All the Dead Lie Down

by Mary Willis Walker

  She’ll leave it in the hands of fate, right where it’s always been anyhow.

  RIDE A COCK-HORSE TO BANBURY CROSS,

  TO SEE AN OLD LADY UPON A WHITE HORSE.

  RINGS ON HER FINGERS AND BELLS ON HER TOES,

  SHE SHALL HAVE MUSIC WHEREVER SHE GOES.

  —MOTHER GOOSE

  It was the land of the living dead.

  Eyes as faded and vacant as milk-glass marbles, they sat staring at motes of dust drifting through shafts of rosy evening sunlight. Their skeletal, blue-veined hands plucked at their clothes or at the blankets across their laps or at any warm-blooded creature passing within their range. This common room with its chintz-covered wicker furniture and big-screen TV was the antechamber to eternity, where the half-dead, slumped in wheelchairs, waited for whatever was to come next. Molly Cates hoped that eternity would prove more interesting for them than the assisted living wing of the Regency Oaks Senior Care Center in Lubbock, Texas.

  As she walked down the hallway toward Harriet Cates’s private room, she steeled herself against the familiar waves of guilt. It was more than three months since her last visit. And the only reason she was here now was that she wanted something. She was a piss-poor excuse for a niece, negligent and squeamish, repelled, in spite of her efforts not to be, by sickness and decay. Her repugnance, she acknowledged, was born of fear: this place was her worst nightmare. These frail, helpless old people filled her with dread for her own future, her own vulnerability, her own inevitable losses. Maybe she would grow up someday and come to terms with death, but she would never come to terms with incontinence and senility. Never. She turned the corner and came to a stop outside room 136.

  The door stood open and the last rays of daylight streamed in from the west-facing window. The hospital bed with its crisp white sheets was so expertly made that even the Harriet Cates of old, the perfectionist whose house stood ready day and night just in case House Beautiful should arrive to photograph it, would have approved. The cream-colored linoleum floor was sparkling clean and a fresh yellow rose stood in a cut-glass vase on the night table. This place, Molly conceded, was as good as nursing homes got; she’d chosen it herself, mainly because they managed, somehow, to avoid the usual urine and disinfectant reek, and Aunt Harriet had always been particularly fastidious about odors. In the hallway the only discernible smell was of chicken cooking.

  In a chrome wheelchair next to the window sat Harriet Cates Cavanaugh. She looked thinner than she had three months before. Her head was tipped back slightly and on her face was an expression of pure bliss. Behind her stood a nurse’s aide gently brushing the old woman’s sparse yellowish-white hair. Molly had to swallow twice before she could find her voice. “There you are, Aunt Harriet.” She walked in slowly, watching her aunt’s face closely for some spark of recognition. On her last visit, Molly had stayed for several hours and had dinner in the dining room during which they’d talked about the food and her aunt’s pains and the weather, but she’d left uncertain whether Harriet had known who she was.

  She bent and kissed her aunt’s cheek. Under her lips, the skin felt as dry and ridged as corrugated paper, dead and loose, as if it had separated from the supply of warm blood underneath and was being sloughed off. It seemed to Molly that the old woman’s journey toward death had been a piece-by-piece shedding of body parts—teeth, hair, a breast, muscles, brain cells, and now skin. What continued to surprise Molly was how much of your original body you could live without—all those things you once believed essential.

  The old woman turned her face toward Molly. The eyes that had once been large and dark and almond-shaped, snapping with irony and opinion, just like her younger brother’s, were now cloudy and nearly obscured by hanging folds of cracked skin like some prehistoric lizard’s. But Molly thought she glimpsed a response there—a slight narrowing of the eyes and a squeezing together of the eyebrows. She was staring at Molly with the intent, unsettled, dour look of someone trying hard to remember past grudges.

  “Aunt Harriet, hi. How are you?” Molly squatted down, took her aunt’s fragile hands in hers. “It’s so good to see you.”

  Harriet said nothing, but Molly thought the corners of her aunt’s mouth curled up just an iota.

