Patricia Highsmith / Old folks at home

Old folks at home

by Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith / Ancianos en casa

'Well,' Lois said finally, 'let's do it.' Her expression as she looked at her husband was serious, a little worried, but she spoke with conviction. 'Okay,' said Herbert, tensely
They were going to adopt an elderly couple to live with them. More than elderly, old probably. It was not a hasty decision on the part of the Mclntyres. They had been thinking about it for several weeks. They had no children themselves, and didn't want any. Herbert was a strategy analyst at a government-sponsored institution called Bayswater, some four miles from where they lived, and Lois was an historian, specializing in European history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thirty-three years old now, she had three books and a score of articles to her credit. She and Herbert could afford a pleasant two-story house in Connecticut with a glass-enclosed sunroom that was Herbert's workroom and also their main library, handsome grounds and a part-time gardener all year round to look after their lawn and trees, bushes and flowers. They knew people in the neighborhood, friends and acquaintances, who had children-young children and teenagers-and the Mclntyres felt a little guilty about not fulfilling their duty in this department; and besides that, they had seen an old people's nursing home at first hand a few months ago, when Eustace Vickers, a retired inventor attached to Bayswater, had passed away. The Mclntyres, along with a few of Herbert's colleagues, had paid a visit every few days to Eustace, who had been popular and active until his stroke.

One of the nurses at the home had told Lois and Herbert that lots of families in the region took in old people for a week at a time, especially in winter or at the Christmas season, to give them a change, 'a taste of family life for a few days,' and they came back much cheered and improved. 'Some people are kind enough to adopt an old person-even a couple-to live with them in their homes,' the nurse had said.

Lois remembered her shudder at the thought, then, with a twinge of guilt. Old people didn't live forever. She and Herbert might be in the same boat one day, objects of semi-charity, really, dependent on the whim of nurses for basic physical needs. And old people loved to be helpful around the house, if they possibly could be, the nurse had said.

'We'll have to go-and look,' Herbert said to Lois, then broke out in a grin suddenly. 'Something like shopping for an orphan child, eh?'

Lois laughed too. To laugh was a relief after the earnest conversation of the past minutes. 'Are you joking? Orph­anages give people the children the orphanages choose to give. What kind of a child do you think we'd rate, Herb? White? High I.Q.? Good health? I doubt it.'

'I doubt it too. We don't go to church.'

'And we don't vote, because we don't know which party to vote for.'

'That's because you're an historian. And I'm a policy analyzer. Oh yes, and I don't sleep at regular hours and sometimes switch on foreign news at four in the morning. But—you really mean this, Lois?'

'I said I did.'

So Lois rang up the Hilltop Home and asked to speak to the superintendent. She was not sure of his or her title. A man's voice came on, and Lois explained her and her husband's intentions in prepared words. 'I was told such arrangements were made sometimes-for six months, for instance.' These last words had come out of nowhere, as if by themselves.

The man on the telephone gave the shortest of laughs. 'Well-yes, it would be possible-and a great help usually for all concerned. Would you and your husband like to come and see us, Mrs Mclntyre?'

Lois and Herbert drove to the Hilltop Home just before seven that evening. They were received by a young nurse in blue and white uniform, who sat with them in a waiting room for a few minutes and told them that the ambulant guests were having their dinner in the refectory, and that she had spoken to three or four couples about the Mclntyres' offer, and two of the couples had been inter­ested, and two hadn't.

'These senior citizens don't always know what's good for them,' the nurse said, smiling. 'How long did you and your husband plan on, Mrs Mclntyre?'

'Well-doesn't it depend on whether they're happy?' Lois asked.

The nurse pondered with a slight frown, and Lois felt that she wasn't thinking about her question, but was turn­ing over a formularized response. 'I asked because we usu­ally consider these arrangements permanent, unless of course the single guest or the couple wishes to return to the Hilltop.'

Lois felt a cold shock, and supposed that Herbert did too, and she did not look at him. 'Has that happened? They want to come back?'

'Not often!' The nurse's laugh sounded merry and practiced.

They were introduced to Boris and Edith Basinsky by the nurse in blue and white. This was in the 'TV room,' which was a big long room with two television sets offering different programs. Boris Basinsky had Parkinson's dis­ease, the nurse volunteered within Mr Basinsky's hearing. His face was rather gray, but he smiled, and extended a shaking hand to Herbert, who shook it firmly. His wife, Edith, appeared older than he and rather thin, though her blue eyes looked at the Mclntyres brightly. The TV noise conflicted with the words the Mclntyres were trying to exchange with the Basinskys, such as, 'We live nearby ... we're thinking ...' and the Basinskys' 'Yes, Nurse Phyllis told us about you today ...'

Then the Forsters, Mamie and Albert. Mamie had broken her hip a year ago, but could walk now with a cane. Her husband was a tall and lanky type, rather deaf and wearing a hearing aid whose cord disappeared down the open collar of his shirt. His health was quite good, said Nurse Phyllis, except for a recent stroke which made it difficult for him to walk, but he did walk, with a cane also.

'The Forsters have one son, but he lives in California and-isn't in a good position to take them on. Same with the two or three grandchildren,' said Nurse Phyllis. 'Mamie loves to knit. And you know a lot about gardening, don't you, Mamie?'

Mamie's eyes drank in the Mclntyres as she nodded.

