Aisle of the Dead

by Joseph E. Wright

  Beatrice handed a worn, dirty card to Miss Witherspoon who proceeded to copy the numbers.

  “I’m gonna be sixty-five come next month,” Beatrice said with almost unbearable pride. “All I wanna know now is how much I’m gonna get ev’ry month.” She waited patiently, seated on the edge of her chair, her hands resting on the top of the simulated leather vinyl pocketbook, which she held firmly on her lap. She was positive, after working so hard for so many years, that it would be a handsome amount. Miss Witherspoon did some magical tricks with the computer in front of her.

  It was less than a quarter of an hour later that Beatrice came out into the blinding sun on Arch Street, stunned, unable to feel, unable to think where she was walking.

  “Them bastards, them bastards,” she kept repeating. “Why dint they tell me? Why dint they tell me? Not a one a’them, not a word. And they knew I was lookin’ forward ta this day. Why dint they tell me?”

  None of the employers for whom she had cleaned had ever deducted from her salary or paid a penny towards her social security benefits. Miss D. Witherspoon had informed her that since there was no record of her having worked, and that she had not been married to Herbert Mulrooney for ten years, she was entitled to nothing each and every month until the day she died.

  Life had finally given Beatrice Mulrooney nee O’Brien the hardest kick in the ass of all. Bitterness was now hers.

  She stopped cleaning apartments and stayed home every day, too broken to face those people she had worked for for so many years. She had saved only a few dollars and that she used to eat: cheap food that put the weight on her. With what little she had left, she paid her utility bills. She neglected herself. Her teeth rotted away and her face became blotchy, red patches on her cheeks and fine red lines on her nose. She didn’t bother to brush her hair. The money ran out and the gas and electric were turned off. The old house was paid for, but she found out it was practically worthless. Now the City wanted its taxes. She was told she was to be evicted from her own house, the house where she had been born sixty-eight years ago.

  She did not own a suitcase. She took a few of the plastic grocery bags she kept under the kitchen sink and filled them with her best clothing, meager as it was, a second pair of shoes, and although the weather was getting warmer every day, her heavy winter coat. She hit the streets one morning and began walking. Before ten o’clock, her feet were too sore for her to go on. She was on Sycamine Street, leaning against an iron fence. The sun was beating down on her. The tree in the garden beyond the fence looked so very inviting. She went in through the gate and headed for the cement bench. It felt like heaven to sit. She slipped off her shoes and leaned back, the coolness of the tree enveloping her. She dozed off.

  She was brought back to reality by the blasting of a taxi horn. At first, she didn’t recognize this garden, then floods of memory washed over her. It was Saint Alban’s, the church where her grandmother used to take her on Sunday mornings whenever she could. The place was neglected. Someone should take care of it, she told herself. She got up and went over to a patch of wild violets, which were being choked by ivy. She began weeding, and before she knew it, the sun was going down. She was hungry. She had her last three dollars in her pocket. She’d have to be careful, she knew, if she was to make it last a few days more. After that…? She would not think about that.

  The next day, she repeated her chores in the garden of Saint Alban’s. On the third day, as she was down on all fours pulling weeds from under a pair of holly trees, a voice startled her. She turned around to see a man with gray hair totally dressed in black. For a moment, she thought it was the Grim Reaper come to take her.

  “I’m Father Sieger,” the figure told her. “What’s your name?”

  She crawled backwards until she cleared the lower branches of the bushes, and tried to push herself up with the aid of a broken spade. The priest reached down and took her elbow, helping her to her feet. “Beatrice Mulrooney,” she replied, then added, “An’ who be you?”

  He introduced himself a second time, then suggested they sit for a while on the stone bench. Before long, he had the story of Beatrice’s life--at least her version of it.

  “We couldn’t hire a gardener,” he told her. “But there is some money in an endowment for the garden. Most of it goes to replace things that die because no one takes care of them. I don’t see why we couldn’t give you a few dollars to tend it. Heaven knows, it needs a kind hand taken to it.”

