Chapter Seven - Aidan's Quest

Chapter Seven
Margo

Margo hated to leave her son again to decode the mystery that was Mrs. Riseman.  It paid the bills, though, so she might as well stop complaining, she thought.  Burying herself in her notes and Mrs. Riseman’s chart, she decided that this woman wasn’t really in psychological jeopardy at the moment.  Now, she was deceptive, sneaky, up-to-something, but not stark ravin’ mad.  She was just too calculating and had way too much spunk to be depressed, even if she was sad about that grandson of hers. 

Margo expected a psychologist to come up with an Axis II diagnosis and you can’t medicate a Personality Disorder.  They are who they are-just more extreme than the general public.  It’s the Axis I diagnoses that the nursing home wants to zero in on before they leave.  The medical community loves Axis I diagnoses because, with that diagnosis, a doctor or nursing home gets money from Medicare to pay for psychological consults and monthly follow-up visits and medications for Depression, Anxiety, and Bipolar Disorder, a combination of the previous two. 

On a side note, of course, the medical community has learned that depressed people don’t recover from heart attacks as well and some don’t become depressed until the attack.  For this reason only, she could rationalize the necessity of hunting for a problem before a resident was released. 

Margo smelled Annie before she saw her.  Nurses weren’t supposed to wear perfume but she got away with it by using a tad in her laundry. 

“Hello, Annie. Why are you standing behind me just watchin’ me? You tryin’ to sneak up on me or something?”

“How’d you know I was behind you?  You read minds too? 

“I smelled you, Annie. What do you think?  What is that, oil of hydrangea?”

“Lord, thank goodness for the sense of smell.  I was about to say that if that woman taught you somethin’ of her creepy ESP thing, I’m gonna have to find a new job.  That woman gives me the willies, I’m serious Margo.  You just spent an hour with the woman this morning.  Did she not come across a little weird to you?  C’mon, tell me you aren’t holding her longer for an evaluation, please.  I know she’s nuts and if she says one more thing about my granddaddy not likin’ that boy I went out with last night, I’m just gonna scream.  Right here.  You watch, I’ll do it.  I got assigned to her room today and every time I set foot in there, she offers to have a séance’ to bring Grandpa back.  I’d say ‘bless her heart’ but I’m too scared to ask God to have anything to do with her.” 

“She told me she warned you about that boy.  Shoulda listened to her, huh.  Doesn’t feel too good getting the ole ‘I told ya so’ does it? “
“I’m used to hearing ‘told ya so’ from people who are alive, but I’m not takin’ that from my dead, meddlesome, judgmental granddaddy.  That ole man spent half my life griping about my skirt length and askin’ if I was really gonna wear ‘that’ in public.  The old prude.  He was worse than that teacher friend of my momma’s.  Come to think of it, they did know each other.”

“Annie, you ever hear her talk plain old English, without an accent?”  Margo didn’t want to breach confidentiality, as hard as that was with Annie around, but she figured it could have a bearing on her mental status if she switched accents often and that was Margo’s job to asses this lady’s mental status. 

“You know, I think maybe I have.  Can’t promise though because it was one day when I had to make up her bed and two other ladies were in there too.  I remember because I had a time trying to get around that tiny room, and nearly tripped over one of their legs when I had my arms full of old sheets and blankets.  I thought I heard her tell me to watch my step but since it wasn’t accented, I thought I’d just heard one of the other women talk.  Except, I heard it from the side Mrs. Riseman was sitting on.  Why, have you heard her?  Wouldn’t surprise me none.  She’s strange.”  Annie drew out the word ‘strange’ for at least four syllables.

“Yeah, when I left, I swear I heard her answer the phone and just talk and talk with absolutely no accent.  Sounded a bit Southern, well, like the rest of us but with less twang.  She told me she had met Aidan today and I didn’t think anything of it at the time.  Now that I’ve heard her change accents, I’m tempted to tell Mr. Wade not to bring my boy back to her room.  I don’t trust her one bit, not now anyway.”

“You ate lunch with him, didn’t you?  Why didn’t you just tell him?”

“Didn’t have much of a chance since he left to make a phone call when I arrived and he returned as I was about to leave.  Aidan had so much fun with Mr. Kelly and his grandson, I hated to sour the day by forbidding him to visit Ms. Riseman or any other resident.  I don’t so much mind if Mr. Wade is present.  Well, I didn’t but now with the accent, I’m not so sure I want him anywhere near her.  Thing is, I also don’t want him to decide that keeping Aidan during the summer is too much trouble.  I hate to put him back in daycare.”

