“Norma, it’s not that far.”
“Well, we can’t tell Aunt Elner, she’ll get too upset. And she’s liable to have a heart attack, too. That’s all we need right now, two people in the hospital at the same time.”
Macky took Norma by the shoulders and led her over to the sofa. “Norma, listen to me. She’s in one of the best hospitals in the country and has one of the best doctors and all she has is just a pretty bad stomachache, that’s all. The doctor said she has gastroenteritis.”
“What?”
“Gastroenteritis.”
“Well, I’ve never heard of it. How did she catch it?”
“I don’t know, honey.”
“Is it some kind of Texas thing?”
“Probably not.”
Norma jumped up and went to the phone. “Well, I’m calling Dr. Clyde and asking him.”
As Norma was dialing, Macky said, “I give up. Do what you want, you’re going to anyway.”
Norma said, “Macky, get me some vanilla ice cream in a dish, I’m a nervous wreck. Look, my hands are shaking like a leaf.… I can hardly dial the—Tootie? It’s Norma Warren, is he there? Well, tell him I need to speak to him right away. Yes, it is. Macky, give me two scoops, I’m—Oh, Dr. Clyde … this is Norma and I need to ask you a question. Is there a disease called gastro inter-something? Hold on.” She called to the kitchen. “Macky, gastro what?”
“Enteritis, I think.”
“He says enteritis, he thinks. Macky, did that woman say gastroenteritis? Yes, that’s it.” She turned away from the phone. “Macky, he says, yes, there is, only it’s a condition, not a disease. No, Doctor, we don’t have it, it’s Baby Girl.”
Macky came in and handed her a bowl of ice cream and took her purse from her.
“Thank you, honey. No, I was talking to my husband. What kind of condition?” She repeated everything she heard in a loud voice. “It’s an inflammation of the stomach lining … uh … caused by too much acid. Usually brought on by stress. Did you hear that, Macky? Well, Macky was right, he said she was working too hard and now look what’s happened. She can’t die of it, can she? Ahhh, he says no, he doesn’t think so. Well, thank heavens for that. I was … oh … OK, yes, in that case you better get on back. Thank you, Doctor.” She hung up.
“See, she’s not going to die,” Macky said. “Now, don’t you feel better?”
“Not yet.”
An hour later, she picked up the phone in the kitchen and dialed Aunt Elner while Macky made himself a ham and cheese sandwich.
“Aunt Elner, were you taking a nap? It’s Norma. Put on your hearing aid, honey. Can you hear me? Well … now that we know it’s not life threatening, the tale can be told. Are you sitting down? Well, go sit down. Are you seated? I don’t want you falling out with a stroke. Well, the whole thing started last night at about ten-thirty. We had been in bed for about an hour when we heard a cricket in the living room and Macky got up without his glasses on and stepped on it and killed it! I know it’s bad luck to kill a cricket, that’s probably the reason Baby Girl wound up in the hospital in the first place!”
The Captive
Houston, Texas
February 10, 1976
After Dena had been in the hospital for a few days she began to feel better, and anxious to get out and back on tour. Dr. DeBakey had come to see her every afternoon, and when he came in today, she explained to him why he had to let her out to pick up the rest of the cities. He took her hand. “Honey, I know you are disappointed you can’t go back to work. You feel a little better so you think you’re ready to get up and start running again. I’ve heard it from my patients more times than I can tell you. How they can’t stop now, how they have to keep going till they get that job, that money or success or whatever it is they are running after, but let me tell you something: nothing is worth ruining your health. Most of my patients are sent to me after their doctors have given up on them. If you could see what I see when I open them up … I’ve had some of the richest, most powerful people in the world right here, movie stars, tycoons, kings, begging me to save them, but it’s too late. Believe me, nothing in the world is really important except life and death and that’s it.”
Dena did not give up. “I understand that and I will take it easy from now on, but you don’t understand how important this tour is; the network is counting on me. I made a commitment. I can’t let them down.”
