For a moment, I could not breathe. “Oh, I know,” I whispered. “I know.”
“Zach…I lived to see him turn to dust in the ground. He died in my own arms, a feeble, old man, and he asked me to sing Home, Sweet Home, like I used to when he was a young ’un. Oh, little Zach!” And she began to cry in earnest. She couldn’t move her arms to wipe the tears away, so I pulled another tissue from the box on the tray and dabbed at her cheeks.
She reached out a scrawny hand and clutched my arm. “Thank you, doc. Thank you. You helped me find my child again. You helped me find my boy.”
And then I did an odd thing. I stood and bent low over the bed and I kissed Mae Holloway on her withered cheek.
I’m going there to see my mother.
She said she’d meet me when I come.
I’m only going over Jordan,
I’m only going over home.
My days at the Home passed by in an anonymous sameness, dispensing medicines, treating aches and pains. Only a handful of people came to see me; and those with only trivial complaints. Otherwise, I sat unmolested in my office, the visitor’s chair empty. I found it difficult even to concentrate on my journals. Finally, almost in desperation, I began making rounds, dropping in on Rosie and Jimmy and the others, chatting with them, enduring their pointless, rambling stories; sometimes suggesting dietary or exercise regimens that might improve their well-being. Anything to feel useful. I changed a prescription on Old Man Morton, now the Home’s Oldest Resident, and was gratified to see him grow more alert. Sometimes you have to try different medications to find a treatment that works best for a particular individual.
Yet, somehow those days seemed empty. The astonishing thing to me was how little missed Mae Holloway was by the other residents. Oh, some of them asked after her politely. Jimmy did. But otherwise it was as if the woman had evaporated, leaving not even a void behind. Partly, I suspect, it was because they were unwilling to face up to this reminder of their own mortality. But partly, too, it must have been a sense of relief that her aloof and abrasive presence was gone. If she never had any friends, Mae had told me, she wouldn’t miss them when they were gone. But neither did they miss her.
I usually stopped at the hospital on my way home, sometimes to obtain a further tissue sample for Singer’s experiments, sometimes just to sit with her. Often, she was sedated to relieve the pain of the tumor. More usually, she was dreaming; adrift on the river of years, connected to our world and time by only the slenderest of threads.
When she was conscious, she would spin her reminiscences for me and sing. Rosalie, the Prairie Flower. Cape Ann. Woodsman, Spare that Tree. Ching a Ring Chaw. The Hunters of Kentucky. Wait for the Wagon. We agreed, Mae and I, that a wagon was just as suitable as a Chevrolet for courting pretty girls, and Phyllis and her wagon was the ancestor of Daisy and her bicycle, Lucille and her Oldsmobile, and Josephine and her flying machine. And someday, I suppose, Susie and her space shuttle.
It was odd to see Mae so at peace with her memories. She no longer feared them; no longer suppressed them. She no longer fled from them. Rather, she embraced them and passed them on to me. When she sang, Roisin the Beau, she remarked casually how James Polk had used its melody for a campaign song. She recollected without flinching that she had voted for Zachary Taylor. “Old Rough and Ready,” she said. “There was a man for you. ’Minds me some’at of that T.R. Too bad they pizened him, but he was out to break the slave power.” It gave her no pause to recall how at New Orleans, “There stood John Bull in martial pomp / And there stood Old Kentucky.” It must have been an awful relief to acknowledge those memories, to relax in their embrace.
There were fond memories of her “bean,” Green the Long Hunter. Of days spent farming or hunting or spinning woolen or cooking ’shine. Of nights spent ‘setting’ by the fire, smoking their pipes, reading to each other from the Bible. Quiet hours from a time before an insatiable demand for novelty—for something always to be happening—had consumed us. Green had even taken her down to Knoxville to see the touring company of The Gladiator, a stage play about Spartacus. Tales of slave revolts did not play well elsewhere in the South, but the mountaineers had no love for the wealthy flatland aristocrats.
