The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  An inverse square law, I suppose. Memories dim and blur with age, their strength depending on distance and mass. Too many of Mae’s memories were too distant. They had passed beyond the horizon of her mind, and had faded like an old photograph left too long in the Sun. And yet sometimes, near the end, like ashes collapsing in a dying fire, the past can become brighter than the present.

  “No,” I said. “It don’t seem right.”

  “And Mister.… Haven’t thought on that man in donkey’s years,” she said. “Green Holloway was my man. I always called him Mister. He called me his Lorena.”

  “Lorena?”

  Mae shrugged. “I don’t remember why. There was a song.… He took the name from that. It was real popular, so I suppose I’ll recollect it bye and bye. He was an older man, was Mister. I remember him striding up through Black’s hell; gray and grizzled, but strong as splo. All brass and buckles in his state militia uniform. Company H, 5th Tennessee. Just that one scene has stayed with me all my life, like an ole brown photograph. Dear Lord, but that man had arms like cooper’s bands. I can close my eyes and feel them around me sometimes, even today.” She shivered and looked down.

  “Splo?” I prompted.

  “Splo,” she repeated in a distracted voice. Then, more strongly, as if shoving some memory aside, “Angel teat. We called it apple john back then. Mister kept a still out behind the joe. Whenever he run off a batch, he’d invite the spear-side over and we’d all get screwed.”

  I bet. Whatever she had said. “Apple john was moonshine?” High tail it, Luke. The revenooers are a-coming. What kind of Barney Google life had she led up in those Tennessee hills? “So when you say you got screwed, you mean you got drunk, not, uh.…”

  Mae sucked in her lips and gnawed on them. “It was good whilst we were together,” she said at last. “Right good.” Her lips thinned. “But Mister, he lit a shuck on me, just like all the others.” She gave me a look, half angry, half wary; and I could almost see the shutter come down behind her eyes. “Ain’t no use getting close to nobody,” she said. “They’re always gone when you need them. Why, I ain’t, haven’t seen Little Zach nigh unto.…” She looked momentarily confused. “Not for years and years. I loved that boy like he was more’n a brother; but he yondered off and never come back.” She creaked to her feet. “So, I’ll just twenty-three skidoo, Jack. You got things to do; so do I.”

  I watched her go, thinking she was right about one thing. Old milk does go sour.

  There will I find a settled rest

  While others go and come.

  No more a stranger or a guest

  But like a child at home.

  Brenda’s silver Beemer was parked in the garage when I got home. I pulled up beside it and contemplated its shiny perfection as I turned my engine off. Brenda was home. How long had it been, now? Three weeks? Four? It was hard to remember. Leave early; back late. That was our life. A quick peck in the morning and no-time-for-breakfast-dear. Tiptoes late at night, and the sheets rustle and the mattress sags; and it was hardly enough even to ruffle your sleep. Always on the run; always working late. One of us would have to slow down, or we might never meet at all.

  My first thought was that I might give Consuela the night off. It had been so long since Brenda and I had been alone together. My second thought was that she had gotten in trouble at the office and had lost her job.

  Doctors make good money. Lawyers make good money. Doctors married to lawyers make very good money. It was not enough.

  “Brenda?” I called as I entered the kitchen from the garage. “I’m home!” There was no one in the kitchen; though something tangy with orange and sage was baking in the oven. “Brenda?” I called again as I reached the hall closet.

  A squeal from upstairs. “Daddy’s home!”

  I hung up my overcoat. “Hello, Dee-dee. Is Mommy with you?” Unlikely, but possible. Stranger things have happened.

  “No.” Followed by a long silence; “Connie is telling me a story, about a mule and an ox.”

  Another silence, then footsteps on the stairs. Consuela looked at me over the banister as she descended.

  “The mule and the ox?” I said.

  “Nothing,” she replied curtly. “An old Mayan folk tale.”

  “Where’s Brenda?” I asked her. “I know she’s home; her car is in the garage.” Maybe she was in the back yard, by the pool or in the woods.

  No, she didn’t like the woods; she was afraid of deer ticks.

  “Mrs. Wilkes came home early,” Consuela said, “and packed a bag—”

  Mentally, I froze. Not this. Not now. Without Brenda’s income.… “Packed a bag? Why?”