Lois felt suddenly overwhelmed, somehow drowned by gray heads all around her, wrinkled faces tipped back in laughter at the events on the TV screen. She clutched Herbert's tweed jacket sleeve.

That night around midnight, they decided on the Forsters. Later, they were to ask themselves, had they decided on the Forsters because their name sounded more ordinary, more 'Anglo-Saxon'? Mightn't the Basinskys have been an easier pair, even if the man had Parkinson's, which required the occasional enema, Nurse Phyllis had warned?

A few days later, on a Sunday, Mamie and Albert Forster were installed in the Mclntyre house. In the preced­ing week, a middle-aged woman from the Hilltop Home had come to inspect the house and the room the Forsters would have, and seemed genuinely pleased with the stand­ard of comfort the Mclntyres could offer. The Forsters took the room the Mclntyres called their guest room, the prettier of the two extra rooms upstairs, with its two win­dows giving on the front lawn. It had a double bed, which the Mclntyres thought the Forsters wouldn't object to, though they didn't consult the Forsters about it. Lois had cleared the guest room closet completely, and also the chest of drawers. She had brought an armchair from the other twin-bed spare room, which meant two comfortable armchairs for the Forsters. The bathroom was just across the hall, the main bathroom with a tub in it, though down­stairs there was also a shower with basin and toilet. This move took place around 5 p.m. Lois's and Herbert's neighbors the Mitchells, who lived about a mile away, had asked them for drinks, which usually meant dinner, but Herbert had declined on Saturday on the telephone, and had explained why. Then Pete Mitchell had said, 'I under­stand-but how about our dropping in on you tomorrow around seven? For half an hour?'

'Sure.' Herbert had smiled, realizing that the Mitchells were simply curious about the elderly pair. Pete Mitchell was a history professor at a local college. The Mitchells and the Mclntyres often got together to compare notes for their work.

And here they were, Pete and Ruth Mitchell, Pete stand­ing in the living room with his scotch on the rocks, and Ruth with a Dubonnet and soda in an armchair, both smiling.

'Seriously,' Pete said, 'how long is this going to last? Did you have to sign anything?' Pete spoke softly, as if the Forsters, way upstairs and in a remote corner, might hear them.

'Well-paper of agreement-responsibility, yes. I read it over, no mention of-time limit for either of us, perpetuity or anything like that.'

Ruth Mitchell laughed. 'Perpetuity!'

'Where's Lois?' Pete asked.

'Oh, she's-' At that moment, Herbert saw her entering the living room, brushing her hair to one side with a hand, and it struck him that she looked tired. 'Everything okay, darling?'

'Hel-lo, Ruth and Pete!' Lois said. 'Yes, everything's all right. I was just helping them unpack, hanging things and putting stuff in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. I'd forgotten to clear a shelf there.'

'Lots of pills, I suppose,' said Pete, his eyes still bright with curiosity. 'But you said they were both ambulant at least.'

'Oh sure,' said Lois. 'In fact I asked them to come down and join us. They might like-Oh, there's some white wine in the fridge, isn't there, Herb? Tonic too.'

'Can they get down the stairs all right?' asked Herbert, suddenly recalling their rather slow progress up the stairs. Herbert went off toward the stairway.

Lois followed him.

At that moment, Mamie Forster was descending the stairs one at a time, with a hand touching the wall, and her husband, also with his cane, was just behind her. As Herbert dashed up to lend an arm to Mamie, Albert caught his heel, lurched forward and bumped his wife who went tumbling toward Herbert. Albert regained his balance with his cane, Herbert seized Mamie's right arm, but this did not prevent her from swinging forward and striking Lois who had started up the stairs at a fast pace. It was Lois who fell backward, landing on the floor and bumping her head against the wall. Mamie cried out with pain.

'My arm!' she said.

But Herbert had her, she hadn't fallen, and he released her arm and looked to his wife. Lois was getting to her feet, rubbing her head, putting on a smile.

'I'm quite okay, Herb. Don't worry.'

'Good idea-' Albert Forster was saying as he shuffled toward the living room.

'What?' Herbert hovered near Mamie, who was walking all right, but rubbing her arm.

'Good idea to put a handrail on those stairs!' Albert had a habit of shouting, perhaps because he did not move his lips much when he spoke, and therefore what he said was not clear.

Lois introduced Mamie and Albert Forster to Pete and Ruth, who got up from her armchair to offer it to one or the other of them. There were pleasant murmurs from the Mitchells, who hoped the Forsters would enjoy their new surroundings. The Mitchells' eyes surveyed both the Forsters, Mamie's round gray head with its quite thin hair all fluffed up and curled evidently by a professional hair­dresser to make it seem more abundant, the pale pink apron that she wore over her cotton dress, her tan house slippers with limp red pompoms. Albert wore plaid house slippers, creaseless brown corduroy trousers, an old coat sweater over a flannel shirt. His expression was slightly frowning and aggressively inquisitive, as if consciously or unconsciously he had decided to hang on to an attitude of a more vigorous prime.

They wanted the television on. There was a program at 7:30 that they always watched at the Hilltop.

'You don't like television?' asked Mamie of Lois, who had just turned the set on. Mamie was seated now, still rubbing her right elbow.

'Oh, of course!' said Lois. 'Why not?' she added gaily.

