All Hallows Read online

  “—Any remaining costs you earned from suffering through the services of your church for so many years. The arrangements are made. You’ve told me each detail in such repetition I would like to scream.”

  “Did I? It feels as if I did, but sometimes… I told you everything?”

  Maren blew a raspberry and shook the handkerchief as though a cheap ghost had bitten her hand.

  “Nat King Cole is to be featured before the main event. The call to arms is that song about abiding. That’s to be played live. Pipe organ. The readings are Mathew 10:28 and Proverbs 14:27, with further expansion from the minister, His Irrelevancy Steve Barnard. He’ll use those proclamations to cudgel the mourners into obedient little lambs. A word on your works and deeds will follow, also delivered by this Barnard fellow. Then it’s an open mic for personal stories; anything your family wants to share—that phase should move right along.”

  “Yes, that’s… that’s how it was,” Dorothy said, tapping a finger on her bottom lip. “The passages… Rhea Gray is going to do the readings.”

  “So you’ve said. Your corpse will be on display. You’ll be flanked by a number of mop-head hydrangea. Obscene chrysanthemum will grow from your legs.”

  “Yes, that’s—”

  “—Skip a step or two, and they’ll break sod next to what’s-his-name, Lawrence. You go on and on about getting tossed next to him. I assume it’s a requirement of a coupon—two for one, something of that kind.”

  “The plot wasn’t a… I do recall that. Setting-down my wants. Larry bought those plots in the seventies. No coupon, but he got a real good deal on those.”

  “There you are then. It’s grass on an old grave: the matter is settled.”

  “If times are tight, though, I could look for a refund. I could sell the plot. Cut the bells and whis… Do you think I should switch to cremation and a graveside service?”

  “Dottie, you don’t want my thoughts on what to do with a body. If you could force me to attend, I’d smuggle a boombox in my bag, insert my Meat Loaf mixtape, and give the ushers a merry chase before I got cornered. As to that—heaven and waiting—we must speak of that while my Linzers are active. Do you accept your death?”

  “I can’t deny what’s coming.”

  “Well said. It is easy to die. Unavoidable. Sit, wait, and it’s over before you know it. Pay a bit more, and this modern medicine will drain your liquid accounts, fill you with saline and silliness, and provide a few additional hours to wander about in a meaningless sea of pain.”

  “I don’t want to buy more than I already have. I saw the machines breathing for… no, I won’t be like that. I signed the waiver. Sandy did.”

  Maren tested Dorothy’s forehead quickly with the back of her hand. “The Linzers are in their full effect. You are somewhat sound of mind, and your body is what it can be. You were prepared before you fell, Dot. I need this to be a sure thing. We are at the door, yet I see a woman unready to die. What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Dorothy said, tears reddening her brown eyes. “I thought I… I was at peace. I’ve lived my life. It was a good life—everyone tells me it was. And accepting… I did that when Larry passed. I floated for years, haunting my own home. Simple words. His end. My end. The end. I only had to wait, like you said, but then…”

  Maren dabbed at Dorothy’s tears with the folds of silk. “You have regrets, Dottie. They’re legitimate ones. It is why I’m here. Your problem came of living too long. That and thinking. It’s a snake in a can, Dot. Such things should not be opened in your later years—not when it’s for the first time.”

  “I didn’t try to think.”

  “It was a late development. Nonetheless, it has come to your attention that you could have been anything—but you let yourself be nothing.”

  “I was something, but I…” Dorothy straightened in the bed, shaking her head softly. “I should be more grateful. I was a mother. A wife. A homemaker.”

  Maren snorted. “A man with a chisel and a hip-flask is waiting to carve that summation below your name and into eternity. Well, not eternity. The lettering might be legible for a hundred years. That’s if the stonemason did not cheat you, and if the rain doesn’t turn to acid again, and if the cemetery is not moved, and if your marker isn’t vandalized and pushed on its face.”

  Dorothy exhaled loudly. “I didn’t last a year in assisted. Why couldn’t I have fallen at home?”

  “Did you try?”