“Got a point there.  Just wait, hon.  I’ll keep an eye on them from here.  Men do the
opposite of what us women tell ‘em anyway.  You’ll just make Aidan get obsessed over
her if you say no to him visiting.  You know that son of yours.  And Mr. Wade is
stubborn, heck, he’d have that boy in her room daily if he thought for one minute you
were being unreasonable.”

“I just thought of something. Be right back.”  Margo stashed her papers and Ms. Riseman’s chart in an empty corner of the nurses’ desk.  She hated to leave things without putting them in the right place but this just couldn’t wait.  As she walked down the hall, she found her eyes counting the swirled beige-on-white linoleum squares on the hallway floor.  She had to blink a few times to get her eyes off the hypnotizing squares. 

She couldn’t help feeling Aidan was a lot like her sometimes.  In the past few weeks, she had poured over whatever literature she could find about Asperger’s and Autistic Spectrum Disorders.  Finally having a name for why her son acted the way he did was partly a relief but something inside her felt a pull of familiarity and self-effacing humor.  The lack of friends as a child, the awkwardness in crowds, counting things; these all made her think she was a “Type-A, driven, and a little bit obsessive-compulsive.  Now though, started wondering about the rest of her family.  Her mother’s obsession with movie stars, her father’s inability to let things go and his frustration that no one really understood him.  These odd feelings resulted in her father’s alcohol addiction and abusive monologues toward his family and her mother’s lack of restraint about spending money only if it had to do with her one true obsession  She wondered, too, about her father’s inability to show or feel warmth, unless it was the warmth his liquor spread throughout his body with the first drink of the night. 

What did this all mean, that they had excuses for messing up her childhood; that she had to forgive her father because he was just made that way.  No, that Alanon meeting she went to when she was just out of high school taught her that the alcoholism was a disease and she already had to forgive him for that.  She couldn’t forgive him for being a hateful, distant, patronizing drunk.  Not yet anyway.  She nursed her feelings for her father by keeping them raw as a freshly picked scab, reminding her every day the path she could not, would not take as a parent.  That’s why she didn’t drink.  She just knew it would be her undoing.  If genetics could cause her entire family to be just on the “normal” side of the Autistic Spectrum as they called it now, it could also cause her to become a raging alcoholic at the mere sight of a beer.  She couldn’t let up.  It was not in her to let it go.  That is the one thing she and her father shared. She wondered if he also struggled daily to keep control over his fear of failure, as if he would be trampled at the least sign of weakness.  She also wondered at what point he gave in and let the alcohol claim him. 

Deep in her thought and subconsciously counting floor tiles again, she crashed into a vaguely familiar button down shirt.  She was looking down at the tiles and didn’t see his face but knew fate was laughing at her.  She had nearly knocked down the very soul she was on the way to meet. 

“Where’s the fire?”  He put his hands on her shoulders briefly to brace them both.  Margo realized she must have been walking faster than she thought because she had to brace herself by reaching for his forearms. 

“The fire was in the cafeteria, I thought.  I was on the way to ask you a favor and here you are, beating me to the punch.  You do that often?” 

“So, I was Jethro at lunch and now I’m fire.  Movin’ up in the world. You mean fire in a destructive way or am I just that hot?” 

Margo was taken back a little by his familiarity with her after just having met at lunch.  On the other hand, they spent almost an hour together, cackling like hyenas while grossly botching hillbilly accents.  She smiled at the thought that Ms. Riseman might have made an excellent Granny but for the fake Russian or Yiddish or whatever that accent she was sporting in the presence of the residents and staff at the nursing home.  “You have time for a coffee?  I can take a break for a few minutes and I really need to ask you something.”

“Sure, I’m free.  That is, I could be free.  Aidan sent me on an errand to ask you if he could stay with me and Gramps tomorrow when I interview a few residents.  Mr. Wade has some folks to visit during the time I’m doing the interviews.  You know, he really is a big help, Aidan, I mean.  Smart kid.  He’s no problem at all and Gramps has a twinkle in his eye when Aidan talks.  He’s got the old man in there now, asking him a million questions about WWII and Gramps is eating this up.” 