'We were—we were just wondering-since it's there, why isn't it on?' said Albert out of his slightly parted but hardly moving lips. If he had chewed tobacco, one would have thought that he was trying to hold some juice inside his lower lip.

As Lois thought this, Albert drooled a little saliva and caught it on the back of his hand. His pale blue eyes, now wide, had fixed on the television screen. Herbert came in with a tray that held a glass of white wine for Albert, tomato juice for Mamie, and a bowl of cashew nuts.

'Could you turn up the sound, Mis'r Mclntyre?' asked Albert.

'This all right?' asked Herbert, having turned it up.

Albert first laughed at something on the screen-it was a sitcom and someone had slipped and fallen on a kitchen floor-and glanced at his wife to see if she was also amused. Smiling emptily, rubbing her elbow as if she had forgotten to stop, eyes on the screen, Mamie did not look at Albert. 'More-louder, please, if y'don't mind,' said Albert.

With a quick smile at Pete Mitchell, who was also smil­ing, Herbert put it up even louder, which precluded con­versation. Herbert caught his wife's eye and jerked his head toward the sunroom. The four adjourned, bringing their drinks, grinning.

'Whew!'said Ruth.

Pete laughed loudly, as Herbert closed the door to the living room. 'Another TV set next, Herb. For them up in their room.'

Lois knew Pete was right. The Forsters could take the living room set, Lois was thinking. Herbert had a TV set here in his workroom. She was about to say something to this effect, when she heard, barely, a call from Mamie. The TV drama was over and its theme music boomed.

Through the glass door, she saw Mamie looking at her, calling again. When Lois went into the living room, Mamie said:

'We're used to eating at seven. Even earlier. What time do you people eat supper?'

Lois nodded-it was a bore to try to shout over the blaring TV-raised a forefinger to indicate that she would be right on the job, and went off to the kitchen. She was going to broil lamb chops for dinner, but the Forsters were in too much of a hurry for that.

After a few minutes, Herbert went looking for Lois, and found her spooning scrambled eggs onto warmed plates on the stove. She had made toast, and there were also slices of cold boiled ham on a separate plate. This was to go on trays of the kind that stood up on the floor.

'Help me with one of these?' Lois asked.

'The Mitchells think we're nuts. They say it's going to get worse-a lot worse. And then what do we do?'

'Maybe it won't get worse,' Lois said.

Herbert wanted to pause a moment before taking the tray in. 'You think after we tuck them in bed we could go over to the Mitchells'? They've asked us for dinner. You think it's safe-to leave them?'

Lois hesitated, knowing Herbert knew it wasn't safe. 'No.'

The living room television set was brought up to the Forsters' room. TV was the Forsters' main diversion or occupation, even their only one, from what Lois could see. It was on from morning till night, and Lois sometimes sneaked into their bedroom at eleven o'clock or later to switch it off, partly to save electricity, but mainly because the noise of it was maddening, and her and Herbert's bed­room was adjacent on the same side of the hall. Lois took a small flashlight into their bedroom to do this. The Forsters' teeth stood in two glasses on their night table, usually, though once Lois had seen a pair in a glass on the shelf in the bathroom, out of which she and Herbert had moved their toothbrushes, shampoos and shaving articles to the smaller bathroom downstairs. The teeth gave Lois an unpleasant shock, and so they did when she switched off the loud TV every night, even though she did not shine the light on them: she simply knew they were there, one pair, anyway, and maybe the second pair was in the big bath­room. She marveled that anyone could fall asleep with the TV's bursts of canned laughter, marveled also that the sudden silence never woke the Forsters up. Mamie and Albert had said they would be more comfortable in separ­ate beds, so Lois and Herbert had made the exchange between the two upstairs rooms, and the Forsters now had the twin beds.

A handrail had been installed on the stairway, a slender black iron rail, rather pretty and Spanish-looking. But now the Forsters seldom came downstairs, and Lois served their meals to them on trays. They loved the TV, they said, because it was in color, and those at the Hilltop hadn't been. Lois took on the tray-carrying, thinking it was what was called women's work, though Herbert fetched and carried some of the time too.

'Certainly a bore,' Herbert said, scowling one morning in his pajamas and dressing gown, about to take up the heavy tray of boiled eggs and teapot and toast. 'But it's better than having them fall down the stairs and break a leg, isn't it?'

'Frankly, what's the difference if one of them did have a leg broken now?' Lois replied, and giggled nervously.

Lois's work suffered. She had to slow up on a long art­icle she was writing for an historical quarterly, and the deadline made her anxious. She worked downstairs in a small study off the living room and on the other side of the living room from Herbert's workroom. Three or four times a day she was summoned by a shout from Mamie or Albert-they wanted more hot water for their tea (four o'clock ritual), because it was too strong, or Albert had mislaid his glasses, and could Lois find them, because Mamie couldn't. Sometimes Lois and Herbert had to be out of the house at the same time, Lois at the local library and Herbert at Bayswater. Lois had not the same joy as in former days on returning to her home: it wasn't a haven any longer that belonged to her and Herbert, because the Forsters were upstairs and might at any moment yell for something. Albert smoked an occasional cigar, not a big fat one, but a brand that smelled bitter and nasty to Lois, and she could smell it even downstairs when he lit up. He had burnt two holes in the brown and yellow cover on his bed, much to Lois's annoyance, as it was a handwoven blanket from Santa Fe. Lois had warned him and Mamie that let­ting ash drop could be dangerous. She hadn't been able to tell, from Albert's excuses, whether he had been asleep or merely careless.

