Captive Dreams

by Michael Flynn

  The Guinness Book of Records sat next to the dictionary, the thesaurus, the atlas and the almanac, all neatly racked together. Sometimes, Brenda’s obsessive organizing paid off. I noticed that Dee-dee had left one of her own books, The Boxcar Children, on the shelf and made a mental note to return it to her room later.

  According to Guinness, the oldest human being whose birth could be authenticated was Shigechiyo Izumi of Japan, who had died in 1986 at the ripe age of 120 years and 237 days. So, a few wheezing, stumbling geezers did manage to hang around that long. But not many. Actuarial tables suggested one life in two billion. So, with nearly six billion of us snorting and breathing and poking each other with our elbows, two or three such ancients were possible. Maybe, just maybe, Mae could match Izumi’s record. The last surviving Progressive.

  The oldest human being.

  The oldest human being remembers.

  The oldest human being remembers pop music of the last hundred years.

  A Hundred-and-Twentysomething. Great book title. It had “best seller” written all over it.

  ’Neath the chestnut tree, where the wild flow’rs grow,

  And the stream ripples forth through the vale,

  Where the birds shall warble their songs in spring,

  There lay poor Lilly Dale.

  On my next visit, Mae was not waiting by the office door for me to unlock it. So, after I had set my desk in order, I hung the “Back in a Minute” sign on the door knob and went to look for her. Not that I was concerned. It was just that I had grown used to her garrulous presence.

  I found Jimmy Kovacs in the common room watching one of those inane morning “news” shows. “Good morning, Jimmy. How’s your back?”

  He grinned at me. “Oh, I can’t complain.” He waited a beat. “They won’t let me.”

  I smiled briefly. “Glad to hear it. Have you seen—”

  “First hurt my back, oh, it must have been sixty-six, sixty-seven. Lifting forms.”

  “I know. You told me already. I’m looking for—”

  “Not forms like paperwork. Though nowadays you could strain your back lifting them, too.” He cackled at his feeble joke. It hadn’t been funny the first two times, either. “No, I’m talking about those 600-pound forms we used to use on the old flat-bed perfectors. Hot type. Blocks of lead quoined into big iron frames. Those days, printing magazines was a job, I tell you. You could smell the ink; you could feel the presses pounding through the floor and the heat from the molten lead in the linotypes.” He shook his head. “I saw the old place once a few years back. A couple of prissy kids going ticky-ticky on those computer keyboards…” He made typing motions with his two index fingers.

  I interrupted before he could give me another disquisition on the decadence of the printing industry. I could just imagine the noise, the lead vapors, the heavy weight-lifting. Some people have odd notions about the Good Old Days. “Have you seen Mae this morning, Jimmy?”

  “Who? Mae? Sure, I saw the old gal. She was headed for the gardens.” He pointed vaguely.

  Old gal? I chuckled at the pot calling the kettle black. But then I realized with a sudden shock that there were more years between Mae and Jimmy than there were between Jimmy and me. There was old, and then there was old. Perhaps we should distinguish more carefully among them…say “fogies,” “mossbacks” and “geezers.”

  ***

  Mae was sitting in the garden sunshine, against the red brick back wall, upon a stone settee. I watched her for a few moments from behind the large plate glass window. The sun was from her right, illuminating the red and yellow blossoms around her and sparkling the morning dew like diamonds strewn across the grass. The dewdrops were matched by those on her cheeks. She wore a green print dress with flowers, so that the dress, the grass and the flower beds; the tears and the dew, all blended together, like old ladies’ garden camouflage.

  She did not see me coming. Her eyes were closed tight, looking upon another, different world. I stood beside her, unsure whether to rouse her. Were those tears of joy or tears of sorrow? Would it be right to interrupt either? I compromised by placing my hand on her shoulder. Her dry, bird-like claw reached up and pressed itself against mine.

  “Is that you, Doctor Wilkes?” I don’t know how she knew that. Perhaps her eyes had not been entirely closed. She opened them and looked at me, and I could see that her regurgitated memories had been sorrowful ones. That is the problem with Jackson’s syndrome. You remember. You can’t help remembering. “Oh, Doctor Wilkes. My mama. My sweet, sweet mama. She’s dead.”

