Jennifer<\/p>\n
Elsie called this morning, worried because she hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s house. I usually see her there. Elsie and I are connected through Friends\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Meeting. Beatrice and I are connected through my mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always been tension and hurt there.<\/p>\n
I decided to make copies of my mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s senior paper and bring her one; that would be a good pretext for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dropping by\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. (One point of hurt for Beatrice was why didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 sake, which was one sticking point between them. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure one had warning about Mummy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t offered an alternative solution for future panics.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
This is a true story. It happened to me, today.<\/p>\n
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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s request, found her and her dog\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
I rather wish my immediate family wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t out of town just now. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be a little hard not to brood over sights and smells tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jennifer Elsie called this morning, worried because she hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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 … Continue reading