Vic Socotra

28 December 2010

The Adventures of Magpie and Raven

This was the Christmas I noticed that Big Momma had burned away and been replaced by someone else. Someone with bright blue eyes that resembled someone I used to know, and seemed to channel Big Momma in an eerie way, though she had metamorphosed into something new:

A birdlike creature who no longer needs to comb her wispy white hair, which is long in several directions I have not previously observed, and surrounds her inquisitive face like a small cyclone. She still is as alert as a Magpie, inquisitive and inclined to chatter now in repetitive ways, much as I remember her mother, when she was still living in the cute little stucco house in Massillon.

The boys were little, and asleep in the back seat of the mini-van. It had just begun to rain. Grandma looked at me with those deep glittering eyes, magnified behind the lenses of her tortoise shell glasses.

“Do you think we should bring the children in?”

“No, Grandma. We will just let them sleep.”

She nodded. “Do you think we should bring the children in?”

We are not quite there, but headed well down that road.

I stopped by Potemkin Village to make my outcall with Raven and Big Momma. I was feeling pretty virtuous about the whole visit, and considered the time well spent. I would just day farewell and be about my business for the rest of the holidays, maybe get a weekend to just shut down and veg out in my brown chair with a book and not think about anything at all.

It was only 830 miles and the remains of one East Coast blizzard away.

I decided a courtesy call would be a good thing. I talked to Karen at the front desk, and adjusted the order to the local Glenn’s market for delivery later in the week.

“Little Debbie’s donut sticks are what we had to get at the WalMart yesterday,” I said. “God knows my but Mom likes them.” Karen wrote down the addition to the order, and I asked if Jackie, the Village Den Mother was back. She nodded, and pointed toward the back office. I walked back to pay a courtesy call, just a formality, really, since things were going so well.

She hung up the phone and waved me into a seat across from her desk in the little office. “Well,” she said, “We had another event on the 23rd,” she said, pursing her lips. A chill waved over me. “What do you mean? I asked, knowing the answer already. The road was out there, connected to the parking lot, and eventually to my little home at Big Pink, and I was supposed to be on it.

“Raven went wandering again, and was discovered in the apartment of one of our reclusive ladies. She was very upset.”

“I can imagine,” I said. “This is terrible. I thought we were locking the dead-bolt from the outside in the evening.”

“Apparently your mother is leaving the key in her purse and he has figured it out.”

“Damn,” I said. Barb, the Executive Director, stuck her head in the door and amplified the gravity of the situation. Raven was going to get the boot. “Let me see if I can figure out what happened,” I said. “I know we have had the third strike already, but maybe I can do something to salvage the situation.”

They were very nice and very kind, but I was blushing in embarrassment. I hustled out of the office and saw the door of the slow-motion elevator closing. A worker inside started at my rapid approach.

“You scared me. We don’t see much running, here.”

“Sorry,” I said. This was really screwed up. Eventually we arrived with glacial dignity at the third floor and I walked briskly down the corridor to the apartment, which like all the others on the corridor had a shelf adjacent to the door that was garnished with two Christmas statues and a picture I took at their 60th wedding anniversary at the Little Church Around the Corner in New York. The tableaus are intended to provide a cheery visual queue to the residents so that they can recognize where they live.

I rapped the knocker on the heavy soundproof door and walked in. Big Momma was watching Fox News and Raven was slumped back in his chair asleep, mouth open.

She looked up at me with those bright blue eyes.

“Mom, we have a situation. It is very serious.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dad got out again, four days ago. He was reported to management, and they are going to throw him out if something does not change.”

“Well I know he was out this morning. He got up before me, which was very unusual. The bed was wet and as I came out of the bedroom I saw the door closing slowly. I got him back,” she said proudly. “Very unusual for him to be up early. I slept with him almost on top of me all night to make sure.”
“No, Mom, not this morning. He got out and was found in another apartment and he frightened the lady badly.”

Mom looked dubious, so I started again at the top. “This is very serious. They are going to throw you out if I can’t guarantee that this will not happen again.”

We did that three or more times, and finally we were on the same sheet of music, but it was difficult to hear, since the remote control had disappeared and I was having a hard time hearing anything. I ransacked the apartment looking for it, as Margo the care-giver arrived to check Raven’s pants and ensure he was dry before lunch.

I almost have stopped squirming at the whole idea. Mom has not. “I think they don’t realize that we own this furniture. We are not ruining anything of theirs.”

“Mom, they don’t care about peeing on the furniture. They just want the residents to be dry. They know about incontinence here.”

She still wanted to cover the thing up. “Well, Doctor Blanchard’s son is here. He came to visit and he just shouted out that he needed to go to the bathroom at lunch.” She pursed her mouth in disapproval.”

“I think that is the Doctor’s father,” I said. “And wetting yourself is something much different than trespassing and scaring people.”

“Your Father is very gentle,” said Mom.

“I know that, but it doesn’t matter. He is scaring people and he is going to get the bounce if we don’t do something. Where are the keys to the door?”

That initiated a square search of her purse and every drawer and cranny of the apartment. Eventually we came up with two sets for the mailbox and the deadbolt. I saw a Medic-alert necklace hanging by the telephone with a dog-tag on it with Raven’s name and address in case he was found wandering off the property.

I took the two dead-bolt keys off the keychains and looped them onto the necklace. “You are going to have to wear these on your neck all the time so Dad can’t get at them without waking you up.”

We worked on the concept until it was time to go to lunch. I walked them down to the elevator and into the casual dining area.

“I have to go explain to Jackie our big new plan, Mom. You will have to keep the keys on you all the time.”

“You are not staying for lunch?”

“No, Mom, there are some things I need to do.” I started to tick them off. Find a place for Raven to go, if they bounced him. Talk to the lawyers and the social workers. Try to buy some time with Potemkin Village’s management, so he is not put out in the parking lot. “I will be back around Happy Hour and hopefully I will have some options.”

“Options are good,” said Mom, bright as a magpie. Then she got into it with one of the pert young women who had placed her skim milk with ice at an unfamiliar table.

“We have a family group coming, so we will just move you for this one lunch.”

“I am not sitting there,” said Mom firmly, the old Big Momma full-blown. I didn’t understand what it was all about until I realized that this was the table where a gnarled old man sat alone with his face twisted in a permanent scowl.

“Just sit somewhere, Mom. I will be back.”

Raven plopped himself down, waiting for instructions. His glittering eyes had a strange focus on something I could not quite see, is out of it.

I eventually brokered a neutral table with no trolls and got them seated. Then I went back downstairs and threw myself on the Management’s mercy.

Then I roared home and started the search for supervised living alternatives for Raven the rest of the afternoon, and called everyone with a dog in the fight to pass the alert that the moment of Doom was at hand.

The shadows were lengthening when I got back in the car to drive back to the Village.

I walked back into the apartment to see my Mom with the contents of her purse in her lap, looking endlessly at all the objects, two coin purses, two mailbox keys with large green plastic tags, two pairs of reading glasses.

She picked them all up over and over again. I looked at her neck where I had placed the chain that contained the keys to the dead-bolt. Nothing there.

Crap! My big solution had lasted an hour or so.

Mom-the-magpie had been looking for the necklace since lunch.

“How about the necklace that you have on your left arm, Mom?”

She brightened. “Oh, there it is,” she said with satisfaction.

I had several schemes to present as options, but it suddenly struck me that I was totally out of my element. I have no good options in dealing with Magpie and her Raven.