Eleanor Rigby

by Douglas Coupland

  Then the mysterious Jane arrived. I’d been half expecting a dominatrix or a Goth with unshaved armpits, but instead I opened my door to a sensible-looking woman, twentyish, long face, a nice smile and a blue anorak. If she were to own a dog, it would be a collie with an IQ of 115; she might have been canvassing for the SPCA.

  “I’m Jane.”

  “Liz.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In there.”

  I was relieved. She sat down beside Jeremy and touched his face. He placed his hand on hers and said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Shush.”

  Jeremy fell asleep as if hypnotized on a stage before an audience. I asked, quite frantically, what was wrong with him, but Jane instead questioned me as to how Jeremy and I had connected, and how he’d ended up at my place. Once she was satisfied that I was both genuine and concerned, she said, “MS.”

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t really know what it is, do you?”

  “Nobody ever does.”

  Leslie said, “Like that Stephen Hawking guy—the smartest guy on earth.”

  “No, that’s something else. This is multiple sclerosis.”

  I said, “It’s bad—isn’t it?”

  Jane nodded. “It is.”

  “How bad?” asked Leslie.

  Jane asked, “Can I have a cup of coffee?”

  I poured her one.

  At first none of us knew where to start, and then things became very medical very quickly. For the sake of brevity I’ll say that, just like Rome, MS has many websites.

  In capsule form: For unknown reasons, myelin sheaths that protect the brain and spinal cord’s nerve cells are attacked and dissolve, bit by bit. Some people blame dietary wheat. Some blame mercury amalgam fillings. Some blame viruses deposited in freshwater lakes visited by migrating ducks. Regardless, the lesions of MS rob a victim of body functions in random sequence: balance, heat sensation, clear thinking and stamina—and everything else. In the end the body loses the battle.

  Jane said, “It typically hits people in their twenties and early thirties, but it can skew either way. There’s no cure, there are a few palliative measures that can be taken, and that’s basically it.”

  “Nothing?”

  Jane said, “Nothing. Fewer men get MS than women, but men get hit harder. Jeremy has Progressive MS. Most people have Relapsing Remitting MS. His body is unknit-ting itself.”

  We were quiet. I said, “Jeremy said the two of you had broken up.”

  “We did.”

  Another highly freighted lull here, the freight being, What sort of monster would dump a guy with MS?

  “Look,” Jane said, “I know what you’re thinking. The reason we split is because he was doing drugs. Even if he didn’t have MS, I’d have dumped him.”

  Leslie, who did heaven knows how many drugs with her husband, kept a studiously neutral look on her face. I said, “I can understand.”

  “No, you see, every time he does them, it accelerates his MS. He’s on fast-forward with this stupid disease. And with these new chemicals out there—I mean—they turn your brain into a dying coral reef. If he’s not going to watch out for himself, then I’m not going to be the one being a babysitter and martyr for the guy. We’ve talked this through a hundred times.”

  I asked, “Why does he say he takes drugs?”

  “To forget he has MS.”

  We needed to change the topic, and Jane and Leslie both wanted to know more about my meeting with Jeremy. I suppose they wanted syrup and violins, but I didn’t give them that. I told them about the phone call, the doctor and the flowers—but not about crawling down the highway. “Look, he’d already known me for years, so I can’t have been too new a subject for him.”

  “But for you? How did you feel?”

  Their eyes drilled into me.

  What about me?

  There’d been no real digestion time that day, and the news just kept on coming. “I really don’t know.”

  Jane asked, “Who was his father?”

  “I can’t tell you,” I said.

  “How come?” Leslie asked. She was quite cross that I was still holding out.

  “I’m not telling anybody until I tell Jeremy.”

  Strangely enough, we then discussed wisdom teeth. It was neutral yet medical; timely yet irrelevant.

  Jeremy made a noise. “Mom?”

  I can’t tell you how good the word Mom made me feel.