“I guess.  You’re not a child molester or kidnapper are you?  God, I can’t believe I just asked you that.  Can’t be too careful, you know.”  He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and presented it to her.  “Got proof, see.  I’m not a pervert.  Well, at least the state child welfare and state bureau of investigations doesn’t think so.  That work for ya?”  He showed her a private investigator’s license from the state and a card issued by the human resources division authorizing him as a thoroughly trained foster parent. 

Margo and Will had turned back toward the nurses station to get coffee in the lounge.  Margo didn’t want Aidan to think she was checking on him if she went to the cafeteria. 
“Here ya go, what do want in your coffee.”  She doctored hers up the way she liked but he just drank his black. 

“So, you’re a foster parent? I would never have guessed.  You married or what?”
“Or what.  Divorced, actually.  We went through the process of being trained as foster parents but we were really trying to adopt.  She couldn’t have kids, or at least, we couldn’t seem to. Just as we finished the classes, she got pregnant and then miscarried.  I wanted her to stop for a while and let us be a couple and she was driven to procreate.  She finally realized she could get pregnant and didn’t want to adopt anymore.  What a roller coaster that was.  Drove a wedge right in the middle of the bed, know what I mean?

She thought she knew a little about that; the man not wanting a baby and the woman feeling differently.  It was a stretch but she could relate.  “Aidan’s father wanted me to put him up for adoption but I just couldn’t do it.  Haven’t talked to him since.  Listen, that reminds me, if I don’t ask now I will forget again.  You said earlier that you had some ways of researching and finding missing people, what’s your price range?

“Oh, I could work something out for ya.  Who ya looking for, Aidan’s father?”

“Yes and no.  I don’t want anyone to make contact with him.  I just want to know how he is, you know, what he’s doing now.  I never got to tell him I kept the baby.  That’s not all though.  I want to know something else too.  He had some family, not a lot, but at least a grandmother and an alcoholic mother.  That’s all I remember.  I want to know something about their medical and psychological history.  It’s for Aidan’s therapist.  She wants to know some information and I feel like such an idiot for not knowing.  You think you can do some genealogical research if I give you his full name?”

“Sure, no sweat.  Do it all the time.  That’s what got me interested in adoption to start with.  I had several clients when I was just doing PI work.  They were adoptees searching for birth relatives or at least, information about their birth relatives. Some wanted to meet their relatives and some didn’t, but either way, most wanted to know about family histories of genetic disorders so they can get preventative check-ups. To answer your question, any information you have on him would be good.  The obvious things like birthdates, names, places he lived but also old roommates, schools he attended, any other relatives he might have mentioned.  Can you make a list of those things and maybe dates when he went to certain colleges or lived in certain towns.  You’d be amazed at the gossip you can get by finding one old lady who grew up in the towns my clients came from.  No everything comes from computer searches.  Gotta get on the road a bit and interview folks sometimes too.  You want that done here or just computer searches?”

“Maybe just computer searches for now.  I’m a little hesitant about what I will find out.  Will, Sam had some sort of mental health issues when I last saw him.  I think maybe depression but I don’t know for sure.  I need to know that stuff for Aidan, so we can help him better.  I just don’t want some man to pop into his life and say ‘hi, I’m your daddy” and then go crazy and make him doubt himself.  You see what I mean?”

“Yeah, you’re not so different than most who hire me.  They struggle with whether or not they are being sneaky and underhanded and then later, about whether or not they really want to know.  Had a few who asked me to put the answer on a card and seal it an envelope, just in case they became ready at a later time.”

“That’s a relief.  I felt a little weird about hiring you for this. Listen, I have go get back to work but lets get together and finish our conversation, okay.”

“Sounds good to me.  We’ll make arrangements when you get off work.  You’re coming to the cafeteria to get Aidan, right?”

“Right.  Tell Aidan he can stay with you guys tomorrow but don’t take him out of the building, okay?

Margo wanted to trust Will with her son since she knew Aidan would be disappointed if he was denied this chance to ask questions and help out.  If only she could trust him in other ways.  She was not too good at the trust thing.  Didn’t come easy to her anymore.  Sam saw to that.  Then again, there was another one she figured she had to excuse for having a mental illness rather than just being too wrapped up in his own issues to be a father. 

She wondered what Will’s Achilles heel would be.  What she would find out in his past that would cause her to regret the miniscule yet present excitement she felt when Will was near her.  She decided she needed to get back to her day job before her emotions led her astray.  She confirmed their meeting for the afternoon and headed, once again, to meet with Mrs. Riseman and make some sense out of this accent of hers. 



SWPoet
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