She recalled meeting Walt Whitman, a fellow nurse in the Sanitary Commission. “A rugged fellow and all full of himself,” she recalled, “but as kind and gentle with the men as any of the women-folk.”
She still confused her son sometimes with a brother, with her father, with Green. He was younger, he was older, he was of her own age. But there were childhood memories, too, of the sort most parents have. How he had “spunked up with his gal,” “spooned with his chicken,” or “lollygagged with his peach,” depending on the slang of the decade. How they had “crossed the wide prairie” together after the War and set up a ranch in Wyoming Territory. How he met and wed Sweet Annie, a real “piece of calico.”
Not all the memories were pleasant—Sweet Annie had died screaming—but Mae relished them just the same. It was her life she was reclaiming, and a life consists of different parts, good and bad. The parts make up a whole. I continued to record her tales and tunes, as much because I did not know what else to do as because of any book plans, and I noticed that, while her doubling episodes often hopscotched through her life—triggered by associations and chance remarks—the music that played in her mind continued its slow and inexorable backward progression, spanning the 1840s and creeping gradually into the mid-thirties.
Slowly, a weird conviction settled on me. When the dates of her rememb-heard tunes finally reached 1800, she would die.
***
Time was running short. Most brain tumor patients did not survive a year from the time of first diagnosis; and Mae was so fragile to begin with that I doubted a whole year would be hers. Reports from Singer alternated between encouragement and frustration. Apparent progress would evaporate with a routine, follow-up test. Happenstance observation would open up a whole new line of inquiry. Singer submitted requests for additional cell samples almost daily. Blood, skin, liver. It seemed almost as if Mae might be used up entirely before Singer could pry loose the secret of her genes and splice that secret into my Deirdre.
I began to feel as if I were in a race with time. A weird sort of race in which time was speeding off in both directions. A young girl dying too old. An old woman dying too young.
One day, Wing was waiting for me when I entered the hospital. Seeing the flat look of concern on his face, my heart faltered. Not yet, I thought; not yet! My heart screeched, but I kept my own face composed. He took me aside into a small consultation room. Plaster walls with macro designs painted in happy, soothing colors. Comfortable chairs; green plants. An appallingly cheerful venue in which to receive bad news.
But it was not bad news. It was good news, of an odd and unexpected sort.
“Herpes?” I said when he had told me. “Herpes is a cure for brain tumors?” I couldn’t help it. I giggled.
Wing frowned. “Not precisely. Culver-Blaese is a new treatment and outside my field of specialty, but let me explain it as Maurice explained it to me.” Maurice LeFevre was the resident in genetic engineering, one of the first such residencies in the United States. “Several years ago,” said Wing, “Culver and Blaese successfully extracted the gene for the growth enzyme, thymidine kinase, from the herpes virus, and installed it into brain tumor cells using a harmless retrovirus.”
“I would think,” I said dryly, “that an enzyme that facilitates reproduction is the last thing a brain tumor needs spliced into its code.”
Wing blinked rapidly several times. “Oh, I’m sorry. You see it’s the ganciclovir. I didn’t make that clear?”
“Ganciclovir is—?”
“The chemical used to fight herpes. It reacts with thymidine kinase, and the reaction products interfere with cell reproduction. So if tumor cells start producing thymidine, injecting ganciclovir a few days later will gum up the tumor’s reproduction and kill it. There have been prom
ising results on mice and in an initial trial with twenty human patients.”
“What is ‘promising’?”
“Complete remission in seventy-five percent of the cases, and appreciable shrinkage in all of them.”
I sucked in my breath. I could hardly credit what Wing was telling me. Here was a treatment, a deus ex machina. Give Singer another year of live tissue experiments and he would surely find the breakthrough we sought. “What’s the catch?” I asked. There had to be a catch. There was always a catch.
There were two.
“First,” said Wing, “the treatment is experimental, so the insurance will not cover it. Second…Well, Mrs. Holloway has refused.”
“Eh? Refused? Why is that?”
Wing shook his head. “I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. I thought if I caught you before you went to see her…”
“That I could talk her into it?”
“Yes. The two of you are very close. I can see that.”
