All Hallows Page 3

  With no easy way to help the process, Maren buried the yellow lemon Linzer in a tin that had originally been a civilian first-aid kit; manufactured between world conflicts, it was the perfect size for stacked delicacies. Thick slices of cotton batting discouraged the Linzers from rattling into powder. Given the deep losses to her arsenal, Maren pulled a handful of cottonballs from her purse to offset the cookies Dorothy had consumed.

  Maren sniffed the cotton for chemicals, threw one to the floor that stank of chloroform, and packed the rest into position. She seated the rusting tin within her substantial purse and patted the chains, zippers, and pockets of her waistcoat. The effect of the formal vest would have been nummularian were it not willfully scuffed, repaired with large, off-color stitches, and dyed the color of fallen leaves by a Mudmee process.

  A trio of bulges responded to soft pokes along three parallel pockets near Maren’s spleen. Satisfied, she returned her attention to the woman wheezing in the bed.

  “Better?”

  “Much. Wish I had a ribbon to give you, Maren. Every treat of yours I try is lord over the last. It’s strange, but I do feel more like myself. Best I’ve been in days. It was poor nutrition that got me down. They serve me pills and needles for breakfast.”

  “My Linzers are not paper cups or hanging bags: they hold more than false hopes. If we put three in you, the intercoms would be afire with reports of a Dorothy Tommaso skipping through the halls.”

  “I don’t know about… they said just standing would be the death of me.”

  “Which is precisely why you are cut-off at two. That, and I must conserve the lemon Linzer. Might need a boost myself, later. A walking holiday is upon us, and I am no spring chicken.”

  “Yes, I… it’s easy for me to forget your age. You act young. You don’t shake or totter or… I can’t see you falling.”

  “Anyone can fall,” Maren said absently, her ears twitching as high heels rang in the outer corridor. Her lips thinned. “What sort of fool constructs a wing to care for the elderly, slaps the occupants in paper slippers, and sets them loose on a concrete floor?”

  Dorothy looked at the floor. “It’s antiseptic. Easy to clean.”

  “How nice for the custodians! They’re killing more than germs in this place. You look as though you leapt from a roof.”

  “Been like this for years,” Dorothy said, motioning to the tattoo-deep blotches of purple on the backs of her hands and forearms. “They have pills for everything. This one makes me bruise. The name escapes me. It’s not Manhattan, but it’s an island. I try to use those memory games you taught me—”

  “—I have taught you no mnemonics. Not that I can recall,” Maren interjected.

  “It was a therapist, then. I use the games. They help with… I can recall the clues and keys, but the answers are as hard as ever. It’s not Ellis… what do you call those blood thinners?”

  “Leeches,” Maren said, spoons clicking as she adjusted her flowing scarf. “Do you need something for pain? If you had your teeth in, you’d have ground them away.”

  “It hurts to sit up, but there’s no good position left. I get tired of lying on my… there’s a button to push for the pain. Morphine. Whatever they call it now.”

  Maren clucked her tongue. “What I could propose makes morphine look… but no, you’re right. You should be sharp. The cookies have achieved that, but we must be quick. Poor old Dot! I thought you would touch a century. You are in a bad way.”

  “I know it. They can’t operate, and without… I won’t walk again. Not like this. They have me trapped, Maren. I won’t ever get out of this awful room.”

  “Nonsense. Not alive, Dot, but rest assured; they will discard your corpse while it’s warm. Look around—you’re into their prime real estate. A private room. Well, private if you overlook the propped door and the people who come and go. You’ve moved up.”

  “The blankets are the same. Haven’t been warm since I fell.”

  “Can’t help you there. I can’t risk an interaction with the Linzers. More blankets might do.” Maren scanned the room, scowling at its cheerful color scheme. “They may stock linens in the cupboards, but I am loathe to explore.”

  “Why?”

  “When bad art prints and boring plants are left in the light, I have to wonder what horrors lurk unseen.” Maren counted wordlessly on her necklace, thinking. “I haven’t seen a wall done in lime green for over thirty years. Not fresh like this, top to trim.”

  “The room’s refurbished. Calming colors, they said. It promotes health and good spirits. Relaxes the mind.”

