Recessional by James A. Michener
Zorn, who had attended operas both as a student and as a doctor in Chicago, knew much of the music and asked to hear what Muley had recorded for his wife. Muley started the tape in the apartment and handed Andy a typewritten copy of the program: ‘Marjorie is very feminine, as you’ve seen from those pictures I showed you of her with her first husband. Frilly gowns, fancy hairdos. Well, she loved arias in which two women singers, one with a high voice, one low, sang together. She thanked me a dozen times for making her this private concert of her music, of her women signing about their joys and sorrows.’
There in the apartment overlooking the river and the channel, Zorn sat rapt as Muley’s expensive speakers poured out the rich music his wife had loved: ‘She would sit here and explain what I was hearing, and in time I came to know. This is Madame Butterfly and her maid decorating the house with flowers for the American’s return. He’ll return, all right, but with an American wife. She’ll commit suicide.
‘This next one was her favorite, from an opera called Norma about Romans and Druids. She loved this so much that I often called her Norma: “Hey, Norma! Here she comes again,” and we’d listen as the two women sang about the Roman soldier that neither of them was supposed to love. Forbidden because they were priestesses. But Norma died and I think the other woman died, too. Listen to those heavenly voices. Marjorie loved this recording.
‘This next one is the one I grew to love best. It’s in a place called Ceylon, again a priestess loving somebody she shouldn’t. When I think of Marjorie I think of these voices in the jungle—so simple, so feminine.
‘This next one, you’ve always known it, so did I, but I never knew what it was. I don’t know what they call it but it’s two women in a gondola in Venice.’
‘Isn’t it the “Barcarolle”?’
‘I don’t know, but I am sure about the gondola. Listen to how those voices blend. Marjorie liked it, too. This one she listened to a great deal. If you look on your paper, it’ll give you the two names.’ Reaching for his catalog, Muley read: ‘Beatrice and Benedict by a guy named Berlioz.’ He mangled the pronunciation but added: ‘Two women talking on the night before the wedding. Marjorie said they spoke for all women. This next one by a German composer sort of captured both of us. Marjorie explained everything to me the first time I heard it. One of the women plays the part of a boy who has come to present a golden rose to a young girl. The idea is that he is to propose to this girl, not for himself but for an old lech. Some sort of ritual, I guess, but as he hands this beautiful girl the rose, and as she takes it from him, and he’s not bad-looking either, they fall in love with each other and to hell with the old guy. Every time I hear it I think of what she told me about the record: “This must be the only musical statement of the exact moment when love begins.” I really do like this song even though you can’t sing along with it like some of the others.’
As the two men listened to the glorious voices of two women from some German opera company a flood of memory swept over Muley and he said softly: ‘You’d laugh if there was a photo of the moment when I met Marjorie and you saw it. Because you’d see she really didn’t even see me. I was working for her husband, the owner of the stores I was serving, and when he came out to give me special orders, his wife trailed along. They were headed somewhere and he had stopped off to speak with me. And when I looked at him to hear what he wanted me to do, I couldn’t see him, for there she was in the frilly kind of dress you’d wear to a dance or a reception for a bigwig, maybe the prettiest woman I’d ever seen, and she wasn’t sixteen, either. She was …’ He chose his next word carefully: ‘Poetic, like they write about.’ He shook his head in disbelief: ‘I remember exactly what I thought at that moment: Some guys have all the luck! Imagine him owning all the stores and having her, too. She haunted my dreams.’
‘How did you get to know her?’
‘In time my trucking firm grew almost as big as his stores, and it was clear to anyone with good sense that his business was going down and mine up. It was then he suggested we become partners, in a manner of speaking. We saw a lot of one another, the three of us, but I never thought of her except as his wife. Mountains higher than me, both of them.’