  “She said she must go to Washington for a few days, to assist in an argument before the Supreme Court.”

  “Oh.” Sudden relief coupled with sudden irritation. She could have phoned. At the Home. In my car. I showed Consuela my teeth. “The Supreme Court, you say. Well. That’s quite a feather in her cap.”

  “Were she an Indio, a feather in the cap might mean something.”

  “Consuela. A joke? Did Brenda say when she would be back?”

  Consuela hesitated, then shook her head. “She came home, packed her bag, gave me instructions. When the car arrived, she left.”

  And never said good-bye to Dee-dee. Maybe a wave from the doorway, a crueler good-bye than none at all. “What sort of instructions?” That wasn’t the question I wanted to ask. I wanted to ask whose car picked her up. Whom she was assisting in Washington? Walther Crowe, the steeleyed senior partner with the smooth, European mannerisms? FitzPatrick, the young comer who figured so often on the society pages? But Consuela would not know; or, if she did, she would not say. There were some places where an outsider did not deliberately set herself.

  “The sort of instructions,” she replied, “that are unnecessary to give a professional. But they were only to let me know that I was her employee.”

  “You’re angry.” I received no answer. Then I asked, “Have you and Dee-dee eaten yet?”

  “No.” A short answer, not quite a retort.

  “I didn’t pull rank on you. Brenda did.”

  She shrugged and looked up at me with her head cocked to the side. “You are a doctor; I am a nurse. We have a professional relationship. Mrs. Wilkes is only an employer.”

  She was in a bad mood. I had never seen her angry before. I wondered what patronizing tone Brenda had used with her. I always made the effort to treat Consuela as an equal; but Brenda seldom did. Sometimes I thought Brenda was half-afraid of our Deirdre’s nurse; though for what reason, I could not say. I glanced at the overcoat in the closet. “Would you and Dee-dee like to go out to eat?”

  She gave me a thoughtful look; then shook her head. “She will not leave the house.”

  I glanced at the stairs. “No, she’ll not budge, will she?” It was an old argument, never won. “She can play outside. She can go to school with the other children. There is no medical reason to stay in her—”

  “There is something wrong with her heart.”

  “No, it’s too soon for—”

  “There is something wrong with her heart,” she repeated.

  “Oh.” I looked away. “But.… We’ll eat in the dining room today. The three of us. Whatever that is you have in the oven. I’ll set the table with the good dinnerware.”

  “A special occasion?”

  I shook my head. “No. Only maybe we each have a reason to be unhappy just now.” I wondered if Brenda had left a message in the bedroom. Some hint as to when she’d return. I headed toward the dining room.

  “The ox was weary of plowing,” Consuela said.

  “Eh?” I turned and looked back at her. “What was that?”

  “The ox was weary of plowing. All day, up the field and down, while the farmer cracked the whip behind him. Each night in the barn, when the ox complained, the mule would laugh. ‘If you detest the plowing so much, why do it?’ ‘It is my job, señor mule,’ the ox would reply. ‘Then
do it and don’t complain. Otherwise, refuse. Go on strike.’ The ox thought about this and, several days later, when the farmer came to him with the harness, the ox would not budge. ‘What is wrong, señor ox?’ the farmer asked him. ‘I am on strike,’ the ox replied. ‘All day I plow with no rest. I deserve a rest.’ The farmer nodded. ‘There is justice in what you say. You have worked hard. Yet the fields must be plowed before the rains come.’ And so he hitched the mule to the plow and cracked the whip over him, and worked him for many weeks until the plowing was done.”

  Consuela stopped, and with a slight gesture of the head turned for the kitchen.

  * * *

  Although entitled to two evenings a week off, Consuela seldom took them, preferring the solitude of her own room. She lived there quietly, usually with the hall door closed; always with the connecting door to Deedee’ s room open. Once a month she sent a check to Guatemala. She read books. Sometimes she played softly on a sort of flute: weird, serpentine melodies that she had brought with her from the jungle. More than once, the strange notes had caused Brenda to stop whatever she was doing, whether mending or reading law or even making love, and listen with her head cocked until the music stopped. Then she would shiver slightly, and resume whatever she had been doing as though nothing had happened.

