Recessional by James A. Michener
‘I was determined to make it that way when I moved in. I’d had enough of the horse manure this nation throws in the faces of us black women. I had to succeed.’
Betsy, with tears in her eyes, asked Zorn to help her, and she pulled herself up, reached across to the head of the table and embraced Nora: ‘You did more than succeed. And, Nora, you did a damned good thing tonight.’
One morning before the Thanksgiving holidays, a trio of agitated widows descended upon Ken Krenek, demanding that he summon Dr. Zorn for an important meeting. With the two men listening intently, for the women were obviously serious in their protest, they heard an impassioned rendition of a complaint that they had heard before. At first they were inclined to laugh at what seemed a situation worth no more than an amused dismissal, but as Zorn was about to handle it that way, Krenek, who had learned to take the grievances of widows seriously, said: ‘Now, tell us again, what exactly is your complaint against Muley?’
‘Last night at the long table he went too far.’
‘In what respect?’
‘His jokes. He went way beyond the bounds of decency.’
‘Now, ladies, you know that Muley is a rough-cut diamond. He livens up the place with his jokes.’
‘But they’ve been getting more and more vulgar, and this one was just too much.’
‘What did he say?’
‘We refuse to repeat it,’ and Mrs. Robinson snapped: ‘If Patrick had ever told a joke like that in our dining room, or kitchen either, I’d have thrown him out of our house.’
When it was clear that none of the widows would repeat the offensive joke, Dr. Zorn did his best to mollify them: ‘You shouldn’t have to listen to offensive jokes, especially at dinner. I’ll speak to Muley and warn him that he must clean up his act.’
‘I assure you our protest is not trivial,’ Mrs. Robinson said, ‘and when you hear the joke he told, I’m sure you’ll agree.’
When the ladies were gone, Andy asked Krenek to fetch Muley if he could be located.
In a few minutes Ken arrived with the ex-truck driver, red-faced and chuckling at some new joke he had collected and shared with Krenek. Andy went right to the point: ‘Muley, three of our women came in here objecting to one of the jokes you told at the long table last night. Since these women are not chronic complainers or prudes who feel insulted if a man says damn, Krenek and I have to take their protests seriously, especially since the incident occurred at dinner, when there are many people around.’
Muley leaned back, rubbed his chin and after a long pause said brightly: ‘Oh, yes! I’d just heard this beauty about three old codgers sitting in the morning sun on a bench in St. Petersburg, known widely as God’s Waiting Room. When I used that title, the women laughed, so I was encouraged to go ahead.’
‘Share the joke with us,’ Krenek said. ‘Let’s see how offensive it might have been.’
‘These men in their late eighties were comparing health problems, and the first says: “My only serious complaint is I can’t urinate easily. It’s a real problem.” And the second says: “Same kind of problem, but with me I can’t have a bowel movement. And that can be nerve-racking.” The third man says: “Now, that’s funny. I empty my bladder every morning, at seven o’clock sharp. And I have a complete bowel evacuation every day at eight.” And the two others said: “You are really lucky,” but the third man held up his hand and waved it back and forth: “Not so fast. You see, I never wake up till nine.” ’
His two listeners could not suppress their amusement, and Krenek said: ‘Rough, I’d agree with the women, but it’s certainly not grossly offensive.’ Andy, however, pointed out: ‘It could get by in the billiard room, but in a dining room, with meals being served—I think they had a right to complain.’
‘But look! I go to the long table to eat by myself, down at one end. They crowd around to hear my stories. I don’t crowd around them.’
‘Let’s leave it this way, Muley,’ Andy proposed. ‘Continue to entertain the ladies, they enjoy it, but remember that they are ladies, not truck drivers,’ and Muley, chastened by the complaints, promised to sanitize his yarns, and that night at the long table he sought out the women, sat among them and told them jokes more to their liking.
Later that night, when Dr. Zorn was checking on recent improvements in the appearance of Assisted Living he became aware that familiar music was coming out of the room long occupied by Muley Duggan’s wife, Marjorie, and he wondered who was playing the tape Muley had transcribed of her favorite operatic selections. He stopped outside the door and heard those heavenly female voices in the duet ‘Mira o Norma’ but he also heard Muley’s voice, pleading with his wife and calling her by the name he had given her when she was still able to understand and appreciate music. Now, far advanced in her Alzheimer’s affliction, she could not respond to the music in any way, and this apparently frustrated her husband, for he was pleading with her: ‘Norma? Listen to the music! It’s your music, Norma. I made the tape for you. Norma, please listen!’
Andy was aware that he was eavesdropping and that he ought to pass on, but there was something so heartrending about the situation that he was held in position as if icy hands had gripped him. Suddenly Muley shouted: ‘Goddammit, Norma! Listen to the music. It’s your music. I made it for you—to keep you happy.’ Silence, then: ‘Norma, for God’s sake, listen to it! Please!’ But, of course, she could not. His heart aching for poor Muley, Andy slowly moved away.