Remembering those days, he said: ‘One night they took me to the opera. Never been before. It was this thing we just listened to, Norma, and in the middle of the duet between the two women she trembled, gripped my arm and said to her husband and me: “Poor woman! It’s so unfair!” and it was then I realized she was not just a society lady but a real woman with deep feelings.’
As Muley ended the concert with a replaying of the Norma music he said: ‘When he was dying he called me in and said: “Take care of Marjorie. Lots of men will be after her money, I know some of them already. Don’t let her marry some damned fool. Check him out. Be sure he’s worked for a living.” ’
‘How did you and she get together?’
‘It was a miracle. I still don’t believe it. At the wedding I trembled like a leaf.’ As the great music from Norma filled the apartment, Muley having turned up the volume, he looked at Zorn and repeated with a smile: ‘It was a miracle. Did it really happen? I pinch myself when I ask that question and get no answer, but she’s in this room with me now, always will be.’
At the end of the great duet, Muley said: ‘There was empty space left at the finish, so Marjorie asked me to tape a song she loved dearly, but it wasn’t a duet. It’s another girl singer dressed like a man. He’s a Greek god or something, and he’s lost his sweetheart with a crazy name something like Yurideechy, and he is searching through hell for her. I know his words in Italian: “Che faro Yurideechy? Where is she?” ’
And suddenly, as the contralto sang this meltingly yearning aria from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, Muley, the truck driver who had married a princess, looked pitifully at Dr. Zorn and whispered: ‘I’m like him. We both search through hell for the women we love, but neither of us is going to succeed.’
When Laura Oliphant was halfway through her treatment for cancer—she had decided, with Dr. Zorn’s guidance, to opt for the entire battery, which would give her a 97 percent chance of survival—most of her hair fell out, and she was distraught, taking her meals in her room and refusing to allow friends to see her in this condition.
Nurse Nora, aware of Laura’s self-imposed isolation, strode purposefully down the first-floor corridor to find the poor woman sitting listlessly in her sitting room. Distressed to see the extent to which this onetime strong school principal had been devitalized by her bout with cancer, the nurse attempted to cheer her up: ‘Laura, you’re looking so much better.’
‘I look like a ghost,’ Ms. Oliphant said weakly, ‘a bald-headed witch.’
‘Now wait a minute, Laura. Hundreds of women undergo chemotherapy and lose their hair. But it grows back, stronger than before.’
‘Yes, but how soon? I can’t sit in this room till Christmas.’
‘Laura! The world looks out for people with problems. Brilliant men and women work to find solutions, and yours has been around for two thousand years.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Wigs. They had them in the pyramids, I’ve seen pictures—in color. And today we have stores that specialize in selling them. Near the offices of doctors who specialize in cancer treatments. I’m taking you to one of those stores right now.’
She was looking into Ms. Oliphant’s eyes when she said this, hoping to give the woman courage, but the teacher shied away at the mention of the word store, as if she’d had a bad experience in such a place. Nora told her to relax, and in a few minutes they were on their way in Nora’s car to downtown Tampa, where a medical district containing several wig stores was easy to find. Even though Ms. Oliphant was uneasy about entering one, for reasons Nora could not fathom, the nurse prevailed, and within minutes of entering the shop, whose two saleswomen were skilled in dealing with cancer patients, Laura was inducted into the mysteries of wigs.
‘They come in all styles and
Laura looked at the wigs, fingered the two cheapest and, looking at Nora hopelessly, whispered: ‘Get me back home. I’m not well.’
The saleswoman treated Laura as if the latter were her daughter and helped bundle her into Nora’s car. Before the car started, the woman whispered to Nora: ‘Don’t take it too seriously. Women often suffer shock when the reality of a wig hits them. Jolly her along. A week from now she’ll be laughing about this.’
Nora had barely started her car on the road back to the Palms when Laura covered her face with her hands and began to sob piteously. When Nora slowed down to comfort her, she whimpered: ‘You don’t understand. I’m the poorest resident in the Palms. I live right at the edge of destitution, and a wig at five hundred dollars—it’s unthinkable.’