  “No, but I put-off servicing that fixture over my basement stairs. It was burned-out for years. Both bulbs black. I could have leaned a ladder into position, broken my neck, and been done with it. I’d have saved a bundle. That, or I’d have had a working light.”

  “Be thankful it has ended this way. You would have missed my visits—missed my offer. And only here could you escape your family.”

  “That wasn’t my intent.”

  “An accidental blessing, then. You have avoided sticky-fingered children looking to retire, grandchildren too lazy to rebel at middle age, and great-grandchildren without names. You could avoid death itself, if you’d listen to me.”

  “Did you meet them? My family?”

  “Never met the throng. There was that great-grandson of yours. He left quite an impression, what with his lumberjack’s beard and lotion-soft hands. Stood there sucking peach-flavored vapor without a trace of shame. I recall that you asked him why he wore his hair like a woman. He defended that as a man-bun, and you accused me of snickering when I coughed.”

  “You coughed like a monkey. It was a mistake of me to ask about hair. That was his one visit. He doesn’t think much of me, I fear.”

  “Nobody thinks much of… did you visit your ailing aunties?”

  “The women of my line die young, or they used to. I had a grandmother; father’s side. She lived with us for about a year when I was just a girl.”

  “And?”

  “I remember less than I would like. She didn’t trust recordings, I remember that. She’d snap any album she saw over her knee. Said she could hear the devil talking in the wax. Made me rebellious. I might have missed Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald, if not for her.”

  “A life without music,” Maren said. “Hers must have been a sorry existence.”

  “She went to live performances. We spent hours at gospels and psalms and singalongs, over to the church. She listened, and she sang too loud, like the deaf will do. Wanted my hand in her pocket whenever we stood at a service. I got a penny if I did that.”

  “Thought you’d run off?”

  “I don’t know. She said she hated Abraham Lincoln. Couldn’t bear to look at his smug face. My grandmother unloaded pennies every chance she got.”

  “I assume she finally died?”

  “She did. Caught a cough. She held-on for a month, but… I don’t remember her face. Not alive. I have a photograph, but what I remember is her breaking those records on her knee. That and the singing. She had a voice like a basset hound in a sticker patch.”

  “A good voice is wasted on the young,” Maren said.

  “I don’t know if she ever sang well. She died, and they put her on the kitchen table, like they used to do. I had two of her pennies left, and I put those on her eyes. One was shiny, but the other was almost black. The pennies, I mean. I can’t remember the color of her eyes. I want to say they were gray.”

  “Do you see, Dot? Your grandchildren will not mourn you. They don’t understand you. Can’t. Just as you did not truly know or understand your grandmother. That boy with the peach vapor and the lawyer’s hands is only yours in name. It’s just as well. He’s a lost cause.”

  “He’s young. The Lord will guide him.”

  “And if the good Lord does not? We have discussed this at the edges, Dot—it’s time we take it in our teeth. What if you could guide him? What if he were obliged to listen?”

  “He would hate me more than he does.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s restrict this to strangers. If you could
change a person’s way of thinking, would you? And if you could—who to choose?”

  “Well, I could… people say this country cast the wrong ballot, this last round. If I could change—”

  “—You are thinking small.” Maren pinched at an intravenous line, dimpling the cord with a flat, yellowed nail. “Too small, and yet too large. Leave the voting and bullets to others. I want you to touch one life. A life like yours. I want you to help a person flourish who would otherwise drown. I want you to assist them. Take them to their potential. Do you understand?”

  “The words, yes. It’d be a noble gesture, riding on a shoulder like those angels in the funny papers… but I don’t see how—”

  “—Let me worry about how. If you could attach to a young person—young to you—would you? It would be a solitary pupil; a person with whom you would share your second lifetime. Could you advise them?”

  “Advise?” Dorothy looked at her stained and punctured hands. “I don’t see how. I’m under watch myself. I can’t even advise on things I’ve done a thousand times. If I could, I’d wheel to the cafeteria and speak to the cooks. They could use a lesson on buttermilk biscuits and readymade sausage links—”

  “—Hush that talk! You ate my cookies, recall, and I have nothing to eat but my own words. Dottie, what I’m offering is… it’s a transfer. You would no longer be in bed. You’d live inside another person.”

