Chapter 3, Bad Novel

There was something strange about her, something I had never seen, or especially felt.

The way she grabbed my arm, for example—it was as fast as a snake bite, and the grip was super strong. Where did it come from? She was, after all, over 70; I’m in my teens. But I swear, once she grabbed me, she wasn’t going to let go. And that glare, as she plunged my hand into the toilet bowl! She was completely certain that she had me in her grip, and she was right.

“It’s something we’ve all noticed,” said Sister Barbara. “My, I declare she could pick up a car, if she’d a mind to. And she never does a thing to stay strong. She just is, and will always be….”

The stories about her were legendary. Born in Transylvania, she had come to the United States as a young girl, accompanied by her mother, who was a spiritist.

“A spiritualist?” I asked Sister Barbara, who could talk for hours about the Blessed Mother.

“Don’tcha let her hear you call her that,” said Sister Barbara. “A spiritualist is a fraud, according to the Blessed Mother. No, a spiritist is the woman with the real gift, not some huckster who tells you that you will meet the man of your dreams or find a great treasure. No, a spiritist will tell you the truth—that ill health awaits you, that a death is close to you, that business will go bad before it turns good again. She’ll warn you of the dangers in your path, not tell you about some imaginary rosy future….”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“Mighty strange things happen when she’s around,” said Sister Barbara. “Haven’t you noticed that there’s something about the way she looks at you? It’s like you can’t look away. And then, you start telling her things you don’t mean to. Not lies—just things you’d never say to another human being. First time I met her, I told her all about my brother, who died from the measles, combined with pneumonia.”

“That must have been hard….”

“That’s the thing—I hadn’t never told anyone about it. Mostly because it was my fault—I’d gone off to school, and come back home with the measles. Mother told me not to go near my brother, said she was scared to death he’d catch the measles. But I didn’t pay her no mind. And when my doll went missing, I knew just who was responsible. So I charged into my brother’s bedsroom, and demanded he give it back. And he just laughed…”

“So what did you do?”

“I told him I knew he had it, and he denied it. So I sat down on his bed, and told him I wasn’t gonna move ‘til he gave it back. So he just kept laughing, and then I noticed that he was guarding his pillow. So I asked whether the doll was under that pillow. He said no, and I said it was too, and we got into a fight, the way kids do, and I was wrestling with him to take away the pillow. Well, we were pulling and tugging at the pillow, both of us, and our faces were just about touching. And then, my brother stiffened and just stared at the bedroom door.”

“What was it?”

“It was my mom, who’d just returned from the dump. She’d taken all the sheets I’d used, and the towel, and my rag doll to the dump, ‘cause she was terrified that they were all infectious. So when I missed my doll, it was she—not my brother—who’d taken it. And now, there I was in his room, all but coughing on him. Never forget the look on her face….”

“What was it?”

“She was madder than hops. She just took me by the arm, marched me out of the room, and like to have thrown me into the bed. Then she slammed the door, and I knew better than to ask to come out. Well, I waited there, crying my head off, and then Papa came in, and brought me dinner. Didn’t say a word, just sat by the bed, and watched me. Well, I was hungry, but I couldn’t eat—my stomach was all in knots. Finally, he said something….”

“What was it?”

“Asked me why I done it, and I couldn’t tell him. He said, ‘didn’t your momma tell you to stay outta the boy’s room?’ And I just started crying harder. Told him I was sorry, but he just kept lookin’ at me, and askin ‘why, Barbara? Why?’”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, he got up, and said, ‘now I’m going to leave you,’ and he went to the door, turned off the light, and said ‘goodnight.’ ‘Course, the moment he left, I wanted to run after him and tell him the truth, tell him that I hadn’t realized momma had taken the doll, tell him I never thought that Jeb, by brother, was so sick. Just didn’t think. But I couldn’t, and the next day, I got the news that my brother had broken out with the measles. Had all the sign—the fever, the rash, the weakness. Well, by then, only poppa was coming into my room, since momma was taking care of Jeb. So he came, gave me food and water, but never stayed, and never said much. I stayed in that be for three or four days, and then I heard my mother scream, and my father come running down the hall to Jeb’s room, and then the door slamming, and the car racing out of the driveway.”

