Susan Finlay limped out into her small backyard garden and moved the old aluminum chair into the sun. The chair was a wobbly thing, and as she sat down she had to catch at it to keep her balance, but slowly she relaxed into the vagaries of the seat. Her garden was not much as gardens went, but she was fond of it. It was hers, and hers alone.
The shrub rose had managed a few flowers since last week, but the daylilies had given up. They lay as if collapsed from fatigue, though she didn't remember them having done much. The ferns were dying back-only to be expected at this time of year-but the phlox were still blooming in their sunny corner, and the asters soon to join them.
Overhead, the leaves of the burr oak were brown and curled. At least it had leaves. "It's dying," her neighbor had said. "You should cut it down."
Susan had looked at him, but hadn't said anything.
Now she tapped her finger on the aluminum arm of the chair. She'd been fifty-four when they'd told her she was dying. Yet here she was, fifty-eight and alive-and fully intending to stay that way.
The sage was doing well, though the basil was past its prime. Next to the basil the dead tea rose was twitching.
She shut her eyes tight, then opened them again.
All that was left of the poor thing were three brown, truncated stems. It twitched again, then shook violently. It'd been a Tropicana. She'd been meaning to dig it up, but, with one thing and another, hadn't gotten around to it.
She watched a bit apprehensively as the soil at its base mounded and cracked. Something claw-like appeared... A moment more, and a small green hand with thick, dirty nails was groping blindly for purchase. Susan couldn't help but wonder if this wasn't why the plant hadn't made it in the first place.
Another green hand appeared, then the dome of a head. Its scalp was shiny and mottled, like frog skin, but the face, when she could see it, was childlike-at least in size and roundness. It had two eyes, two nose holes, and a red-lipped mouth. It was the ugliest thing Susan had ever laid eyes on.
Bracing itself on its elbows, as someone might who was hanging on the edge of a swimming pool, it looked up at her and smiled, displaying several rows of sharp, pointy teeth. Then it sneezed, spraying slime everywhere.
Susan instinctively pulled back, though the chair threatened to collapse underneath her. She wondered why she couldn't just hallucinate cats, like her Uncle George, who in his last days had insisted that Persians were infesting his hospital room.
"To whom, lovely lady, do I have the pleasure of making my address?" it croaked.
"Why are you in my garden?" she countered.
"Ah lady," said the creature, rubbing its nose holes with the back of its dirty wrist and leaving dark streaks above its fleshy red lips, "I am a messenger from elsewhere. Exactly where, I'm not at liberty to say, though I might venture to suggest that if I am talking to you," and here he gave a throaty chuckle, "you are not in the best of health. Am I right?"
Susan surged up from her chair, and drawing on all the pent-up anger, sorrow and frustration of the last eleven years, she stomped down hard on the creature's head, driving it into the dirt like a tent stake. But when she lifted her foot to see what she'd done-there was only the rose bush, just as it had been. Dead.
That night, and for the next several nights running, Susan took only half of her usual narcotic dose. She hurt more, especially in the evenings, so that even her neighbor made mention of her obvious pain, but it was worth it not to see things.
And it worked. One day, then two, then a week went by with no more disturbing incidents.
The following week her morning coffee was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell. An odd hour, she thought, for fund raising. The only people who ever rang her doorbell were earnest young college students with clipboards and pamphlets.
Getting up with care, as morning was not a good time for her, Susan hobbled to the door and opened it.
"Good morning, Madam."
The man at the door held a clipboard, but he was in no other way like anyone who had ever called before. She did not think him young, but his age was difficult to pinpoint. He was slight of build, with dark hair oiled back in a style she hadn't seen since the sixties. He wore a dark suit and white shirt in the manner of a Jehovah's Witness, but the green silk handkerchief in his jacket pocket was an odd touch. His skin was remarkably pale, almost porcelain, with a translucent quality to it, and his eyes were the greenest she'd ever seen. They matched his handkerchief.
