Chapter 1
Marjorie Mayfield awoke to find both her circumstances and her “sense of well-being” much altered, since both were now disturbingly peaceful and this was terrifying.
After a few blinks, reassured herself that she was not simply seeing the world through the dregs of her discount mascara she found that she was not only bound up with restraints like a Queen Kong all gussied-up for her close-up with the flash-bulbs, but practically invaded by a full complement of pesky leechy medical tubing.It took a few more blinks to recognize with a sterile objectivity, that she was in a serene medical setting, the hottest clues being the jabber of cable television in the corner and a rancid mélange of antiseptic smells (room deodorizer, powder-free/latex-free examination gloves, hothouse flowers in plastic wrap, and generic surface sanitizer that could double as windshield wiper fluid in a pinch.) Something untoward must have occurred in her life, she told herself. Well, Marjorie had faced the world alone more than once and this was just the latest call to freedom. Now just dispose of all this tubing and these chirping machines about her and the world would find itself trembling once more at her name.
However, just as suddenly and oh-so terrifyingly, Marjorie realized that her tremulous, tubified body had been completely deprived of any ice cream in any form for an indeterminate length of time. No sugared lactose with a generous percentage of fat. Where was the dipped cone, the pink plastic spoonlet handed across the display case, the parfait glass with its congealing layers of sweetened fruit and soft-serve?She could only hope that she was in the loving, compassionate hands of a team of medical professionals—even though none of them were hovering benevolently in sight.
But who was in sight was Geoffrey Durant-Dupont, seated comfortably in a kind of sliding rocker popular in maternity wards and other places where the inmates wear diapers, eat soft food, and try the nerves of their caregivers with unbridled license.He was scanning a dog-eared magazine and sipping at intervals from a dewy glass of ice water at a side table.This stuff must have been from the Fountain-Of-Youth Bottling Plant in El Dorado, Florida for Geoffrey’s entire visage and bearing—and Marjorie blinked again to verify that her senses were not engaged in a bait-and-switch—now bore a placid, upright, patriarchal air.His hair was trimmed and parted on one side like any number of Air Force majors; as for his clothes, he could have been modelling catalogue clothing for senior partners in the firm or the vice principals of private prep schools: disrobed of his muumuu or anything else billowing or indistinct, he wore loose flannel pants, shabbily comfortable leather slip-ons, and a button-up number suitable for an evening with the pipe and a slumbering spaniel at his feet.In a matching rocker next to him, with a pair of Oriental palace dogs in his lap, snoozed and snored that German fellow.
Probably sensing her eyes upon him, Geoffrey Durant-Dupont set down his magazine on the side table, then took from the same a fresh-from-the-stationery-store manila folder jutting out several colored tabs and greeted her with a grandfatherly smile.“Good afternoon, Marjorie.Or Sandra.”Hearing this, Andreas snorted awake and slid up in his rocker, the dogs in his lap also stirring with tiny yawns and shakes of their leonine heads.Geoffrey went on.“You’re finally awake.Welcome to Summerset.”
Marjorie leaned unavailingly against the straps that held her bedfast. “Summerfield.”
“Summerset,” Geoffrey repeated.“The Evenstar Wing, to be precise.”He pointed behind her bed and Marjorie strained to curl her head back to squint at a picture, like a holy image, from the 1970s of Sam Summerfield with wide sideburns and even wider jacket lapels.“Sam knew that people would get older than just plain old, so he built this place as the next stage for anyone who ‘outgrew’ Summerfield.”
Spotting some kind of trickery coming down the conveyor belt at her, Marjorie demanded, “Why didn’t I know about this?”
“Because you would have sunk your talons into it and people in need would have lost a great deal.”
“So, this is what, the feeding pen before they get their organs harvested?”
Geoffrey shook his head.“No.Hospice and dementia care.”
“Ah, so they never know when they’re being marched off behind the barn.And why am I here?”
“Because you presented with…”Geoffrey took up the manila folder and opened it.“…possible early-onset dementia, NOS.”
Andreas explained, “Not Otherwise Specified,” and scratched a dog behind her silken ear.
Marjorie sneered, “Thank you, Josef Mengele.But I do not have dementia.”
“No, I don’t think so, either,” said Geoffrey.“But it sure looked like it.No.But you do have acute onset diabetes.”
Marjorie stared at him as if he were telling her that she would have to start working retail with a nametag like that Tyler at the iThing Store.(Note to self, Marjorie remembered: shark-tank tester, Tyler, youthful adventure gone wrong.)
