Recessional by James A. Michener
Berta continued: ‘I have made my estate will and filed it, but all you need to know about it is that whatever funds I have when I die will go to you to enjoy in your lifetimes. I leave no trusts or clever documents to try to retain control over my money. It will be yours at the proper time and you are not to beg me for your share before I die. I won’t give you any. But with this next paper I do give you this wonderful house. I’m giving it to the family as a unit. As of this afternoon. If you look you’ll see it’s dated so that you take charge tomorrow, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did in the days when life here was good.’
This, of course, caused immense discussion, and she let it run without further comment. As it died down she said: ‘I want all of you up at seven tomorrow for an early breakfast, because at eight-thirty a truck will arrive and I’ll need help from all of you. Your problem is this: “What should Grandmother Umlauf take with her when she moves from this big house into a little apartment in that big building on the other side of the channel, the one you see from our porch?” Because that’s where I’m going to live for the remainder of my life.’
There was an outcry at this, with her daughter-in-law saying repeatedly that she did not want their mother to live in a nursing home, but when it became obvious that Berta was determined to do exactly what she said, talk centered on what she should take from the large house to what was probably a minute bed-sitting room with a bathroom and maybe a small kitchenette. Berta disabused them of that perception: ‘It has a large bath, a full kitchen, a large living room and two bedrooms. So I’ll be able to use quite a few things from here.’ Quickly she added: ‘You understand, I’ve already bought two new beds, so that’s not a problem. Everything that we leave here tomorrow morning belongs to this house and to you.’
By the time the young people went to bed, they had affixed to almost a score of things little red tags that meant they were to go into the truck, but after they were asleep Berta moved quietly about the rooms removing two thirds of the markers. She had always aspired to a neat house devoid of clutter.
Next day by noon she was fully ensconced in her apartment on the fourth floor of the Peninsula, and when her family saw the vistas framed by almost every window—views of the waterways, the trees—as well as the easy access to the elevators, they agreed that Grandmother Umlauf had made a wise decision.
To celebrate the move, Berta had arranged with Dr. Zorn for a table to be reserved for a family lunch, to which they invited Andy. As the quiet luncheon started, for not many residents took that meal, he told the Umlaufs: ‘We’re happy to welcome a woman as distinguished as Mrs. Umlauf.’ Noel asked: ‘What’s she done that we don’t know about?’ and Zorn replied: ‘You know about it more than anyone else. Dr. Farquhar told me confidentially what a heroic woman your mother was in caring for three different members of her family who underwent protracted deaths.’
‘She was a saint,’ Noel said, patting his mother’s hand. Zorn continued: ‘We praise women for selflessly caring for others while surrendering their personal happiness. As you say, it’s being a saint. But now we have better solutions, and moving people like her to the Palms is one of them. Here we provide monitored care and loving attention to the end. Our center is able to do this because it has a wonderful staff and caring residents like your mother.’
The luncheon did not end on this lugubrious note, because Victor had become fascinated at what was happening at a nearby table: ‘Who’s that interesting lady eating alone?’ and after a glance at table fifteen Zorn explained: ‘We call her the Duchess. She was a woman of some social importance years ago, and she gets real pleasure from pretending that she still is.’
‘You let her have a table all to herself?’
‘At lunch we can allow it, to make her feel more important. At dinner we need every table.’
‘Does she eat with the others then?’
‘No. She has a snack in her room. Alone. But on the nights we show movies she joins us after dinner, and we keep a comfortable seat reserved for her when she comes, like a great lady going to the opera.’
Nurse Varney was the first member of the staff to recognize that Betsy Cawthorn’s amazing progress in mastering the use of her artificial legs was only half the battle in her recovery. Indeed, Nora saw real danger signals. The young woman was concentrating so completely, almost fanatically, on strengthening the muscles of her torso and thighs and managing her skeleton metal legs that she ran the risk of either straining her system or driving herself with such compulsion that she was bound to become discouraged and give up prematurely. To protect the girl’s balance and long-range mending, it was obligatory that someone lead her to new experiences and new concerns. And that job fell to Nora.