Once, on returning from the library with some borrowed books and a folder of notes, Lois had been called upstairs by Mamie. Mamie was dressed, but lying on her bed, propped against pillows. The TV was not as loud as usual, and Albert appeared to be dozing on the other twin bed.

'Can't find my teetV Mamie said petulantly, tears started to her eyes, and Lois saw from her downturned mouth, her little clamped jaw, that she was indeed tooth­less just now.

'Well-that should be easy.' Lois went into the bath­room, but a glance revealed that no teeth or toothglass stood on the shelf above the basin. She even looked on the floor, then returned to the Forsters' bedroom and looked around. 'Did you have them out-in bed?'

Mamie hadn't, and it was her lowers, not her uppers, and she was tired of looking. Lois looked under the bed, around the TV, the tops of the bookcases, the seats of the armchairs. Mamie assured Lois they were not in the pock­ets of her apron, but Lois felt the pockets anyway. Was old Albert playing a silly trick, playing at being asleep now? Lois realized that she didn't really know these old people.

'You didn't flush them down the toilet by accident?'

'No! And I'm tired of looking,' said Mamie. 'I'm tired!'

'Were you downstairs?'

'No!'

Lois sighed, and went downstairs. She needed a cup of strong coffee. While she was making this, she noticed that the lid was off the cake tin, that a good bit of the pound cake was gone. Lois didn't care about the cake, but it was a clue: the teeth might be downstairs. Lois knew that Mamie-maybe both of them-came downstairs some­times when she and Herbert were out. The big square ash­tray on the coffee table would be turned a little so that it looked like a diamond shape, which Lois detested, or Herbert's leather chair would be pulled out from his desk, instead of shoved close as he always left it, as if Mamie or Albert had tried the chair. Why couldn't the Forsters be equally mobile for their meals? Now with her coffee mug in hand, Lois looked over her kitchen-for teeth. She looked in her own study, where nothing seemed out of place, then went through the living room, then into Herbert's workroom. His chair was as he would have left it, but still she looked. They'll turn up, she thought, if they weren't somehow down the toilet. Finally, Lois sat down on the sofa with the rest of her coffee, and leaned back, trying to relax.

'My God!' she said, sitting up, setting the mug down on the coffee table. She had nearly spilled what was in the mug.

There were the teeth-lowers, Lois assumed-on the edge of the shelf of the coffee table that was otherwise filled with magazines. The denture looked shockingly narrow, like the lower jaw of a little rabbit. Lois took a breath. She would have to handle them. She went to the kitchen for a paper towel. Herbert laughed like a fool at the teeth story. They told it to their friends. They still had their friends, no change there. After two months, the Mclntyres had had two or three rather noisy and late dinner parties at their house. With their TV going, the Forsters presumably heard noth­ing; at any rate, they didn't complain or make a remark, and the Mclntyres' friends seemed to be able to forget there was an elderly pair upstairs, though everyone knew it. Lois did notice that she and Herbert couldn't or didn't invite their New York friends for the weekend any longer, realizing that their friends wouldn't want to share the upstairs bathroom or the Forsters' TV racket. Christopher Forster, the son in California, had written the Mclntyres a letter in longhand. The letter read as if it had been prompted by the Hilltop Home: it was courteous, expressed gratitude, and he hoped that Mom and Dad were pleased with their new home.

I would take them on but my wife and me haven't got too much extra space here, just one room as spare that our own children and families use when they visit us .. . Will try to get the grandchildren to write but the whole family is not much for writing...

The letterhead stated the name and address of a dry-cleaning shop of which Christopher Forster was not the manager. Albert Forster, Lois remembered, had been a salesman of some kind.

Albert started wetting the bed, and Lois acquired a rub­ber sheet. Albert complained of backache from 'the damp,' so Lois offered him the double bed in the spare room, while she aired the twin-bed mattress for a couple of days. She telephoned the Hilltop Home to ask if there were pills that Albert might take, and had he had this complaint before? They said no, and asked if Albert was happy. Lois went to see the Hilltop Home doctor in attendance, and got some pills from him, but he doubted the complete effi­cacy of the pills, he said, if the subject was not even aware of his dampness until he woke up in the morning.The second teeth story was not so funny, though both Herbert and Lois laughed at first. Mamie reported that she had dropped her teeth-again the lowers-down the heat­ing vent in the floor of the bathroom. The teeth were not visible down there in the blackness, even when Herbert and Lois shone a flashlight. All they saw was a little dark gray lint or dust.

'You're sure?' Herbert asked Mamie, who was watching them.

'Dropped 'em bof but only one fell t'rough!' said Mamie.

'Damned grill's so narrow,' Herbert said. 'So are her teeth,' said Lois.

Herbert got the grill off with a screwdriver. He rolled up his sleeves, poked gently at first in the fluffy dust, then with equal delicacy explored more deeply with a bottlebrush, not wanting to send the denture falling all the way down, if he could help it. At last he and Lois had to conclude that the teeth must have fallen all the way down, and the heat­ing tube, rather square, curved about a yard down. Had the teeth fallen all the way into the furnace below? Herbert went down alone to the cellar, and looked with a feeling of hopelessness at the big square, rivet-secured funnel that went off the furnace and branched into six tubes that brought the heat to various rooms. Which one even belonged to the upstairs bathroom? Was it worth it to tear the whole furnace apart? Certainly not. The furnace was working as usual, and maybe the teeth had burned up. Herbert went downstairs and undertook to explain the situation to Mamie.

