1970
Highway 50 between Jefferson City and Loose Creek, Central Missouri
<kshhkhkshhhh shhhssshhkk sssshshhk sshhh shhhsh khhhshsshhkshh>
“Breaker one-nine, breaker one-nine, this is Lady Sundance. Trash Can, you out there? Come back.”
<ssshhhkkshhshssshkhsshh>
“This is Trash Can, I read you loud and clear.”
<kssshshhhshhhssssk kshshhh>
“Ten-four good buddy. I’m headin’ east on the big Five-Oh, and ain’t a smokey in sight, come back.”
“Okay, Karen, we better cut it out with the lingo. The truckers are gonna get pissed.”
“I don’t know what you mean, good buddy. This is how I always talk, over.”
<kshhkkshhh shhhk skshhhh>
“This is Mellow Yellow. Cut out the jabber on 19, lovebirds. This channel’s for truckers. Take it to another frequency or I’ll ram this Peterbilt up your ass.”
“Sorry about that, Mellow Yellow. Sundance, switch to channel 14, over.”
<shhhkhhkhhsshsksh shshssshhh ksskshshhhksk shhsh>
“You there, Max?”
“I’m here.”
“That was fun!”
“You’re gonna get me killed!”
“Oh, don’t be such a baby. I miss you, Maxie.”
“Already? We just kissed goodbye a few seconds ago.”
“I know. I miss you anyway. It’s cold out here. I wish you were in this car with me to keep me warm.”
<kssskshhhhh shhhh shhhhhkks shhhhk>
“I’m there with you, Karen.”
“I know you are, sweetie.”
“That’s Trash Can to you, miss.”
“My mistake, Mr. Can.”
“I should be jealous of Robert Redford over that handle of yours.”
“Darling, don’t talk about my Bobby like that. Besides, you love him, too.”
“I’m more of a Paul Newman fan myself.”
“I should call you Butch.”
“I like my handle.”
“I do too.”
<ssshshhhhkkshshhkshhh shhh shhhk kshhhshhk shkkshhhk>
“I’m going down Kramer’s Hill, Trash Can. I’m gonna lose you soon.”
“I know. Keep talking as long as-”
<sshshhshh>
“Max? You still there? I love you.”
“Still here. I love-”
<kkhhshhshshhskshhskshhssshh>
“Goodnight Maxie.”
<shhhsshshksskkshshh>
“-night Kar-”
<kshsshhhhhhssshshhhhhhkhhshhhhhh>
CHAPTER 1
Liz Loretta’s fingers trembled as she punched 9-1-1 into her cell phone.
Perched on the stairs leading to the back porch of her parents’ house, Liz placed the phone to her ear. As she listened to the outbound ring, she turned to look at her big sister Cory sitting next to her.
“We’re doing the right thing,” Liz said. It wasn’t a question; she was stiffening her backbone and showing Cory, who had melted into a puddle of tears, that the world wasn’t coming to an end. Liz was the strong one at the moment. She knew Cory would do the same for her. They locked eyes and Liz repeated herself. “We’re doing the right thing.”
A second later, the emergency operator answered.
“Yes, hello? My name is Elizabeth Loretta. I need an ambulance at two sixteen South Nebraska Street. My father suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, and he’s acting violently toward me, my sister, and our mother. His doctor recommended we call for an ambulance.
“He’s 68.
“His name is Max Loretta.
“Thank you. Yes. Thanks.”
She dropped the phone. As it clattered onto the cedar deck, Liz turned and embraced Cory. “They’re on the way,” she whispered into her sister’s hair. As they peeked through slitted eyes toward the ancient walnut tree in the backyard, the morning sun broken into yellow fingers behind the middle branches, Cory patted Liz’s back and hugged her tightly. Now she was the strong one.
The phone call was a catalyst, the first step in a plan developed weeks before by Liz and Cory along with their mother, Karen, after Max’s disease had taken a dangerous turn. Max began to tumble down the dementia rabbit hole over two years ago, but the early months were only tragic, not horrifying. The disease at first manifested in little more than forgetfulness, a trait almost endearing in a person like Max, but the three women closest to him recognized other symptoms before long, including fatigue, depression, and anxiety.
In the weeks prior to the phone call, Max also displayed signs of aggression. He stomped around the house, cast furious glares at his loved ones, and blamed Karen for infractions miniscule and imagined.
Panicked by the change in Max’s behavior and fearful she would find herself unable to care for him at home, Karen called upon her daughters and their family doctor, who had diagnosed Max’s dementia, for guidance. The plan they formulated would allow Max to stay home as long as possible while also drawing a clear red line: if Max struck Karen, they would make the 9-1-1 call and begin the process of committing her beloved husband to a nursing home.
