Recessional by James A. Michener
‘And you never heard us?’ the nurses asked, and Berta said grimly: ‘Oh, I heard you all right. Loud and clear. The voices of reason. But the ones who were dying refused to listen or allow me to listen. They rebuffed me with one of the cruelest phrases I’ll ever hear: “What would the people back home think if we were put in a nursing home?” They were more concerned about supposed friends in Marquette in northern Michigan than they were about me, or, really, about themselves. And Marquette was nearly a thousand miles away.’ She paused, chuckled sardonically and told the nurses: ‘And I’ll bet there couldn’t have been six people in Marquette who would have given a damn if my mother-in-law and my husband had been over here in these fine quarters.’
One of the advantages of life in Assisted Living, she was discovering, was that Dr. Farquhar stopped by two or three times a week and could spend more time in a patient’s room than he had ever been able to manage in his crowded office: ‘You’re so available, Doctor, and you’re so reassuring.’ He was more than that, a paradigm of what a doctor should be, willing to make new diagnoses if earlier ones proved non-productive, always prepared to ask for the opinion of another doctor, and not unwilling to look into new drugs that his patients had read about in Reader’s Digest or Prevention. One day he laughed at a suggestion Berta made: ‘I should subscribe to both those magazines. They account for about half the calls I get: “Dr. Farquhar, did you read about this new miracle drug for bronchitis?” The new drug rarely accomplishes anything, but also rarely does any serious damage, so I prescribe it. Makes them happier.’
Berta felt he performed minor miracles in keeping her alive and able to function, shifting medication when she failed to respond to what she was taking and monitoring her vital signs. One day she told her nurse: ‘When I watch Dr. Farquhar, I have the feeling that I’m looking over the shoulder of Hippoc-rates, the father of you all.’
But as before, Farquhar could accomplish only so much, and the time came in early November when he had to summon her children, Noel and Gretchen, to share with them the bad news: ‘Your mother is declining rapidly. She no longer responds to normal medication, and we see no probability that her vital responses will improve.’
Noel tried to put the doctor at ease: ‘She predicted quite a while ago that her genetic clock, as she called it, was running down and would one of these days stop ticking altogether. She’s highly satisfied with what you’re doing to help her, so let’s continue. You may be sure you have the full confidence of the whole family.’
‘But things aren’t going as well as you and she might think. She may have a relapse.’
These words were so chilling, coming from a low-key person like Farquhar, that the two Umlaufs had no immediate response. But the crucial question had to be asked: ‘Dr. Farquhar, are you trying to let us down easy, that Mom hasn’t much longer to live?’
‘I’m making no predictions as to time, but yes, she is fading.’
‘And you’re preparing us for the fact that she might, one of these days, have to be moved upstairs to Extended Care?’
‘Yes, that was my next point.’
Noel broke down and could not speak, but Gretchen said: ‘We’ve never talked about this among ourselves, but I guess we’ve always known. You think it’s inescapable?’
‘Yes. The system in Assisted Living is not able to provide the necessary care. We’ll have to move her.’
‘This relapse—can you guess how soon it might occur?’ Gretchen asked as the take-charge member of the Umlauf team.
‘We never know. It could be postponed indefinitely, but we must play the averages, and in Berta’s case—what a fighting little woman she is—’
The three sat silent, no one wishing to probe the next inevitable problem, but after some moments Noel, recalling the oath they had taken in Berta’s living room, said quietly: ‘Mom prepared a living will. My copy is in a safe back home and I believe hers is in her room. Should I bring it to you?’
Dr. Farquhar responded reassuringly, ‘Noel, she’s nowhere near that extremity—could be even years from it. She’s a tremendous fighter. Ordinary rules don’t apply to rare individuals like her.’
‘If she might have to move up to the third floor—’
‘Noel, you haven’t heard me. She must be moved up by tomorrow night. There is no option.’
The two Umlaufs sat silent. They were prepared emotionally to hear these words, had even speculated on them when Dr. Farquhar summoned them, but they found it difficult to accept the fact they applied to tough little Berta Umlauf with her record of fighting off the inevitable.
Seeing their downcast faces, Farquhar tried again to reassure them: ‘She’s moving to Extended Living, but it’s not a death sentence. Berta may have many happy, full years ahead of her.’
But it didn’t work out that way, because shortly after midnight the older Mrs. Umlauf underwent what one of the aides termed ‘a humongous heart attack,’ which left her near death and so incapacitated that she had to be taken by ambulance to a local hospital. When Dr. Farquhar rushed there to tend her he saw at once that recovery was improbable. But subsequent days proved what a determined fighter Berta was, for she rallied, reestablished satisfactory heart rhythms, and in time became stable enough to be transferred back to the Palms, where accommodation was provided in Extended Care on the third floor.
Unfortunately, her tough mind did not make the trip with her; it had been lost in this latest series of shocks, and when she was finally bedded down in Room 312 on the third floor, she no longer had the capacity to remember her association with the room once occupied by Mrs. Carlson, who still clung to life in a much smaller room because her funds were running out.
