Chapter 10 #2
“Yes, thank you.”
“At least, I think it’s tea… There’s hot water involved, anyhow.”
“That’ll be fine, Imogene. Thank you.”
“This sure takes me back,” Mrs. Chrysler said after a few moments. “The junk we used to eat in those days.”
Katherine regarded the tray with dismay.
“Never quested for a bran muffin then, did we? We can look for one of those in the morning.”
Katherine suspiciously eyed the food that Mrs. Chrysler doled out for her. “I know ordering here was my idea…” she said, giving it an experimental sniff.
Ruben sat gingerly down on the opposite edge of the mattress, shifting crunchily on its straw stuffing and glancing warmly at Katherine, as he accepted a laden plate from Mrs. Chrysler.
He began to thoughtfully chew something blissfully unidentifiable under hot, greasy breading.
“Sure beats boiled stew beef and mushy peas,” he said.
“Is that what they fed you at Eagle Heights?”
“For the most part. Lots of porridge too. Rather got the sense they’d just as soon not feed us at all, though, portions were so measly.”
“How long were you at Eagle Heights, Ruben?” Katherine asked, deciding to stick to tea for the time being.
“Oh, ’bout…” The old man searched the ceiling in thought, as if the beams might hold some clue. “Six years… and a quarter,” he finally concluded. “I had a roommate at the… place too. He claimed to have invented string.” He cocked his eyebrows.
The two women regarded him blankly.
“I don’t think it’s true,” Ruben seemed compelled to clarify. “Gary has said a lot of strange things the past few years.” He shrugged. “He wasn’t always like that, though. Used to be real sharp, and up for pretty much anything. But… after a while… it just seemed kinder to humor him.”
Katherine nodded gravely, catching Mrs. Chrysler’s eye. “And what about the others?” she asked. “You must have had other friends at Eagle Heights?”
“Mmm, define ‘friends.’” Ruben tore into a chunk of fried potato as if it had offended him, then went on after swallowing.
“I mean, I did at the start. A nice group of people to chat with, pass the time with, you know. Then, we started helping each other get away with things.” He picked up another piece and smiled puckishly.
“Like visiting each other’s rooms after lights out, or sneaking extra food, or pinching extra blankets from the store closets.
Gary especially helped me with that. I was so darn cold all the time.
But, that’s all ancient history.” Ruben sighed.
“We went through some rough stuff, and they all pretend I don’t exist now.
” He thoughtfully pushed the hunk of potato into his mouth.
“Your friends won’t talk to you? At all?”
“Nope. Just cold-shouldered me. All of ’em.” Ruben made a swiping motion with his hand. “No one in there has said a word to me in years. Except Gary, but he doesn’t really remember who I am. I’m sure he hasn’t even noticed I’m gone.”
Katherine exchanged a glance with Mrs. Chrysler, who crinkled her brows uncertainly. “What ‘rough stuff’ did you all go through?” Katherine asked, taking another sip from her mug and watching him over the rim while she swallowed.
Ruben squirmed a bit, chewing carefully, as if doing so required all of his attention.
“What did you do, Ruben?” Mrs. Chrysler demanded with motherly authority.
“I didn’t do anything!” Ruben finally blustered.
“Or, at least, we all did things.” Mrs. Chrysler cocked her head at him and set her jaw, and he sighed.
“Yes, all right, fine. I suppose, if I really think about it, maybe I can’t completely blame them for being sore at me.
Maybe… I don’t know. Maybe they all just got tired of my big plans never actually, quite, exactly, working out…
in the specific, particular, way we hoped. Precisely.”
“Big plans,” Katherine said. She gave Mrs. Chrysler another sidelong glance. “You mentioned you’d tried escaping.”
“Oh, yes. One time too many, I guess.” Ruben took a sip of his tea, frowned slightly, and continued. “But everyone was on board at the start,” he said. “Might have been my idea, but they were game.”
“All right, Ruben,” Mrs. Chrysler said. “Go on. Tell us what happened.”
“Well, I wanted to get out of… there, and when I brought it up, I learned my friends did too. They said things hadn’t been so bad under the old management.
There used to be art classes and games, evidently, even a shuffleboard court…
a lot more freedom. But after Ms. Angela was hired, classes and visits and mail all stopped and she started really cutting corners…
Started making up more rules too, about what you could do and where you could go.