  Consuela had furnished her room with Meso-American bric-a-brac. Colorful, twisty things. Statuettes, wall hangings, a window treatment. Squat little figurines with secretive, knowing smiles. A garland of fabric flowers. An obsidian carving that suggested a panther in mid-leap. Brenda found it all vaguely disturbing, as if she expected chittering monkeys swinging from the bookshelves and curtains; as if Consuela had brought a part of the jungle with her into Brenda’s clear, ordered, rational world. It wasn’t proper, at all. It was somehow out of control.

  “Did you like having dinner downstairs today?” I asked Dee-dee as I studied Consuela’s room through the connecting door. The flute lay silent on Consuela’s dresser top. It was the kind you blew straight into, with two rows of holes, one for each hand.

  “It was OK, I guess.” A weak voice, steady but faint.

  I turned around. “Only OK?” There was an odd contrast here, a paradox. Although it was evening and Deirdre’s room was shrouded in darkness, Consuela’s room had seemed bright with rioting colors.

  “Did I leave any toys downstairs?” A worried voice in the darkness. Anxious.

  “No, I checked.” I resolved to check again, just in case we had overlooked something that had rolled under the sofa. Brenda detested disorder. She did not like finding things out of place.

  “Mommy won’t mind, will she? That I ate downstairs.”

  I turned. “Not if we don’t tell her. Mommy will be at the Supreme Court for a few days.”

  Dee-dee made a sound in her throat. No sorrow, no joy. Just acknowledgment. Mommy might never come home at all for all the difference it made in Dee-dee’s life. “Ready to be tucked in?”

  Dee-dee grinned a delicious smile and snuggled deeper into the sheets. It was a heartbreaking smile. I gave her back the best one I could muster, and took a long, slow step toward the bed. She shrieked and ducked under the covers. I waited until she peeked out and took another step. It was a game we played, every move as encrusted with ritual as a Roman Mass.

  Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome. Deedee’s smile was snaggle-toothed. Her hair, sparse; her skin, thin and yellow.

  Manifestations: Alopecia, onset at birth to eighteen months, with degeneration of hair follicles. Thin skin. Hypoplasia of the nails.… I had read the entry in Smith’s over and over, looking for the one item I had missed, the loophole I had overlooked. It was committed to memory now; like a mantra. Periarticular fibrosis; stiff or partially flexed prominent joints. Skeletal hypoplasia, dysphasia and degeneration.

  Dee-dee had weighed 2.7 kilos at birth. Her fontanel had ossified late, but the slowness of her growth had not become apparent until seven months. She lagged the normal growth charts by one-third. When she lost hair, it did not grow back. Her skin had brownish-yellow “liver” spots.

  Natural history: Deficit of growth becomes severe after one year. The tendency to fatigue easily may limit participation in childhood activities. Intelligence and brain development are unimpaired.

  Deirdre Wilkes was an alert, active mind trapped in a body aging far too quickly. A shrunken little gnome of a ten-year old. Etiology: Unknown. I hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. Then I tucked the sheets tightly under the mattress.

  Prognosis: The life span is shortened by relentless arterial atheromatosis. Death usually occurs at puberty.

  There were no papers delivered on Hutchinson-Gilford that I had not crawled through word after word, searching for the slightest whisper of a breakthrough. Some sign along the horizon of research. But there were no hints. There were no loopholes.

  Prognosis: death.

  There were no exceptions.

  Deirdre could smile because she was only a child and could not comprehend what was happening to her body. She knew she would have to “go away” someday, but she didn’t know what that really meant.

  Smiling was the hardest part of the game.

  Come along, Josephine, In my flying machine.

  We’ll go up in the air.…

  How can I explain the feelings of dread and depression that enveloped me every time I entered Sunny Dale? I was surrounded by ancients. Bent, gray, hobbling creatures forever muttering over events long forgotten or families never seen. And always repeating their statements, always repeating their statements, as if it were I who were hard of hearing and not they. The Home was a waiting room for Death. Waiting and waiting, until they had done with waiting. Here is where the yellowed skin and the liver spots belonged. Here! Not on the frame of a ten-year-old.

