Adele The Avenger

Adele was a bit drunk, I knew that. So when she said “Patrice, can you keep a secret?” I probably should have just laughed it off and avoided the whole confessional bit. But still… she was dating my ex-boyfriend and I couldn’t help but be curious. Maybe I was a little drunk, too, come to think of it. We stood side by side in the elegant ladies’ room at the Tropical Hideaway Bistro, looking at ourselves and each other in the mirror above a tastefully appointed vanity counter. We patted our hair and refreshed our lipstick.

For a couple of women in our mid-ish 70s, we looked pretty good. Aging is aging, and obviously neither of us was as hot as we’d been thirty years ago. But we kept ourselves up and bought new clothes and were more “with it” than most of our friends at Shady Ridge Senior Living. So we pretty much had our pick of any male residents who wanted to date. And here we were, on a double date at a nice restaurant with gentlemen who could still look distinguished and even carry on a smart conversation. She’d started dating Dick after I became annoyed with him and had the “let’s be friends” talk. I was being escorted by the newest resident, Dr. Gordon Cutter, a widower and a retired surgeon to boot.

Did I want to hear Adele’s secret? Being a confidante implied a closer friendship than we really had, but after all, it’s nice to have a best friend wherever you go, and she was about as good as it gets at Shady Ridge. So sure, let’s be besties. Why not?

Having decided, I said, “My lips are sealed.” And I made a little zipper gesture over my mouth.

“Do you really mean it?” She persisted. “I mean no matter what?”

“Of course. No matter what. Even if you killed a man. I won’t tell.” I laughed.

“Good,” said Adele. “Because that’s what I did.”

“What’s what you did? What do you mean?”

“What you said,” said Adele, using a tissue to remove a bit of lipstick that had strayed off her lip.

“What?”

“I killed a man.”

I was dumbfounded. Surely she was joking. “You killed a man,” I repeated. “What man? What do you mean you killed him?”

She looked at me as if I were simple-minded. “The usual meaning, Patrice. Is this hard to understand?”

I became aware that my mouth was open, and I closed it. “I’m just surprised, Adele. You don’t seem like… I mean, you never… I mean… It’s just a surprise to me, that’s all. Can you, um, tell me more? Anyone I know?”

Her bright smile startled me. “I’ll tell you everything, but you have to promise to keep it to yourself.”

“Of course.”

“It is someone you know, or at least know of. Mayor Dodd?”

Of course I knew all about Buster Dodd. His corruption was legendary, but nobody had as yet been able to pin crimes on him, since witnesses always seemed to suddenly change their minds before testifying against him. He was widely hated and everyone complained about him, but he’d seemed indestructible until he’d dramatically died in the middle of a city council meeting the week before. Other city leaders were having a hard time maintaining the facade of him as a respected public servant, they obviously despised him so much. His funeral was likely to be lightly attended.

“You killed Mayor Dodd.”

“That’s right,” she smiled and made a little gesture of patting herself on the back.

“Didn’t he die of a heart attack?”

“Yes, I made it happen.”

“You made it happen.”

“Yes, I did. You’re welcome.”

“What do you mean you’re welcome?

Adele laughed. “Remember a couple weeks ago when you said he was a fascist and it would be better for everyone if he just turned up dead? I thought about it, and decided you were right. So I made it happen. You’re welcome.”

I was feeling a little lightheaded. I sat down on the velvet bench. “How did you make it happen? Did you know Buster Dodd?”

“No,” she said. “But I just thought about it a lot and decided a heart attack would be the best way. You always said he was a heart attack waiting to happen. I sort of focused my mind on it while I was watching the city council meeting on channel 0, and then it happened.”

I was speechless. Of course, in our age bracket, you see a lot of dementia, but surely not Adele. She knew the names of all hundred residents of our senior living community, plus a few dozen staff. And she was usually the undisputed champion of Trivia Night. But killing a man just by thinking about it?

She kept talking. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you about it so you can help, going forward.”

“Help?” I said. “With killing people?”

“No, no, just help figuring out who should be killed. That was a good idea you had about Mayor Dodd.” She put her lipstick back in her purse and took one last look in the mirror. “We can talk about it later. We should get back.”

At first, it was sort of a game. I obviously didn’t believe she had the power to murder someone with her mind. But — and this is a little hard to explain — there was a kind of good feeling, almost a catharsis, in just thinking about which evil people in the world should be eliminated. Adele and I started eating breakfast together every morning so we could talk about it. We’d joke about it, too. If a barely-trained waiter got our order wrong, we’d say, oh better watch out or he’ll go on the list. One time, she pointed a knife at one of them and said “You’re next, Bub,” and he suddenly tripped and fell down. It caused quite a stir. We stared at each other across the table. “I need to be more careful,” Adele said. And we laughed at her hilarious joke.

