The House of Death

[Steven Hunley]

House of Death

The living room was elegant and spoke volumes about old Hollywood. The walls, where not mirrored, were dazzling white. In the corner, like a dark sentinel, stood a black-lacquered baby grand with sheet music, I believe it was September Song, propped up by a bottle of Chateaux laFit Rothschild. The fireplace was dead, but above marble mantel was a Japanese watercolor of two geese with resplendent wings. The wings lay outstretched, like a Geisha’s fan, in magnificent black and white, white being used as foreground and background. Clever Orientals. It had one of those signatures in red, an unreadable exotic stamp under vertical lines of calligraphy. You didn’t mind that you couldn’t read it, the mated geese were all the beauty you could take. Foolish Occidentals are incapable of reading between lines of Haiku anyway.

Besides, I wasn’t here to enjoy myself, this was no museum tour where you hid popcorn in your pocket. This was the house of death.

In one corner a bronze Tiffany lamp grew up like a tree and was shaded with stained glass. Over the rectangular glass shade copper cut outs of branches, then twigs, then fine stems, then fragile leaves hanging on for dear life; lay blackened and dying against an incandescent setting sun.

Directly under the lamp sat a pillow that read ‘It takes someone special to be a grandmother.” Under that was another pillow reading ‘A daughter is just a little girl who grows up to be a friend’. There was one more photo in an oval frame. It was flaming-red-haired Edythe, nicknamed Torchy, Torchy, you heard me, with her kissable scarlet lips, and dark-haired brooding daughter. The daughter, who actually vies for the viewer’s attention, and for that very reason was the closest to Torchy during life, is now, near its end, even closer.

Barbara, the lovely daughter, my sacred muse, is the reason I’m here.

On the coffee table sit art deco silver frames with images of handsome men resembling Sinatra and Martin, other Good Fellas, like Ted, and like Howard, Torchy’s Good Fella. The kind of man that ‘takes care of things’ a ‘fixer’ who knows what to do. Cufflinks, suit and tie kinda guy, confident in his skills and good looks. A leader of well-mannered men with kind countenances and savage dispositions. Scrap metal men fashioned of iron and spare parts.

One wooden framed shot is a group portrait. It’s Torchy and her Goodfella Guys standing next to a movie star and a presidential hopeful. On the same table an ancient massive Chinese box sits across the corner. Torchy discovered it at an estate sale, substantial black lacquer and bronze, with the combined weight and importance of a thousand mandarins. She must have assumed it contained tea for the Last Emperor of China. Turned out it was an ossuary.

It was the only dark part of the room.

Six inches away, on the other side of the wall, Torchy’s room was as dark as the other was light. Stacks of orange plastic prescription bottles with white plastic tops. Flowers from friends in faraway places, with names and notes of goodbye and condolence stuck on white plastic skewers, dot the green bouquets like white marble headstones at Rosecrans Cemetery on a sunny day. Torchy slipped her eyeshade printed Sweet Dreams up onto her forehead so we could talk. Like the rest of the folks in the house she was waiting. Not for death mind you, but for an ultimate reunion.

It was hard to imagine that this helpless creature, lying on her death-bed, wrapped in blankets from head to toe, would have this effect on me with her voice and eyes alone. Oh, I found out early that Torchy possessed wicked charisma. And she could draw it up still, and refresh you, like sparkling water from an inexhaustible well, whenever she needed it.

They told me she’d flirted with the rabbi. With the rabbi, a holy man for God’s sake. Well, I never.

Her emerald eyes fixed on me like a sticky note.

“Did you ever feel like, when you wake up in the morning, that you’re not here, or you’re not there? You don’t know where you are.”

“Yes, I understand. Like you’re between two worlds.”

“That’s how I felt this morning. Like I wasn’t here but wasn’t there either.”

I nodded, and we would have talked more, I was ready.

Then I wait for more, but Olivia comes in with a glass of Ensure. I’m about to discover the secrets of life and death from a dying woman who’s led a full life, still has the moxie to flirt with a rabbi, and it’s interrupted by a sip of Ensure. Figures. The moment is lost, and I'm still begging for answers.

That’s how it was with Torchy. Either you carried a torch for her or basked in her radiance. It was the old moth to flame thing with Torchy, and didn’t she know it.

