It was odd, but I suddenly remembered how much we had once done together. Silly things, simple things. Football games, Scrabble, Broadway shows. Moments public and private. The party had asked Brenda to run for the state legislature one time, and I had urged her to accept, but the baby had been due and…Somehow, now we stood at opposite ends of the house. I thought for a moment of asking her to come with me to the Home, but thought better of it. Brenda would find those old, grey creatures more distressing than I did. “Look,” I said, “this should only take a couple hours. I’ll call you and we’ll do something together this afternoon. Take in a movie, maybe.”
She nodded in her distracted way. I saw that she had spilled tea into her saucer.
***
Once at the Home, I sought out Mae in her garden retreat, hoping that she was in a better mood than yesterday. I had a thousand questions to ask her. A dozen puzzles and one hope. But when she saw me coming, her face retreated into a set of tight lines: Eyes, narrowed; mouth and lips, thin and disapproving.
“Go away,” said Mae Holloway.
“I only wanted to ask a few—”
“I said, go away! Why are you always pestering me?”
“Don’t mind her,” said a voice by my elbow. “She’s been that way since yesterday.” I turned and saw Jimmy Kovacs, the retired printer. “Headache. Maybe you should give her something.”
“You don’t need a doctor to take aspirin.”
He shook his head. “Aspirin didn’t work. She needs something stronger. Might be a migraine. I had an allergy once. To hot dog meat. Every time I had a frank, my head felt like fireworks going off inside. So, my doc, he tells me—”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. Old folks chatter about little else than their ailments. They compare them the way young boys compare…Well, you know what I mean. “Mine is bigger than yours.” They have contests, oldsters do, to see who has the biggest illness. The winner gets to die.
I sat on the stone bench beside Mae. “Jimmy tells me you have a headache,” I said.
“Jimmy should mind his own affairs.”
“Where does it hurt?”
“In my haid, jackass. That’s what makes it a headache.”
“No, I mean is it all over or in one spot? Is it a dull ache or sharp points. Is it continual, or does it come in bursts? Do you see or hear anything along with the headache?”
She gave me a look. “How do you make a headache into such a contraption?”
I shrugged. “There are many things that can cause a headache. When did it start?” If I could relieve her pain, she might be willing to answer the questions I had about her family history.
She squinted at the ground, her face tight as a drum. I heard her suck in her breath. Bees danced among the flowers to our right; the fragrances hung in the air. “Yesterday afternoon,” she said. “Yesterday afternoon, after you left. It was like the sun come up inside my head. I was lying down for a nap when everything turned blind white for a few seconds and I heard a chorus a-singing hymns. I thought I’d surely died and gone to heaven.” She took a deep breath and massaged her left temple with her fingers. “Somedays I’ud as lief I were dead. All these here aches and pains…And I cain’t do the things I used to. I used to dance. I used to love to dance, but I can’t do that no more. And everybody who ever mattered to me is a longtime gone.”
Her parents. Little Zach. Green Holloway. Gone a very long time, if I was right. Joe Paxton. Ben Wickham. There must have been plenty of others, besides. Folks in Cincinnati, in California, in Wyoming. She left a trail of alienation behind her every place she had ever been. It was a cold trail, in more ways than one.
“When the white light faded out, I saw it weren’t an angel choir, after all. It were Christy’s Minstrels that time when they come to Knoxville, and Mister and me and…” She frowned and shook her head. “Mister and me, we tarryhooted over to hear ’em. Doc, it was the clearest spell I ever had. I was a-settin’ in the audience right down in front. I clean forgot I was a-bedded down here in Sunny Dale.”
Sometimes migraines triggered visions. Some of the saints had suffered migraines and seen the Kingdom of God. “Yes?” I prompted.
“Well, Mister was a-settin’ on my left holding my hand; and someone’s man-child, maybe fifteen year, was press’t up agin me on my right—oh, we was packed in almighty tight, I tell you—but, whilst I could see and hear as clear as I can see and hear you, I couldn’t feel any of them touching me. When I thunk on it, I could feel that I was lying a-bed with the sheets over me.”
