Extraordinary

Five

It was nearly three in the morning now. The hum from the refrigerator clicked off, leaving the room in audible silence. It seemed as though the curtains, the lamps, the pictures on the wall were all waiting too. I was standing at the window looking down at the parking lot. A man in a white jacket moved between the cars and stepped under a spotlight. He looked up. We looked at each other for an unnaturally long time. Then he waved, a big wide wave as though he were on a boat and trying to catch the attention of a passing freighter. But I didn’t wave back. He seemed like bad luck and I stepped away from the window.

Sally came out of the bathroom and sat down heavily on the indentation on the couch, her usual place, and put her crutches carefully to one side, held them in place for a moment to be sure they didn’t wobble over. “I’m ready to do this thing now,” she said.

I looked at her face. It was grey and a little puffy, the face of an exhausted person, a party-goer who has come to the end of the night, knows it, but is too exhausted, among the wilting flowers and sweating cheese and lipstick-stained wineglasses, to get up and make it across the room to the door. Too tired to enjoy staying, too tired to leave.

I leaned forward in my chair. I closed my fingers together and then stretched them out. I saw she was watching my fingers. Then she looked up at me with a soft smile. “Could we skip this next part?”

I knew what she meant, of course, but I needed to hear her say it. “Which part would that be?”

“The questions that have obviously occurred to me a thousand times.”

“And tonight’s the night?”

“If you love me, please don’t make me plead.”

“Okay.”

“Do you have them?”

“Yes.”

“Are they with you?”

I took the dark bottle from my shoulder bag, which I had laid on the floor beside my chair.

“Are there enough?”

“Yes, Sally, there are enough.”

“I don’t have to take, like, two hundred of them, do I?”

“No.”

“How many do I have to take?”

“Thirty. Tops.”

She looked at the bottle. “It looks scary, that bottle. Can’t we put them in something else?”

I got up, went into the kitchen, opened the pill bottle, removed the cotton batten (we didn’t need a sinister rattle coming from my bag as I crossed the room).

The phone rang again.

“Who the hell is that?” she said.

“Should I get it?”

“God, no. Please don’t. Let’s get on with this.” After a moment, she said, “I don’t want to throw up, be found half alive in a pool of vomit and spend the rest of my days with the IQ of a cabbage.”

“You know, Sally, for someone who says she’s had enough, you’re an awfully amusing woman.”

“Death concentrates the mind. I must have read that somewhere.”

“No, I believe that’s an original.”

She thought about it for a second; quietly mouthed the words again. “You’re sure? I don’t want to go out on a plagiarized note.”

“It’s yours. Straight up.”

“Where were we?” she said. I was about to open my mouth to protest, but she silenced me with a tilt of her head, a reminder to not make her plead.

I said, “Let’s have a drink first.”

“Yes, something fun.” (A hint of postponement?)

“Okay.”

“What’s fun?”

“Well,” I said, “what drink would you order if we were at the Cucaracha in Mexico?”

“A margarita.”

“Have you got the ingredients?”

“I sure as hell do.”

“You tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

“Hang on,” she said, “I’ll come into the kitchen with you.”

“Stay where you are.”

“I have eternity to sit on my behind. Besides, there’s a stool in there.”

So she came into the kitchen with me and told me how to make a margarita.

And when we were done, we toasted each other. Then I turned off the light and brought the drinks back into the living room and sat hers down by her side.

She said, “Would you get me a glass of water, please. A big one.”

“Cold or warm?”

“Just medium.”

I put it beside her margarita. Then I said, “Is it too late? Can we put some music on?” I found myself thinking of the man in the white jacket in the parking lot, waving. “What would you like to hear?”

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “I’d like to hear ‘Take Five.’ You know that one. Dave Brubeck. I’ve always loved that drum solo.” (The approach of death, in the same way the prospect of the day’s first drink rejuvenates an alcoholic, had made her chatty). “It’s the only drum solo I’ve ever liked.”

Or perhaps it was nerves, now that we were here, finally, at last.

“I agree.”