  The announcement did not astonish me. Had either of Mae Holloway’s parents been alive I would have been astonished. I started to tell her that, but my words came out surprisingly gentle. “It happened a long time ago,” I told her. “It’s a hurt long over.”

  She shook her head. “No. It happened this morning. I saw Pa leaning over my bed. Oh, such a strong, young man he was! But he’d been crying. His eyes were red and his beard and hair weren’t combed. He told me that my mama was dead at last and she weren’t a-hurtin’ no more.”

  Mae Holloway pulled me down to sit beside her on the hard, cold bench, and she curled against me for all the world like a little girl. I hesitated and almost pulled away; but I am not without pity, even for an old woman who half-thought she was a child.

  “He told me it was my fault.”

  “What?” Her voice had been muffled against my jacket.

  “He told me it was my fault.”

  “Who? Your father told you that? That was…cruel.”

  She spoke in a high-pitched, childish voice. “He tol’ me that mama never gotten well since I was borned. There was something about my birthin’ that hurt her inside. I was six and I never seen my mama when she weren’t a-bed…”

  She couldn’t finish. Awkwardly, I put an arm around her shoulder. A husband who lost his wife to childbirth would blame the child, whether consciously or not. Especially a husband in the full flush of youth. Worse still, if it was a lingering death. If for years the juices of life had drained away, leaving a gasping, joyless husk behind.

  If for years the juices of life had drained away, leaving a gasping, joyless husk behind.

  “I have to get back to my office,” I said, standing abruptly. “There may be a patient waiting. Is there anything I can get you? A sedative?”

  She shook her head slowly back and forth several times. When she spoke, she sounded more like the adult Mae. “No. No, thank you. I ain’t—haven’t had these memories for so long that I got to feel them now, even when it pains me. There’ll be worse coming back to me, by and by. And better, too. The Good Man’ll help me bear it.”

  It wasn’t until I was back behind my desk and had made some notes about her recollection for my projected book that I was struck with an annoying inconsistency. If Mae’s mother had died from complications of childbirth, where did her “little brother Zach” come from?

  Step-brother, probably. A young man like her father would have sought a new bride before too long. Eventually, we put tragedy behind us and get on with life. But if I was going to analyze the progress of Mae’s condition, I would need to confirm her recollections. After all, memories are tricky things. The memories of the old, trickier than most.

  Peaches in the summertime,

  Apples in the fall;

  If I can’t have the girl I love,

  I won’t have none at all.

  ***

  There was music in the air when I returned home, and I followed the thread of it through the garage and into the back yard, where I found Consuela sitting on a blanket of red, orange and brown, swathed in a flowing, pale green muumuu, and Deirdre beside her playing on the cane flute. Dee-dee’s thin, knobby fingers moved haltingly and the notes were flat, but I actually recognized the tune. Something about a spider and a waterspout.

  “Hello, Dee-dee. Hello, Consuela.”

  Deirdre turned. “Daddy!” she said. She pulled herself erect on Consuela’s gown an
d hobbled across the grass to me. I crouched down and hugged her. “Dee-dee, you’re outside playing.”

  “Connie said it was all right.”

  “Of course, it’s all right. I wish you would come out more often.”

  A cloud passed across the sunshine. “Connie said no one can see me in the yard.” A hesitation. “And Mommy’s not home.”

  No one to tell her how awful she looked. No cruel, taunting children. No thoughtlessly sympathetic adults offering useless condolences. Nothing but Connie, and me, and the afternoon sun. I looked over Dee-dee’s shoulder. “Thank you, nur— Thank you, Connie.”

  She blinked at my use of her familiar name, but made no comment. “The sunshine is good for her.”

  “She is my sunshine. Aren’t you, Dee-dee?” You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. A fragment of tune. Only, how did the rest of it go?

  “Oh, Daddy…”

  “So, has Connie been teaching you to play the flute?”

