by Rachel Heng
“Italy,” the lady said. “Nice place. Warm. I always thought I’d go, once.”
When Anja didn’t respond, she turned to look at the water as well. After watching the waves roll past for some time, the lady said: “What’s your husband’s name?”
“Branko,” Anja answered.
The wind whipped her hair about her face, tickling her cheeks. She looked back toward Staten Island, which was only a faint darkness in the fog now.
* * *
When the ferry docked, Anja bade the lady goodbye. She had been mostly silent for the rest of the trip, leaning her torso over the railing and pushing her face into the wind.
“Goodbye,” she said in return, smiling to show those jagged teeth again. “Give my regards to Branko.”
Anja nodded and turned away. Soon she was lost in the stream of people coming off the ferry.
The noise of Manhattan hit her like a brick wall, a solid slap in the face. A thick cloud of sound, woven tightly of individual threads—the roar of conversation, the thumping footfalls of the walking throngs, the dull gratings and booms of various construction sites, sirens, helicopter blades, music, the great soft whoosh of the Hudson.
There was something comforting about being slapped in the face, Anja thought as she plunged into the moving crowd on the sidewalk. Something satisfying about being hit hard, to emerge ears ringing and nose bleeding, tendons throbbing, alive. How strange it was that it was a city like this that first produced lifers, those smooth-skinned, long-limbed islands, whose entire beings were dedicated to only ever skimming the surface. How could they do it, she wondered, in a place like this?
She wondered what they would do if they got back to Sweden. Perhaps there, she’d find a doctor who would be willing to put an end to her mother’s suffering, have a proper funeral. She’d asked her mother once where she wanted her ashes to be scattered, for Anja had thought it would be nice to have them thrown in the Baltic Sea, next to their home. Her mother had said it didn’t matter. She didn’t believe in symbolism or rituals or afterlife, and she thought it was a silly, sentimental question. She didn’t see how it would affect her, for she would already be gone. She didn’t see that it wasn’t for her.
Nevertheless, Anja would scatter her mother’s ashes in the sea. As she pushed through the afternoon sidewalk traffic, Anja imagined carrying an urn to the beach. She would do it in the morning, just after sunrise. She’d stand on the surf, weak waves caressing her feet, sand shifting under her heels. The water would be so cold it burned, and the jellyfish, harmless and luminescent, would be plentiful. Some would already be stranded and dying on the sand as the tide went out, inert half-spheres of solid water, fat droplets of morning dew studding the shoreline.
She’d lift the top off the urn, dig her fingers in, marvel at how light the grains were, more like dust than sand. Then she’d fling one hand out toward the rising sun and the waking sea. Her mother would be taken by the wind.
THIRTY-ONE
When Anja unlocked the door, the smell of the room rushed out at her, filling her nostrils and head, bringing the usual sense of helpless dread. Her mother lay exactly where she had left her. Everything in the room was exactly as she had left it.
Anja walked over to the corner of the room and knelt down. She pried a floorboard loose and pulled out the stacks of cash within, halfheartedly beginning to count them. She already knew how much was there—she knew that it wasn’t enough. She could maybe manage to get hold of a car. But what then? What about the fuel and tolls and food?
She was still there, kneeling on the floorboards, when she heard the footsteps coming up the hallway outside. She could recognize the steps of all their neighbors, and this wasn’t one of them. These footsteps were loud and confident, businesslike, the gait of someone who felt assured of their place in the world, of their right to walk down hallways.
Anja froze. How could they have found her so quickly? She’d left the diner only a few hours earlier. Surely they hadn’t finished interrogating everyone else yet. Or maybe Rosalie had let slip that Anja had left; maybe her disappearance had aroused suspicion.
She listened as the footsteps drew closer, closer still, until they stopped right outside her door. Silence, a pause. Then three sharp raps—thock, thock, thock.
Anja sprang to her feet. Looking down, she realized she was still holding the wads of cash. She stuck them quickly into the waistband of her pants, pulling her loose shirt over the top to hide the bulge. She kicked the floorboard back in place.
They were knocking again. The knocks were more insistent now, in quicker succession, demanding to be heard.
Anja looked over to her mother. At a distance, she could almost imagine she was still herself, taking a nap while Anja tidied the house. From where she stood she couldn’t see the translucent skin or the glassy eyelids, though she could still hear her heart, pumping away.
She braced herself—for what exactly? Perhaps they would break down the door, take her away in handcuffs. Perhaps this would be the last time she would ever see her mother. She’d receive an address and a number months later, in prison, the exact lot in the farm her mother had been sent to. Anja would never be able to visit, of course, even if she wasn’t in prison. People weren’t allowed into the farms. It made you wonder what they did there, what was so unsettling that relatives weren’t allowed to see.
She would deliver herself into their hands. There would be no more choices to be made, no more responsibility to try. She’d done her best. Surely her mother would understand. So Anja took one last look at her mother’s face and walked toward the door. They wouldn’t have to break it down; there would be no need for noise and violence and struggling.
Anja opened the door, expecting to see the shark-faced officer and his colleagues surrounding the entryway. But they weren’t there.
“Anja. Hi.”
It took a moment for the slight, dark figure in front of her to resolve into focus.
“Lea?” Anja said. “What—what are you doing here?”
Lea looked down the hallway, as if she expected someone to be there. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Anja observed that it appeared slightly greasy, as if she hadn’t showered today.
“Do you mind if I come in?” she said. “If it’s not a bad time?”
It was. But something in Lea’s voice made Anja forget her own situation for a moment.
“Sure, come in.”
