There Must Be Some Mistake Read Online Free PDF Page B

college for the first time, when I went the second and third times, and then much later, in her last years, when she was approaching eighty and something of a recluse. My father had long since passed away, and Mother was living alone in a small town house among a group of town houses set aside for seniors where the fees, which were ridiculous, covered a good deal of care and attention from a staff that included RNs and PAs and assorted additional semi-medical people, not to mention staff that cooked and cleaned. The place was an old-folks home, though it was at pains to represent itself as something more modern and inoffensive.
    I visited her often in those days, staying for an afternoon, for dinner and occasionally overnight, alone, often with Diane, who liked Mother tremendously and didn’t object. Those were not bad times for us, for all of us, even Mother, who, in spite of her age, was still healthy and cheerful, funny, pretty much all there. It was only in the last few months that things hit the skids.
    So I was coming home and I drove into our little community, which was dotted with some trees I suspected we paid a fortune to get to grow in the soil there, and with more recent low bushes designed to look natural, which of course they weren’t, and I admired once again the plot plan of the place, the units set back with balconies or decks over tiny but impeccable yards, the better to be easily cared for, all providing pleasant outdoor space and detached housing units that, through careful design, did not impinge too much, one on the next. Our two-lane road circled the community so that the two entrances—they were only several hundred yards apart—could live up to their distinct signage, one saying NORTH ENTRANCE and the other saying SOUTH ENTRANCE .
    I rolled past the condos of a half-dozen neighbors, none of whom I knew other than to wave at or wish a good day. A gay couple—two guys who looked maybe a little more working class than most of the regulars, and who were, by and large, younger than the average residents—had recently bought the condo four units down from mine. We hadn’t talked much. They were very nice and sociable and had brought me some rather unattractive barbecued shrimp one weekend a few days after they moved in, probably because Jilly had chatted one of them up when she was out for a run the day they arrived.
    I hadn’t met these guys, but I had said hello and waved on several occasions when entering or leaving, and this particular afternoon, as I entered Forgetful Bay, I noticed their garage door was up, and inside, standing on a white Styrofoam ice chest with a blue top, was a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It wasn’t news that they owned such a statue. I had seen it before a couple of times, displayed at various positions in their front yard, in every case staying in one place only a day or two before being moved to a new location, and another, until it had disappeared entirely a week or so before.
    Jilly had remarked that the statue was in poor condition. It was about twenty-four inches tall, and a hand was missing, and the paint was badly flaked, but it was perfectly recognizable as the Blessed Virgin Mary, with her flowing white floor-length gown and her pale blue cape and cowl, her right hand held out with what appeared to be a rosary—an actual rosary, not part of the statue—draped over it, and her other arm similarly posed, but missing the hand.
    We were both, Jilly and me, taken with this statue, a little surprised to see it at the new neighbors’ house because it was not the sort of thing people routinely put in their yards. Mostly they put in their yards seasonal decorations—Christmas wreaths and candy canes, Halloween orange and black crepe paper, goblins and ghouls on a stick, rabbits at Easter, and, of course, American flags of all sizes, some with glitter.
    And here was Mary in the neighbors’ garage. Mary the Mother of