The Door Swung Open
Jennifer
Elsie called this morning, worried because she hadn’t heard from my Aunt Beatrice in a long time. She had last gotten through to Beatrice by phone in early February. Beatrice has often been hard to reach; she leaves her phone off the hook when she writes, and maybe at other times as well. But two and a half months was longer than usual; Beatrice usually goes to a writing group Elsie convenes, and Beatrice usually goes to an Easter potluck at Elsie’s house. I usually see her there. Elsie and I are connected through Friends’ Meeting. Beatrice and I are connected through my mother’s brother who died about 4 years ago. They married when his children and I were all teenagers, and although we should have a lot in common, there’s always been tension and hurt there.
I decided to make copies of my mother’s senior paper and bring her one; that would be a good pretext for “dropping byâ€. (One point of hurt for Beatrice was why didn’t my mother like her? I thought reading the senior paper would help her see just how not-personal that dislike — which Beatrice had explicitly asked about several years ago, and about which I had tried to answer honestly — was. The paper was written long before Mummy met Beatrice, but one could see in it the beginnings of someone not-at-all-interested in politeness for politeness’ sake, which was one sticking point between them. I’m not sure one had warning about Mummy’s competitiveness as a writer in the senior paper, but I HAD been able to tell Beatrice about that.) In the past, apparently, when Elsie has become concerned and asked the police or fire department to check in, Beatrice has been fine, apologetic about worrying her friends, but hasn’t offered an alternative solution for future panics.
I arrived at the house around 1PM, rang the doorbell, noticed dog feces smell, checked the mailbox (empty, and Elsie had written), opened the screen (unlocked, unusual, hmm), st.a.r.t.e.d .. to .. r. a. p. on the window and realized it was broken and the door swung open.
This is a true story. It happened to me, today.
So, I called 911 on my cell phone and it took a while (an hour plus) but it turned out the fire department had broken in 2 days ago at the neighbor’s request, found her and her dog’s bodies in the house, but been unable to figure out the next of kin. The detective was glad to hear from me. The bodies had been there for some time.
One thing I got was a clear visual answer to why Beatrice sometimes left her phone off the hook for a month or more. My family had become aware shortly after my uncle married her that she was an alcoholic, but neither she nor my uncle ever admitted it. (That combination was the biggest reason my mother never liked her, but I had found myself unable to tell Beatrice that.) When she totally stopped drinking about 20 years ago, she still never admitted she had been a closet drinker. When my uncle died, or maybe before, she apparently went back to it.
I rather wish my immediate family wasn’t out of town just now. It’ll be a little hard not to brood over sights and smells tonight.
I had a good friend found by another friend under almost identical circumstances. Reduce the age by 60% (alas) and change dogs to cat, but otherwise…….. Massive difference — it wasn’t me knocking. The only good news is she and the dogs had been removed, but I sympathize (though I’m clear I can only barely theorize your state). I wish you untroubled sleep.
You may have out-Michaeled Michael, BTW, lifting secretive personal demons to the light of day (or the blog’s sorta daylit rooms, anyway), but from the added acuteness of a just-seconds-ago perspective. Yow.
Comment by adam — April 22, 2005 @ 7:55 am
Once sleep came it was untroubled.
I also can only guess at my state. I crack funny jokes one minute and have uncontrollable shaking fits another. OK, maybe the jokes aren’t funny.
I have no idea how to look through files for important things, and I think I’m elected.
Comment by jennifer — April 22, 2005 @ 8:54 am
I’m sure you’re all dying (oops! — just an idiom) to know, I found the will in the files, and I’m not the next of kin, nor the executor, nor a beneficiary. Things seem to be moving along … although Michael, could you do a glass replacing job?
Comment by jennifer — April 22, 2005 @ 5:17 pm
Michael assures me that it’s largely random whether folks write in or not. But … are you all worried about offending me, or offended that I’m not taking this more seriously? Please don’t worry about the former, and I’m sorry if I’ve offended anyone.
Adam, that’s awful, and terribly sad. I’m not at all sure that it’s worse to be the present party, by the way. Imagination isn’t all that different from memory. It also sounds like there were no mitigating (or do I mean “ameliorating”?) circumstances in your situtation.
By the way, those weren’t the real names. I don’t mind people knowing, I just didn’t like the idea of it being in print. Michael said he imagined it in the country, isolated. Wrong: think Brighton, two doors down from a nursing home, two arm-spans from neighbors on both sides. The postal carrier put a “box full: pick up mail at Post Office” in her box on March 31.
Comment by jennifer — April 22, 2005 @ 10:44 pm
My younger brother found his downstairs neighbor ready for her wooden pajamas. I donÃt believe he walked in on her, but peered through an open door. The scene you descibe, Jennifer, is macabre, unsettling and sad. All of those what coulda, mighta, shoulda been questions bubble up, the very same ones that haunt when a friend or blood kin commits suicide. Which is, of course, what she did.
Comment by michael — April 23, 2005 @ 7:09 am
Sobering account, Jennifer, causing me to read it over three times just to make sure I wasn’t imagining this to be an actual, real-time, first-person account of a human tragedy (you can never be sure of much in this virtual info-world we inhabit nowadays).
Many of the same questions already asked come to mind, and one that hasn’t: if the fire dept had broken in earlier, why were the bodies still there? I’m sure this mundane question is just my way of distancing myself from the emotional realities touched on by previous commenters.
Comment by dan — April 24, 2005 @ 9:43 am
Sorry, Dan, I just noticed your question. I guess that sentence of mine was ambiguous. The bodies weren’t there on Thursday, I meant that when the fire dept. found them two days earlier they had been there for some time. (Since sometime between March 13 and March 27, apparently.) The fire dept. removed the bodies but nothing else, and no cleaning/disinfecting was done; no windows were opened except the one broken into — so the smell was … um … quite strong. By the way, what took an hour was: the first police officer wasn’t really prepared to figure out what happened, and made me go in first(!) She called for backup once we got to the bedroom. I was terrified to look behind the bed, etc. I guess she was too — although I would think that she would have been trained to recognize what was going on; for instance, that the shape spot on the mattress was in keeping with a long-dead body, that the neatly broken window was what the fire dept. does, etc. Anyway, we waited outside for backup when neither of us could deal with searching further. When backup came, I followed them partway in but wandered back out again, … and one of the two backup officers got on his radio and someone at headquarters recognized the address, finally.
Comment by jennifer — April 26, 2005 @ 11:20 pm