The Death of Mildred Tuttle
by Sherry Tsai

Mildred Tuttle found herself lying prostrate at the base of her stairs and thought if it were not for the wincing pain that propagated from her right hip, she would be laughing right now. The fall was too fast to recall the sordid details that led to her crash. She had slipped on something small and greasy on the third step from the second story. It was around lunchtime and she was getting ready to fix herself a sandwich and watch her favorite show on Home and Garden Television, Sensibly Chic. She would sit down in her lumpy brown chair, kick her veiny feet up on the matching lumpy brown ottoman and daydream that her lumpy, puke-colored living room were outfitted in country style plates standing on display, white crackle-finished furnishings and Provence-inspired upholstery from floor to ceiling.

Not so today. Mildred was annoyed. She looked around to find her Life-Alert pendant that was given to her by her son and daughter. As a gift. Mildred snorted in disgust when the two of them had presented it to her. Her older daughter Maggie was a dentist working in the city while her son Mathew worked as a bank teller also in the city. Maggie had called in one day and casually informed her mother that the two of them would be dropping by later in the afternoon. She dreaded their arrival.

The last two conversations that had taken place between herself and her children quickly transformed into an endless argument. They wanted Mildred to move to the city, to be closer to the both of them. They had misgivings about her living in New Jersey all by herself in their old home, felt it was unsafe that a woman so old should have to take care of herself and an old house, being as ancient as the both of them were. It was enough to make Mildred sick. Apparently her children had forgotten that she had always taken care of herself and the house, not to mention their ungrateful asses since the time they were born. But what really made her mad, what really got her goat was that neither her son nor her daughter, the little brats she had worked so hard to protect and instill a set of values that were completely fabricated on her part, did not offer to take her in. They did not say it aloud but Mildred knew. They wanted her in a home for old people who could not take care of themselves. She refused flatly without so much as an explanation and for Mildred, that was the end of that.

So the next time her children arrived at her door in person, Mildred knew that again they were up to no good. Her son Mathew sounded sweet and therefore phony over the phone. She wasn’t fooled, Mathew was never a sweet boy. From the tender age of three he tortured ducks and geese roosting in the park, destroyed their eggs whenever he could find them and he enjoyed it immensely. Growing up, he graduated on to happy little squirrels that romped in their backyard, enticing them toward him with food, and then whomping on them with whatever hard and hurtful thing that was in reach. Although he had grown up and displayed a more sensitive side since his childhood, she still saw him for the little bugger that he was and could never fully trust him with anything, much less her own well being.

Her daughter although less sadistic was just as lacking in compassion, Mildred thought. The pendant was certainly Maggie’s idea, just like stuffing Mildred in a convalescent home. Maggie owned her own dental practice, an impressive feat for a woman in a city as saturated with dentists as NYC. Within the last year Maggie had been slapped with a liability suit for performing a root canal on the wrong tooth. Her daughter refused to settle and was caught in the trappings of a highly involved legal dispute. This was Maggie’s way, as she was stubborn and above all a tightwad. Mildred could not help but notice that it was only after Maggie was threatened with the loss of money that she began to take “accidents” very seriously and that this somehow translated to her mother’s health and well being. Mildred shuddered to think what kind of cheap hole in the ghettoes of New York and overcrowded with old people her daughter would try to lock her up in.

Thus it was not more than a month ago that Mildred’s progeny rang the doorbell and entered the house carrying a pamphlet tucked away under their heavy winter coats and a prepared speech well rehearsed between them. Maggie tried to drop it in casually but there was no casual way to discuss a life-saving pendant to her mother. Mildred sunk into her cushy brown couch and prepared to turn off her ears and let her children drivel on. They sat very steadily on the edge of their seats, leaning toward her in preparation for a momentous discussion. Maggie started the topic off so distastefully that Mildred was thrown off guard and could not slip away into the Sensibly Chic oasis tucked neatly in the back of her brain.

“Mother, you know that we love you. Very, very much,” Maggie began. Mildred began to feel nauseous.

“Yeah mom. And the idea that something horrible could happen to you when you’re alone in this house is hard for us to handle,” continued her brother.

He reached into his inside coat pocket, pulled out a pamphlet and slid it onto the coffee table where his mother could see it. Mildred pulled up her reading glasses that dangled heavily around her neck and read the front page.

It read, “Now You Can Live Alone Without Ever Being Alone.”

Oh dear God, Mildred thought as she recognized the slogan. They want to put me on Life Alert. They think I’m going to fall down the stairs like a little old lady, helpless and immobile, doomed to die and not be found for weeks before the neighbor’s dog traces my stench and it is too late. They think I’ll cry Help! Help! I can’t get up, and no one will be able to hear me.

“Mother, this is information about what they call a Life-Alert Pendant.” Maggie spoke in a voice usually reserved for kindergarten class, and used her hands to make quotations in the air around the words Life Alert. “See here? If you’re ever in trouble you can just push this little button and –“

“I know what this is Maggie. And I won’t wear it. Ever. It’s stupid.”

