SUNSET ROMANCE: 6) INSURRECTION
My Saturday Evening Post
7.
John Mulberry is ashen-faced and perplexed when he steps from his office, having just put down the phone after a call from Daniel Barton, Esquire.
Carol-Ann regards him with curiosity as he absently passes by without brushing his fingers against her back or shoulders as usual, a flirtation she habitually ignores.
Mulberry marches stiffly to where six female residents are conducting their weekly book club.
“Mrs. Peabody?” he says, mustering as much calmness as possible.
Elsa looks up.
Mulberry sneers at Sara Barton. “May we speak privately?”
“Yes of course,” says Elsa. “But I don’t care for offices. May we sit over there?” Elsa points to a corner on the other side of the room.
Mulberry bristles, preferring the authority of his own turf. “If you wish.” He doesn’t bother to wheel Elsa’s chair, but walks ahead of her, thumps his rump in a chair, scowling as Elsa draws herself near.
Then he erupts. “Do your sons know that you have retained a lawyer?”
“Have I?”
“Well, Mrs. Peabody, someone claiming to represent you as a lawyer has phoned me for the second time to make threats against us, against where you live.”
“Have they?”
“Stop playing games with me, Mrs. Peabody.”
“No, Mr. Mulberry. You stop playing games with me. I do not appreciate being lied to.”
“I see.” Mulberry recoils, a pained expression from intestinal gas that has built up since his phone call minutes earlier with Daniel Barton. “You think we lie to you?”
“You told me that Mr. Stewart was moved for medical tests.”
“Yes.”
“I spoke with Miles Stewart. He told me this is untrue.”
“I see.” Mulberry thinks for a moment. “Mr. Stewart must be confused.”
Elsa’s eyes widen. And then she explodes with a ferocity Mulberry had never before encountered in a ninety year-old. “You think just because we’re old you can lie to us and, when we learn the truth, suggest we are senile? Shame on you, Mr. Mulberry! If you are lucky, you will grow old like your residents—and it happens a lot faster than you may think.”
Mulberry sits back, dumbfounded, even amused, if quietly alarmed. “I’m going to have to phone your sons and make them aware of your hostility towards us.”
Elsa does not miss a beat. “You may phone the Easter Bunny if you wish, Mr. Mulberry. I shall not be treated like this. She whirls around and rolls away, leaving Mulberry’s mouth agape.
Watching from afar, but close enough to hear, Ernesto snickers.
8.
Something very interesting occurs to Elsa as she tucks into lunch that afternoon: Her cottage cheese and fruit salad seemed to possess more flavor than usual, as if her taste buds have been rejuvenated. An adrenal rush from her feistiness that morning with Mulberry? She eats with gusto. And afterwards, Vervain, her favorite herbal tea. Elsa savors the pungent flavor.
Ernesto interrupts her enjoyment with a summons for a telephone call.
Sara Barton winks. “Popular, aren’t we,” she whispers to Elsa.
Ernesto tries to grip her wheelchair, but Elsa turns on him with a new-found vigor. “I can do it myself, young man, thank you very much.”
Sara claps her hands, and others at the table also applaud as Elsa wheels herself toward reception.
Carol-Ann points to a house phone on a table in the foyer. “Unless you prefer to take it in your room, Mrs. Peabody.”
“This will be fine.” Elsa picks up the receiver, holds it to her ear. “Yes?”
“Ma!” says Elsa’s elder son. “How are ya, Ma?”
“I’m fine, Leonard. How are you?”
“Good, Ma.”
“And the family?”
“Family’s good, Ma. What’s going on over there?”
“I was having lunch.’
“I’m getting calls, Ma. They’re telling me you’re causing trouble. Are you causing trouble?”
“No.”
“Because it took a lot of doing, getting you into Sunset Assisted Living and all. We wouldn’t want you to get thrown out of there.”
“You mean like the time you were expelled from Christian Brothers Academy?”
“Aw, Ma, that was a long time ago.”
“Perhaps. But I remember it better than last week.”
“Why have you hired a lawyer, Ma?”
“Leonard, I stopped interfering in your life seventy years ago, at your insistence. Why are you now interfering with mine?”
“Because they called me, Ma! You don’t think I got better things to do than talk to people at Sunset making threats about your security?”
“My security?”
“They said they wouldn’t tolerate insurrection. That’s their word, not mine.”
“Who said that?”
“John Mulberry. This is serious, Ma. He says you’ve brought in a lawyer and everything.”
“Everything?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, Leonard, I don’t know what you mean. You’re not very articulate. But talking to you on the phone is making me tired. If you truly believe this is your business, come visit sometime and we’ll talk about it in person. And bring my granddaughter, if she’s not too busy to see her grandmother.”
Words continue to spill from the earpiece as Elsa returns the phone to its cradle.
“Thank you,” Elsa says to Carol-Ann, who had been absorbing the dialog conversation like a sponge.