Exposure (23 page)

“And what does your mum, er, mom say about Ms Manfred?” prompted Helene.

The child shrugged.

“She says that they’re just IRS and Miz Manfred ain’t done paid her taxis. But I don’t think that’s right neither cuz I ain’t never seen her take no taxi.”

Helene and Charlie exchanged glances.

“Thank you,” said Helene. “You’ve been very helpful.”

And in lieu of anything better, she gave the child a half-opened packet of chewing gum. He seemed disproportionately pleased with his trophy and went off to show it to his gang, with no intention of sharing it.

Helene followed Charlie up the driveway past an elderly pick-up truck that, at some point in the past, had been reversed into something solid. He knocked on the door frame and waited.

There was no answer.

“Maybe she’s not in,” said Helene.

“She’s in,” said Charlie. “Her pick-up is here and the kids would have said if she’d gone out.”

He knocked again and motioned for Helene to do the speaking. She spoke softly but clearly, unwilling for her voice to reach the goggling children.

“Miss Manfred: we’re not Federal agents. We’re here to help you – you and your father. Will you come and talk to us, please?”

There was some scuffling behind the door.

“Go away! I can’t talk to you!” said a light, girlish voice.

“Please, Miss Manfred,” persisted Helene. “Barbara, we know what happened to your father three years ago. We know that you’re scared, but if you talk to us we can help you.”

“You can’t help me,” came the reply, in a voice that was near to tears. “No-one can help me. You have to go now or they’ll know! Go away. Please!”

The shuffling retreated.

Helene tried again but it seemed Barbara Manfred had said as much as she was going to: as much as she could.

“We could come back tonight,” said Charlie quietly. “So no-one knows we’ve been here. She might talk to us if she thinks no-one will know.”

“I suppose so,” said Helene wearily.

Charlie frowned.

“If we leave the car a mile or so back on the highway and hike in, we can get to her without anyone seeing us. It’s worth a punt.”

“Okay,” said Helene, half-heartedly. “Let’s do that. In the mean time I think we should go and find Manfred senior.”

“You’re the boss,” he said easily.

Helene nearly swallowed her gum.

Warm Creek Nursing Home was less than a half an hour’s drive from Arrowhead Springs. Helene took her turn at the wheel and the SatNav guided her easily. It must make being a spy so much easier, she reckoned. Not that this was how she thought of herself: she was still a journalist and she had one helluva story to tell. Nearly.

The nursing home was set amid the low foothills, some miles out of San Bernadino. The modern, low-rise building was painted a soothingly pale terracotta. Neat lawns and young trees were framed by a secure looking fence: either to keep the patients in or, possibly, visitors out.

But it seemed security wasn’t the main concern as Helene and Charlie were buzzed in through a pair of electric gates, no questions asked. Helene could see that the inmates were making the most of the pleasant weather, or rather their carers were, as they were pushed or escorted around the grounds. Some just sat, slumped in a haze of memories, lost to the present world. All seemed to be in either early or more developed stages of dementia.

Helene could hardly bear to watch. Her mother had died confused and scared, surrounded by strangers, while Helene had been working abroad; home just one day too late to say goodbye. She was haunted by the last image she held of her mother: a thin, frail, wild-haired woman who knew no-one and nothing – except that she wasn’t at home and she desperately wanted to go there. “Won’t you let me go home?” she’d wailed. She’d called for Helene, begged for her, but could not recognise the daughter who stood before her, crying, unable to comfort or help.

It was the only thing about being single that really terrified Helene: the thought that one day, she, too, might wake up and not be able to remember who she was or where she belonged; not to be able to recognise familiar faces; to be lost and fearful. It was a terrible thing to lose control of one’s body, but to lose your mind was to lose yourself.

“Are you ready?” he said.

“Not really,” said Helene. “I hate places like this.”

He shrugged. “Most people do, I would have thought,” he said, a serious expression on his face, “although hopefully not the people who work here. At least it seems pretty calm here.”

“I can’t imagine why that might be, can you?” said Helene sharply.

He didn’t reply but compressed his lips into a thin, bitter line.

“Let’s find out,” he said at last.

They followed the signs to reception and a well appointed blonde woman, on the slippery slope from sixty and dressed as a nurse, fielded their enquiry.