  “Yes. And she showed me lots of things. Did you know there are zillions of different bugs in our grass?”

  “Are there?” You make me happy when skies are grey.

  “Yeah. There’s ants and centipedes and…and mites? And honey bees. Honey bees like these little white flowers.” And she showed me a ball of clover she had tucked behind her ear.

  “You better watch that,” I said, “or the bees will come after you, too.”

  “Oh, Daddy…”

  “Because you’re so sweet.” You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you.

  “Daaaddyyy. I saw some spiders, too.”

  “Going up the waterspout?”

  She giggled. “There are different kinds of spiders, too. They’re like eensy-weensy tigers, Connie says. They eat flies and other bugs. Yuck! I wouldn’t want to be a spider, would you?”

  “No.”

  “But you are!” Secret triumph in her voice. She had just tricked me, somehow. “There was this spider that was nothing but a little brown ball with legs this long!” She held her arms far enough apart to cause horror movie buffs to blanch. “They named it after you,” she added with another giggle. “They call it a Daddy-long-legs. You’re a daddy and you have long legs, so you must be a spider, too.”

  “Then…I’ve got you in my web!” I grabbed her and she squealed. “And now I’m going to gobble you up!” I started kissing her on the cheeks. She giggled and made a pretense of escape. I held her all the tighter. Please don’t take my sunshine away.

  We sat for a while on the blanket, just the three of us. Consuela told us stories from Guatemala. How a rabbit had gotten deeply into debt and then tricked his creditors into eating one another. How a disobedient child was turned into a monkey. Dee-dee giggled at that and said she would like to be a monkey. I told them about Mae Holloway.

  “She didn’t give me any new songs today,” I said, “but she finally remembered something from her childhood.” I explained how her mother had died and her father had blamed her for it.

  “Poor girl!” Consuela said, looking past me. “It’s not right for a little girl to grow up without a mother.”

  “Deirdre Wilkes! What on earth are you doing outside in the dirt?”

  Dee-dee stiffened in my arms. I turned and saw Brenda in the open garage door, straight as a rod. A navy blue business suit with white ruffled blouse. Matching overcoat, hanging open. A suitbag slung from one shoulder; a briefcase clenched in the other hand. “Brenda,” I said, standing up with Dee-dee in my arm. “We didn’t expect you until Monday.”

  She looked at each of us. “Evidently not.”

  “Dee-dee was just getting a little sunshine.”

  Brenda stepped close and whispered. “The neighbors might see.”

  I wanted to say, So what? But I held my peace. You learn there are times when it is best to say nothing at all. You learn.

  “Nurse.” She spoke to Consuela. “Aren’t you dressed a bit casually?”

  “Yes, señora. It is after five.” When she had to, Consuela could remember what was in her contract.

  “A professional does not watch the clock. And a professional dresses appropriately for her practice. How do you think it would look if I went to the office in blouse and skirt instead of a suit? Take Deirdre inside. Don’t you know there are all sorts of bugs and dirt out here? What if she were stung by a bee? Or bitten by a deer tick?”

  “Brenda,” I said, “I don’t think—”

  She turned to me. “Yes, exactly. You didn’t think. How could you have allowed this, Paul? Look, in her hand. That’s Nurse’s whistle, or whatever it is. Has Deirdre been playing it? Putting it in her mouth. How unsanitary! And there are weeds in her hair. For God’s sake, Paul, you’re a doctor. You should have said something.”

  Sometimes I thought Brenda had been raised in a sterile bubble. The least little thing out of place, the least little thing done wrong, was enough to set her off. Dust was a hanging offense. She hadn’t always been that way. At school, she’d been reasonably tidy, but not obsessed. It had only been in the last few years that cleanliness and order had begun to consume her life. Each year, I could see the watchspring wound tighter and tighter.

  Consuela bundled up flute, blanket and Dee-dee and took them inside, leaving me alone with Brenda. I tried to give her a hug, and she endured it briefly. “Welcome home.”

  “Christ, Paul. I go away for two weeks and everything is falling apart.”