Close? Mae and I? If Wing could see that, those thick eyeglasses of his were more powerful than the Hubble telescope. Mae had not been close to anyone since her son died. Since her child died in her arms, an old, old man. Inwardly, I shuddered. No wonder she had never gotten close to anyone since. No wonder she had lost an entire era of her life.
“I’ll give it a try,” I said.
When I entered her room, Mae was lying quietly in her bed, humming softly. Awake, I knew, but not quite present. Her face was curled into a smile, the creases all twisted around in unwonted directions. There was an air about her, something halfway between sleep and joy, a calm that had inverted all those years of sourness, stood everything on its head, and changed all her minus signs to plus.
Setting on her cabin porch, I imagined, gazing down the hillside at the laurel hells, and at a distant, pristine stream meandering through the holler below. At peace. At last.
I pulled the visitor’s chair close by the bedside and laid a hand lightly on her arm. She didn’t stir. “Mae, it’s me. I’ve come to set a spell with you.”
“Howdy there, doc,” she whispered. “Oh, it’s such a lovely sunset. All heshed. I been telling Li’l Zach about the time his grandpap and Ol’ Hickory went off t’ fi’t the Creeks. I was already fourteen when Pa went off, so I minded the cabin while he was away.”
I leaned closer to her. “Mae, has Dr. Wing spoken to you about the new treatment?”
She took in a long, slow breath; and let it out as slowly. “Yes.”
“He told me you refused.”
“I surely did that.”
“Why?”
“Why?” She opened her eyes and looked at me; looked sadly around the room. “I been hanging on too long. It’s time to go home.”
“But—”
“And what would it git me, anyways. Another year? Six months? Doc, even if I am nigh on to two hunnert year, like you say, and my bone-box only thinks it’s a hunnert, that’s still older’n most folks git. Even if that Doctor LeFevre can do what he says and rid me of this hyar tumor, there’ll be a stroke afore long or my ticker’ll give out, or something. Doc, there ain’t no point to it. When I was young, when I was watching everyone I knew grow old and die, I wanted to go with them. I wanted to be with them. Why should I want to tarry now? If the Lord’ll have me, I’m ready.” She closed her eyes again and turned a little to the side.
“But, Mae…”
“And who’ll miss me, beside,” she muttered.
“I will.”
She rolled out flat again and looked at me. “You?”
“Yes. A little, I guess.”
She snorted. “You mean you’ll miss whatever you want that you’re wooling me over. Always jabbing me with needles, like I was a pincushion. There’s something gnawing away at you, Doc. I kin see it in your eyes when you think no one is looking. Kind of sad and angry and awful far away. I don’t know what it is, but I know I got something to do with it.”
I drew back under her speech. Her words were like slaps.
“And suppose’n they do it and they do git that thang outen my brain. Doc, what’ll happen to my music? What’ll happen to my memories?”
“I—”
“You done told me they come from that tumor a-pressing against the brain. What happens if it’s not pressin any longer?”
“The memories might stay, now that they’ve been started, even with the original stimulus removed. It might have been a ‘little stroke’ that started it, just like we thought originally.”
“But you can’t guarantee it, can you?” She fixed me with a stare until I looked away.
“No. No guarantees.”
“Then I don’t want it.” I turned back in time to see her face tighten momentarily into a wince.
“It will relieve the pain,” I assured her.
“Nothing will relieve the pain. Nothing. Because it ain’t that sort of pain. There’s my Pa, my Ma, Green, Little Zach and his Sweet Annie. Ben and Joe and all the others I would never let cozy up to me. They’re all waiting for me over in Gloryland. I don’t know why the Good Man has kept me here so long. H’isn’t punishment for killing Ma. I know that now. There must be a reason for it; but I’m a-weary of the waiting. If’n I have this operation like you want, what difference will it make? A few months? Doc, I won’t live those months in silence.”
My Chloe has dimples and smiles, I must own;
But, though she could smile, yet in truth she could frown.
But tell me, ye lovers of liquor divine,
Did you e’er see a frown in a bumper of wine?