Some weeks later Krenek, Nurse Varney and Zorn received formal invitations from Muley to attend Marjorie Duggan’s sixty-eighth birthday party, which would be held in Muley’s spacious apartment in Gateways at five-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon. At four Muley reported at his wife’s room in Assisted Living to dress her for her evening meal, and on this occasion he brought along the hairdresser, who made sure that she looked as beautiful as she had in the early days when she was the cynosure of the Palms: a tall, graceful queen with an entrancing smile. So perfect was her blend of physical charm and social grace that Muley’s guests could hardly take their eyes away from her.
On this night the hairdresser and the two nurses had re-created the beauty of the younger Marjorie, and when he escorted her into the apartment, where some two dozen of her former friends waited, the crowd broke into spontaneous applause, both for her and for her devoted husband. The dinner was a genuine pleasure, for by good luck she behaved herself as if some fragment of understanding had mysteriously returned, making her aware that this was a special occasion. The flawless skin seemed more radiant than ever and she was, however fleetingly, the woman of ultimate grace who had captivated everyone in the past.
A week after this celebration, which went smoothly and without incident, the nurses in Assisted Living telephoned Muley at four in the morning: ‘Mr. Duggan, we think you’d better come over right away. Yes, a coma like before, but much deeper. Please come.’
Trembling, he slipped into his clothes as he mumbled: ‘Dear God, don’t take her yet. Please, please allow her to come back home, like before.’ But when he hurried to Assisted, he was stopped before he could enter her room and told: ‘She died peacefully.’
When he was finally allowed in the room he insisted on taking charge of dressing her in a gown she had particularly liked and in brushing her hair as he used to do, and in attending to all details, even though the nurses said: ‘They’ll have to do it over again when they prepare her for the funeral.’
These words, intended to be helpful, had such a note of finality that he collapsed in tears, and nothing could halt the flow. He created confusion when he demanded to ride with her corpse to the undertakers, where he created more confusion by wanting to remain with her during the preparation of the body. Two men had to draw him away and drive him home.
At the memorial service Reverend Quade reminded the residents of how gracious Marjorie had been, how helpful to everyone, and said in conclusion: ‘She was a woman who walked with beauty and with music, so we shall send her from
In the days that followed, the people of the Palms gained a new insight into the meaning of death, for even the least observant could see that Muley Duggan was declining almost as rapidly as his wife had. He did not want to be with people. He told no jokes, and residents found him wandering aimlessly. In Assisted Living the nurses had to tell him to stop tormenting himself by wanting to visit her room, and often at dinnertime Krenek would have to dispatch a waiter to bring him down to a meal he did not want. He sat alone, and while he did not rebuff anyone who might ask to join him, he said little and left abruptly before dessert was served.
One day when he asked to see Reverend Quade she did not wait for him to raise the subject of his wife’s recent death and burial: ‘All your friends have been worried, Muley, about the grief you are suffering. But those of us who’ve worked with Alzheimer’s patients know it was, in a very real sense, God’s benevolence that allowed her to die without extended agony. When we prayed at the service, Muley, we were thanking God for His kindness.’
‘Not me,’ Muley said. ‘She was the loveliest woman God ever made, and I’d have been happy to care for her till the end of my life.’
‘We know. Your acts of love enriched us all.’
‘Mrs. Quade, do you believe … what does your religion say about this? When I die, will I be reunited with her in heaven?’
This was the brutal question that clergy could never avoid. Death of a loved one was such an overwhelming blow that even people who had never thought much about religious explanations now wanted to know, and Helen Quade was not one who could answer the question in a way to give the bereaved the assurance they sought. Through the years, and from the teachings of many different societies in which she had served as a missionary, she had developed her own carefully considered idea of the afterlife, but it was not one that she could explain to another, not even a fellow religious leader, in a brief conversation. So, as a sensible leader of her flock, wherever it chanced to be, she had adopted the strategy of answering the terrible question like Muley’s in this manner: ‘Christianity teaches us that in heaven we shall be granted eternal life, and surely this means that we will be reunited with our loved ones.’ She never said or even intimated that the Bible promised reunion with loved ones, nor did she find reassurance on that matter in the Church Fathers. The concept was a late invention, but she felt she was doing little harm in telling those who had already convinced themselves on the subject, ‘Christianity teaches that we will be reunited,’ because some branches of her faith did.
So now, when Muley pressed his question and she saw how eager he was for an affirmative answer she repeated her standard ending ‘we will be reunited,’ and she watched his face glow with a peace that had previously eluded him. He told her: ‘You can’t imagine how much I loved her, this society figure, attending operas and balls, and me a lousy truck driver who went to smokers when I was making my way in New York. When she accepted me as her second husband, it was like a rainbow filling the sky.’ Wondering whether he was saying too much, he added: ‘It wasn’t money, you understand. Her husband talked a lot but he didn’t leave much. I had far more than she did, and it’s been my money she lived on down here. I wanted you to know.’
‘Muley! You don’t have to apologize for anything. All of us in the Palms looked upon your love for Marjorie as a highlight in our experience. You were a wonderful husband,’ and when she saw how his face brightened, she repeated: ‘You will be reunited with her in heaven,’ and he left her with a smile and a lighter step.
