Bruce Wagner - Memorial

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.”

“I won’t!” she cried, closing the door.

“Now what’s the sense of locking a door that won’t even be here in an hour? Look, I’ve been trying to go easy. If you insist on staying here, I’ll have to call a cop.”

She silently beseeched Robert Redford to help. After the intruder left, the old woman asked why he hadn’t come to her aid.

He told her to look in the mirror: his reflection was absent.

“You tricked me!” she shouted. “It was you all the time!”

“Yes,” said the handsome cop. “I tricked you.”

“But why? Now that I let you inside, you could have taken me anytime…but you were nice. You made me trust you.”

“I had to make you understand,” he said. “Am I really so bad? Am I really so frightening? You talked to me. You confided in me. Have I tried to hurt you? It isn’t me you’re afraid of — you understand me. What you’re afraid of is…the unknown. Don’t be afraid.”

“But I am afraid!”

“The running is over. It’s time to rest. Give me your hand.”

“But I don’t want to die!”

“Trust me.”

“No!” she said.

Arm outstretched, he softly called her Mother.

“Give me your hand.”

Their fingers, then palms, touched.

“You see? No shock. No engulfment. No ‘tearing asunder.’ What you feared would come like an explosion, is a whisper. What you thought was the end…is the beginning.”

“When will we begin?” she asked, faintly excited. “When will we go?”

He nodded toward the bed, where the old woman saw her own body lay — lifeless.