The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  I stood for some moments at the door to the kitchen, jiggling the car keys in my hand. Then, instead of entering the house, I turned and left the garage through the backyard door. I had seen the second story light on as I came down the street. Deirdre’s room. Tonight, for some reason, I couldn’t face going inside just yet.

  The back yard was a gloom of emerald and jade. The house blocked the glare of the street lamps, conceding just enough light to tease shape from shadow. I walked slowly through the damp grass toward the back of the lot. Glowing clouds undulated in the water of the swimming pool, as if the ground had opened up and swallowed the night sky. Only a few stars poked through the overcast. Polaris? Sirius? I had no way of knowing. I doubted that half a dozen people in the township knew the stars by name; or perhaps even that they had names. We have become strangers to our skies.

  At the back of the lot, the property met a patch of woodland—a bit of unofficial greenbelt, undeveloped because it was inaccessible from the road. Squirrels lived there, and blue jays and cardinals. And possum and skunk, too. I listened to the rustle of the night dwellers passing through the carpet of dead leaves. Through the trees I could make out the lights of the house opposite. Distant music and muffled voices. Henry and Barbara Carter were throwing a party.

  That damned old woman. Damn all of them. Shambling, crackling, brittle, dried-out old husks, clinging fingernail-tight to what was left of life.…

  I jammed my hands in my pockets and stood there. For how long, I do not know. It might have been five minutes or half an hour. Finally the light on the second floor went out. Then I turned back to the house and reentered through the garage. The right-hand stall was still empty.

  * * *

  Consuela sat at the kitchen table near the French doors, cradling a ceramic mug shaped like an Olmec head. Half the live-in nurses in the country are Latin; and half of those are named Consuela. The odor of cocoa filled the room, and the steam from the cup wreathed her broad, flat face, lending it a sheen. More Indio than Ladino, her complexion contrasted starkly with her nurse’s whites. Her jet-black hair was pulled severely back, and was held in place with a plain, wooden pin.

  “Good evening, Nurse,” I said. “Is Dee-dee down for the night?”

  “Yes, Doctor. She is.”

  I glanced up at the ceiling. “I usually tuck her in.”

  She gave me an odd look. “Yes, you do.”

  “Well. I was running a little late today. Did she miss me?”

  Consuela looked through the French doors at the back yard. “She did.”

  “I’ll make it up to her tomorrow.”

  She nodded. “I’m sure she would like that.”

  I shed my coat and carried it to the hall closet. A dim night light glowed at the top of the stairwell. “Has Mrs. Wilkes called?”

  “An hour ago.” Consuela’s voice drifted down the hallway from the kitchen. “She has a big case to prepare for tomorrow. She will be late.”

  I hung the coat on the closet rack and stood quietly still for a moment before closing the door. Another big case. I studied the stairs to the upper floor. Brenda had begun getting the big cases when Deirdre was eighteen months and alopecia had set in. Brenda never tucked Dee-dee into bed after that.

  Consuela was washing her cup at the sink when I returned to the kitchen. She was short and dark and stocky. Not quite chubby, but with a roundness that scorned New York and Paris fashion. I rummaged in the freezer for a frozen dinner. Brenda had picked Consuela from among a dozen applicants. Brenda was tall and thin and blonde.

  I put the dinner in the microwave and started the radiation. “I met an interesting woman today,” I said.

  Consuela dried her cup and hung it on the rack. “All women are interesting,” she said.

  “This one hears music in her head.” I saw how that piqued her interest.

  “We all do,” she said, half-turned to go.

  I carried my microwaved meal and sat at the table. “Not like this. Not like hearing a radio at top volume.”

  She hesitated a moment longer; then she shrugged and sat across the table from me. “Tell me of this woman.”

  I moved the macaroni and cheese around on my plate. “I spoke with Dr. Wing over the car phone. He believes it may be a case of ‘incontinent nostalgia,’ or Jackson’s Syndrome.”