  “What relaxed in here were the bowels of a crayon factory,” Maren said. “Poor taste is a clever beast. Persistent. Circles around like a depraved man at the outskirts of a playground, riding his bicycle to the rims.”

  “I’d have gone with an off-white,” Dorothy mused. “Creamy amaretto for the trim.”

  “I’m glad you are bedridden. Way back when, Uriah Lee and I toured the Sagrada Familia. That basilica is the most hideous structure standing in Barcelona. It reminds me of this room.”

  “A church?”

  “So they claim. Uriah prowled the grounds like a puma with a grudge, looking at it from this angle and that. She finally determined a sequence. How it came to be. She said it was a conjugation, like a verb. It goes: God, Gaudí, gaudiest. I laughed my fool head off, as you can imagine. That monstrosity is unfinished—may it forever so remain.”

  “I like a simple building for worship,” Dorothy agreed. “No crowds and microphones. The big ones just want to pass the plate.”

  “Everyone wants something,” Maren said. “Speaking of that, let’s get you a blanket.”

  3

  Maren shook a folded hand-towel from a packed drawer, bit her lip at the size, and threw it to the floor. She followed the first with dozens of clones.

  “I found blankets, but they’re made for hamsters. Much too small. Rough to the touch, too. I don’t want to know what your cold nights cost.”

  “Nor do I. Disturbs me to think on it. We used to be frugal. Back when my Lawrence was alive, we drove clear to California on just… we had an empty nest, by then, but we kept to a budget. Larry believed very strongly in budgets. We slept in the Mercury six nights running.”

  Maren slammed a drawer that sounded as if it might contain ampules and numerous loose metal parts. “I have always said that a person possessed of a motorcar should invest in a fur-lined trunk.”

  “We… we stayed up front. The evenings were chilly, but I had Larry, and we had an afghan I’d made for the holidays, and that Mercury had a whiz-bang heater at your feet. It seemed an adventure. My hair smelled of cigars and gasoline for a week after we got back.”

  “You won’t get that here,” Maren said, tossing a handful of washcloths over her shoulder with none of the reverence she would have shown salt.

  “No,” Dorothy said. “No, I won’t. Not for any price. Lawrence was… he wasn’t what you’d call romantic. Not on purpose. We traveled like that because Larry couldn’t bear to pay for a motel, and I couldn’t bear to make him. We stopped at I don’t know how many.”

  “Why?” Maren squeezed the bulb of a pressure cuff several times, made a dismissive sound, and closed another drawer with a bang.

  “Oh, just to ask. Larry would kill the engine and go to the front office. I’d roll down my window and fix my lipstick in the side-view. Out he’d stomp, holding his fedora, and he’d make the glass rattle in the door. He’d start-up the Mercury, start a stogie… then I did my part, asking how much it was, and he’d tell me. Highway robbery, he’d say, and I’d laugh like it was the first time.”

  “Mmm,” Maren said, attempting—and failing—to put several feet of very thin, very loud, very crinkly paper back onto a conveyor belt that fed from underneath an examination table wheeled into the far corner of the room.

  “The Mercury would fill with smoke, Larry would grab my knee, and he’d ask if I was ready to hit the road. I’d s
ay yes, darling, and he’d dump the clutch and travel through the gears. When he got into third and cracked the window, then I’d say, if highway robbery is legal, let’s be Bonnie and Clyde. He’d laugh and cough and grab my knee, and Larry would pretend he was checking the rearview for cops, and we’d go like that until we found the next neon sign. We did that for a thousand miles.”

  “Thick in the head, was he?”

  “Larry? He knew how it would go. It was something to do. He lived to look for a deal. About twilight, he’d get to nodding-off, and then I’d say I was carsick. Larry, he’d find a rest area for me, pull over, and we’d doze-off until our necks were stiff or the sun tried to bake us into a casserole.”

  Maren tore the paper from a tongue depressor with her orange teeth and spat the cellophane to the floor. The rounded stick soon followed. “As I said—you should have appointed the trunk with furs.”