After due consideration, we decided that we would concentrate on distant evil-doers. Nobody at Shady Ridge. Keep in mind that it was just a game, a coincidence followed by a lot of jokes. After weeks of considering the appalling wickedness of various public figures, we decided on the despotic dictator of a distant country. He was currently in the news for his cruel policies regarding gay people, and my grandson is gay and it really riled me, so I brought him up as a possibility. After my impassioned criticism of his evil ways, Adele nodded. “Okay, I’ll do it. How should he die?”

That took another whole breakfast, but we decided that some air disaster would be appropriate, giving “bring him down” a literal meaning. I was kind of proud of that little poetic flourish. But of course we didn’t want to hurt anyone else, so it couldn’t be an airplane crash. We had a good time suggesting all kinds of solo air mishaps, one funnier than the next. Falling out of a hot air balloon. Diving into an empty swimming pool. A jet pack that lost power. It was all very Looney Tunes, and it got sillier and sillier. Finally Adele wiped her eyes and said, “Okay, I’ll do it. Tonight’s the night.” And we laughed some more. Our little “pretend” had turned into a whole play-acting thing, and we were both getting a big kick out of it.

But then things got dark. The next morning, I turned on the news while I was getting dressed, and I was stopped in my tracks by the serious-faced anchor reporting the sudden accidental death of our homophobic dictator. He had fallen down a long flight of marble stairs during a ceremonial appearance. Just as we had planned.

I got dressed in record time and rushed down to the breakfast room fifteen minutes earlier than usual, but Adele was already there. We were both wide-eyed. Had this really happened? “I don’t know what to say, Patrice,” she said.

Yes, she had concentrated on his death but nothing specific. She had thought about “bringing him down.” But this was surely ridiculous. Nobody can just concentrate and cause someone to die half a world away. Can they?

By the end of breakfast, we had convinced ourselves that it had to be just happenstance. Adele accepted that she wasn’t at fault, but seemed a bit doubtful, and said she wasn’t going to concentrate on anybody dying again, “just in case.”

After that, we didn’t talk about who should die for a long time, months. We kept hanging out together at breakfast, double dating this man or that, sitting next to each other at movie night. But our favorite topic of conversation seemed off limits.

Eventually, though, we came back to it. We were sitting in the community room watching the news on TV. I made some comment about how there are too many bad people in the world, and we looked at each other meaningfully. “You know that you didn’t kill anybody, don’t you?”

She nodded. “You’re right. It was just a coincidence.”

“There are a lot of people dying in the world all the time, you just happened to accidentally pick two people who were about to die anyway.” I gestured at the screen. “If you really did have that power, I can think of a lot of villains who deserve it.”

“I know,” said Adele. “I know I don’t — I just feel a little nervous about it anyway.”

“I completely understand,” I replied. And I did. But I regretted it a little too, because it had been so much fun to talk about eliminating all the people we didn’t like.

When I told her that, she said, “Well, we can still talk about it. As long as I don’t concentrate on it. We talked about a lot of people and only those two died.”

At that moment Dick walked past our couch. “Adele,” he said with a little nod. “Patrice.”

“Dick.”

“Dick.”

Nobody smiled. We were being cool to Dick because he had dumped Adele when he joined the Shady Ridge Gardening Club and started hanging out with Honey (“Call me Honey Bee”) Bergstrom. She was super annoying, 80 but irritatingly fit and energetic. She did yoga, if you can believe it. I mean give me a break.

Anyway, as Dick moved off toward the garden, Adele and I rolled our eyes at each other. “What a fool,” I said.

“Complete idiot,” she said. “I can’t believe I ever gave that man the time of day. He had no appreciation for anything but his idiotic sports games. He’s a stupid, stupid man, and I think I hate him a little.” I nodded in agreement. “You saw it first, what a fool he is.”

“Yes, I did, but now it’s over between you, thank goodness. Have you met Henry Paisley? He seems like a possibility. He dresses better than Dick.”

Our discussion of the various men at Shady Ridge was suddenly interrupted by a loud crash from outdoors. One of the staff went rushing outside to check, and some of us stood up and crowded around the window, even though we couldn’t see anything. Then the resident nurse went rushing out with her bag. One of the supervisors came into the room making calming gestures with her hands. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said. “Stay inside. There’s been an accident in the garden.”

There was a lot of hubbub until we heard a siren and then two paramedics rushed through with a gurney. And when they wheeled it out, sure enough, we could see it was Dick, who had his eyes closed, his mouth open, and blood on his face.

Adele was white-faced. “I swear I didn’t concentrate, Patrice. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“And you didn’t make it happen,” I replied. “Just pure chance. Coincidence. He was probably doing something he wasn’t supposed to do.”