“Let me tell you something.” He smiled. “Those people in New York may try and make you think they can’t do without you but they can. Take some advice from an old man—no amount of success is worth pushing yourself like you are doing. When you came in here your blood count and your blood pressure were so low I don’t know how you were able to stand, much less give a speech. I’m not trying to scare you, but I can promise you if you keep on going like you have been, you won’t live another five years. This flare-up is a warning that your body just cannot go on at this pace. And once you do permanent damage, you can’t get your health back. You have to slow down right now, before it’s too late. I called your family and Mr. and Mrs. Warren have already made arrangements to come here on Thursday with a car and take you home and look after you for a while.”
Dena was alarmed. “What?”
“The dietician gave instructions to Mrs. Warren as to what you can eat.”
“Dr. DeBakey, you don’t understand—I don’t even know these people. I mean, not well. We are related … but I can’t go home with them.”
“Oh … I see. Do you have other family?”
“I can take care of myself.”
“No, you can’t. You are going to need someone to prepare all your meals, keep people away from you, not let you use the phone. Now, you can stay in the hospital here with us or you can let me arrange to hire a twenty-four-hour-a-day nurse and put you in our aftercare clinic; that’s up to you. But one way or another, you have got to rest.”
“Why can’t I rest in New York?”
“I don’t want you anywhere near New York for at least three weeks. It’s not that I don’t trust you, young lady, it’s those people you work for I don’t trust. Now, you decide.”
And so on Thursday afternoon Dena found herself wrapped in a blanket, lying in the backseat of a brown and tan Oldsmobile, on her way to Elmwood Springs, Missouri, while Norma happily chatted nonstop through the entire state of Texas and on into Missouri about people Dena did not know or care to know, for that matter. She was too busy plotting her escape.
A Cheerful Visit
Elmwood Springs, Missouri
February 13, 1976
That first morning Dena woke up in a strange room with a woman she had never seen before sitting in a chair across the room, staring at her and fanning herself with a small brown paper bag. As Dena opened her eyes, the woman said, “I know you were glad to get out of that old hospital, weren’t you, honey.”
Dena managed a weak, “Yes,” wondering who in the world this old lady was.
“Well, we are sure glad you are home where you belong. I kept saying to Norma, when is Baby Girl getting out of that hospital and coming home? I don’t envy anybody in the hospital. Did I tell you about the time Norma carried me up to the hospital for a checkup?”
“No.” Dena wondered if she had stepped into the Twilight Zone.
“That bed they had me in was like sleeping on a bunch of cantaloupes. I will say this, that bed could do anything you wanted it to, go up and down, flat or tilted; it did everything but dance the polka and kiss you good night. When they had me up there they looked at me up and down, every which way but sideways from stem to stern, and after they finished, I said to that doctor, I said, ‘You’re just like that TV show Star Trek.’ ‘How so?’ he asked. I said, ‘Honey, you’ve been places where no man has ever dared to go.’ ”
Norma came into the room with a tray. “Good morning.”
“I was telling Baby Girl about my hospital stay, how they checked me out, and how he said all my numbers looked good. Whatever that meant.
But it finally calmed Norma down, didn’t it, Norma?”
Norma said begrudgingly, “Yes, but everybody needs a checkup once in their life.”
The old lady winked at Dena. “She’s scared I’m gonna die on her.”
Norma placed Dena’s tray in front of her. “Here, honey, I want you to try and eat this.”
Dena sat up and looked at a bowl of milk with a piece of toast floating in it. Norma went over and opened the windows. “Seriously, Aunt Elner, you could be watering your sweet peas one minute and the next topple over with a stroke. Or, who knows, a 707 airplane on its way to St. Louis could drop out of the sky. You can make fun of me but you never know from one minute to the next.”
“All the more reason to enjoy every one of them. You shouldn’t waste all your alive time worrying. It tells us that in the Bible. ‘Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?’ Luke 12:25.”
