He is already dead when God comes to collect him, already dead before Mills or his daughter or Messenger notices that he has closed his eyes.
He has died with Louise’s birthday pie in his mouth, with Cornell’s plastic Meals-on-Wheels fork in his teeth.
“Tell us about,” the brand new orphan demands of her parent, and asks for some event she herself has fleshed out into a story. “What is it, Dad? Are you asleep?”
The death is discovered and the irrational is suddenly loose in the room, all the gases of the unstable like heavy weather. The house is too small to contain its tricky, too fluid volumes. Even the dead man’s stolid constancy seems willful, some petulant obstinacy. George Mills’s mood ring flashes a bright yellow, cautionary as the back of a school bus. For all of them, mood is wayward, volatile, uncapped, at once murderously resolved and open as the tempers at gaming tables. They are not in shock but in shock’s agitate, high-strung otherness, their reckless affections jumpy with rampage.
“Well this is it,” Cornell says. “Who needs this? I don’t need this. Under the circumstances I said a perfectly normal, natural thing. The woman’s
dying.
All I said was is there anything I could do. Bam! She dumps her volunteer work on me! The horror, the horror! Now I see my mistake. I rushed things. In these situations you wait, you buy time and keep your own counsel. Afterward, if you want to be helpful, you say a word to the widower. You never ask the principal. Never. You ask the principal it’s like some deathbed pledge, high oaths. God knows what they’ll come up with. They could whisper the name of their killer in your ear. Then where are you? I’ll tell you what I learned from this. If it’s terminal you shake their hand if they’re a man and kiss them on the lips if they’re a woman.”
Mills’s wife says, “There wasn’t a thing wrong. Nothing. He was old is all. That’s no sickness. I won’t say I never saw him looking better. That would be hogwash. Sure I’ve seen him look better. He wasn’t
always
old. He used to be young. I’ve seen him when he could be downright playful. There was this great big gal the next farm over that whenever Dad saw her he’d say how she must have been dieting and that he knew he could lift her. And he’d try. Then and there. He’d try to pick her up. But she was so big, well of course he never could. Sure. I’ve seen him look better. But I’ve seen him look worse, too. He even laughed. He was laughing not ten minutes ago. You heard him, George. What? What are you making that face for?”
“I mean it never even occurred to me that it would be open-ended. Even after she told me I could take over her Meals-on-Wheels and I found out it fit my schedule, it never occurred to me it would turn into this ongoing thing. I don’t know what I was thinking of. I must have been stoned. I wasn’t, but I agreed. You’d have to be stoned or otherwise impaired to agree to such a nutty proposition. I’m needed at home, for God’s sake. I got a teenage kid doesn’t get the point of knock-knock jokes and one old enough to vote thinks he’s a fucking prince. Works part time, minimum wage, to get cash to see ball games, calls the movies eleven times to check when the show starts. I mean look what time it is, for Christ’s sake. When is lunch over? When some old fart dies? Oh.”
“What is it, George?”
“His bowels. Phew! It’s got to be his bowels.”
“Do they do that? I heard they do that, but I’ve never been sure. It’s like that thing you hear about hanged men, that they get, you know, a big one. Is that true, too? I shouldn’t be the one to have to clean him up. He was my father. That’s what I’d remember. That wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t. It isn’t right to expect a daughter to wipe up her father’s intimate dirt. What’s that, a way of dealing with grief? I guess if you have something practical and nasty to do you don’t feel so bad afterward because all you remember is how awful it was and you’re only glad he doesn’t have to die again. Oh, these arrangements. Everything supposed to come out even. What’s even about it? What’s so damned
even
about it? Dad and I didn’t have such an easy time together. No thank you! If the city wants him cleaned up, let the city do it!”
“
Phew!
I’m going to open the windows. He’d have had to be poisoned to stink like that.”
“He loved that pie,” Louise says. “That was his favorite pie.”
“How do I go to her? What am I supposed to say? ‘You, Judith! What do you think you’ve saddled me for, the duration? You’ve got pancreatic cancer trouble. You’re a goner, but you could last six months. Since when do saints subcontract? I never signed up for any war on poverty,
you
did. I’m clearing off for Canada.’ ”
“They’ve got to be smelling it in the streets. Like sewer smoke. He had to be poisoned. No
peaceful
gut stinks like that.”
