Chapter 21 Taylor
Taylor
Taylor attends the patient confidentiality online refresher course.
Clicks the right buttons. Shows up at work.
Comes home and brushes her teeth. Places a dirty cereal bowl in her sink, alongside the one from the previous day.
Goes to sleep, these days with the bedroom door open, so she can see through to the opposite end of her apartment, out the glass patio door.
One night she gets out her tape measure and runs it along the bedroom window.
Prior to moving to Boston, her landlord had assured her and her dad that the window met Massachusetts egress requirements.
But now, Taylor feels a sudden need to double-check.
It’s thirty-six inches wide and twenty-four inches tall, which passes muster.
After her mother died, Taylor developed a compulsive need to locate the fire exit in every room she enters. It’s become so second nature that she barely thinks about it, simply marking surrounding doors and staircases with an ingrained vigilance.
Once, when she and her dad went to see a movie, she saw how he, too, first craned his neck to note the red exit sign in the theater corner before settling into his seat. It made her wonder: Is life just a series of escalating anxieties?
The fact that her bedroom window meets egress standards should make Taylor feel better overall, but it doesn’t. With Vivian gone from the hospital, some days have the same tenor as those that followed her mom’s death.
Taylor pesters Aunt Gigi for information on where Vivian went. “She was moved to an undisclosed location,” Aunt Gigi says. That might be all she knows, Taylor concludes, when she’s bothered her aunt enough.
Somehow it becomes the beginning of April, the weather so slowly warming that it’s like watching a piece of frozen chicken defrost on the counter.
The wheel turns. Sam’s forgiven her for missing the haircut, and they slip back into their friendship.
But something’s different; something is amiss.
It’s probably her. She still hasn’t talked to him about Vivian, not even to mention how she was her patient. Guilty conscience, probably.
“Do you want to get some sushi—my treat?” Sam dangles in front of her, more than once. “Or do a workout with me and Bron?” That’s his personal trainer.
“Next time,” she replies, and offers excuses that sound lame even to her: stomach issues, headaches, menstrual cramps.
“You Southern girls get your period a lot,” he says sarcastically.
She should work out; maybe it would make her feel better.
One day, on a whim, she tries a yoga class from the place where Vivian had a membership card, Mission Hill Yoga. The class is wonderful, the teacher, Cassandra, wonderful, but there’s no essence of Vivian. Afterward, Taylor feels almost stupidly let down.
She half hopes Sam will stop asking her to do stuff and half hopes he doesn’t.
She’s not sure she deserves him as a friend.
She’s not sure what she deserves. Or what she wants.
Or anything at all, really. She’s worn slap out, and a now familiar angst resides inside her.
The only time it seems to lessen is when she fingers the key she keeps in her jewelry box, like a precious charm, and recalls the innards of Vivian’s apartment.
The softness of her patient’s cashmeres, the slinkiness of her satins, the light fuzz of her velvets.
It’s probably wise she hasn’t brought up Vivian to Sam, she thinks.
She’s slipping at work: missing a patient’s low potassium blood level, forgetting to order a needed EKG, getting into an unprofessional tiff with the orthopedic resident. Her nurse manager, Jan, has to speak with her—and news trickles up to Aunt Gigi.
“I professionally vouched for you,” Aunt Gigi chides. “Usually one doesn’t get to go from an outpatient ortho center in Bumblefuck, North Carolina, to an ER position at MGH. Get it together, T.J.”
On her commute home from work, Taylor often peers into the storefront of Storied Antiques.
It remains empty, with an unchanged window display.
The same coral chair and footstool. The same tumbler on the hammered coaster on the same end table.
The Emily Dickinson book with a faded blue 1970s cover.
She’s looked at the window front so often she could draw it from memory.
She’s also googled Vivian Lawrence plenty of times to no avail.
One day, Taylor wonders: Are death records public in Massachusetts?
Turns out they are. On the Massachusetts Document Retrieval website, she types in as much information about Vivian as she knows, which is nothing, really.
Unknown place of death, unknown date of death (other than the current year).
Unknown names of her parents. Still, Taylor fills it out and pays the forty-five dollars.
It will take ten to fourteen business days, and she might not get her money back if they don’t find a record, but at least she feels like she’s doing something.
Then a unicorn of a day appears, a hint of warm weather. The sky clear, the morning air carrying a sea kiss, reminding Taylor of back home.
She’s off that day, and she decides to shop at the Beacon Hill thrift stores.
She hasn’t splurged on herself in a while.
On the way, she detours to Storied Antiques.
It remains shuttered, the closed sign hanging at its usual slanted angle, the furniture the same old.
Taylor tilts her head. Something is different. She checks off a mental list.