  That was how Beatrice came to work in Saint Alban’s garden. Each evening, she left the garden and went home to an abandoned shell of a house on Fitzwater Street. She did this for almost six months, through the balance of the summer and well into autumn. One afternoon, as she crossed Spruce Street, lost in thought about what she would do when she got “home”--the temperature was already down in the thirties and with no heat and only two blankets she had found in someone’s trash, she feared she might die from the cold during the night--a man bumped into her, sending her against a telephone pole.

  “Hey!” she shouted at him. “Watch where ya goin’!” She had seen this man before. He was tall, well over six-three, but bent over, with white hair and always seemed not to know where he was going. “What’s the matta with ya? Blind or somethin’?”

  “Yes,” he said, quietly, simply.

  “Huh? What d’ya say?”

  “Yes, madame, I am blind.”

  “Hey, who ya callin’ a madame?” Beatrice had never spoken to a man with a voice such as his: golden, soft, and resonant, with an accent she could not identify.

  “It is not my intention, ma--lady--to offend. I have suffered the misfortune of being blind these past twenty-odd years.” He bowed slightly, more or less in Beatrice’s direction.

  “Well, ya oughtta have a dog or at least a white cane,” she said, her belligerent tone softening.

  “Dogs are expensive to feed. I had a cane, but some ruffians thought it was humorous to take it away from me.”

  “Then how d’ya get around? I mean, don’t ya…?”

  “Precisely, just as I did to you. I bump into everything.”

  “Where ya headed now?”

  “Home. It’s only three blocks away. I went to the store for some provisions, as you can see.” He held up a plastic shopping bag.

  “Ya gotta cross some streets, and the traffic, it’s heavy. C’mon, ya might’s well walk with me.”

  Beatrice and the gentleman continued along Spruce Street, she telling him when to get out of the way of other pedestrians and taking his arm each time they had to step down off or up onto the curbs. She saw him to his apartment, a third floor walk-up on 20th Street. It consisted of two rooms: a living room with a kitchen set in an alcove and a small bedroom with a single bed in it.

  “Please, stay and have some tea with me,” he urged.

  She sat down, mystified as she watched him prepare tea, never missing a movement in the process.

  “Ya manage a’right here, I see,” she commented.

  “Oh, yes, I’m completely at home here in my little apartment.”

  “How d’ya pay for it? Got a job?”

  “Dear me, no. I do have a small pension and I have a son. He sends me a few dollars from time to time. He doesn’t have much himself, you see, what with three children to support. I get along quite well, nevertheless. And yourself?”

  Beatrice was of too simple a nature to lie about such things. It would never occur to her to dissemble the truth, not even for appearances sake. She told him how she lived and where.

  “Oh, my dear, dear woman. And to think I thought I had troubles. You mustn’t go back to that… that hovel. You shall stay here this night. It is already freezing cold outside. I insist. I shall fix us some dinner. It won’t be anything fancy, but--”

  “Don’t you think I’m staying here!” she snapped and jumped up. “I wasn’t brought up like that, to stay with a strange man.”

  “I assure you it would be quite proper,” he insisted as he tie
d an apron behind him. “No question of impropriety of any kind. You may take the sofa. It’s quite comfortable. And once I fall asleep, I don’t waken until morning.”

  Beatrice sat down. How, she wondered, was she going to resist this temptation? He was a gentleman, that much was certain. Besides, he was blind. It would be all right to stay with him. Being blind, he couldn’t do anything wrong, right? With the convoluted reasoning to make a casuist blush, she came to the conclusion there could be nothing improper about her spending just this one night with this blind gentleman in his warm apartment, even if she didn’t know his….

  “Say, what’s your name?”

  “Desmond. Desmond Whitesall. Don’t laugh. Most people nowadays do, you know. And most people call me David. That’s my middle name.”

  “I wouldn’ laugh,” she said. “Des… mond.” She savored the two syllables. “That’s a pretty name. Des… mond.”

