Chapter 2
The next morning Mary Louise sat in her chair with her cup of coffee, looking out at the beautiful live oak trees that covered the rear of her property. They went all the way to a small creek and then up the hill beyond. This time of year they were at their least attractive, shedding their old leaves to make way for new buds, but they were always beautiful and calming to her no matter what time of year it was. If Albert had had his way, they would have been bulldozed and replaced by grass. That was one battle Mary Louise won, although the war had been ongoing until Albert passed away.
She wasn’t hungry. She rarely was these days. All those years cooking to Albert’s likes and dislikes and now that she could cook anything she wanted, food didn’t interest her much. She did enjoy it when it was Dottie’s turn to cook. It was like eating at her mother’s. Beverly, not so much. It was usually overcooked pasta, bagged salad, and frozen garlic bread, but still better than most restaurant meals these days.
She was taking a mental inventory of what was in her fridge when her phone rang. It was after 9:00 a.m. and a number she didn’t recognize so she was tempted to simply ignore it. So many scams these days, she was scared to answer her phone, look at text messages, or open her email. However, curiosity got the better of her so she slid the button to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Mary Louise?”
Mary Louise did not immediately recognize the voice, although it was vaguely familiar and triggered a small sense of dread.
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“It’s Rhonda.”
Rhonda? Rhonda. Gears clicked into place. There was only one Rhonda she knew.
“Why are you calling?” she asked, mentally shuffling her deck of emotion cards and picking out suspicion and anger to have at the ready.
The one and only time she had spoken with this woman was over two years ago, the night Albert died. Mary Louise’s phone began ringing about 11:00 p.m. showing Albert on the caller ID. It was unusual for him to call her so late, even when he was out of town on business, as he was that night. But it wasn’t Albert calling. It was a hysterical woman calling her from Albert’s phone.
“Mary Louise? Is this Mary Louise? I’m so sorry,” she sobbed.
Mary Louise was about to enjoy an episode of House Hunters International where a young couple was looking for an apartment in Amsterdam. Her brain was having trouble grasping the reality of someone who was not Albert calling her from Albert’s phone. “Who is this?”
“My name is Rhonda. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do!” she ended in a shriek.
“Calm down. Please calm down. Where is Albert?”
Mary Louise’s brain split in two. Half of it stayed on the phone, waiting for an answer. The other half picked up a one way ticket to, “I’ll bet Albert….Land.” I’ll bet Albert got drunk and got in an argument with a Black Jack dealer at a casino. I’ll bet Albert charmed his way into asking you to join him for a meal and got so drunk he ended up diving face first into a plate of Fettuccine Alfredo, with shrimp, not chicken. I’ll bet Albert…
“He’s…he’s here. He’s right here.”
“Let me speak to him please.”
“You can’t!”
Mary Louise smacked her palm into her forehead. Who was this woman?
“What do you mean I can’t? Please put him on the phone immediately.”
All those years as an Executive Assistant had left a residue of authority and no nonsense in Mary Louise’s phone demeanor. She got out of her chair and stood up. Her heart thumped in her chest. What has Albert done now?
“I can’t!” the voice from her phone wailed. “He’s dead.”
This was followed by hysterical crying that gave Mary Louise a moment to absorb the shock of what this woman just said. Albert dead? She sat back down. Like Scarlett O’Hara, she couldn’t think about that right now.
“Rhonda. Calm down. I need you to talk to me. Where are you? What happened?”
“I’m in New Orleans,” said Rhonda, sucking in a large amount of snot.
Mary Louise took a deep breath.
“I mean exactly where are you? Have you been in an accident? Have you called 911?”
The question was met with silence.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
Very quietly Rhonda said, “I’m in his hotel room.”
Mary Louise closed her eyes and shook her head. Of course she was.
“Have you called 911? Have you called the front desk to ask for help?”
“No! Albert told me to call Mary Louise!”
Albert in a hotel room with a strange woman, and yet what may have been his last words were to call her. Again, she didn’t have time to think about that right now.
“Do you know CPR?”
“No.”
“Go to the hotel phone right now and call 911, or get the front desk and ask them to call. Quick as you can, then come back to me.”
Mary Louise’s heart continued its imitation of the drum line in a marching band. Could this really be happening? She flashed back to Albert’s first heart attack when she was the one with him. He had overdone it with the yardwork, and luckily she had looked out the kitchen window and seen him go down. Her knowledge of CPR and the quick response of EMS had saved him then. Could it save him now?
Finally, Rhonda was back.
“EMS is on the way.”