"I am here, Madam, because I understand you had an unpleasant encounter in your garden the other day..."
She stared at him, open mouthed, as he drew his wrist across his dripping nose, wiping it on his starched shirt cuff. His nails were long, with dark lines of dirt.
He smiled at her. He had small, sharp, yellow teeth. "If you could just fill in your name here, on this top line, ma'am, I will take the problem to the proper authorities." He held out the clipboard and a ballpoint pen.
Susan slammed the door in his face and locked it.
Not only did she lock it, but she set the chain-for the first time in the fifteen years she'd lived in the house. And with hardly a thought for the pain, she jogged to the back door and locked it, also. Then gasping for breath, she climbed the stairs to the guest room and looked down to the sidewalk, but saw nothing out of the usual. Not that she was surprised.
* * *
The doctor's office put her on hold. They always did if you weren't dying or bleeding to death. If you had the bad luck to be dying or bleeding to death, they hung up on you, expecting you to have enough sense to call 911 and not bother them further.
"Hello? This is Jean." Jean was her doctor's nurse. Susan and Jean had a relationship dating back eleven years-ever since Susan's diagnosis, in fact. Things had been upbeat back then-we're going to cure this, just hang in there. She'd hung in there; she'd done her part.
"Jean, can I get a CT scan of my head, just to make sure everything is O.K.?"
"Why would you think things might not be, Susan?"
"Well, I've been seeing things..."
There was a moment of silence. "What sort of things?"
"Umm...cats."
"Maybe the neighbor has a new cat?"
"No, cats in the bedroom. I'm sure it's in my head. I've even tried lowering the narcotics. It hasn't helped."
There was a long pause on Jean's end, which Susan interpreted as sympathetic. Jean had paused like this when Susan had first called about the pain in her hip. "I'll talk to the doctor, but I'm sure he won't have a problem with it. I'll call you back with a time, Susan, all right?"
* * *
The scan was normal. It was one of the first pieces of good news Susan had had in months. Her brain was fine. But then why was she seeing things?
For three solid days she tried coming off the narcotics entirely, then gave up the attempt. She lived alone. She had to be able to get around, cook, go shopping... Anyway, there'd been nothing new. Maybe it was over.
* * *
There was someone in bed with her.
Susan sat up and turned on the light. "Paul!"
Icy cold to the touch and stark naked, her ex-husband was lying beside her, face down on top of the comforter, (a mercy, as even in his best days he hadn't been much to look at). A large damp area had formed on the pillow by his head.
"Paul. What on earth are you doing here?"
He opened an eye and turned his head to look at her. His nose was dripping, the reason the pillow was damp. "Where am I?"
"In my bed. How did you get here?"
"I'm not sure. Do I know you?"
"I used to be your wife, before we were divorced. You died, about four years ago. I saw you in your coffin at the funeral."
"How did I look?"
"Dead, but not too bad."
His brows furrowed as he thought about this. "Thanks for coming. What did you say your name was again?"
She grabbed for the first thing at hand, which happened to be a glass of water, and threw it. But he was already gone by the time it hit the bed.
She sighed. Water lay all around her in the bed, in puddles and lakes. She picked up the glass and put it back on the table. The pillow did feel damp, but then-it could've been the water.
She got up and began the laborious process of changing the bedding at three in the morning. On her first visit to the doctor he had asked if she ever have to change the sheets in the middle of the night. This probably wasn't what he'd meant.
She couldn't get back to sleep after that. She lay and watched the sky through the window slowly get light. The creature in the garden, the man with clipboard, her dead husband, they'd all wanted the same thing: her name.
* * *
Mary was an old friend who just happened to be a hospice nurse. Mary knew all there was to know about death and dying, except how it felt. Mary might've heard of something similar. Susan picked up the phone.
"Susan?" said Mary.
Two small syllables, yet it was amazing how much information they contained: sadness, that Susan was now at the point in her disease that she was seeking Mary out; relief, that Susan was seeking help herself, rather than having to have it forced on her; and pleasure, that it was her old friend Mary she was turning to in this time of need. Unfortunately, Mary was wrong on all counts.