“ ‘You want something reasonable, just ask. You want magazines? You want someone to fetch your prescriptions or drive your visitors home? Sure, I can do that.’ ”
“Poisoned? You really think so? Those peach slices on lettuce with creamy dressing. Where are
you
going?”
“This is terrible,” Cornell says. “I’m very sorry. I guess the only good thing about it is that he had his family with him. Look,” he says, obedient to his civilized life, “if there’s anything I can do——”
“Clean him up.”
“What?”
“You’re an agency, aren’t you?” Louise says. “Or if you ain’t an agency you work with them. Clean him up. Clean my father up!”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a food handler. I handle
food!
”
“Yes, and it was your food he was eating when he died!” Louise shouts.
“Like hell! He was eating that pie you made from the goddamn recipe!” snaps outraged Cornell.
“You had some
too!
” Louise yells at him. “
I
ate it,
I’m
all right!”
“I didn’t actually mean he was poisoned,” George says quietly.
“There was nothing wrong with him.”
“He was old,” Cornell says. “He was a very old man.”
“Sure, and that’s all the reason your kind needs, ain’t it? It isn’t enough a person may have pain, or outlived his family, or he’s got worries, or can’t stretch his benefits. All that ain’t enough. You fix it so he’s got to sleep with one eye open and be on the lookout for someone with a needle from the government who’s decided he ain’t productive no more or’s a drain on the taxpayer! When all that’s wrong is he’s some lonely old man who’s only got left what might have happened to him when he was young. Then it’s all ‘Oh, the poor dear, let’s put him out of his misery, let’s stick the needle in his arm or give him a pill or slip something in his food.’ Where are you going? Don’t you
dare
leave! George, stop him.”
“This is crazy,” Cornell says.
“Don’t call
me
names. I don’t need any murderers calling
me
names. George?
George!
”
Except for the fact that he misses his father-in-law and wishes he were here to enjoy this, George Mills is having a grand time. His enjoyment is his share of the irrational.
“Why do you think he ain’t in a Home? Why do you think the VA don’t have him? He wanted to steer clear of people like you.
He
wanted to decide when enough was enough and not some bureaucrat mercy killer. Who made you God? You ain’t God. When you came in, didn’t you see that he had folks, that he had a daughter who still made him birthdays, a son-in-law who took an hour off from work to share them with him? Couldn’t you have changed your mind? Would it have been too inconvenient to back out without giving him dinner? You had the tray with you. I know you can’t just dump your poison in the street because if a dog died, or somebody’s cat, and if there was an investigation the whole thing might just come apart. Or maybe whoever it is you work for already wrote him off and it would have taken too much explaining. Do you know what that makes you? Not
even
a mercy killer. You killed him for paperwork! Oh,” Louise says softly, “oh, oh.” And begins to cry, her lump of the insanity wearing off like a drug, pulling her passionate madness, which she will never be able to account for, no more than the others, when they are once again sane, will be able to account for theirs, George his glee, Cornell his blabbermouth anger.
“Oh,” she says again, stunned, her orphan’s grief not even in it, none of her precedent loyalties or bespoke associations with the corpse on the bed, knowing the deepest shame she has ever felt, humiliation so profound apology would be unseemly as its cause. If she could die herself she would do so, if she could will Messenger dead she would, or George——anyone witness to her outburst. Only Mr. Mead is dead, and she turns pragmatically to him, not for forgiveness, for relief. He’s the only one in the room who’s neither seen nor overheard her lapse, and she’s actually grateful to him because only he has nothing to forgive.
Carefully, she begins to clean her father.
But Cornell is not through yet, and because Cornell is still mad George still has someone to entertain him, so George is not through yet either.
“Jeez,” he says slyly, “she sure had some things to say about you.”
“They’re lies,” Cornell says, “they’re crazy lies. I’m from Meals-on-Wheels. Not even from Meals-on-Wheels. I’m filling in. This ain’t my corner. Ifyouwereonbettertermswithyourneighborsyou’dknowthat.”
“My neighbors?”
“Your neighbors. The shut-ins. That take from Judy Glazer when she isn’t dying from cancer and has more time for them. They know all about it. Judy keeps them posted from the deathbed.”
