At Proxmire Manor I was the only passenger to get off the random, meandering, and profitless local that carried its shabby lights off into the dusk like some game-legged watchman or beadle making his appointed rounds. I went around to the front of the station to wait for my wife and to enjoy the traveler’s fine sense of crisis. Above me on the hill were my home and the homes of my friends, all lighted and smelling of fragrant wood smoke like the temples in a sacred grove, dedicated to monogamy, feckless childhood, and domestic bliss but so like a dream that I felt the lack of viscera with much more than poignance—the absence of that inner dynamism we respond to in some European landscapes. In short, I was disappointed. It was my country, my beloved country, and there have been mornings when I could have kissed the earth that covers its many provinces and states. There was a hint of bliss; romantic and domestic bliss. I seemed to hear the jinglebells of the sleigh that would carry me to Grandmother’s house although in fact Grandmother spent the last years of her life working as a hostess on an ocean liner and was lost in the tragic sinking of the S.S. Lorelei and I was responding to a memory that I had not experienced. But the hill of light rose like an answer to some primitive dream of homecoming. On one of the highest lawns I saw the remains of a snowman who still smoked a pipe and wore a scarf and a cap but whose form was wasting away and whose anthracite eyes stared out at the view with terrifying bitterness. I sensed some disappointing greenness of spirit in the scene although I knew in my bones, no less, how like yesterday it was that my father left the Old World to found a new; and I thought of the forces that had brought stamina to the image: the cruel towns of Calabria and their cruel princes, the badlands northwest of Dublin, ghettos, despots, whorehouses, bread lines, the graves of children, intolerable hunger, corruption, persecution, and despair had generated these faint and mellow lights and wasn’t it all a part of the great migration that is the life of man?
My wife’s cheeks were wet with tears when I kissed her. She was distressed, of course, and really quite sad. She had been attached to Justina. She drove me home, where Justina was still sitting on the sofa. I would like to spare you the unpleasant details but I will say that both her mouth and her eyes were wide open. I went into the pantry to telephone Dr. Hunter. His line was busy. I poured myself a drink—the first since Sunday—and lighted a cigarette. When I called the doctor again he answered and I told him what had happened. “Well, I’m awfully sorry to hear about it, Moses,” he said. “I can’t get over until after six and there isn’t much that I can do. This sort of thing has come up before and I’ll tell you all I know. You see, you live in Zone B—two-acre lots, no commercial enterprises and so forth. A couple of years ago some stranger bought the old Plewett mansion and it turned out that he was planning to operate it as a funeral home. We didn’t have any zoning provision at the time that would protect us and one was rushed through the Village Council at midnight and they overdid it. It seems that you not only can’t have a funeral home in Zone B—you can’t bury anything there and you can’t die there. Of course it’s absurd, but we all make mistakes, don’t we? Now there are two things you can do. I’ve had to deal with this before. You can take the old lady and put her into the car and drive her over to Chestnut Street, where Zone C begins. The boundary is just beyond the traffic light by the high school. As soon as you get her over to Zone C, it’s all right. You can just say she died in the car. You can do that or if this seems distasteful you can call the Mayor and ask him to make an exception to the zoning laws. But I can’t write you out a death certificate until you get her out of that neighborhood and of course no undertaker will touch her until you get a death certificate.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, and I didn’t, but then the possibility that there was some truth in what he had just told me broke against me or over me like a wave, exciting mostly indignation. “I’ve never heard such a lot of damned foolishness in my life,” I said. “Do you mean to tell me that I can’t die in one neighborhood and that I can’t fall in love in another and that I can’t eat …”
“Listen. Calm down, Moses. I’m not telling you anything but the facts and I have a lot of patients waiting. I don’t have the time to listen to you fulminate. If you want to move her, call me as soon as you get her over to the traffic light. Otherwise, I’d advise you to get in touch with the Mayor or someone on the Village Council.” He cut the connection. I was outraged but this did not change the fact that Justina was still sitting on the sofa. I poured a fresh drink and lit another cigarette.
Justina seemed to be waiting for me and to be changing from an inert into a demanding figure. I tried to imagine carrying her out to the station wagon but I couldn’t complete the task in my imagination and I was sure that I couldn’t complete it in fact. I then called the Mayor but this position in our village is mostly honorary and as I might have known he was in his New York law office and was not expected home until seven. I could cover her, I thought, that would be a decent thing to do, and I went up the back stairs to the linen closet and got a sheet. It was getting dark when I came back into the living room but this was no merciful twilight. Dusk seemed to be playing directly into her hands and she gained power and stature with the dark. I covered her with a sheet and turned on a lamp at the other end of the room but the rectitude of the place with its old furniture, flowers, paintings, etc., was demolished by her monumental shape. The next thing to worry about was the children, who would be home in a few minutes. Their knowledge of death, excepting their dreams and intuitions of which I know nothing, is zero and the bold figure in the parlor was bound to be traumatic. When I heard them coming up the walk I went out and told them what had happened and sent them up to their rooms. At seven I drove over to the Mayor’s.
He had not come home but he was expected at any minute and I talked with his wife. She gave me a drink. By this time I was chainsmoking. When the Mayor came in we went into a little, office or library, where he took up a position behind a desk, putting me in the low chair of a supplicant. “Of course I sympathize with you, Moses,” he said, “it’s an awful thing to have happened, but the trouble is that we can’t give you a zoning exception without a majority vote of the Village Council and all the members of the Council happen to be out of town. Pete’s in California and Jack’s in Paris and Larry won’t be back from Stowe until the end of the week.”
I was sarcastic. “Then I suppose Cousin Justina will have to gracefully decompose in my parlor until Jack comes back from Paris.”
“Oh no,” he said, “oh no. Jack won’t be back from Paris for another month but I think you might wait until Larry comes from Stowe. Then we’d have a majority, assuming of course that they would agree to your appeal.”
“For Christ’s sake,” I snarled.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “it is difficult, but after all you must realize that this is the world you live in and the importance of zoning can’t be overestimated. Why, if a single member of the Council could give out zoning exceptions, I could give you permission right now to open a saloon in your garage, put up neon lights, hire an orchestra, and destroy the neighborhood and all the human and commercial values we’ve worked so hard to protect.”