“Normally I hate drum solos,” she said.

I clicked through her small CD collection and there it was, the Picasso-like cover. I put it on. We listened to those delicious opening bars, cymbal and crisp snare drum.

“Now listen for the piano, that gorgeous piano,” she said. “My grandparents made me take piano for a while. They knew I was artistic, but they just had the wrong thing. But they meant well.”

The green liquid in her drink tilted to the rim. She reached into the bowl of pills and took one and then another. It dropped from her hand onto the carpet. I got it for her and put it back in the bowl.

She said, “This song makes me nostalgic for a life I never had. Have you ever had a song that does that to you?”

“Yes,” I said, “but with me it’s more to do with smells. Pears soap makes me feel like that.”

“Isn’t that funny. Kyle loved the smell of Pears soap. I think it evoked a life that he wanted, an organized comfort that he lacked the discipline to create for himself and knew it. Even when he was a little boy, he loved it. What do you make of that?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Do you think he intuited, even then, how things were going to go?”

I shook my head and smiled somewhat foolishly, or so it felt. We listened to the music. The saxophone was fading, making way for the drum solo.

“I don’t mean I wish I’d had a different life,” she continued. “I had a decent life. I could have done without that fucking carpet, but all in all, lots of love, a wonderful daughter…” Her eyes clouded for a moment; she was thinking of Kyle. “But when I hear ‘Take Five,’ especially the piano (there, you hear it?), I feel like some part of me grew up in Manhattan and went to great parties. For some reason, I always think of Playboy magazine when I hear this song. Men with tie pins. Hugh Hefner.” She reached into the bowl and, with some difficulty, removed two pills.

“I’ll get it,” I said.

“No, no, I’m fine.” She put one pill then the other in her mouth, threw back her head, her black hair falling to her shoulders, then straightened up and took a sip of water. “You know, when I was a little girl, I used to ride cows. Honest.”

I said, “How come you never came to live with us?”

She thought for a full minute. That’s a long time in real time. I could feel myself sobering up more quickly than I wanted. Then: “I used to think that it was because your father didn’t want to raise another man’s child. For years I believed that. But near the end of her life, when the booze and the pills were starting to make her a little sloppy with her stories, Mother let something slip. I understood suddenly that it was her, she was the one who didn’t want me around.”

“Mother? Really?”

“Really.”

“Did you see much of her?” I said.

“She’d come and go. When she felt like it. When she felt sentimental.”

“But her own daughter, surely—”

“Most of the awful things in life turn out to have quite banal reasons—I’ve learned that. You know what I think? I think she thought her new man might like her more if she didn’t come with so much furniture. It might be even more banal than that. Maybe I was too old; maybe having a daughter my age contradicted something she’d said about her own age. Once she got him, got him married, then it was okay to let the cat out of the bag. I remember going on a holiday with her once, one of the few times. I was all grown up and married by then, and determined to get over what a shitty mother she’d been. We went to a beach resort with black sand in Antigua. First night we were in the hotel, just as we were heading downstairs for dinner, she asked me not to tell anyone I was her daughter, to say that I was a cousin.”

I said, “Why were you determined not to hate her? Why do you have to love everyone in your family just because they’re family?”

“I can see you’re thinking of your brother, Jake, again.”

“He’s just an example.”

She said, “The truth is, sometimes I really loved my mother. When I was a little girl, I used to daydream about falling asleep in her arms. And then she’d turn up at my grandparents’ and be funny and worldly and hug me and tell me I was beautiful and we’d go for these drives and I’d forgive her all over again.”

“And then?”

“And then she’d go away again. Sometimes it looked like she wanted to be sure she still had me. Then she was free to get on with her life, knowing I was still there.”

“But you forgave her in the end.”

“Just before she died, yes, I did.”

“Did she know that?”

“Yes, yes. She let her guard down once. And I got to say everything I needed to say.”

“And what’d she say?”