“Then what happened?”

“It was quiet for the longest time, and then I heard my mother scream again, and then she was comin’ down the hallway, and she flung the door open, and she started screamin’. Screamin’ terrible things, terrible things, so I took the pillow and put it over my head, to get her out of my sight, and then I felt her take the pillow, and she was pushin’ it down hard. So I was going under, but still I heard her screamin’, and I knew what she was sayin’, and that made it worse.”

“What was she saying?”

“That I had killed my brother, and she had lost the only thing she’d ever loved, ’cause she’d never loved me, and wasn’t about to start. ‘Specially now, now that I’d killed my brother. So I was going under, and I thought I was gonna die, and I didn’t much care. Wasn’t no use living, and then all of a sudden, from far away, I hear more sounds, and it’s my father, come back home with the doctor. And that’s when they saw my mother, pressin’ the pillow against my face. Poppa said another minute or two, and I’d ha’ been dead.”

“Oh, my God!”

“Yeah. Well, they said they didn’t know what to do about momma. Doctor wanted her put away, but poppa wouldn’t allow it. But the doctor said it wasn’t safe for me, there in the house, alone with momma. Said she could turn in a single moment, and what would I do? Nearest neighbor 120 acres away—that’s a a long way to run, for a little girl. So the doctor said we should just talk her over to Topeka, put her in the state loony bin. Said they’d keep her safe, at least, and me as well.”

“And?”

“Poppa wouldn’t hear of it. Told the doctor he’d send me over to my aunt, his sister, and he’d look after mother. Well, the doctor wasn’t happy, but there wasn’t much he could do, and at least I’d be safe. So I went to my aunt, and she was good to me. Think she knew I felt bad, and think she felt bad herself.”

“Then what happened?”

“Finally, Poppa came to visit. Said Momma had been taken to the hospital after all, and that she was getting’ good care there. They’d found a new drug—thorazine—and it was helpin’ plenty of folk. She could come home for a visit, and I should be there when she did. Poppa promised not to leave me alone with her….”

“And?”

“Well, she came home, all right, but she weren’t nothin’ like what she’d been. Moved real slow, and was very stiff, and she was shakin’ like a leaf. Looked down a lot, and drooled outta the corner of her mouth, and father she sat there, with his head in his hands. Looked at me, looked at my mother, and back again. Finally just left the room—though he said he wouldn’t—and walked out to the barn. I followed him, and found him drinking straight from a bottle of rye he got hid there.”

“And?”

“I asked him what was gonna happen, and he just said, real slow, that Momma was gonna go back to the hospital, where they could take care of her. And that it was best if I didn’t stay either, but go back to my aunt’s house. He’d stay on, and if things got better, he’d send for me. But I knew that wasn’t gonna happen, and it never did. And then, six months later, we got the news. Poppa was dead—shot himself in the head out back of the barn. All the neighbors said he’d been drinkin’ harder and harder. Finally, he just snapped.”

“Wow—I’m so sorry.”

“So I tell Mother all this, and she’s just lookin’ at me with that look of hers, and then all of a sudden I come to the end, and she doesn’t do nothin’ but then she grabs me and she rockin’ me in her arms, and she’s singin’ and I’m cryin’ so hard I can’t stop. Though I don’t want to, and then I realize why I’m sobbing so hard, and it comes like such a shock that I’d like to have died.”

“Why? What was it?”

“Blessed Mother is singin’ the song my momma used to sing when I was a little girl, and…”

“Yeah?”

“…never met no one who knew that song.”                    

Chapter 2, Bad Novel

“I’ve read the file on you,” said Mary Ann, “though don’t know why I bother. Never learn a damn thing from them: story’s always the same. Rich family, father’s a doctor, mother’s a nurse. Girl comes home from school, and there’s no one there. So why come home? Why not go somewhere with their friends, and sneak in the door five minutes before Dad or Mom gets home? Then, of course, they find out. Parent’s don’t give a damn if they’re there or not. So then it’s staying out until all hours, going to bars, drinkin’ and smokin’, and getting up to all kinds of mischief. Well, it wasn’t that way when I was young, I can tell you that….”

