Recessional: A Novel (47 page)

The first official to be summoned was a tall young policeman named Johnson, who first thought from the cries of bystanders that someone had been hit by a car. Hurrying up and taking one look at the beautiful, vacant face, he behaved admirably, guessing that she might be some patient from the Palms, and wrapped his light uniform jacket about her shoulders.

After radioing to headquarters: “Call the Palms, they’ll be looking for her,” he led her gently to a bench that fronted a store on Broadway, and there she waited, head on his shoulder, content to see
what might happen next. She had been away from her room for five hours, and she had been walking constantly, much of the time through difficult terrain, but despite her fragile condition she would still have been prepared, and even eager, to resume walking had she been allowed.

People at the Palms who should have caught her as she left her room and escaped into the night did not detect her absence until half after six, an unconscionable delay, and even then neither Dr. Zorn nor Muley Duggan was informed. Not until seven-ten did they learn that Marjorie had, as the nurses said, “gone a-walking.” But as soon as it was generally known, search teams streamed down the roads and footpaths, for it was understood that when an Alzheimer’s patient broke loose on his or her own, the walking spree might carry the person anywhere. No distance was too great, no destination too bizarre.

With Andy at the wheel of the staff car and Muley Duggan beside him, the two set out for a rapid reconnaissance of the main roads, looking for the runaway, but also for any unusual cluster of early morning risers who would probably have gathered about a woman who was clearly in trouble. Afraid that she might have fainted in some isolated spot, they intensified their search, calling back on the cellular phone to Nurse Varney at the Palms: “Any news yet, Nora?”

“Nothing. But everybody’s out searching.”

“Any reports from the police?”

“They’ve been here interrogating everyone. No news from their headquarters.”

Shortly after nine Nora called with the news: “An Officer Johnson found her on Route 78 and Broadway. Legs cut by thorns apparently, and near naked but not otherwise damaged. He’s keeping her there till we arrive. She’s warm and has taken some hot coffee.”

Overcome by the sickening report about his wife, Muley slumped forward and, covering his face, began crying. Andy tried to comfort him: “She’s alive, Muley. All the rest is of no consequence.” When his car screeched to a stop at the intersection he saw the large crowd surrounding Marjorie, who kept her head resting on the policeman’s shoulder, happy and oblivious to the world. Incongruously the thought struck him: My God, she’s beautiful! and she was, with her
translucent skin, perfect features and elegant bearing. In the morning sunlight she was more beautiful than she had been at nineteen.

When she sensed it was Muley who was consoling her as he wrapped her in blankets she began berating him: “You made me cut my legs, You did it. You punched me.” In a loud voice that seemed to come not from her frail body but from some evil, lurking spirit, she kept screaming at him and trying to break away as he led her to Zorn’s car. This assault was fundamental, springing from a profound disarrangement of her human psyche.

At dusk that night it would become vastly worse. Muley Duggan, although aware that everyone in Gateways knew about his wife’s extraordinary behavior, was determined to maintain his established routine in dealing with her problems, refusing to be unduly concerned about other people’s reactions. He certainly felt no shame, and contrary to general expectations, he had no intention of keeping her hidden in her room.

So to everyone’s amazement, at five o’clock he reported as usual to her room on the second floor, helped the nurse dress her in a pretty skirt and blouse, gently took her arm and took her to the elevator, where the nurse cried: “Oh, Mr. Duggan! You’re not taking her down to dinner? Not tonight?”

“Especially tonight,” he said as he walked with Marjorie into the elevator.

The Duggans entered the dining room through the eastern door, and Muley had to escort his wife past the other tables; as he did so he marched erect, a tough Brooklyn alley fighter walking as tall as he could and defying the assembly as if to proclaim: This is the woman I vowed to protect in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, until death do us part. And the manner in which he helped her into her seat at the table was so tender that people throughout the Assisted Living dining room caught a new definition of married love.