One evening when Andy brought Betsy home from a movie at the mall, she invited him to accompany her and together they went to her apartment in the Peninsula, with its view of both the river and the handsome entryway of tall palms and colorful oleanders. She handed him the key and when he pushed the door open she asked casually: ‘Would you like a glass of white wine?’
He accepted eagerly. Inside her apartment, she used her cane to slam the door closed, and then, with a pronounced gesture of independence, put the cane aside and moved about the room in her own secure but cautious way. Sitting on the couch, he watched with admiration as she walked to her kitchenette and opened a bottle of white wine with a corkscrew and then set the bottle on a tray with two glasses. As he watched her approach him, operating her legs carefully, he thought: How beautiful she is! When she came here last May her face was pallid, pasty. Now her long, successful battle has transformed it into true beauty, like something carved out of marble.
This happy thought made him smile, and when she asked why he seemed so pleased, he explained: ‘I was thinking how beautiful you’ve become since coming down here, and how your mature new face reminds me of a handsome carving in marble.’
‘Well, it’s a good thing you said marble, and not granite, because granite would have put me alongside those presidents on Mount Rushmore.’
Andy laughed and said, ‘That reminds me of one of my mother’s favorite jokes. She loved words and this always tickled her: “Our Uncle Josh worked in a quarry but they had to fire him,” and I was expected to ask “Why?” and she would say: “They couldn’t trust his judgment. He took everything for granite.” She thought that was a real knee-slapper.’
Betsy chuckled. ‘I love those wonderful rural jokes,’ she said. ‘I had a maiden aunt who used to play ask-me games with my sisters and me: “What did the carpet say to the floor?” and she’d reply with the greatest enthusiasm: “Don’t make a move, Buster. I’ve got you covered.” She was also very big on: “What did the hat say to the hat rack? You stay here, I’ll go on ahead.” But she had other goodies, too.’
Andy returned to his earlier comment: ‘You really are far more beautiful than when you arrived. Yancey has done wonders.’
Very carefully she said: ‘I believe the greater doctor was you,’ and when he protested sh
He reached across and embraced her ardently: ‘I’ll be forever grateful you did find me. That you did is far more important to me than to you.’
‘Is that really true?’
‘Oh, yes!’
She kissed him, and snuggled happily into his arms. She continued her story: ‘Dad hired a detective to see what could be found, and he learned from Dr. Zembright that you’d been a doctor in Chicago and that you’d quit your practice to work at something else in Florida. After that you were easy to find.’
Zorn drew back and looked at Betsy with an old fear: ‘Then if you’d wanted to sue me for intervening, you could have. You’d have had my full identification.’
‘What are you talking about?’ and he told her of the warning Dr. Zembright had given him about never interfering in a roadside accident because he might be sued. ‘Oh, Andy! What a horrid thought. You saved my life. You’re why I’m here today—why I’m alive.’ She kissed him, kept her head close to his and whispered: ‘As long as I live, Andy, my life will be bound to yours—no escape for me—and I hope none for you.’
Then came the moment of decision. She rose, put aside the glasses and walked slowly toward her bedroom door, clearly meaning that he should follow. He did not move. She saw his hesitancy and they stood transfixed, each in a turmoil of fear and indecision. She thought: Is it possible that he can’t see me as a woman? And she trembled at the real question: Can a man love a woman with no legs?
And he was assailed by his own apprehensions: Could I support her emotionally for a lifetime? Is she suffering from girlhood fantasies—a dream concocted in her delirium? I failed in one marriage, even though it had once looked as if it would last forever. Was it a terrible mistake to allow her to come down here with her fantasies? Has she any concept of who I really am?
But in this long, agonizing pause, other, more powerful emotions took over, and she spoke in strong, clear accents: ‘Andy, you’re even better than I dreamed back in Chattanooga. You’re a man among men, I see it when you talk with residents, when you visit patients upstairs. You’re the man I longed to find, and I can’t let you go! I love you!’
He moved forward to take her hand and he said: ‘It’s terrible it took me so long to wake up, but thank God you found me.’ And he pulled her to him hungrily.
When he left her apartment early the next morning they both knew they were truly in love, a fact that would be affirmed on many following nights, but each was also sadly aware that there were many obstacles to a lifelong marriage. But as they kissed in parting, each could be sure that the other shared a great love.
Like millions of men and women who cherish their formal education because they remember it as the means of escape from drab lives, Judge Lincoln Noble felt that a man’s spiritual year began not in January but in October, and he had always approached each autumn with heightened anticipation, as if the days were now doubly meaningful. He had ample cause for such feeling, because most of the good things in his life had come in October.
Now in the cool, crisp middle of that month, so welcome after the sizzling summer, as he lounged in Nurse Varney’s office his mind went back to that unbroken chain of meaningful autumns. ‘I remember when I was six,’ he told the nurse, ‘and Mother said as she neatened up my new shirt and pants for my first day of school: “Lincoln, what you begin on this day will decide what kind of man you’ll grow up to be.” ’
Nora said: ‘I had that kind of mother. Goaded me into nursing school, thank God.’
