Sex and Death (12 page)

Richard leapt up and went downstairs. The convulsions were so strong it felt as if her spine would break. Then they began to ease. Richard came back in. He had trousers on. His face was ghastly.

They're coming. Christ, what the fuck is the matter with her. What kind of fucking depraved game is this?

*

A junior doctor asked him questions in the family room of A & E. About the fit. About whether she'd had headaches lately, or vomiting, vision or memory loss – he did not think so, he said. And her behaviour: had there been any changes? In what way? Had he been concerned?

They had ruled out stroke, toxicity. She was sent for a CT scan. The junior was evasive, professional, but the scan was not a good sign, he knew. Richard had followed the ambulance in a taxi, had sat with him on the hard plastic chairs while they'd sedated her and run tests, had fetched coffee. But they did not talk.
I didn't know
, he wanted to say, though no blame had been directed. The silence was blame. The repeated enquiries about his wife's state that he'd been fielding from his friend for the last few weeks were blame. There was no point in them both waiting. He promised to call Richard with any news.

A consultant came and found him in the family room. The scan had shown an area of the brain that appeared abnormal, in the prefrontal cortex. They didn't know yet what it meant. But the appearance was suspicious.

Do you mean a tumour?

We need to investigate.

The same questions were asked, more focused, the chronology of her cravings, her confusion, her promiscuity, the man nodding at the answers, as if already confirming a diagnosis. When they let him see Evie she was asleep. He found her hand under the sheet. She didn't wake. In the light of the small overhead lamp she looked normal, unextraordinary.

Everything after was the penalty for some unknown crime. The MRI pictures. The whitened shape. She was lucky and unlucky, they said. The mass, though probably benign, was big. He couldn't remember the word after the meeting and had to look it up.
Meningioma
. It was not in the important tissues – he did not really understand what could be unimportant inside the brain – but pressure was swelling the surrounding area, interfering with her functions, her cognition, her self. Over the next few weeks she had more fits. The second broke her wrist. She choked on her vomit and infected a lung.

She was given drugs to control the seizures. They began radiotherapy. The operation was scheduled. He could barely stand to think about the procedure – the position was difficult, she was ineligible for Gamma Knife or endonasal surgery, she needed a craniotomy. He looked online. The pictures were medieval. Rent-open heads. Pinned-back scalp. Lilac membranes and manes, so horribly wet and delicate. In one video a surgeon described the sound of cracking the skull,
like opening a can of Coke
. They would try to keep the incisions behind her hairline, but plastics might be required. The risks were extensive; leaks, aneurysms, coma.

She still wanted sex. She still strung wrong words together, talked like a charismatic, her mind slipped and was instinctive. But she knew what it was now. She was self-conscious, and fought for rationality; she contained it. When they were in the act she would claw away and start to howl and they would stop.

This isn't me, she'd say. I don't know if it's me.

She was not afraid. She knew she would live. Recovery would be tough, unpredictable, relearning; she might not be or feel exactly like the same person, ever again, but she would live. He didn't know if it was her, believing, or the lambency, the mania of the illness. It was an illness now. It had a name.

They had told Richard soon after the final diagnosis, convincing him to come over for dinner, saying that the meeting was vital, not a set-up. He had wept. Evie looked at him, expressionless, and left the room.

Jesus Christ, Alex.

She'll be okay, he said. She's tough.

Richard shook his head.

Do you not understand. What don't you understand.

They sat without speaking, sipping their drinks, until the evening dissolved.

Richard phoned the morning of the surgery but did not come to the hospital. He phoned regularly but did not visit. The decision to withdraw was obvious, even gracious. It was difficult, but he didn't mind. He was glad that it wasn't completely broken off. On the phone they talked about things of no consequence. Work, weather, the past. They never talked about that night, though he thought of it, often, more often than he should.