Four nights before the phone call, Max threw a paperback book at Karen, which glanced off of her arm. The night after that, he shoved her to the ground. The night after that, he balled his fist and cocked his arm, but stopped himself before punching his wife.
The Max Loretta they had grown to love would have never raised a hand in anger. He was a tender grizzly of a man who chose pacifism over violence. Liz and Cory grew up in a peaceful house. Once, before Liz was born, Max disciplined Cory by swatting her on the bottom. Cory barely noticed, but that night, after his daughter fell asleep, Max curled up in Karen’s arms and wept - he wept - over what he had done. He never struck his children, or anybody else, ever again.
Until the day of the phone call.
That morning, hours before sunrise, Cory blinked awake at the sound of a soft but persistent knock on her front door. Her husband Jared heard it too, and they tiptoed down the stairs together. Outside they found Karen, arms folded over her pajama top against the twilight chill, a bruising welt below her right eye, bleeding in the middle where Max’s wedding ring gouged out a piece of skin.
After bringing Karen inside and applying an ice pack to the wound, Cory called Liz, who lived in an apartment half an hour away. She made the drive in 20 minutes. While the four of them - Karen, Liz, Cory, and Jared - huddled around the dining room table, Karen recounted the events of the previous few hours, her voice low to keep from stirring her grandchildren asleep upstairs.
“Max was fine last night,” Karen whispered. “We sat on the couch together and watched TV. He kept repeating a silly story about a dog he had when he was a kid. He told it over and over, you know, like he does. Probably repeated that story a dozen times. Then, around nine o’clock, Max told me he was tired. He kissed me on the cheek and walked into the bedroom. I joined him a few minutes later, and we were both asleep by 9:30.
“I woke up at midnight. He was standing at the dresser, slamming drawers, looking for something. I asked him what he was doing, but he didn’t say anything. I got up and walked over to him and put my hand on his back, but he shook it off. He looks at me and goes, ‘Get away from me, you bitch!’”
Karen clapped her hand over her mouth and stifled a moan.
“I asked him to come back to bed. Max shook his finger in my face, like this, and he goes, ‘You think I’m too stupid to know you’re cheating on me. I want you out of this goddamn house!’ I tried to calm him down. I was telling him everything’s okay, but then I felt this sting on my cheek. I reached up and my fingers were all bloody. I didn’t even see him throw the punch.”
Karen stared into the distance, her lips quivering. She rubbed the mark on her cheek.
“Max stormed off. I think he scared himself. I didn’t know what to do, so I put on my slippers and drove over here.”
Liz leaned forward and traced a line on the table with her finger. “I guess that means it’s time,” she said. The others agreed, in their silence, that she was right.
“I can’t go back over there,” Karen croaked. “I can’t make that phone call.”
“We know, Mom,” Cory replied, squeezing her mother’s hand. “Liz and I will take care of everything.”
At two o’clock in the morning, they rode in Elizabeth’s car to their childhood home. Max was inside, sitting in his recliner, watching television. He blinked when he saw his daughters standing there.
He smiled.
“Hi Dad,” Liz said.
“What are you kids doing here?” He stood from his easy chair to offer hugs. “Where’s your mother?”
“Oh, she had to run some errands,” Cory lied. “We were in the neighborhood, so we decided to stop by and say hello.”
“Tell me the truth, Cory. Did your mother send you over here to keep an eye on me?”
“No!”
“Liz?”
“Of course not.”
He motioned to the couch and the girls sat down. Max returned to his chair and crossed one leg over the other as he silently, steadily pulled at his beard. His other hand found the television remote on the arm of the chair. Max picked it up and absently thumbed the “Down” button, the room descending into a half second of comforting darkness each time the channel switched. Finally he settled on a cable network that played old movies, about halfway through a broadcast of “Smokey and the Bandit.” Burt Reynolds chatted on a CB radio with his truck driver friend.
“Shit,” Liz muttered under her breath, perceptible only by Cory. The sisters shared a glance. Liz knew the next words out of Max’s mouth would be, Your mother and I used CB radios before CB radios were cool.
“Your mother and I used CB radios before CB radios were cool,” he said.
“Is that right?” replied Cory, always decorous with their father, a skill Liz envied.
On reflex, Liz’s gaze turned toward The Shelf, a three-foot-tall wooden bookcase on the far wall of the living room where Max and Karen displayed mementos from their lives together.