"Actually, Mary, I was just calling with a silly question..."
"Susan, there's no such thing as a silly question."
Susan rolled her eyes. "Mary, have any of your patients ever talked about seeing things?"
Silence. "Well, of course. They're ill. They're on narcotics..."
"Little green men?" said Susan, with a forced laugh.
"No Martians that I can remember," said Mary, also adopting a lighthearted air.
Actually this was an angle that Susan hadn't even considered. Could these be aliens? She didn't think so. "I guess what I mean is, did your dying patients ever have visions?"
"One woman spoke of walking up a hill as she lay dying. It was quite moving, really."
The only hills Susan had seen were the hairy buttocks of her dead ex-husband. "Listen, thanks Mary. I have to go." And she hung up.
* * *
A week went by with nothing unusual. Then another. As Susan rode up the elevator to the doctor's office, she debated what, if anything, to say at the appointment. She'd called to request the scan, after all. Her doctor was bound to ask about the hallucinations that had prompted it.
They knew her at the desk, so she could just smile and wave and not state her name. She'd become a little paranoid about giving it out these days. She took a seat by the magazines, picked up one at random, and tried to pretend an interest in it. She hated the waiting room. Everyone was always surreptitiously eyeing each other, trying to decide who was dying and who wasn't, who had a chance and who didn't.
Today it was a middle aged couple and a bored young man, all three watching television. But then the door opened and a teenage boy with piercings held it so that the woman coming behind him could maneuver a wheelchair through the narrow entrance. In the wheelchair a man sat slumped, his chin against his chest. His skin was mailer-envelope yellow and his belly swollen like a starving African child's, but what horrified Susan was the creature on his lap. It was green, just like the one she'd seen in the garden, and it was jumping up and down, bouncing on the man's belly as if it were a trampoline.
It caught sight of Susan and stuck out its tongue.
Susan was in the hallway almost before she knew what she was about. Not trusting the elevator, she followed the exit signs to the stairs and took them two at a time, surprising a young man climbing up. She pushed through the doors and with the last of her strength, sprinted for her car.
* * *
It had taken her almost a half hour in the parking lot to recover enough to drive home. Now she was so sore she could barely get out of the car. Rather than tackle the front steps, she limped round back to the garden, holding out a hand to the side of the house for support. Maybe the creature had been right. Maybe she was dying. Really dying. Her cancer was filling up the marrow of her bones, she knew that. The pain was getting worse. She was getting weaker. And the doctor had nothing left to offer her. He'd told her that at her last visit. She'd just chosen to ignore him.
She looked to the oak. A hundred years it must have lived, or more, and soon it would be just a stump. And then not even that. But, come spring, the daylilies would be back-and the peonies, and the ferns. A few warm April days and the trumpet lilies would be pushing up through the dirt, growing like magic beanstalks. But she wouldn't be here to see it. Someone else would be living in the house by then.
She sat down heavily in the old aluminum chair and looked around her, letting the truth of it all sink in. She would never see another spring. The way she felt, she might not even live to see the leaves turn. The hostas were blooming-spires of pretty violet on plants so dependable and tough she hardly ever gave them a second thought. They'd never gotten the appreciation they deserved.
Something brushed against her leg and she jumped, but it was just a cat, rubbing its chin on the leg of her chair.
"Hello," she said to it, "Where'd you come from?" It was a sizable beast, with long, blue-grey fur.
An identical cat was sitting by the oak, looking at her with cold, dispassionate eyes. There was a movement of branches, and a third cat slunk out from under the boxwood.
Persians, every one.
Susan tightened her grip on the arms of the chair. Her heart was pounding, her breath short. She had to clear her throat just to be able to speak. She felt the need to speak.
"Well," she said. "It's about time."
But being cats, they made no reply.
© 2006 by Dorothy Uhlman.