Imbody, Lilia said, spelling for the two children. Patience was not her virtue, but if she had enough to live to her age, there was no reason she could not spare some for the third-graders. Or were they in second grade? It didn't matter. She would long be dead before they'd grow up into anything remotely interesting. ‘Make sure it starts with an
I
,' she said. Lilia, née Church, had kept her second husband's last name because it was too precious to give up for Milt Harrison, whom Lilia had married only because she had not felt ready for a permanent widowhood. ‘A gentle giant' was what Milt's children had put in his obituary, and after that, Lilia had given her life some thought, and decided that three marriages were an adequate record – not everyone could be Elizabeth Taylor. ‘Mrs Imbody,' Lilia said now. ‘Not Mrs Embody.'

The boy checked his notes before raising his face, the black and white of his eyes in shocking contrast. One only saw droopy lids and fogged-up eyes these days. ‘Mrs Embody, would you like to go by your first name or last name for this interview?'

This was one of the days when she could benefit from playing truant from this life. Coffee lukewarm in the morning; Phyllis Nielsen taking a seat next to Lilia (uninvited) and talking in a circle about what to buy for her granddaughter's birthday (who cares); Elaine Moniz demanding everyone's participation in the school project – the head teacher was her niece, Elaine had gone from table to table with the announcement, her two loyal followers trailing behind her (as always one could hear their ‘double double toil and trouble'); and now a child who seemed to be on the verge
of tears under Lilia's stare. ‘Call me Mrs
Im
body,' she said.

The boy nudged the girl and whispered that it was her turn. ‘Is it okay if we record this interview, Mrs Imbody?' the girl read, and then explained that a Post-it would be placed in front of the camera and only her voice would be recorded.

‘Where's the camera?' Lilia asked.

The girl turned to the boy and he pointed to the top of the laptop, which was set facing Lilia, though she had forgotten to bring her reading glasses so nothing on the screen could be deciphered. It would be perfectly fine with her if they left the peephole uncovered; Lilia wondered if she could request that they remove the Post-it. What could they see, though, these children whose undiscerning eyes would not tell the difference between Lilia and Phyllis or perhaps their own nondescript grandmothers tucked away in some nursing home. If indeed their teachers wanted them to understand anything about the world, they should be trained to look and listen at the same time, but there was no need to further this discussion. Lilia could sense Elisa and her assistant unwrap packs of cookies in the kitchenette next door. The flyers advertising the morning activity – meeting students from a local school for their oral history project – had promised cookies, clementines and hot chocolates with marshmallows. Lilia imagined Elisa peeling a clementine and handing a smaller half to her assistant – infringing on the residents' rights; a theft, strictly speaking, though no one here was strict with petty crimes. When you're closer to death, you're expected to see less, hear less and care less. Care less until you become careless, and that's when they pack you up to the next building. Memory care unit: as though your memories, like children or dogs, are only temporarily at the mercy of the uncaring others, waiting for you to reclaim them at the end of the day. You have to be careful not to slip into the careless: the care-full live; the care-less die; and when you are dead you are carefree. ‘But who cares?' Lilia said aloud.

The boy studied Lilia's face. The girl patted him on the back of his head and said again – she must have memorised the line – that they were only recording voices. Around Lilia most residents were talking with their interviewers one on one. Only she was assigned a precocious girl who could not wait to mother an infantile boy. Lilia leaned close to take a look at the girl's ear studs. ‘Are they diamond?'

The boy looked too. ‘Do you know there's a diamond called Hope?' he said, addressing the air more than Lilia or the girl.

Normally Lilia would have reminded the boy that it was rude to speak when a question was not addressed to him. But somewhere in her body – Mrs Imbody's body, she called it when it made mischief to inconvenience Lilia – there was a strange sensation. Sixty years ago she would have called it desire, but now it must be as wrinkled as she was – the memory of desire. Certainly the staff at the next building would be happy to confiscate it.

The girl touched her earlobes. ‘These are crystal. My cousin in Vancouver made them for me.'

‘Are you Canadian?'

‘My dad grew up in Canada.'

