“It’s probably self-esteem,” Greta said solemnly, and then broke into giggles. “Oh, Lord. I don’t know how I kept a straight face in that lecture. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to change the subject.”
“Maybe you didn’t change the subject,” Dessa said. “Maybe it is all about self-esteem. I keep thinking about trying to sell the house, to have the money to put him in a nursing home, and then I think it wouldn’t be enough and what would I do with myself anyway?”
“You’d come and live with me,” Greta said. “We talked about that.”
Dessa dropped her work-out shoes on top of her pile of dirty exercise clothes and pulled the string closure of her gym bag shut. It was a terrible gym bag, cheap and shoddy, and she was suddenly ashamed of it.
“Well,” she said, “I’ve got to go talk to the social worker, and after I do that I’ll probably realize that there isn’t anything to do but wait for him to die. Sometimes I wish I was a different person from the one I am. One of those people who could just dump him in the hospital emergency ward and disappear.”
“No, you don’t want to be that,” Greta said.
“I don’t want to be who this social worker is going to think I am, Greta. The fat lady. Fat ladies have nothing else to do with their lives than take care of their senile parents until they’re old enough to be senile themselves. Thin people have goals and aspirations that have to be respected.”
“Do people really do that to you?”
“All the time.”
“Go talk to the social worker,” Greta said. “Then come over and spend the night with me. We’ll sit down and think the whole thing through and try to work it out.”
“I don’t think there’s anything to work out.”
“Then come and we’ll talk about the big important meeting tomorrow. Gregor Demarkian unmasks the killer. I’m sure that’s what he’s going to do. Won’t it be exciting?”
Dessa parked her car in the parking garage right under a security lamp and got out. She always parked under security lamps, just in case, in spite of the fact that nobody had ever bothered her. There was one good thing about being this fat. You didn’t worry about getting raped, even if you ought to.
Dessa let herself into the core well and then into the elevator. As far as she could tell, the garage was absolutely deserted. She pressed the button for the first floor and tapped her foot while the elevator was getting ready to move. She thought about going over to Greta’s after all this was over and not seeing the house in Derby at all. Greta’s place sounded nice—not big, but nice, and away from the worst things. No gangs. No addicts. No crazy old men smashing up the furniture. Was it such a terrible thing, under the circumstances, that she wanted so desperately for her father to die?
The elevator stopped on the first floor and opened. Dessa got out. Nobody in the lobby looked like a doctor or a nurse. Nobody was wearing a uniform. Dessa thought something wonderful had gone out of the world when nurses stopped wearing their graduation caps.
Dessa went up to the visitors’ desk and gave her name. “I have an appointment with Claudia Dubroff,” she told the woman.
The woman turned away from her computer and pointed down the hall. “Down there. Follow the signs. Up one flight. All the social workers’ offices are together.”
“All right,” Dessa said, and thought: “all” the social workers’ offices? How many social workers does a place like this need?
There were not only signs on the walls but colored lines on the floor. To get to Social Work, all she had to do was follow the blue line. Dessa went past a row of offices with only names in them and letters following the names. Except for “M.D.,” she didn’t know what any of the letters meant. She went past little clusters of Christmas and Hannukah decorations, too, and in once place a display that seemed to have something to do with the Hindu festival of Dewali. Then she went around a corner, up a short flight of stairs, and around another corner. There was a pair of swinging metal fire doors with a round safety window in each one. She lumbered through the doors and came out on a hall with a big black-and-white sign on the wall of it: SOCIAL WORK.
I should have gone up and seen my father first, Dessa told herself, but she couldn’t make herself feel guilty about it. She didn’t want to see her father. Not now. Not for a couple of days. She would have him back soon enough. She went down the hall, reading the names on the signs outside the doors. Thomas Fitzpatrick. Annemarie Gonzalez. Tammy Wu. When she got to the one that said Claudia Dubroff, the door was open.