‘Of course not,’ thought Joan. ‘when you were young, the glaciers were just starting to recede. So that was nice, since it gave your pet dinosaur more room to graze. God, how will I stand five more months of this? And there’s not much room to escape, since they won’t let us into our rooms until 9:30 PM. Then, it’s lights out at ten, though how anyone in the world can sleep at ten is beyond me.”

The routine, in fact, was monotonous. At seven, one of the nuns came down the aisles of the dormitory, knocking on doors, and announcing that breakfast would be at eight. That, in fact, had caused the first fight between them.

“I don’t eat breakfast,” Joan had said, “I never have. And I didn’t sleep so well, so I thought I’d simply rest instead….”

She realized immediately that that was a mistake.

“Well! So little missy don’t like gettin’ up with the rest of us! And I suppose you’d like breakfast in bed? Served on a tray, with carnations in bud vases? Well, this ain’t no Hilton Hotel, Missy. This here is an establishment with rules, in case you ever heard of them things. So when Sister Albert knocks on your door, you get to your feet, you stand in line to use the bathroom, you splash water on your face and brush your teeth. Then you get out, lickety-split, ‘cause you ain’t the only one needin’ the washroom. Then, you go down to the dining hall and wait for your breakfast. This is a religious house, so you’ll keep your voice down, and not speak until spoken to. Breakfast—twenty minutes, ‘cause my nuns got other things to do than waiting for a buncha rich girls to finish their breakfast. Then, it’s back to your room, tidy up, make the bed, and sweep as necessary. By nine o’clock, you should be in place in the school room, getting at your books. Sister Mary Margaret will supervise you, until noon. Lunch, and then return to school at 1 PM. At four, there’s exercise in the yard. Lucky you, the garden season hasn’t started, otherwise there’d be some real chores to be done. Though you break any of the rules….”

The orphanage was so old, it was impossible to believe it had ever been new. As well, it was so ramshackle, so rickety, that it was impossible to believe it had ever been well-constructed or well-maintained. Every floorboard groaned under the weight, which prompted ceaseless criticism from the nuns.

“When are you girls going to learn to walk modestly down these halls? And please, eyes down in submission; I’ll have no girl glaring at me in the eyes, thank you very much!”

‘We’re pregnant, we’re not junior nuns,’ thought Joan. ‘Though if I had known how bad this was going to be, I’d have braved telling father and had the damn thing at home. Or an abortion, which is looking better and better every day….’

The orphanage was an eyesore at the end of the ugliest road in Wisconsin, though Joan. A long rectangular building, it had a living room to the right of the foyer. Next to that was the dining room, which when not in use doubled as the classroom. The girls’ rooms were lined at the back of the house, down a long, drafty corridor. Mary Ann’s room—by far the largest of any of the bedrooms—adjoined the corridor, but faced the front of the house.

‘That’s the reason the old biddy can keep an eye on all of us,’ thought Joan. ‘She’s right in the thick of us. So any time any of us gets up in the night, the old buzzard comes bearing down on us, with that beady eye of hers, and those hand that look like talons, ready to rip our gullets out. What the hell does she think we’re doing, up in the middle of the night? We’re pregnant, we pee—doesn’t she know that? Does she think there’s an army of Latin lovers coming down the country roads of Necedah, Wisconsin?’

They had seemed to clash the moment they met. First it had been skipping breakfast, that first day. Then, it became about the breakfast itself. The toast was both burnt and cold, the eggs were runny. And Joan had always disliked eggs in any form; her mother had given up trying to get to eat them years ago.

Mary Ann—or the Blessed Mother, as the nuns called her—was a different story.

She was clever enough not to try the waiting game, since what adolescent girl cannot outwait a middle-aged girl? Instead, she had taken the plate away after twenty minutes, and then put a mop and bucket in her hands.