“Well, that’s fine for Luke,” Norma said, “he didn’t have you and Macky driving him crazy night and day. Do you want any more iced tea?”
Dena shook her head and Aunt Elner held her glass up. “I’ll take some more while you’re up.”
After Norma left the room Aunt Elner said, “I had that quotation crocheted for her on a doily, but she didn’t appreciate it. That girl worries herself into a frazzle over everything. If I don’t call her by seven A.M., she has me dead and buried. I said to her, I said, ‘Norma, when I finally do go, it’s gonna be anticlimactic. You won’t even be surprised, you’ve been practicing for so many years.’ “Aunt Elner pointed to the twirling trophies on the shelf that belonged to Norma’s daughter, Linda. “You know poor Dixie Cahill died last year.”
Dena had no idea who Dixie Cahill was. “No, I didn’t.”
“Well, she did. Of course, she was well up into her eighties but still teaching when she went. They buried her in tap shoes and with her batons.”
Norma came back and Aunt Elner said, “Are you going to take Baby Girl out to eat while she’s here?”
“Of course. She can go anywhere she wants. But I have to watch her diet. I have specific instructions.”
“You know that catfish place closed.”
“Yes, that didn’t last long, did it?”
“No,” said Aunt Elner. “But I told Verbena, I said, ‘They can stick a neon catfish up outside the door but everybody knows that’s where the mortuary used to be. Nobody’s gonna want to eat fish in a place where they came to see their relatives laid out, no matter how good the food is.’ ”
Dena could not believe what she was hearing. But Aunt Elner went on. “Baby Girl, since you were last here, Hatcher’s mortuary moved outside of town and now they put in a new, drive-through funeral home.”
“I’m sorry?” asked Dena, who was trying, in self-defense, to eat.
“They have a drive-by window to view the remains,” Norma put in. “It’s some lamebrained idea James Hatcher came up with.”
Aunt Elner said, “Instead of ordering a burger and fries, you look at a dead relative. No, I believe I’ll just get myself cremated, thank you. I don’t want anybody looking at me without me knowing it. What if Darlene did my hair funny? You know how horrified we were when she decided to give Mrs. Alexander bangs; everybody forgot about her being dead and just looked at her bangs. Darlene is liable to give me some peculiar hairdo and there won’t be a thing in the world I can do about it. At least while I’m alive I can come home and wash it out, but once I’m dead, I’ll be stuck for eternity with a bad hairdo. You remember what she did to that poor Church of Christ lady?”
“Oh, yes,” Norma said, “it was terrible.”
“She always wore her hair pulled back into some big old knot on the back of her head, like a cinnamon bun, and she never wore a drop of makeup, so you can imagine what the other Church of Christers thought when they saw her lying there with bangs and blue eye shadow.”
Aunt Elner added, “I’ll tell you, with Darlene around, people are afraid to die. My question is why would anybody want to fix dead people’s hair?”
There was a pause. Then Norma said, “Who knows? It’s quiet work, I suppose. No complaints. But I guess you never know whether or not your customer is satisfied, do you?”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Aunt Elner said, “but in her case that might be a blessing. Just the same, I’m not taking any chances. I’m getting cremated. Verbena and I went over there to the new mortuary and talked to James about it. He gave us a brochure to read up on it.”
“When?”
“The other day, after I went to my seventy-fifth high school reunion and there were only three of us left. I figured I better start thinking about what my options are.”
“Is Verbena thinking about cremation?”
“No, she was up there looking at coffins. She says for fifty years she’s been putting Merle Norman cold cream on her face, night and day, so she’ll look good, and she says she’ll be darned if she’s gonna get turned into ashes after all the work she’s put into her face. I said, ‘Your face may look great, Verbena, but if Darlene does your hair, you’re not gonna look good.’ ”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. But as for me, I don’t care a thing in the world about wasting money on a coffin that you’re only gonna use once. I’d rather spend my money over at the mall … or give it to the Humane Society.”
“Uncle Will bought a burial policy for you, Aunt Elner. It’s already paid for.”