“What does she tell them?” George asks.
“What are you smiling about? You enjoy it you know our secrets?”
Mills shrugs.
“Big deal.
Everybody
suffers. If you want to know the truth I didn’t even know I
had
secrets until I found out that strangers knew them.”
“Don’t be ashamed,” Mills says with cheerful compassion.
“Wait a minute. Is this about the Lord or something?”
“The Lord?” says the saved man.
“You know what I mean. If Audrey Binder cringes in the corner when there’s a misprint in a book she’s reading or the line is busy, it isn’t because she guessed wrong about Jesus. Unhappiness is her dirty little secret. I can’t keep up with it.”
“No,” says Mills, all understanding.
“I mean we live this Top Secret, Eyes Only life. I don’t see the point of it. You know what I think? I think we make too much of things. We’re the crybabies of the Western world! Boy oh boy, do we carry on! Pain, real pain, stuff wrong with your joints, that’s something else altogether.” Messenger lowers his voice and begins to bad-mouth his west end pals. “I mean who gives a shit Sam Glazer might not be able to handle the deanship?” he asks. George shakes his head, and Cornell fills him in on all the juicy gossip he can think of about his closest friends. He tells him about Victor Binder’s troubles with the IRS, about Paul Losey’s malpractice premiums and how Paul, smitten as a teenager, has evidently fallen hopelessly in love. “Nora Pat’s guessed something’s up, but she hasn’t a clue really. She’d bust if she did. It’s supposed to be someone right here in town.”
George nods.
“Say,” Messenger asks, “you’re not a blackmailer, are you?”
“I evict poor people,” Mills tells him expansively.
“Nora thinks all she has to do is fix an exciting bedroom, but I’ll tell you something. Nora’s got a mouth on her like the iron jaw lady. What difference does it make? She can lick and suck and blow on his balls till the cows come home. The guy’s in love. What can she do? If some other chick gets him off, that marriage is curtains. That’s why she’s on academic probation. Architecture flies out the window when a
femme fatale
comes in at the door. Hell, what does it matter? As if problems could ever be solved. I mean, shit, that’s why they’re problems, right? I mean if anything’s wrong it’s wrong forever. You can only make things worse. That’s where I screwed up with Harve. That’s where I screwed up with my kids. They’re bad kids, so I had to go and be a worse father. The horror, the horror, eh?”
But George is suddenly embarrassed. It’s his sanity returning. Only Cornell still steams with madness. Waves of it seem to come off his head like distorted, illusory vapors in a road, like the transparent parts of flame. It is astonishing to Mills how all mood cancels itself, how satiety sours abandon and compromises everything. Is there anywhere an experience one can walk away from with a clear conscience? He understands practically nothing of Messenger’s complaints and confessions, though he knows enough to be troubled by their intimacy. He does not want Cornell for a friend. He does not want friends. It’s too late. He is the man to whom everything has happened that is going to happen. This is his grace.
“Could you help me turn him please, George?” Louise asks politely.
The old man is naked on the bed. The sheets and pillowslips, smeared with feces, are in a corner of the room with his soiled pajamas.
“Sure, Louise,” Mills says.
“Wait, I’ll help you,” Messenger says, and handles the man as if he were changing a tire.
“My husband and I can manage,” Louise says.
“What? Oh. Sure. I just thought I might be able to help. Say,” Cornell says, “did anyone think to make a phone call?”
“A phone call?”
“Well when something, you know, like this happens the authorities have to be notified. It’s just that they’re supposed to know. And I guess arrangements have to be made.”
“Oh. Right. Who do we call? You know who we call, Louise?”
“Dad was a member of the union, but I don’t know the number. He might have written it down somewhere.”
“I can look it up,” Cornell volunteers.
“It was the Barge and Shippers’ Union.”
“I can handle that. I can make that call.”
“It’s just that I’m upset. I don’t exactly feel like…”
“Well sure, of course not,” Cornell says. “You can’t be expected to. That’s why I suggested I do it myself. Of course you’re upset. Where does your father keep his phone book? Never mind, I see it.”
“This is very considerate,” Louise says.
“Hey,” Messenger says, “that’s why it’s important to have a neutral party around at a time like this.”