“Phew! I’m going to open the windows. He’d have had to be poisoned to stink like that.”
“He loved that pie,” Louise says. “That was his favorite pie.”
“How do I go to her? What am I supposed to say? ‘You, Judith! What do you think you’ve saddled me for, the duration? You’ve got pancreatic cancer trouble. You’re a goner, but you could last six months. Since when do saints subcontract? I never signed up for any war on poverty, you did. I’m clearing off for Canada.’ ”
“They’ve got to be smelling it in the streets. Like sewer smoke. He had to be poisoned. No peaceful gut stinks like that.”
“ ‘You want something reasonable, just ask. You want magazines? You want someone to fetch your prescriptions or drive your visitors home? Sure, I can do that.’ ”
“Poisoned? You really think so? Those peach slices on lettuce with creamy dressing. Where are you going?”
“This is terrible,” Cornell says. “I’m very sorry. I guess the only good thing about it is that he had his family with him. Look,” he says, obedient to his civilized life, “if there’s anything I can do—”
“Clean him up.”
“What?”
“You’re an agency, aren’t you?” Louise says. “Or if you ain’t an agency you work with them. Clean him up. Clean my father up!”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a food handler. I handle food!”
“Yes, and it was your food he was eating when he died!” Louise shouts.
“Like hell! He was eating that pie you made from the goddamn recipe!” snaps outraged Cornell.
“You had some too!” Louise yells at him. “I ate it, I’m all right!”
“I didn’t actually mean he was poisoned,” George says quietly.
“There was nothing wrong with him.”
“He was old,” Cornell says. “He was a very old man.”
“Sure, and that’s all the reason your kind needs, ain’t it? It isn’t enough a person may have pain, or outlived his family, or he’s got worries, or can’t stretch his benefits. All that ain’t enough. You fix it so he’s got to sleep with one eye open and be on the lookout for someone with a needle from the government who’s decided he ain’t productive no more or’s a drain on the taxpayer! When all that’s wrong is he’s some lonely old man who’s only got left what might have happened to him when he was young. Then it’s all ‘Oh, the poor dear, let’s put him out of his misery, let’s stick the needle in his arm or give him a pill or slip something in his food.’ Where are you going? Don’t you dare leave! George, stop him.”
“This is crazy,” Cornell says.
“Don’t call me names. I don’t need any murderers calling me names. George? George!”
Except for the fact that he misses his father-in-law and wishes he were here to enjoy this, George Mills is having a grand time. His enjoyment is his share of the irrational.
“Why do you think he ain’t in a Home? Why do you think the VA don’t have him? He wanted to steer clear of people like you. He wanted to decide when enough was enough and not some bureaucrat mercy killer. Who made you God? You ain’t God. When you came in, didn’t you see that he had folks, that he had a daughter who still made him birthdays, a son-in-law who took an hour off from work to share them with him? Couldn’t you have changed your mind? Would it have been too inconvenient to back out without giving him dinner? You had the tray with you. I know you can’t just dump your poison in the street because if a dog died, or somebody’s cat, and if there was an investigation the whole thing might just come apart. Or maybe whoever it is you work for already wrote him off and it would have taken too much explaining. Do you know what that makes you? Not even a mercy killer. You killed him for paperwork! Oh,” Louise says softly, “oh, oh.” And begins to cry, her lump of the insanity wearing off like a drug, pulling her passionate madness, which she will never be able to account for, no more than the others, when they are once again sane, will be able to account for theirs, George his glee, Cornell his blabbermouth anger.
“Oh,” she says again, stunned, her orphan’s grief not even in it, none of her precedent loyalties or bespoke associations with the corpse on the bed, knowing the deepest shame she has ever felt, humiliation so profound apology would be unseemly as its cause. If she could die herself she would do so, if she could will Messenger dead she would, or George — anyone witness to her outburst. Only Mr. Mead is dead, and she turns pragmatically to him, not for forgiveness, for relief. He’s the only one in the room who’s neither seen nor overheard her lapse, and she’s actually grateful to him because only he has nothing to forgive.
Carefully, she begins to clean her father.
But Cornell is not through yet, and because Cornell is still mad George still has someone to entertain him, so George is not through yet either.
“Jeez,” he says slyly, “she sure had some things to say about you.”
“They’re lies,” Cornell says, “they’re crazy lies. I’m from Meals-on-Wheels. Not even from Meals-on-Wheels. I’m filling in. This ain’t my corner. Ifyouwereonbettertermswithyourneighborsyou’dknowthat.”
“My neighbors?”
“Your neighbors. The shut-ins. That take from Judy Glazer when she isn’t dying from cancer and has more time for them. They know all about it. Judy keeps them posted from the deathbed.”
“What does she tell them?” George asks.
“What are you smiling about? You enjoy it you know our secrets?”
Mills shrugs.
“Big deal. Everybody suffers. If you want to know the truth I didn’t even know I had secrets until I found out that strangers knew them.”
“Don’t be ashamed,” Mills says with cheerful compassion.
“Wait a minute. Is this about the Lord or something?”
“The Lord?” says the saved man.
“You know what I mean. If Audrey Binder cringes in the corner when there’s a misprint in a book she’s reading or the line is busy, it isn’t because she guessed wrong about Jesus. Unhappiness is her dirty little secret. I can’t keep up with it.”
“No,” says Mills, all understanding.
“I mean we live this Top Secret, Eyes Only life. I don’t see the point of it. You know what I think? I think we make too much of things. We’re the crybabies of the Western world! Boy oh boy, do we carry on! Pain, real pain, stuff wrong with your joints, that’s something else altogether.” Messenger lowers his voice and begins to bad-mouth his west end pals. “I mean who gives a shit Sam Glazer might not be able to handle the deanship?” he asks. George shakes his head, and Cornell fills him in on all the juicy gossip he can think of about his closest friends. He tells him about Victor Binder’s troubles with the IRS, about Paul Losey’s malpractice premiums and how Paul, smitten as a teenager, has evidently fallen hopelessly in love. “Nora Pat’s guessed something’s up, but she hasn’t a clue really. She’d bust if she did. It’s supposed to be someone right here in town.”
George nods.
“Say,” Messenger asks, “you’re not a blackmailer, are you?”
“I evict poor people,” Mills tells him expansively.
“Nora thinks all she has to do is fix an exciting bedroom, but I’ll tell you something. Nora’s got a mouth on her like the iron jaw lady. What difference does it make? She can lick and suck and blow on his balls till the cows come home. The guy’s in love. What can she do? If some other chick gets him off, that marriage is curtains. That’s why she’s on academic probation. Architecture flies out the window when a femme fatale comes in at the door. Hell, what does it matter? As if problems could ever be solved. I mean, shit, that’s why they’re problems, right? I mean if anything’s wrong it’s wrong forever. You can only make things worse. That’s where I screwed up with Harve. That’s where I screwed up with my kids. They’re bad kids, so I had to go and be a worse father. The horror, the horror, eh?”