“Latrine duty,” announced the Blessed Mother, and led Joan to the three bathrooms at the back of the house. “And mind you scrub them spotless!”

She then handed Joan scouring powder and rags.

“Shouldn’t there be a toilet bowl brush?” asked Joan. Lois, the family’s cleaning lady, had always used one.

“We’ve no need for them,” snorted the Blessed Mother. “Elbow grease is all that’s wanted. Get to work. Start with the toilet!”

They stood glaring at each other.

“Well, get on with it,” said the Blessed Mother. “Do I need to show you? Here! First you sprinkle the powder into the bowl.”

She did so.

“Then you take a rag,” and she thrust a rag into Joan’s unwitting hand.

It happened with lightening speed. The Blessed Mother clasped Joan’s hand with surprising strength and thrust it into the toilet bowl. Joan, outraged, tried to wrench her hand away, but only succeeded in roiling the water, which splashed onto the floor.

“Now see here, Missy—this foolish rebellion is going to stop this minute, do you understand? Because you’re to have eggs every meal until you learn your place!”

“No,” cried Joan. “I’m pregnant, remember? I can’t eat eggs, and I won’t, and I need a good diet…”

“There’s nothing more wholesome than an egg,” said the Blessed Mother. “And nothing more honest than a good day’s work. Which is something you ain’t never had to do, is it now? Well, you can just make up your mind to obey the rules, eat the food that’s given to you, or pay the consequences. Or do you think your rich father want to know where you are, and what condition you’re in? Oh, it was all very well when you was out drinkin’ and fornicatin’, and breaking every rule that the good Lord commanded. But here, you’ll learn the consequences of your behavior! Now get to work, and get these bathrooms clean!”

Where was she to go? The orphanage was at the end of a long, dirt driveway. It was early March—a sullen, cold drippy day. The nearest town was miles away.

‘One day,’ thought Joan, whose pulse was exploding in rage, ‘I’ll get this bitch, and I’ll get her good.’

Then she got down to work.

Chapter 1.1

“OK—so I have it all solved,” I told Lady. “Now, all I have to do is to write a bad novel first. Complete and utter crap. Stale characters, ridiculous plot turns, stilted speech, long rambling passages designed to impress the reader. All having the opposite effect, of course….”

“Why write a bad novel?” asked Lady. “Though it might be interesting to see if you could. But surely we don’t lack for bad novels?”

“It’s good advice, really,” I told her. “First, it’s tremendously freeing—it takes all the pressure off you. And then, you get to make mistakes, which is the only way to learn. And lastly, you have the knowledge that, yes, you can write a novel. Even if bad….”

“Well, I’d like to see you try,” said Lady. “And I’ll tell you if it’s bad or not.”

“No, you won’t. I’m not supposed to show it to anyone, and I’m not supposed to read it myself for six months. Oh, and forget publishing it, because it’s going to take at least three novels before I have anything publishable. So Penguin and Simon & Schuster? Sorry, guys—don’t call me, I’ll call you!”

“Well, it doesn’t make much sense to me. And what will happen if you sit down and write the 21^st century’s War and Peace? After all, you’ve written one book, though not a novel. But you must have some experience.”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” I told her. “I write something one day, and something the next, and there’s no connection between them. But if I sit down and try to outline a plot—which does make sense—then I go completely barren. Which is why I invent absolutely sterile plots.”

“Get to work,” said Lady. “Make an absolute mess. Hey, why not start out with the worst line of all? ‘It was a dark and stormy night!’ That should send you merrily on the way to the quicksand of mediocrity!”

“Great idea,” I told her. “And can I have my main character spirited away by aliens, who implant a chip allowing her to see the Blessed Virgin Mother?”

“Sure,” she said. “And if that doesn’t work out so well, there’s always the cavalry, right behind that hill….”

“Perfect,” I told her. “Chapter 1!”

Chapter 1

It was a dark and stormy night!!!!

(“Love the punctuation,” whispered Lady. “Off to a great start!”

