I tried to reach Elmo Castelmaine at King Solomon Gardens. He was on shift again, busy with a patient. I got in the Seville and drove to the Fairfax district, to Edinburgh Street.
The old-age home was one of dozens of boxy two-story buildings lining the narrow, treeless street.
King Solomon Gardens had no gardens, just one pudgy-trunked, roof-high date palm to the left of the double glass entry doors. The building was white texture-coat trimmed in electric blue. A ramp carpeted in blue Astroturf served in place of front steps. Cement had been laid down where the lawn should have been, painted hospital green and furnished with folding chairs. Old people sat, sun-visored, kerchiefed, and support-hosed, fanning themselves, playing cards, just staring off into space.
I found a parking space halfway down the block and was headed back when I spotted a chunky black man across the street, pushing a wheelchair. I quickened my pace and got a better look. White uniform tunic over blue jeans. No corkscrew beard, no earring. The crown of the head yielding to near-total baldness; the stocky body, softer. The face looser, double-chinned, but the one I remembered from Resthaven.
I crossed the street, caught up. “Mr. Castelmaine?”
He stopped, looked back. An old woman was in the wheelchair. She didn’t pay any notice. Despite the heat, she wore a sweater buttoned to the neck and an Indian blanket across her knees. Her hair was thin and brittle, dyed black. The breeze blew through it, exposing white patches of scalp. She appeared to be sleeping with her eyes open.
“That’s me.” The same high-pitched voice. “Now, who might you be?”
“Alex Delaware. I left you a message yesterday.”
“That doesn’t help me much. I still don’t know you any better than I did ten seconds ago.”
“We met years ago. Six years ago. At Resthaven Terrace. I came with Sharon Ransom. Visited her sister, Shirlee?”
The woman in the chair began to sniffle and whimper. Castelmaine bent down, patted her head, pulled a tissue out of his jeans and dabbed at her nose. “Now, now, Mrs. Lipschitz, it’s okay, he’s gonna come get you.”
She pouted.
“Come on now, Mrs. Lipschitz, honey, your beau’s gonna come, don’t you worry.”
The woman lifted her face. She was sharp-featured, toothless, wrinkled as a discarded shopping bag. Her eyes were pale-brown and heavily mascaraed. A bright-red patch of lipstick had been smeared over a puckered fissure of a mouth. Somewhere behind the crease and corrugation, the mask of cosmetics, shone a spark of beauty.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Aw, Mrs. Lipschitz,” said Castelmaine.
She drew the blanket up to her mouth, began chewing on the coarse fabric.
Castelmaine turned to me and said softly, “They reach a certain age, they can never get warm, no matter what the weather. Never get full satisfaction of any kind.”
Mrs. Lipschitz cried out. Her lips worked around a word for a while and finally formed it: “Party!”
Castelmaine kneeled beside her, eased the blanket away from her mouth, and tucked it around her. “You’re gonna go to that party, hon, but you’ve got to be careful not to ruin your makeup with all those tears. Okay?”
He placed two fingers under the old woman’s chin and smiled. “Okay?” She looked up at him, nodded.
“Goo-ood. And we are looking pretty today, honey. All spiffed up and raring to go.”
The old woman held up one shriveled hand. A thick black one wrapped around it.
“Party,” she said.
“Sure, there’s gonna be a party. And you’re so pretty, Clara Celia Lipschitz, that you’re gonna be the belle of that party. All the handsome boys are gonna line up to dance with you.”
A rush of tears.
“Now c’mon, C.C., no more of that. He’s gonna come, take you to that party- you’ve got to be looking your best.”
More struggle to enunciate: “Late.”
“Just a little late, Clara Celia. He probably hit some heavy traffic- you know, all that gridlock I’ve been telling you about. Or maybe he stopped off at a flower shop to get you a nice corsage. Nice pink orchid corsage, like he knows you love.”
“Late.”
“Just a little,” he repeated, and resumed pushing the chair. I tagged along.
He began singing, softly, in a sweet tenor so high it verged on falsetto. “Now C., C.C. Rider. C’mon see, baby, what you have done…”
The music and the repetitive rub of the chair’s tires against the sidewalk set up a lullaby rhythm. The old woman’s head began to loll.
“… C.C. Lipschitz, see what you have done…”
We stopped directly across the street from King Solomon. Castelmaine looked both ways and nudged the chair over the curb.
“… you made all the handsome boys love you… and now your man has come.”
Mrs. Lipschitz slept. He pushed her across the green cement, exchanging greetings with some of the other old people, got to the bottom of the ramp and told me: “Wait here. I’ll be with you soon as I’m through.”
I stood around, got drawn into conversation with a thick-waisted old man with one good eye and a VFW cap who claimed to have fought with Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill, then waited, belligerently, as if expecting me to doubt him. When I didn’t he launched into a lecture on U.S. policy in Latin America and was going strong, ten minutes later, when Castelmaine reappeared.
I shook the old man’s hand, told him it had been educational.
“A smart boy,” he told Castelmaine.
The attendant smiled. “That probably means, Mr. Cantor, that he didn’t disagree with you.”
“What’s to disagree? Emes is emes, you got to keep those pinkos in line or they eat your liver.”
“The emes is, we gotta go, Mr. Cantor.”
“So who’s stopping you? Go. Gey avek.”
We walked back across the green cement.
“How about a cup of coffee,” I said.
“Don’t drink coffee. Let’s walk.” We turned left on Edinburgh and strolled past more old people. Past sweating windows and cooking smells, dry lawns, musty doorways.
“I don’t remember you,” he said. “Not as a specific person. I do remember Dr. Ransom visiting with a man, because it only happened once.” He looked me over. “No. I can’t say that I remember it being you.”
“I looked different,” I said. “Had a beard, longer hair.”
He shrugged. “Could be. Anyway, what can I do for you?”
Unconcerned. I realized he hadn’t heard about Sharon, gritted my teeth and said:
“Dr. Ransom died.”
He stopped, put both hands alongside his face. “Died? When?”
“A week ago.”
“How?”
“Suicide, Mr. Castelmaine. It was in the papers.”
“Never read the papers- get enough bad news just from living. Oh, no- such a kind, wonderful girl. I can’t believe it.”
I said nothing.
He kept shaking his head.
“What pushed her so low she had to go and do something like that?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
His eyes were moist and bloodshot. “You her man?”
“I was, years ago. We hadn’t seen each other for a long time, met at a party. She said something was bothering her. I never found out what it was. Two days later she was gone.”
“Oh, Lord, this is just terrible.”
“I’m sorry.”
“How’d she do it?”
“Pills. And a gunshot to the head.”
“Oh, God. Doesn’t make any sense, someone beautiful and rich doing something like that. All day I wheel around the old ones- fading away, losing the ability to do anything for themselves, but they hang on, nothing but memories to keep them going. Then someone like Dr. Ransom throws it all away.”
We resumed walking.
“Just doesn’t make sense,” he repeated.
“I know,” I said. “I thought you might be able to help me make some sense of it.”
“Me? How?”
“By telling me what you know about her.”
“What I know,” he said, “isn’t much. She was a fine woman, always looked happy to me, always treated me well. She was devoted to that sister of hers- you don’t see a lot of that. Some of them start out all noble, guilty for putting the loved one away, swearing to God they’re gonna be visiting all the time, taking care of everything. But after a while of getting nothing back, they get tired, start coming less and less. Lots of them disappear completely. But not Dr. Ransom- she was always there for poor Shirlee. Every week, like clockwork, Wednesday afternoon, two to five. Sometimes two or three times a week. And not just sitting- feeding and fixing and loving that poor girl and getting nothing in return.”