There Was an Old Woman by Hallie Ephron Page B

rationalize. It could happen to anyone, and after all, she’d been distracted. But coming right on top of leaving her handbag . . . in the refrigerator ? That went beyond misplacing and uncomfortably a few steps beyond what her doctor referred to, in that patronizing tone that fortysomething doctors used to address their elderly patients, as “benign senescent forgetfulness.” There was nothing benign about senescence.
    Mina stood, straightening her bathrobe and tucking her hair behind her ears. She’d be damned if she’d let herself be swallowed up by self-pity. All she had to do was put things back in order. She took a deep breath. And then keep them that way.
    She placed a quilted placemat on her kitchen counter and set her purse on it. From now on, she promised herself, that was where she’d leave it. Then she lined up everything she’d taken down from the cabinet, sorting the packages—cereal, cookies, crackers, grains, and beans—and checking the expiration dates before placing them back in the cupboard.
    While she was at it, she reorganized her canned goods in the adjacent cabinet, wiping tops that had become dusty and tossing anything past its use-by date. Then she double-checked the shelves in the refrigerator to be sure that everything that was there belonged.
    Later, after eating the stale bran cereal, she boiled herself a cup of water in the microwave, dropped in a tea bag, and carried the cup and the morning paper out onto the back porch. There, she settled into the glider and opened to the obituaries, determined to start the day afresh.

Chapter Twenty
    Cocooned in blankets on the mattress she’d dragged down from upstairs, Evie woke up thinking: jelly doughnut, jelly doughnut, jelly doughnut. She’d completely forgotten about those doughnuts, and how her dad used to make what he called his “doughnut run” on Sunday mornings. Coated with velvety powdered sugar, the light cakey doughnut left not a trace of the usual greasy film that said “store-bought.” Sparkles’ doughnuts had been literally jam-packed, front to back, so every bite risked spurting some of the filling out the other end—filling that was in a league of its own, too, thick and tangy and intensely raspberry. Not that pallid, sugary-sweet, gelatinous stuff that doughnuts were filled with these days.
    Could the doughnuts Finn said they still sold be anywhere near as good as the ones she remembered? It was worth a trip to find out.
    Evie rolled off the mattress onto the living room floor. She ached from all the lifting and bending she’d done the day before. Still wrapped in a quilt, she made her way to the bathroom. After washing her hands, she opened the medicine cabinet looking for toothpaste. No toothpaste, but the medicine cabinet was stocked: Nyquil, Excedrin, a few bottles of bright red nail polish and nail polish remover. Plus numerous bottles of various shapes and sizes, all with pale-green NaturaPharm labels. Vitamin A. Thiamin B 1 . Riboflavin B 2 . Niacin B 3 . Vitamin C. Calcium. And more. It was an impressive collection.
    Evie found a tube of Crest in the drawer. As she brushed her teeth, she wondered when her mother had started taking vitamins. Even more surprisingly, given the complete disarray of the rest of the house, she’d kept them lined them up in her medicine cabinet in alphabetical order.
    Evie didn’t bother changing out of the plaid flannel pajama bottoms and NYU sweatshirt she’d slept in, though she did take a moment to brush her hair into a ponytail and wash her face, checking that she didn’t have flecks of sleep still in her eyes. She was about to leave when she paused. If Finn saw her sorting the mail in the house, anyone could have. She went back inside, took the envelopes of cash from under the mattress, stuffed them into her purse, and took her purse with her.
    As she locked the front door, she remembered how her parents