“Shhh,” I told her. “Or maybe ‘shhhhhh!!!!’”)

The lightening fell like celestial swords (‘YES, Marc!’) upon the barren fields of Necedah, Wisconsin. Thunder wracked the air, the animals stirred in their barns, moved closer together, looked upwards in fright. In the nearly deserted farmhouse, Mary Ann van Hoof stood by window, her visage (‘love that…’) torn askew by the tumultuous events of the climatic occurrence.

(“I can’t,” I told her. “I really just can’t do it. It took me five minutes just to cook up that last sentence….”

“You can do it,” she told me.

“You know, what worries me is that by trying to write badly, I’ll actually teach myself bad habits. Actually, ‘it was a dark and stormy night,’ doesn’t seem so bad to me. After all, some nights are darker than others. And if it was stormy—well, that’s what it was. I really think that Bulwar-Lytton-whoever-he-was got a bad rap. I can think of a lot worse….”

“Yeah?”

“Sure—how’s this?

It was at that part of the score plus four-hour cycle that God—so loving in his care for mankind, so doting in his ministrations to the most faltering of the sheep in his flock—when the sun, that golden-globed giver of light, takes to its celestial bed, lies down, sighs in contentment, and rests. But on this night—to give it the word which mere mortals call it—the most fearsome of celestial events shattered the peace and tranquility that normally attend to that period of time during which man lays at rest from his daily toils, and takes solace in his bed.  Events of the greatest sonic magnitude occurred, accompanied by irruptions of energy in the form of light waves; both phenomenon indicating that a tempestuous period of climactic activity was occurring.

“Right—that is pretty awful,” said Lady. “So maybe you should try not quite so hard?”

“OK—but you have to go back to painting houses, now. No more interruptions!”)

Chapter 1.1

It was a dark and stormy night.

The rain came in sheets, battening down the shoots of corns that were just now sprouting from the soil. Spring had come late to central Wisconsin, and Mary Ann van Hoof, looking out the window of her farmhouse, wondered how the harvest would be, if it continued cool and wet.

She had been poor all her life, but what of it? Who, in the little village of Necedah, Wisconsin, had been rich? There had never been much money in the town, and never much purpose for living there. The soil was sandy, and only grudgingly could be put to work. The fodder was thin, and livestock had a hard time of it. Calves were born sickly, and grew into weak, indifferent cows. Horses were colicky; pigs scrawny and discontent.

No, there was no money, and there never had been. And if the town had been poor before, it had really suffered during the last several decades. First, the dust-bowl years—not as bad in Wisconsin as it had been in the West, but still bad.

“You woke up hot,” said Mary Ann to one of the unwed mothers in her orphanage. “Hot—first thing in the morning. Then you realized: you’d been hot all night, even during your sleep. Never got no relief. And never felt like you’d gotten a good night’s sleep. So you’re lying in your sweaty sheets, and you know this day’s gonna be as hot as yesterday. And it’s been hotter than blazes for the longest time. Don’t remember the last time it rained. And it don’t seem like it ever will again, neither….”

The heat made everybody torpid, senseless. Men and women sat on their porches, hoping to catch a breeze that never came. The silence was total; couples that had chattered in court-hood and early marriage fell mute. The heat stewed the mind and stilled the tongue; movement seemed heavier, as if moving through water.

“That was the summer that the baby wouldn’t stop crying, and wouldn’t keep any milk down, neither. Lord, how that child cried! Night and day, and all I could do was hold her, but seemed like she never fell asleep. You don’t know how desperate a body can become, when all you can hear is that damn crying, and ain’t nothin’ you can do to stop it. Lord!”

What little rain fell didn’t do much good. The crops wilted in the field, and somehow the yellowing of the plants was more painful than the brown of death would be. How, Mary Ann used to wonder, how long can we go on like this? The last good harvest had been nigh on a decade ago, and each year they had planted anew, and hoped anew, and never gotten anything much out of it. What little money they had they put into the field, and watched as the crop sickened and died.