“She just listened. That’s what I needed her to do. Just listen and not argue; not defend herself; not go on the attack. And then she said, ‘You’re right.’ And then we were okay. I never quite trusted she wouldn’t take off on me—people who do that seldom do it just once—but still, we had some fun. I just kept her a little distant from my heart.”

Sally took another four or five pills and threw her head back and swallowed. “Besides, at some point it seems like we all leave someone we love by the side of the road and drive away. I did it to Kyle when I put him on that bus in Mexico; she did it to me to get a new husband.”

And I did it to you, I thought. I sat up. “It sounds rather grand, but I’m going to say it anyway. All sins are not equal. Putting a self-destructive teenager on a bus is not the same as leaving your daughter to grow up elsewhere. It just isn’t.”

Or not bothering to visit your crippled sister.

The drum solo from “Take Five” concluded and, like a slippered guest entering a room, the saxophone resumed.

“Anyway,” she said, and I could see she didn’t want a debate. That she had arrived at an understanding from which she did not want to be dislodged.

I said, “And her new husband? What did you think of him?”

“Your father?”

“Yeah.”

“Very old school guy. Blazer and these beautiful starched white shirts and such lovely, lovely cufflinks. He smelt like Old Spice aftershave. Just a hint. We could not have been more different, but we made each other laugh—don’t ask me why. I also thought he fancied me a bit. Nothing overt; there was just a little extra sparkle in the way he talked to me or the very, very gentle way he touched my back when we were going into a room together. I don’t think Mother much liked that. But I did. It was an impotent way to level the score, but there you go.”

“But nothing more?”

“It crossed my mind, but that would have poisoned my heart as well as hers. No. Mother had her own inferno—you know what your dad was like. He was way out there on the margins. And not just financially. He screwed half her friends, even the unattractive ones. It sounds hostile, but it wasn’t. It was just greedy. No, in the end our mother didn’t get away with anything. No one does. In a way, we all have it coming.”

I wanted to keep her talking; she took such palpable pleasure in conversation, she danced such an elegant dance when she spoke, that I thought for a second it might occur to her to stay around and do some more. I also knew that if things went as planned, these were the final chapters, the final paragraphs, the final sentences I would ever get from her. From some point not so far down the road, there would be a clean line, an end, and from there I would have only past conversations to revisit; and they, like the paint on an old house, would fade gently away. And I would partially forget them and then people would forget me and then there’d be nothing left of us or this evening.

“So you grew up with your grandparents. In the country. And that was—?”

“You want to keep me talking,” she said with a smile. “And I’m happy to. Just please don’t confuse it for something else. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

I nodded.

“We were seven miles out of town, the nearest neighbour was a farmer across a cornfield. The school bus came to the top of the driveway every morning. It was all fine. Until puberty. Then living in the country’s not so good. It always feels like you’re missing something. And you are, in fact. Then one day a car rolled up the driveway and Bruce Sanders got out. And that was that.”

She took three pills and swallowed them. Both of us, Sally and I, retreated into private thought. Surfacing, I said, “What are you thinking about?”

She jerked as if she had been suddenly startled. “Something ridiculous.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s not the sort of thing you’re supposed to be thinking about at times like this.” Turning a frowning, half-smiling face toward me, she said, “Do you ever have a song in your head that you can’t get rid of?”

“Yes. Do you?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“It’s the theme song from that television show, The Waltons.”

“Right. I remember that show.”

“I always liked that man, the actor who played John-Boy’s father. Do you know his name?”

“No. But I remember the theme song.”

“Now we’re both hearing it,” she said with a dry smile that made my heart contract.

More pills. I could hear her fingernails rattle against the side of the glass bowl.

The music changed. Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade.” I hadn’t heard it since that night with Chloe in the Montreal jazz club.

“Nice song,” I said.

She looked up sleepily. “Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman. One of those guys. I can’t remember.”

We listened, both of us, those easygoing saxophones floating overhead like clouds.

“I have another favour to ask,” she said. “I want you to tell Chloe about this night we had. I want you to do it soon. I don’t want her to think I died sad and alone. Will you do that?”

“I will.”

“Do you promise? Look me in the eye and promise.”