She started by picking up on the hint that Betsy had given during one of the familiarization tours. As they passed the corner where the Bridge Fanatics congregated, the players had teased her about learning their game and she had replied, half in jest, that she might do just that. Now Nora took her to the cardplayers and said: ‘This young woman needs something to pass the hours. She can’t be sweating in rehab all day,’ and they took her in, arranging her wheelchair so that she could look over the shoulder of one of the players who would whisper explanations of what he or she was doing. With the assistance of two books by Charles Goren that Nora brought her from the library, Betsy learned the game at a minimal level.
Most of the men and women made up teams at random, leaving the expert players to themselves, and Betsy fell in with a group who played poorly enough to find a place for her. The two male members were Muley Duggan and Harry Pidcock, a quiet, inoffensive Pennsylvania farmer. She was told by Nora that both men were married, but that their wives lived separately from them on the second floor of the health-services building—what this meant she did not at first understand. The fourth member was Marcia Raborn, wife of the senator who played with the experts. Betsy was delighted when she knew enough to make her first finesse. She had obtained the bid and was playing in hearts, and her partner, Muley Duggan, had laid down the A-Q-8-7 of spades, so when she led to his spades, hoping to catch the opponents’ King, she intended to play the Ace until Muley coughed so loudly that she knew she must be about to make an error. She studied the matter until it dawned on her that it was much better to play the Queen, for if Mr. Pidcock on her left had the King, she would be sure of making two spade tricks. It worked so successfully that for the rest of the session she finessed everything, learning that if she held 9-7 in her hand she could play the 7 and isolate the 8 on her right. Of course, she tried the device when there was no reason to do so, but she had mastered one of the fundamental plays of bridge, and from that solid start she could progress to the other basics. In less than two weeks she was playing respectable beginner’s bridge and was busy memorizing the Goren system of bidding.
At about the time she learned about jump bids, she also learned more about the mysterious responsibility that both Muley Duggan and Mr. Pidcock had on the second floor of the health-services building. One evening after the bridge game ended, she asked Pidcock whether his wife was improving in her recovery in Assisted Living, and he looked at her with brimming eyes as he replied: ‘She’s there permanently, I’m afraid. She has advanced Alzheimer’s, and there seems to be no cure.’
Such a statement astounded her, for she had only vaguely heard of the disease, and when she started to probe for an explanation, Mr. Pidcock excused himself and left. Nor did Muley Duggan care to discuss his wife’s illness, but when the men were gone, the senator’s wife lingered by her wheelchair and said: ‘You were touching on delicate matters, Betsy. Those two men face one of the most terrible afflictions we have here in the Palms.’
‘They don’t look as if they had any illness.’
‘They’re fine. It’s their wives who have Alzheimer’s.’
‘What is that? I heard about it in Chattanooga but never took the time to find out exactly what it is. Please tell me about it.’
Mrs. Rabo
‘So don’t grow impatient with Muley and his gross jokes, or with Mr. Pidcock and his fussy ways. Those men are living saints, and you and I should have such husbands—by the way, is there a husband lurking behind the potted plants in your life?’
‘No,’ Betsy said, but she blushed so revealingly that Mrs. Raborn thought: So Nora was right. She’s infatuated with the doctor. And why not.
‘Well, when you get one, be sure he’s as truly admirable as Muley and Pidcock. They tend to their wives faithfully, look after them week after week, but neither of the women even recognizes them, neither knows that this strange man coming to see her is her husband.’ She took out a handkerchief, wiped her eyes and broke into a soft chuckle: ‘I sometimes tell the senator: “If that disease ever struck me, I doubt you’d be as good a husband as Muley and Pidcock are,” and he says, “I suppose not.” I could bash him.’