Tumbler? Yes. Hammered brass coaster? Yes. Emily Dickinson book? Check.
It’s so obvious what is different that it takes her a good minute to realize. The footstool has been removed.
Someone has been into the store.
Taylor moves closer to the window. The sun is at her back, creating a reflective glare.
She pushes her face up against the glass, and her breath quickens, creating a circular fog. A light glimmers in the back of the store.
She moves a few feet down to another spot, trying to get a better look, when she hears the door rattle open.
“Taylor, what are you doing?” a raspy voice says. Taylor takes a moment to compute the person standing in front of her: It’s her landlord, Anna.
Even with a hunched back, and resting on a cane, she is still a few inches taller than Taylor. Her silver hair falls loosely around her shoulders and is tucked behind one ear, exposing a small ruby stud.
“Uh, hello, ma’am.”
Anna lets out a raucous laugh. “It’s Anna to you. Did you come looking for me?”
“No, I, uh, I was just coming to look at the store. Why…” Taylor trails off. She doesn’t want to be rude, but she wants to know why Anna is inside Vivian’s store. Do they know each other?
“That’s a funny coincidence,” Anna replies, looking intently at Taylor. “I own this building.”
“You do?”
Anna picks up her cane and points down the street.
“And that one, two doors down.” Then she begins jabbing the cane this way and that.
“And a building on Charles Street, with one of those nail salons and clothing stores. I also own some real estate near the Old State House. Another couple of nail salons and a bookstore. Not the new bookstore, the one that sells used books—Turned Pages. The old one, like me,” she cackles.
“Oh, I didn’t realize. That’s a…a lot of buildings.”
“Yes, it is. All that action keeps me on my toes.”
Taylor smiles politely. “Is this store reopening soon?”
Anna glances behind her and sighs. “I hope so. It’s a shame; the woman who owns the antiques business had an accident.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. Is she okay?” Taylor says, trying to keep her voice even.
“I’m just the landlord. The rent continues to be paid, which is all I care about. Paid in advance, in fact.”
Paid in advance. Who is making payments on Vivian’s behalf?
Maybe it’s her personal accountant, because Vivian must have a personal accountant, or a money manager, or whatever it is the über wealthy have.
Whoever it is, it doesn’t matter. It gives Taylor a jolt of hope.
This must mean Vivian is returning, because otherwise why would her rent continue to be paid?
Anna taps the cane, like a metronome. “No, wait, that’s not right. What month is it, again? April?”
Taylor nods.
“Then it’s only been paid through the end of this month.” Anna laughs. “This is what happens when you get to be my age. The days all run into each other like those damn bicyclists making their food deliveries.”
“So, the store is not reopening?”
“We’ll see. Between you and that nicely dressed fellow who’s come around, this store has gotten a surprising amount of traction for being temporarily closed.” Anna gives Taylor a sweeping look. “How’s your dad doing? He must be getting ready to reopen the restaurant for the season?”
“Uh, yeah,” Taylor responds, but she’s thinking to herself: What nicely dressed fellow?
“Your dad’s a real Southern gentleman.” Anna laughs again.
“I don’t know many Southern gentlemen. I don’t know many gentlemen.
But your dad is a fine Southern gentleman, let me tell you.
When we spoke on the phone, it was ‘ma’am this’ and ‘ma’am that.
’ Must be where you get your manners from.
I had a feeling about you. I said to myself, this daughter of his is a nice girl.
A nice nurse and a nice girl. She’ll be a good tenant. Is Boston treating you well?”
Taylor swallows. It might be the mention of her dad, or just someone asking if she’s okay, but she finds herself blinking back tears. “Yeah. Yeah, everything’s good. Thanks.”
“What time is it, dear? You young people always know the time because you have phones. My time is kept in here.” She taps her forehead with one long, spiny, red-nailed finger.
Taylor checks. “Ten fifteen.”
“Thank you, doll. You run along now, enjoy your day.”
Taylor tries to do what Anna said, enjoy her day.
But as she combs through the racks at a consignment store, she can’t find anything she likes.
The shirts are ill-fitting, the trousers unflattering, the dresses too plain and ordinary.
She still tries, bringing garment after garment into the dressing room.
She’s reminded, briefly, of childhood trips to the department store with her mom—how her mother would carry armfuls of clothes into the dressing room while Taylor hid in the stacks, waiting for her absence to finally register.
Staring now at her naked body, Taylor suddenly feels overwhelmed. She quickly gets dressed, steps over the pile of clothes, and then simply walks out. She’s never done that before, made a mess like that and just left.
It occurs to her that the last time she liked her image in the mirror was that glorious day in Vivian’s apartment, when everything she slipped onto her body was Midas gold.