And I did. And I suddenly realized who the caller on the phone was.

She sighed. “Will you dance with me? I want to remember what it’s like to be held in a man’s arms.”

So we danced, the two of us. She dropped her crutches and I carried her, my chin to hers, and it struck me the way she nestled her chin into my shoulder that she was, after all this, still very much a girl at a teenage dance.

“Do you think there’s an afterlife?” she said.

She was sinking into sleep. I said, holding her tight, holding her for my own life, it seemed, “If there is, will you let me know?”

A slow sigh, her eyes closed. “How would I do that?”

“Find a way to let me know. Find a way to tell me.”

For a second, I thought she had fallen asleep, but then her hand stirred and she said, “What would you do then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe behave better. Or worse.”

“It’s best not to know.”

“But don’t you want to know?” I said.

Another sleepy pause, her head dropping down near her chest.

“I think I’d like to lie down. Will you help me?”

She was dead weight, her head bobbing against my shoulder. I lifted her in my arms and I took her and laid her on the couch on her back and straightened her legs and put a pillow under her head and sat beside her. I took her hand. It was still so warm, so lifelike. Her pulse fluttered like a tiny bird under her skin.

“When I was a little girl,” she said, “I used to go to sleep on the porch during the summer.They had a little bed out there for me. And sometimes, in the middle of the night, it’d start to rain. How I loved the sound of that rain. My grandfather used to come out, and he’d say, ‘Sally, do you want to come inside?’ And I’d say, ‘No, Grandpa, I want to lie here. Will you stay with me?’ And he’d say yes and sit down, and I could hear him settle into the chair and light his pipe, and I could smell the smoke drifting over to me, this delicious blue smoke, and I was so, so, so happy—just the rain and my warm bed and my grandfather’s tobacco. I was happy for eternity.”

“I’ll stay with you,” I said.

“Will you?”

“Yes, Sally, yes, I will stay with you.”

For a long time, nothing, and then she mumbled something. I leaned over. “What?” I whispered. I put my ear to her mouth. “Yes?”

And then she said, or I think she said, “I’m almost there.”

Some quarter of an hour later, she took a deep breath, as though she was going to say something; and then she slowly exhaled. And then I never heard her breathe again. I kissed her on the forehead. I could feel the life leaving her body. I said, “I love you, I love you. Please take this with you wherever you’re going.”

I had never before sat in the room with death. But I stayed with her because I have always suspected that there is something between dying and dying, a zone of after death that precedes extinction. And I wanted her to have company for it. Who knows when we’re really born into consciousness or when we leave it?

I remained in my chair, holding her hand, speaking quietly to her. Suddenly, a wave of goosebumps covered my whole body; my voice broke; the tears streamed down my cheeks. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

Her hand grew still colder, and as it grew colder, I could feel a change come over her, see a change rather, and I understood for the first time in my life that we are born with a soul and that it inhabits our body our whole lifetime and when we die, reluctantly, like children leaving a park, our soul very gently disengages and moves off, like a shadow, and takes with it all that ever made us human, all that ever made us us. And behind, in its wake, is just a body, an uninhabited residence. The doors blowing open, the windows creaking. Grass growing up in the cracks in the floor.

So this is death, I thought. I touched my sister’s face. It too had grown cold.

But still I stayed. “Will you tell me?” I said. “Will you find a way to tell me?” But from this body on the chesterfield in front of me, in its green dressing gown, her lips lipsticked, her brow unwrinkled, I knew that she had gone, and it felt as if I was talking to no one, talking to an empty room.

“Where did you go?” I said. “Where are you now?”

But there was no answer.

“Is there anyone there with you?”

I stayed with Sally’s body until the sun came all the way up, a morning, I recall, almost metallic in its sheen. I taped the note about calling the police to the outside of her door. Then, certain the hall was empty, with the ashes of her son under my arm and my bottle of pills rattling like teeth in my pocket, I kissed her on the forehead. “Goodbye, Sally,” I said, “goodbye,” and then I went down the back stairs and went home.