And then the storm broke. When Marjorie was properly seated, with Muley beginning to feed her, one spoonful at a time, her confused mind once more identified Muley as the cause of whatever wrong that had been inflicted on her. In a loud, raspish voice so at odds with her angelic appearance, she cried as she pushed him away, spilling her food across the table: “You stole my money! You took it away from me and spent it on that girl. You brought me here to get rid of me. I’m on to your evil ways, you swine.”

Her accusations could be clearly heard throughout the small dining
area, and the more gently he tried to calm her, the more violent her accusations against him became, until everyone in the room knew that Marjorie was acting up again. A black college student who waited on their table heard the commotion and walked quietly forward until he stood beside her. Gently he told her: “It’s all right, Mrs. Duggan,” and it was as if her mind cleared momentarily, for she patted his hand and said in her sweetest voice: “Thank you, Ernest. You’re the one man in this place I can trust.”

At the other occupied tables men coughed and women wiped their eyes or looked away, and when the waiter helped her from her chair and started walking with her toward the elevator, Muley thanked him and tried to take over, but when Marjorie saw him approach she screamed: “No! You’re the one who put me here,” and Muley had to trail behind as the waiter took her from the dining room.

That night, even those residents who had blinkered themselves against Alzheimer’s awoke to the reality of what Alzheimer’s was and how it tore down men like Muley Duggan to the point of utter despair. There was not much talking in the room as Marjorie Duggan and her two attendants departed.

Later in the evening, Andy and Krenek went quietly to the suite in Gateways that Muley Duggan now occupied by himself. After commiserating with him over the terrible experiences of the day, Krenek said: “Mr. Duggan, the staff feels, unanimously, that it would be better if you and Mrs. Duggan took your evening meals in her quarters in Assisted Living, rather than the dining area. Dr. Zorn and I feel sure you’ll understand our concerns.”

It had been a terrible day for Muley. First the disappearance of his wife without his being told. Then the two-hour search with Dr. Zorn. Then the awfulness of finding her in the center of town with a mob gathered around her. And finally the disaster in the dining room.

“You think they were offended?” he asked pleadingly.

“Terribly. I was there,” Krenek said. “It was awful, Muley. You could see the reactions of the diners.” He had been going to say “the revulsion of the diners,” but had caught himself in time. “It can’t go on, Muley. The other residents have their own problems to get through.”

“But that’s why we came here,” Muley argued. “Now you want to change the rules because some nervous women…”

“Muley,” Krenek said patiently, “the men reacted worse than the
women. I believe they were wondering what they would do if their wives…”

He surrendered: “All right, if you’re banishing us from the dining room…I did not bring her here to hide her away. If your precious people cannot stand to see how lives sometimes end up, more pity to them. I’ll keep her away.”

He kept his word. Occasionally he would allow her to be fed alone in her room while he dined alone in Gateways or with old friends, and sometimes when a man who had lost his wife saw Muley dining alone, the man would find tears rushing to his eyes, for he knew that he never showed his wife one half the love that Muley continued to give his. But more often a lone man or woman, coming into the dining room and seeing Muley sitting alone, would ask politely: “May I join you, Mr. Duggan?” and invariably during the course of the meal the visitor would ask: “And how is Mrs. Duggan?” and he would reply, almost convincingly: “Just fine. She seems to do better every day.”

One morning toward the end of August, when summer was waning, Nurse Varney entered Dr. Zorn’s office without knocking, fell into a chair and started sobbing. Hastening to her side, he took her hands in his and asked: “Is it Jaqmeel?” and when she nodded, unable to speak, he put his arm around her ample shoulders. “Is the news really bad?”

“Mrs. Angelotti called. Said it looked like the end.”

Not satisfied with a secondhand report, Zorn called the hospice and was told: “We see a lot of these cases, Dr. Zorn, and the two nurses agree that this is it. I looked in and doubt he’ll last till nightfall.”

“Have you been wrong before?”

“Many times. With AIDS it sometimes looks like death from day one. Remember, he was a star basketball player. He could have reserve power.”

But when Zorn called Dr. Leitonen, that expert said simply: “Let’s meet there in twenty minutes. I may need your help.”