  I explained how trauma to the temporal lobe sometimes caused spontaneous upwellings of memory, often accompanied by “dreamy states” and feelings of profound and poignant joy. Oliver Sacks had written about it in one of his best-sellers. “Shostakovitch had a splinter in his left temporal lobe,” I said. “When he cocked his head, he heard melodies. And there have been other cases. Stephen Foster, perhaps.” I took a bite of my meal. “Odd, isn’t it, how often the memories are musical.”

  Consuela nodded. “Sometimes the music is enough.”

  “Other memories may follow, though.”

  “Sometimes the music is enough,” she repeated enigmatically.

  “It should make the old lady happy, at least.”

  Consuela gave me a curious look. “Why should it make her happy?” she asked.

  “She has forgotten her early years completely. This condition may help her remember.” An old lady reliving her childhood. Suddenly there was bitterness in my mouth. I dropped my fork into the serving tray.

  Consuela shook her head. “Why should it make her happy?” she asked again.

  That little bird knew lots of things.

  It did, upon my word.…

  The Universe balances. For every Consuela Montejo there is a Noor Khan.

  Dr. Noor Khan was a crane, all bones and joints. She was tall, almost as tall as I, but thin to the point of gauntness. She cocked her head habitually from side to side. That, the bulging eyes, and the hooked nose accentuated her bird-like appearance. A good run, a flapping of the arms, and she might take squawking flight—and perhaps appear more graceful.

  “Mae Holloway. Oh, my, yes. She is a feisty one, is she not?” Khan rooted in her filing cabinet, her head bobbing as she talked. “Does she have a problem?”

  “Incontinent nostalgia, it’s sometimes called,” I said. “She is experiencing spontaneous, musical recollections, possibly triggered by a mild stroke to the temporal lobes.” I told her about the music and Wing’s theories.

  She bobbed her head. “Curious. Like déjà vu only different.” Then, more sternly. “If she has had a stroke, even a mild one, I must see her at once.”

  “I’ve told her that, but she’s stubborn. I thought since you knew her better.…”

  Noor Khan sighed. “Yes. Well, the older we grow, the more set in our ways we become. Mae must be set in concrete.”

  It was a joke and I gave it a thin smile. The older we grow.…

  The file she finally pulled was a thick one. I took the folder from her and carried it to her desk. I had nothing particular in mind, just a review of Holloway’s medical history. I began paging through the records. In addition to Dr. Khan’s notes, there were copies of records from other doctors. I looked up at Khan. “Don’t you have patients waiting?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “My office hours start at ten, so I have no patients at the moment. You need not worry that I am neglecting them.”

  If it was a reproof, it was a mild one, and couched in face-saving Oriental terms. I hate it when people watch me read. I always feel as if they were reading over my shoulder. I wanted to tell Khan that I would call her if I needed her; but it was, after all, her office and I was sitting at her desk, so I don’t know what I expected her to do. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers.”

  * * *

  Holloway was in unusually good health for a woman of her age. Her bones had grown brittle and her eyes nearsighted—but no glaucoma; and very little osteoporosis. She had gotten a hearing aid at an age when most people were already either stone deaf or stone dead. Clinical evidence showed that she had once given birth, and that an anciently broken leg had not h
ealed entirely straight. What right had she to enjoy such good health?

  Khan had been on the phone. “Mae has agreed to come in,” she told me as she hung up. “I will send the van to pick her up Tuesday. I wish I could do a CAT scan here. I would hate to force her in hospital.”

  “It’s a waste, anyway,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  I clamped my jaw shut. All that high technology, and for what? To add a few miserable months to lives already years too long? How many dollars per day of life was that? How much of it was productively returned? That governor, years ago. What was his name? Lamm? He said that the old had a duty to die and make room for the young. “Nothing,” I said.

  “What is wrong?” asked Khan.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “That wasn’t what I asked.”

  I turned my attention to the folder and squinted at the spidery, illegible handwriting on the oldest record: 1962, if the date was really what it looked like. Why did so many doctors have poor handwriting? Holloway’s estimated age looked more like an eighty five than sixty-five. I waved the sheet of stationery at her. “Look at the handwriting on this,” I complained. “It’s like reading Sanskrit.”

