The Girl Who Read Him the Box Scores

It was closer to twenty-five minutes. When Mrs. Driscoll came back she had a green binder and a sheet of printer paper, and she did not go back to the front table. She stood right in among the chairs.

“I’m going to tell you what I found, and it isn’t good,” she said. “The companion program started three years ago. It was one part-time employee, a retired teacher named Jan. She was good at it. Jan moved to Colorado to be near her daughter in April of last year. The position was posted. It was never filled.” She looked at the paper. “The program stayed in our admissions folder. It stayed in the billing system as a recurring charge. Eleven residents are being billed for it tonight. Not one of them has had a paid visit in seventeen months.”

The man in the seed corn cap let out his breath.

“I’ve been administrator here for nineteen months,” Mrs. Driscoll said. “I have signed the monthly billing summary every one of those months. That line was on it. I never once asked who was doing the visiting. I’ve been covering two department heads’ jobs and I have told myself that was a reason. It’s not a reason. It’s my signature.”

“So where did the money go?” Donna said. She did not say it meanly.

“Into the building’s general account. Nobody pocketed it. I can show you that. But you paid for something you did not get, and that is the home’s fault, and mine.” Her voice shook on the last word and she steadied it. “Every family will be refunded every dollar back to the first month you were charged with no visits. I’ll call each of you tomorrow myself with your figure. Checks will be cut from the home office in Grand Island and I’ll have them to you inside two weeks. The charge comes off tonight. And I will report this to the state myself in the morning, because you should not have to.”

“I’ll be calling the state too,” I said. “I’d rather tell you that to your face.”

“You should,” she said. “I would.”

“I’ll wait until these folks have their checks. Two weeks. Then I call, whether or not you have.”

She nodded. “That’s fair, Mr. Olson. That’s more than fair.”

One of the sisters raised her hand, like school.

“Then who’s been sitting with his dad?” she said. “He said his dad told him nobody came. But you said Sunday you finally asked. What did he say, exactly?”

I had not planned to tell that part. But it was the only part worth telling.

“He said, just you, and the girl who mops.”

“Angie?” Donna said, straight off. “With the ponytail?”

“That’s her. She’s been taking her morning break in his room since the week he moved in. She reads him the box scores out of a paper she buys herself. She wouldn’t let me pay her back for the newspapers. Fourteen months, on her own fifteen minutes.”

“She fixes Mother’s afghan,” Donna said. “Every morning. Mother can’t stand it crooked. I thought that was just part of the cleaning.”

“She waters Dad’s violet,” one of the sisters said. “We couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t dead.”

The man in the seed corn cap cleared his throat.

“She’s the one taught Joan’s roommate how to work the remote,” he said. “Joan told me. I didn’t know which girl she meant.”

Mrs. Driscoll was writing on the back of her printer paper.