The last words frightened Zorn, for he could not risk, as director of the Palms, becoming any more deeply involved medically with a case of AIDS than he already was, but when Nora implored him tearfully to go, he felt he had to give her what comfort he could. “Get in the car and we’ll see what we can do.” To his surprise and dismay
she refused to leave her chair: “No! I can’t watch him die. He was the hope of our family…” and she began sobbing convulsively.

Grabbing her roughly by her two hands, Andy pulled her to her feet: “Nora! You’re the one who means most to him. You’ve got to come! You’re his family—his last tie to this world.”

With great difficulty she pulled herself together and they made their way to her car. When they reached the hospice, Mrs. Angelotti said to Andy: “They’re waiting for you upstairs,” and Andy wondered why he was needed. Climbing the stairs almost reluctantly, he was surprised to find Dr. Leitonen standing by the bed and holding a Bible with a bookmark protruding from it: “Mr. Reed, you’ve begged me to tell you the truth, and I’m telling it to you now. The signs are not good. The tests I ran show a bad infection in both your kidneys and your lungs.”

“How many days do I have left?”

“Could be two, could be two hundred.”

“But not two thousand?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“And in increasing pain?”

“Yes, your systems are breaking down—all of them.”

“Can you end it for me?”

“You know I’m not allowed—by my oath and the law.”

“So, I’ve got to stick it out?”

“That’s what you’re supposed to do, Jaqmeel. But I can ease your pain, you know.”

“No sedatives for me, Doctor. I want to feel every minute.”

“Then you’ll get none from me. You’re a brave fellow, Reed. Has anyone from the university been here to give you support? The coaches, maybe?”

“They’re gung-ho only when you’re scoring twenty points and making six steals from the other team.” Then, ashamed of such a bitter comment on colleagues from his days of glory, he softened his tone: “They’re scared to death of AIDS. You saw how the pros refused to play with Magic Johnson. College kids are just as jittery.” As Zorn heard Jaqmeel talk he thought: What a waste! And he wanted desperately to ask: “How did you catch this disease? A needle? Some girl? Homosexual activity? Blood transfusion?” But no matter how he might phrase his question it would be intrusive, moralistic and offensive. It had happened, and the tragic result made
how
it happened irrelevant.

“So, you’re alone?” Leitonen asked.

“Not when my aunt is here.” He smiled at Nora with such overflowing love that Zorn saw his nurse look away with shame at her earlier cowardly refusal to come to her dying nephew.

At this point the final meeting took such a bizarre turn that Zorn could never have anticipated it. Dr. Leitonen became once more the devout Lutheran he had been as a boy, and in a slow, comforting manner he said: “Mr. Reed, I want you to see yourself as you are—what you represent—your place in history.”

“I already know what I am, the guy who threw it all away.”

“No, you’re the young man three thousand years ago of whom God spoke in Leviticus, and I want Dr. Zorn to read aloud what instructions God gave men like you in those days!” He handed Andy the Bible, opened at Leviticus 14, Verse 21, but before Andy could start reading, Leitonen added a medical note: “The Jews of that day were afflicted by a plague as devastating as your AIDS. Scores of people died of leprosy, their bodies falling apart, and there was no cure.” Emphasizing his words, he looked straight at Reed and said: “For five thousand years there was no cure for their terrible plague. But like me today, medics did everything imaginable to halt the spread, to cure those who contracted it. Listen, Jaqmeel, to what God directed be done to try to cure a penniless Jew five thousand years ago.”

Before he gave the signal for Zorn to read, he took off his rubber gloves and stood before Reed like some ancient priest, with bare hands touching the boy’s bare hands. Then Andy read the instructions for helping a poor man fight leprosy:

“And if he be poor, and cannot get so much, then he shall take a log of oil;

And two turtledoves, or two young pigeons….”

When he came to the next verse Leitonen produced a vial of baby oil, which he poured into the palm of his left hand:

“And the priest shall pour of the oil into the palm of his own left hand:”

As he was doing this, Andy looked ahead to the words of the next verse, pathetic, prayerful ancient words that the Jews hoped would combat their plague:

“And the priest shall put of the oil that is in his hand upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and the thumb of his right hand, and upon the toe of his right foot, and upon the place of blood….”