A Very Nice Lady is Gone

The Plotniks' neighbor Pat Allgood died this morning. When they couldn't do anything more for her, the hospital had asked whether she'd like to stay in the hospital or go to a hospice or go home, and she said she wanted to go home.

So for the last week, she's been lying in the bedroom in their house, the house they moved into when they got married in 1953. Ray has been sitting in his easy chair in the living room, trying to pay attention as his and Pat's four girls have been taking care of all the business. Ducknik baked them a cake on Sunday and Plot and she took it over. But Pat had stopped eating anything but morphine five days ago, so it had to come soon, and it did.

Ray called Plotnik this morning and left a message that just said "This is Ray..." and ended up in sobbing and a hang-up. So Plot and Duck hurried over.



Pat and Ray are 10 years older than Plot and Duck, and they come from an earlier generation, from the Irish working class who moved in after the original Germans had moved away. Now, one by one, they are leaving too, and the new immigrants are all mixed up. Usually at least one works in Silicon Valley.

As long as there are any of these people still living here, Plot and Duck won't be the "old man and woman who live in that house with the iron fence." They can pretend to be young for a little while longer.

In the fourteen years the Plotniks lived in World Headquarters, Plot never saw Pat without a smile, and she asked about Isabella every time Plot saw her. Those are nice memories.