wanted for work. Most of the nurses wore scrubs, but Emma preferred her own clothing.
Emma placed the cloth in the overflowing red plastic bag of dirty linens.
“I don’t have any children, but I live with my little sister. She’s going to medical school this fall,” Emma explained, talking as though the coughing fit hadn’t taken place.
“And you’ve been helping her get by?”
“Her brilliance and the scholarships have done that. Still, she lived with me while she’s been in undergrad.”
“You said your parents are both gone. So you’ve paid for your sister’s food and keep and whatever else her scholarship hasn’t provided—which I’m sure is plenty? You don’t have to answer,” Cristina said after a short pause. “I’m getting the make of you.”
“And here I thought I was so complex and mysterious.”
“Martyrs never are. That’s the reason you dress like a drudge, a pretty girl like you,” Cristina decided with an exhausted air of finality. Her breathing was coming easier now, but the coughing had tired her. “You don’t think twice about things like fashion. You look down your nose at we women who do.”
“You’re wrong,” Emma said, quite unoffended. She found Cristina’s sharp wit engaging, and sensed Cristina respected her for it. “And your logic is faulty. You call me a martyr because I’m a walking fashion mistake and because of the job I do.”
“Who else but a martyr would do this godforsaken job?” Cristina sparred without pause, even though her speech had begun to slur.
“A person who loves it, of course.”
Cristina snorted. Emma finished changing the pillowcase and lifted Cristina’s head gently, slipping the fresh pillow into place. She settled with a sigh. Emma began checking her patient’s pulse.
“And in fact,” Emma continued when she had finished, “I am as vain as any female can be that works too hard, owns a car that’s been long overdue for work at the shop, not to mention a perpetually clogged kitchen sink, a water heater that thinks ‘hot’ means lukewarm, and a stack of bills that never seems to shrink. Which is to say, pretty damn vain, from what I’ve noticed. Desire grows from lack as much as overindulgence.”
Cristina gurgled a laugh and studied her figure narrowly. “What size are you? A four?”
“What has that got to do with anything?” Emma wondered.
“We’re the same size—or at least we once were—although you are a little taller. I’ve racks and racks of clothes in my closet over there,” Cristina said, nodding weakly at a door in the distance. “You take them. I want you to have them all,” she finished imperiously, her accent now so thick and her exhaustion so great, Emma barely understood her.
Emma placed her hand on her patient’s cold, trembling one.
“No. But thank you for the generous thought, Cristina,” she said softly.
She kept her hand in place and watched as the older woman succumbed to sleep.
“The repairman left without fixing the washer,” Emma told Debbie, the night nurse, after they greeted each other in the living room of the suite. Debbie had arrived for her shift early. “He said the part probably wouldn’t get here until Friday.”
“What a slacker,” Debbie said disgustedly. “What are you doing?” the other nurse asked when Emma stuffed down the linen in the bag with a latex-glove-covered hand, removed the glove, and then tied off a tight knot.
“The wash.”
“What? You’re taking it home with you?”
“Not a chance,” Emma said with a grin as she headed toward the door. “I don’t even own a washer and dryer.”
She noticed Debbie’s stunned glance and correctly interpreted it.
“This is a mansion,” Emma said, waving her hand in a circular “look at reality” gesture. “There has to be another washer and dryer here. Probably a couple.”