Betsy, moved by what she had heard, asked: ‘Would it be possible for me to see these women? I’m totally bewildered,’ and Mrs. Raborn said: ‘That would be easy. You’d be startled, for they’re as beautiful as they were on their wedding days. Mrs. Umlauf, that little woman who keeps so busy, she volunteers in Health and would be happy, I’m sure, to show you what fine facilities they have over there. You’ll like Berta Umlauf, a true Christian. She survived what I’m told were two Alzheimer’s men in her family, although her father-in-law wasn’t diagnosed as such.’ When Mrs. Raborn dropped Betsy off at Nora’s office, she told the nurse: ‘I think this young explorer is ready to tour Assisted and Extended, to see how we operate there. I was wondering if she could accompany Mrs. Umlauf on her duties?’
‘First-rate idea. Thanks for the suggestion,’ and when Mrs. Raborn left her in Nora’s office the nurse explained: ‘I’m in charge of those two floors, but it would be better for you to see them through Berta Umlauf’s eyes, since she’s a fellow resident.’
‘Mrs. Raborn said Berta visits her floors every day and is indispensable. Is she paid for this?’
‘Heavens, no!’
‘You mean she volunteers? Out of the goodness of her heart?’
‘You got it right.’ After getting two Cokes, Nora explained in detail one of the miracles of almost any good retirement center: ‘We get women here, cross section of the country, who have served their communities all their lives. For no pay. They help run the hospitals, the libraries, the church Sunday schools, the women’s organization of the American Legion. They are God’s right-hand servants, and without them this would be a pitiful country.’
She said that she had organized such women in the Palms into the Golden Angels and provided each member with a bright yellow jacket: ‘They wear them proudly as they move about Health, bringing loving care and attention to the bedridden.
‘From the moment Mrs. Umlauf started to live here, she wanted to be a Golden Angel. If I’d rejected her I think she might have shot me. These days if she has to be absent from her rounds, she comes and apologizes to me. God didn’t make many like her, but when we get one she does the work of seven. When I turn you over to her, Betsy, you are close to the heart of that wing up there.’
Two days later, when Mrs. Umlauf was asked if the girl in the wheelchair could accompany her on her rounds she cried: ‘Oh, the people would be pleased to meet someone as young and pretty and vibrant as you, Miss Cawthorn. They’ve heard you were here and how you got here, that dreadful smashup.’ Wheeling Betsy to a special elevator, she said: ‘Miss Betsy, we’ll start with the second floor, Assisted,’ and within the first few moments there, Betsy understood the comfort that Mrs. Umlauf provided. As they moved from room to room the feisty little woman engaged in chatter or discussions of the day’s news. To some she brought flowers, to others books, and even though she had been in residence only briefly, everyone seemed to know her and responded to her interest in their well-being. Mrs. Umlauf pointed out: ‘Everyone on this floor, except for the Alzheimer’s patients, is convinced that she or he will be leaving very soon, either going back to their apartment in Gateways or to their homes in the Tampa Bay area.’
Betsy was wheeled into Marjorie Duggan’s room, and for the first time in her life young Betsy Cawthorn, child of affluence, saw an Alzheimer’s patient. She was astounded at the cameo-like beauty of the woman, who was in her late sixties but looked a serene thirty-five, her silvery hair beautifully coiffed, and her trim figure enhanced by a lace-trimmed morning gown. Betsy was amazed at the elegance of her face, its skin pale and almost translucent, like that of the women in Pre-Raphaelite paintings. She was, as she lay there in bed, beautiful to look at, but she could not read books or comprehend a newspaper, or look at television with understanding. She did like music, but merely responded viscerally to the beat—the structure and significance of the melodies she could no longer grasp.
As Betsy remained transfixed by the sight of this cruelly wasted life, Muley Duggan entered the room and almost shouted: ‘It’s my bridge partner!’ It was pitifully apparent that the bedridden woman did not recognize her husband, as indeed she had not for many years.
