Under One Roof: How a Tough Old Woman in a Little Old House Changed My Life. Barry Martin

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СКАЧАТЬ that she was not competent to take care of herself. They couldn’t make her move – they couldn’t prove that she was a danger to herself or anything – but they were apparently putting on a pretty strong push. Charlie said they kept coming around again and again, being persistent about how much better off she’d be, how much more comfortable she’d be, how much better her life would be, if only she’d let them bring her to a facility. I remembered how she used that word – facility – when she told me about her mother, how much disdain she had in her voice. It made me wince just hearing Charlie say it.

      Now it made more sense to me why Edith was so touchy when guys from my office kept offering her more money to move. She must have felt she was battling on two fronts just to stay in her house – with the Bridge Group coming at her straight on and the social workers from the flank. I’m sure that, to Edith’s ears, what they were both saying was, “You’re not able to take care of yourself anymore. Let us do it for you.”

      I don’t think anybody wants to hear that they can’t take care of themselves. Certainly not a tough old bird like Edith.

      Charlie took off, and I knocked on Edith’s door. I wanted to ask her about the social workers, but when she called me to come in, I found her at a rickety little desk in the corner of the living room, typing at – well, I’m not sure what you call it anymore. It looked like a cross between a late-model electric typewriter and an early PC. The thing must have been twenty-five years old. It had a tiny square computer monitor and a dark gray keyboard with white keys – not like a modern keyboard, more like a typewriter – and she was pecking away at it, slowly. I saw the word Whisperwriter on it.

      “Good morning, Barry,” she said. “Excuse me for just a moment. My fingers don’t work quite as well as they used to.”

      The sun was glinting off the monitor, so I couldn’t quite make out what she was writing, but when she turned around she caught me looking at it, and I felt guilty for being so nosy.

      “Just a little short story,” she said, guessing at what I was trying to do. “The mind still works, but the goddamn fingers don’t want to cooperate.”

      It was the first time I’d heard her curse.

      “So, you’re a writer?” I asked.

      “Well, I’ve done my share,” she said. “There’s one of my books, right over there.”

      I looked at the counter where she was pointing, and there was a doorstop of a book, a big, bulky hardcover thing called Where Yesterday Began. The title was in red script, over the silhouettes of a man and woman looking at a sunset.

      “Who’s Dominelli?” I said, looking at the author’s name.

      “That’s Dom-i-li-ni,” she said, correcting me. “Domilini. That was the name I wrote under. I took it from …” But she didn’t finish the sentence. Before I could ask, she was on her feet.

      “Can’t write anymore, dammit all,” she said. “I’m getting a cup of tea. Can I offer you one?”

      While she was shuffling off to the kitchen, I opened the book and looked at the inside cover. What I saw stopped me in my tracks.

      About The Author

      E. Wilson Macefield (Domilini) was born in Oregon in 1921 and reared in Seattle and New Orleans. She served as an undercover agent during World War II. She was captured and interned at Dachau, from which she escaped, taking 13 interned Jewish children with her. She married a Yorkshire man, lived in England for thirty years, where she adopted and raised 27 children.

      Following the death of her husband, she returned to the States to care for her mother. In 1984, she met and married an Old World Italian who was killed in an accident on their honeymoon. She has been writing for the greater part of her life, and has attained success in Europe.

      “I cannot stop writing,” she says, “whether it is read or not. It is imbedded in the soul.” She wishes she might achieve the clarity of Maugham, and express the important truths of Locke, Lichens, and Poe.

      This time, when she came back into the room, I was too intrigued to be embarrassed about my snooping. I didn’t know where to start.

      “Edith, it looks like you’ve lived quite a life,” I said.

      “I’ve lived quite a number of lives,” she said.

      “Who are all these children it talks about here? Where are they now?”

      She began to tell me the wildest story. I can’t even remember most of it now, it blew my mind so much. Apparently at some point she had come back to the States, but then was “summoned” back to England – that was her word – by a man she had met at a party. Apparently they had hit it off pretty well. He was a very rich man, and he had asked her if she had unlimited funds what she would do with the money.

      “I told him there’s only one thing a moral person can do in this moment in time,” she said, her good eye focused not on me but on a spot somewhere out the window, as though she was trying to see something far away. “Create an orphanage for all the children left without parents by the awful war.” So he brought her back to England, and gave her a castle in Cornwall to start the orphanage.

      “Gave her a castle in Cornwall.” There’s a sentence I bet no one I know has ever heard in their lives.

      She went on, telling me how she went to Scotland and bought some sheep to raise at the castle.

      Suddenly, Edith fell silent. I tried to ask her more. I mean, I had a million questions. Led an escape from Dachau? Married a Yorkshire man? Was he the guy with the castle? Was he Domilini, or was that the “Old World Italian”?

      But I wasn’t getting any answers. She was done, for now. “The past is the past,” she said, and that pretty much ended it. “This tea isn’t hot enough. I’m going to go warm it up. Lukewarm tea tastes too much like piss, if you ask me.”

      She tottered off back to the kitchen, her teacup rattling on its saucer. She crossed the bright ray of sunlight streaming in through the windowpane, dust motes swirling in the light, all my questions just hanging in the air with them.

      The questions I had about my dad got answered that summer. He was still slipping, no doubt about it. He’d forget my sister Malinda’s name, which drove her kind of bats. Or he’d ask my mother a question, and five minutes later ask the same thing again. He was having trouble doing math in his head – something he’d always been pretty good at – and that would make him really angry. Angrier than it ought to, frankly. He’d start trying to figure something out, like what’s 15 percent of $150, and the next thing you know he’d be cursing a blue streak. As I said, it was strange to hear my dad curse, and that as much as anything made us wonder if something was up. He wouldn’t talk about it, though. He’s from that generation where you just buck up and hold whatever’s bothering you inside, so we mostly just let it go.

      Except for Malinda. Malinda’s my older sister, and the pushiest of us three kids. I mean that in a nice way. She’s the one who’s going to say enough’s enough, let’s get done what needs to get done, period. And that’s what she did in this situation. It was at her urging – her insistence is more like it – that my mom took my dad for tests. They did all kinds of tests those first couple of weeks – dexterity tests, memory tests, blood tests, brain scans, you name it. My dad was none too pleased about it all, but he went along with it.

      And СКАЧАТЬ