How an Ancient Royal Typewriter Caused the Death of Dolores Wainwright
Ronald Wolff
My name’s Jane. I’m 94. I teach the creative writing class here at the Sunnyside Retirement Home in Springfield, Alabama. But what follows is the God’s honest truth.
#
On a sunny Sunday afternoon in September, just last year it was, Sally Smith moved into the Sunshine Retirement Home on Melody Avenue in Springfield, Alabama, right next to the widow Dolores Wainwright.
Sally and Dolores didn’t get along too well—like distant cousins in West Virginia who get married and can’t agree on what kind of banjo music to play. Should the light in the library be bright or subdued? Should the flowers on the tables in the dining room be real or artificial? Sally’s quiet preferences always clashed with Dolores’s histrionic passions.
Daughter of a Baptist minister and his lovely spouse, Sally had been the picture-perfect southern wife: five foot four, white as cotton, cultured from her diminutive feet to her impeccably coiffed hair. Bore two sons, she did—products, no doubt, of the missionary position. Randy, the oldest, became a hotshot detective. Solved a cold case murder that had been committed umpteen years ago just by spotting a man with a guilty-looking grimace in a Starbucks and starting a casual conversation. Rumor has it Sally’s husband died of boredom.
Dolores—the “Bitch from Brookfield” behind her back—couldn’t have been more different. Every day she was upset about something. Weeds in the rose garden! Bingo caller unfair! I can’t remember her third pet peeve, but it will come back to me later.
Dolores sent every meal she got back to the kitchen. Soup is cold! Nothing green on the plate! Blah! Blah! Blah! “That so-called chef wouldn’t know a protein from a fatty acid,” she used to say. Her husband didn’t die of boredom; he died of aggravated verbal assault.
One other thing you need to know about Dolores, then I’ll get back to the conflict. Fancied herself a woman of letters. Apartment was full of books. I happen to know she never read most of them. Partial to mysteries, and that’s about it. Kept an ancient Royal typewriter in her bedroom and pecked away until late at night. Hinted to the few people who would eat with her that she was working on a short story.
Sorry, one more thing. Dolores had a bachelor’s degree. Never let anyone forget it, neither. Newcomers, she would invite them up to her place and show off her diploma, hanging right next to that discolored “Nurse of the Year” certificate from Springfield Hospital.
Anyway, the main bone of contention between Sally and Dolores was that ancient Royal typewriter I cleverly introduced two paragraphs ago. As luck would have it, the two tiny bedrooms in their adjacent apartments sat on opposite sides of a really really thin wall. Night after night, while Dolores pecked away keystroke by agonizing keystroke, Sally lay in bed unable to sleep, trying to prevent herself from marching down the hall and giving Dolores a piece of her mind. Softly, of course.
Just exactly two months ago tomorrow, Sally had it up to here with pecking. She put on her housecoat and slippers, about ten thirty it was, and knocked on Dolores’s door.
“I’m sorry, but you’re keeping me awake,” she said.
“I’m writing my story,” Dolores explained.
“But the pecking on your typewriter is driving me . . . well, nuts.”
“I’ve just had an inspiration. The muse has inhabited my fingers. I can’t stop now.” Dolores’s flabby forearms flagellated the air.
“If you had any consideration for other people, you would be ashamed of yourself.” Sally’s voice actually got up to ten decibels. That’s still pretty soft; a friend who knows how to use the Internet looked it up for me.
“You stay out of my point of view!” Dolores screamed, and she slammed the door in Sally’s face.
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Sally stayed in her apartment the entire next day, feigning illness and having breakfast and lunch delivered despite a meager appetite. She had never been treated so rudely in her entire life. She didn’t know how to react. But gradually, as the rays of the sun streaming in the eastern-facing window increased their angle of incidence from 30 to 80 degrees, then retreated into the west, sadness, disappointment, chagrin, indignation, resentment, and even a little anger coalesced into a plan. By dinnertime, her stomach had become voracious, and her brain had come to a conclusion: “By jove, if I can’t beat her, I’ll join her!”
So it was that Sally entered the dining hall the following day just as Dolores was sitting down to lunch. “I’m so sorry I got angry at you the other night,” Sally lied. “It was wrong of me.”
Nobody at the Moonrise Retirement Home had ever spoken to Dolores like that. She melted like butter left too long under the heat lamps at a Denny’s restaurant. “Won’t you join me?”
Sally summoned her best Scarlett O’Hara impression. “I do declare, it would be my distinct pleasure!”
A waiter appeared out of nowhere. Well, actually he came out of the kitchen. “What will it be today, ladies?”
“I’ll have the starch,” Dolores said.
“I’ll try that too,” Sally said, placing her hand on Dolores’s arm.
They spoke of one thing and another, ignoring the stares of the other residents. By the time they finished, the plot had thickened to the consistency of the dessert. Cheesecake, if I remember correctly.
After lunch they adjourned to Dolores’s apartment. “So, what are you working on?” Sally asked, hoping to get close enough to the Royal machine to jam the keys while Dolores conveniently went to the bathroom. But even though it complicates our story, Dolores did not have to go to the bathroom at that particular moment.
“It’s a mystery.” Dolores held up a stack of pages about three eighths of an inch thick. “Someone poisons the chef at a retirement home because the food sucks. And nobody ever figures out who did it.”
“Clever,” Sally replied. “How original!”
Dolores swelled up, like an injured ankle. “I’m drawing on my nursing background. I know just the way to do it, too!”
Thus began an apparent friendship between the ladies, notable not only for the regularity of their lunch engagements but the spirited nature of their conversations. Occasionally, Sally even took notes.
Two weeks after the relationship began, Sally observed her 84th birthday. Everybody sang for her at lunch. Dolores presented her with a card from Walgreens.
Three weeks after that, Dolores died in her sleep. Well, I know that she went to bed alive and didn’t wake up, so that’s what I infer. Sally went to the funeral, dressed in black. But she didn’t cry.
Randy (her hotshot detective son, remember?) looked at her suspiciously a couple of times during the service. When it ended, they walked out arm in arm. “Now Mom,” he asked, deliberately not looking directly at her, “is there anything you’d like to tell me about this?”
Sally removed her black hat, thrust it casually into her oversize purse, and replied, “Now son, where would you like to go for lunch?”
Dolores left all her worldly possessions to Sally, who put the mystery books on the shelves in her bedroom and donated the other volumes to charity. She burned the “Nurse of the Year” certificate and donated the Royal typewriter to the lady three doors down and across the hall.
That’s me, Jane. I’m 94. I teach the creative writing class here at the Sunnyside Retirement Home in Springfield, Alabama.
Ronald Wolff
Following a career in the nonprofit social service field, Ronald Wolff now pursues three major activities: writing, photography, and volunteering. His short stories have appeared in eight literary journals, including Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, Stepping Stones Magazine, Pilcrow & Dagger, and Blood Tree Literature. Completed but still unpublished works include a dystopian novel and a contemporary YA novel incorporating magical realism. Ron’s photographs have been exhibited at museums and special events in Virginia, Colorado, Kentucky, and northern and southern California. He lives near Los Angeles with his dog Cooper. Fun fact: his favorite t-shirt reads, “I’m Silently Correcting Your Grammar.”