Back in the hall, Mrs. Umlauf assured Betsy that the cases of men with the disease were just as harrowing, and as they sat at a table overlooking the pond below, she told briefly of how her father-in-law, Otto, and her husband, Ludwig, had died of Alzheimer’s. ‘Ludwig,’ she said, ‘was a walker, and I tell you this because the huge man whom we’ll see next is a prodigious walker. Let him have free access to the elevator, he’d be downstairs in a flash and out the front door. We might not find him for two days, way down the countryside.’
When they reached the man’s room they found a big placid fellow staring out the window at birds. They stayed only a short while and outside his door Mrs. Umlauf said: ‘The floor above isn’t like this one at all. Up there hope does not exist. It can be cruel. Do you still want to try it?’
‘Yes,’ Betsy said with no bravado. ‘The more I see, the better I’ll understand things,’ and back they went to the elevator.
The floor presented a striking incongruity: the decorations were aggressively bright as if the occupants lived in a constant state of euphoria, but the patients themselves were colorless and listless and obviously awaiting death. Betsy noticed the difference in how people here greeted Mrs. Umlauf, their tested friend, from how those below, most of whom expected to be released from Assisted Living, had greeted her.
But volunteers like Mrs. Umlauf did bring warmth and hope. She talked intelligently with the old people and let them know that she was just about their age, but luckier in that her health was still pretty good. Also, these people could read, and watch television and enjoy music: ‘They especially like the afternoon talk shows when Oprah and Donahue and Sally Jesse Raphaël bring those unbelievable human beings on the screen to discuss their woes or their weird lifestyles or their defiance of accepted behavior; like the man who had been sleeping with three sisters and saw nothing wrong in it, or the woman who was lending her womb to her daughter who could not have a baby. They spent some time trying to figure that one out,’ Mrs. Umlauf said. ‘What was the official relationship of the mother to the baby or the husband, whose sperm had been used, to his mother-in-law?’
To complete her rounds Mrs. Umlauf looked into a room that terrified her but that she felt obligated to cover. Room 312 contained one of the ugly aspects of the Palms, a very old woman stretched out on a bed with a tall mechanical gantry reaching out over her. From it was suspended a network of electrical wires, plastic feeding tubes and intravenous delivery systems sticking into her arms for the providing of chemical food substances in liquid form. The woman was obviously brain-dead, and had been since before the day of Berta’s first visit to the floor, but through the brillian
Berta went through her routine: ‘Can you hear me, Mrs. Carlson? Mrs. Carlson, do you want to be turned over to ease your bedsores? Mrs. Carlson, do you see my hand in front of your eyes?’
There was no response, nor would there ever be, barring the miracle of Lazarus. The harsh truth, however, was that many doctors in America, most courts, and almost all legislators hoped for a recurrence of that amazing incident when a man clearly dead rose and resumed his life. And to keep that religious faith alive, about once a year in America, a woman like Mrs. Carlson, certifiably dead for two or five or ten years, did miraculously revive and give renewed hope to those who prayed for a repetition of such a phenomenon. The caretakers on the third floor kept hoping for such marvels.
Mrs. Umlauf, who had prayed diligently for such divine deliverance in the case of her three family members, had learned not to hope, but she did voice one wish over which she did have some control: ‘Do not let me or anyone I love wind up in some Room 312.’
‘Why do they allow this to go on?’ Betsy asked.
‘The law. We’re not allowed, on this floor, ever to terminate a lifesaving procedure without legal permission, and that’s almost impossible to get. So the miracles of medicine keep life continuing, but of course it isn’t really life.’ As she left the room she said: ‘It’s abhorrent, this place, and I cannot understand how it’s allowed to continue,’ and Betsy agreed.
As Berta was about to take Betsy back to Nora’s office she was intercepted by a very young nurse who said: ‘Mrs. Pawling in 319 is dying and wants you to help her make one last phone call, but they won’t let her. Please come.’
When Berta and Betsy entered the room they could see that Mrs. Pawling had not long to live and they were appalled by what her problem was: ‘I want to phone my lawyer in a little town near Indianapolis, but they won’t let me.’