“Oh, wow,” Doreen replied. “I hadn’t considered it that way.”
“Of course not. That’s because you’re young. You don’t have to stay here. This isn’t a life sentence for you, but, for the rest of us, it’s a one-way street. We’re here, and we’re only going to leave in an ambulance or in a plastic bag,” she noted succinctly. “And that makes our life, our living, our day-to-day activities here, very different from what yours is. You go home, think that you’re fine and dandy. You still got another fifty, sixty, seventy years ahead of you, until a bus comes down your side yard and just slams into you and takes you right now.”
Patsy sighed. “Other than that, you’re not bothered. You think that you’ll live forever just because you’re young and stupid,” she said, without appearing to mean any insult.
Kind of like Patsy was on autopilot, and this was her daily spiel.
Patsy continued. “Those of us in here, we already know that we’ve lived longer than we should, and a lot of times people here don’t care about the consequences of what they do or say because they know that there’s really nothing anybody can do about it that’ll make a difference. So what? They’ll take away our perks here?” She shrugged. “Big deal. So I can’t play pool for a day or two? I’ve got a mini one in my room anyway,” she stated. “They can’t touch that. They’ll make me not eat breakfast? Well, that’s not allowed. That’s against the law, so obviously they can’t do that.” She shrugged. “They’ll put me in jail? Maybe, but I highly doubt a judge will do that either. Anybody here in this place has exactly the same knowledge that I do. So they can pretty well get away with murder.”
At that, Doreen sucked in her breath. “And that’s one of the reasons that I’m going around and talking to people,” she stated carefully. “Did you know Chrissy?”
“Of course I knew Chrissy. Everybody knew Chrissy, mad as a hatter.” And she picked up her cue stick again and whacked it into her other hand. “And, if you think she was anything but that, you’re wrong.”
“Okay,” she noted. “Why would you say that she’s mad as a hatter?”
“Because she was,” she stated, waving the stick and then turning to point it at Doreen. “You have to be here to understand, but very quickly you recognize who’s got it all up here.” Patsy tapped her temple. “And who doesn’t. Your Nan? She’s got it up here.” Patsy pointed again. “That’s why the two of us sometimes don’t get along because I do too. We’re both sharp as a whistle. But I respect Nan. Your grandmother’s good people, just not always good people for me. And that is probably something you can’t quite understand yet either. Maybe in another thirty, forty years, you will.” Patsy laughed.
“I think I understand just fine.” Doreen liked and appreciated the woman’s forthright honesty and humor. “It still doesn’t change the fact that somebody attacked Nan, and potentially somebody killed Chrissy.”
At that, the woman looked at her in astonishment. “Good Lord, who would want to hurt Chrissy? She was harmless.”
“Sure she was harmless,” Doreen agreed.
“Besides, even if somebody did murder Chrissy, I don’t think anybody cares.”
At that, Doreen raised an eyebrow. “Well, I care. Nan cares.”
“Why does Nan care?” she asked curiously. “I mean, like I said, Chrissy was off her rocker.”
“Because Nan feels guilty,” Doreen noted quietly.
“Ah. So she was ignored, with all that talk about somebody poisoning her, huh?”
“So you heard that too, did you?”
“Sure did.” Patsy nodded. “I considered it for a brief moment and then let it go because, even if somebody was trying to murder her, there’s not really any way to prove it. Chrissy’s been talking like that for a long time. Sometimes it was for attention, and sometimes it makes you wonder.”
“Makes you wonder what?”
“Whether it’s true or not. At one point in time, you just give up because you can’t tell fact from fiction. Chrissy lived in her own head a lot of the time.”
“Did she ever say anything else to you?”
“Yep, she did. She said it was justice.”
At that, Doreen’s antenna twitched. “Justice?”
“Yep, justice for something she’d done. Somebody was poisoning her to get back at her for something she’d done.”
“Interesting.”
“That’s what I thought. I did try to talk to her about it little bit more, but I never got any further. You had to pick your moments with her, and then she would go down the rabbit hole very, very quickly, and it could be days before she came back out. Part of that was the medication they kept her on. I did question her medication a couple times and talked to the nurses a couple times, and they just said that she was losing her grasp on reality, and that’s a real big duh moment for all of us because of course she was. Was it a good thing? No, of course not. Was it a sad thing? Yeah, sure was. But it was also the facts of life here. We have a lot of people who lose their grasp on reality.” She yawned. “So boring. So predictable. I hope whenever I die, it’s definitely not in the same vein.”
“You don’t want your death to be predictable?” Doreen asked, then she smiled.
“Or boring,” she added. “Like your Nan, I’d rather hit the home plate, skidding in at the last moment, with a glass of scotch in my hand and holding a winning poker hand in the other, only in my case, make it be a pool cue.” She chuckled. “And there’s enough shenanigans going on this place to keep even the two of us going.”
“Shenanigans?” Doren asked quietly.
At that, Patsy rolled her eyes. “Sex.” She shook her head. “Everybody’s bed-hopping with everybody. It’s as if we all hit our second childhood, with absolutely no rules or regulations.” As she looked at Doreen, Patsy chuckled. “And look at that? You’re blushing. Nobody your age ever wants to think about anybody our age having sex,” she noted, “but it’s rampant in these homes.” And she went off in peals of laughter again.
“Well, that’s a good question though,” Doreen noted. “Was Chrissy seeing anybody?”
At that, Patsy’s laughter stopped; she looked at Doreen. “You know something? That’s a really good question.” She thought about it and frowned. “I think there was somebody, and he was quite a bit younger than her. It did cause some consternation among the residents though.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, we don’t really worry about age gaps, when we’re here,” she noted. “I mean, why bother? We’ll die anyway, so who cares? And, if we can get it on with somebody that much younger, all the more power to them. And, for the old guys, they don’t really care what age you are anyway. As long as you’re still breathing, they’re good to go.”
“Seriously?” Doreen asked. “So they don’t change much in old age, right?” Patsy guffawed so loudly and long. Doreen found herself grinning like a fool. Something was really likable about this woman. And, yes, Patsy reminded Doreen of her own Nan.