I left and returned to the living room of life. One half of the wall was mirrored and sparkling crystal ashtrays graced the dining room table. Life thrives on smoke and mirrors anyway so why bother with deceptions?

Outside was growing darker by the minute and the Eucalyptus, like the old Dylan song, were blowing in the wind. A storm was approaching. In a couple of days it would be raging. Torchy needed time to make sure the kids were alright. Later would be the more dramatic choice, and a mother’s choice, and besides, she was not about to go gentle into that good night. She’d read her Thomas. She filled with resolve to hang on, and in preparation asked Olivia to do her nails.

“What color do you want this time, Torchy?” asked Olivia. Olivia was holding her hand, the warm soft hand she’d held for over twenty-five years, was now transmutated into a cancerous frigid claw.

“Pure Ice,” Torchy responded, and took her other hand from under the blanket and placed it on her stomach. Inside that distended stomach the cancer patiently waited and relentlessly grew with deadly intent. It was hard to imagine that this once proud beauty, one who in her prime couldn’t pass a mirror without seeking its approval and receiving it, had been reduced to this state by a cancerous growth. Maybe not so hard for me personally to imagine, since my mother died at the hand of a member of the same family, a family of killers who go for the gusto, the lungs, the colon, the skin, the brain, and murder you slowly with deadly precision with incremental doses of their poison. Not recklessly, but methodically, one day at a time.

So the death house was full of mirrors. Barbara inherited all the beauty and a taste of Edythe’s vanity too. She never passed a mirror without gazing for a moment of self-evaluation. It was one of the things I loved about her, the constant evaluation of me and herself, and our relationship. Barbara was determined to work at keeping them viable, and she was industrious. Strength, beauty, and character, are the three pillars of a woman of substance. I was lucky and I knew it, lucky to be in the house of death.

The storm sputtered, the clouds drew ominous shadows, then the storm raged, then passed on leaving blue clean skies. On Monday morning Edythe was still hanging on. With claws that had once been pale and shapely fingers coveted by endless men, with nails that had never gone a day without polish, Edythe clung to the precious remains of life. Barbara and I fed her orange slices the size of postage stamps, the first real food she’d had in days, and Edythe savored each stamp as if it were a rare issue, her ultimate souvenir of California, something to be tasted and appreciated, like life itself.

I savored them both, the mature serving daughter I'd held in my arms, and the vintage receiving mother about to take her last breath. I recorded their pain. No one else was suited to the work. No one else fit. It was terrible and exhilarating to witness. But I observed, and I wrote. It’s who I am, it’s what I do, and in doing so I soar on wings as resplendent as any Japanese geese over any marble mantle, over any green narrow island dominated by the rays of a setting sun, over snowcapped Mount Fuji for God’s sake and no one else’s, even in the restricting confines and decaying air of the terrible house of death.

The storm didn’t have to be outside as I predicted. Why did it have to be, when it was within us all the time? And Edythe would hang on. A Shakespearean or Burnsian end wasn’t her style. Edythe was vain; a queen in her own right, but Edythe was no Caesar. My prediction for her to make her end in a dramatic raging storm was like the plans of many mice and mortal men. It went awry.


©Steven Hunley2014

[MANICHAEAN]

Wow. What a story and one of the best I have ever read from you. In terms of characters, background, potency, theme and sardonic humour it was a sterling contribution. You have also drawn,(consciously but with a light touch) on such greats as: Chandler, Poe, Burns and the Bard. Could see a lot of Mae West in there as well. But at the end Steve, it was your baby. Congratulations.
M.

[108 fountains]

There is much I like about this story. I like the slow pace and the almost reluctant way it unfolds (although I think most modern readers might prefer getting to the action sooner). There are four things that I think you could do to improve the story.

1) About three quarters of the way through the story, you change the name from Torchy (which I guess is a nickname) to Edythe. That really threw me off, and I had to go back to be sure I wasn’t getting the characters confused. I would stick with "Torchy" - it's a good nickname that throws the old lady back to her youth in contrast to what she is now.

2) Olivia doesn’t seem to add anything at all to the story, which if I understand your intention correctly, is to have the narrator be an observer and a describer of the relationship between Torchy and Torchy’s daughter Barbara – Olivia distracts from the intimacy of the other three and I would get rid of her altogether.