A bitter wave of memory crashed against Liz, crystal clear except for jagged static around the edges of her vision, like the VHS tapes that catalogued her childhood. She saw her father as a younger man, seated on the carpet in front of The Shelf, and toddler version of herself climbing onto Max’s lap to gain a better view of the objects residing there.
“You have to be careful with these things, Liz,” Max whispered. “They’re priceless family heirlooms.”
Liz watched her father’s hands select items from The Shelf to show her. Souvenir spoons from family road trips. A chalky red brick salvaged from the foundation of the farmhouse where Karen was born. A set of Russian nesting dolls Max proudly dug out of a dumpster. A plastic snow globe Cory gave her dad for his birthday one year. A Minolta camera with a broken lens. Max loved teaching his daughters how to load a 35mm cartridge and advance the film, how to adjust the manual focus and click the shutter, his strong, warm hands guiding them through the motions.
Each item on the bookcase had a story, and Max recited each story in the gentle cadence of a fairy tale.
Liz’s favorite item lived on the bottom shelf: a dusty black box with a metal bracket on top and a row of buttons across the silver front panel.
“This is a CB radio,” Max would say, passing Liz the handheld receiver attached to the box by a pigtail cord. “Once upon a time, a beautiful farm girl named Princess Karen fell in love with a raggedy city kid named Max. Every Saturday night, Max and Princess Karen would meet at an enchanted tavern called the Bloody Bucket. At the end of the night, Max would press his dry, cracked lips to Princess Karen’s perfect cheek, then he’d drive his trusty chariot, an Oldsmobile Delta 88, back toward his shanty in the city. Meanwhile, Princess Karen drove her metallic blue Ford Falcon back home to the Kingdom of Loose Creek. But each of them carried a secret magic box in their chariots granting them the power to continue their courtship even after they parted ways: a CB radio, just like this one. All you do, Liz, is press this mystical button, hold this piece to your mouth, and recite the magic spell: ‘Breaker one-nine …’”
Liz blinked away the vision and glanced at her father, who was engrossed by the Bandit’s black Trans Am rocketing down a Georgia highway. Before long he yawned, then again a few seconds later. He caught Cory staring at him and said, “I’m falling asleep, girls. Your old man’s not being a very good host.“ Liz silently begged her father to fall asleep. Eventually, he did, around 3 a.m. After he began snoring, Liz’s phone buzzed with an incoming text from Cory.
Let’s wait until daylight. If he goes crazy in the morning, we’ll make the call.
Liz nodded at Cory. Then she tiptoed over to Karen’s easy chair and settled in, while Cory sprawled on the couch. She couldn’t remember if she actually slept, but she knew it couldn’t have been for longer than a few minutes at a stretch. Every time Max moved or changed his breathing, Liz jolted to full consciousness.
At dawn, their father was awake and full of venom.
“Your mother is leaving me.”
“No she’s not, Dad,” Cory replied.
“You don’t know anything.”
“Why are you so angry, Pop?” Liz asked.
“Shut up, Elizabeth. Why are you two here, anyway? And where’s your mother? That bitch left me, didn’t she?”
He thundered off to the bathroom, not waiting for a response. Liz and Cory stepped out to the back porch. They knew it was time. Liz made the call.
*****
She thought she would experience relief. But the second Liz hung up, she recognized a savage truth: the phone call was the easy part.
They found him on the front porch, sitting completely still in the old wooden rocking chair Karen gave him for his retirement present years before. As the screen door creaked open, Max snapped his head in the direction of the sound and glared at his daughters.
“Dad,” Cory started, “we’ve got to talk to you about something.”
“What?”
“Daddy, you’re sick. You don’t realize it, but you are. Liz and I are here to help you, but you’re not gonna like it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“We’ve called for an ambulance, Pop,” Liz said. “They’ll be here in a few minutes to take you to the hospital.”
Max laughed. A mean bark of a laugh. “I’m not going anywhere in an ambulance.”
“You have to.”
“I don’t have to do a goddamn thing. I’m leaving.”
“You can’t leave, Dad,” Cory said.
“Why not?”
“Because your truck isn’t here anymore.”
“The hell it’s not.”
He grunted out of his rocking chair and stepped down off the porch, then walked around to the back of the house, Liz and Cory hustling to keep up. Max clicked the button on his keychain to open the garage door.
Inside, his parking space sat empty.
Max stared into the cavernous expanse.
“I don’t believe this.”
“We took your truck away three months ago,” Cory said. “You’re not safe on the road anymore.”
“I just drove it yesterday.”
“No, you didn’t.”
He turned to face them, rage brimming in his eyes. “I can’t believe you two are doing this to me.”