  Khan took the letter. “I can read Sanskrit, a little,” she said with a smile. “It’s Doctor Bench’s memoir, isn’t it? Yes, I thought so. I found it when I assumed Dr. Rosenblum’s practice a few years ago. Dr. Bench promised he would send Mrs. Holloway’s older records, but he never did, so Howard had to start a medical history almost from scratch, with only this capsule summary.”

  I took the sheet back from her. “Why didn’t Bench follow through?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows? He put it off. Then one of those California brush fires destroyed his office. Medically, Mae is a blank before 1962.”

  Just like her mind. I thought. Just like her mind.

  For the joy of eye and ear

  For the heart and mind’s delight

  For the mystic harmony

  Linking sense to sound and sight.…

  The third time I saw Mae Holloway, she was waiting by the clinic door when I arrived to open it. Eyes closed, propped against the wall by her walking stick, she hummed an obscure melody. “Good morning, Mrs. Holloway,” I said. “Feeling better today?”

  She opened her eyes and squeezed her face into a ghastly pucker. “Consarn music kept me awake again last night.”

  I gave her a pleasant smile. “Too bad you don’t hear Easy Listening.” I stepped through the door ahead of her. I heard her cane tap-tap-tapping behind me and wondered if a practiced ear could identify an oldster by her distinctive cane tap. I could imagine Tonto, ear pressed to the ground. “Many geezer come this way, kemo sabe.”

  Snapping open my briefcase, I extracted my journals and stacked them on the desk. Mae lowered herself into the visitor’s chair. “Jimmy Kovacs will be coming in to see you later today. He threw his back out again.”

  I opened the issue of Brain that Dr. Wing had lent me. “Never throw anything out that you might need again later,” I said, running my eye down the table of contents.

  “You do study on those books, Doctor.”

  “I like to keep up on things.”

  I flipped the journal open to the article I had been seeking and began to read. After a few minutes, she spoke again. “If you spent half the time studying on people as you do studying on books, you’d be better at doctorin’.”

  I looked up scowling. Who was she to judge? A bent-up, shriveled old woman who had seen more years than she had a right to. “The body is an intricate machine,” I told her. “The more thoroughly I understand its mechanisms, the better able I am to repair it.”

  “A machine,” she repeated.

  “Like an automobile.”

  “And you’re jest an auto mechanic.” She shook her head.

  I smiled, but without humor. “Yes, I am. Maybe that’s less glamorous than being a godlike healer, but I think it’s closer to the truth.” An auto mechanic. And some cars were old jalopies destined for the junk heap; so why put more work into them? I did not tell her that. And others were not built right to begin with. I did not tell her that, either. It was a cold vision, but in its way, comforting. Helplessness is greater solace than failure.

  Mae grunted. “Mostly milk sours ‘cause it’s old.”

  I scowled again. More hillbilly philosophy? Or simply an addled mind unable to hold to a topic? “Does it,” I said.

  She studied me for a long while without speaking. Finally, she shook her head. “Most car accidents are caused by the driver.”

  “I’ll pass that along to the National Transportation Safety Board.”

  “What I mean is, you might pay as much attention to the driver as to the automobile.”

  I sighed and laid the journal aside. “I take it that you want to tell me what is playing on your personal Top 40 today.”

  She snorted, but I could see that she really did. I leaned back in my chair and linked my hands behind my head. “So, tell me, Mrs. Holloway, what is ‘shaking’?”

  She made fish faces with her lips. Mentally, I had dubbed her Granny Guppy when she did that. It was as if she had to flex her lips first to ready them for the arduous task of flapping.

  “‘Does Your Mother Know You’re Out, Cecelia?’”

  “What?” It took a moment. Then I realized that it must have been a song title. Some popular ditty now thankfully forgotten by everyone save this one old lady. “Was that a favorite song of yours?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Oh, mercy, no; but there was a year when you couldn’t hardly avoid it.”

  “I see.”

  “And, let’s see.…” She stopped and cocked her head. The Listening Look, I called it. “Now it’s ‘The Red, Red Robin’—”

  “Comes bob-bob-bobbing along?”

  “Yes, that’s the one. And already today I’ve heard ‘Don’t Bring Lulu’ and ‘Side by Side’ and ‘Kitten on the Keys’ and ‘Bye-bye Blackbird.’” She made a pout with her lips. “I do wish the songs would play out entirely.”