3) Consider deleting the conversation between the narrator and Torchy. Seems to me you want the narrator to be an observer standing in the background. But the exchange itself is interesting, so you might want to include it as part of a dialogue between mother and daughter (see number 4 below)

4) The big thing that is missing is any interaction between Torchy and Barbara, and since the idea is to describe their relationship, this is a huge missing piece. I would suggest you put Barbara in Olivia’s place – it would be natural for the daughter to come in to do her mother’s nails. It would also give them the opportunity to have a conversation, and I think this conversation (which you haven’t written yet) really needs to be the heart of the story. I don’t know where you will want to take it – whether something dramatic or something subtle – but seems to me a conversation between mother and daughter really needs to be the centerpiece of this story.

[Steven Hunley]

El Camino has fun golf-cart rides if you ignore the gravestones. It’s a break after sitting through three hours of sorting through contracts and catalogues of caskets, listening to double-speak fine-tuned to your bereavement and object lessons in salesmanship. Who cares what it costs? Here’s your last chance to send them off in style, and the last opportunity for you to lose your guilt and make amends.

“Sign here please. We are sorry for your loss. Right here on the dotted line. It won’t take long.”

That’s what they always tell you. “It won’t take long.”

That’s what the people at the Hospice told us too, “It won’t take long.”

There’s plenty of perks in making you wait, the object and payoff are that waiting so long makes you emotionally exhausted and ready to take the quickest way out, a convenient end to dealing with death. Even death has a convenience fee. The merchants of mortality like it when you worry. Cemetery vultures are so familiar with tears they perch boxes of Kleenex in the center of the contract table to feather their corporate nests. If they could, if California law allowed, they’d worry you to death and plant you on the spot.

The newbie, Brenda, doesn’t know what she’s doing but is good at driving the cart. I’m an old Hippie, used to listen to Jefferson Airplane, and the ride is so depressing all I can think of is the song She Has Funny Cars. Getting nostalgic to help avoid the present. That’s me, Mister Avoidance. We’re on our way to Howard’s gravesite to identify the granite. We step carefully between Levine’s and Jacob’s and find it’s black granite. Seems it has a space for Edythe’s name already. Howard thought of everything. Brenda says Edythe can lie next to Howard or they can ‘piggy-back’ them in the same plot. I know they were close, I could see it in their pictures, but I’m not too sure they’d like to be ‘piggy-backed’.

“Look, Honey, she’s got funny shoes.”

Barbara gives Brenda’s shoes a look. They’re high heels, and the toes are narrow and end up square toed. There must be five inches between the end of her toes and the toe of the shoe. In addition, she’s had them a while since they’re turned up at the ends like red Persian slippers. I figured they might have been fairy slippers and she took the tassels off the toes when no one was looking and glued on the high heels later. Ludicrous shoes, by hook or by crook or by fashion. I figured since she worked for a mortuary is was by crook.

The golf-cart ride was through a Disneyland of the Dead where the lawns were always as green and living as their contents where grey and dead. Rainbird lawn sprinklers kept tick tick ticking silver arks of spray with double rainbows across the well-tended lawns at all points of the compass. And spike-heeled, funny-toed Brenda, sure of her position, throttled-down obliviously through it all. To Brenda it wasn’t a heart-rending situation; to Brenda it was just another day at work.

I wondered what Brenda thought, and if she’d spied me giving Barbara a kiss in her golf-cart rear-view mirror. I wondered how Barbara and I would survive the trials of living in a society that values an impersonal life. I don’t think either one of us was cut out for it. But we would survive and hang on in much the same matter as Edythe was hanging on to life. The way we’d get through it would be by remembering that life never got any worse than this.

And Brenda, with her stacks of contracts in white and pink and goldenrod, her golf-cart snaking between green lawns marked with bouquets, is not aware. Some are fresh, some not so fresh, some decaying, and all the flowers are only a reflection of the world below the surface, of the fresh, not so fresh, decaying, bodies of patrons who sleep with the fishes. Brenda isn’t old enough to appreciate the Godfather, and young, vital, poor spike-heeled and funny-toed Brenda doesn’t know what she’s doing.

