The result was “Geriatric Ward,” and Harlan took the story forthwith.

  A year later. Two years. Five. Locus would report from time to time that Ellison was “working on” the book. That he would be “finished by . . .”

  Then came a letter from Harlan—the same one he was sending all the other contributors. Sorry I’m so slow, I’ll understand if you withdraw your story and publish it elsewhere, but let me know if you still want me to hold on to it.

  By then I was making my living from novels, so the money wasn’t an issue. I wanted to be in Harlan’s book. So I told him to hang on to it.

  Now it has been twenty years. Nobody’s expecting to see Final Dangerous Visions, ever. And that’s fine. Ellison already changed the world of sci-fi. He already helped teach me how to write.

  So here is “Geriatric Ward,” like a fossil suddenly brought to life. It represents the work I was doing in the first two years of my sci-fi writing career. I didn’t keep it in my trunk, I kept it in Harlan’s. To me it’s as if it were written by a stranger. I don’t even know that kid. And who does he think he is, writing about old age? What did he know?

  Christmas at Helaman’s House

  There were times when he wanted to give up and live in a tent rather than fight with the contractors one more time, but in the end Helaman Willkie got the new house built and the family moved in before Christmas. Three days before Christmas, in fact, which meant that, exhausted as they all were from the move, they still had to search madly through the piles of boxes in the new basement to find all the Christmas decorations and get them in place before Santa showed up to inaugurate their new heat-trapping triple-flue chimney.

  So they were all tired, weary to the bone, and yet they walked around the house with these silly smiles on their faces, saying and doing the strangest things. Like Joni, Helaman’s sixteen-year-old daughter, who every now and then would burst into whatever room Helaman was in, do a pirouette, and say, “Daddy, Daddy, I have my own room!” To which he would reply, “So I heard.” To which she would say, hugging him in a way calculated to muss his hair, “You really do love me, now I know it.”

  Helaman’s old joke was that none of his children had ever been impossible, but they had all been improbable more than once. Twelve-year-old Ryan had already been caught twice trying to ride his skateboard down the front staircase. Why couldn’t he slide down the banister like any normal boy? Then at least he’d be polishing it with his backside, instead of putting dings in the solid oak treads of the stair. Fourteen-year-old Steven had spent every waking moment in the game room, hooking the computers together and then trying out all the software, as if to make sure that it would still work in the new house. Helaman had no evidence that Steven had yet seen the inside of his own bedroom.

  And then there was Lucille, Helaman’s sensible, organized, dependable, previously sane wife, kissing all the appliances in the kitchen. But the truth was that Lucille’s delight at the kitchen came as a great relief to Helaman. Till then he had been worried that she was still having doubts about the house. When the movers left, she had stood there in the main-floor family room, staring at the queen-size hide-a-bed looking so forlorn and small on the vast carpet. Helaman reassured her that in no time they’d have plenty of furniture to fill up the room, but she refused to be reassured. “We’re going to buy a truckload of furniture? When our mortgage is bigger than the one on our first store back in 1970?”

  He started to explain to her that those were 1970 dollars, but she just gave him that how-stupid-do-you-think-I-am look and said, “I took economics in college, Helaman. I was talking about how I felt.”

  So Helaman said nothing. He had long since learned that when Lucille was talking about how she felt, none of the things he could think of to say would be very helpful. He couldn’t even begin to put into words what he felt—how proud he had been of this house he had caused to exist for her, how much he needed to know that it made her happy. After all their years of struggling and worrying to try to keep the business afloat, and then struggling and worrying about the huge debts involved in starting up the branch stores, he knew that Lucille deserved to have a fine house, the finest house, and that he deserved to be the man who could give it to her. Now all she could think about was the huge amount of money the house had cost, and Helaman felt as though someone had taken the very breath out of him.

