Recessional: A Novel Read online

  Jiménez, a devout Catholic, protested: ‘Don’t stress the agony, Doctor. I’ve known several families who reared such babies and found great joy in doing so.’

  ‘Granted,’ Zorn said. ‘But the child usually dies in his or her early twenties having caused considerable expense in both money and emotion. Is it worth the dual investment? To save a life that can never be a life?’

  ‘Completely unwarranted,’ snapped President Armitage, who was a tough-minded realist despite his Santa Claus appearance. ‘I’m surprised you even pose the problem.’

  ‘I advance it for two reasons. First, the accuracy of the test is not one hundred percent. What if you’re condemning a child who might have proved normal? Second, there’s the religious factor.’

  ‘How does that operate?’ Armitage asked, and Zorn explained: ‘When a couple faces its first pregnancy, it’s a mysterious affair. They tend to grow more religious, especially the women. This is God’s blessing on their union and there’s a strong desire to accept His judgment: “If He’s giving us a damaged child, it must be for some deep purpose we don’t understand.” So they allow the baby to be born and more than half the time it’s severely retarded.’ He ended his sentence in a very low voice, and for a moment the table was silent.

  Senator Raborn, who in his public life as an interrogator had fought to obtain clear, simple answers, asked: ‘So where does that leave the couple with the pregnant wife? What problem do they face?’

  ‘Abortion.’

  ‘No, no!’ Jiménez protested. ‘I oppose abortion.’

  ‘So do I,’ Zorn said. ‘In ordinary cases. To make it easier for a careless couple. Or as a form of birth control. But in this it would be a therapeutic abortion, recommended by careful medical practice.’

  ‘I’m in favor of that,’ Senator Raborn said. ‘It seems the practical thing, to correct nature’s accident.’

  ‘God does not make mistakes,’ Jiménez said. ‘The Down’s syndrome child can bring powerful love to a family. Parents and siblings alike, they unite to nurture the unfortunate and become better human beings in doing so.’

  St. Près said quietly: ‘When you’ve served in the underdeveloped countries in South America and Africa, you look on therapeutic abortion in a different way. It seems the humane way to go.’

  ‘Never humane!’ Jiménez said firmly, the long tradition of his Catholic heritage coming through. Then, as if conducting a debate in some parliament, he placed his hands flat on the table and reminded his tertulia: ‘We were supposed to be discussing triage. What’s your medical reaction there, Doctor?’ And he pronounced the title with all the reverence that citizens of the Latin American countries feel toward their medical men.

  Zorn said: ‘I side with the senator. Cost alone will demand that we ration health care. And that throws us into value judgments, severe moral dilemmas.’

  ‘Who will make such judgments?’ President Armitage asked, and Raborn said sharply: ‘The public. Through discussions like this, and public statements by our leaders including the church and the economists, we’ll reach a consensus.’

  ‘And when it is reached,’ St. Près said with an almost cruel insistence on facing the truth, ‘seventy percent of the operations performed on people like us in the Palms will be declared nonessential. They’ll be forbidden in the regular system, but remain available through a black market, which only the rich will be able to afford.’

  Such a conclusion disgusted Armitage, who rebutted with considerable force: ‘So you’ll ration health needs by the standard of the pocketbook?’

  ‘Has there ever been any other way?’ St. Près insisted. ‘Isn’t that what we do now? Tell us, Dr. Zorn, could a married couple of modest means gain entry to this establishment, and the good health advantages you provide us? Are your services not rationed by our pocketbooks?’

  Zorn took a deep breath, for he did not yet know how much power the ambassador wielded in the establishment, but even so, he was not afraid to answer: ‘You may be surprised to learn, Mr. Ambassador, that we have three widows now occupying single rooms who used to live in expensive duplexes when their husbands were alive. They’ve fallen on bad times, the poor women. Their husbands weren’t as rich as they both thought they were. We figure that our corporation made a decent profit from such a family while the husband was alive, and so we carry the widows on our books at a very low rate—very low indeed.’