  Molly glanced up at the nurse’s aide, a young black woman with smooth tight skin over plump cheeks. “Miz Cavanaugh’s been waitin’ on you all day,” the woman drawled. “We been telling her you coming, and she’s been real excited.”

  “Really?” Molly was never sure how much of what the staff here said about the patients was sensitive observation and how much of it was wishful thinking, like anthropomorphizing animals to make them more lovable. She looked at her aunt’s knit brow and narrowed eyes: somewhere behind those dulled eyes did the real Harriet Cates Cavanaugh still live? Maybe all her memories were still there intact, bundled up inside that Alzheimer’s mess of neurofibroid tangles, waiting for Molly to tap into them. If she just knew how. The phone call, for example, the one Harriet made to her brother a week before he died, the call that changed him, caused him to break his engagement. Surely something that important was still in her memory bank. What had they talked about? Why had she never told Molly about it?

  “Really?” Molly repeated. “She was excited I was coming?” Then she looked back at Harriet apologetically. It was inexcusable to talk about someone as if they weren’t there, even if they were senile, but she felt desperate to know what she could expect, if she had a prayer of getting what she came for.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” the nurse said. “Real excited. She said you was her niece and she wanted to look good when you came.” She patted the old woman on the head. “Wanted to get yourself pretty for your niece, didn’t you, sweetheart?” She slipped a pink ribbon under Harriet’s thin hair at the back of the neck and, with one smooth movement, tied it in a bow on top of her head. “Now don’t she look pretty!” she said, stepping back and surveying the old woman in the wheelchair.

  Molly looked at the ridiculous pink bow perched on top of her aunt’s head. This was an indignity Harriet, the real Harriet, that striking woman with sleek black hair and flawless taste, would never have allowed. She had always dressed simply and elegantly in dark colors—no ruffles, no frills, and no pink bows, for God’s sake.

  “Really?” Molly felt like a broken record. “She said her niece was coming?”

  “She sure did.” The nurse put the brush back in the dresser drawer. “I’ll leave you two ladies to it. Have a real nice visit. We hope you’ll stay for supper. It’s at six. Miz Cavanaugh will tell you what’s on the menu.”

  “Thanks,” Molly said, standing up.

  After the nurse left, Molly drew the door shut, pulled the room’s one chair close to the wheelchair, and sat facing her aunt, who had not once taken her eyes off Molly’s face. Molly reached out and picked up the frail dry hands. “Aunt Harriet, it’s me, Molly.”

  The old woman nodded.

  “That’s right. I came to see you. And I need to ask you something important.”

  Harriet withdrew her hands from Molly’s grasp. She held them out in front of her, palms down. “Where’s my ring?” she asked in the rich contralto of her old self, only slightly shaky. “Do you know where it is?”

  “Your diamond ring, you mean? Your engagement ring?”

  “My diamond ring.” She lowered her voice. “I think they stole it.”

  “No, Aunt Harriet, they didn’t steal it. It’s in your lock-box—for safekeeping. You remember when you came here it was one of the rules: all valuables have to be kept in the lockbox in the office. Your good watch and some of your other jewelry are there too.”

  “Where’s my ring?”

  “In the lockbox. We can get it out after we talk. You could wear it to dinner if you want.” Harriet nodded.

  “It sure is good to see you and hear your voice, Aunt Harriet. I hope they’re taking good care of you here. Are they?”

  Harriet squinted and looked confused. Finally she patte
d her hair and said, “They fix my hair for me.”

  “Is there anything you need? Anything I can do for you?”

  There was no response.

  Molly looked into the hooded eyes. “Well, Aunt Harriet, there’s something you can do for me.” As soon as she said it, she realized how much a part of their lifelong pattern this was. It had always been Molly in need of something—a place to stay, a loan, a car, a shoulder to cry on, someone to take care of her daughter, comfort, support—she had always needed something.

  “As usual,” Molly said with a rueful smile, “I’ve come because I need something from you. Hasn’t that always been the way? I come back to you when I need something.”

  Harriet nodded in a matter-of-fact way, as if acknowledging that it was the proper course of things.

  “You remember Franny Lawrence, don’t you?”

