No Cure for Death

TWENTY-FOUR

Dawn. The sun glanced off the smooth surfaces of the Norman house, ricocheted off its sharp edges and shot blinding crossfires of glare across our eyes as Rita and I approached in the Rambler. The house looked smaller in the light of day, as though someone had come in during the night and replaced it with a scale model; and while no less grotesque in the morning light, the art deco castle seemed somehow less frightening, like a ghost that in the turning on of a light is revealed as a sheet caught on a nail.

We got out of the Rambler and I stood and had a look at the place. The slabs of interlocking cement showed a fresh crack here and there, as well as patches of mortarwork where others had been; the house just didn’t lend itself to mint preservation. Oh, if nobody tore it down, it’d be standing in a hundred years or two, but all that concrete, unpainted like it was, was bound to chip and crumble and lose some of its shape and, well, beauty. As a relic to be found in ages to come, by intergalactic free-booters perhaps, or maybe the mutated remains of whatever becomes of our race, the Norman place’ll be an enigmatic curiosity piece that, like a sunbleached skull sticking up out of the desert sand, makes one wonder what story was behind it.

Harold filled the back doorway. He was wearing a gray suit, white shirt open at the collar. He made like a cigar store Indian for a few moments, then came to partial life and motioned us in, grimly.

Rita gave me a look that included a quick downward movement of the mouth, which I took as meaning she was worried about just how bad I’d screwed up her relationship with her brother.

I gave her a look that said, Come off it, it’s six in the morning, a couple hours after the violent death of one of his employers, how do you expect him to act?

And she sighed and let go a tentative smile. Very tentative.

Harold was about to usher us into his room, saying something about getting us some coffee. I quickly stated the purpose of my visit, hoping to avoid any further amenities: I apologized for implying that he might’ve been involved in Janet Taber’s death, and said I was sorry for any inconvenience I might have caused either him or Mr. Norman. And I expressed my sympathy for the loss of Stefan. Then I asked if I might go up and express the same sentiments to Mr. Norman.

Harold’s one eye narrowed on me a good long while. There was, I thought, skepticism in that eye, along with it being bloodshot. He was absolutely still, staring at me, like a freeze-frame in a film, then said, “You can go on up, Mallory.”

“Thanks, Harold.”

“But don’t wake him if he’s got back to sleep, though I don’t imagine he will have.”

“I won’t.”

“And don’t upset him.”

“I won’t.”

“Then go on up.”

“Thanks.”

Norman was in his wheelchair. He had wheeled himself over a tiny ramp that led up to the desk on the stagelike platform. He sat at the desk looking out the long viewscreen of a window that faced the river.

“Sir,” I said.

He turned his head slightly, but not enough, I thought, for him to see me. Just the same, he said, “Oh, hello, young man. I’m glad you’ve come back to continue our chat.”

“I’m glad you’re glad.”

“I’m not really in any better spirits than before-perhaps even a shade worse-but I don’t anticipate getting quite as cantankerous as I did toward the end there last time you were up. Damn old people, anyway, changing their mind before it’s made up the first time. Please forgive my rudeness.”

“Only if you’ll forgive mine,” I said. “For breaking in on you the way I did.”

“I enjoyed your company,” he said, still facing away from me, toward the river. “Come join me here, would you? The view is very nice here, share it with me, please.”

I walked across the long empty room glancing at the portrait in purple over the fireplace, and stepped up on the platform and looked out the window. The sun was still rising, the sky was gray, and rose-gray just over the line of trees, which had the artificial, nearly surreal appearance of a landscape painted by one of your relatives. Not a beautiful sunrise, rather an eerie one, unreal, a collaboration between Grandma Moses and Salvador Dali, and I wondered if sunrises always looked that way from the Norman house.

I had almost said, “Quite a sunrise,” when Norman said, “Right down there it was,” and I suddenly realized he wasn’t watching the sun come up at all, his head was tilted downward, toward the lawn that stretched for a hundred yards or so from the house to the edge of the bluff. He was staring at the dead brown grass, pointing a trembling finger.

He said, “There used to be flowers all around, bordering that lawn, and the lawn was green. The country club with its golf course would have liked to have grass so lush and green and rich. Every Sunday they’d gather there, folks from all over, they’d drive here and come sit out on the lawn and just look up at the building. Some were sick and needed help, others… others just liked to hear, well, as I used to call it, the ‘Sound of Truth’-that was what my Sunday broadcast was called. So anyway, what was it you asked? Oh, the gathering on the lawn. Well they came from all over and filled the parking lot, which took up all the space and more than that supermarket ’cross the street does now, the one by that filling station that stands where mine used to. And they’d sit out on the grass and we’d pump the broadcast out to them over speakers and would they ever listen. We put tents up in dreary weather, ’cause a little rain wouldn’t keep them away from Doc Sy Norman and Station KTKO and the Sound of Truth.”

