Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen Read Online Free Page A

with mock seriousness. “See you next time.”
    I watch her for a minute heading back down the hall, moving like some exotic zoo animal.
    â€œHi, Auntie.” Byron has strolled down to meet me. So attentive, Byron Barclay, ever since that day when I was sure death waited for me and I signed a paper giving him power of attorney. Is it possible to sue a doctor who suggests an eighty-nine-year-old heart might not make it through surgery? Any mind would have to be morphine-addled to put her affairs in the hands of a high-school dropout who has worked most of his life servicing soda-pop dispensing machines.
    Six months ago, when the pain was so bad it made me dizzy, I was sure my boat was headed out to sea, all primed with tar, ready for the torch. I said things; Isigned things. But the funeral barge wasn’t set afire. And, God, it’s hard to have to hobble back to shore and find Byron waiting for you.
    In fact, he always seems to be lurking these days. Like a turkey vulture.
    â€œAlberich,” I say.
    â€œAlberich?” He shakes his head, puzzled, and then smiles. I can tell he thinks I’ve gone off into loony land. I don’t bother telling him that Alberich is the ugly dwarf guarding the gold of the Rhine maidens in
Das Rheingold
. That he’s Alberich and the gold is mine.
    â€œHave you given any more thought to selling your house, Auntie?” He’s followed me into my room and drops into the visitor’s chair.
    Poor Byron, he’s lost pretty well all of his hair like my brother did, and he’s red in the face, as if the very business of living embarrasses him. He mops at the perspiration on his forehead.
    â€œI can’t think why I’d sell it,” I say. “I expect I’ll be back there soon. Once this hip is working.”
    He doesn’t look at me. He stares, instead, at the bureau by my bed, as if it were a heap of Rhine gold.
    Minnie, an afternoon worker, comes in and helps me into bed. She sends Byron out into the hall while she gets me out of my dress and into a wrap.
    â€œYou’re tired, aren’t you, Miss Barclay?” she says.
    I like Minnie. There’s no nonsense about her. She does up the last couple of buttons on my housecoat and tucks a quilt around me. “You want me to send him away?”
    â€œNo. I can do that.”
    She smiles. “I’m sure you can.”
    â€œThink of it,” Byron says when he comes back in. “It’s a seller’s market right now. You’d really come out on top.”
    â€œI’ll think about it,” I say. I
am
tired and, more than anything, I’d like Byron to go. I close my eyes.
    â€œAnd your car,” he says. “I’d like to put an ad in the paper. I just had it tuned up and it’s running like a charm. Anyone who test-drives that Buick —”
    â€œI’ll think about it.”
    â€œThink about it,” Byron echoes, tiptoeing to the door.
    The last trip I took with the Buick was to drive to Seattle to see
Die Walküre
. Gladys Enright went with me. It would have been better to have gone by myself. Gladys dithering and twittering around. The type that would say sorry to a coffee table if she stubbed her toe on it. Never learned how to drive. Always had a husband who did it for her until he died. Once he was gone, Gladys would declare, “Too late to teach an old dog new tricks.”
    It was at the end of that trip that I began to notice the hip pain, and by the time I got home, it was agony to work the pedals. But it was Gladys, an old dog with no new tricks, who had the heart attack and died three weeks later.
    Will I ever drive again? The doctor says no. “It’s not just your legs. You have lapses, times when your mind just shuts down for brief periods. It’s really not safe for you to drive.”
    The thought makes me furious. Why does life tantalize us with possibilities, only to turn coy, withdrawing?
    Anger shoves