  Until she came into the kitchen and squealed in delight. It was exactly the sound his daughters made—an ear-piercing yelp that gave him headaches whenever Trudy and Joni got excited for more than a minute at a time. He had almost forgotten that it was hereditary, that they got that glass-shattering high note from Lucille. She hadn’t been surprised and happy enough to make that sound in years. But she made it now, and said, “Oh, Helaman, it’s beautiful, it’s perfect, it’s the perfect kitchen!” It made up for her reaction to the family room. If it hadn’t, he would have despaired—because he had worked hard to make sure that the kitchen was irresistible. He had kept careful track of everything she had ever admired in magazines or home shows; he had bought all new appliances, from the can opener and toaster to the microwave and the breadmaker; he had brought those all into the house himself and had his best crew install everything and test it so it ran perfectly. He had inventoried every utensil in her old kitchen and bought a brand-new replacement; they had chosen new silverware and pans and dishes for daily use, and he had arranged it as close to the way she had her old kitchen arranged as possible, even when the arrangement made no sense whatever. And he had kept her out of the kitchen—with tape across the door—all the time he was doing it, and all during the move itself, until that moment when he told her she could tear away the ribbon and walk through the door. And she squealed and kissed all the appliances and opened all the drawers and said, “Just where I would have put it!” and “I can’t believe there’s room for everything and there’s still counter space!” and “How did you get them all out of the old kitchen without my seeing you do it?”

  “I didn’t,” Helaman told her. “I bought all new ones.”

  “Oh, you’re such a tease,” she said. “I mean, here’s the old garlic press. I’ve never even used it.”

  “Now you have two of them.”

  And when she realized that he meant it, that he had really duplicated all her utensils and put them away exactly as she had always had them, she started to cry, which was a sign of happiness even more certain than the squealing.

  So yes, they loved the house, all of them. Wasn’t that what he built it for? For them to feel exactly this way about it? But what he hadn’t expected was his own feeling of disappointment. He couldn’t match their enthusiasm; on the contrary, he felt sad and uncertain as he walked through the house. As if after all his struggling to cause this house to exist, to be perfect, now that it was done he had no reason to be here. No, that wasn’t quite the feeling. It was as if he had no right to be here. He strode through the house with all the rights of ownership, and yet he felt like an interloper, as if he had evicted the rightful occupants and stolen the place.

  Am I so used to struggling for money all my life that when I finally have visible proof that the struggle is over, I can’t believe it? No, he thought. What I can’t believe is me. I don’t belong in a place like this. In my heart, I think of myself in that miserable three-bedroom tract house in Orem with the four makeshift bedrooms Dad built in the basement so all his six kids could have rooms of our own. Well, I’m not a wage man like Dad, and my kids will not be ashamed of where they live, and my wife will be able to invite any woman in the ward into her home without that look of apology that Mother always had when she had to bring chairs from the dining room just so there’d be enough places for her visitors to sit.

  Yet even when he had told himself all these things, reminded himself of the fire that had burned inside him all during the building of the house, he still felt empty and disappointed and vaguely ashamed, and he just didn’t understand it. It wasn’t fair that he should feel like this. He had earned this house.

  Well, what did he expect, anyway? It was like Christmas itself: The gifts were never as good as the preparations—the shopping and hiding and wrapping. He felt as he did because he was tired, that’s all. Tired and ready for it to be the day after Christmas when he could get back to running his little empire of five Willkie’s stores, which sprawled on their parking lots in choice locations up and down the Wasatch Front, beaming their cheery fluorescent lights to welcome people in to the wonderful world of discount housewares. This had been a record Christmas, and maybe getting the accountants’ year-end reports would make him feel better.

  Then again maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe this is what it is, he thought, that makes all those lonely women come to see the bishop and complain about how they’re so depressed. Maybe I’m just having the equivalent of postpartum blues. I have given birth to a house with the finest view in the Darlington Heights Ward, I’m sitting here looking out of a window larger than any of the bathrooms, the twinkling lights of Salt Lake Valley on Christmas Eve spread out before me, with Christmas carols from the CD player being pumped through twenty-two speakers in nine rooms, and I can’t enjoy it because I keep getting the postpartum blues.

