Recessional: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  She accepted the chair that Dr. Zorn offered her and looked at him with the steady, warm gaze so appreciated by the residents. In that moment Zorn realized that he had as his main associate a woman who was born to be a nurse and comforter: ‘They tell me you’re the soul of this establishment, Nurse Varney. I’ll need your help, because I’ve been sent down by Mr. Taggart to bring this place up to running speed, and I won’t be able to do it without you and Mr. Krenek and Miss Foxworth giving me cooperation and guidance. Tell me a little about yourself. Where did you grow up?’

  ‘Little town in Alabama.’

  ‘And you studied to be a nurse where?’

  ‘Larger town in Alabama.’

  ‘How’d you get down here?’

  ‘We were led to believe the streets were paved with rubies. I got on a bus and came down to see.’

  ‘I don’t see any rubies on your fingers.’

  She laughed easily: ‘They’re here, but I haven’t found them yet.’ As they continued to talk Zorn was increasingly impressed by her humor and articulateness. If one looked only at her ample face, one might have expected her to speak in a typical black dialect, but there was no trace of one and he was so interested in her that he dared to ask: ‘Did you consciously learn to speak without an accent?’ and she explained: ‘When I came to work in Florida thirty years ago, white people visiting from the North thought it was colorful when I spoke with a heavy Alabama dialect, and I had one of the best. Still do. But I soon learned that as long as I clung to it, I was accepted only as a back-country servant, colorful but not to be taken seriously. So I taught myself to eliminate the “Yassuh, master” nonsense and converted myself into a real head nurse.’ She broke into laughter, her wide face gleaming with mischief: ‘Sometimes strangers coming to inspect the place, they speak to me in black dialect, to put me at ease. I never scorn them, but I do answer in complete sentences with an accent just like theirs, and they’re smart. They get the point, especially if they’re going to live here and discover that much of what they want they will get through me—we get along fine.’

  She considered this for some moments, then added: ‘But at night when I’m with old friends or family I can talk Alabama with the best of them. And often during the day, to make a point, I’ll revert without embarrassment, but I didn’t waste those years in night school getting my degree.’ Then, apparently aware that she might be talking too much about herself, she added: ‘But I still cling to one phrase used in our family of eight. It sounds right to me, because my mother taught me so much about human beings while using it: “Nora, you gots to learn that all peoples gots their own way of doin’ things. Respect ’em, don’t fight ’em.” I continue to preach from that text: “All peoples gots their own way.” It’s my tie to home.’

  ‘Keep it. Now, what advice can you share with me to make my job easier?’

  ‘In my work I hear the complaints of the residents, and the thing they will not tolerate is bad food or bad service in the dining room. Remember, Dr. Zorn—’

  ‘Mrs. Varney, you’re old enough to be my mother. Name’s Andy.’

  ‘Remember, they’re in the dining room only once a day, most of them, and it’s a big occasion. If you allow the cooks and waiters to mess things up, you’re going to have a very unhappy group on your hands.’

  ‘And—?’

  ‘The part of the building we call Assisted and Extended, and don’t you ever call it the hospital, is my responsibility. It’s where we earn our big money, so if I come to you and say “Dr. Zorn, we ought to repaint the hallways in Assisted Living,” don’t dismiss the request out of hand. I won’t be thinking of my own desires. I’ll be thinking: “The last two visitors who came here to see if they wanted to put their mother in with us noticed the shabby wainscoting and turned away.” I may really need that paint job, but I won’t expect you to give in right away. But do study it, take a look for yourself, and try to find the money somewhere.’

  He asked her what other friction points he should be aware of, and she surprised him by saying: ‘You have to be very diplomatic with our house medical adviser, Dr. Farquhar. The relationship between you two men has never been spelled out neatly, not here or anywhere else. He’s tremendously important and extremely helpful, but he is not at your beck and call. He is not to be treated as if he were your paid employee. He’s more like a trusted lawyer who is on what they call a retainer. Consult with him, don’t try to give him orders, because he won’t take them, and if he turns sour on this place, he can destroy us with the rest of the medical community. You don’t have to be nice to me or Mr. Krenek, but you must be nice to him, because he can be of terrific help to us, smoothing the way with the hospitals, referring people to us and keeping the place in good running order. Let me put it simply, as head nurse I could exist if you and I despised each other, but I couldn’t keep Health prospering if Dr. Farquhar decided it was inferior.’