  ‘So you’re practicing your own version of humanistic triage,’ President Armitage said enthusiastically, pleased to hear that their corporation had a semblance of a heart, and St. Près conceded: ‘I suppose that’s the way it will always work. Strict rules governing priority, but subtle ways, often secret, for circumventing them.’

  ‘But ultimately,’ the senator warned, ‘it will have to come down to the available dollars. Ultimately someone will have to choose who shall live and who must allow nature to take its course.’

  ‘I know this about triage,’ Armitage said. ‘If I’m driving my car carefully, sober, eyes on the road, and a situation over which I have no control suddenly explodes—three children running onto the road over here, an elderly man with a cane occupying half the road over there, and I have to make a split-second decision, I will invariably head away from the children and instinctively allow the car to plow into the old man. He’s had his life. He’s done whatever good he’s going to do. The children have sixty or seventy or even eighty years ahead of them in which to accomplish miracles.’

  ‘Easy choice,’ Ambassador St. Près said quietly. ‘Three young children, one old man. Let’s make it one child about whom you know nothing. And an old man living in a district of some affluence. He may have made a tremendous contribution, maybe he still does. Then where do your reflexes direct you to steer?’

  Armitage did not hesitate: ‘Not even a moment’s hesitation. I’d rub out the old man. And I’ll tell you why my reflexes are conditioned to respond like that. As a college president I never lost sight of the fact that the freshman boy, just in from the farm and starry-eyed with vast ambitions, was a damned sight more important to my college than some sixty-year-old professor whose dreams were now dead. That’s how I was conditioned to think, and that’s how I’ll always respond, automatically.’

  ‘But if the freshman is destined to flunk out at the end of his sophomore year,’ St. Près asked, keeping the pressure on, ‘and the doddering old professor has the capacity to leave your school two hundred thousand dollars if he’s allowed time to draft his will—if you don’t rub him out prematurely—then what?’

  President Armitage said very slowly: ‘Then debaters like you and senators like Raborn will draft new procedures for establishing human values, and may God have mercy on all of us, for humanity will have been sacrificed to greed.’

  ‘No,’ the senator replied in an equally controlled voice. ‘The budget, inescapable from the moment of birth till the instant of death, will have dictated the value decisions.’

  Dr. Zorn, though impressed by both the gravity and the civility with which these men argued, felt that the time had come to add a light-hearted note. Turning to Jiménez on his right, he said jovially: ‘I’ve noticed that you always sit in that corner chair. Is it your good-luck spot?’

  The Colombian intellectual gave a surprising answer: ‘Two reasons. First, sitting here I can watch the pretty girls as they float about our dining room. Second, when you’ve edited a newspaper in Bogotá and traveled frequently to Medellín, you learn always to sit with your back to the wall, and in a corner like this I have my back to two different walls. Double precaution.’

  That session of the Palms tertulia ended with the members’ assuring their new manager that he would be welcomed back at later meetings when the discussion would probably focus on some less morbid topic.

  Dr. Zorn had now enjoyed a series of triumphs in getting the two Indiana couples to enroll in Gateways and in welcoming the affluent Yo-yo Mallorys back into their big apartment, and on his terms. But he had
accomplished nothing in his real problem area, filling the beds in Assisted Living.

  But now he was about to achieve an outstanding victory in that field, not because he had been especially brilliant in setting it up but because a used-car dealer from Sarasota had to go to the men’s room. The fortunate accident was set in train one day as Andy sat in his office biting his nails, studying a report on what the Palms was spending on advertising for Assisted Living and the meager results the ads were producing: ‘Krenek, there’s got to be a more effective way of bringing patrons in here to Assisted.’

  ‘You have to keep your name before the public. Otherwise you slowly die.’

  ‘Granted. But you don’t always have to do it in the same old way. Tell me. Who is our ideal prospect?’

  ‘For what? Residence in Gateways or temporaries in Health?’

  ‘Gateways takes care of itself. Long-term assured growth. Over here in Health is where we make our money. Who’s our target?’

  Krenek thought for a few moments, then spoke judiciously: ‘First of all, someone with above-average income. Stable family but not rich enough to afford round-the-clock private nurses. An accident happens? An operation is necessary? A temporary bed here is their ideal solution.’

  ‘I know, but explain who these people are.’