  “Can I stay here tonight? I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  “It’s fine by me, but maybe Jane wants you back wherever you live.”

  “On Commercial Drive. In a fifties apartment building. Jane won’t want me. I really blew it this time.”

  Jane made a face.

  “Why’d you do drugs if you know it’s going to make things worse?”

  “Because after I come down, I can see things I couldn’t see before.”

  “Like the sun over Horseshoe Bay fifteen miles away.”

  “Please don’t get mad at me. But I did—see the sun, and it wasn’t the sun we usually see. It was different.”

  Jane said, “I have to go.”

  “Jane—”

  “Come by and get your stuff tomorrow.”

  As soon as she was gone, I asked Jeremy how long his visions had been going on; Jane hadn’t mentioned that.

  “Just over a year now. I was at a party and I froze. I mean, I was locked inside my body, but I might just as well have been concrete. It scared the crap out of me.”

  “How long were you frozen?”

  “Only two minutes. When Jane and a few other people dragged me out of the dance area, it was like I was a plank. We were all scared. We chalked it up to the drugs I wasn’t supposed to be doing, but which I was.”

  “When did you start—seeing things?”

  “Maybe a month later.”

  Leslie’s phone rang. It was her husband, Mike. “Liz, I have to go. There’s going to have to be a huge family mob scene dinner or something like that. You know it, right?”

  “Can we delay it a little?”

  “We’ll talk tomorrow. When are you going to call Mother and tell her?”

  “When Jeremy’s asleep.”

  “She’ll flip.”

  * * *

  Oh, to have a photo of Mother’s face when they wheeled me up to maternity! Or Father’s—or, for that matter, mine. They looked as though they’d just been pelted with eggs.

  Did they ever let on to the staff that they didn’t know? No. Once again, the good thing about families is that everybody knows exactly when not to discuss something big.

  The birth wasn’t painful—I think I’m a born procreator. I’ve had pimples more painful than childbirth. I exaggerate, but that part of things was easy, even more so with the drugs they gave me. What I recall more than anything is being embarrassed at having so many people focus their attention on me: Look at someone else! Everybody stop staring at me! I don’t like people making a fuss over me, childbirth or not. Nurses kept on wanting to hold my hand, which seemed corny to me, but then I realized I’d never held anyone’s hand before, and this made me sad—which was again interpreted as something medically wrong, but no, it was simply me being sad for a moment.

  I could hear Mother out in the hallway yelling at a matron, and an orderly not allowing her or Father entry into the theatre. If Mother had played her cards right and hadn’t had a mood see-saw, she could have been right there with me. It was a relief to have them out of the way, but I’d have to face them soon enough. I wished the nurse would jab Mother with a needle—I was the one supposed to be doing the screaming.

  The proceedings became heavy-duty: bright lights, green smocks, stainless steel tools that performed tasks best left unknown. I thought of that night on the disco roof, rain and all, and the Austrian boys and their red wine. Well, they were at least quite handsome, so maybe this kid will get a good break out of life.

  And then out popped my son, chubby and pink and cov
ered with muck. I made that—I did something useful, I did. A moment after the birth, they asked me if I wanted to hold him, and this is when I overrode the effect of the drugs, the craziness of the surprise, the screaming mother, the aerospace maternity technology; I thought about what I knew would happen to this child, how it didn’t stand a chance if it was saddled with me as a mother, or with my parents in the picture, and with—oh, forget about it. There was no chance this kid could stay with me, and I knew it. Life had already taught me not to want what I can’t have. I said no, I didn’t want to hold the baby. Not even for a second. We never even made eye contact—I wouldn’t allow myself—and so they whisked him away, and with him a whole other way of life was gone forever. Me? They pretty much gave me an Aspirin, a bowl of tapioca and, after one day, a discharge. Jeremy stayed there for light treatment to correct a slight anemia.