  “Yes, well… it was used, the Mercury. Larry told me about the options and packages, but I don’t—it was fully-loaded, he said. We pushed the safety belts through the seat on the first day. Never dug them out again. That car felt safe. It felt free.”

  “You must’ve cut a figure,” Maren said, rising on the toes of her neon sneakers, searching a high shelf she determined to be empty.

  “Maybe we did. I’m trying, but I can’t picture myself like that—a woman in fishnet stockings, laughing through a Pall Mall, riding with my feet on the dash.” Dorothy’s face shrank. “I can see the memory, but it’s… I’m talking about myself, Maren, but I’m describing a stranger.”

  “Good riddance, I say. Any sane person only drives through California if they’re leaving. They’ve let that place go. A few hundred years back, that whole region was a paradise. Uriah Lee loved to flop on a beach, but then, she has the skin for it. Me? I burned to see the trees. Magnificent, they were.”

  “Larry thought the same. He got his fill of redwoods, so we drove to see the sequo… you know, Sandy could tell you what this room costs. She said she could book the top floor of a Vegas suite for what this runs. She called.”

  “Ah,” Maren said, her tone dry. “Did she sit on her phone again?”

  “No, she just wanted to… they called her when I fell. The hospital. Sandy called back. She wanted to ask me where the—how I was holding-up. She checks on me whenever… she asked if I was hanging in there. I said I was.”

  “Sacking the home place, is she?”

  Dorothy looked at the wall, passing over the lone, nondescript plant, for it was easily lost against a solid wash of lime.

  “She might as well. Strip it to wallpaper and studs, I say. The tax man will take whatever she can’t cart away.”

  “I am defeated,” Maren said, maintaining pressure on a cabinet door that squished against a deformed box. Fifty pairs of disposable gloves had leaked, the rubbery fingers pushing through a punched-out hole in the side of the box.

  “Defeated. That’s two of us.”

  “But only one of us is cold. There’s not a spare blanket to be found. Must cost extra. Do you miss your house?”

  “I don’t miss cleaning it. I try not to think about… I can handle hearing what’s happening there. I can when it’s over the phone. I thank the saints I haven’t had to go back. I dream, sometimes. I see the empty rooms. Rectangles where photographs were framed—there was Sandy in her sailor suit, and…” Dorothy’s voice hitched. “You’re my first visitor, Maren. The first since I fell.”

  “You could say that with a smile, you rumpled hen. Would you prefer I leave?”

  “No. No, I just wish…” Dorothy shook her head, her eyes welling with tears.

  Maren sat bodily in the plastic chair, pulled a coarse tissue from the designer-printed box on the bedside table, frowned at the texture, and let the tissue flutter to the floor. She reached into her round purse for a more suitable alternative.

  When she found the object she wanted, Maren cleared her throat loudly to capture her audience, lifted a bushy eyebrow several times with a showman’s smirk, and presented a tiny silk triangle with professional solemnity. Maren assumed an exaggerated, disbelieving child’s face and employed a practiced dexterity, snapping the triangle into a voluminous bandana.

  “Magic,” Maren said, her sincerity such that she was clearly teasing. Dorothy cheered appreciatively and pretended to clap her hands, pulling her skin taut against the tape and tubing. Maren dabbed at the damp furrows on Dorothy’s cheeks.

  “Don’t let dying get you down, Dot. You’ve been a faithful servant. Your last reward awaits.”

  “I know it. I have my faith. It’s just… God, I hate to cry. You won’t believe me, but I never cried in the hard times. We lived hand-to-mouth, and even when we lost… I didn’t cry then, not when people told me I should. Now look at me. Sniffling in bed. It’s the drugs making me silly.”

  “Yes, I can see that. Any sillier and you will slit your throat.” Maren exhaled and looked at the lime-colored wall. “I’m sorry you took a tumble. Fortuitous timing, if you are me, but your perspective must be… You got a plant out of the deal, so there’s something. Spathiphyllum wallisii. Peace lily.”

  “Sounds pleasant. The normal name.”

  “It does, though in a generic and sentimental way. This one has flowered and is done for a while. Tougher than any patient here. You can’t kill a lily with a chainsaw. What of you, Dot? Are you at peace?”