At about four next morning the Duchess, who had a keen ear for suspicious sounds, telephoned the main desk and told them she had heard a muffled gunshot somewhere in the upper floors. But when the night men investigated, they could find nothing, and the night nurses in Assisted and Extended said they’d heard no sound like that. Dawn came and the night men reported Mrs. Elmore’s call, so Ken Krenek made investigations and uncovered nothing. However, when he checked attendance at dinner that night, a ritual carefully observed in a large building with many elderly people, he found that Muley Duggan was absent.
Suddenly nervous, he called for one of the guards to fetch a master key, and when they entered Muley’s apartment they found him in bed, a heavy revolver in his right hand; a high-caliber bullet had ripped completely through his brain to exit at the top of his skull.
At his funeral service six different men recited his wildest jokes, even the naughty ones, so that there was much laughter as his neighbors recalled his boisterous ways. On a more serious theme, however, Reverend Quade eulogized: ‘Muley taught us a new definition of the word love, and in the end he proved to skeptics that a man truly can die of a broken heart. We watched it happen, and let us pray that this wonderfully loyal man is now reunited with his beautiful bride.’
But she could not bestow benediction upon herself, because she had good reason to suspect that it might have been her reassuring words about an afterlife of reunion in heaven that had encouraged heartbroken Muley Duggan to take his own life in order to join Marjorie. In her distress she asked Ambassador St. Près if he might have time to talk with her, and when he joined her for a walk under the palms, she posed the question: ‘Did I do something terribly wrong when I promised Muley that he would be reunited with Marjorie? Whom he loved so desperately? And around whom his life was built?’
‘If it’s part of your faith, of course you were justified. It seems to have been a significant part of his.’
‘That’s the ugly part, Richard. It’s not part of my religion. I find nothing in the Bible that promises reunion with spouses. It’s a late invention, to make people feel easy.’ She strode along, kicking at pebbles, then added: ‘One reads damned little in the Bible about wives. Has it ever bothered you that all twelve of Christ’s apostles were men, and I wouldn’t be able to guess whether any of them had ever been married. Our New Testament is rather silent on the married state. And it isn’t much concerned about remarriage in the hereafter for the good reason that the men weren’t much concerned about it in the here and now.’
‘Helen, I must warn you. You’re riding the theme of your book too hard. Look at the great love stories in the Old Testament, as in the last chapter of Proverbs, where women are idealized. I think you can extrapolate from them and deduce the concept that those married on earth will likewise be married in heaven.’
‘I have this dreadful fear that it was my counsel, lightly given and not explained because I did not want to confuse him in his sorrow—’ She burst into tears: ‘I was a poor shepherd to my lamb when I told him something that may have speeded his death. It hangs heavy on me, and then to allow his jokes to be told at his service. I must have been out of my mind these past days.’
‘You are not, Helen. You were edging your way along after you were shocked, we all were, by Marjorie Duggan’s death, which we applauded as the termination of an evil and a burden on Muley. I was as deeply shaken as you were—’
‘But you were not in a responsible position. I faced a major test and failed. Mea culpa, mea culpa,’ and he said: ‘Those are the sacred words that preface enlightenment, that suggest wisdom is at hand.’
‘You’re a dear friend, Richard.’ Then as they returned through the grand gate she said: ‘I have a feeling that I received more meaningful help when I consulted you than poor Muley did when he consulted me.’
For some years, with approval from Chicago, the Palms had allowed the scientist Maxim Lewandowski and his wife, Hilga, to occupy an additional room without additional cost. In this rather small space Max had installed a filing cabinet, a word processor, a computer, a fax machine and a high-quality television set with special controls for easy use o
When his burgeoning scientific reputation had been damaged by the controversy over the extra Y chromosome, he was discredited as a serious researcher. And his academic career was ruined. Fortunately both he and his wife found alternative work; they saved their money and were able to move into the Palms at a much reduced rate.
The instruments that crowded his small office had been paid for by a consortium of universities and scientific centers in the United States, England, Sweden and Japan who recognized his unparalleled skill as a researcher. The schools sent him tasks whose solutions would speed their work, and which would be verified by other scientists. What the consortium was seeking, as were hundreds of other researchers in other countries, was an answer to this complex question: What causes Alzheimer’s, why does it strike certain individuals and not others, and what triggers the onset of the disease in which large deposits of a translucent waxy substance collect in the brain, causing the loss of normal mental functions?
Breaking this gigantic puzzle into its many component parts meant that any brilliant new insight into any portion of the tangle might cast light on half a dozen collateral topics, for as a researcher in Japan pointed out: ‘We’re looking for needles that can be enlarged into mountain ranges.’
Dr. Zorn, having been told by members of the tertulia of the fascinating talk Lewandowski had given them on his researches, suggested to Krenek that it might be rewarding to invite the scientist to talk informally to the residents about his work, and Kenneth, with his entrepreneurial skill, devised the perfect announcement for the affair: THE SECRET OF ALZHEIMER’S, but when Maxim saw the poster he forced Krenek to take it down: ‘I got into deep trouble when the newspapers proclaimed that I’d uncovered the secret of criminality.’ But he did allow: RECENT ADVANCES IN ALZHEIMER’S, which attracted a full house of fascinated listeners.