Lilia thought of saying something – so rarely did she get a chance to discuss the country with another person. On a second thought, she turned to the boy. ‘Cheaper than your Hope, aren't they?' Hope, the diamond that had once been the subject of a post-lovemaking talk with Roland – but any conversation between them had taken place after sex. Lilia wondered if she could locate the mention of Hope in his diary. Not that she would see herself on the same page – Lilia had appeared in the diary only three times, and all three entries she had memorised, page numbers included. Footnote from the editor on page 124: L, unidentified lover.

‘My mom took me and my brother to see the diamond last year,' the boy said.

‘Did she?' Put a woman and a diamond together and you get a thousand stories, all uninteresting.

The girl nudged the boy. ‘Do you want to start with the first question?' she said to him.

Lilia would rather discuss jewellery with the boy. She regretted that she hadn't thought of wearing something for the day. She could've shown him her favourite ring and quizzed him on the stone (green amethyst – he'd never have guessed that); she could ask him to venture an estimate about the ring's age (fifty-six: a present naturally, not from Roland but one that had made him jealous). ‘I bet you a hundred dollars that your mother is one smart woman who knows how to raise a son.' Men in training – no doubt that was why the mother had taken the boys to see a diamond instead of zoo animals.

‘I don't have a hundred dollars.'

‘I don't have with me either,' Lilia said. ‘It's just a way of saying.'

‘But my mother died.'

By now the girl was more on the verge of tears than the boy. She looked around, searching for an intervening adult.

‘I'm sorry to hear that,' Lilia said. ‘But it's okay. Everybody dies. It's not up to you and me to say when.'

The boy opened his mouth and looked straight ahead as though he had not heard Lilia. She turned around, and, not to her surprise, Phyllis was sobbing into a cluster of Kleenex. Elisa and her assistant had already arrived at the crisis scene, trying to calm her, and the teacher bent down and whispered to Phyllis's interviewer, a girl who seemed too embarrassed to raise her eyes. The children around the recreation room gaped, but the residents tried hard to draw the interviewers' attention to their own memories. Let Phyllis cry – this was the chorus that went unheard by the children.

‘Do you know –' Lilia whispered to the boy and his companion. ‘That woman there, ask her anything she turns herself into a faucet.'

The boy's face, not expressive to start with, turned oddly flat. Look, here's an exemplary child for Phyllis to learn a few things about stoicism: after a lifelong career of wife-ing and mothering and grandmothering she still could not forget that she had begun as an orphan.

The teacher gestured to the children to go back to their work. ‘Mrs Imbody, when and where were you born?' the girl asked. (Mrs Imbody, Lilia thought, has no use for obedient little girls.)

The interview was shorter than Lilia had expected. Five questions, harmless (but for Phyllis) and uninspiring. Where and when were you born? What was your family like when you were a child? Who was your favourite teacher when you were in school? What was your hometown like when you were a child? What's one thing you've done that you're proud of?

‘One thing I'm proud of? Hard to choose. There are too many. How about I once knew a man who tried to borrow that diamond of yours –' Lilia nodded at the boy, ‘– for an exhibition.'

‘Did he get it?' the girl said.

‘I said he tried.'

‘And they wouldn't let him borrow it?'

‘His country. They wouldn't let his country borrow it.'

‘Why?'

‘Well, ask your friend here.'

‘I don't know,' the boy said.

‘I thought you saw the diamond with your own eyes.'

‘My mom took us there.'

And your mom is dead. ‘Where did Hope come from?' Lilia asked the boy, who shook his head. ‘Not from this country, you know that, right?' Perhaps the boy didn't know anything. ‘But once put into the museum, it rarely travels again. Remember, I say rarely, not never. It did travel, but not to my friend's country.'

‘Where did it travel to?' the girl asked.

‘Well, young lady, you should've asked where it was not allowed
to travel,' Lilia said. That was what mattered to the story. ‘Can you do me a favour,' Lilia said to the girl. ‘Run to the lady there, yes, the one standing by the cart. Ask her if you could help her with the hot chocolate since we're done with your interview.'

Lilia moved closer to the boy when the girl went away. ‘How did your mom die?'

‘From a heart problem.'