She’s new to the scene, and though Barbara and I are over sixty-five, we’re in much the same place. We don’t know what we’re doing either. We’re new to the scene too. When faced with death, nobody knows what they’re doing; everyone is new to the scene. It makes some kind of terrible sense and follows some sort of inescapable logic.

They ought to publish a user’s manual. I think the Tibetans already have their book of the dead.

Clever Orientals anyway, living on the roof of the world, in a room with a view of the Cosmos.

What’s death anyway, and when do we first perceive it? Was it at three when we saw our first leaf fall from a tree? Was it later than that? We don’t learn about it because even when it affects someone else it makes us consider our own mortality. We don’t want to face it and we don’t want to know.

Allison, one granddaughter, is singing to Edythe with the sweetest voice. I can’t make out even one of the words, but the song, as soft as it is, reverberates through me. She touches me tenderly with her song. I’ll have to tell her someday that my mother, in her dying moments, would have liked to have listened to her and witnessed her comforting kindness. My mother would have liked grandchildren, and having a girl grandchild would have pleased her immensely. It wasn’t a Gregorian chant, where you heard the reverberation of a stone chapel and smelled frankincense and myrrh, where the voices were many and exclusively manly. Rather it was a single angelic voice, a feminine comforting voice, emanating straight from heaven.

I witness the death of others, and their comforting where I stood witness, was in turn comforted.


©Steven Hunley2014

Jefferson Airplane She has Funny Cars http://youtu.be/7eXG8Mxg_rM

to be continued...

[Steven Hunley]

I sat the two chairs side by side so I could sit nearby as Barbara held her mother’s hand. Just witnessing her simple act of affection and kindness reminded me that I wasn’t present when my mother passed away. Oh I was present, but removed from the action. Kristina and I got a call from the nursing home a week after her last unsuccessful operation.

“She’s very near the end tonight. We don’t expect her to last until morning. She’s only moments away.”

We raced down highway eight to La Mesa. By the time we got to the foot of her bed she was asleep. If Cancer wouldn’t give her a break, Morpheus would. Over the course of months, under the influence of the disease, the once jolly fat lady was wasted to a pathetic seventy-six pounds.

I calculated the effect and started distancing. Her withered arm, its muscle hanging flaccidly on the bone like steamed chicken, began trembling. It was real horror show.

“What’s that?” I said, impersonally as possible.

“The doctor said it was uremic acid backing up. She’s beginning to shut down.”

“Oh,” I replied, as clinically as I could manage.

Even the nurse couldn’t take it, and she was a starched-capped professional Nurse Ratchet.

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

She padded off quietly so as not to disturb the living.

I evaluated the patient sterilely, with a jaded eye, and turned towards Kristina.

“If they think she’s going to die tonight, they’re mistaken. This new doctor doesn’t know my mom. It won’t be tonight.”

“No, I guess not.”

Then I put some actual physical distance into the inevitable defensive pattern and we bailed out and sped away.

The mother that chose me over a bunch of baby angels sleeping at Paradise Valley Hospital because I was the only one crying and she’s dying, really dying. I don’t hold her hand. The mother I crafted dozens of Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day cards for from kindergarten to sixth grade is making her one-time one-way celestial exit and I don’t hold her hand, I take a powder instead.

In Steven, how hardened a son. In Barbara, how tender a daughter. Barbara’s act of compassion makes me feel like a self-serving bastard.
Life is a barrel of monkeys and most of them are on your back. Among the savage beasts that cling there, the heaviest gorilla is guilt.

Finally Edythe and I were alone. Her hand wasn’t as cold as usual, but when my fingertips searched for her pulse, they found it weakened, only a ghost of what it had once been. The once bold strokes of a drummer were reduced to faint taps, taps expressed by an exhausted organ after ninety-two years of constant drumming.

Edythe was dreaming too, and I understood where her pretty red head was under the effect of the narcotic. There was no doubt in my mind she could hear me. I didn’t want to allow her to focus on the pain so I decided to give her an image instead. It would be something we all need from time to time, something to dream on.

The image would be based on reality, not anyone else’s reality mind you, but on a singular reality shared between Edythe and I alone.

