They May Not Mean To, But They Do

26

Molly called her mother every day, which was admirable, Freddie thought, and often inconvenient, happening when they both got home from work and should, theoretically, have been talking to each other. Freddie called her father, of course, but not as frequently. Often, when she did call, he wasn’t in his room. He was a social person and he had found several of the ladies of Green Garden willing to be social with him. Her father was so social, Freddie told Joy, that the social worker at Green Garden seemed to devote a good portion of her working life to him. So when Freddie got a call from the social worker telling her that Duncan was feuding with a woman in a room down the hall, Freddie was not surprised.

“He’s become verbally abusive,” the social worker said.

“Oh, that.” Freddie breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes, he told me there’s a lady who shouts at him when he walks by her door.”

“His language is out of bounds.”

“Did he call her a crusty botch of nature? That was always one of his favorites.”

“I don’t think you understand how serious this is. It’s disturbing the entire facility.”

“But that’s from Troilus and Cressida.”

“It was very upsetting for Mrs. Barsky.”

“Mrs. Barsky?” Mrs. Barsky had been his regular dinner partner some weeks back. Now he was sharing his table with another lady. Freddie suggested to the social worker that this shift in dining companions might have something to do with the arguments, but the social worker kept coming back to her father’s elaborate curses.

“He called Mrs. Barsky the slander of her heavy mother’s womb and, let me see, I wrote it down somewhere, here it is: a swollen parcel of dropsies.”

“Henry the Fourth, Part I. You know that’s why I became a Shakespeare scholar? To keep up with him.”

“They’re revving up to kick him out. I can feel it,” she said later to Molly. “He’s making trouble again.”

“At least he enjoys himself.”

But when Molly spoke to Daniel that night, she said, “I know he has a good time, but still, I’m glad Mom’s not a sex maniac like Duncan. She’s so dignified. It does my heart good.”

“We’re lucky we have such a reasonable, levelheaded mother.”

“You’ve done so much, Daniel, to help her get to this point. Going over there every day and everything.”

“Well, so have you. You arranged for Wanda to stay on, you got the Life Alert, you took care of the banking stuff.”

They both smiled, thinking of their mother safe, clean, and comfortable in her apartment, her Life Alert wristband securely fastened.