‘What kind of heart problem?'

The boy shook his head. The black and white of his eyes were never for a moment blurred. (Dry-eyed-ness, Lilia said to herself, is a virtue Mrs Imbody endorses.)

‘Who do you live with now?'

‘My grandparents.'

‘And your brother, too?'

The boy nodded.

‘Where is your dad?' (Or: do you have a dad?)

‘He lives in San Diego.'

‘Did he move there before or after your mom's death?'

‘Before.'

Lilia thought of pulling the teacher or her young assistant aside and asking if the boy's mother had killed herself (and if so, in which way). They might be horrified, but so what? A distinction was essential: a woman dying from heart attack was different from one dying from heartbreak. Lilia had earned the right to know every single detail even if it was a stranger's death: enough people had died on her, starting with her parents. Too bad the boy was born at a wrong time when orphans were no longer an everyday phenomenon. Let me tell you a story from a long time ago, Lilia thought of saying, and this would then become one of those Russian stories she used to read with Roland, when an aristocratic soul, after enough food and drink, sat down by the fire and recounted the past, his or other people's. By the end of the story the boy would pretend nonchalance and yawn, but Lilia would
know that something in him was changed. You don't just tell a story to a random soul.

Elisa clapped her hands and herded the residents to the snacks. The boy looked at Lilia uncertainly, so she prompted him to thank her for the interview. He did, and instantly rolled on the carpet with another boy.

Elaine went from one resident to the next, making sure they had co-operated with the children. ‘Do you notice that there's no middle ground with your niece's students?' Lilia said.

‘What do you mean?' Elaine said, and Lilia pretended that she had lost interest in the conversation. From neck up Elaine was made of marble, and Lilia was not a craftswoman to make anything out of that beautiful dumbness. Had Roland been here, Lilia would have pointed out that the children were either too skinny or too plump. No middle ground – children at this age were like politicians he used to laugh at: they had made entertaining subjects for post-coitus conversation. Children would do, too.

From the corner someone started to play a Bach minuet, tentative at first, but when even the noisiest boys quieted down to listen, the pianist became bolder. Ever so expectedly, it was Lilia's girl interviewer who was enchanting the roomful of people. Always eager to be more than what she was, Lilia thought. Already she could hear Elaine and her two wayward sisters expressing their amazement afterwards; Phyllis must be drowning in a fresh flood of tears; those who had finished their snacks were looking for a spot to sit down; Walter Berns, one hand on his cane, was conducting with the other arm. When you're closer to death, you don't need much of an excuse to play at being alive again.

Lilia shuffled around the room, looking for the orphan. He was sitting under a table, on which sometimes cut flowers would be on display but today the vase was empty. Again his face took on the obtuse look. Lilia beckoned him, and he, defeating her in a staring contest, did not move.

Had she been alone with the boy Lilia would have crawled under the table. There was a lesson for him, which nobody but she could teach him at the moment: any other person's death would be his gain. It was never too early to instil the wisdom in a child. The world might not love him; the world might not ever be in love with him.

‘All I ask you is to be unselfish,' Roland had once said to Lilia. ‘Always let me be the selfish one.' To be absent and present at once was what Roland had demanded: Lilia was not to be in the newspaper clipping where his bride held birds of paradise in her hands (26 January 1947; what a cold day in Ottawa that must be, for the flowers and newlyweds alike); Lilia was not to be the minor poetess whose decades of love letters to him had elevated her to some infamous status (‘Sentimentality seems to calm her sexually,' one reviewer, not without malice, said of her letters). But didn't Lilia defeat them all by staying alive, present long after they had vacated their worldly positions?

Boy, let me tell you something your teachers and your elders don't know: one can – and should – live on a minimal diet of feelings. People expect you to always remember the sweetness of your mother's affection or the bitterness of losing her; they will come into your life with offers of other food and unnecessary spices. But trust Mrs Imbody's words: the days after love are bound to be long and empty. Let others seek in vain to satiate themselves; you and I know that only a cleansed palate prevails.