After the photo shoot, as most of the centenarians were being returned to their rooms, Gail and Ericka went into one of the home’s intimate sitting rooms to speak in private. Gail said that she had something important she wanted to talk to Ericka about. There was a travel magazine on the sofa. Ericka moved it to the coffee table before sitting down. On its cover was a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge. Someone had prankishly penned in a little stick man taking a dive from it. Ericka set it down on top of another magazine — this one for senior citizens. The cover article was titled “Fifteen Reasons to Visit Flagstaff, Arizona.” Ericka wondered if one of the reasons was souvenirs; her great-aunt had bought her a Grand Canyon pennant at a gift shop in Flagstaff called Gertie’s. Ericka had added it to her growing collection of colorful place-pennants, most of them purchased by friends and relatives at Stuckey’s roadside stores.
Ericka liked the cozy little room. On the wall across from her was a print of Maxfield Parrish’s fantastical Daybreak; on the wall behind her a print of van Gogh’s reticent “Vase with Poppies.” The radio in the room was tuned to a classical station. In honor of Memorial Day weekend, the station was playing works by American composers — at the moment, the first movement of Edward MacDowell’s Second Piano Concerto.
“Dear, there is something I’d like you to do for me. While the longevity of my roommate Catherine is something I might wish to aim for, I don’t believe for a minute that I’ll ever reach the age of 107. When I do die, be it this year or the next, I’d like you to take my cremains — is that the word? — take them down to New York and go to the top of whichever of the World Trade Center towers has the observation deck. I haven’t been there since right after they were built. And I want you to cast my ashes to the wind. You must make certain, dear, that the wind is blowing away from the building. What I’m asking you to do may very well be illegal, but then again, illegality hasn’t stopped me from doing a host of things in my life that I thought had value. I very nearly stowed away on the Akron when I was a much younger woman — in protest over the fact that women weren’t allowed to serve in any capacity on Uncle Sam’s rigid airships. How I envy you, Ericka — all the wonderful opportunities being afforded to women of your generation.”
“I’ll do that for you, Gail. I will.”
“Of course, my preference has always been to have my ashes taken to the top of Mount Everest, but that’s an impossibility, isn’t it? You don’t happen to know anyone who climbs that mountain on a regular basis, do you?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“I never had children — wasn’t able to. I’ve met a lot of women over the years who weren’t able to bear children but were successful in making of their friendships something very much like family. My trouble is that all of my friends are dead. Except for you, Ericka. This is one of the drawbacks to living to be so old. Now, I take that back. I do have a couple of other younger friends besides you of whom I’m relatively fond. My friend Audrey in Austin, for example. And Nona in Marietta, Georgia. Nona’s a preschool teacher. And back in the twenties, so many, many years ago, I was good friends with a couple of Bohemian gals in Greenwich Village, Jenny and M.K., and there were the Cadwaladers — Wilberforce and Rosalinda — an older couple I knew in the thirties. She was a crosspatch but he was a dream. The cat’s meow, as we used to say. Of course, now I’m talking about people who are dead. I suppose I just made my earlier point, didn’t I?”
“Would you like me to take you back to your room now?”
“I am a little sleepy. I’m liable to nod off any minute now. Ginger, who lives across the hall from me, does that sometime. She’s from Iowa. Red Oak. Lost two brothers in the war. Poor unlucky woman, poor unlucky town. And Camilla doesn’t so much fall asleep as go into a kind of temporary catatonia. I think she’s reliving the death of her teenaged son back in Helena, Montana. He and another boy died in a terrible car crash one night.”
Ericka helped Gail to her feet. “Have you traveled much, Gail?”
“Oh good Lord, have I traveled! First Tillman and me, and then me and that cuniculine bastard — we all had the wanderlust, don’t you know, and once I was free of Mr. Rabbitt, that wanderlust got even lustier. I flew prop planes all over South America and skydived in Europe and pretty much wore myself out until I was forced to become almost exclusively terrestrial. Even grounded, I’ve had my share of interesting experiences. I lived with an Indian couple in Old Town Albuquerque, had lunch with Harry and Bess Truman in Independence, Missouri. I even worked as a counselor at a girl’s camp in Wisconsin. I’ve seen so much that is good about this country, Ericka, honey, and so much that wasn’t good at all. I was in Greensboro when they rounded up all those homosexuals in 1957. I was in Nashville, Tennessee, when the women-haters almost killed the Nineteenth Amendment abornin’. And can you believe I was even in Cincinnati the night they arrested that evangelist couple about fifteen years ago — the Swearingens…accounting fraud or tax evasion or some such thing as that. Sometimes I feel like — oh, what was that retarded man’s name? Tim Hanks played him in the pictures.”
“Tom Hanks, I think you mean. Forrest Gump.”
“That’s right. I feel just like Forrest Gump. Except that I’m allergic to chocolates.”
Ericka took Gail by the arm and led her back to her room. Catherine was in bed, taking her afternoon nap. On the television there was a story about the risks to airlines of unsecured lithium batteries in their cargo holds. “Is there anything I can get you before I go?” asked Ericka.
“No, dear, I’m fine. And you’ve taken such a load off my mind, knowing that you’ll dispose of my ashes in the way that I ask. Oh, goodness! That’s an awful thought: being ‘disposed’ of. Will you be coming back tomorrow for the celebration?”
“Of course I will,” said Ericka, helping Gail into bed.
“I used to soar. Now I’m earthbound. But at least my ashes will take wing.”
Ericka nodded, said goodbye, and stepped from the room. She poked her head into the room of another friend she had made at the home, a spry widow named Jelena from Kansas City, Kansas. Jelena was resting.
On the drive back to her apartment, Ericka gave more serious thought to what Gail had asked her to do. She was touched that she had been asked, but worried over how she would pull it off. It wasn’t all that easy to throw things from the World Trade Center. For one thing, the windows were airtight. And what if the wind on the observation deck was uncooperative? It would be terrible to leave Gail’s “cremains” scattered about the surface of the building’s roof. Ericka wished that Gail wasn’t so particular about it having to be the World Trade Center. As skyscrapers went, the Empire State Building was far more useful when it came to putting things into the air from a great height. Ericka learned this when she was a little girl and accidentally sent her Barbie Doll all the way down to Fifth Avenue the fast way. Or how about the Woolworth Building? Wasn’t it the tallest building in the world for several years in the early part of the twentieth century?