I nodded. “You weren’t getting any tactile memories, then. I think your—”
She didn’t hear me. “The troupe was setting on benches, with each row higher than the one in front—Tiers, that be what they call ’em. They all stood to sing the medley, ’cept ‘Mr. Interlocutor,’ who sat in a chair front and center. Heh. That was the out-doin’est chair I ever did see. Like a king’s throne, it was. They sang Jim Along Josie and Ring, Ring the Banjo. I h’ain’t heared them tunes since who flung the chuck. The interlocutor was sided by the soloists on his right and the glee singers—what they later called barbershop singers—on the left.” She gestured, moving both hands out from the center. “Then the banjo player and the dancer. Then there was four end-men, two t’ either side. Those days, only the end-men were in the Ethiopian business.”
“The Ethiopian business?”
“You know. Done up in black-face.”
Images of Cantor singing “Mammy.” Exaggerated lips; big, white, buggy eyes. An obscene caricature. “Black face!”
My disapproval must have shown in my voice, for Mae grew defensive. “Well, that was the only way us reg’lar folks ever got to hear nigra music back then,” she said, rubbing her temple. “The swells could hear ’em any time; but the onlyest nigras I ever saw ’fore I left the hills was Will Biddle and his kin, and they didn’t do a whole lot of singing and dancing.”
“Nigras?” That was worse than black-face. I tried to remind myself that Mae had grown up in a very different world.
Mae seemed to refocus. Her eyes lost the dreamy look. “What did I say? Nigra? Tarnation, that isn’t right, anymore, is it? They say ‘coloreds’ now.”
“African-American. Or black.”
She shook her head, then winced and rubbed her temple again. “They weren’t mocking the col— the black folks. The minstrels weren’t. Not then. It was fine music. Toe-tapping. And the banjo…Why, white folks took that up from the coloreds. But we’uns couldn’t go to dark-town shows, and they couldn’t come to us—not in them days. So, sometimes white folks dressed up to play black music. Daddy Rice, he was supposed to be the best, though I never did see him strut Jim Crow; but James Bland that wrote a lot of the tunes was a black man his own self. I heared he went off to France later ’cause of the way the white folks was always greenin’ him.”
“I see. Has your headache subsided since then?” Minstrel shows, I thought.
“It’s all so mixed up. These memories I keep getting. It’s like a kalidey-scope I had as a young ’un. All those pretty beads and mirrors…”
“Your headache, Mrs. Holloway. I asked if it was still the same.” Try to keep old folks on the track. Go ahead, try it.
She grimaced. “Why, it comes and goes, like ocean waves. I seen the ocean oncet. Out in Californey. Now, that was a trek, let me tell you. Folks was poor on account of the depression, so I took shank’s mare a long part of the way, just like Sweet Betsy.” She sighed. “That was always a favorite of mine. Every time I heared it, it was like I could see it all in my mind. The singing around the campfire; the cold nights on the prairie. The Injuns a-whooping and a-charging…” She began to sing.
“The Injuns come down in a great yelling horde.
And Betsy got skeered they would scalp her adored.
So behind the front wagon wheel Betsy did crawl.
And she fought off the Injuns with powder and ball.
Mae tried to smile, but it was
a weak and pained one. “I went back to Californey years later. I taken the Denver Zephyr, oh, my, in the 1920s I think it was. Packed into one of them old coach cars, cheek by jowl, the air so thick with cigar smoke. And when you opened the window, why you got coal ash in your face from the locomotive.”
“Look, why don’t you come to the clinic with me and I’ll see if I have anything for that headache of yours.”
She nodded and rose from her bench, leaning on her stick. She took one step and looked puzzled. Then she staggered a little. “Dizzy,” she muttered. Then she toppled forward over her stick and fell to the ground. I leapt to my feet and grabbed her by the shoulders, breaking her fall.
“Hey!” I said. “Careful! You’ll break something.”