Already a visible exasperation was brewing in her children’s eyes. Mildred thought it betrayed their selfish reasons for being there. Mildred knew they did not want to have to deal with her existence for very much longer, but they also did not want to deal with the guilt of their mother’s dead corpse, alone and uncared for two weeks before anybody got a whiff of her absence.

“Mom it’s not stupid,” protested her stupid son. “Look it’s real easy! If something happens you just press this and tell someone right away that you need help.”

“And just what do you think I’ll need it for? Do you think I’m feeble and will slip down the stairs or something? That I’ll try to stand on my own two feet but the only thing I’ll be able to do is yell ‘Help! I can’t get up?’ I watch TV, I’ve seen the commercials too you know. Your mother is not as old or as helpless as you think she is, and she can see right through the two of you.”

Mildred saw her children squirm and look at each other incredulously, as if they did not know what she was talking about. They pretended they were hurt by her words and Mildred detected a fake tear welling up in Mathew’s right eye. They opened their mouths to say something but Mildred cut them off before they could utter a word.

“Don’t waste your money. I don’t want it, I don’t need it and I sure as hell ain’t gonna’ use it. So if this is all you came for, you may leave now.”

The steely look in Mildred’s eyes told her children that they were defeated and decided it was best that they should argue no further. Mathew and Maggie got up and left while Mildred did not so much as get up and walk them to the door. Mathew left a box on the stairs for her to see and after they left, Mildred walked to it and opened it. It was a Life Alert pendant. She stuffed it back in the box, went back to her chair, sat in it and fumed for a good hour.



Mildred eyed the box sitting on the steps just a few feet out of reach from where she lay. She had never touched the thing since the first time she had opened it, and would only glance at it resentfully from time to time when she passed by. Still Mildred never had the courage to throw it out of her house. She glared at it resentfully now. She was more comfortable not acknowledging it was there at all. She stretched her arm out toward it and noticed how she moaned like a mummy coming out of its crypt and must have resembled one too. She attempted to lurch her body forward to get closer to it but could not gather the momentum from her thin, frail torso to propel her body forward. After a few tries she became exhausted and a little worried. Her right hip hurt a lot and she wondered if she’d ever be able to walk again. She could just see it, her two children showing up at her door with a wheelchair and a pamphlet that headlined, “I Choose Mobility!”

For a moment she thought of her husband when they were young and happy together. She was never afraid to admit to him that she was weak, was never too proud to accept his help whenever he had the kindness to offer it to her. If he had asked her she would have sat in a wheelchair for the rest of her life…

At long last Mildred had contorted herself in such a way that the box was within grasp and she dumped its contents on the floor. She found the plastic pendant with its strong lanyard cord that was meant to be worn across an old person’s neck. She found two AA batteries and clumsily popped them into the device. A little red light went on and it beeped. She found the famous Life Alert button but it would not be depressed unless she had taken care of the safety switch. This was part of a safety mechanism to lower the rate of false alarms. They’ve thought of everything, Mildred murmured.

She undid the safety latch and pressed the button. She didn’t know what to say, whether she should speak first or wait for a dispatch to strike up the conversation. She waited, and a dispatch spoke.

“Hello Life Alert. Are you in trouble?” a young man’s voice asked.
“Yes I suppose I am.”
“What seems to be the problem ma’am?”
Mildred thought for a moment and smiled devilishly. “Young man, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

The humor was apparently lost on the dispatch. “Are you Mildred Tuttle? We’ll have an ambulance over as soon as possible. Are you hurt?” The dispatch stayed on with her until the ambulance arrived but by that time exhaustion has overwhelmed Mildred’s throbbing body and she slipped into the deepest of slumbers.

Mildred awoke only once more in a hospital room, her son and daughter sitting solemnly at her feet, tubes and needles running in and our of her arms, chest and throat. She looked distastefully at the hospital gown she wore. Maggie saw her mother’s eyes flicker open first, then nudged her brother. They lit up and they nestled closer to her and cried. The nurse who was in the room called the doctor but by then things had gotten more hazy for Mildred and she knew it was the end. Thoughts of her life floated back on her, washed themselves up gently on the beach of her memory. The man that she had married and had children with. His death and how devastating it was to her. The children that she had bathed and fed and read stories to before bedtime. The adults and strangers her children had become. The happy home they had lived in comfortably. The fixtures and structures that were quickly decaying from decades of disuse and disrepair.

In her last lucid meditation she distilled the thoughts about her life into a single contemplation. She was puzzled with it. It seemed to have no point. “What the fuck was that about?” she wondered. Then Mildred was gone.

These last words were her ticket for deliverance into the boundless where she hob-knobbed with the likes of Mozart, Buddha, Einstein and the greatest thinkers of all time.

The End.