Elderville

By Elaine Dandh

This is the story of a woman who unwillingly lands in a home for the aged. When she decides to write a book about the place, she interviews some of her neighbors. She makes new friends and learns things she had not known about life in the 1940s. She also realizes that she has stumbled into a village that could be a model for all old-age establishments. And its fun here, too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543430783

Elaine Dandh

Elaine Dandh has lived in three countries and has had several careers. She has been a writer, a university instructor , a high school teacher,and a real estate broker. She pursues life as an adventure, and she is enjoying the tail end of it by writing about where she lives -- in Elderville.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Elaine Dandh.

ISBN:                   Softcover             978-1-5434-3079-0

                          eBook                   978-1-5434-3078-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 06/15/2017

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Contents

Home

The Important Meeting

Veterans

More Names, More Faces

Dave

Marriage

Change

Ethan Kanski

Location, Location. Location

Characters, Characters, etc.

Audrey

Neal

Dr. Allen, Veterinarian

Cissy

Mighty Mac

The Yankee From Wichita Falls, Texas

A Fairly Recent Veteran

People

Marjorie

Dave

Ingrid

Ray, Daisy, and the Meeting

Disaster

She parked the car in front of the small cottage that would be hers as soon as the workers repainted inside. She didn’t need a key. The work crew would be there today. Already from this distance she could smell the paint they were putting on the walls of her living-dining room. She had spent days picking out a lovely pale rose, chosen to go with the flowers in a painting that would hang above her sofa.

She stepped inside. Then she screamed. The walls were on fire.

Something awful had happened. The house stank of fresh paint. Fire-red walls closed in on her, and she saw a man splayed out against the awful red-orange wall, clutching a paintbrush.

She screamed again. This time he lowered the paintbrush and turned to greet her. Not bad looking at all, she noted. Laura was ninety, but she thought she was forty-five and she had retained a keen eye for male beauty. Not with any intention of getting involved, of course, just for the aesthetic experience of it. She knew that old men liked to look at young girls. Her late husband had been an example of that. Never once had he missed a televised beauty contest. So why was it so wrong for ladies of a certain age like her to enjoy looking at young men?

Now the second man stepped away from the wall and turned toward her. Not great, much too short and doughy-looking.

The good-looking one with the nice eyes was taking a small square of paper out of the pocket of his paint-stained overalls and advancing toward her.

Gave me this at the office, ma’am. I couldn’t believe it, but this is what they told me to put on your living room wall.

Get it off! I can’t stand it. Now she was yelling.

He nodded. Me, I been believing lately I was in hell with these walls this color, just like the fire the preacher tells us about, ma’am.

Your preacher’s right. Get rid of it. Mix it up with some white and do it over.

Gonna take a lot of white to get rid of this. Thoughtfully, he surveyed the walls. Lotta work, at least a couple of days.

I can’t breathe in here. Mix it fifty-fifty with white and get it on, fast. Furniture will be delivered on Wednesday. She spoke fast. She could hardly breathe.

His voice lowered now. He looked her straight in the eye. Seriously, ma’am, it’s gonna cost you.

Laura knew that this was the opening for a dickering contest. Ordinarily she would have enjoyed the game, and would have played it well. She had learned how from her late husband, who had been a master bargainer. But what with paint fumes and delusions of a fiery red hell, Laura was not in shape for the game. She nodded and ran out into the fresh air. If he were still alive, her husband would have given her a long lecture on money. At times like this, she missed the man. After he died she had replaced him with a small black cat, but somehow it was not the same.

Out in the fresh air, Laura remembered that she had forgotten to examine the floor of the place that was to become her new home. When she had first been shown the cottage, it had been covered by thick beige carpet. Because it was summer, and because the place had been empty for some time, the rug was then covered by the lively small lizards that are native to southern Texas. She had almost refused it, but she had finally chosen the place because it was close to the cottage of George and Dorothy, old friends she and Kenny had once known in Guadalajara, and also because she had learned that a cool tile floor could be installed. Furthermore, the ugly red stones that filled an area in the patio and around the house could be removed and be replaced by soil for a garden. But the tile could not be installed until the painting was finished, and the stones would not be removed until she moved in.

Laura did not get back to her small house until the middle of the following week. She needed to watch over a sale of her household goods and sign her name a hundred times at a closing for the sale of her house. She had to say goodbye to a guava tree which had grown accidentally from seed and which now perfumed her back yard with its fruit. She had to take a good look at the bananas on the tree that she had bargained for in Spanish from an old man who had set up a viveros on the side of the road. Sadly, the bananas that were ripening on them would have to be left behind. They weren’t ready yet. And finally, while she waited for her new house to be ready, she needed to take her cat to the vet.

Both cat and vet were new to Laura. She had bought a carrying box large enough for a Great Dane, and into this she ordered the cat to go. Blackie (name chosen by the Animal Rescue people) did not obey. Cats are not like dogs; she began to realize. She threw a handful of treats into the box, the cat leapt in, and Laura slammed the door.

The receptionist at the office of the veterinarian studied the large box that Laura had dragged in.

What do you have there?

A cat.

What is its name?

Blackie.

What color is it?

At this point Laura began to question whether she had selected the right veterinarian, but somehow, after a long interview about medical insurance and Blackie’s inability to bear offspring, both cat and Laura were led to an inner room an introduced to a man in the garb of a surgeon.

He examined the cat from head to tail and declared her fit. Finally, both Laura and the cat escaped without needing any more shots than they already had. Somebody loaded Blackie into her Dane-sized carrier, and Laura promised the little cat that she would never have to go through such an ordeal again, as long as she stayed as healthy as the neighborhood strays.

Probably it was at this point on their ride home that Laura realized she was talking to her cat in the same voice she had used when she had discussed things with her late husband. Laura liked to talk, loved the sound of her own voice making sentences. Her husband, a little hard of hearing toward the end, had paid rapt attention. She suspected that he read her lips, but it was nice to be looked at so attentively, and now the cat did likewise. Unlike her husband, though, the cat never argued. She just listened to the well-wrought sentences that Laura directed at her.

Finally, then, she needed to say goodbye to her next-door neighbors, the Presleys. The two had tried to talk her out of moving to Elderville. You’re going to hate it over there, they had said. They’re all old. I know you’re old, but you’re not real old, like them. They’ve given up. They go there to be taken care of until they die. You’re not ready for that. You haven’t finished living yet.

When they talked this way, Laura shuddered. She remembered the time in Florida when she had gone to visit her aunt. Blind, and in her nineties, she had become too much of a burden for her children, who, while they were still able to do so, had wanted to see a bit of the world. The family had done the best they could. They had placed her in a highly rated old age home.

When she visited, Laura had carried a box of the candy that she remembered had been her Aunt’s favorite. The buildings were lovely, grounds well-planted. Inside, soft music in the air. At the desk, a nicely dressed clerk gave her directions to Mrs. Roberts’ room, and she started down the hall. She passed a room full of ladies playing cards. Pleasant. Now the air