  “Not just yet, but I hadn’t fully noticed the plant until now. It blends into that wall, and my glasses are… I have no idea where they are. Not where I left them.”

  “It is not your fault you didn’t see it. That lily is meant to inspire those on the brink, or to comfort those huddled around the departed. That plant should be the centerpiece of our limited view. Instead, it has been buried—just like any other temporary occupant of this room.”

  “I wish it was in flower, but you can’t always get… I’m coming to terms with the lime, more and more.”

  “You shouldn’t. Hate the wall, hate the plant, and despise these kindergarten colors. This entire room is a blatant manipulation of emotion. It is positively desperate that we be cheerful. Don’t take me wrong, I like a burst of color—but lime green is like the French language: I tolerate it best when it’s an accent.”

  “That was a joke.”

  “If it was, it missed your long face.” Maren clucked her tongue. “You are living proof that laughter dies before the body. Wipe your mouth if you want—I’ll launder that kerchief someday.”

  “My mother used to say that blood dries faster than tears. It’s the kind of thing a daughter remembers. It wasn’t advice to see me through a rough spot. She was talking about washing clothes.”

  “Blood carries platelets and proteins. Sweat and tears have salts going for them. It would be a good race. I wonder where she heard that—I doubt your mother had an original thought in her life.”

  “She didn’t think much of schooling,” Dorothy admitted. “She taught me cooking, cleaning, sewing… She never lost hope I’d do better than my Larry. She was quick to say as much. They were cats and dogs for forty years, those two. I dreaded our family gatherings. More, if there was any beer in the icebox.”

  “Are you reconciled with your loved ones, Dot? Satisfied with your legacy?”

  Dorothy picked at the thin blanket with her less encumbered hand. “Have to be, don’t I? Larry’s been gone for most of a lifetime. Feels like he has. Sandy and… everyone downstream of me is busy.”

  “Oh yes, they’re busy little bees. Too busy to come see a sickling.” Maren recovered the handkerchief. “One likes to pretend that family will show for the end. Already signed your testament, did you?”

  “Our will? I never changed it. Larry had it done-up. The advisor told us it would roll over to the survivor. Me.”

  Maren smacked her palms on the sides of her chair. “There was your mistake.”

  “To have a will?”

  “Absolutely. You should have amended it. Should have left
the whole works to church and charity. Then, see, you could have drafted another version—unsigned. That one would dispose of your effects and funds to the brood.”

  “That’s the same end as it is now.”

  “Yes, but it changes the events leading there. Had you done that, your kin would have buzzed through with regularity. They would be here now. They would be busy in this very room, standing vigil and practicing your cursive.”

  “You’re being too… Sandy is doing what she can. The estate I’m leaving is barely worth executing. It took everything we had to keep me going.” Dottie waved an arm painted with iodine and sleeved in bruises until the back of her hand connected with the monitoring apparatus behind her line of sight. “These beeps and bloops cost a fortune. Sandy has my power of attorney. Had to have it.”

  “No doubt she did.”

  “The nurse said the same. It let Sandy get started on… there’s not enough left to cover a funeral, but they’ll pool together. Sandy said they’ll find a way—I’m not to worry about how. I hate to shove another bill under the door when I won’t be there to pay it. They deserve better.”

  “Who? Your family? What they deserve is… Dottie, your bedside is empty. I don’t count, for I come with a claim of my own. What penalty is it to visit? There’s no fee to enter this facility. Anyone who wants to be here, is.”

  “They’re—”

  “—Jackals and ghouls! Your estate… you’ve already paid for your funeral. Told me as much.”

  “Did I?”

  “Plot, hole, stone, readings—all the usual frippery. The name of your embalmer, the titles of songs, the flowers chosen. Do you recall showing me the casket you’d circled in that showroom leaflet? I said it was fine, but mahogany wasn’t a poplar model. You didn’t laugh at that, either.”

  “Poplar? Oh, the wood. I get it now.”

  “Jokes are not jars of pickled cauliflower in a cellar, Dot. A joke expires. You picked and paid when your precious Lawrence kicked his bucket. The expensive bits are long bought. Have you forgotten?”

  “Well, no, but I thought I might be confused. Sandy said—”