Her eyes rolled back up into her head and her limbs began to jerk uncontrollably. I looked over my shoulder and saw Jimmy Kovacs hurrying up the garden path. “Quick,” I said. “Call an ambulance! Call Dr. Khan! Tell her to meet us at the hospital.”
Jimmy hesitated. He looked at Mae, then at me. “What’s wrong?” he said.
“Hurry! I think she’s having another stroke.”
Jimmy rushed off and I turned back to Mae. Checkout time, I thought. But why now? Why now?
I have always loved hospitals. They are factories of health, mass producers of treatments. The broken and defective bodies come in, skilled craftsmen go to work—specialists from many departments, gathered together in one location—and healthy and restored bodies emerge. Usually. No process is one hundred percent efficient. Some breakdowns cannot be repaired. But it is more efficient to have the patients come to the doctor than to have the doctor waste time traveling from house to house. Only when health is mass produced can it be afforded by the masses.
Yet, I can see how some people would dislike them. The line is a thin one between the efficient and the impersonal.
Khan and I found Mae installed in the critical care unit. The ward was shaped like a cul-de-sac, with the rooms arranged in a circle around the nurses’ station. White sheets, antiseptic smell. Tubes inserted wherever they might prove useful. Professionally compassionate nurses. Bill Wing was waiting for us there. With clipboard in hand and stethoscope dangling from his neck, he looked like an archetype for The Doctor. We shook hands and I introduced him to Khan. Wing led us out into the corridor, away from the patient. Mae was in a coma, but it was bad form to discuss her case in front of her, as if she were not there.
“It was not a stroke,” he told us, “but a tumor. An astrocytoma encroaching on the left temporal lobe. It is malignant and deeply invasive.” Wing spoke with an odd Chinese-British accent. He was from Guandong by way of Hong Kong.
I heard Khan suck in her breath. “Can it be removed?” she asked.
Wing shook his head. “On a young and healthy patient, maybe; though I would hesitate to perform the operation even then. On a woman this old and weak…” He shook his head again. “I have performed a decompression to relieve some of the pressure, but the tumor itself is not removable.”
Khan sighed. “So sad. But she has had a long life.”
“How much longer does she have?” I asked.
Wing pursed his lips and looked inscrutable. “That is hard to say. Aside from the tumor, she is in good health…for a woman her age, of course. It could be tomorrow; it could be six months. She has a time bomb in her head, and no one knows how long the fuse is. We only know that the fuse…”
“Has been lit,” finished Khan. Wing looked unhappy, but nodded.
“As the tumor progresses,” he continued, “her seizures will become more frequent. I suspect there will be pain as the swelling increases.” He paused and lowered his head slightly, an Oriental gesture.
“There must be something you can do,” I said. Khan looked at me.
“Sometimes,” she said, “there is nothing that can be done.”
I shook my head. “I can’t accept that.” Holloway could not die. Not yet. Not now. I thought of all those secrets now sealed in her head. They might be fantasies, wild conclusions that I had read into partial data; but I had to know. I had to know.
“There is an end to everything.” Noor Khan gazed toward the double doors that led to the medical CCU. “Though it is always hard to see the lights go out.
I drew my coat on. “I’m going to go to the University Library for a while.”
Khan gave me a peculiar look. “The Library?” She shrugged. “I will stay by her side. You know how she feels about hospitals. She will be frightened when she recovers consciousness. Best if someone she knows is with her.”
I nodded. “She may not regain consciousness for some time,” I reminded her. “What about your patients?”
“Dr. Mendelson will handle my appointments tomorrow. I called him before I came over.”
All right, let her play the martyr! I tugged my cap onto my head. Khan didn’t expect thanks, did she? I could just picture the old crone’s ravings. The hysteria. She would blame Khan, not thank her, for bringing her here.
As I reached the door, I heard Khan gasp. “She’s singing!”
I turned. “What?”
Khan was hovering over the bed. She flapped an arm. “Come. Listen to this.”