“Mr Manfred? Why, yes, he’s one of our guests. But he doesn’t see anyone. Who did you say you are, honey?”

“Mona Samovar,” said Helene, mentally wincing at the ridiculous name. “I live in London and this is the first chance I’ve had to come out here to see Wally. We used to work together.”

“Well, gee, I hate to disappoint you when you’ve come all this way and all,” said the nurse, who didn’t sound in the least bit disappointed.

“Barbara asked us to drop by,” said Helene, clutching at straws. “Barbara Manfred, his daughter.”

At that the woman’s face tightened still further.

“His daughter you say! Harrumph! All I’ll say is that young lady is no better than she ought to be. Well, I suppose as you’ve come all this way… why don’t you and your son wait in the garden, honey, and I’ll go get Wally. Maybe you’d like a glass of iced tea, too?”

“Thank you,” said Helene, gratefully on both counts. “That would be marvellous.”

Once the nurse had gone Charlie raised an eyebrow.

“Your son?”

Helene tried a wry smile. “Technically I am nearly old enough to be your mother.”

“Hmm. Would that count as an Oedipus complex?” he said.

Helene couldn’t be bothered to reply.

She led them to a bench under a tree that the nurse had pointed out, and an Hispanic orderly dressed in a white uniform brought them their drinks. The iced tea was sweet enough to set Helene’s teeth on edge. And, despite the heat of the day, Charlie pulled a face and tipped his drink under the bench. Helene half expected to see the grass wither instantly.

After a short wait, Helene saw a dumpy black woman approach with a wizened man strapped into a wheelchair, a panoply of St Vitus Dance making his limbs jerk in unison. He seemed unaware of his surroundings, a thin line of drool hanging from his lower lip.

The nurse frowned and used a clean tissue to dab at the man’s mouth. Unwanted tears came to Helene’s eyes: she felt ridiculously grateful to see that small act of kindness towards one so helpless. She hoped that when her time came… then she shook the thought away.

A new feeling of horror overcame her when she realised that the man in the wheelchair was undoubtedly the one from the photograph that Hassan had shown them. But the last three years had taken a terrible toll on the once vital face and strong, stocky body.

“Hello Wally,” said Helene in a strangled voice.

And despite her best efforts she couldn’t keep the tears from welling, threatening to brim over at any second.

“Is this the first time you’ve seen him in a while, ma’am?” said the nurse carefully.

Helene nodded wordlessly.

“It’s probably a bit of a shock for you. You sit back down, miss. Don’t you be frettin’ yourself. It gets Wally all upset: he likes people to be calm.”

“S-sorry,” said Helene.

“That’s okay, ma’am, I understand. We get a lot of that here. But really the patients are just like children: you gotta keep ‘em comfortable and busy and they’re good as gold. See Jimmy over there?”

She pointed to an elderly man with white hair sitting serenely holding a cup of tea.

“Jimmy used to be in removals: you know, movin’ folks from place to place, shiftin’ their furniture. Well, he kept on movin’ all the furniture in his room and one day he moved half the living room down the hall and no-one knew how to stop him. But then I figured even removal men gotta have a rest during their work so I said to him, ‘Now, Jimmy, you shouldn’ be doin’ that: you’s on your tea break’. An’ he stopped: jus’ like that. You gotta know how to talk to ‘em is all. They’s still people, ma’am.”

Helene took a deep breath, reached forward and gently took Wally’s hand between hers.

“Hello, Wally,” she said. “It’s Mona. Genie sent us. You remember Genie?”

There was no reaction in the man’s face, not so much as a flicker of recognition. Helene tried again.

“We stopped by to see Barbara – she said to say ‘hi’. You know, Barbara, your daughter?”

Nothing. But Helene was intrigued to see the expression of disgust on the nurse’s face.

“Have you met his daughter Barbara?” said Helene, looking up.

“I met her,” said the nurse, with pursed lips.

“We saw her today,” said Helene. “I didn’t think she seemed very well.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said the nurse. “She don’t come here.”

“What, never?” said Helene surprised. “She’s only half-an-hour away.”

“Half-an-hour, half-a-day, half a lifetime to some folks,” said the nurse enigmatically. “Some kids push their parents in here and never see ‘em again. Say it’s too hard. Well, I’ll tell you what’s too hard: havin’ children what is so ungrateful that they don’t have the time of day for you – that’s hard.”

