Her hands tried to grip my wrists, to push away the pillow. But her hands grew feeble. I smelled urine. I did not flinch. A pillow held tight over the face of an elderly cardiac patient will snuff out her life within minutes, if you do not flinch.
When I was sure that it was over, I removed the pillow. The pillowcase was soaked with the woman’s saliva, tears. Her body, which was surprisingly heavy, with a hard round stomach like an inverted bowl, lay limp and unresisting now. The face like a bulldog’s face, contorted in death. I heard a harsh panting sound — my breathing. Hers had ceased, abruptly.
When death is only a matter of seconds, you think that it might be revoked. Life might be called back, if one had the skill.
But no. Once the match is shaken out, the flame is gone.
Without haste, with the precision of a veteran orderly, I removed the pillow from the soiled pillowcase, and pushed it snugly inside a fresh pillowcase. I took time to shake the pillow well down into the pillowcase. This action so frequently performed by me, in my role as orderly, like clockwork I executed it within seconds.
The bedclothes were badly rumpled as if churned. These I tidied deftly, tucking in bed sheets as you learn to do in the U.S. Army as well.
There is pleasure in executing small perfect things. One, two, three — completed! On to the next.
(The soiled pillowcase I might have tossed into the laundry. No one would have thought to look for it there — for the death of the eighty-four-year-old nun would not be considered a “suspicious” death. Yet, I was cautious, taking time to fold the pillowcase neatly to slide it into my backpack, to be disposed of when I left work.)
I lifted Sister Mary Alphonsus’s limp head, to wind the strip of cheap gauzy curtain around it, and to hide her flushed and contorted face. Bride of Christ! Here is your wedding veil.
Why did I take time to do this? — why, to risk suspicion where there would be no suspicion?
I’ve thought of it, often. But I don’t know why.
A smile comes over my face at such times — a strange slow smile. Am I happy, is that why I am smiling? Or — is the smile involuntary, a kind of grimace?
I could not have explained any of this. Not even to my father. It seemed the “right” thing to do, at the time. It would be my secret forever.
“Dorothy Milgrum” had left no will, it would be revealed. And so the deceased woman’s modest estate would be appropriated by the State of Wisconsin.
How much did “Dorothy Milgrum” accumulate, in her years as chief administrator of Craigmillnar? It could not have been much. It was whispered among the staff that there was barely enough money for a decent headstone in the St. Simon’s churchyard at Craigmillnar, where Sister Mary Alphonsus had secured a plot for herself years before.
I was the orderly charged with emptying, cleaning, and preparing the room for the next resident.
In the bureau in Sister Mary Alphonsus’s room, amid her old-woman undergarments, stockings, and woolen socks, there was a packet of letters. I appropriated these, for there was no one to prevent me. It was a surprise to see so many handwritten letters, dated 1950s. Who’d written to the mother superior at Craigmillnar so often? And why had the mother superior kept these letters? The return address was Cincinnati, Ohio. The stationery was a pale rose color. The salutation was Dear Dotty. The signature was faded maroon ink — it looked like Irene. I tried to read a few lines, but could not decipher the curlicue handwriting. Another nun? A dear friend? There was also a packet of snapshots, yellow and curling. In these, Sister Mary Alphonsus was a young woman in her thirties — with sharp shining eyes, bulldog face, wide glistening smile. She wore her nun’s dark robes with a certain swagger, as a young priest might wear such attire. The wimple was tight around her face, dazzling white. Her face looked cruelly and yet sensuously pinched, as in a vise.
In several snapshots the youthful Sister Mary Alphonsus was standing close beside another nun, a stocky broad-shouldered middle-aged woman with a moon face and very white skin. Both women smiled radiantly at the camera. The older woman had flung off her nun’s hood, her hair was close-cropped, gray. The older woman was taller than Sister Mary Alphonsus by an inch or so.
In the background was a lakeside scene — a rowboat at shore, fishing poles.
In the last of the snapshots the women were again standing close together, now both bareheaded, arms around each other’s waist. These were thick arms and thick waists — these were husky women. Then I saw — it was a shock to see — that both women were barefoot in the grass, at the edge of a pebbly lakeside shore.
I thought — They took these pictures with a time exposure. It was a new idea then.
The snapshots and the letters covered in faded-maroon ink I burnt as I’d burnt the pillowcase soaked with a dead woman’s saliva. If it had been in my power I would have burnt all trace of Sister Mary Alphonsus on this earth, but the truth is, some smudge of the woman’s sick soul will endure, multiplied how many hundreds of times, in the memories of others.
I would say nothing — not ever — to my father or to my uncle Denis, but a certain long level look passed between us, a look of understanding, yet a look too of yearning, for what was concealed, that could not be revealed. When I next saw them, and the subject of the nun’s death arose. My father had kept a newspaper to show me, the front-page headlines, though I didn’t need to see the headlines, knowing what they were. In a hoarse voice Dad said — Good riddance to bad rubbage.
By which Dad meant rubbish. But I would not correct him.
Now that months have passed there is not much likelihood of a formal inquiry into the death of Sister Mary Alphonsus aka “Dorothy Milgrum.” The Oybwa County medical examiner has never contacted us. Dr. Godai has left Eau Claire to return to Minneapolis, it has been announced. (Many, including me, were disappointed to hear that Dr. Godai is leaving us so soon, though it isn’t surprising that a vigorous young doctor like Dr. Godai would prefer to live and work in Minneapolis, and not Eau Claire.) Yet, I have prepared my statement for the medical examiner. I have not written out this statement, for such a statement might seem incriminating if written out, but I have memorized the opening.
Early shift is 6:30 A.M. which was when I arrived at the elder care facility at Eau Claire where I have been an orderly for two years. Maybe thirty minutes after that, when the elderly nun’s body was discovered in her bed.
Eric Rutter
The shot
From Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
Barbara paused with her hand on the doorknob, clearing her head. Sometimes she could learn something from her first glimpse of a patient. On the other hand, it was all too easy to project onto them preconceived notions she already had. Not that she truly had patients in this job. A patient was someone you saw more than once. Most of the people she dealt with here were suspects who’d been arrested and the people they’d victimized — that is, allegedly victimized. In an odd sort of way the members of the police department were more like real patients, or they would be if she wound up working here a few years.
She opened the door to the waiting room. He was sitting in the chair by the far wall, legs crossed, not reading anything. He might have been staring at her receptionist, Maggie, the moment before, but somehow she doubted it. He looked too at ease, content just to sit there thinking his own thoughts. His eyes met hers and in them she saw no trace of uncertainty or dread, which did indeed tell her something about him.