Like other residents, he enjoyed talking with the nurse, not only because she was a fellow black with experiences somewhat comparable to his, but also because she was an extremely understanding person, whether her visitor was black or white, male or female, young or old.
He continued with his reminiscences: ‘The October when I turned twelve was memorable. Then I moved into Thomas Jefferson Junior High and Miss Lear growled at us: “The easy classes are over. Now you have to bear down and really work,” and she was right, because my lifelong study habits were formed in those three years by Miss Allen in English and young Mr. Barney in math. You understand, this was in Mississippi, and everyone, teachers and students, was black like me.’
‘Same with me in Alabama, and I never thought it did much damage, except that never in my schooling did I have a new book of my own. Always one ten years old that had been used up by the white children and handed down to us.’
‘Now, the autumn I started Kennedy High was a revelation, because on opening day the first thing I saw in the classroom was a vision, Edith Baxter, a fifteen-year-old angel come to our town.’ He stopped as memories of that day flooded back. Then he coughed and almost whispered: ‘Very black hair bobbed in front, pigtails in back. Light complexion, and movements that made her seem as if she was floating. But when I asked the other boys who she was, they told me: “Bad news. Her father’s no good, neither’s her mother.” And during my three years at Kennedy I had ample proof of those harsh judgments, because her parents really were rotters, in constant trouble, big trouble. But she seemed to sail serenely by, like one of those yachts we see sailing up our channel, untroubled by the storms out in the bay.’ He paused again. ‘So I remained friendly with her in spite of what Mother preached: “You stay away from that child. She come from trash, she be trash. She tainted, like her folks.” I never resolved the mystery, because Edith did good work in school and sang in the church choir. But everyone except me continued to think her tainted.
‘My record at Kennedy was so strong—I graduated from high school with honors—that all my teachers, and the principal too, urged me to go on to college, and I wanted to but a problem came up.’
‘I know,’ the nurse said. ‘You might call it “the black problem, money.” Your folks didn’t have any. Mine neither.’
‘Money was a definite problem, but World War Two was an even more immediate problem and I got drafted. I can still recall the day in October when I got back home after my tour in the Pacific. It burns like a slow, never-dying ember close to my soul, always there, always smoldering. Mother took me aside and pointed to my two sisters, each older than me, each a fine person, Kate and Esmerelda. She said: “Lincoln, you got to go to college, but we don’t have the money and your GI Bill won’t pay for everything. I’ve been asking around the community and good people are willing to give you nearly a hundred dollars. Your sisters say they’ll help from the tips they make. So you go over to Jackson and tell them you’re there for an education. It’s late, maybe too late, but if they look at your record, they’ll find a place. I know it.” So that night my sisters helped me pack. It didn’t take long because I didn’t have much, and the next morning I kissed Mom and the girls good-bye—’ His voice broke and for some moments he sat looking through tears at the nurse, who understood such moments. Finally he said: ‘The girls, and you know this is true, they were as bright as me. They were girls of wonderful character, and it was the tips they got in the restaurants where they worked that allowed me to attend college.’
Nora suggested they have coffee and some cookies she’d baked, and after this pleasant recess. Judge Noble continued: ‘Those autumns in college were glorious, each one opening a new vista on an enlarging world. Ideas, moral problems, dedications. My character was hauled out, examined, fumigated and tucked back into place a lot better off than when I started. I couldn’t explain to my family the great things that were happening to me. All they could see were my semester grades and
‘My record looked so good on paper that I was offered two scholarships to law school, and when I showed Mom and the girls the letters that made the offers official, we had a celebration. “You’ll be on the Supreme Court one of these days,” Sister Kate predicted and we didn’t go to bed till midnight. When I entered law school I discovered that in comparison with white students from colleges like Yale, Williams and Duke I was deficient in the kind of general background knowledge that came from vacations in Europe with wide travel and visits to museums and theaters, but in my ability to study hard and learn at a fast pace I had to apologize to no one. I gained a spot on the law review, and after graduation I was invited by a judge on the Alabama Supreme Court to serve as his clerk. Then my year really did start in the autumn, for then the court reassembled after the summer vacation and cases began to be heard and decisions written.
‘All good things in my life sprang from that appointment as clerk to a white judge. Acting as my mentor, my judge introduced me to major law firms in the South, assuring me: “They’ll be hungry to land a good black lawyer, Lincoln. Keep your nose clean.” So I vaulted right into an apprenticeship in a big New Orleans firm, and from that into a federal judgeship. How did that happen? During my stint in the navy I’d made a strong impression on a young white officer. People back home told my mother: “Nothing can stop Lincoln now,” but they didn’t know Windy Wilson. He sure had the power to stop me.’
‘I read about him in the papers,’ the nurse said. ‘Was much of it true?’
‘As you know, if you followed the case, all of it was lies. The FBI proved my innocence beyond question. But the damage had been done. When the story first broke there were calls for my impeachment—in all the papers, television, Sunday news sections—and to this day most people believe that I was actually impeached.’