“Strong sleeping pills, Mr. Szymanski,” Dr. Okonjo said, “and a sedative no man of seventy nine should take without a doctor watching. Enough to make you foggy, then forgetful, then easy to lead.” I thought of the burned soup, the open garage door, the birthday of my grandson that I missed. The false doctor in Grand Rapids rang at the desk of Krystyna, where she had the printers, the forms and the pharmacy card in my name. I felt no anger yet. I felt a long cold calm, like adding a column of figures and watching it come out to a number I did not want.
“I can call the police right now,” he said. “Please do not,” I said. “Not yet. If she hears about it, she will say I am confused, and everyone will believe her. I need her to say it herself.” He studied me over his half glasses, then nodded. “Thirty years of pharmacy,” he said, “and I have never met a patient who thought like an auditor.” He printed every record, stamped each page, and gave me a clean, honest bottle of my real blood pressure pills. That night I emptied the pill box into the trash and filled it with candy mints.
For three weeks I played my part. I yawned. I forgot my coffee cup. I let Krystyna find me dozing in my chair with the television on. Each Sunday she kissed my cheek and said, “Dad, we really must sign those papers.” Each Sunday I said, “Soon, honey.” Meanwhile I clearly felt stronger, and I used it. I called Marianne Vos at the Michigan Attorney General office, who handled fraud against seniors. I called my doctor, who was horrified. And I called my grandson Tyler, who said, “Grandpa, I will come to anything, even a party I already missed.”
A pharmacy printout and a pot of pierogi let a sharp old bookkeeper in Lansing expose his daughter and keep his retirement, his memory and his Christmas Eve table.
On the fourth Sunday I told Krystyna I was ready to sign. “Come for dinner,” I said. “Glen too. I am making pierogi, just like Mama made.” She arrived with a leather folder and a pen already uncapped. She did not notice that the blinds were open, or that my old neighbor was parked across the street with a very quiet camera. She did not notice that the closet door in the hallway was not quite closed. She sat at my table, smiled her office smile, and slid the trust papers across the tablecloth, right next to the sour cream.
“Dad, you are so tired,” she said gently. “Did you take your evening pills?” “I did,” I said. “The ones from the doctor in Grand Rapids?” She froze, only for a second. “What doctor?” “The one whose phone rings on your desk, Krystyna.” Glen put down his fork. I lifted the pharmacy printout from under my napkin and laid it on the folder. “Six months of sleeping pills. Forty seven pickups. Your signature on every one.” Her face went white and then red. “Dad, you are confused,” she whispered. “No,” I said. “I am the most awake I have been all year.”
The closet door opened. Marianne Vos stepped out with Dr. Okonjo behind her and my family doctor behind him, holding his bag like a shield. Krystyna looked at each of them and then at me. “You tricked me,” she said. “I did the books for thirty seven years,” I answered. “I just checked the numbers.” Glen stood up so fast the chair fell over. “Krystyna, you told me he wanted help,” he said, and his voice broke. “You told me he was slipping.” He took off his napkin, set it on the table, and walked out of the room without his coat.
The papers were tidy afterward, the way real justice usually is. Krystyna was charged and lost her position at the billing office, and a judge ordered her to stay away from me and repay every cent she had tried to touch. The doctor with no name turned out to be a made up license number and a phone she paid for with her work card. Glen came to see me alone, hat in his hands, and apologized until I told him to sit down and eat. He has been coming on Sundays ever since, and he makes terrible coffee, and I am fond of him.
My head cleared the way a window clears after rain. Within a month I was back at my workbench, sanding the roof of a birdhouse shaped like a little red barn. Tyler came on Saturdays and learned to use the drill. My real doctor adjusted my medicine, and my own two hands put it into the box each Sunday, morning, noon, evening and bedtime, with a pencil check on a chart. My retirement account stayed exactly where it had always been, earning interest in the name of a man who knew how to count. Thirty seven years of saving does not belong to anyone but the saver.
In the weeks after, small pieces fell into place. Marianne Vos found that Krystyna had also been using my name for a credit line and had been quietly telling the church that I was failing. The ladies at St. Gerard had been bringing casseroles and whispers in equal measure. Now they brought apologies, and a card signed by forty people. I read every name twice. A man does not mind being underestimated by a daughter nearly as much as he minds being pitied by friends, and for that alone I would have done it all over again, and I told the pastor so on the church steps.
On Christmas Eve I set the table for six. Tyler rolled the dough with flour up to his elbows, and I pinched each pierogi shut the way Dorota taught me, a little less badly than the year before. Glen brought the poppy seed cake. The pharmacist came by with a bottle of cider and said he had never been invited to dinner by a patient. When the first plate came out of the steam, I set a picture of my wife next to the candle, and the little birdhouses I had built for the church sale lined the windowsill, every one of them with a light on inside.