'We'll see that you get another set, Mamie. Might even fit better. Didn't you say these hurt and that's why-' He paused at Mamie's tragic expression. Her eyes could get a crumpled look that touched him, or disturbed him, even though he thought Mamie was usually putting on an act.

However, between him and Lois, she was consoled. She could eat 'easy things' while the dental work was done. Lois at once seized on the idea of taking Mamie back to the Hilltop Home, where they might well have a dentist in residence, or an office there where dentists could work, but if they had, the Hilltop Home denied it on the telephone to Lois. This left her and Herbert to take Mamie to their own dentist in Hartford, twenty-three miles away, and the trips seemed endless, though Mamie enjoyed the rides. There was a cast of lower gums to be made, and of the upper denture for the bite, and just when Herbert and Lois, who took turns, had thought that the job was done in pretty good time, came the 'fittings.'

'The lowers always present more difficulties than the uppers,' Dr Feldman told them regretfully. 'And my client here is pretty fussy.'

It was plain to the Mclntyres that Mamie was putting on an act about the lowers hurting or not fitting, so she could be taken for rides back and forth. Every two weeks, Mamie wanted her hair cut and waved at a beauty salon in Hartford, which she thought better than the one in the town near where the Mclntyres lived. Social Security and the pension sent on by the Hilltop helped more than fifty percent with the Forsters' expenses, but bills of the hair­dresser and also the dentist the Mclntyres paid. Ruth and Pete Mitchell commiserated with the Mclntyres by

telephone or in person (at the same time laughing their heads off), as if the Mclntyres were being afflicted with the plagues of Job. In Herbert's opinion, they were. Herbert became red in the face with repressed wrath, with frustra­tion from losing work time, but he couldn't countenance Lois losing more of her time than he did, so he did his half of hauling Mamie back and forth, and both the Mclntyres took books to read in the dentist's waiting room. Twice they took Albert along, as he wanted to go, but once he peed in the waiting room before Herbert could point out the nearby toilet (Albert's deafness made him slow to understand what people were saying), so Lois and Herbert flatly refused to take him along again, saying sympathetic­ally but really quite grimly that he shouldn't risk having to go to the toilet again in a hurry, if he happened to be in a public place. Albert snatched out his hearing aid while Lois was speaking about this. It was Albert's way of switching off.

That was in mid-May. The Mclntyres had intended to fly out to Santa Barbara, where Herbert's parents had a house plus a guest house in the garden, and to rent a car there and drive up to Canada. Every other summer they visited the older Mclntyres, and it had always been fun. Now that was impossible. It was impossible to think of Mamie and Albert running the house, difficult but maybe not impossible to engage the services of someone who would look after them and sleep in, full time. When they had taken on the Forsters, Lois was sure they had been more able to get about. Mamie had talked of working in the garden of the Hilltop Home, but Lois had not been able to interest Mamie in doing anything in their garden in April, even the lightest of work, such as sitting and watching. She said something to this effect to Herbert.

'I know, and it's going to get worse, not better,' he replied.

'What do you mean exactly?'

'This bed-wetting-Kids'll grow out of it. Kids grow other teeth if they lose 'em.' Herbert laughed madly for an instant. 'But these two'll just get more decrepit.' He pro­nounced the last word with bitter amusement and looked Lois in the eyes. 'Have you noticed the way Albert bangs his cane now-instead of just tapping it? They're not satisfied with us. And they're in the saddle! We can't even have a vacation this summer-unless we can possibly shove 'em back in the Hilltop for a month or so. You think it's worth a try?'

'Yes!' Lois' heart gave a leap. 'Maybe. What a good idea, Herb!'

'Let's have a drink on it!' They were standing in the kitchen, about to have their own dinner, the Forsters hav­ing been served earlier upstairs. Herbert made Lois a scotch, and replenished his own glass. 'And speaking of shoving,' he went on, pronouncing his words very clearly as he did when he had something to say that passionately interested him, 'Dr Feldman said today that there was absolutely nothing the matter with Mamie's lowers, no sign of gum irritation, and he could hardly pull 'em off her jaw himself, they fitted so well. Ha! -Ha-ha-ha-a!' Herbert fell about the kitchen laughing. He had lost three hours taking Mamie to the dentist that afternoon. 'The goddamn last time-today! I was saving it to tell you.' Herbert lifted his glass and drank.

When Lois rang the Hilltop the next morning, she was told that their accommodations were more than filled, some people were four in a room or booked for that, because so many other people were placing their elderly relatives in the Hilltop in order to be free for vacations themselves. Somehow Lois didn't believe the mechanical-sounding voice. But what could she do about it? She didn't believe that so many people lived with their parents or grandparents these days. Yet if they didn't, what did people do with them? Lois had a vision of a tribe shoving its elders off a cliff, and she shook her head to get the thought out, and stood up from the telephone. Lois did not tell Herbert.