  “They’re hee-eere!” sang out Trudy. So the new love of her life (the second in December alone) must be at the door. At eighteen she was their eldest child and therefore the one nearest to achieving full human status. Unlike Joni, Trudy still spelled her name with a y, and it had been more than a year since she stopped drawing the little eyes over the u to make it look like a smile in the middle of her signature. At church yesterday she had fallen in love with the newly returned missionary who bore his testimony in a distinctly Spanish accent. “Can I invite him to come over for the hanging of the stockings?” she pleaded. In vain did Helaman tell her that it would be no use—his own family would want to have him all night, it was his first Christmas with them since the 1980s, for heaven’s sake! But she said, “I can at least ask, can’t I?,” and Lucille nodded and so Helaman agreed, and to his surprise the young elder had said yes. Helaman took a mental note: Never underestimate the ability of your own daughters to attract boys, no matter how weird you think your girls have grown up to be.

  And now the young elder was here, no doubt with so many hormones flowing through him that he could cause items of furniture to mate with each other just by touching them. Helaman had to get up out of the couch and would play father and host for a couple of hours, all the time watching to make sure the young man kept his hands to himself.

  It wasn’t till he got to the door and saw two young men standing there that he realized that Trudy had said they’re here. He recognized the elder, of course, looking missionary-like and vaguely lost, but the other was apparently from another planet. He was dressed normally, but one side of his head was mostly shaved, and the other side was partly permed and partly straight. Joni immediately attached herself to him, which at least told Helaman what had brought him to their door on Christmas Eve—another case of raging hormones. As to who he was, Helaman deduced that he was either a high school hoodlum she had invited over to horrify them or one of the bodacious new boys from the Darlington Heights Ward that she had been babbling about all day. In fact, if Helaman tried very hard he could almost remember the boy as he looked yesterday at church, in a lounge-lizard jacket and loosened tie, kneeling at the sacrament table, gripping the microphone as if he were about to do a rap version of the sacrament prayer. Helaman had shuddered at the time, but apparently Joni was capable of looking at such a sight and thinking, “Wow, I’d like to bring that home.”

  By default Helaman turned to Trudy’s newly-returned missionary and stuck out his hand. “Feliz Navidad,” said Helaman.

  “Feliz Navidad,” said the missionary. “Thanks for inviting me over.”

  “I didn’t,” said Helaman.

  “I did, silly,” said Trudy. “And you’re supposed to notice that Father said Merry Christmas in Spanish.”

  “Oh, sorry,” said the missionary. “I’ve only been home a week and everybody was saying Feliz Navidad all the time. Your accent must be good enough that I didn’t think twice.”

  “What mission were you in?”

  “Colombia Medellín.”

  “Do I just call you Elder or what?” asked Helaman.

  “I’ve been released,” said the missionary. “So I guess my name is Tom Boke again.”

  Joni, of course, could hardly bear the fact that Trudy’s beau had received more than a full minute of everyone’s attention. “And this is my first visitor to the new house,” said Joni.

  Helaman offered his hand to Joni’s boy and said, “I know a good lawyer if you want to sue your barber.”

  Joni glared at him but since the boy showed no sign of understanding Helaman’s little jest, she quickly stopped glaring.

  “I’m Spencer Raymond Varley,” said the boy, “but you can call me Var.”

  “And you can call me Brother Willkie,” said Helaman. “Come on in to family room A and we’ll tell you which cookies Joni baked so you can avoid them and live.”

  “Daddy, stop it,” said Joni in her cute-whiny voice. She used this voice whenever she wanted to pretend to be pretending to be mad. In this case it meant that she really was mad and wanted Helaman to stop goading young Var.

  Helaman was too tired to banter with her now, so he pried her off his arm, where she had been clinging, and promised that he’d be good from now on. “I was only teasing the spunky young lad out of habit.”

  “His father is the Spence Varley,” Joni whispered. “He drives a Jag.”