  ‘Is he the best man possible for the job?’

  ‘He’s a saint. Temper as smooth as apple butter. Very good doctor, and a man you can trust.’

  When it looked as if the interview was coming to an end, Zorn, unwilling to lose the insight of such an interesting woman, suggested: ‘Perhaps I’d better see your domain, with you as my guide,’ and they walked together down the hallway connecting to Health. When they reached the second floor, Andy could see that Nurse Varney was in command, but in a benevolent way, for as she passed through the corridors she spoke in a supportive way to the nurses, introducing them to the new manager and encouraging them in their work. At the door to most of the rooms she was able to stop, look in and speak to the occupant, using his or her name. It was obvious that she knew her hall and was well acquainted with its problems.

  But when she and Zorn reached the third floor, Extended Care, Andy sensed a much higher level of tension, exemplified by the nurse in charge, a white woman named Edna Grimes who had a combative air as she moved along the corridors almost as if she were a warden in a jail. Zorn whispered: ‘She doesn’t seem to like her job,’ but Nora replied: ‘She’s extremely capable. I can rely on her to get things done.’ Zorn thought that perhaps this type of personnel was necessary, for here the illnesses were more severe and the patients more testy. He caught a good example of this, and the different ways Nurse Grimes and Head Nurse Varney handled difficult cases, when they heard a rather loud rumpus, and looked into one of the rooms to which Nurse Grimes had hastened at the first signs of trouble.

  A Mr. Richards, eighty-eight, and weighing not much over a hundred and fifteen pounds, was having a tantrum and making a good deal of disturbance for his size. Nurse Grimes was tugging him about but Nora stepped between them and said rather roughly: ‘Hey! Brother Blowhard! What’s all the racket?’

  ‘They took my paper. I want my paper. Only thing I enjoy is my paper and they took it.’

  ‘What’s he talking about?’ Nora asked and Miss Grimes said: ‘Cleaning people must have seen it on the floor and thrown it in the trash.’

  ‘No wonder you’re distressed,’ Nora said to the angry little fellow. ‘I’d be, too, if they took my paper before I’d read it.’ Reaching for his phone, she dialed her office and said: ‘Jane, rush my copy of today’s paper up to Room 326,’ and this was done, but when it arrived, Mr. Richards took one look and threw it to the floor: ‘It’s the Tampa paper and I want my paper, the St. Petersburg one. It has more foreign news.’ Again Nora phoned her office: ‘Have Sam rush over to the mall and get Mr. Richards a copy of today’s St. Petersburg paper. Use money from our petty cash,’ and while they waited for this to be done, Nora sat on the bed with Mr. Richards and told him: ‘You raise hell like this again, Buster, I’m gonna whomp you,’ and he looked up at her gigantic size and said: ‘I believe you would, too. But I do want my paper.’

  ‘Weren’t you listening? I just sent Sam to get you a copy,’ and he said: ‘I’m not going to pay twice for what was mine to begin with.’

  ‘Mr. Richards, my dear friend, I’ve a
lready paid for it. You were right to make a fuss, but now settle down or I’m really gonna whomp you.’ He looked at her and smiled, and when Sam delivered the paper with the foreign news Richards took it, thanked him and explained to Nora and Zorn: ‘In my real life I worked overseas a lot, Arabia, Pakistan, Congo, Mexico, wherever there was oil in the ground, there I was. Thank you.’

  But even Nora’s relaxed style tensed when they approached Room 312, where she stopped outside the door: ‘This is our job at its worst, Andy. The woman in here, Mrs. Carlson, is practically dead, but there is no way, legally, that anyone can take any positive step, like cutting off support systems or stopping medication, to enable her to die of natural causes.’

  ‘Does she know she’s in the last stages?’