Max pushed past his daughters and walked back around to the front of the house. As soon as he settled his aging frame back into the rocker, an ambulance pulled up, emergency lights mercifully turned off. A silent police car followed.
Cory knelt in front of her father, but far enough away so he couldn’t reach her if he swung his fist. While the EMTs tinkered with equipment at the back of the ambulance, two uniformed officers walked toward the house.
The reality of the situation sliced Liz in half. She was nearly 30 and had been supporting herself for the better part of a decade, but she had never been called on to practice adulting at such a high level. At that moment, Liz felt totally unequal to the task. Still, she steadied herself and walked out to meet the officers.
“Thank you for coming,” she muttered through a controlled sob. “That’s my dad, Max Loretta. We need to get him to the emergency room. But he has Alzheimer’s disease, so he’s a little bit, you know, extremely pissed off right now.”
“Okay, ma’am,” one of the officers replied. “We’ll take care of everything.”
They approached the porch. Cory faded back as Max rocked up out of his chair.
“Good morning, Mr. Loretta,” the senior cop said. “I’m Officer Lawrence, and this is Officer Fischer. We’re gonna take you over to that ambulance, sir.”
Fisher stepped forward and grasped Max’s arm above his elbow, but Max ripped his arm away. “I can walk by myself. There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Yes sir.”
Max remained defiant, but eventually, in the face of authority figures, he acquiesced and walked away from his house, the house he bought with Karen three decades before, the house where he raised his daughters, the house he would never step foot in again.
Max climbed into the back of the ambulance without assistance. From the top step, he scowled at Cory and Elizabeth, locking eyes with each of them, one by one. Then he said, “I never want to see you ever again.”
The ambulance door swung shut.
*****
<kshshshssshhk kshsksk skhhhh>
Max had no idea why he spoke those words to his daughters, and he sure as hell didn’t know what he was doing in an ambulance. He just knew something was wrong with him. And he could not get that damn static out of his head.
<shhhhhh kshhhhk>
“Mr. Loretta?”
The voice came from a man wearing some kind of uniform. A soldier? No. He seemed to be in an ambulance, so the man was probably an EMT. What am I doing in an ambulance?
“How old are you, sir?”
“I’m 65,” Max grunted.
“According to your driver’s license, you’re 68.”
“Then I guess I’m 68, smart guy.”
<kshhhh hshsssskshh>
Max knew he shouldn’t take it out on the stranger. This wasn’t his fault. It was Cory and Elizabeth’s fault. They were the ones who put him in this ambulance. But he wasn’t sick! He felt perfectly fine! Something was wrong in his head, though, but you didn’t get thrown into an ambulance for being a little bit fuzzy.
<sskshhhhh ksh shhhkk shhhshhssssss>
What had he ever done to them, anyway? Except provide three square meals a day for their entire lives, put a roof over their heads, and pay for their college education? He worked hard to provide all that. Although, at the moment, he couldn’t quite remember what he had done for a living.
<kshsssss shhhhhk shhhhhhh>
But it was silly that he couldn’t remember. Hell, maybe something was wrong with him. Maybe he was sick. That didn’t change the fact that he had been betrayed by his daughters, Cory and …
<ssssssssssss>
Madison? No, that wasn’t right. Madison was his granddaughter. Madison was Cory’s little baby. Elizabeth. His youngest daughter’s name was Liz.
Why am I thinking about Cory and Liz? And why am I in an ambulance?
<kkshshhhsssshhh kskskkshsk hshssshh ssshhhhhhhhh kshh>
*****
As soon as the ambulance pulled away, Liz ran inside the house and sprinted to the bathroom, where she could weep in private. Then she washed away the makeup streaks from her face, knowing more tears would flow as the day continued. When she emerged, Cory was hanging up her cell phone.
“That was Mom. She’s not up to driving, and Jared has to stay with the kids. I told her we would drop by and pick her up on the way to the hospital.”
“Okay, sure,” Liz said, drying her hands on her blue jeans.
“Come here for a second,” Cory said.
Liz dropped onto the couch and rested her head on Cory’s shoulder. They sat in silence. Liz’s eyes landed once again on The Shelf.
Three framed photos lined the top of the bookcase. On each end, sturdy wooden 5x7 frames displayed the most recent school pictures of each of Cory and Jared’s children. In the middle, a smaller gold tone frame housed a Kodachrome snapshot taken of Max and Karen on their first date nearly 50 years before.
Eventually, Cory and Liz rose from the couch. The worst day of their lives was just getting started. As they walked outside and closed the door behind them, a vortex of air running through the home ruffled the curtains and rattled the picture frames.