  “No, Nurse was right to bring her outside. Deirdre should have as much normal activity as possible. There is nothing wrong with her mind. It’s just her body aging too fast.” That wasn’t strictly true. Hutchinson-Gilford was sometimes called progeria, but it differed in some of its particulars from normal senile aging.

  Brenda swatted at a swarm of midges. “There are too many bugs out here,” she said. “Let’s go inside. Carry my suitbag for me.”

  I took it from her and followed her inside the house. She dropped her briefcase on the sofa in the living room and continued to the hall closet, where she shed her overcoat. “You’re home early,” I said again.

  “That’s right. Surprised?” She draped her overcoat carefully across a hanger.

  “Well…” Yes, I was. “Did Crowe drop you off?”

  She shoved the other coats aside with a hard swipe. “Yes.” Then she turned and started up the stairs. I closed the closet door for her.

  “How was Washington?” I asked. “Did you impress the Supremes?”

  She didn’t answer and I followed her up the stairs. I found her in our bedroom, shedding her travel clothes. I hung the suit bag on the closet door. “Did you hear me? I asked how—”

  “I heard you.” She dropped her skirt to the floor and sent it in the direction of the hamper with a flick of her foot. “Walther offered me a partnership.”

  “Did he?” I retrieved her skirt and put it in the hamper. “That’s great news!” It was. Partners made a bundle. They took a cut of the fees the associates charged. “It opens up all sorts of opportunities.”

  Brenda gave me a funny look. “Yes,” she said. “It does.” If I hadn’t known better, I would have said she looked distressed. It was hard to imagine Brenda being unsure.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “Nothing. It’s just that there are conditions attached.”

  “What conditions? A probationary period? You’ve been an associate there for seven years. They should know your work by now.”

  “It isn’t that.”

  “Then, what…”

  Deirdre interrupted us. She stood in the doorway of our bedroom, one foot crossed pigeon-toed over the other, a gnarled finger tucked in one shrunken cheek. “Mommy?”

  Brenda looked at a point on the door jamb a quarter inch above Dee-dee’s head. “What is it, honey.”

  “I should tell you ‘welcome home’ and ‘I missed you.’”

  I could almost hear Connie said…in front of that statement and I wondered if Brenda could hear it, too.

  �
��I missed you, too, honey,” Brenda told the door knob.

  “I’ve got to take my bath, now.”

  “Good. Be sure to get all that dirt washed off.”

  “Okay, Mommy.” A brief catch, and then, “I love you, Mommy.”

  Brenda nodded. “Yes.”

  Dee-dee waited a moment longer, then turned and bolted for the bathroom. I could hear Connie already running the water. I waited until the bathroom door closed before I turned to Brenda. “You could have told her that you loved her, too.”

  “I do,” she said, pulling on a pair of slacks. “She knows I do.”

  “Not unless you tell her once in a while.”

  She flashed me an irritated look, but made no reply. She took a blouse from her closet and held it in front of her while she stood before the mirror. “Let’s go out to eat tonight.”

  “Go out? Well, you know that Dee-dee doesn’t like to leave the house, but…”

  “Take Deirdre with us? Whatever are you thinking of, Paul? She would be horribly embarrassed. Think of the stares she’d get! No, Consuela can feed her that Mexican goulash she’s cooking.”

  “Guatemalan.”

  “What?”

  “It’s Guatemalan, whatever it is.”

  “Do you have to argue with everything I say?”

  “I thought, with you being just back and all, that the three of us—” The four of us. “—could eat dinner together, for a change.”

  “I won’t expose Deirdre to the rudeness of strangers.”

  “No, not when she can get it at home.” I don’t know why I said that. It just came out.

  Brenda stiffened. “What does that crack mean?”

  I turned away. “Nothing.”

  “No, tell me!”

  I turned back and faced her. “All right. You treat Dee-dee like a non-person. She’s sick, Brenda, and it’s not contagious and it’s not her fault.”

  “Then whose fault is it?”

  “That’s lawyer talk. It’s no one’s fault. It just happens. We’ve been over that and over that. There is no treatment for progeria.”