Get Up, Eleanor by Jeffrey McClain Jones

Author:Jeffrey McClain Jones [Jones, Jeffrey McClain]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John 14:12 Publications
Published: 2020-06-10T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Arranging to bring Yvonne to the house required a personal consultation with Consuela and a phone conversation with a younger woman who would be covering for Consuela on Wednesday morning. Eleanor drove to The Dove’s Nest again and arrived exactly at nine-thirty. The appointed time.

“I know this car now. I’ve been in this car before.” Yvonne pecked the air in front of her before climbing in, as if punctuating her declarations with her nose.

“Yes. You have been in this car. I left it unlocked this time, so it won’t beep at us again.” Eleanor walked around the car but slowed as Yvonne seemed delayed by her comment, a moment of consternation written in scrunched eyebrows and the slightest nodding that could qualify as more than a palsied tremor.

Eleanor restarted her trip around the car to the driver’s side. She settled into her seat without staring at Yvonne. But her left hand shook visibly as she pulled the door shut. Yvonne was just now settling into the passenger seat.

“I can see the paintings. They are at Connie’s house?”

Eleanor paused before answering, wondering what manner of statement this was. A question? Was Yvonne questioning the nature of reality again? The actual visibility of the paintings? Or was she clarifying their destination? Eleanor opted for a complete reiteration. “I found some of the paintings in her barn and brought them into the house. They each had your name on them. There are eight of them now. That might be all of them. Connie said that you can do what ...”

“I know. I remember.”

Too much information, apparently. It was, of course, repetitive, except the part about the eighth painting. That one had been hanging on the wall in the basement, next to the flat-screen TV. Her mother’s media room was crude, a recent development. Eleanor would never have hung a painting so close to the TV. Had the painting been hung first? Or the TV?

Yvonne seemed to have an information capacity that Eleanor was prone to overfill, given her tendency to lecture and clarify.

“How did you know that Connie was dead?” Yvonne was once again pressed back in her seat with a hand clutching the contoured door handle. That handle seemed appropriately designed for just such an anxious grip.

“How did I find out? Paul Wasser called me. He found her.”

“Paul Wasser is not her husband.”

“No. Connie’s husband was Darrel. He was my father.”

“How did Paul Wasser know that Connie was dead?”

Again, Eleanor struggled with that wording. Was it the event of discovering Connie that Yvonne was seeking to understand? Or was it the perception of the reality of death?

“He found her lying on the ice one day, when he went to her house to check on things. He fixes things around the house.”

“He was a handyman.”

“Yes. And he still is.”

“And he was sure that she was dead?” Her intonation wasn’t quite right for a question, but Eleanor adjusted for Yvonne’s generally wooden tone, dull and emotionless most of the time.

“He was sure. But he called an ambulance just in case.

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