  The one night spent in Desmond’s apartment turned into a winter spent in Desmond’s apartment. He did not have a television. Each evening after dinner, they would sit and talk. Actually Desmond would talk and Beatrice would listen as he told her of his days in New York as an actor in radio when he was in shows like The Shadow and Lights Out and Suspense, and later in early television on Playhouse 90, and how he once appeared on Milton Berle’s show. Beatrice enjoyed doing his food shopping. Sometimes he went with her and as they walked up and down the aisles, she pretended to herself they were married.

  The summer came and he insisted it was too hot for her to live on the streets. His two small rooms had a window air conditioner and Beatrice had to admit she enjoyed coming home from working in Saint Alban’s garden to the coolness of Desmond’s apartment. The next winter came and the winter after that and still Beatrice and Desmond shared the small apartment on 20th Street.

  “I can tell you’re a most beautiful woman,” he said to her one evening for no apparent reason. “I can’t see with these eyes of mine, but I assure you I have had years in which to learn who is beautiful and who is not. You must be exceptionally beautiful.”

  Beatrice giggled.

  A few weeks before Father Paul’s death, Desmond’s son, Dudley, appeared on the scene. He was shocked by what he found: his father, whom he had not seen for a number of years, was living with a woman. Being a good Bible-reading Christian, Dudley immediately decided this sinfulness would have to come to an end. Such happiness his father now seemed to have couldn’t possibly be right. Dudley demanded his father return with him to Baltimore to live with him and his wife and their three children. Desmond was equally adamant that he would not leave Philadelphia and Beatrice.

  Dudley discovered that Beatrice worked at Saint Alban’s. “I once met the rector of that church,” he told his father. “He’ll agree that you should return with me.”

  Dudley went to Saint Alban’s rectory and was admitted by Father Paul who explained the rector was out, but offered to help.

  “I got to know Father Sieger a few years ago,” Dudley explained to Father Paul, and related how they had met at the church’s national convention. “We had a most interesting chat, the two of us. Most interesting, indeed.”

  Unwittingly, Father Paul fell into the trap of becoming Dudley’s ally.

  “I’m sure you’ll agree with me, Father, that it is unwise for my father, being totally blind, not to be with me and my wife. We can provide a good home for him. True, he’d have to share one of the boy’s bedrooms, but in the long run….”

  Father Paul innocently agreed that it was, indeed, difficult for a blind person to function alone in a large city. That was all Dudley needed. He hurried back to the apartment on 20th Street and began packing his father’s belongings, quoting Father Paul as the ultimate authority on the subject. As an irrefutable final argument, Dudley none too subtly mentioned that if his father did not return with him, Desmond could expect no more money coming to him in the future.

  The next morning, a saddened and defeated Desmond got into the back seat of his son’s car, surrounded by his three grandchildren, headed towards familial bliss in the small housing development his daughter-in-law liked to call “Superb-i-a.” To make Desmond’s joy complete, she turned around and told him as they drove away, “You’ll just love Superb-i-a. We have a mall with not one but two movie houses and a huge supermarket and our two older boys are in Little League and our church has a social every month and there’s a senior citizen center a short walk from our house where they have bingo twice a week.” Her voice trailed on as Desmond leaned his head back and wondered what Beatrice would do now.

  Beatrice did the only thing she could do, since she no longer had a home. She once again took to the streets. She did not blame Desmond for leaving. She didn’t even blame his son for taking him away. The only person, she knew in her heart, to blame for what had happened to her was The Reverend Paul Mowbray.

  CHAPTER XIII

  “Need I ask why we really came here?” Phillis said as she followed Pat through the revolving doors.

  “For one thing, I want to get some things for the party we’re having next month.”

  “Right. Which reminds me: I could use a new outfit.”

  “Never mind the new outfit.”

  “You couldn’t possibly have another reason, could you?” she mumbled as they went through the jewelry department on the first floor.

  They crossed the center court with the large marble pillars along each side. She never went through without staring upwards at the ceiling several floors above. She could remember as a child her mother used to take her each Christmas season to see the show put on in the court with the world-famous organ and the fountain displays. She thought of her mother now, buried in that grave in North Philadelphia, and of how much she missed her and of all the things she, Phillis, could now have done for the woman who had had a sad life, separated from Phillis’ father because of social snobbery. They went towards a counter at the far end of that floor.