  Afterwards, life at home was grim at best. Father had no idea what to say or do. Mother? Thank heaven for Valium. I hammed up the too-tired-to-talk aspect of the birth, and Mother hopped like a bird between my room and the TV room down the hall, sleepless and restless.

  “It was Rome. I know it was Rome. What happened there?”

  “Nothing happened there, Mother.”

  “It was nine months ago. How stupid do you take me to be?”

  Of course I eventually told her what I thought had happened, but what could they do about it? Call the school and demand compensation or justice—and, in doing so, reveal that they hadn’t even known I was pregnant, possibly inviting a squad of social agencies onto the front doorstep to question their viability as parents? One of Mother’s many moods was paranoia. In this case it worked to my advantage. For the months leading up to the birth, and in the days following it, I played out in my head all possible what-to-do-with-the-baby scenarios, and in all of them Mother came out looking bad. Adoption was the least harmful scenario. I said, “Hospitals must have closets full of adoption papers. I’ll ring and ask for one.”

  As for my baby, I did look at him once in the nursery while he slept in his see-through light box, and he was beautiful. I thought of those handsome Austrians on the roof, and was sure they were all good genetic raw material. Nature can be cunning that way.

  And my heart did go out to my son, but I placed my faith in the provincial adoption system, that it would give him a family as bland and middle-class as my own—or perhaps protect him from families as bland and middle-class as my own. I offloaded my guilt onto bureaucracy—with hindsight, a stupid and childish thing to do. That’s what I blame myself for. Not the rest.

  * * *

  I was enjoying the relative peace now that Leslie and Jane had left. Leslie was no doubt on her cellphone, blanketing the airwaves with gossip, and my phone would shortly be ringing—Mother.

  Jeremy stirred, as if having a bad dream. Then his eyes opened, and even with just the hallway light shining on us, I could tell he could see again.

  “What is it, Jeremy?”

  “Farmers.”

  “What about farmers?”

  “I had this vision.”

  “You mean a dream?”

  “No. Dreams are boring. I had a vision. I told you I have them. It was these farmers, out in the Prairies, growing wheat or something, and it was spring, but they weren’t planting their fields. They were standing out in the middle of those rural roads that go right to the horizon, and it was midday, and they were looking up at the sun shining through an all-black sky.”

  “Why were they doing that?”

  “They were hoping they’d see something there.”

  “What?”

  “Further instructions on what to do. I think they believed that the world was to end that year—that’s why they didn’t bother sowing their seeds. And they weren’t crazy or anything. They accepted the end times as a given, and weren’t fighting the idea.”

  “Were there any farmers’ wives in this vision? They might have a different view of it.”

  “They believed too. They were on their porches, throwing their jarred preserves into their yards—beets and beans and tomatoes—with the glass shards like coins in the sun, and the juices trickling into the soil, which was all chalky and grey, and the juices were feeding the things sleeping inside it—worms and embryos of locusts.”

  “Okay then, did the farmers get any information from the sky?”

  “They did.”

  “What was that?”

  “They were told the world is a place filled only with sorrow, and that people have no idea where it is we’re destined for. Disaster is inevitable, whether it be by our own doing or as an act of God. That’s why they shouldn’t be afraid—because the end is going to happen no matter what.”

  “This made the farmers feel better?”

  “Yeah, it did. They were also told that there was a gift awaiting them, and that shortly they’d be given a signal—I don’t know what the signal was to be—and that they’d receive this gift.”

  The farmers’ plight chilled me. It seemed to echo my own plight in a way Jeremy didn’t realize, but I didn’t let on about this. “How do you feel about it? You, personally.”

  Jeremy relaxed. “I wish I could say the things I see are crap, but I just don’t know. Why would my own life become so messed up like this with MS if there wasn’t some sort of compensation?”

  “I don’t always think life hands out compensations, Jeremy.”

  “What about life after death?”

  “What about death after life after death?” It sounded clever, but I wasn’t completely sure what I meant by it. A bad joke.