“I know he did but I’d rather have the money now. Do you think they’d give it to me or do I have to die first?”
“Aunt Elner, the subject of death gives me the willies and I am sure Baby Girl does not want to sit here and listen to you talking about getting yourself burned up.”
“Oh Norma, you don’t burn up, it says so in the brochure. It’s like a white light so bright, it’s like looking into the sun; you feel the bright light and then you just disappear … just one big bright light and you’re gone.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. That appeals to me, much more than a dark coffin. And you still get a headstone and a place over at the cemetery so you can come and decorate me every Easter, so don’t worry about that. And when you wonder where I am, just look up at the sun and that’s where I’ll be.
“Well, guess I better get on home,” Aunt Elner said. “I don’t want to overstay my welcome. I just wanted to come over and cheer you up.” She patted Dena on the hand. “I’ll come back tomorrow. Maybe I’ll even bring you my cremation brochures, see what you think.”
“Come on, Aunt Elner,” Norma said. “Let’s let her get some rest now.”
“ ’Bye, honey. Or I could bring my cat, Sonny, if you’d like.”
“Aunt Elner, you are not bringing that cat over here and get fleas all over my house.”
Dena smiled wanly. “ ’Bye … thanks for coming.”
When they closed the door, Dena thought: I have to get out of here.
My Funny Valentine
Elmwood Springs, Missouri
February 14, 1976
The second morning Dena had another visitor. At eight o’clock, Dr. Gerry O’Malley arrived at the front door, dressed as a fifteenth-century troubadour complete with pink tights and a plumed hat, and carrying a dozen red roses and a mandolin. Macky came to the door. “Hi. Can I help you?”
Gerry felt like a complete fool now that he was actually here but he was determined to go through with it. “Mr. Warren, I am a friend of Dena’s and I wonder if I could see her for just a few minutes?”
“She’s upstairs. Can I tell her who—or what—is here?”
“Uh, well … it’s sort of a Valentine’s thing. A surprise.”
“OK. Wait just a second. I’ll see if I can get her down here.”
As Macky passed Norma, who had come out from the kitchen, he said, under his breath, “You’re not going to believe what’s out on the porch.”
Gerry spread the roses in front of the door and went down and stood waiting for Dena in the
yard. He caught a glimpse of a woman sneaking a look at him from the living room window, but it wasn’t Dena.
Dena was still sound asleep when Macky knocked.
“Baby Girl, there is somebody downstairs to see you.”
Dena woke up, startled. “What?”
“There is somebody here to see you.”
Dena sat up in bed. “Who?”
“He said it’s a surprise. He has something for you.”
“Oh. Can you just get it for me?”
“No … I don’t think so. I think you need to go down and get it yourself.”
Dena got out of bed and put on her robe. Downstairs, Macky had to pull Norma away from the window. “Come on, Miss Busybody, let’s go in the kitchen.”
She did not want to move. “One of us should stay here. What if he’s a crazy person? He might be dangerous, Macky!”
Macky laughed. “He’s crazy, all right, but he’s not dangerous.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the poor guy’s out there shaking like a leaf.”
Dena came downstairs and went to the door. She did not see anybody at first but she looked down and saw roses spread out in a big heart-shaped design with a card in the middle. As soon as she walked out on the porch, she heard music. She saw Gerry O’Malley standing in the yard dressed in some idiotic costume playing a mandolin and singing something about love. She could not believe her eyes.
As she stood there in her robe shivering in the cold, as the neighbors started peering out their windows one by one, she could hardly believe what she was seeing or hearing.
After his song he took off his hat and bowed and drove off, leaving her standing, still in a sleepy daze, trying to figure out what Gerry O’Malley was doing in Elmwood Springs, Missouri, at eight o’clock in the morning. Or was she having some sort of hallucination? She reached down and picked up the card and read it.
NO PRESSURE, JUST KNOW I ADORE YOU!
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY
LOVE, GERRY