  “That’s not—”

  “—You’d remain yourself. Diminished, but aware. You’d live on, alive in the mind of a child. A child who would not ignore you. They’d see you as a friend, not some prune of a person. Not someone to shun. Do you see the good you could accomplish?”

  “If I had more time, but I…” Dorothy lay her head against a thin pillow. “Just took a dizzy spell. I should rest. Thank you for coming to see me, Maren—you’re a wonderful distraction. You gave such ease of mind to Liza, there at the end. Rennie, too. You should be a priest.”

  Maren chuckled bitterly. “Priests are men who sell ideas that favor themselves. Such men as that put slick tile in a hallway for the convalescent. I’m not trying to distract you, Dottie. I am here to let you die a different way.”

  “How many ways can there be?”

  “There is dying without the death. I can offer that, if you want the advisory role—but it must be your choice. The peace of mind you saw, Dot, that gentle way they went? Liza and Rennie are not gone, Dottie. They’re alive.”

  Dorothy glanced at a cigar box that held her remaining possessions. Maren knew the box to contain a number of trashy items, chief among them a small, golden cross with a tiny rose in its center, which—as she’d heard far too many times—Dottie had received from her mother in commemoration of her first communion.

  “I know they’re not gone. I haven’t lost my faith. They’re waiting with the Lord. Free of suffering. They were borne aloft on wings of—”

  “—Don’t lean too hard on midrash like that.”

  “Am I? I try to stay off the sores, but… My old bed was hard as marble, and this new one hisses. Jostles me around. It’s like trying to sleep on the back of a python. My hip’s… be a dear, Maren. Will you press the… the morphine?”

  Maren reached for the button, her orange teeth bared in frustration. She jabbed a knotty finger at the plunger as if to stab the button numerous times, a cracked nail shaking.

  When she regained control, Maren folded the finger into her fist like the blade of a pocketknife. Her knuckles cracked as she breathed her way to calm.

  “I’ll ask again. Dot, if you could enrich a life, would you? Would you guide a child?”

  “It’s the Christian thing to do,” Dorothy said. She thought for a moment. “It would be unpleasant at times, wouldn’t it? Being in someone’s head? There’s the bedroom. The bathroom would—”

  “—You have been both places before,” Maren said quickly. “You’d be helping a good person in a bad place. A person in need. I’ll choose with care.”

  “That would be nice,” Dorothy said. “Did you press the button?”

  “I’m trying to find the right button to press,” Maren said, unmoving. “I need your understanding, and I need your confirmation. Yes or no. I can’t just throw you into a child’s brain and assume you won’t gibber about biscuits until they go barking mad.”

  “I thought… it’s the only button there,” Dorothy said.

  “A child,” Maren hissed between thinning lips. “Will you guide a child?”

  4

  The dying woman stared at the distorted, black face of a the flat-screened television that swung from an articulating arm. She refused to watch its programming while medicated—yet even while disconnected, the screen was disorienting.

  Threatening.

  “We think we can help young people, but I wonder. Perhaps they ignore us for a reason.”

  “They do. What child can pull sense from dusty stories told from a sickbed? The key is to be there in the moment. We elders must act before fateful decisions are made.”

  “They won’t listen,” Dorothy said, squirming against her pillow. “They never do.”

  “Examine why. The young dismiss wisdom because the packaging is unattractive. Experience is a whispering pile of wrinkles and scars. Danger is loud, confident, and brash.”

  Dorothy adjusted a pillow against the worn discs in her neck. “Is there a card on the table, Maren? Laminated? You could read that menu to me, if you want to… to talk to me. The pasta is too rich, but the lemon chicken is… Say, would they have pumpkin pie today? They said I’ve got to eat something or I’ll be nothing but a skeleton.”

  “And I’ll be a flammulated owl!” Maren exclaimed. “Dot, I need you to focus.”