“You know, Edythe, Howard and Ted and Jeff are getting ready. Howard is putting on his whitest shirt and gold cufflinks. Ted is picking out his shoes. Jeff is stuffing a silk handkerchief in his coat pocket, making sure it’s peaking over the top like a cock’s comb. Howard is excited about seeing you again. I can tell by the look on his face.”

Edythe squeezes my hand with an almost imperceptible squeeze that’s so full of meaning it hurts.

“It’s like he’s dressing for that first date. And it will be like a first date, and both of you will be whole and perfect, vital and new, like that first date in Min-na-so-ta. You’re looking forward to seeing him again too, aren’t you?”

A squeeze of gentle affirmation soft as a lamb.

“You know, Edythe, I’m going to take care of your Barbara. I don’t want you to worry. I love her dearly.”

One more gentle caress of slender finger tips with red nails and Edythe relaxed. Her tense shoulders finally settled into the heavenly cloud-like pillows, and she slept.



to be continued...

[MANICHAEAN]

Keep it going. Very enjoyable.

[tfkmarauder]

I really enjoyed the story and though the characters name change from torchy in the middle was slightly confusing. good work

[Steven Hunley]

The next morning I made strong coffee with real sugar and cinnamon in true Mexican fashion. I opened the fridge and found split pea soup that Rick left. With my very first spoonful I decide to like Rick. After all, what a hand-full he had. Barbara, young, vital, deservedly arrogant, bearing full-steam ahead and following her own private compass. He’d loved her and married her and survived her. And Rick made kick-*ss split pea soup-my favorite.

We shared two favorites and survived them both, and survived them in style with our wits still about us and were two stand-up fellows with good tastes. All hail the masculine conquests of Barbara. Once touched by her, all other lovers suffer by comparison. It’s enough to drive a man to eat split-pea soup.

In Edythe’s room the music, and right now it’s the Romantic Strings” rendition of Stairway to Heaven, muted so as not to rattle the bones or Minds of the living. They called it ‘Easy Listening Music’. We called it “Music to Die By’ or ‘Necrotic Nocturnes’.

Barbara is posted up at her mom’s side, and asking as she always does, the tough questions.

“Mom, yesterday Olivia said you told her you were afraid of taking that last step. Is that because you can control the moment of death?”

Edythe’s answer was not returned by a word, or even a whisper, for Edythe had lost the power of speech. Fearing death might overhear and take the upper hand and usurp her power, Edythe found another way to answer. And it wasn’t the Morphine producing the nod, it was Edythe, who’d come close enough to Death’s door to understand its mechanism, and Edythe alone who held the key.

Edythe nodded her head vehemently in affirmation.

Around two forty-five Olivia awakened us with a “Barbara, Barbara,” from the foot of the stairs.
Barbara sprang up one final time and while I was still searching for my clothes she came in and
began searching for her phone book in her enormous purse.

“What’s going on?”

“She’s dead,” she replied mechanically, and even through her cold mechanism I felt searing pain.


It was over for Edythe, the silver cord had snapped, and her golden bowl of consciousness was set free. Finally I found my pants and shirt and was ready to go downstairs. I was facing the patio and the open area below. But before I opened the door to the stairway I opened the door to the balcony overlooking the patio and hillside. I expected to see Edythe, or at least her trail, like the faint tail of a comet streaking through the night sky.


I searched the heavens where the lights of civilization were reflecting on the clouds leaving the silhouettes of the Eucalyptus like black construction paper cut outs against the grey brooding sky. But I saw nothing.

It occurs to me that I’m looking for the wrong thing. Edythe, for the vast majority of her existence on earth was vital and throbbing with life and good humor. Only for a fraction of that lifetime was Edythe restricted to the remains of her glory, and only the remains had I witnessed. I was looking in the wrong place for the wrong thing.

So I looked once again and saw what I needed to see.

It was Truffaut’s Red Balloon. Red-haired and red-nailed and red-lipped Torchy was drifting across the Seine, past Notre Dame, over the Louvre and the Arc de Triumph. Watching over the city of lovers and romance as if it was her charge, gleefully snapping all connections, transcending all boundaries, gladly jettisoning the corporeal world of earth wind and fire, and gracefully ascending to Heaven.