***
There is something about the ice cold shock of a perfect martini. The pine tree scent of the gin. The smooth liquid sliding down the throat. Then, a half second later, wham! It hits you. And in that half second, there is an hour of insight; though, sometimes, that hour comes very late at night. You can see with the same icy clarity of the drink. You can see the trail of choices behind you. Paths that led up rocky pitches; paths beside still waters. You can see where the paths forked, where, had you turned that way instead of this, you’d not be here today. You can even, sometimes, see where, when the paths forked, people took different trails.
“Paul!”
And you can wonder whether you can ever find that fork again.
I turned to see Brenda drop her briefcase on the sofa. “Paul! I never see you drinking.”
Subtext: Do you drink a lot in secret when I can’t see you? Sub-subtext: Are you an alcoholic? Holding a conversation with Brenda was a challenge. Her words were multi-layered; and you never knew on which layer to answer.
I placed my martini glass, still half-full, carefully down upon the sideboard, beside the others. It spilled a little as I did, defying the laws of gravity. I faced her squarely. “I’m running out of time,” I said.
She looked at me for a moment. Then she said, “That’s right. I’d wondered if you knew.”
“I’m running out of time,” I repeated. “She’ll die before I know.”
“She…” Brenda pulled her elbows in tight against her sides. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“That old woman. To live so long, only to die just now.”
“The old woman from the home? She has you upset? For God’s sake, Paul.” And she turned away from me.
“You don’t understand. She could save Dee-dee.”
Brenda’s head jerked a little to the left. Then she retrieved her briefcase and shook herself all over, as if preparing to leave. “How can a dying old woman save a dying old girl?”
“She’s yin to Dee-dee’s yang. The universe is neutral. There’s a plus sign for every minus. But she wants to go over Jordan and I…can’t stop her. And I don’t understand why I can’t.”
“You’re not making any sense, Paul. How many of those have you had?”
“She’s two centuries old, Brenda. Two centuries old. She was a swinger and a sheba and a daisy and a pippin. She hears songs, in her head; but sometimes they’re wrong, except
they’re right. The words are different. Older. Old Zip Coon, instead of Turkey in the Straw. Lovely Fan’, instead of Buffalo Gals. Bright Mohawk Valley, instead of Red River Valley. She read Moral Physiology, when it first came out. Mae did. Do you know the book? Moral Physiology, by Robert Dale Owen? No, of course not. It was all about birth control and it sold twenty-five thousand copies even though newspapers and magazines refused to carry the ads and it was published in 18-god-damned-30. She voted for Zachary Taylor, and her Pa fought in the Creek War, and her husband died at Resaca, and she saw Abraham-fucking-Lincoln—”
“Paul, can you hear yourself? You’re talking crazy.”
“Did you know The Gladiator debuted in New York in 1831? ‘Ho! slaves, arise! Freedom…Freedom and revenge!’” I struck a pose, one fist raised.
“I can’t stand to watch you like this, Paul. You’re sopping drunk.”
“And you’re out late every night.” Which was totally irrelevant to our discussion, but the tongue has a life of its own.
Through teeth clenched tight, she answered: “I have a job to keep.”
I took a step away from the sideboard, and there must have been something wrong with the floorboards. Perhaps the support beams had begun to sag, because the floor suddenly tilted. I grabbed for the back of the armchair. The lamp beside it wobbled and I grabbed it with my other hand to keep it still.
Awkwardly twisted, half bent over, I looked at Brenda and spoke distinctly. “Mae Holloway is two centuries old. There is something in her genes. We think. Singer and Peeler and I. We think that with enough time. With enough time. Singer and Peeler can crack the secret. They can tailor a…Tailor a…” I hunted for the right word, found it scuttling about on the floor and snatched it. “Nanomachine.” Triumph. “Tailor a nanomachine that can repair Dee-dee’s cells. But Mae is dying. She has a brain tumor, and it’s killing her. There’s a treatment. An experimental treatment. It looks very good. But Mae won’t take it. She doesn’t want it. She wants to sleep.”
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