  “When I open that box,” Dorothy said, squinting at the table, “I can still smell them. Larry’s cigars. It’s been so many years, but I swear I can.”

  Maren opened the box and sniffed deeply at the crease of the lid. “Manikins. The wood’s cedar. No rot. Havana tobacco, but not grown there. Hints of vanilla: whole bean, not the extract. It’s not in your head.”

  “Oh. That’s good,” Dorothy said. “So much else seems to be.”

  “Dottie, I need you to decide. You may decide to do nothing, but you must stick to it, if you do. Make a stand. The wringing of hands seldom helps a situation of life and death.”

  “What if… what do you think I should do? You strike me as older than your years.”

  “I am no older than I have lived, though I confess that I have lived longer than I look. I can’t tell you what to do, Dot. I can offer no more than your options. The Linzers will wear away any minute. You will be left half-alive, mumbling about cigars until they pull the plugs.”

  “Can you… could you make me smile? Like they did? Liza and Rennie?”

  “Yes,” Maren said, rising on her elbows. “That I can do. Would you like that, Dot? To appear at peace?”

  “Very much. I’ve had these dreams where… I wake, and I… hover. I’m crawling on the ceiling, looking down. Seeing myself. Passed on. And in the bad dreams… when I look at myself, I don’t… don’t let me look like that, Maren. Not like the last thing I saw was a bugbear crawling from under the bed.”

  “Don’t fear for that,” Maren said. “I will make you appear to have died as peacefully as any saint. You’ll smile like Death is an accomplished kisser. And if you want, Dot, you can live another duration of human life. A life spent more as a passenger than the driver, it must be said—but life is life.”

  “Should I?”

  “If you want. Your motives must be pure, and decent, and kind. You would have a second family to care for, and the person you bond with won’t abandon you, nor you them. Eventually, you will reach the end, and you’ll journey into whatever lies beyond, together. Hand in hand. You won’t be alone.”

  “That sounds… nice,” Dorothy said, staring at the dull reflection in the dead screen, her left hand reaching blindly for the button that would deliver her from pain
.

  “I need your permission,” Maren said, reaching for the dying woman’s groping hand. She massaged pockets of purple blood that had pooled under Dorothy’s skin. “There is a ceremony to perform, if you want to live again. It could… it might startle you. It’ll go well only if we’re in total agreement. I’m ready if you are. Do we have a deal, Dottie?”

  “I’m not signing anything,” Dorothy said, her mouth gaping in a terrible approximation of a grin. “Sandy has my power of—”

  “—So you said. Your daughter doesn’t care either way, but she has no power in this. You do. Be serious.” Maren’s tone swept the jovial expression from Dorothy’s face. “This is a bargain. You give and you get. I need lucid assent. There are fifty people waiting to die on this floor, Dot. I chose you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t demand control. Because I trust your judgment. Because you were a good person. Too often, good people end here, like this. They die full of emptiness, and drugs, and regret.”

  “I know,” Dorothy said, her mouth open, the edges of her lips falling backwards over her gums. The blank, dark screen of the television appeared to be wider than it had been before. “I don’t want to go alone, Maren.”

  “Then don’t. Clasp this second chance. Come with me. Your alternative is to die surrounded by careless machines and a scent I assure you is not the harbinger of heaven—I certainly hope it is not. If you come with me, you will continue. You’ll be grafted to another like a branch added to an apple tree. You will advise, and the young person will heed you. Respect you.”

  Dorothy’s eyes fluttered. “Maren, does this risk my soul?”

  “I can’t see how. You say you have your faith, but I see your fear. It’s not a weakness—who is not afraid of death? What proof do we have of anything except our childish wish to believe? What I propose does not reject faith—it requires and strengthens it.”

  “How?”

  “Well, it… this new relationship would remove any doubt you have that there’s more to life than what you know today. Consider it an offer of proof. You will have a lifetime longer to prepare, to refine your faith… Maybe you could scrub at a sin or two before you hit the gates, hmm? I can’t say what your judgment will be, Dottie, nor can I promise there is such a thing—but I can give you the chance to try again.”