‘But there was one at fifty.’
‘That’s unthinkable, too, if it isn’t absolutely required.’
‘But it is required—for your self-esteem—for your recovery.’
Laura would say no more, except that when Nora walked her to her room she stopped at the door and said: ‘It’s all happened so suddenly, Nora. And right in the middle of it I realized that I had no money, no close friends, and that if my cancer spreads I shall one day soon be dying in this room. It’s overwhelming. Life isn’t easy for an aging woman on her own.’
It was obvious to Nora that she had to help Laura escape from her malaise, so she said firmly: ‘Bald or not, wig or not, you are going to start rehabilitation work tomorrow with Mr. Yancey and his wife, and I’m going to speak to Mrs. Mallory to see if she can cheer you up. Now go to bed and I’ll be back to see you at nine tomorrow.’
Next morning, Laura reported to Mr. Yancey, who took no notice of her baldness: ‘They tell me you had a cancer operation, Ms. Oliphant. Rotten luck, but you appear to be in good health otherwise. I know you had a hip operation and you walk so well you must have been a model therapy patient. Makes my job easier.’ Taking both her hands he began a series of broad, easy swaying steps intended to loosen her upper torso. Then he raised her arms gently to the point at which she cried: ‘It hurts!’
‘I know it does, but I wanted to see your limits. Ms. Oliphant, you’re way ahead of most mastectomies I see. You’re already on your way to being rehabilitated, but I can help you speed it up,’ and he moved her into a different kind of dance, one likely to relax the entire body. She complied, and by ten o’clock, after an hour of carefully controlled exercises, she was actually smiling and had, at least temporarily, forgotten her baldness.
Her meeting with Mrs. Mallory had been arranged for ten-thirty. Nora simply led her to the big double apartment on the seventh floor, knocked on the door, told the petite former banker: ‘Esther, Laura’s here,’ shoved Ms. Oliphant forward and left.
When the door was closed, Mrs. Mallory said: ‘Let’s sit over here on this love seat overlooking the river and the swamp. We may see some deer.’
She was not hesitant in getting to the heart of the matter: ‘Nora—and may God bless such women—informed me in strictest confidence, which I shall honor, Laura, that you have money problems—Now wait, we all do. Did you know that Chris was once sued for three million dollars? She also told me that you refrained from buying a wig, and God knows you need one, because of the cost. Well, my dear, I have a present for you,’ and from behind the love seat she produced a square box of some size. Laura, wondering what was happening, noticed that the box was decorated in red, blue and white with a drawing of the Eiffel Tower, and when she removed the lid she saw a papier-mâché baldhead atop which rested a beautiful Parisian wig.
‘Put it on,’ the owner said. ‘It’s yours.’
‘Esther—’
‘I too had chemo, my dear. Three packs of cigarettes a day. And this wig was a great consolation to me because I could look at myself and say: “Well, Es, old girl. You may have a leaky lung but on the dance floor on Saturday night you can still knock ’em dead.” ’
For some moments they discussed illnesses and Mrs. Mallory said: ‘You’re about seventy-five. I’ll soon be ninety. So if my wig brings you as much luck as it brought me, you could have twenty years more of a rousing good life. At least take a shot at it.’
She then left her seat overlooking the river, went to her desk and returned with a long envelope: ‘My dear, Chris and I discussed your case when Nora brought it before us, and we want to give you this document, but you must pledge never to tell anyone in the Palms about it or ever to speak to us about it. Go ahead, read it.’
It was a lengthy paper, a transcription of sixteen pages purloined by Nora itemizing all the medical bills pertaining to Ms. Oliphant’s cancer treatment, including the heavy fees of the seven doctors she had consulted. It came to forty-one thousand dollars, of which Medicare had paid more than half. All remaining charges for which Laura was responsible were marked in red ink: ‘Paid in full.’ The Midwestern banking couple had decided to help this retired schoolteacher start her final years with a clean financial slate, freed from the devastating fear of running out of funds and with no place to which she could retreat. Laura returned to her room in a daze, studied the papers that would rescue her from poverty and broke down in a flood of tears.