Geoffrey continued.“You do not remember collapsing into an unconscious heap, then, do you?Well, I hope your memory hasn’t been unduly compromised.In any event you did and then into a tidy little coma.It was a good thing that EMS had just arrived—and that you were surrounded by a cohort of gentlemen who were all trained to look after a lady—or you, in this case.”
“And why exactly would I have diabetes?”
“Because of all those slop-buckets of ice cream that you have been slurping down for the past forty-some years.The doctor thinks that only the marked levels of animal fats in them saved you from a complete metabolic collapse.If you doubt me, you might scan this…”He held up the newly-minted file.“…unless your ‘team’ thinks that it might distress you needlessly.”Marjorie tried to reach out with both hands at the document, but found herself still strapped in place.“If you doubt, allow me to present...” and drawing from his pocket with a theatrical flourish a small tape recorder, he pressed Play.(Already well-familiar with the howls to come, Andreas carried on scratching the dogs’ ears.)
From the recorder gushed up a geyser of unattractive, unappealing, and unladylike verbal filth, as if a ditchdigger-backhoe had inadvertently punctured a sewer main.Marjorie’s eyes did not exactly start from their sockets, but her ranting made poor Linda Blair sound like a New Age life coach on diazepam.
Geoffrey pressed the Stop button.“That was you as you were being transported here via helicopter.”
“Transient delusions,” she said.“No licensed medical man would accept that as a progressive disease state.”
Andreas suggested, “What big words.”
“A definite clinical sign,” Geoffrey surmised.“Latent vocabulary comes to the surface.”
But after another brief bout of struggling at the wrists and ankles, Marjorie said, “And what’s this about a helicopter? Where am I?”
Geoffrey reiterated, “At Summerset.”
“Which is where?”
“On the Coast.The air here is conducive to peaceful reflection.”
“Well, my mind is perfectly clear.And I have the right to refuse medical treatment.As far as I’m concerned, this is kidnapping.”
Geoffrey sighed.“Sandra...”
“That is not my name.”
“You know, your father was a wise, wise man.”
“Leave daddy out of this.”
“When two men spend their summer vacation foiling international assassination plots, it does form a bond.Your father came to trust me implicitly and in time thought it fitting and sensible that during your minority, I should be your legal guardian.”
“Um, I am not a minor.”
“And in the event of your incapacity your legal guardian and holder of your power-of-attorney. As long as you have been obtunded—”
“And I’m not that fat.”
“—you have been under my authority.”
“I’m responsible for deciding my own power-of-attorney.”
“Well, that was not forthcoming, so the nice doctor accepted my documentation.”
“Glib legal trickery.Shysterism.Let me out of here now.I’m feeling fine.”
Geoffrey marched on, oblivious to her objections.“You know, you were close to the mark—”
“My markspersonship is unparalleled,” Marjorie snipped, a bit of her 3rd-wave feminism poking through.
“—when you said that Summerset is a holding pen, until your final fate is determined.”
“Which is nobody’s decision but mine,” she shrieked.“I want out of here now.”
“But as your legal guardian—”
“But you’re not!You’re not!I’ll petition the court for my emancipation.I just want Summerfield back.”
“You cannot have Summerfield back since it was never yours in the first place.It belongs to the LLC.”
“Then I’ll take this place.”
“Well, it’s has been at your disposal for the last two weeks.”
“Weeks?”
Geoffrey nodded gravely and Andreas seconded him with a bobbing of the head.“But you’re out of the woods now,” he assured her, indicating the plastic fluid-filled sacks hanging from a stainless steel wheeled tree by her bedside, each looking bored with nothing to do but seep its contents into the tube stuck into its plump rubbery bottom.Marjorie focused on them: normal saline, insulin, dextrose, and some kind of benzodiazepine (which was not working on her).
Geoffrey leaned towards Andreas and whispered something that Marjorie guessed would not bode well for her.The old German rose, deposited the dogs on to Geoffrey’s lap, and went to the door.He stepped out and with a breezy quiet the door closed behind him.
Geoffrey waved a hand at her to catch her gaze away from the door.“What you say is arguable within the parameters of the law.But I am responsible for you until the attending physician signs the discharge papers.And I will eventually get around to contacting him.”
At this Andreas came back into the room and in a reverse of the scene just played, leaned into Geoffrey, took up the dogs, whispered significantly, set Una and Olga on the floor to explore the low-pile carpeting, and sat back in his seat.