So, I suggested we sneak out one night.” He shrugged his eyebrows and shoulders nonchalantly, as if breaking out of a rest home was a perfectly reasonable thing for anyone to suggest. “But, we got caught. Of course. Next thing you know, Ms. Angela has everyone locked in their rooms at night. Locked. In their rooms. Every night.”
Katherine nodded knowingly. “So,” she said. “Everyone got sore at you after that. No more sneaking around.”
“Oh, no.” Ruben shook his head. “That wasn’t it.
That escape attempt was only the beginning!
” He threw up his hands, accidentally sending a few lumps of food skittering off of the plate he was holding and onto the mattress.
“I couldn’t pick the lock on my door, so one evening I swiped a butter knife from the dining hall to pry the pins out of the hinges. ”
Katherine almost choked on her tea. “You what?”
“I was going to teach everyone else how to do it once I figured it out. And it would have worked too, but it took me all night, and the staffer who let us out of our rooms in the morning caught me still at it.” Ruben suddenly noticed his plate was almost bare and looked around himself for the food he’d dropped.
Katherine coughed a bit to clear her throat of the wayward tea. Mrs. Chrysler patted her on the back then returned to watching Ruben with fascination, shaking her head.
“Next I tried going out my window,” Ruben said.
“Figured I’d help Gary down too, after I made sure it was safe.
But the sheets I tied together didn’t reach all the way to the ground, and they started to rip.
That wasn’t pleasant, let me tell you. I got caught dangling above a first-floor window.
They don’t mention the importance of thread count in the adventure stories, do they? ” He raised his brows expectantly.
Mrs. Chrysler and Katherine exchanged glances again.
“Gary and I did manage to sneak out of the common room a few times during the day,” Ruben said, “to try and find another way out of the place. Had Jim fake a fit or Eleanor a hip-cracking fall or something to distract the staffers. That’s how I came upon the crates in the hallways, and the caskets. ”
Katherine nodded slowly, beginning to comprehend how very determined this old man must have been to escape, and wondering what the orderlies and Ms. Angela must have thought about it. “So, what happened?” she asked.
“We got caught,” Ruben sighed. “Always. I’m not exactly fleet of foot.” He gestured at his thin, crooked legs with dismay. “And neither was Gary, or anyone else for that matter…”
“What happened when you got caught?” Katherine asked. Mrs. Chrysler gestured to her untouched food, and Katherine gave her a go-ahead nod to take it.
Ruben grimaced and frowned, furrowing his brow in indignation. “I’d get yelled at,” he said. “And sometimes”—he shuddered—“they’d take me to see Ms. Angela.” He took an aggressive bite of his dinner, and Katherine waited for him to go on, with Mrs. Chrysler munching quietly.
Ruben continued bitterly after downing his mouthful.
“The staffers all talk about her behind her back, you know. Always barking orders at people. She can’t stand the sight of us.
I don’t know why a woman like that would even take that job.
The staffers would say she loves the control.
Anyway, I tried to raise a mutiny at the…
place. Maybe get Ms. Angela fired. My friends and I kept insisting how unfair it was that we didn’t get to go outside or have any visitors. ”
He paused to take a drink, and Katherine found that her own tea had gone cold. “That is really awful, Ruben,” she said. “I’m sorry it was like that for you.”
Mrs. Chrysler nodded her agreement.
“Thanks,” Ruben said. “But all our rabble-rousing just made things worse in the end. So much worse. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if Ms. Angela were sacked?’ we’d ask the staffers.
And it wasn’t just me,” he insisted, holding up his hands.
“We were all doing it. But… in the end, none of them wanted to make waves, and one of them must have ratted on us. Because Ms. Angela finally came down on us like a sack of bricks. The last time I was caught trying to escape, they took me to see her, and I’d never seen her so angry.
We were confined to our rooms—all of us—all day, and all night.
It was a whole month before we were let back into the common room and dining hall again.
All under the guise of ‘renovations’, if you can believe it.
There were some changes around the place, and new uniforms for the staffers too, but I know it was really so we couldn’t organize, couldn’t do anything. For a whole month.”
“And that’s when all your friends stopped talking to you?” Katherine asked.
“Yes. The whole ordeal seemed to really sober everybody up. Nobody, not even Gary, was as keen to make a fuss anymore as I was.” Ruben heaved a huge, deflated sigh.
“So, eventually, I gave up too. I stopped trying to escape, stopped doing anything, really. Everyone hated me, so I just spent all my time in that common room huddled under my blankets, cold as ever, and without any friends at all. And that was, gods, nearly three years ago now. Almost to the day.”