  ‘Know! Doctor, she’s been comatose for more than a year. In all that time she’s never known who she was, or where she was, or the name of anyone who comes to visit her. She’s what they call a “living vegetable,” and I want you to see how she’s kept alive.’ Nora ushered him into the room where, in a bed lined with many wires and transparent tubes running down from a complicated gantry, Mrs. Carlson, pallid and passive and tormented by bedsores, spent her unheeding existence. It was both a miracle and a travesty of modern medicine. She was kept alive without her brain or nervous system sending signals for the various body functions; they were discharged according to the dictates of medicines or pumps or the slow drainage of chemicals into and out of her body.

  Nora commented, in a voice carefully devoid of inflection: ‘We are absolutely committed by law and the customs of humanity and the Hippocratic oath to keep her alive as long as we can, and medicine comes up with one miracle solution after another to do this. Her physician, you’ll meet him, Dr. Ambedkar, an Indian Indian, is first-class. He’s engineered the devices that keep her going and I suspect he thinks of her as his masterpiece.’

  ‘And what has it cost so far?’

  ‘Counting everything, outside costs and ours and the doctors’, she has to have several of them, around two hundred thousand dollars.’

  ‘You certainly don’t approve of a scene like this, do you?’

  ‘I’m a licensed agent of the government with a sworn obligation to keep her and all the others alive, and let me give you some stern advice, Doctor, don’t you by word or deed or even a hint go against the legal rules or you could destroy both yourself and the Palms. Our responsibility is to keep them alive.’

  ‘But isn’t there something called a living will? Gives the doctors the legal right to terminate cases like this?’

  ‘There is. But she didn’t sign one. And even when they do we often find that because of some slip or other the courts find them not legal at all. We’re on very tricky ground here, Dr. Zorn, and don’t allow yourself to be thrown by it. Anyway, you have nothing to say about the problems on this floor. Only Dr. Farquhar can give orders, and he’s extremely careful about preserving life. So do not try to interfere. Only disaster can come from that.’

  These two compassionate officials who understood the moral aspects of what they were discussing had conducted their analysis while standing on opposite sides of Mrs. Carlson’s gantried bed, but she did not hear their arguments, even though they concerned her welfare, nor had she heard anything for the past fifteen months, a hostage to the miracle of modern medicine.

  During his third week on the job, Dr. Zorn had two conspicuous successes, which gave him the confidence to tell Miss Foxworth: ‘We may be able to turn the corner,’ only to have her warn: ‘Each of your predecessors told me the same thing at some early stage in his regime, only to see the brief success crumble into dust.’

  ‘But these two events prove that I can sell rooms.’ He had, by accident, come upon Ken Krenek when the latter was ineffectually trying to convince two elderly couples from Indiana that the Palms was the place for them. Zorn, in passing, saw the glazed looks in the eyes of the Hoosiers and realized that they were soon going to terminate their inspection. Quietly he inserted himself into the quintet, told the visitors how much he had enjoyed the beauty of Indiana when he worked in nearby Chicago, and subtly brought in the names of Ambassador St. Près and Senator Raborn: ‘On the floor of the United States Senate, Raborn was a lion of rectitude and the sponsor of many fine laws. He and his wife occupy the suite next to the one you’re considering, Mr. Evans. If he chanced to come by he’d tell you what a fine place the Palms is.’

  ‘Do those two men actually live here? Permanently?’

  ‘Indeed they do,’ Andy said, his brick-red hair glistening in the sunlight and his round face a wreath of smiles. ‘Goodness me! Here comes the ambassador now,’ and he made a great to-do about hailing the reserved diplomat: ‘Sir, these good people from Indiana are inspecting our establishment, and I wonder if you’d care to tell them how congenial you find the place.’

  The Hoosiers proved to be such interesting citizens that after a few moments St. Près actually drew up a chair. When Senator Raborn happened to come looking for the diplomat, he too joined the conversation, and forty minutes later Andy Zorn had sold his first two apartments. In finalizing the deal the four visitors told Zorn: ‘You were so helpful. You had so many answers to the very questions that troubled us. Lucky for us you came along, because if you’re the manager—’

  Andy accepted the compliments, for they verified what he had promised Mr. Taggart: ‘The skills that enabled me to calm anxious mothers and frightened children will work equally well with older people.’ As for Andy’s second success, it began as a disaster on the day after the Hoosier sale when Krenek and Miss Foxworth rushed into his office with terrible news: ‘The Mallorys are moving out again. There goes our biggest suite.’