  ‘Upper-class but not elite. What you might call upper-upper.’

  ‘What are they like?’

  ‘The men go to work in offices. They belong to luncheon clubs like Kiwanis. They play golf. And when older family members get real sick, toward the end, they want to get them into a center where they’ll get good care. They aren’t afraid to spend money, these people, especially on parents who’ve been good to them. They love them, but they do want them out of the house.’

  Andy was reflecting on something Krenek had said: ‘Kiwanis, aren’t they something like Rotary? Which has more prestige?’

  ‘I think you’d have to say Rotary, at least in this part of Florida.’

  Without further comment Zorn said: ‘We’re going to invite Rotary clubs to have their meetings here. We’ll give them free dinners.’

  ‘They meet at noon.’

  ‘Good. Luncheons are cheaper,’ and Zorn’s plan was set. From the start it began to produce results, for when these men of upper management saw that the Palms had a touch of class they began recommending it to friends who needed health services for the elder members in their families.

  The operation was simple. From a list of Rotary clubs, Krenek selected one nearby, telephoned the secretary, extended the invitation and set a date. Then Andy told the kitchen staff: ‘Wednesday noon. Rotary lunch. Important to us, so serve an extrafine meal. There’ll be tips.’ The Rotarians, enjoying the break in their routine and a chance to inspect a different operation, completed their club business with dispatch and listened to Zorn deliver what he called ‘a low-key, no-heavy-breathing, soft-sell description of the Palms,’ after which the men were taken on brief tours of the health-care units. The procedure required only eighty minutes from the Rotarians and less than five dollars a plate from the Palms. As the men finished their meals they saw a box labeled: FOR OUR HELPFUL WAITERS, and many who had enjoyed the food tossed in dollar bills.

  Zorn’s strategy worked, because although he could not point to a single instance in which a Rotarian, after a free meal, brought a member of his own family to the Palms, he knew that the men did talk to others about the two health services, and several families in the area who enrolled elderly relatives did say: ‘We heard about you from our neighbor who attended a lunch here.’ When careful calculations were made, Zorn and Krenek reported to Chicago: ‘The Rotary lunches pay handsomely. Assisted Living is slowly beginning to bloom.’ But one such gathering brought an unexpected surprise.

  Krenek had invited a club from the Sarasota area and was pleased with the number of apparently well-to-do men who traveled north to visit. The meeting started well, but just as Dr. Zorn was ready to launch into his spiel an excited Rotarian who had slipped out to go to the men’s room came bursting back: ‘Hey, fellows! Guess who I just met out in the hall!’ He brought with him an old man of singular appearance, for despite his advanced age, the slump forward in his hesitant walk, and the cheapness of his sports shirt and trousers, he had the slim figure of a rigorously trained athlete who had not allowed the years to pile on excessive weight. Dr. Zorn knew him only as Mr. Bixby, but now the Rotarian who discovered him was excitedly addressing the luncheon: ‘Fellow Rotarians, this man is one of the all-time great baseball players, Buzz Bixby of the immortal Philadelphia Athletics of 1929, ’30 and ’31. A computer study has just decided that they were perhaps the premier ball club of all time, because of their fabulous pitching staff,’ and without notes he reeled off the names of that incomparable staff: ‘Grove, Earnshaw, Walberg, Rommel, John Picus Quinn and Howard Ehmke.’ As he mentioned each name, the old man nodded approvingly, for with his bat and glove he had helped them win their games: ‘And among these immortals was Buzz Bixby!’

  ‘What’s his story?’ Zorn whispered and Krenek explained: ‘His admirers found him in a flophouse without a dime, so they put together a fund to buy him life occupancy in one of our less expensive one-room jobs in Gateways.’

  ‘Was he pretty good?’

  ‘Hall of Fame.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Approaching ninety, but he still has all his marbles.’

  ‘And his physique,’ Zorn said admiringly. ‘Does he give us any trouble?’

  ‘He’s a teddy bear. Everybody loves him.’

  Now the man who had found him wandering in the halls made the formal introduction: ‘I’ve persuaded Buzz to tell us about that unforgettable afternoon when he achieved immortality.’