  * * *

  The fourth time I saw Mae Holloway, she crept up behind me as I opened the door to the clinic. “Morning, doc,” I heard her say.

  “Good morning, Mrs. H.,” I replied without turning around. I opened the door and stepped through. Inevitably, she followed, humming. I wondered if this was going to become a daily ritual. She planted herself in the visitor’s chair. Somehow, it had become her own. “The show just ended,” she announced. “Oh, it was a peach.” She waved a hand at my desk. “Go on, set down. Make yourself pleasant.”

  It was my own fault, really. I had shown an interest in her tiresome recollections, and now she felt she had to share everything with me, as if I were one of her batty, old cronies. No good deed goes unpunished. Perhaps I was the only one who put up with her.

  But I did have a notion that could wring a little use out of my sentence. I could write a book about Mae Holloway and her musical memories. People were fascinated with how the mind worked; or rather with how it failed to work. Sacks had described similar cases of incontinent nostalgia in one of his books; and if he could make the best-seller lists with a collection of neurological case studies, why not I? With fame, came money; and the things money could buy.

  But my book would have to be something new, something different; not just a retelling of the same neurological tales. The teleology, perhaps. Sacks had failed to discover any meaning to the music his patients had heard, any reason why this tune or that was rememb-heard. If I kept a record, I might discover enough of a pattern to form the basis of a book. I rummaged in my desk drawer and took out a set of file cards that I had bought to make notes on my patients. Might as well get started. I poised my pen over a card. “What show was that?” I asked.

  “Girl of the Golden West. David Belasco’s new stage play.” She shook her head. “I first seen it, oh, years and years ago, in Pittsburgh; before they made it a high falutin’ opera. That final scene, where Dick Johnson is hiding in the attic, and his blood drips through the ceiling onto the sheriff. That was taken from real life, you know.”

  “Was it.” I wrote Girl of the Golden West and doubling episode and made a note to look it up. Then I poised my pen over a fresh card. “I’d like to
ask you a few questions about your music, Mrs. Holloway. That is, if you don’t mind.”

  She gave me a surprised glance and looked secretly pleased. She fussed with her gown and settled herself into her seat. “You may fire when ready, Gridley.”

  “You are still hearing the music, aren’t you, Mrs. Holloway?”

  “Well, the songs aren’t so loud as they were. They don’t keep me awake anymore; but if I concentrate, I can hear ‘em.”

  I made a note. “You’ve learned to filter them out, that’s all.”

  “If You Talk in Your Sleep, Don’t Mention My Name.”

  “What?”

  “‘If You Talk in Your Sleep, Don’t Mention My Name.’ That was one of ‘em. The tunes I been hearing. Go on, write that down. Songs were getting real speedy in those days. There was ‘Mary Took the Calves to the Dairy Show’ and ‘This is No Place for a Minister’s Son.’ Heh-heh. The blues was all in a lather over ‘em. That, and actor-folks actually kissing each other in the moving picture shows. They tried to get that banned. And the animal dances, too.”

  “Animal dances?”

  “Oh, there were a passel of ‘em,” she said. “There was the kangaroo dip, the crab step, the fox trot, the fish walk, the bunny hug, the lame duck.… I don’t remember them all.”

  “The fox trot,” I offered. “I think people still dance that.”

  Mae snorted. “All the fire’s out of it. You should have read what the preachers and the newspapers had to say about it back then. They sure were peeved; but the kids thought it was flossy. It was a way to get their parents’ goat. ‘Bug them,’ I guess you say now.”

  “Kids? Isn’t the fox trot a ballroom dance for, well, you know—mature people?”

  She made her sour-lemon face. “Sure. Now. But today’s old folks were yesterday’s kids. And they still like the music they liked when they were young. Heh-heh. When you’re ninety or a hundred, sonny, you’ll be a-listening to that acid rock and telling your grandkids what hell-raisers you used to be. And they won’t believe you, either. We tote the same bags with us all our lives, doc. The same interests; the same likes and dislikes. Those older’n us and those younger’n us, why, they have their own bags.” A sudden scowl, halfway between fright and puzzlement, passed across her face like the shadow of a cloud. Then she hunched her shoulders. “Me, I’ve got too many bags.”