When the Woman announced, Your route guidance is now complete, Joan did as before, U-turning to the liquorstore to the lighthouse for Diet Coke, Marlboro Lights and fluffy Lay’s, then drove to the apartment complex and had herself a smoke. She was actually looking forward to seeing him because this time her nerves had settled. Relatively. He was so unaffected, so unmythic, and didn’t seem to want anything from her. (She wondered what she wanted from him.) Joan thought that today he might ask her simple questions. She was ready. It wasn’t about being interrogated, from either end. She was prepared.
She stood at the door, which this time was open
LXXVIII.Ray
and smiled from the other side, old man/twinkle-eyed smile, remarking on her Diet Coke. I don’t know what they put in those things but it can’t be good. She brushed by and he smelled the cigarettes — why did she think she could pull one over? why had she even tried? she was still his little girl and didn’t want him to know that she smoked. She thought it so dear: he’d bought Diet Cokes at the store in anticipation of her visit, and had “a cold one” waiting for her.
The dog immediately bit her ankle.
He swatted it and the thing yelped and hid under a chair.
Joan kept saying No worries as her dad flushed Nip out and corralled him in the kitchen, swatting his behind, more yelping as they went. Please, no worries! She thought he might have another heart attack. Joan heard voices in the back — the “galfriend.” A woman in a colorful sari rushed out (was it her? No: too young), smiling diffidently on her way to the kitchen just as Ray and the dog ran past. Joan laughed: kind of a French farce. Water whistled and the sari made tea, wordlessly offering some to the guest. Joan shook her head then teacups were spirited to bedroom, the cousin grinning absurdly and bobbling her head at both as she fled.
“They’re helping out my gal,” said Ray.
An image was frozen on the living room television.
A cop, lying in the snow.
“My favorite show—The Twilight Zone. Ever see it? They play marathons on Thanksgiving Day. They’ll put on a whole season’s worth. Old ones, the classics. I think I’ve seen pretty much all of em. They’ve tried the show a couple times since, I mean a redo job, but they just can’t get it right. That fellow Serling was somethin special. They broke the mold. He was a smoker too! Busted. Back in the days when they didn’t hide it. Ed Murrow and Jack Paar and all those fellows. It was glamorous. Now they herd people out of buildings to puff up, like dope addicts. Busted. You see em on the sidewalks. Anyway, they did a movie — helluva long time ago. The actor got his head chopped off by a helicopter.”
“Vic Morrow.”
“That’s right!” He was pleased his daughter had the factoid at hand. “The director was gonna to go to jail but he got off.”
“John Landis.”
“Why, yes! I think that was his name. That was a big trial.”
He aimed the remote and said, “You know, Marjorie and I used to watch this together. My my, that was ’61, ’62.”
Joan’s gut clenched.
“How is she?” he ventured.
“She’s great! She’s traveling.”
“Married?”
“Her husband died last year.”
“Oh. Oh. That’s too bad. I’m — I’m sorry to hear that.”
Why did I say — that wasn’t part of the cover.
“Were you close?”
Joan thought he meant she and Mom, then realized what he was asking.
“Not close, no. But he was a very, very nice man.”
She was glad not to have blurted out the fact that Ham adopted her, which definitely would have hurt him.
He pressed PLAY and they watched the DVD.
A police officer had been shot outside an old woman’s tenement door — she looked like Marj! — and when he asked for help, she was afraid to let him in. She kept saying he was Mr Death, and that he was just trying to trick her. The cop (a babyfaced Robert Redford, no less) said he was bleeding and asked her to at least call someone for help. Compassion got the best of her and he leaned on the frail, frightened woman as they crossed the threshold of her front door. She put a blanket on him and he slept. Now she seemed happy to have a visitor and when Redford awakened, she fed him hot soup. He realizes she hasn’t called the doctor because she has no phone and there aren’t any neighbors because they’ve all moved away; the tenement has been slated for demolition. She finally tells him why she never leaves the house.
“I know he’s out there! He’s trying to get in. He comes to the door and knocks, begs me to let him in. Last week he said he was from the gas company. Oh, he’s clever! Then he said he was a contractor, hired by the city…I sent him away! He knows I’m onto him. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.”
Redford tells her not to cry, that he’s not going to hurt her.
“At 1st,” says the old woman, “I couldn’t be sure. I was on a bus. There was an old woman sitting in front of me, knitting. Socks, I think. Then this young man got on. There were empty seats but he sat down right beside her. It upset her. He seemed like a nice young man. When she dropped her yarn, he picked it up and gave it to her — I saw their fingers touch. He got out at the next stop. When the bus reached the end of the line, she was dead.”
“But you said yourself that the woman was old.”
The tenement lady ignored the logic, lost in a dream. “I’ve seen him since, several times. I’ve seen him in crowds, watched for him. Once he was a young soldier…a salesman…a taxi driver. Every time someone I knew died, he was there. I knew—because I was getting old and my time was coming. I saw more clearly than younger people.”
She said she hadn’t always lived like a recluse. People used to tell her she was pretty. She loved the sun even though she’d been warned it would spoil her complexion.
“I didn’t care. I’ve always hated the dark and the cold. I’ve lived a long time and I don’t want to die! I’d rather live in the dark than not live at all.”
Redford said there was nothing to be afraid of. Just then, a burly man interrupted, pounding at the door. When she opened, he pushed in and she swooned. The old woman came to, and the man was relieved she was all right.
“I’m sorry, lady, but I’ve got my orders! Look, I don’t get no pleasure busting in doors. I got a crew and equipment coming in an hour or 2 to pull this tenement down.”
“Are you really not Mr Death?”
The intruder didn’t seem to hear what she said.
“All I know is I got a contract to demolish this row of buildings. You were notified months ago, right? These buildings were condemned by the city — this building’s had it! It’s worn out, used up; all these buildings have to come down! I ain’t no monster, lady. I’ve got a heart just like anybody else. I can see how you can get attached to a place, but the building’s got to come down and make way for the new. That’s life, lady — I just clear the ground so other people can live. A big tree falls and a new one grows from the same ground. Old animals die and young ones take their places. Even people step aside.”