“This is just some ploy to disorient me,” Marjorie said.
“Your mind is fairly clear.”Geoffrey glanced at one of the plastic bags supplying her with fluid.“Well, in a little while your dextrose will run out and then you can be as disoriented as you like.But we might get you a fresh bag in a few minutes. In the meanwhile, speaking of bags...”He reached beside his rocker and took up, of all things, Marjorie Mayfield’s treasured shoulder bag.He hefted it to his lap as if it were a beloved child and she was to watch as it had kissed him and called him daddy.
“That’s mine,” she breathed hotly.“Kidnapping and theft.”
Deaf to these accusations, Geoffrey spread the bag open and drew from its recesses one by one those homey treasures that Marjorie had pilfered from the old fellows’ house.Firstly, he brought out the pictures of (a) the handsome dog and (b) the grim lines of German prisoners at Paulinenhof.After holding them towards Marjorie’s persimmony face, he passed them on to Andreas who took one in each hand and considered them like newborn twins.
“Mein Hund,” he smiled.“Meine Kaiserin.”
Marjorie snipped, “Can’t you speak English?”
Geoffrey advised, “Never fiddle with a man’s dog or his empress.And see here.”Now he took from her bag the enigmatic shard of masonry and transferred it too to Andreas, who gratefully pocketed it in his sweat suit, which he zipped securely shut.
Marjorie said, “I have never seen one fellow so in love with a rock.”
Geoffrey countered jovially, “Es ist der Schloßstein.”
“And why doesn’t this place have an English-only policy?”
“Der Schloßstein,” Andreas repeated with quiet sobriety.
“The only piece of Schloss Bochenrod he saved from the war,” Geoffrey said.“Those Reds get their boys all ginned-up with Bolshevik propaganda and they level the first castle they come to.This was ’45, of course.Not a good year for castles.”
Andreas grunted in forlorn agreement.
“So, he lost a castle,” Marjorie sniffed.“They got one in Disneyland.”
At this moment, a cautious knock-knock-knock sounded at the door and Marjorie instinctively snarled at any strangers that might invading her new lair (or prison cell—she could not be picky at this point.)But as the door timidly opened, through it stepped, of all people, her own workers, Dana and Vickie.(Vickie was looking a touch slimmer after her kale-broth regimen.)Both women had traded their Marjorie Mayfield Estate Sales honeydew-hued polo shirts for raspberry crème numbers stitched with Summerset on the upper-left chest.
As they stood huddling together, plainly forlorn to behold her in her sickbed, Marjorie panted, “You’re here.Vickie, please, Dana, just get me out of here.”
Dana sniffed, “Oh, Marjorie,” and wiped the corner of her eye.
“That’s right, Dana.Remember: Who gave you your first job, when the city fired you?, after you told off that delegation from our sister city in North Korea?”
Geoffrey told them, “It looks like she still remembers you, on some level.But the brain damage may be permanent.”At this Dana and Vickie sobbed in unison as if doing a sister-act audition for a Greek tragedy.“It’s gotten pretty bad.She’s started saying she tried to kidnap me and has been murdering people to do their estate sales.”
Marjorie protested, “Don’t you talk to them.These are my employees.”
Geoffrey raised his voice and spoke in building-blocky syllables.“Vi-ckie and Da-na work here now.We don’t know whe-ther you re-mem-ber them.”
Like a harpy being crammed into a parakeet cage, Marjorie shrieked, “Of course I do!”
“—but when we told them what had hap-pened, they thought that work-ing here at Sum-mer-set might be nice.And they can still be close to you.Isn’t that nice?”
“But they work for me.And I have a business to run.People respect me.”At this point the horror really hit her.“I have car payments.I have a condo mortgage.”
With an inviting openness, Geoffrey told Dana and Vickie, “Maybe a little fresh air?” and the weepy pair nodded together, wiped their wet cheeks, and moved towards Marjorie.
“What is this?” she demanded.Dana was pulling open a dresser drawer and arranging an ensemble of warm things, while Vickie was snapping on latex gloves as if for some invasive procedure.
The two men both rose with that enjoyable energy which comes from getting back into the swing of things; Andreas gathered up Olga and Una, while Geoffrey took up their reclaimed possessions, as well as Marjorie’s medical file.Onnce all had been assembled, he announced, “Marjorie, Dana and Vickie will get you ready.Ladies, be sure to dress her nice and warm.It’s time to go for a little walk.”
