“That woman always gets my back hair up, and I guess I do the same to her. I must, because I’ve never in my life known one woman to smile that much at another without hating her guts. Anyway, I told her I had to wash the kitchen floor, to start with. ’Just look at it,” I said.

“dirty as the devil.”

“’Huh!” Harold says. ’I can’t believe you’re going to send us back to the city empty-handed after we came all the way down here, Ma Well I’m not moving into that place no matter how far you came,” I said back, ’so you can get that idea right out of your head.

I’ve been living in Derry for thirty-five years, half my life.

All my friends are here, and I’m not moving.”

“They looked at each other the way parents do when they’ve got a kid who’s stopped being cute and started being a pain in the tail.

Janet patted my shoulder and said, ’Now don’t get all upset, Mother Lois-we only want you to come and look.” Like it was the brochures again, and all I had to do was be polite. just the same, her saying it was just to set my mind at ease a little. I should have known they couldn’t make me live there, or even afford it on their own.

It’s Mr. Chasse’s money they’re counting on to swing it-his pension and the railroad insurance I got because he died on the job.

“It turned out they had an appointment all made for eleven o’clock, and a man lined up to show me around and give me the whole pitch. I was mostly over being scared by the time I got all that straight in my mind, but I was hurt by the high-handed way they were treating me, and mad at how every other thing out of Janet’s mouth was Personal Days this and Personal Days that. it was pretty clear that she could think of a lot better ways to spend a day off than coming to Derry to see her fat old bag of a mother-in-law.

“’stop fluttering and come on, Mother,” she says after a little more back-and-forth, like I was so pleased with the whole idea I couldn’t even decide which hat to wear. ’Hop into your coat. I’ll help you clean up the breakfast things when we get back.”

“’You didn’t hear me,” I said. ’I’m not going anywhere. Why waste a beautiful fall day like this touring a place I’ll never live in?

And what gives you the right to drive down here and give me this kind of bum’s rush in the first place? Why didn’t one of you at least call and say, “We have an idea, Mom, want to hear it?” Isn’t that how you would have treated one of your friends?”

“And when I said that, they traded another glance.

Lois sighed, wiped her eyes a final time, and gave back Ralph’s handkerchief, damper but otherwise none the worse for wear.

“Well, I knew from that look that we hadn’t reached bottom yet.

Mostly it was the way Harold looked-like he did when he’d just hooked a handful of chocolate bits out of the bag in the pantry. And Janet… she gave him back the expression I dislike most of all. Her bulldozer look, I call it. And then she asked him if he wanted to tell me what the doctor had said, or if she should do it.

“In the end they both told it, and by the time they were done I was so mad and scared that I felt like yanking my hair out by the roots. The thing I just couldn’t seem to get over no matter how hard I tried was the thought of Carl Litchfield telling Harold all the things I thought were private. just calling him up and telling him, like there was nothing in the world wrong with it.

“’so you think I’m senile?” I asked Harold. ’Is that what it comes down to? You and Jan think I’ve gone soft in the attic at the advanced age of sixty-eight?”

“Harold got red in the face and started shuffling his feet under his chair and muttering under his breath. Something about how he didn’t think any such thing, but he had to consider my safety, just like I’d always considered his when he was growing up.

And all the time Janet was sitting at the counter, nibbling a muffin and giving him a look I could have killed her for-as if she thought he was just a cockroach that had learned to talk like a lawyer.

Then she got up and asked if she could ’use the facility.” I told her to go ahead, and managed to keep from saying it would be a relief to have her out of the room for two minutes.

“’Thanks, Mother Lois,” she says. ’I won’t be long. Harry and I have to leave soon. If you feel you can’t come with us and keep your appointment, then I guess there’s nothing more to say.”

“What a peach,” Ralph said.

“Well, that was the end of it for me; I’d had enough. ’I keep my appointments, Janet Chasse,” I said, ’but only the ones I make for myself. I don’t give a fart in a high wind for the ones other people make for me.”

“She tossed up her hands like I was the most unreasonable woman who ever walked the face of the earth, and left me with Harold.

He was looking at me with those big brown eyes of his, like he expected me to apologize. I almost felt like I should apologize, too, if only to get that cocker spaniel look off his face, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I just looked back at him, and after awhile he couldn’t stand it anymore and told me I ought to stop being mad. He said he was)’List worried about me down here all by myself, that he was only trying to be a good son and Janet was only trying to be a cood daughter.

“I guess I understand that,” I said, ’but you should know that sneaking around behind a person’s back is no way to express love and concern.” He got all stiff then, and said he and Jan didn’t see it as sneaking around. He cut his eyes toward the bathroom for a second or two when he said it, and I pretty much got the idea that what he meant was Jan didn’t see it as sneaking around. Then he told me it wasn’t the way I was making it out to be-that Litchfield it had called him, not the other way around.

“’All right,” I said back, ’but what kept you from hanging up once you realized what he’d called to talk to you about? That was just plain wrong, Harry. What in God’s good name got into you?”

“He started to flutter and flap around-I think he might even have been starting to apologize-when Jan came back and the youknow-what really hit the fan.

She asked where my diamond earrings were, the ones they’d given me for Christmas. It was such a change of direction that at first I could only sputter, and I suppose I sounded like I was going senile. But finally I managed to say they were in the little china dish on my bedroom bureau, same as always.

I have a jewelry box, but I keep those earrings and two or three other nice pieces out because they are so pretty that looking at them always cheers me up. Besides, they’re only clusters of diamond chips-it’s not like anyone would want to break in just to steal those.

Same with my engagement ring and my ivory cameo, which are the other two pieces I keep in that dish.”

Lois gave Ralph an intense, pleading look. He squeezed her hand again.

She smiled and took a deep breath. “This is very hard for me.”

“If you want to stop-”

“No, I want to finish… except that, past a certain point, I can’t remember what happened, anyway. It was all so horrible. You see, Janet said she knew where I kept them, but they weren’t there. My engagement ring was, and the cameo, but not my Christmas earrings. I went in to check myself, and she was right. We turned the place upside down, looked everywhere, but we didn’t find them. They’re gone.”

Lois was now gripping Ralph’s hands in both of her own, and seemed to be talking mostly to the zipper of his jacket.

“We took all the clothes out of the bureau… Harold pulled the bureau itself out from the wall and looked behind it… under the bed and the sofa cushions… and it seemed like every time I

looked at Janet, she was looking back at me, giving me that sweet, wide-eyed look of hers. Sweet as melting butter, it is-except in the eyes, anyway-and she didn’t have to come right out and say what she was thinking, because I already knew. ’You see? You see how right Dr. Litchfield was to call us, and how right we were to make that appointment? And how pigheaded you’re being? Because you need to be in a place like Riverview Estates, and this just proves it. You’ve lost the lovely earrings we gave you for Christmas, you’re having a serious decline in cognition, and this just proves it. It won’t be long before you’re leaving the stove-burners on… or the bathroom heater…”