He shook his head and a lock of the long white hair fell like a thick comma across his brow; the blue hypnotist’s eyes were open and clear and you could see they’d been compelling in their day. “You know, it made you feel… important. Hell, I was important, and I knew it, and I was doing people good, too, no matter what some thought and said. Do you know that? I did do people good, and I’ve done good since, in different ways, quieter ways. I’ve helped this town, it’s grown because of me, people have jobs because of me, they feed their families, do you know that? Did you know I licked the scoundrels who ran the water ’n’ light trust? It was me got a municipal water and light plant put up, back in ’26. And that building’s still in use today. You go look at it. I designed it, just like I designed this house. And like this house it’ll be there long after I’m gone. Did you know I drew the rough design of this house on a tablecloth? Well it’s true. The night we got the okay from the Department of Commerce, you know, to go ahead and build the station, well a bunch of us got together in my cafe and started trying to pin down this hazy aircastle I’d been dreaming of so long. Everybody had an idea of his own of what it should be and just about every kind of architecture you can think of got suggested. Then it came to me… why not take the best of all of them and build something unique? A touch of Spanish here, a dab of Egyptian there, and toss in some of what that man Wright was doing. And I built it here, on the highest point in Port City, two hundred feet above the Mississippi, where everyone, always, could see it. And years from now they’ll say, that’s Doc Sy’s hill and that’s where he lived and worked, and when I’m long gone it’ll still be up here. You know, a man likes knowing he’s left something behind that’ll be there after he’s gone, you know that?”

“It must be a comforting feeling,” I said, “to know you’ve accomplished something in your life.”

“Oh it is, it is indeed. Though, I’ll tell you, uh, what was your name?”

“Mallory.”

“Mallory. I’ll tell you, Mallory, a man feels a little empty at this stage of life, no matter how full it’s been up to then. It’s a kind of a used-up feeling, I guess, and it doesn’t matter how grand your achievements…” (he affectionately patted the glass over the autographed picture of Hoover) “… no matter how grand, you just feel empty.”

I didn’t say anything; it would’ve been a good time to find things out, but I couldn’t make myself ask anything.

Finally, he went on himself: “It’s not so much I miss her-my wife, I mean-it’s been so long ago, and she was a young girl and here I am an old man, but… I don’t have anything left of her and there won’t be anything left of her after I’m gone… nothing of the two of us together… not with Richard gone… and my grandson.”

His mind must’ve been wandering, I thought; Stefan was his nephew, not his grandson.

He went on: “… and Stefan, too, is a loss, I suppose, even if I do feel some bitterness, can’t help but feel some bitterness….”

I had to say something now. Inside me I sealed compassion over, much as someone had mortared the cracks in the old house.

I said, “I suppose you must feel a little bit sad, being the last of the Normans. It’s a lot of tragedy to go through, losing a wife, a son and his wife and daughter, and now your nephew.”

“He shouldn’t have done it.”

“Commit suicide you mean?”

“No, no, boy, that’s not at all what I mean. Under the circumstances suicide was ideal, really. It’s that he shouldn’t have gone bothering that little Taber girl.”

There was fondness in his voice; that stopped me.

“Wasn’t Janet blackmailing you, Mr. Norman?”

“Blackmailing…?” A dry rasp sounded in his throat: his laugh. “No, no, Stefan knew that wasn’t so, or he at least should have. Still, I suppose he meant well.”

“I’m… sure he did.”

“But it was so silly of him, so silly to think she was taking advantage of me. Why, I doubt she even knew of me, I kept in the background so. Stefan should have known better.”

“He should have?”

“Why, of course. He was the one I had contact the girl’s mother, he better than anyone knew how badly I wanted to find the girl, and then how pleased I was when, after several years had dragged by, she turned up again.”

“Why did you want to see her, Mr. Norman? Why would you search for Janet Taber?”

He waved a quavery hand in the air, like the reluctant blessing of a disillusioned old priest. “That doesn’t matter, not now….”

“Oh?”

“She’s dead. And her son’s dead.”

“Her son?” And I remembered Janet’s little boy and his heart trouble and the anonymous benefactor. “You were helping Janet help her son? Did you arrange for his treatment at a clinic in the east?”

He nodded. “But none of that matters. She’s dead. Her son is dead.”

“Her son,” I said.

“Her son,” he said. “Hers and Richard’s.”

I looked out the window; it caught the reflection of the smiling portrait behind us.

“My grandson,” he said. Softly. Softly.