Members of the Bored: Happy-Go-Lucky

ISBN-13: 9781482620276 / Angielski / Miękka / 2013 / 250 str.

Charles Hammer; Elise Ray

Opis

What's this about a Death Angel? Recently widowed and quite old, Rosa Lee Rainsburg wants something to happen now, or she wants everything to stop---just STOP. Then it starts happening too fast as she enters a nursing home and meets her first roommate, who dies that very night. Is this another visitation of the sinister Death Angel, whom some residents believe haunts the halls of Hearthstone? Two more deaths follow, and Detective Lieutenant Sterling P. Fjord---elderly himself---comes to investigate. Under suspicion, Rosa Lee endures his interrogation, warding him off in a verbal fencing match. But she's delighted to discover Fjord is a fan of crime fiction, his favorite detective---like hers---being Porfiry Petrovich of Crime and Punishment, though they both love Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes. Meanwhile, Rosa Lee is cheered by the company of luncheon pals who call themselves Members of the Board---so she first understands---learning only later that the word is Bored, elders glad to be bored rather than scared or dead. Her favorite among them is Omer Hayden, a retired power company lineman with a sexy leer and a passion for plant breeding. With the help of a staff member, he takes her on an expedition to his former property, hoping to recover his unique strain of rudbeckia daisies. They bag the plants. Then Rosa blunders into a garden patch of okra, so she thinks. Omer, horrified, hisses cannabis sativa. Baffled by his agitation, she charms the ball-bat wielding thugs who grill them before they can get out through the gate and away. Her new roommate is Evelyn Hardway---the Ozarks Tornado, Omer calls her---who shrilly crusades against all the pill-taking at Hearthstone. The pills, Evelyn asserts, are the very weapon of the Death Angel. Evelyn moves in, takes the pleasant window bed that Rosa Lee covets and begins introducing her to the mysteries of nursing homes. "They want to get you in their power," Evelyn explains. In their power? Rosa Lee wonders Really? Then why does she find life so pleasant at Hearthstone? Why does she so much enjoy the institution's mascot, Phantom, an elderly yellow tabbycat with an extravagant emotional life? Loosely based on the nursing home where the author's mother-in-law spent her final days, Members of the Bored shares dark moments of the sort readers encounter in "October Light" by John Gardner. Plus many bright ones: Omer's gallant repair of Hearthstone's power lines felled by a storm. Evelyn's agonized change of heart, which saves a friend's life. And, oh yes, Rosa Lee's sweetness. She despises the word but the quality itself has a vivifying effect on her friends. Members of Bored make the most they can of life in a nursing home. In old age, that evening in the afternoon, what more can be asked of us?