Unfortunately, Herbert, who fetched the tray down at lunchtime, shouted to the Forsters that they would be going back to the Hilltop for two months that summer. He turned the TV down and repeated it with a big smile. 'Another nice change of scene. You can see some of your old friends again-visit with them.' He looked at both of them, and saw at once that the idea did not appeal.

Mamie exchanged a look with her husband. They were lying on their respective beds, shoes off, propped facing the TV screen. 'No particular friends there,' said Mamie.

In her sharp eyes Herbert saw a blood-chilling hostil­ity. Mamie knew also that she wasn't going to be driven to the Hartford dentist or hairdresser again. Herbert did not mention this conversation to Lois. But Lois told Herbert during their lunch that the Hilltop Home had no room this summer. She hadn't wanted to disturb Herbert with the bad news while he had been working that morning.

'Well, that cooks it,' Herbert said. 'Damn, I'd like to get away this summer. Even for two weeks.' 'Well, you can I'll-'

Herbert shook his head bitterly, slowly. 'We might do it in shifts? No, darling.'

Then they heard Albert's cane-it made a different sound from Mamie's-tapping down the stairs. Then another cane. Both the Forsters were coming down. Most unusual. Lois and Herbert braced themselves as if for enemy attack.

'We don't want to go to the Hilltop this summer,' said Mamie. 'You-'

'No!' said Albert with a bang of his cane from his standing position.

'You agreed to let us live with you.' Mamie had her squinty, pity-poor-me face on again, while Albert's eyes were suspicious, his lower lip twisted with inquiry.

'Well,' said Lois with an embarrassed, retreating feeling that she hated, 'the Hilltop is filled up, so you needn't worry. Everything's all right.'

'But you tried,' said Mamie.

'We're trying-to have a little vacation,' said Herbert loudly for the deaf Albert's benefit, and he felt like socking the old bed-wetting bastard and knocking him down, old as he was. How dare that recipient of charity glare at him as if he were a crook, or someone who meant to do him harm?

'We don't understand,' said Albert. 'Are you trying-' 'You're staying here,' Lois interrupted, forcing a huge smile to calm the atmosphere, if she could.

But Mamie began again, and Herbert was livid. They both spoke at once, Albert joined in, and in the Babel-like roar, Lois heard her husband assuring the Forsters grimly that they were staying, and heard the Forsters saying that the Mclntyres had gone back on their word to them and the Hilltop. The phrase "... not fair' came again and again from the mouths of Mamie and Albert, until Herbert uttered a dreadful curse and turned his back. Then there was a sudden silence which fairly made Lois's ears ring, and thank God Albert decided to turn and leave the kit­chen, but in the living room he paused, and Lois saw that he had begun to pee. Is that deliberate? Lois wondered as she rushed toward him to steer him toward the downstairs bathroom which was to the right of the kitchen door around a partition of bookshelves. She and Albert were on the way, but by the time they got there, Albert was finished, and the pale green carpet quite splotched between kitchen and the bathroom door which she had not even opened. She jerked her hand away from his coat-sweatered arm, disgusted that she had even touched him.

She went back to her husband, past Mamie. 'My God,' she said to Herbert.

Herbert stood like a fortress with feet apart, arms folded, eyebrows lowered. He said to his wife, 'We'll make it.' Then he sprang into action, grabbed a floor rag from a cupboard under the sink, wet it, and tackled the splotches on their carpet.

Albert was on his slow way upstairs, Mamie started to follow him, but paused to present her stricken face to Lois once more. Herbert was stooped and scrubbing, and didn't see it. Lois turned away and faced the stove. When Lois looked again, Mamie was creeping toward the stairs.

As Herbert rinsed and re-rinsed the floor cloth, a task he would not let Lois take over, he muttered plans. He would speak with the Hilltop Home in person, inform them that since he and Lois worked at home and needed a certain amount of solitude and silence, they could not and should not have to spend more money for a full-time servant to take meals upstairs, plus changing bed linen every day. When they had taken on the Forsters, they had both been continent and more able to look after themselves, as far as the Mclntyres had known.

Herbert went to the Hilltop Home that afternoon around three, without having made an appointment. He was in an aggressive enough mood to insist on seeing the right person, and he had thought it best not to make an appointment. Finally, he was shown into the office of one Stephen Culwart, superintendent, a slender, balding man, who told him calmly that the Forsters could not be taken back into the Hilltop, because there was no room. Mr Mclntyre could get in touch with the Forsters' son, of course, and another home might be found, but the problem was no longer the responsibility of the Hilltop Home. Herbert went away frustrated, and a bit tired, though he knew the tiredness was only mental and that he'd best shake it off.

Lois had been writing in her study off the living room, with her door closed, when she heard a crash of breaking glass. She went into the living room and found Mamie in a trembling state near the bookshelf partition outside the kit­chen door. Mamie said she had been downstairs and had wanted to use the downstairs toilet, and had bumped the vase at the end of one of the bookshelves by accident. Mamie's manner was one of curiously mixed aggression and apology. Not for the first time, Mamie gave Lois the creeps.

'And I'd like to have some knitting,' Mamie said quaveringly.

'Knitting?' Lois pressed the side of the pencil in her hand with her thumb, not hard enough to break it. She herself felt shattered at the sight of the blue and white glass shards near her feet. She had loved that Chinese vase, which had belonged to her mother-not a museum piece, perhaps, that vase, but still special and valuable. The point was, Mamie had done it on purpose. 'What kind of knitting? You mean-wool for knitting?'