“Had to go to the bank every year,” said Mary Ann, “and we ain’t the sort that ever did. But my husband’s daddy and his granddaddy had farmed the land for generations, and we wasn’t about to be the first generation that lost it. So we kept on, though how I don’t know. So every year it was another loan, and another set of payments, always slightly higher. And each spring, we’d get one good hard rain, and we’d get our hopes up. This year, we’d tell ourselves, we’d get lucky, get a good crop in. And then, nothin’. Ed would sit on the porch, when he should have been out in the fields cultivatin’, but there wasn’t nothin’ to cultivate—even the weeds weren’t grownin’. He’d sit on the porch, smokin’ his hand-rolled cigarette, and he’d look at the horizon. ‘Seems like it’s getting’ dark in the West,’ he’d say. Well, I’d look, and I didn’t see nothin.’ But I couldn’t say nothing, could I?”

“Yes, it was a terrible time. Terrible because of how it turned the men into weaklings. Oh, they could hunt and fish and climb mountains, but they couldn’t work the land, and they couldn’t provide. They saw their wives wearing the same dress year in and year out, and the soup got thinner and thinner. Everybody got thinner, and the little kids musta had worms, probably ‘cause they were eating dirt. ‘Bout all there was to eat, those days.”

“You don’t know nothin’ about being poor,” she told the girl. “Father’s a fancy doctor, down there in Madison, where all them snooty intellectuals live. Oh yes, never had a day when there wasn’t meat and potatoes on the table. Never had to wonder whether the rice and beans would hold out for another day.  And never had the worry of a colicky baby cryin’ day and night in the house. But the worst of it all was the wind. Didn’t never stop blowing, those days—and it didn’t cool things down, neither. Like a blast from a hot oven, it was, and it like to have burned you, that’s how hot it was. It was like the devil himself blowing over the land. Lasted all day, and the sound got into you. Seems like there wasn’t nowhere you could escape it: a constant, nagging howl. That and the baby’s cryin’ seemed to be all that a body could hear, and you’d step outside and that blast of wind would hit you, and you’d swear that you were nigh on burning to a crisp. Well, you just prayed you’d get to evening, see the sun set down, and get a little relief. But it never got no cooler, and the wind completely died. So you sat on that damn porch and wondered how in the Lord you was gonna get through another day of this, ‘cause you knew that tomorrow wasn’t going to be no better. And I’d look over at Ed and think, ‘Lordy, is this the man I married?’ ‘Cause he was lookin’ so old, now, like he’d never been anything but a dried up, withered old man. Used to wonder what I’d done to the man, to make him so sad and unhappy. Beaten, really, and just going through the motions of getting’ through the days.”

“Hard to know,” she said, “who had it worse. The menfolk were hit hard—worse than they had ever had it. But the women had to scrounge for whatever there was to put on the table, and then they had to see their men all silent and beaten up. And the worst of it was that you couldn’t say nothin’ cheerful, nothin’ to lift the spirits. ‘Cause if you said, ‘don’t worry, it’ll surely rain soon,’ well, that’s what you’d been saying for years, and when had that ever come true? And you couldn’t stand to see the look on your husband’s face, since both you and him knew it wasn’t true. Oh yes, awful, awful years.”

‘It’s so fucking boring,’ thought Joan. ‘Every night, on and on, like I hadn’t heard it a million times. Why do old people think kids never had it tough? Why do they get to have a monopoly on suffering? They had nothing, we have everything. Christ, I’ll be glad when I’m out of the clutches of this old lunatic.’

Outside, the wind howled and raged; the storm was nowhere near abating. As if by divine command, both Joan and Mary Ann looked out, just as a bolt of lightening split the century-old oak in two.    

  

  

On The Value of Human Life

When are we going to tell the truth, finally, that on some if not all levels, the value of human life very much has a price?

I say this because last Saturday, I discovered how much the life of an elderly gentleman was worth. For we had taken his wife to the opera, and then stopped by the nursing home to see her husband.