As if I had not listened to enough of her ditties. I walked to the bedside and leaned over. The words came soft and slurred, with pauses in between as she sucked in breath: “There was an old woman…at the foot of the hill…If she ain’t moved away…she’s living there still…Hey-diddle…day-diddle…de-dum…” Her voice died away into silence. Khan looked at me.
“What was that all about?”
I shook my head. “Another random memory,” I said. “The tumor is busy, even if she is not.”
It was not until mid-afternoon, buried deep in the stacks at the University Library, that I remembered my promise to call Brenda. But when I phoned from the lobby, Consuela told me that she had gone out and that I was not to wait up for her.
But the summer faded, and a chilly blast
O’er that happy cottage swept at last;
When the autumn song birds woke the dewy morn,
Our little “Prairie Flow’r” was gone.
In the year before Deirdre was born, Brenda and I took a vacation trip to Boston and Brenda laid out an hour-by-hour itinerary, listing each and every site we planned to visit. Along the way, she kept detailed logs of gas, mileage, arrival and departure times at each attraction, expenses, even tips to bellboys. It did not stop her from enjoying Boston. She did not insist that we march in lockstep to the schedule. “It’s a guide, not a straitjacket,” she had said. Yet, she spent an hour before bed each night updating and revising the next day’s itinerary. Like an itch demanding a scratch, like a sweet tooth longing for chocolate, satisfying the urge to organize gave her some deep, almost sensual pleasure.
Now, of course, everything was planned and scheduled, even small trips. Sometimes the plan meant more than the journey.
Brenda frowned as I pulled into the secluded lot and parked in front of an old, yellow, wood-frame building. A thick row of fir trees screened the office building from the busy street and reduced the sound of rushing traffic to a whisper.
“Paul, why are we stopping? What is this place?”
“A lab,” I told her. “That phone call just before we left the house…Some work I gave them is ready.”
“Can’t you pick it up tomorrow when you’re on duty?” she said. “We’ll be late.”
“We won’t be late. The Sawyers never start on time, and there’ll be three other couples to keep them busy.”
“I hope that boy of theirs isn’t there. He gives me the creeps, the way he stares at people…”
“Maybe they changed his medication,” I said. “Do you want to come in, or will you wait out here?”
“Is there a waiting area?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been here before.”
Brenda gave a small sound, halfway between a cough and a sigh. Then she made a great sho
w of unbuckling her seat belt.
“You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to,” I said.
“Can you just get this over with?”
Inside the front door was a small lobby floored with dark brown tiles. The directory on the wall listed three tenants in white, plastic, push-pin letters: a management consulting firm, a marriage counselor, and the genetics lab.
When Brenda learned that S/P Microbiology was situated on the third floor, she rolled her eyes and decided to wait in the lobby. “Don’t be long,” she said, her voice halfway between an order, a warning and a plaintive plea to keep the schedule.
The receptionist at S/P was a young redhead wearing a headset and throat mike. He showed me to a chair in a small waiting room, gave me a not-too-old magazine to read, and spoke a few words into his mouthpiece. When the telephone rang, he touched his earpiece once and answered the phone while on his way back to his station. Clever, I thought, to have a receptionist not tied to a desk.
I was alone only for a moment before Charles Randolph Singer himself came out. He was a short, slightly rumpled-looking man a great deal younger than his reputation had led me to expect. His white lab coat hung open, revealing a pocket jammed full of pens and other instruments. “Charlie Singer,” he said. “You’re Doctor Wilkes?”
“Yes.”
He shook my hand. “You sure did hand us one larruping good problem.” Then he cocked his head sideways and looked at me. “Where’d you get the samples?”
“I’d…rather not say yet.”
“Hunh. Doctor-patient crap, right? Well, you’re paying my rent with this job, so I won’t push it. Come on in back. I’ll let Jessie explain things.”
I followed Singer into a larger room lined with lab benches and machines. A dessicator and a centrifuge, a mass spec, a lot of other equipment I didn’t recognize. A large aquarium filled with brackish water, fish and trash occupied one corner. The plastic beverage can rings and soda bottles were dissolving into a floating, liquid scum, which the fish calmly ignored.
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