'Ye-es! Several colors. And needles,' Mamie said almost tearfully, like a pitiable pauper begging for alms.

Lois nodded. 'Very well.'

Mamie made her slow, waddling way toward the stairs. Gay music came from the TV set above, an afternoon serial's theme music.

Lois swept up the vase, which was too much in pieces -or she thought so now—to be mended. Nevertheless, she kept the pieces, in a plastic bag, and then Herbert came in and told her his lack of success.

'I think we'd better see a lawyer,' Herbert said. 'I don't know what else to do.'

Lois tried to calm him with a cup of tea in the kitchen. They could get in touch with the son again, Lois said. A lawyer would be expensive and maybe not even successful. 'But they know something's up,' Lois said as she sipped her tea.

'How so?. . . What do you mean?'

'I feel it. In the atmosphere.' Lois didn't tell him about the vase, and hoped that he would not soon notice it.

Lois wrote to Christopher Forster. Mamie knitted, and Albert peed. Lois and their once-a-week cleaning girl, Rita, a plump half-Puerto Rican girl who was cheerful and an angel, rinsed the sheets and hung them on the garden line. Mamie presented Lois with a round knitted doily which was rather pretty but of a dark purple color that Lois didn't care for, or was she simply all round turned off of Mamie? Lois praised Mamie for her work, said she loved the doily, and put it in the center of the coffee table. Mamie did not seem gratified by Lois's words, strangely, but put on her wrinkled frown. After that, Mamie began turning out messes of mixed colors, dropped stitches, in articles presumably meant to be more doilies, or teapot cozies, even socks. The madness of these items made Lois and Herbert more uneasy. Now it was mid-June. Christopher had replied that his house situation was more strained than ever, because his own four-year-old grandson was spending the summer with him and his wife, as his parents were probably going to get a divorce, so the last thing he could do just now was take on his father and Mamie. Herbert invested in an hour's consult­ation with a lawyer, who suggested that the Mclntyres might take up the situation with Medicare, combined with cooperation from Christopher Forster, or Herbert might look for another rest home for the elderly, where the problem might be difficult for him, because he was not a blood relation, and would have to explain that he had taken on responsibility for the Forsters from the Hilltop Home.

Herbert and Lois's neighbors rallied round with moral support and invitations to break their monotony, but none offered to put the Forsters up for even a week. Lois men­tioned this to Herbert, jokingly, and both of them smiled at the idea: that was too much to expect even from the best of friends, and the fact that such an offer had not been forthcoming from the Mitchells or their other good friends the Lowenhooks did not diminish the Mclntyres' esteem for their friends. The fact was that the Forsters were, com­bined, a pain, a cross, albatrosses. And now the Forsters were waging a subtle war. Things got broken. Lois no long cared what happened to Albert's mattress, or the carpet upstairs for that matter, as she had crossed them off. She did not suggest taking Albert's trousers to the cleaners, because she didn't care what their condition was. Let them stew in their own juice was a phrase that crossed her mind, but she never said it aloud. Lois was worried that Herbert might crack up. They had both reached the point, by early August, at which they could no longer laugh, even cynically.

'Let's rent a couple of studios —office rooms to work in, Lois,' Herbert said one evening. 'I've been looking around. There're two free in the same building on Barington Street in Hartford. Four hundred dollars a month-each. It's worth it, to me at least and I'm sure to you. You've really had the worst of it.' Herbert's eyes were pinkish from fatigue, but he was able to smile.

Lois thought it a wonderful idea. Eight hundred dollars a month seemed not outrageous to pay for peace of mind, for the ability to concentrate. 'I can make them a box lunch with thermoses ...'

Herbert laughed, and tears of relief made his eyes shine. 'And I'll be your chauffeur for our nine-to-five jobs. Think of it-solitude-'m our own little cells!'

Lois and Herbert installed themselves the following Monday in the Hartford office rooms. They took type­writers, business files, letters, books, and Lois her manuscript-in-progress. When Lois had told Mamie about the move the weekend before, Mamie had asked who was going to serve their meals, and then Lois had explained that she would be here to serve their breakfast and dinner, and for lunch they'd have-a picnic, a surprise, with a thermos of hot soup, another of hot tea.

'Teatime. . .'Albert had begun vaguely, with an accusing eye fixed on Lois.

'Anyway, it's done,' Lois had said, meaning it, because she and Herbert had signed a six-month agreement.

Mamie and Albert soured still more against the Mclntyres. Albert's bed was wet every evening when the Mclntyres came home between six and seven, and chan­ging it was Lois's duty before preparing dinner. Herbert insisted on rinsing the sheet or sheets himself and hanging them either on the garden line or on the cellar line if it looked like rain.

'Moving out of your own house for those so-and-sos,' Pete Mitchell said one evening when he and Ruth came for drinks. 'That's a bit much, isn't it?'

'But we can work,' Herbert replied. 'It is better. Isn't it, Lois?'

'It really is. It's obvious,' Lois said to the Mitchells, but she could see that they didn't believe her, that they thought she was merely trying hard. Lois was aware that she and Herbert had been to the Mitchells' house perhaps only once for dinner since the Forsters' arrival six months ago, because they, she and Herbert, felt too uneasy to leave the Forsters alone from eight in the evening till maybe after midnight. But wasn't that a little silly? After all, now the Forsters were alone in the house from before nine until around six in the evening. So Lois and Herbert accepted a dinner invitation, so often extended by the Mitchells, and the Mitchells were delighted. It was for next Saturday.