  “You told me they weren’t your favorite songs.”

  “Some are, some aren’t. They’re just songs I once heard. Sometimes they remind me of things. Sometimes it seems as if they almost remind me of things. Things long forgotten, but waiting for me, just around a corner somewhere.” She shook herself suddenly. “Tin Pan Alley wasn’t my favorite, though,” she went on. “I was a sheba. I went for the wild stuff. The Charleston; the Black Bottom. All those side kicks.… I was a little old for that, but.… Those were wild days, I tell you. Hip flasks and stockings rolled down and toss away the corset.” She gave me a wink.

  This … prune had gone for the wild stuff? Though, grant her, she had had her youth once. It didn’t seem fair that she should have it twice. “Sheba?” I asked.

  “A sheba,” she said. “A flapper. The men were sheiks. Because of that … what was his name?” She tapped her cane staccato on the floor. “Valentino, that was it. Valentino. Oh, those eyes of his! All the younger girls dreamed about having him; and I wouldn’t have minded one bit, myself. He had It.”

  “It?”

  “It. Valentino drove the girls wild, he did. And a few boys, too. Clara Bow had It, too.”

  “Sex appeal?”

  “Pshaw. Sex appeal is for snugglepups. A gal didn’t have It unless both sexes felt something. Women, too. Women were coming out back then. We could smoke, pet, put a bun on if we wanted to—least, ‘til the dries put on the kabosh. We had the vote. Why we even had a governor, back in Wyoming, where I once lived. Nellie Taylor Ross. I met her once, did I tell you? Why I remember—”

  * * *

  Her sudden silence piqued me. “You remember what?”

  “Doc?” Her voice quavered and her eyes looked right past me, wide as tunnels.

  “What is it?”

  “Doc? I can see ‘em. Plain as day.”

  “See whom, Mrs. Holloway?” Was the old bidd
y having a seizure right there in my office?

  She looked to her left, then her right. “We’re sitting in the gallery,” she announced. “All of us wearing pants, too, ‘stead o’ dresses. And down there … down there…” She aimed a shaking finger at a point somewhere below my desk. “That’s Alice with the gavel. Law’s sake! They’re ghosts, Doc. They’re ghosts all around me!”

  “Mrs. Holloway,” I said. “Mrs. Holloway, close your eyes.”

  She turned to me. “What?”

  “Close your eyes.”

  She did. “I can still see ‘em,” she said, with a wonder that was close to terror. “I can still see ‘em. Like my eyes were still open.” She raised a shaking hand to her mouth. Her ragged breath slowly calmed and, more quietly, she repeated, “I can still see ‘em.” A heartbeat went by, then she sighed. “They’re fading, now,” she said. “Fading.” Finally, she opened her eyes. She looked troubled. “Doc, what happened to me? Was it a hallucy-nation?”

  I leaned back in my chair and folded my hands under my chin. “Not quite. Simply a non-musical memory.”

  “But … it was so real, like I done traveled back in time.”

  “You were here the whole time,” I assured her with a grin.

  She struck the floor with her cane. “I know that. I could see you just as plain as I could see Alice and the others.”

  I sighed. Her sense of humor had dried out along with the rest of her. “Patients with your condition sometimes fall into ‘dreamy states,’” I explained. “They see or hear their present and their remembered surroundings simultaneously, like a film that has been double-exposed. Hughlings Jackson described the symptom in 1880. He called it a ‘doubling of consciousness.’” I smiled and tapped the journal Wing had given me. “Comes from studying on books,” I said.

  But she wasn’t paying me attention. “I remember it all so clearly now. I’d forgotten. Alice Robertson of Oklahoma was the first woman to preside over the House of Representatives. June 20, 1921, it was. Temporary Speaker. Oh, those were a fine fifteen minutes, I tell you.” She sighed and shook her head. “I wonder,” she said. “I wonder if I might remember my Ma and Pa and my little brother. Zach…? Was that his name? It’s always been a trouble to me that I’ve forgotten. It don’t seem right to forget your own kin.”