The outer room of the chapel at El Camino was uncomfortable and severe. The couches were like couches you sat down in in cheap furniture stores and decided against. The end tables had brass lamps surrounded by black urns like gigantic black pawns, not shades of black but flat no-nonsense black, a shadow of ashes to come.

Four large pictures of Edythe were displayed. Each demonstrates her at different stages of life, and also the fact that true beauty endures and has little to do with age.

The chapel itself was sterile and lacking Feng Shui. But in the cool chapel the eulogies are heart-felt and delightful as sweet warm berry pies from Wisconsin on cold winter nights. In contrast the rabbi passes out black ribbons to be torn called Kriahs. The Kriah signifies that it is only the outer garment representing the body that has been torn. The soul of the deceased, and the love that the deceased and the mourners have for each other, remains, and may even grow stronger over time.

Barbara and I make a wrong turn on one of the twisty roads and end up in a cul-de-sac. I dash out and ask a gardener riding a lawn mower where the Jewish section is. It’s easy to spot because there’s as many cars parked there as a drive in theater. Its breezy and cold and even though it’s spring the leaves are being torn from the trees and rocket past my field of vision in twisted flights. Suddenly the opening of Dr. Zhivago springs to mind.

Russia-boy Uri, his hand held by an adult, leaves falling, my kindergarten picture, I realize that I resemble little Uri in Dr.Zhivago, the prayers, the leaves falling, trees swaying, little boy watching, crystalline tears falling down cheeks flushed with cold, spasmodic lowering of the casket into the trench, inch by inch, great pile of clean earth, two shovels with long handles, living queuing up, some taking one, some taking two, shovels of clean earth, over the red wood casket, over the star of David, into the dark trench in the earth.

Nicole holding Calen by the belt so he won’t fall in, he’s too near the edge. Allison handing a white rose out to Brody. Ric, looking as clinically detached as possible while his insides are torn up. Gary balancing precariously between extremes of emotion, twisting his mustache in displeasure, walking a high-strung tightrope between elation and abandonment.

Barbara, hovering, checking, gauging everything, reluctant to take on Edythe’s mantel and so very suited to the station.

Me, once dispassionate observer, now drawn into the circle, attempting to step back, attempting to gain perspective, miserably,then joyously, in the end, failing, drowning in the tide of their emotions.

©Steven Hunley 2014

[108 fountains]

Overall, I enjoyed this piece and the slow-paced way it unfolded. It has some parts where the writing is excellent and places where there are nice insights into the characters. But there were also some things that were confusing. It could be that now that it’s completed, you may want to go back and expand on some of those things.

The thing that confused me most was bringing in names of people, but not really explaining who they were. I found myself focusing on trying to figure out all the relationships rather than giving attention to the main story. I’m still not sure I got it right, but what I think I figured out was that Steven and Barbara have been married relatively recently. Steven was previously married to Kristina. Barbara was previously married to Rick. Allison is most likely the daughter of Barbara and Rick, and Nicole, Calen and Brody are also Barbara’s children, but not sure if Rick or Steven is the father. Howard is Edythe’s husband. Ted and Jeff are Edythe’s grown sons (I think). I have no idea who Gary is. It was like a jigsaw puzzle trying to figure it all out, but the thing is - I don’t think you want the reader spending a lot of time having to figure it all out.

It seems that the main point at the end of the story is that Steven finds himself being drawn into all these relationships, but because we are only given hints about what the relationships are, I felt like there was something missing. I might suggest you consider filling the story out, possibly with flashbacks to Edythe’s younger “Torchy” days, that give more of a description of Edythe’s relationships with her husband and children. I think Rick needs to be developed more also – you mention that his “insides are torn up,” but we don’t know why - we don’t know what he feels toward either Edythe or Barbara. Expanding on these relationships can/should be an integral part of the story. At the end, you mention that Barbara is reluctant to take on Edythe’s mantle, which is I guess being the matron of the family, but although we have hints, we really don’t have yet a good sense of how Edythe filled that role. To do it justice, you may need to transform this into a novel or novelette, but I think you have the skills to attempt the longer piece.

[Steven Hunley]

I did one called House of Life after that and State of the Union. Figuring it all out is like life itself, nearly impossible.