Best Friend’s Daughter

To enter facility, press 3 digit code followed by #. Today’s code is 982#.

Cindy keys in the code and presses the door. It’s a heavy door in a recessed portico, and must once have been elegant.

“Mrs Barton?” she asks at reception.

“Upstairs, room 27,” the receptionist says. “You’re her daughter?”

“No, just a friend.”

“Oh, I wondered. You don’t look unlike her daughter. Thought you might be sisters.”

Straight fair hair and a navy jacket, Cindy thinks. The dutiful daughter look, as opposed to the bleached and teased hair receptionist look. There is a huddle of people with walking frames and wheelchairs near the lifts, so she takes the stairs.

“Darling heart,” Marnie Barton says. “Dear girl.” She scrabbles with her right hand as she struggles for the name. “Cinders!” she cries with a hint of triumph. Seated in an armchair with her legs up on a footstool, she wears a mauve mohair wrap over her track pants and knit top.

“You’re the only one I’d let call me that,” Cindy says.

“Well, I tried to stop your mother giving you that dreadful Cindy-lou name.”

“Lucinda, Marnie.” Their cheeks meet briefly in a clumsy kiss.

“If you insist, if you insist.”

“Mum always tried to insist, remember? But how are you, Marnie?”

“Well, I’m thinking. I’ll let you know. What brings you here, Cinders?”

“Well, Kate told me you were here, and it’s not so far to come, so I decided to call by. I brought you some magazines.” She puts the copies of Delicious and Home Beautiful on the bedside table but Marnie does not even glance at them. Absurd choices, Cindy thinks. Marnie was a better cook, decorator and gardener than any of the contributors to these stupid magazines. How can she bear to be shut up here with all these pastel walls, floral curtains and insipid pictures? Simpering staff? Faint smell of cauliflower cheese?

Cindy begins a recital of her news. She mentions that she saw Kate recently at the Art Gallery. She tells Marnie what her husband and children are doing. She mentions her part-time work at a children’s charity. Marnie’s almond-shaped hazel eyes are drooping. None of this really matters to her.

Cindy tries again. “Remember when you and Bonnie …?” This time she has Marnie’s attention. “Remember when you’d do that Monnie and Bonnie act?”

Marnie smiles. “Yes. Monnie and Bonnie. Or Marnie and Barney,” she says, rolling the rs in full Hollywood style. “We used to tell those terrible Mo jokes. Don’t ask me what they were. They were funny at the time.”

“I remember. It was summer.”

A young women in shorts is rocking back on forth on her bare heels, balancing on the rail of a veranda and waving her cigarette. Her face crinkles in the sun as she attempts a broad American accent. Bar-r-ney. Her friend, also barefoot, sits in the shady corner of the veranda with a saucepan on her lap, topping and tailing beans.

“It just felt like summer at that beach house.”

“The soles of our feet got as hard as leather, remember, from walking up and down the hill.”

“We couldn’t afford shoes, any of us. We never had any money.”

“That’s what you all used to say. ‘No one’s got any money.’”

“True. We didn’t.”

“I know, but you know how it looks to kids. There’s money for vegetables but not for ice cream. It never seems fair.”

“Good days,” Marnie says. “They were good days, with Bonnie and the kids at the beach.”

“Terrific,” Cindy says. “You were probably Bonnie’s best friend.”

“Yes, and she was mine.”

Cindy begins to gather her things.

“Wait. You’re not going?”

“I have to buy stuff for dinner, and I’m due at …”

“I want to go home,” Marnie says.

“Yes, well, you’ll have to talk to your doctor about that. Or Kate.”

“What’s it got to do with her?”

“She’s your daughter.”

“So?” Marnie demands.

“So discuss it with her.”

“Would you drive me home?” the old woman pleads.

“Sorry, I came by bus.” Cindy is lying and she wonders if Marnie can tell.

“So you say. How much would it take me to get home by taxi?”

“I don’t know, Marnie. Forty, fifty dollars perhaps.”

Marnie stumbles to her bedside table and turns back with something in her hand. “Is this fifty dollars?” she asks.

“No, I’m sorry, Marnie, it’s fifty cents.”

Marnie frowns at the coin. “Fifty cents. Well, would you lend me fifty dollars?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t. You’ll have to talk to Kate.”

“You keep saying that. It’s got nothing to do with Kate. It’s not much to ask my best friend’s daughter, is it? To lend me fifty dollars?”

“Look, I’m really sorry …”

“I want to be home. Home!” Marnie is growing agitated.

“Yes, I do understand, but I’m not the one to talk to about it.”

The young uniformed nurse’s aide is already in the room. “Now, Mrs Barton, everything’s fine, dear. Nothing to worry about. Oh look, your friend’s brought you some lovely magazines. Would you like a nice cup of tea?  Maybe your visitor will have one too.”

“No, I was just going,” Cindy says.

“I’ll just straighten your bed in case you feel like a nice rest,” the young worker says.

“I’ll be going then,” Cindy says, planting a rapid kiss on Marnie’s cheek. Visions of young Marnie and young Bonnie are still swimming in her mind. “Lovely to see you,” she adds, already halfway out the door. As she punches 8 – 9 – 2 and the hash tag into the pad near the exit, she hears Marnie’s voice. “Home. Fifty dollars. I’d pay you back.”

She walks briskly to the parking lot and puts the key in the ignition. Must ring Kate tonight, she thinks.

She presses a button and the cheerful voice of a drive-time radio announcer fills the car. She waits at the nursing home gate to enter the line of traffic.

She has no idea, as she drives home, that years later, long after Marnie and all her mother’s contemporaries are dead and gone, she will still by haunted by that visit, those words.

Not much to ask my best friend’s daughter, is it?