  It was true. The millionaire couple had hired professional movers to report at their apartment at eight in the morning and transport everything to a new condominium on an island in the St. Petersburg district. By the time Andy reached the apartment he found it half empty and the dancing Mallorys unconcerned as they supervised the removal of the remainder.

  ‘My dear friends!’ Zorn pleaded, ‘how can you possibly do this? Haven’t you enjoyed yourselves here?’

  ‘We find we’re really not ready for a retirement center,’ Mr. Mallory said. ‘We need a house of our own—city amenities—beauty like what the new place has. Your lawyers can decide with ours how much you owe us back.’ And with that they vanished, leaving the top Gateway apartment vacant.

  At four that afternoon, Zorn assembled his war cabinet and asked: ‘What did we do wrong, to lose a great couple like the Mallorys? They were so kind to me on my first day. I really liked them and this failure makes me sick.’

  As he spoke, Krenek and Miss Foxworth looked at each other and suppressed giggles, but Nurse Varney was willing to give her new boss the truth: ‘Dr. Andy, the Mallorys have been in and out of this place three times. They’re here, they love it. They see an attractive private house somewhere, and off they go. Six weeks later they’re back here, and the following spring out they go again.’ Krenek and Foxworth nodded in agreement.

  ‘Then why do we fool with them? If they give us that kind of irrational trouble?’

  Again Nurse Varney became the reporter: ‘When they apply to come back in, Mr. Krenek says “To hell with them” but Miss Foxworth sees the buy-in money and the big monthly fees.’

  ‘And what do you say, if you’re closest to them?, he asked the nurse.

  ‘I say that about six weeks from now Mr. and Mrs. Chris Mallory will be in this room, begging you to take them back.’ She was a wise prophet, because five weeks later the Mallorys came swinging into the parking lot in their Cadillac to inform Dr. Zorn that life on the island had proved to them that they were happiest at the Palms, and could he make arrangements immediately to let them have their customary apartment: ‘The big one at the peninsula end of floor seven would be just right,’ and with smiles that could have warmed the entire west coast of Florida, they reminded Zorn that it was in that apartment, with t
hem, that he had begun his tenure at the Palms. And then they uttered a heart-winning line that would become famous throughout the center: ‘We’re really back because of you, Dr. Zorn. You know how to manage this place from A to Z.’ Mrs. Mallory paused, poked Krenek in the ribs and asked playfully: ‘Don’t you get it—Andy to Zorn.’ Krenek looked away in amused disgust, but Miss Foxworth could not suppress a giggle.

  At this point Zorn said: ‘I think the Mallorys should wait outside and allow me to consult with my colleagues about what we should do in this case.’ As the amiable couple rose to go, expressing no displeasure at having been dismissed for the moment, Zorn could not keep from assuring them that he had been warmly impressed by the way they had treated him on that first day: ‘We’ll see what can be worked out.’

  When he was alone with his warring staff members he asked for specifics that would justify Krenek’s harsh opposition to the Mallorys, and Krenek was quick to reply: ‘They drive me nuts. Have for all the years I’ve been here. Initially they could never agree about coming into the Palms. He originally dragged his feet, said he was only seventy-nine and not about to end his life in what he called “God’s warehouse.” ’

  ‘How about his wife?’

  ‘She was two years younger, seventy-seven and absolutely fed up with keeping a large house and entertaining his friends.’

  ‘And she prevailed?’

  ‘Yep, they moved in, fought all the time, made people uneasy, and moved out, with him blasting the place.’

  ‘But they came back?’

  ‘Yep, and now it was he who wanted the easy living and she yammering like crazy against the early dining hours. More fights, more uneasiness. But always brought with them her big Cadillac. They loved it. They’re mad about dancing and take couples from here into Tampa for evening dinners. Yep, they go dancing at least one night a week.’