  Standing tense and poised as if waiting for a fastball from some Yankee pitcher, the old fellow began what Zorn accurately judged to be a set speech; a sportswriter who admired him had gone to the record books and composed several flowery paragraphs that depicted that long-ago game and Bixby’s role in it. Having given the speech many times, he had learned how to deliver it with maximum effect. The sportswriter had coached him on one important point: ‘Buzz, you mustn’t sound boastful. The facts are powerful enough, so you can afford to start low-key and self-deprecating.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Buzz had asked.

  ‘Sounding like you don’t know you’re a hotshot. It can be very effective. Start with exactly these words, and you’ll win your audience right at the start.’ Now, speaking to the audience at the Palms, he obeyed instructions: ‘Some who are entitled to have an opinion believe it was the greatest game in the history of baseball, but I’ve seen better on television.’ He knew the competing teams, the year and even the specific dates of memorable games: ‘Bobby Thomson’s one-out homer against Ralph Branca, Wednesday, October third, 1951, that won the National League pennant, or that grand World Series, Boston-Cincinnati, sixth game, Tuesday, October sixth, 1975, with Carleton Fisk dancing around the bases in the eleventh inning. But what I am about to relate was the greatest single inning in baseball, with no one qualified to cast a negative vote.’ The effect of these polished words was sobering, for his listeners could see that the old man meant to be taken seriously. But then, using a tactic he had found effective, he turned away from the words the sportswriter had written for him and dropped to the street accents of his youth.

  ‘Can’t never forget it. Columbus Day in Philadelphia, 1929. World Series fever. The A’s and Cubs locked in a duel. Saturday game all-important. We win, we gotta near lock on the world championship. They win, they surge on to take it all.

  ‘As I’m leavin’ home for the ballpark I’m stopped by Zingarelli, who runs the sandwich shop: “Buzz, you gonna have a great day.” So I ask: “You the prophet now?” and he says: “Columbus Day, ain’t it. All us Eyetalians got power this day. You gonna be hot.”

  ‘So I thank him, but when the game starts I think: That crazy Eyetalian don’t know from nothin’, becau
se we can’t get men on base let alone around to score, while Chicago is runnin’ wild. They rack up two runs in the fourth and explode in the sixth with five runs. And in the seventh they add another to insult us. Score them eight, us zero. And no sign of us bein’ able to change things, because their pitcher Charley Root ain’t throwin’ baseballs, he’s throwin’ BBs. We can’t even see ’em let alone hit ’em. Game is lost and we’re in deep trouble.’

  At this point in his recollection of that historic day, un-equaled in World Series history, Buzz allowed his entire body to relax in despair. Hands, fingers, shoulders, head all displayed the grief of a professional athlete whose team has collapsed, and he looked so forlorn that Zorn felt sorry for him, a fine fellow who had thrown away his chance for the world championship.

  Suddenly everything changed, for he judged that he should return to his prepared speech. Straightening his head, stiffening his jaw, and making his eyes flash, he kept his voice very low and with increasing volume delivered the lines he liked best: ‘But our A’s were not dead. Slowly, like a summer storm about to explode in fury, we began to chip away at our overconfident enemy with a determination never before seen. The miracle happens slowly, nothing dramatic to scare Chicago, just a scratch hit here, another there until they realize, too late, that the full storm is upon them.’

  An imposing figure, he returned to his own words: ‘Al Simmons nudges a home run over the wall, saves us from the disgrace of a shutout, but that makes it only eight to one. Foxx gets a hit. Bing Miller slips one through the middle. Another scratch hit and I come up with two on and the score eight to two, still their favor. I shoot a hard one toward second, where Rogers Hornsby, greatest second baseman of all time, dives for it and misses by one inch. I’m safe and two runs score. On and on our bats rattle out hits like the spatter of raindrops in June, so that when I come up for the second time in the inning, again we have two men on, and this time I hit a Texas Leaguer, you know, a short pop fly just past the infield. Now the best man in the majors to handle a Texas Leaguer is Rogers Hornsby, but this time he gets a slow start on his famous backpedal and again he misses by one inch and again I bat in two runs.