The first time I met Arthur Whitmore, he was sitting in the sunroom of his house in Beaufort reading the newspaper with his reading glasses pushed so far down his nose that they seemed to be balancing on the tip through sheer stubbornness. His housekeeper, a woman named Della who had been with the family for twenty-two years, showed me in and left without ceremony, and Arthur looked up from the paper and said, without preamble: you must be the girl Marcus sent.
I said: yes. My name is Catherine. Catherine Voss.
He said: how old are you?
I said: thirty-four.
He said: Marcus thinks I need a babysitter. He’s wrapped it in different language, but that’s what he means. Are you aware of that?
I said: your son mentioned that he and his siblings were concerned about your capacity to live independently.
Arthur said: my capacity. He folded the newspaper with the precision of a man who finds imprecision annoying. My capacity is fine. My children’s patience is what’s running out.
He was eighty-two years old, and he was the sharpest person I had met in a very long time.
I want to tell you what Marcus Whitmore had actually said when he called me.
He had found me through a care coordination service that I had been registered with for three years, the kind of service that matches independent contractors, caregivers and household managers and companions, with clients who need them. I was not a nurse. I did not have a nursing degree. What I had was a practical background in elder care, six years of it, and the specific competence that comes from having done the work rather than studied it in a classroom.
Marcus said: my father lives alone in Beaufort and he refuses to move into care, and my siblings and I have decided we need a more permanent solution than weekend check-ins and a part-time housekeeper.
I said: what kind of permanent solution?
There was a pause.
He said: we have discussed this among ourselves, the three children, and we have a proposal that I would like to put to you in person if you are willing to meet.
The meeting was at a restaurant in Columbia on a Tuesday. Marcus was there and so were his two sisters, Pamela and Diane. They were in their fifties, well-dressed, professional, and they had the particular quality of people who have organized their time very carefully and are giving me a portion of it that they have calculated in advance.
Marcus explained the proposal.
Arthur had been assessed by two physicians who had identified early cognitive decline, not severe, but enough that living alone was a concern and that the trajectory suggested more significant decline within two to three years. Arthur had refused all suggested living arrangements, refused full-time in-home nursing, and had told Marcus explicitly that he would not be managed.
What the children proposed was this.
If I were willing to enter into a marriage with Arthur, I would receive a payment of eighty thousand dollars immediately. I would live in the house, managing his care and his household, in the way that a spouse rather than an employee would manage these things, which Arthur would accept where he would refuse a hired caregiver. Upon Arthur’s death, which the physicians estimated was a matter of two to four years, I would receive an additional forty thousand dollars as a final payment. The house and Arthur’s assets would pass to his children and grandchildren as his estate had been arranged.