“That’s good, Rhonda. Now put me on speaker phone, and I’m going to tell you how to do CPR.” Maybe she had a future as a 911 operator.
“But I can’t!”
“Yes you can. You’re the only one who can. We’ll do chest compressions until the paramedics arrive.”
Mary Louise had mad skills at being calm under pressure and speaking clearly. Luckily, as floor captain at her last company, she had been required to keep her CPR certification up to date.
“You’re on speaker,” said Rhonda.
“Is he on his back?”
Mary Louise heard Rhonda grunting, then a huge exhalation of air.
“Now he is.”
Mary Louise took a deep breath.
“Put the heel of one hand in the center of his chest, and the other one on top. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“Put your shoulders directly over your hands and lock your elbows. Now push down firmly, then let up.”
The only sound coming from the phone was whimpering.
“Rhonda! Did you do it?”
“Yes. Yes I did it.”
“I need you to do it again. Push down firmly, then let up.”
“Do I need to blow in his mouth now?”
“No. Just keep doing what you are doing. Firm push down, let up. Firm push down, let up.”
After what felt like an eternity, someone knocked loudly on the hotel room door. A muffled voice warned they were coming in. After that, Mary Louise was forgotten. There were sounds of commotion and after a few minutes, a slamming door. A deep sigh, then the call was disconnected. She went to the kitchen to find the TX whiskey. She needed time to process what was happening.
That night came rushing back. All the confusion. All the anger. All the helplessness. All the guilt. All the grief. Someone had once told her that grief was like the ocean waves. Sometimes calm, sometimes big, and sometimes like a rogue wave hitting you out of nowhere. This was a rogue wave, the first that had hit in well over a year.
“I would have called sooner,” said Rhonda, “But I didn’t, you know, out of respect.”
Dammit! Why had she answered the phone? Every bad emotion in her body pooled in the pit of her stomach.
“Why are you calling now?” asked Mary Louise. She was one hundred percent sure it wasn’t to offer late condolences.
“Well, the thing is, Albert said he always meant to leave me a little something. Then it dawned on me, duh, you didn’t have my address or phone number.”
Or your last name, or any need to contact you, thought Mary Louise. Unbelievable. With only one cup of coffee in her, Mary Louise was in no mood to be nice, especially not to this woman.
“A ‘little something’, huh? Funny, he never mentioned that to me.”
“Well he mentioned it to me. Several times. He always said if anything ever happened to him, he wanted to be sure I was taken care of.”
“You have got to be joking.”
Mary Louise thought she might vomit.
“Listen, lady! He said what he said! I’m not asking for anything besides what he promised me.”
The syrupy voice turned to ice, which fired up Mary Louise.
“What he promised you? What about what he promised me? Like to be faithful. To love, honor and cherish.”
“If you’d been taking care of him at home, he never would have come looking for me.”
Mary Louise shook her head. She had been taking care of him at home. After Albert’s first heart attack, his doctor had provided a strict diet plan that he only followed at home when Mary Louise was there to make him. The doctor said his heart wasn’t strong enough for sexual activity. The doctor had been so right.
“The fact remains, Albert did not leave anything for you.”
“I know that he promised to take care of me, and I’ve got a lawyer.”
“You cannot seriously be threatening me.”
“I’m just saying Ally wanted me taken care of.”
Anger burned inside of Mary Louise. Just when she was at a place in her life where she could almost think of Albert with only fondness and allow the bitterness of his infidelities and her inability to properly deal with it fade away, it all came roaring back.
“Well let me clue you in about Ally,” said Mary Louise quietly. “Your Ally left me, his wife, with no life insurance policy, a cleaned out 401K, and $50,000 in credit card debt. So maybe you can enlighten me on exactly how Ally intended to take care of you.”
“He said he was putting money away so we could get a little house in Houston.”
Mary Louise didn’t doubt for one minute that Albert may have told Rhonda he was putting away money to buy them their own little love shack in Houston. He was very good at lying and he was very good at telling people what they wanted to hear.
“I can assure you the only place he was putting money was on the horses and the blackjack table. Even if he did have money, you would have no legal claim to it. Surely your lawyer told you that.”
Silence on the other end, and then crying. “He said he would take care of me.”
Mary Louise sighed. “Albert said a lot of things.”
Funny, it was hard for her to recall exactly what his voice sounded like. But she could imagine them tangled up in hotel sheets with Albert whispering to her everything he knew she wanted to hear, and her believing it.
“I’m hanging up now. Please don’t call me again.”
After she hung up the phone, Mary Louise shook her head. She liked things peaceful and in order. She did not appreciate this person zinging her zen.
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