Clearly the nurse felt strongly on this point.

“So Barbara has never been here to visit Wally?” pursued Helene.

“Mm-mm. She come just the once, not long after Wally come here,” said the nurse.

“So, Barbara didn’t bring him here herself?”

“No, ma’am,” replied the nurse curiously. “He come by ambulance. Most of ‘em come by ambulance.”

Of course. That made sense. But Helene couldn’t understand why Barbara wouldn’t visit her father?

“Did you say you used to work with Wally?” said the nurse.

A perceptive woman, Helene could tell.

“That’s right,” she replied. “Er, has Wally ever said anything about his work? Does he talk about it?”

“Are you really friends of his?” said the nurse. “You’re not from SAMHSA, are you?”

She saw the blank look on Helene’s face.

“So you’re not from the Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services
Administration?”

“No, why would you think that?” said Helene, honestly confused.

“All them questions you’s asking,” said the nurse.

Helene wondered why the nurse would be bothered about the authorities checking up on Warm Creek Nursing Home.

“Is there something you can tell me about Wally?” said Helene cautiously. “Something about his treatment here?”

The nurse looked intently at Helene, studying her face and then repeated the process with an examination of Charlie.

“I’ll tell you cos you say you friends of Wally here,” said the nurse. “I could get into a lot of trouble for talkin’, see, but I gotta say somethin’ to someone or I’ll just about bust a gut.”

Helene gave her a small smile of encouragement and reassurance. A thought came to her – something Hassan had said…

“Has Wally really got Alzheimer’s?”

The nurse glanced around her, then lowered her voice to a whisper.

“I’ve worked in nursing homes all my life,” she said. “I’ve seen good ones and I’ve seen bad ones. This is one of the good ones: staff here make sure the patients are as good as they can be – all ‘cepting Wally.”

Helene felt her body tense. The nurse paused before plunging in to what she really wanted to say.

“Wally’s meds are never done off the drug cart: no, he’s treated special by the doc.
Real special.
No-one else is allowed to touch his meds. I don’t know what they’re giving him, but I’ll tell you this: he ain’t like no Alzheimer’s patients I’ve ever seen. If you ask me, they doin’ it to keep him quiet. It’s a scandal – that’s what it is. It’s evil!”

Although it was the second time she’d been told this, the nurse’s words confirming Hassan’s original theory, Helene still felt the shock of the revelation.

“That’s awful!” said Helene, weakly. “Does his daughter know? Is that why she doesn’t come?”

The nurse gave Helene a long, appraising look.

“I reckon she knows. But that’s not the reason she don’t come here.”

“Then why?” said Helene.

“I saw her the day she came to see him,” recalled the nurse. “She was screaming and yelling about how he’d been kidnapped and he shouldn’t be in a place like this and how she was gonna call the po-lice on us and all sorts. But then she calmed down a bit when they said she could see him. I was finishing up Wally’s breakfast at the time so I done saw and heard the whole thing – and I tell you… when she walked into that room, she didn’t know him.”

“You mean she didn’t recognise him – because of the dementia, because of the drugs?” said Helene.

“No, ma’am,” said the nurse emphatically. “I mean she didn’t
know
him. She took one look at him and said, ‘That’s not my pa’. Well, at the time I thought she meant he just was so different because that’s how folks feel when they see a family member as has got the dementia, but after I’d thought about it a while I knew that was wrong: she didn’t know him cos this ain’t her pa. I don’t know who this poor soul is, but he ain’t no Wally Manfred.”

Helene stared at Charlie. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He shook his head, his blue eyes stormy with anger and disgust.

Helene stood up slowly and held out her hand to the nurse.

“Thank you for telling us,” she said.

“Just promise me one thing,” said the nurse, ignoring the held out hand. “Promise me you’ll find a way to help this poor soul cos I have surely done all I can. People round here who talk about Wally Manfred, they don’t last long in this job. But maybe I done a good thing tellin’ you. I guess I’ll just have to see about that.”

Helene reached down to stroke Wally’s hand, hoping to see something in his face: but it was the same empty mask of almost-humanity. She watched, sickened, as the nurse wheeled him away.