  Well, your father is the Helaman Willkie, he answered silently. And I’ll be able to get you great prices on crock pots for the rest of your natural life.

  The family gathered. They munched for a while on the vegetables and the vegetable dip, the fruits and the fruit dip, and the chips and the chip dip. Helaman felt like a cow chewing its cud as he listened to the conversation drone on around him. Lucille was carrying the conversation, but Helaman knew she loved being hostess and besides, she was even worse than the girls, waiting to pounce on Helaman and hush him up if he started to say anything that might embarrass a daughter in front of her male companion for the evening. Usually Helaman enjoyed the sport of baiting them, but tonight he didn’t even care.

  I don’t like having these strangers in our home on Christmas Eve, he thought. But then, I’m as much a stranger in this house as they are.

  By the time Helaman connected back to the conversation, Joni was regaling her fashion-victim boyfriend with the story of the marble floor in the entryway. “Father told the contractor to lower the floor in the entryway or the marble would stand an inch above the living room carpet and people would be falling down or stubbing their toes forever. And the contractor said he wouldn’t do it unless Father accepted the fact that this would make them three days late and add a thousand dollars to the cost of the house. And so Father gets up in the middle of the night—”

  “You’ve got to know that I warned them while they were putting in the entryway floor that they needed to drop it an inch lower to hold the marble, and they completely ignored me,” said Helaman. “And now it had the staircase sitting on it and it really would have been a lot easier to just install a parquet floor instead, but I had promised Lucille a marble entryway and the contractor had promised me a marble entryway and—”

  “Father,” said Joni, “I was going to tell the short version.”

  “And now he said he wouldn’t do it,” said Helaman, and then fell silent.

  “So,” said Joni, “as somebody was saying, Father got up in the middle of the night—”

  “Six in the morning,” said Helaman.

  “Let her tell the story, Helaman,” said Lucille.

  “And he got the chainsaw out of the garage,” said Joni, “and he cut this big gaping hole in the middle of the entry floor and you know what? They realized that Daddy really meant it.”

  They laughed, and then laughed all the harder when Helaman said, “Remember the chainsaw if you’re ever thinking of keeping my daughter out after her curfew.”

  Even as he laughed, though, Helaman felt a sour taste in his mouth from the chainsaw story. It really had cost the contractor money and slowed down the house, and when Helaman had stood there, chainsaw in hand, looking in the first light of morning down into the hole he had just made, he had felt stupid and ashamed, when he had meant to feel vindicated and clever and powerful. It took a few minutes for him to realize that his bad feelings were really just because he was worried about somebody walking in without looking where they were going and falling down into the basement, so he wrestled a big sheet of plywood over and laid it mostly over the hole, leaving just enough of a corner that the contractor couldn’t help but know that the hole was there. And then it turned out that that wasn’t the reason he felt stupid and ashamed after all, because when he’d finished he still had to come home and take a shower just to feel clean.

  Of course, while he was thinking of this, they had gone on with the second marble story, only now it was Trudy telling it. “So this lady from across the street comes over and Mom thinks she’s going to welcome us into the neighborhood, and so she holds the door open and invites the woman inside, and the first thing she says is ‘I hear you’re going to have marble in the foyer of your new house,’ and Mom says yes, and then the woman—”

  “Sister Braincase, I’ll bet,” said Var.

  “Who?” asked Lucille.

  “Sister Barnacuse,” said Var. “We call her Braincase because she’s going bonkers.”

  “How compassionate of you,” murmured Lucille.

  “Anyway,” said Trudy, “whoever she was—Mrs. Barnacuse—said, ‘Well, I hope it isn’t that miserable fox marble.’ And Mother just stands there and she’s trying to think of what fox marble might mean. Was it a sort of russet shade of brown or something? She’d never heard of a color called fox. And then all of a sudden it dawns on her that the woman means faux marble, and even though the marble in the entry is real, Mother says to her, ‘No, the marble we have is faux.’ As if it was something to be proud of. And the woman says, ‘Oh, well that’s different,’ and she goes away.”