As it turned out, he was. He was attempting to tear down a trellis that Call Me Honey Bee had declared to be an eyesore. He’d gone out in the evening because he didn’t want anyone to stop him, and when the trellis came down he came down with it. But knowing that didn’t make us feel better about how we’d badmouthed him.

We really felt terrible about Dick, even more so two days later when the word came that he had died in the hospital. Deaths are not uncommon at Shady Ridge, believe me. But this was different for a couple of reasons. First, people don’t usually die here because of an accident. They die of heart trouble, cancer, and just plain old age. Not accidents.

But second was the way we found out. Usually they announced these things in a very dignified and respectful way, but this time the first we knew of it was Dick’s daughter showing up in the lobby, screaming bloody murder. She was a large woman, tall and heavy-set, and she had arms like a steelworker. She towered over the counter, pounding her huge fists on the surface, demanding to speak with Mrs. Lee, the Executive Director, who was already running out to the lobby because of the noise.

“You killed my father!” screamed Dick’s daughter. “I’m going to strangle you with my bare hands!” She said more, but I won’t repeat it. Mrs. Lee is a little tiny woman, completely dwarfed by Dick’s daughter, and though she attempted to calm down the conversation and move it to another room, nothing worked. This went on long enough that the lobby started to fill up with residents, many of them with walkers and canes. One gallant 90 year old seemed like he was planning to hit Dick’s daughter with his cane. Everyone was worried about Mrs. Lee’s safety, and people started getting out their phones to call 911. The lobby was in chaos.

Dick’s massive daughter kept shouting threats. “I’m going to sue you for everything you’ve got! I’m going to shut this place down! Shady Ridge is OVER!” She picked up a lamp and smashed it to the floor. Mrs. Lee had by now run around to the front of the counter and was shooing the man with the cane away from danger, when suddenly Dick’s daughter grabbed her and lifted her in the air. She was making a kind of growling sound. Everyone who could scream, did. Then she put her down, hard. Mrs. Lee almost fell to the floor but caught herself and backed away.

Adele and I were open-mouthed, shrinking into a little alcove next to the juice bar. “What a truly horrible woman,” Adele said in a shrill whisper, close to tears. I nodded vigorously. “A terrible, terrible bully. Do you think she’ll actually do it? Sue to close down Shady Ridge?”

Then, suddenly, Dick’s daughter turned and stalked toward the front door. “You’ll hear from my lawyer! You’re finished!” She shouted over her shoulder. Then the door swung shut and she was gone.

Everyone started to take a deep breath, but then we heard the squealing of brakes and an enormous crash, a thud, and screams from people on the street. Mrs. Lee ran outside, and through the open door we could see a bus that had hit a light pole and sat crookedly half on and half off the street. We could see a bus driver weeping on the sidewalk. “She just ran out in front of me!” He sobbed. “She came out of nowhere!” And in the street, where it had been thrown by the impact of the bus, was a heap of clothing, a dead body, Dick’s daughter.

We were speechless in the moment, but later that day we talked for hours. Had Adele killed Dick just by being annoyed with him? And then she had been angry at Dick’s daughter, and scared, and suddenly she was dead too. She hadn’t concentrated on the manner of their deaths, but they were dead anyway. Maybe the fact that they were so close by meant it didn’t take any concentration, a scary thought.

We had to acknowledge that maybe Adele did have this weird power. But what to do? If we told anyone about this, we knew we’d immediately be reassigned to the Memory Care wing. So we couldn’t get help from anyone. It was on us. It appeared that just being annoyed now set off Adele’s murderous power, so removing that emotion was obviously the only solution. We just needed to stop being so angry and hateful, especially to people here at Shady Ridge.

Anyway, to make a long story short, we taught each other how to be nice, or at least not so judgmental. We had been big complainers, we realized. We’d each filed more than one formal complaint about this staff member or that. Now we practiced thinking about why they might be doing what they’re doing, and how hard they worked. We rehearsed being sympathetic to other people. It was easy, once we got the hang of it.

It was funny how that changed things. As our gossip got less snarky, we got happier. We were able to relax more easily. People commented how much younger we looked. And while we remained besties, we made a lot more friends (even Honey Bergstrom!) and even started a literary club and joined the Chair Yoga class.

We discovered that we could badmouth distant evildoers and they didn’t immediately die. So our theory about proximity seemed to be true. Now, Adele still uses the power, but she’s careful to choose victims whose deaths will definitely make the world a better place. After her third despotic dictator of a distant country, the internet started talking about a curse, so she is now broadening her thinking.

There is a Senator we’ve got our eyes on. Stay tuned.