  Harriet looked vacant.

  “The woman Daddy was going to marry, at Lake Travis. Franny. Well, I was talking to her and she told me something I hadn’t known. She said that, a week before Daddy disappeared, she was at the houseboat with him. He got a phone call and it was from you. You called Daddy and told him something, maybe that someone from Lubbock was coming to see him. It might have had to do with some old business. You remember that?”

  Harriet’s eyebrows moved closer together, as if she were thinking hard, trying to remember. It gave Molly a faint ray of hope.

  “You remember that phone call?” Molly prodded.

  Harriet pursed her lips.

  “Franny says Daddy changed after that. So I wondered who it was who came to see him. I’d really like to know that, Aunt Harriet.”

  Harriet didn’t speak.

  “You’re the only one I can ask, the only one who knows. Please tell me. Please try to remember.”

  The line of concentration between Harriet’s eyebrows deepened, as if she were making a supreme effort. “They told me what it was.”

  Molly was electrified. “Who told you? What?”

  Harriet looked up to the ceiling, as if searching for the answer there.

  “Let me help you remember,” Molly said, excited, eager to jar loose some more words. “It was May of 1970, a year after we’d moved from Lubbock. Remember? You were unhappy we’d left, lonesome. Uncle Donald had died two years before and Daddy tried to get you to move to Austin to be closer to us, but you decided to stay in Lubbock in your old house. I was a junior in high school. Remember? We talked on the phone a lot. I was sixteen and I had a boyfriend, and you used to warn me about being careful. Remember?”

  “I think so,” she murmured with a faraway look.

  Molly’s pulse raced. It was working. “It was May and I was being inducted into the National Honor Society, and Daddy asked you to come, but you said no because you were planning to come for his wedding in just a few weeks. Daddy was going to marry Franny Lawrence. Remember? He was so happy and so much in love. And you kept telling me I needed to be nice to Franny because she was a very nice woman who loved Daddy, and she was going to be my stepmother whether I liked it or not, but I wasn’t nice. And you know something, Aunt Harriet? You were right. She was a very nice woman.”

  Molly was excited because the old woman’s eyes had come alive with interest and response. Talking to her about it was working. “But after that phone call, Daddy broke his engagement to Franny. He said he couldn’t marry her or any one. Why not? What happened? What did you talk about? Would the date help? I figured it out. It would have been May 14.” Molly stopped to catch her breath.

  Harriet’s face was suddenly animated, her mouth open, eyes shining.

  “The phone call,” Molly said. “You’re remembering it.”

  Harriet put her fingers to her temples.

  “What did you and Daddy talk about? What?”

  Harriet suddenly lifted her hands in the air and opened her eyes wide, as if she were miming a person having an idea. “Oh, yes!” she said.

  Molly’s heart hammered her ribs. “Yes—?”

  “Fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Peach cobbler. They told me and I remembered.”

  “What?”

  “For dinner. Things you like.”

  Molly exhaled slowly. She could not believe this. “Dinner?”

  “Stay.” Harriet reached out and gripped Molly’s wrist with her clawlike hand. “Please stay.”

  All this time the old woman had been trying to remember the goddamn dinner menu, not the phone call. Molly felt like taking her by the shoulders and shaking her until the memory Molly needed came unstuck.

  “Yes,” Molly said slowly, “of course I’ll stay.” She needed to get control of herself. Trying to hector this poor senile old woman into remembering something she didn’t remember was stupid. Worse! It was cruel. But this was the last chance. Each time Molly came to visit, Harriet was more confused and disoriented. Now the fog of senility was poised to engulf her totally. Molly could see it hovering behind her aunt.

  It was now or never.

  She had to try.

  Molly looked into the dark, hooded eyes. “You remember I like fried chicken and peach cobbler. And you remember the dinner menu they told you, right?”

  Harriet cocked her head, listening.

  “So you can remember when it’s important to you. I think you can remember that phone call, too. And the other phone calls after that, the week before Daddy died. You can do it if you try. Like you did with the fried chicken just now.”

  Harriet was watching her intently, the skin on her forehead cracked into a web of anxiety.

