10. Monty
CHAPTER 10
Monty
J annell handed me the small iced chocolate Liam guilt-bought for me, and I followed him up the winding iron steps to the loft above the café.
He explained the difficulties and intricacies of re-piping a historic home like Nana’s, and thirty minutes later I was driving back to the rehab facility to break the news to her that she wouldn’t have a home to come home to until fall. It had been almost two months now since her stroke, and I wanted to bring her home more than anything.
I found her in the dining room, sitting across the table from ninety-one-year-old Clarice, our town’s retired librarian. The two were deep into a game of Rummy 500 when I approached.
“Hey, Nana.” I dropped a kiss to her cheek and pulled a chair from the next table over and straddled it backwards. I winked at her and leaned toward Clarice like I was making a play to look at her hand.
She smacked my shoulder good-naturedly and grinned widely, her eyes closing and almost disappearing in her wrinkled face. “Monty, how many times do I have to tell you cheating won’t even help your Nana beat me?”
Nana humphed. I knew for a fact she lost on purpose because she legit beat me every time we played in her room. She spoke slowly, her speech still slightly impeded from the stroke. “N-nope, there’s no hope for me. This old b-brain just isn’t what it used to be.”
Clarice laid down a set of aces. “Sixty points! Doesn’t take brains to get a good hand.” She wrote her score on the notepad in front of her. “But maybe next time don’t put an ace in the discard pile if there’s already one there.”
I couldn’t stop my lips from twitching, so I pressed my teeth together and covered my mouth with my hand, thinker-style, and pretended that was the best advice I’d ever heard.
“Brilliant point, Clarice,” I agreed, stroking my chin. “Nana, we’ll have to work on your Rummy skills next time I come by.”
She heaved a sigh as she drew a card from the deck on her good side. Her weaker hand, positioned against a small rice-filled pillow, held her cards. Thanks to the best speech therapist money could buy, her stuttering and pauses were almost completely gone. I was so proud of her perseverance and progress. “I suppose it c-couldn’t hurt.” She added the card to her hand and set down the king of diamonds. Two cards down was the queen of the same suit, and three over from that was the jack. “How is our dear Parfait le Chat? Have you found a way to sneak him in to see me yet?”
I shook my head as Clarice gleefully swept up the cards. “Not yet. He’s good. But I have some bad news about the house. ”
“Bad news? What could be worse than me losing to Clarice again?”
“Jack, queen, king, plus I’ll take that five of clubs to finish this set.” One at a time, her mouth spreading wider with each card, she placed the three, four, five, six, and seven of clubs on the table. “Fifty-five points!”
“Hmm.” Nana frowned and slid the top card from the deck. “Ha!” She placed it on the table and slowly used her left hand to extract two cards from her right hand. “Three tens! That’s … ten, twenty, thirty points!”
“Glad to see your math is still sharp, Nancy. Now we just need to work on your observation skills.” Clarice spoke with an air of authority as she recorded Nana’s points. She pointed to me. “What’s your bad news, Monty?”
I turned to Nana. “Beck’s crew was re-piping the bathroom and discovered the pipes were significantly rotted. She was going to just replace the ones that were bad but decided to take a look at other piping throughout the house that was relatively accessible. It’s not good, Nana. She said we’re one or two winters away from a disaster of epic proportions.”
“Pipe-ageddon!” Clarice shouted, then whistled. “You have the dough to fix it, right?”
I nodded. “It’s going to be expensive, but the worst part is since the house is a designated historic home, permitting is going to be a process. We’ll have to get the approval of the Historic Preservation Board. They meet once a month, and a review can take time. And even if it didn’t, Beck has another project coming up with her plumber and can’t start on our house until September first at the earliest.”
Nana tilted her head in thought. “We’ve dealt with them before. Not so bad. I like it here. It’s kind of like an all-inclusive resort. Plus, I need to keep Clarice busy. She’s old, you know. Might not have much time left.”
My eyes widened, but the ladies just laughed.
“Oh, Monty, don’t look so scandalized,” Clarice scolded, taking a card off the deck and discarding it right away. “I’ve outlived everyone in my family, including my kids. And some of their kids, sadly. I’m ready to go whenever the good Lord takes me.”
“Hopefully not before the end of this game.” Nana took the card she discarded and set down the other three jacks. “We’re almost tied up!”
“Not quite,” Clarice corrected. “Plus, I’m one hundred twenty-five points ahead from the last two rounds.”
Nana shrugged and shot me a grin. “I haven’t beaten her yet!”
“We-ell,” Clarice dragged the word out as she considered Nana’s observation. Ever the upbeat encourager, she softened. “You’re doing okay, considering your stroke wasn’t that long ago. You’ll probably win a round soon.”
“I appreciate the sentiment,” Nana replied. I shifted in my seat so I could see her hand as she took the top card from the deck, which she immediately placed in the discard train, missing the opportunity to set out a five-card run.
This time I couldn’t hide my smile as Clarice swept it up mirthfully and laid out the rest of her cards with a flourish, ending the game and leaving Nana with almost as many points in her hands as her total on the scorepad.
“One more round?” Nana asked.
“Hold on, doing the math.” Clarice hummed as she counted the value of her cards and Nana’s and did the calculations. “Yes, I’m afraid so.” She chuckled. “Just one should do it. I’m ten points from five hundred. You, on the other hand…”
“No need to tell me how bad it is,” Nana interjected, using her good hand to push her cards to the center of the table.
“Can I shuffle?” I asked.
Both ladies nodded, and I gathered up the cards, pulling them into a tight pile. Nana had taught me to shuffle when I was a preschooler, and by kindergarten I was executing moves like a Vegas dealer. Once, I considered moving there to do just that. But I couldn’t imagine living that far from Nana, especially after my grandfather died.
She’d taken care of me my whole life, and I’d promised her when I was young that I would take care of her when she was old and in a wheelchair.
How prophetic those words had been.
A few years ago, her sweet tooth had caught up with her, and complications with her diabetes made it too hard for her to walk. Installing an elevator in the house had been a Band-Aid to the problem, but even having to use a wheelchair hadn’t dissuaded her from her desserts. One good thing about her being here at the facility was that all the desserts they served her were sugar-free, and the security made it nearly impossible to sneak in sugar-rich foods. Even birthday cakes had to be preapproved and monitored by staff so that the recipient didn’t inadvertently—or purposefully—share it with a patient with dietary restrictions.
I handed the shuffled deck to Clarice.
“So,” Nana said as Clarice dealt the cards. “I assume you’ll be staying with Tasha until the work is done? She doesn’t have a new roommate lined up, right?”
I shook my head. “Nope, she doesn’t. She wanted to keep the extra room open for Penny to stay over when Xavier travels. He said I can stay at his place on those nights, if I want. I might just sleep on the sofa, though.”
“They might like their girls’ nights male-free,” Clarice said.
I hadn’t thought about that. “Good point.”
Clarice beamed. “Just common sense.”