That first night she was apprehensive about appearing in the dining room in the elegant Paris wig, but when she dressed in one of her most attractive outfits and put on the precious wig, she had to admit that she looked fairly presentable. Gingerly she left her room, pleased to see that there was no one in the hall, and walked slowly to the dining room.
When she entered that center of social life she became aware that everyone was looking at her, and some called out greetings, but no one mentioned the wig: ‘How grand we look tonight!’ and ‘Laura! You’ve done wonders since your stay in the hospital,’ and before the dinner ended she was again a full-fledged member of Palms society. Such universal support spurred her recuperation until both she and her doctors could say the treatment was a success, and she reverted to the comfortable routine she had known before: the visit to a nearby church on Sunday, working in the flower gardens in the late afternoons and the intense bridge games after dinner.
The greatest change in her life, however, was that now both Dr. Zorn and Nurse Nora suggested, whenever a woman resident faced the probability of cancer of the breast—and it happened regularly—that she might want to talk with Ms. Oliphant, who knew a good deal about the problem. This happened in the case of Mrs. Clay, a birdlike woman from one of the single rooms, who accepted the suggestion.
Nora and Dr. Zorn watched as Laura sat with the woman in a corner and outlined the options, as Laura had learned them from her own experience: mastectomy or lumpectomy, followed by radiation or chemotherapy, and then maybe treatment with Tamoxifen.
‘What do you advise, Ms. Oliphant?’
‘Unfortunately, no one can make up your mind for you, not even the doctors, because there are a lot of different schools of thought on cancer treatment.’
‘But they tell me you’ve had breast cancer. What did you do?’
‘All three—mastectomy, chemotherapy and Tamoxifen. And I feel good physically. I’m at ease psychologically. I did lose my hair, but it’ll come back. For the present I wear this wig.’
‘What did it cost?’
‘About six hundred dollars in Paris.’ When she heard Mrs. Clay’s surprise, she added quickly: ‘I didn’t buy it. A wealthy friend gave it to me after she had used it. But you can find perfectly usable ones for less than a hundred. You wear it only a few months.’
‘I didn’t mean the wig. The operation and the othe
‘I think everything ran something like forty thousand.’ When Mrs. Clay heard this figure she gasped, and Laura said: ‘Mine must have been extra expensive. I had to consult six different doctors.’
‘Did Medicare cover some of the cost?’
‘With our crazy system of health care, only a portion. But the information I’ve just given you is free. Do it right, ninety-seven percent success. Refuse to do anything, we’ll bury you before Christmas. But only you can make the decision.’
Mrs. Clay, this frightened, friendless little woman, was terrified by what Laura had told her and by her reluctance to give specific guidance: ‘But what am I to do? If you’ve been through the procedures and don’t know, who does?’
Laura was deeply affected by this desperate cry for help. She stuck out her jaw and said almost defiantly: ‘All right! I’ll tell you what to do and save you fifteen thousand dollars. Don’t consult any more doctors. Don’t spend any money on exploratory surgery that merely tells the doctors what they already know. Go the whole route, but do it at the little hospital where charges are less, and then fight Medicare to pay the maximum.’
‘You think that way I can afford it?’
Almost without being aware of what she was doing, Laura grabbed the little woman as if the latter were one of her students and shook her: ‘Damn it all, woman. This is your life. Of course you can afford it.’ Startled by the fury with which she had spoken, she calmed down and spoke in a soft, loving voice: ‘Mrs. Clay, if you have to change your habits to save the money, if you have to borrow from family, if you have to do only God knows what, do it. We’re talking about life, which is precious.’