  “Now, Aunt Harriet,” Molly said, “let me walk you through it. You were in Lubbock. You called Vernon at the houseboat, his office number. It was May, and Vernon was planning to get married in two weeks. They’d just told us. Remember what a surprise that was?”

  Harriet nodded.

  Molly felt her pulse race; of course she remembered. It was just a matter of extracting it. “You talked to him on the phone and—”

  “At two,” Harriet said wistfully, “he could talk like a grownup. He could sing the whole alphabet song. I taught him. I taught it to you, too, and then … Jo.” She had to grope for the name. “Jo Beth, yes. Vern, then Molly, then Jo Beth. But he was quickest.” Her face was infused with the pleasure of a warm memory. “We sat on the porch in the big rocking chair. And he sang on tune. The smartest little boy I ever saw.”

  “Yes, he was smart. He was forty-five, though, when you made that phone call. The week before he died. Remember?”

  The smile faded from her face. She was remembering. Just a little more pushing and she might get there. “We’d been living there a year and this was the week before he disappeared. It was awful—that five days he was missing. And then they found him in the lake. Remember?”

  Harriet began to hum low in her throat. It took awhile, but Molly finally recognized it as the alphabet song. “H-I-J-K-L-M-N-0-P,” she hummed.

  Molly was desperate not to lose the ground she’d gained; she went on talking right over the humming. “What about the week before he disappeared? Franny says Daddy was depressed and you and Parnell talked about him going to see a psychiatrist. Parnell says so too. You never told me that, Aunt Harriet. How come?”

  “He was so smart he skipped first grade. Did you know that? The first week they saw he could read and all, so they put him ahead a year. And I taught him. I was the one taught him to read. And write. I taught him cursive. I saved all his papers he brought home—A’s and gold stars mostly. Mama and Papa didn’t bother with that much, but I did. I saved all his drawings and stories, everything he ever wrote, even later on. And he always told me everything that happened at school and I—”

  Molly had heard all this hundreds of times; she was sick of it. “I know. You were such a good big sister. You two were very close. But later when he was a grown man and we moved away from Lubbock—that’s what I want to know about. The last week of his life. Help me, Aunt Harriet. Help me one last time.”

  “H
e was so smart in school. He could have done anything he wanted. But it’s hard to settle on just one thing when you’re so smart. At six he was reading chapter books and by eight—”

  “I know,” Molly interrupted, “by eight he was reading Sir Walter Scott.” Tears of frustration welled up. “You always tell me how wonderful he was. Tell me something I don’t know. Tell me about his other women. Did he do that while my mother was still alive? Tell me about his failures, his money problems, his drinking, his depressions. You never talk about those things, Aunt Harriet. Tell me about his writing. Was he good at it?” She was losing control. She felt like screaming, kicking, demanding what she had every right to know. “For God’s sake,” she hissed, “tell me. Help me while you still can.”

  Harriet squinted as if in pain from a splitting headache. “Bad things. I don’t think about the bad things and you shouldn’t either. He was a good man. And the smartest little boy.” She began to wring her hands, a gesture she’d begun making about a year ago when she was exceptionally frustrated and stressed. “Don’t think about the end.”

  “Everyone gives me that advice. But I need to know. Tell me just one thing—about that phone call. That’s the thing I really need to know. Please tell me and then we won’t think about it anymore. Okay?”

  Harriet’s hand-wringing accelerated. It made Molly’s nerves jump and twitch. It made her talk faster, push harder. “He answered the phone,” she mimed putting a phone to her ear, “and you said, ‘Hi, Vern,’ and maybe he said that Franny was there with him and you said … what?”

  Harriet squeezed her eyes closed as if she were expecting a blow to fall.

  Molly leaned forward so she was just inches from her aunt. “What did you say? You must remember.” Her voice was rising, but she couldn’t stop it. Maybe it took some volume to break through those dense tangles in that shrunken brain. “What? What did you say to him?”

  Harriet’s face was scrunched into a mask of misery. From under her closed lids a few fat tears slid out and slowly ran down the deep crevasses in her cheeks.