  “So you don’t believe in infinity?”

  “What a funny question. No. Infinity is a mathematical parlour trick. It’s artificial. It didn’t even exist until recently.”

  Jeremy smiled. “My brain hurts.”

  I tapped him lightly on the knee and said, “Brains can’t hurt. They don’t have nerves. I’m not joining your pity party.”

  “Aren’t you a tough nut? I bet you laughed when Bambi’s mother got shot.”

  I lost it completely. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so hard.

  “What’s so funny? What’s so funny?”

  I picked up my Bambi video from the coffee table and told him about my visit from the lovely Donna of Landover Communication Systems, our patron saint of weak coffee and terse notes on the lunchroom fridge asking staff not to touch carrot and celery sticks belonging to other people. Jeremy saw the humour, and said, “Your mother’s going to freak when she finds out about me.”

  “Well, yes.” Leslie had forgotten a pack of cigarettes on the table. I lit one, and then, on cue, the phone rang.

  It was Mother. She didn’t even say hello, instead merely shouting, “Is it true?”

  “Is what true, Mother?”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “Thank you, Mother.” I hung up and went to the kitchen. “I’m making coffee. Do you want any? Are you allowed to drink it?”

  “Yes and no. How much does your mother know about—I don’t know … me?”

  “You’d be amazed how little.”

  “Start.”

  “It’s just not as easy as that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just hang on awhile. If you waited for four years, you can wait a bit longer.”

  We shortly heard four (always four) demanding knocks on my door, the downstairs buzzer somehow bypassed. Once I opened the door, I saw her eyes bulging, but I could tell by musculature alone that she’d taken her meds.

  “Mother, come in.”

  She hesitated.

  “No, really. Come in.”

  “I didn’t think this would ever happen,” she said.

  “I didn’t either, Mother.”

  “The adoption people told us he was beyond access.”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “It’s not my fault. It never was.”

  “Nobody’s saying it is.”

  Mother remained outsid
e until I really insisted she step in. She suddenly seemed so old, her steps assisted by an invisible aluminum walker as she gently stumped into the living room. There she found Jeremy standing up by the coffee table. She looked at him and said, “So it really is you.”

  Jeremy said, “It sure is.”

  “Come over to me,” she demanded, and Jeremy did. You’d think the woman was selecting melons at Super Valu. “I wish my husband could have been here to meet you. You look a bit like him. He was killed in a car wreck some years ago. In Hawaii.”

  “I know. Please. Sit down.”

  “No. I want to look at you a second.” She circled Jeremy, surveying him from all angles. This clearly made him uncomfortable. She said, “There’s your father in there, Lizzie—can you see him?”

  “A bit.”

  Jeremy said, “Please. Sit down.”

  I said, “Do you want some coffee?”

  “Do you have any of that Baileys left?”

  “All out.”

  “Then no thank you.” She looked at Jeremy. “So where did you grow up, then—Vancouver?”

  “No. In the sticks. All over the place.”

  “Oh—was your family military?”

  “I wish. And it was families plural. Eleven, all told, and always within B.C.”

  “Eleven?”

  “Yup.”

  Mother looked at Jeremy as if he’d been marked with a thirty percent discount, but he ignored this. “Most of my families were religious. Whenever something went wrong, religion always surfaced during my interviews with Social Services, and they always thought a different religious family out in the boonies could fix me.”

  “It’s not like you needed fixing,” I said.

  “No. I could have told Social Services about being chained to the laundry pole for sixteen hours during bear season. But my foster mom would have raised one eyebrow, looked skyward and said, ‘Kids. The imaginations they have.’”

  Mother said, “Oh. Well, I only wanted to know where you were raised.”

  “Now you know,” I said.

  “When did you two meet? How?”

  “I contacted Liz.”

  “We were always told it was impossible to find you.”

  “It is, unless—”

  I interrupted. “Jeremy found a loophole in the system.”