  “Women’s cosmetics,” Phillis said too loudly. “I wonder who…?”

  They stopped at a counter where the clerk was busy with an elderly woman who barely came up to the top of the counter and was having trouble making up her mind over the purchase of a pair of false eyelashes. The salesperson was a young man with outlandishly bleached blonde hair. It was obvious he was not enjoying his work. He saw Pat out of the corner of his eye and nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Hi, Ralphy Baby,” Pat said to the clerk after the woman left with her purchase.

  “Well, this is a surprise! What are you doing in this department? You don’t need false eyelashes,” Ralphy Baby said as he reached over the counter and hugged Pat. “And don’t tell me, this is…?”

  “I’m the long, lost sister,” Phillis said.

  “And we interrupted our vacation just to come here and see you,” Pat said.

  “Sure. And I’m about to become president of the National Rifle Association.”

  “Can you get away for a few minutes?”

  Ralph looked around. “You look serious. I can take an early lunch. Meet me upstairs in the restaurant on the third floor. I won’t be long.”

  It was ten minutes later that Pat and Phillis, seated at a table in a far corner, saw Ralph approach the hostess stand and look around. Pat signaled to him.

  “It really is great seeing you again, and meeting the mysterious young woman I heard so much about,” Ralph said as he joined them. “I bet you’re working on a big case, right? Knew it! Honestly, you guys lead the most interesting lives. All that ever happens to me is getting to hold some ninety-year-old woman’s hand as I tell her the false eyelashes she’s about to purchase will make her look eighty again. You probably want some information, right? Thought so. Let’s have it. Who you trying to find this time?”

  “Sherrill Rothe,” Pat said.

  “Make it something difficult,” Ralph said as he unfolded his napkin.

  “You know him?” Phillis asked, a bit astonished.

 
“If your brother hasn’t already told you, I don’t pretend to know everyone in this city, but I do get around. And, besides, Philadelphia’s the world’s largest village. That’s why you two are here today. You know I know three-quarters of the gay population of this city. Only Mary the Hat knew more people than I do and now that she’s no longer with us, I guess that makes me King--if you’ll pardon my using that word. I really should charge you for my wealth of information. What do you want to know about him?”

  “First of all, to make sure we’re talking about the same guy.” Pat took out the photograph they found in Father Mowbray’s desk, and pushed it across the table towards him.

  “That’s your boy. Obviously taken at Asbury Park.”

  “What’s he up to these days?”

  “Been having an affair with a priest, last I heard, the one who got himself murdered a couple days ago. You heard about it? Of course, how stupid of me. That’s why you’re here, right?”

  “In a way,” Pat admitted. “The guy in the photograph with Sherrill is Father Mowbray of Saint Alban’s, the one who was killed. What we really need to know is what kind of person is Sherrill? Honest? Decent sort? Or….”

  “Sherrill’s okay. Got his faults. Besides me, who doesn’t? I’d trust him. Tough break, having your lover murdered. Wonder how Sherrill’s taking it?”

  “The police have him in custody as we speak, and they’ll probably try to hang the killing on him.”

  “Oh, hey! Not Sherrill! I said he had his faults, but he’s no killer, you can bet your ass on that. A few years ago, he was dating Frank Zahn, a good friend of mine. I got to know Sherrill a bit. He and Frank are still best friends. Sherrill’s been known to drink a bit too much at times, but don’t we all. Murder? Don’t you believe it!”

  “That’s what we wanted to hear,” Pat said. “Know anything about this Father Mowbray?”

  “Frank Zahn was talking about him only a few nights ago. A few of us were at the bar where Frank works and Sherrill’s name came up. Frank mentioned this priest and said he was a great guy and how lucky Sherrill was to have someone like him. The two of them, Sherrill and that priest, were planning on going away for a couple of weeks next month when they both had some vacation time coming to them. This must be a real kick in the ass to Sherrill.”