When the Mclntyres returned from the Mitchell's the following Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning at nearly 1 a.m., all was well in their house. Only the living room light was on, as they had left it, the TV murmured in the Forsters' room as usual, and the Forsters' light was off. Herbert went into their room, switched off the TV, and tiptoed out with their dinner tray. He was feeling pleas­antly mellow, as was Lois, because the Mitchells had given them a good dinner with wine, and the Lowenhooks had been there too.

Herbert and Lois had a nightcap in the kitchen while Lois washed up the Forsters' dinner dishes. They were making it, weren't they? In spite of the jokes tonight from the Lowenhooks. What had they said? What if Mamie and Albert outlive you both? Herbert and Lois managed to laugh heartily in their kitchen that night.

On Sunday, Mamie asked Lois where they had been last evening, though Lois had left the Mitchell's name and tele­phone number with the Forsters. The phone had rung 'a dozen times,' said Mamie, and she had not been able to answer it quickly enough before it stopped ringing, and neither had Albert been able to reach the phone in the Mclntyres' bedroom in time, though he had tried when Mamie got tired of trying.

Lois didn't believe her. How could they hear a ring with 1 heir TV on so loud? 'Funny it hasn't rung at all today.'

One evening in the next week, when Lois and Herbert i .ime home together from their offices, they found a large pot of dwarf rhododendrons upset on the living room floor, though the pot was not broken. No one could have knocked over such a big pot by merely bumping into it, and they both knew this but didn't say it. Herbert got to work with broom and scoop and righted the pot, leaving

Lois to admire the new item in the living room, a vaguely hexagonal knitted thing-if it was a doily, it was pretty big, nearly a yard in diameter-which lay over one arm of the sofa. Its colors were turquoise, dark red, and white, and its surface undulated.

'Peace offering?' asked Herbert with a smirk.

It was on a Friday in early autumn, around seven, when the Mclntyres drove home, that they saw smoke coming out of one of the Forsters' room windows. The window was open very little at the top, but the smoke looked thick and in earnest.

'F' God's sake!' said Herbert, jumping out of the car, then stopping, as if for a few seconds he didn't know what to do.

Lois had got out on the passenger side. Higher than the poplars the gray smoke rose, curling upward. Lois also felt curiously paralyzed. Then she thought of an unfinished article, the first four chapters of a book she was not work­ing on now, but would soon, which were in the downstairs front room, below the Forsters' room, and a need for action took hold of her. She flung her handbag onto the front seat of the car. 'Got to get our things out!'

Herbert knew what she meant by things. When he opened the front door, the smell of smoke made him step back, then he took a breath and plunged forward. He knew that leaving the door open, creating a draft, was the worst thing to do, but he didn't close the door. He ran to the right toward his workroom, then realized that Lois was in the house too, so he turned back and joined her in her study, flung open a window, and tossed outside to the grass the papers and folders and boxes that she handed to him. This was achieved in seconds, then they dashed across the living room to Herbert's workroom, which was compara­tively free of smoke, though its door was open. Herbert opened a French window, and out onto the lawn went his boxes and files, his spare portable typewriter, reference books, current reading, and nearly half of a fourteen-volume encyclopaedia. Lois, helping him, finally paused for breath, her mouth wide open.

'And-upstairs!' she said, gasping. 'Fire department? Not too late, is it?'

'Let the goddamn thing burn!'

'The Forsters -'

Herbert nodded quickly. He looked dazed. He glanced around in the sunroom to see if he had forgotten anything, then snatched his letter-opener from his desk and pocketed it, and slid open a drawer. 'Traveler's checks,' he mur­mured, and pocketed these too. 'Don't forget the house is insured,' Herbert said to Lois with a smile. 'We'll make it. And it's worth it!'

'You don't think-upstairs-'

Herbert, after a nervous sigh, crossed the living room to the stairs. Smoke was rolling down like a gray avalanche. He ran back to Lois, holding part of his unbuttoned jacket over his face. 'Out! Out, darling!'

When they were both on the lawn, the window top of the Forsters' room broke through in flames that curled upward toward the roof. Without a word, Lois and Herbert gathered the items they had tossed onto the lawn. They stowed their possessions away rather neatly, in spite of their haste, on the back seat and in the boot of the car.

'They could've rung the fire department, don't you think?' Herbert said with a glance up at the flaming window.

Lois knew, and Herbert knew, that she had written fire dept. and the number on the upstairs telephone in her and Herbert's bedroom, in case anything did happen. But now the Forsters were certainly overcome by smoke. Or were they possibly outdoors, hidden in the dusk behind the liedges and the poplars, watching the house burn? Ready to join them-now? Lois hoped not. And she didn't think so. The Forsters were up there, already dead. 'Where're we going?' she asked as Herbert turned the car onto the road, not in the Hartford direction. But she knew. 'The Mitchells'?'

'Yes, sure. We'll telephone from there. The fire depart­ment. If some neighbor hasn't already done it. The Mitchells'll put us up for the night. Don't worry, darling.' Herbert's hands were tense on the wheel, but he drove smoothly and carefully.

And what would the Mitchells say? Good, probably, Lois thought.