To say it was wrenching is to understate the tragedy badly. I have seen, this season at the opera, kingdoms lost, armies destroyed, loves relentlessly shattered. Nothing was as painful as seeing this older man, with no idea where he was, look at his wife. He began to sob, and did not stop for twenty minutes or so, until we diverted him and took him downstairs. He held her hand, he caressed her face, he told her she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

He also did not know her name.

It’s Alzheimer’s, or another dementia, and it could be much worse. The home is very good, the family has the resources to pay for excellent care, there appears to be ample and well-trained staff. But since the gentleman needs to be turned every hour, the cost of keeping him in the facility is, according to his wife, 7000 dollars monthly.

That’s 84,000 dollars yearly.

The gentleman has been in the home for only a few months; he is in his late 80’s, but otherwise in good physical condition. Given that his father died at age 100, the real question is how long and how expensive his final days will be. In addition, of course, there is his wife, who is his age and who will need care as well.

And so there is every likelihood that the family is facing a multimillion-dollar end-of-life bill. Let’s assume that they have it. My question, which may send you shuddering, is should they spend it?

My mother was quite clear about it: she hated every minute of every nursing home that she had recuperated in or visited. And for the most part, those facilities had been excellent. Still, no nursing home had ever been, and would ever be, her home. She sensibly felt that paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to be kept alive in a place she didn’t want to be was ridiculous. And in those moments when it seemed that there was no alternative but to keep my mother imprisoned in a nursing home, I suffered more despair than at any other moment in my life.

I know all the arguments: once you start on this path, it’s the slippery slope. OK—a life isn’t worth $84,000 annually; how much is it worth? $50,000? $25,000? And if a life is worth $84,000, is there then a figure at which it becomes too expensive to keep a person alive? If it cost $800,000 or eight million, would that be justified?

 Another argument: do we want the government to decide the worth of a human life?

But wait, don’t we? Because imagine if the man I had seen had been without resources—would he still have been in that very beautifully restored older building, with its murals and original oil paintings, and the ornate ceiling in the foyer? No, not by a long shot. He would have been in whatever facility was willing to accept what Medicare was willing to pay. Some bureaucrat, or rather a group of bureaucrats, has made the decision on the value of a human life.

Nor is it just in health care. We make lots of decisions about spending money on schools, on sports arenas, on bringing “democracy” to those nations who may or may not want them.

Everything, in short, has a price. And to pretend it doesn’t has a price, too. I am writing this two yards away from a homeless man, and perhaps three yards away from another homeless man. The first is sleeping in the back of the gift shop: the second is cruising the Internet. A classical guitarist, he lost everything except his computer and guitar in a fire on Thanksgiving Day.

Since I talk to the guitarist, I can tell you the price of homelessness, or at least of losing your home. Because the city had stepped in, and given him a hotel room for a week, and vouchers for two meals a day. Then, he was on his own.

Three lives: two people who have no home, and a third who has—perhaps—a home he doesn’t much want. We have decided that the two homeless men should be cast off, and that the older man should be allowed to die slowly in “luxury.” And do I want any government to redistribute the wealth, take away from the elderly man and give to the two homeless men? Absolutely not.

But do we really have to make that choice? If it is cheaper, in the long run, just to give the homeless homes, what besides our puritan heritage is keeping us from doing that?

And what obscenity could be worse than spending trillions on foreign wars, and having veterans of them on the streets, shell-shocked and homeless? Do we really not have the money to provide for basic needs?

Lastly, maybe it’s time to admit: if we were honest about putting a value on human life, maybe then we could be rational, and make sensible decisions. Instead, every time someone proposes an argument, the counterargument is always that “no price can be put on a human life.” Then we outsource drinking water and pollute an entire city. Or we send off more troops to Iraq.

The old man in the nursing home had been prudent all his life. The couple saved and saved, only hoping that they could pass something on to their children. I had spoken to the wife years ago about what my mother had done—stop drinking and eating—and how well it had worked for her. But the woman’s husband was a cultural Catholic, and wouldn’t have wanted to do anything to end his life.

I wonder…what would he say now?