Miss Undine's Living Room by James Wilcox

Author:James Wilcox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 1987-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

AS SHE CLIMBED THE STAIRS to his apartment Olive wondered if the reason she was unable to feel as bad as she thought she should was because she wasn’t absolutely one-hundred per cent certain that Uncle L.D. was dead. Yet even if she were sure, it might be just as difficult to work up a proper amount of grief. After all, these last few years had not been easy for the old man, what with his being bedridden and his mind all but shot. Was it possible that, toward the end, as more and more of his memory went down the drain, Uncle L.D. had forgotten who he was? This was the only explanation Olive could come up with for Mr. Versey’s so-called murder: The old man had simply thought he himself was someone else, someone capable of murder. And if he had thought he was someone else, if he had no memory of the man who never cursed, who, despite all his other faults, was honest as the day was long, then in a way the person who had passed away was not really Uncle L.D. Perhaps this was why it was hard for Olive to mourn. The real Uncle L.D. had long ago been forgotten—not by her, but by himself.

In spite of this reasoning she had nevertheless suffered considerable alarm earlier that day when the receptionist at the nursing home had informed her that Uncle L.D.’s bed was occupied by a Mr. Norwood. As for the whereabouts of Uncle L.D. the lady had nothing on her computer other than PC. When pressed about the meaning of PC, she had to admit that these initials didn’t mean a thing to her. A timid, motherly woman with a premature Christmas tree brooch pinned to her collar, the receptionist explained that she was just a temp. Olive demanded to see the director, but it turned out she was away at a conference on gerontological sex at the Marriott in Salt Lake City. Mr. Higgins, who might have been some help, had been transferred to the hospital for some tests, while Mr. Uwel had been granted a two-day pass to visit his sister-in-law. When she checked back at the desk a few hours later, Olive was told by the teary-eyed lady, who seemed to have a good heart, that she had figured out what PC meant. Passed Away. The C, it turned out, was really an A when you looked real close on the computer screen. She told Olive that as soon as possible she would round up all the papers for her concerning cause of death and disposition of the remains. “You see,” she patiently explained, “the man in Billing and Records who has all this information, hon, he’s taken a half day off to price mirror wall tiles for his living room.”

Olive kept a set of keys to the apartment on Flat Avenue just in case she and Dr. Bates might need a quiet place to go and talk in the afternoons.

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