Lea stepped through the doorway and closed the door behind her. She didn’t go any further, standing as if glued to where she stood, hands frozen to her side. Her eyes darted around the room, from the water-stained walls to the dusty window to the creaking, sloping floors. Finally they came to rest on the bed.
“My mother,” Anja said. She stopped. How to explain?
Lea nodded slowly, paused, nodded again. Her eyes were still fixed on the bed.
It was odd having Lea there. The soft cream silk of her blouse, the slim tailored drop of her skirt, the tilt of her chin—all of them seemed to call out the meagerness of the room, make the ceilings seem lower and the walls dirtier. Anja shifted from one foot to the other.
“Was there something you wanted to talk about?”
“Is she—” Lea stopped. The word seemed stuck in her throat.
“Alive? It’s okay, you can say it. She can’t hear you, anyway.”
“I wasn’t worried about her,” Lea said. When her eyes met Anja’s, they were filled with tears.
Something caught in Anja’s chest. She hadn’t been prepared for this. She was prepared to give her mother up, to turn herself in, to be called a monster and a criminal. To have things taken out of her hands. But not this.
She bit her lip. “How did you find out where I live?”
“George. I called him,” Lea said. “He thought I was Susan, at first.” A smile tugged at the corners of her lips.
Laughter bubbled up in Anja’s chest. It felt good to laugh, felt good to be standing here with Lea, even given the
circumstances.
“Of course he did.” Anja paused and looked around. “Can I offer you—well, we don’t have much, really.” She walked over to the sink and pulled out a small tin from the cabinet underneath. Opening it, she saw that there were two teabags left. “Tea? We’ll have to use hot water from the sink, though—we don’t have a kettle.”
“Sure,” Lea said, in a low voice.
Anja turned. Lea was no longer looking at her mother. Her eyes were cast to the ground, her arms folded rigidly across her chest. She was kneading the loose skin on opposite elbows with her fingers. A deep frown creased her forehead, something Anja had never seen on her face before.
“You all right?” Anja said.
Lea looked up. “Ambrose,” she said in a rush. “Did you know?”
Anja looked up from the sink. She thought for a moment and realized what day it was. Ambrose, of course. But how did Lea know?
“Cameraman dropped out. Manuel asked me to fill in,” Lea said, as if reading Anja’s mind. “So—so I did.”
The mug Anja held under the faucet was overflowing. She turned the tap off.
Fuck, Manuel. Anja made a mental note to have a word with Mrs. Jackman. He’d always been reckless, but this was a different matter altogether.
“I’m sorry, Lea,” Anja said. “That never should have happened. Not like that. Not when you’re new, not without the training or the preparation. Are you okay?”
The sound of Anja’s mother’s heart filled the pause that followed. She wondered if Lea could hear it too.
“How can you do this?” Lea said. Her mouth twisted.
“What do you mean?”
“This. The Club. Ambrose. Your—” The words stuck in her throat. She gestured toward Anja’s mother.
Anja turned away from Lea’s accusing eyes. She submerged the teabags and watched the rust leak out of them. When she offered Lea a mug, Lea stared down at it as if she didn’t understand what it was. Anja set the mug down on the bedside table gently.
“I didn’t do this,” Anja said, looking at her mother. “My mother did it to herself. Misalignment—that’s what happens. You’ve probably never seen it before.”
“So … what?” Lea said. “That’s why you’re running the Club? That’s the reason to let vulnerable people like—like Ambrose kill themselves?”
Anja’s eyes flashed. “They’re not vulnerable. They’re making a choice. An informed choice.”
“Have you seen Ambrose? Have you heard him in WeCovery? You thought he was making an ‘informed choice’?”
Anja took a sip of the tea. The tepid liquid slipped down her throat, unsatisfying. Her heart pounded in her chest. She didn’t need to hear this now, least of all from Lea. What did she know? She was just like the rest of them, all the other self-satisfied, comfortable, unquestioning lifers, pushing their dogma on everyone else. Pushing their dogma on people like her mother.
“Look,” Lea said in a low voice. Her eyes flickered toward Anja’s mother. “I get it. I think. Where you’re coming from. It can’t be easy, to have your mother like this. But that doesn’t mean the alternative is right.”
Anja sighed. It wasn’t the first time she was having this conversation, though it was the first time she was having it with someone else. These were the thoughts that raged inside her head every night. As if she hadn’t heard it all before.
“You can’t possibly understand,” Anja said. “I’m sorry you had to witness Ambrose’s death. That shouldn’t have happened. But you were the one who wanted to get involved, you were the one who asked me to put you in touch with the Club. You came to the meetings, you volunteered. You said yes when Manuel called you.”
Lea was silent. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet.
“May I?” she said, taking a step toward Anja’s mother’s bed.
Anja nodded. Lea walked up to the bed and sat in the chair that Anja normally occupied.
Her gaze took in the stained skin, the hollow chest, the milky eyes, the beating heart. The smell must have been overwhelming for her, Anja thought, for she wasn’t used to it. But Lea showed no signs of disgust.
Lea reached a hand toward Anja’s mother’s face. Anja started to warn her but then stopped. She watched as Lea rested her fingers on her mother’s skull, where her hair had once been. Lea didn’t pull her fingers away, didn’t look at them in horror, didn’t scream. She seemed to be listening.
“You’re right,” Lea said. “I mean, of course you are. She’s still alive. You can feel it.”
She took her hand away and placed it on her lap.
“I’m sorry,” Lea said.
“It’s fine,” Anja said. She was tired and wished that Lea would go.
“You said I couldn’t possibly understand. But I do. I was there, at the party. Where Dominique was—was—well. You know.” Lea stopped.
How could she have been there? Anja frowned, running through the sequence of events in her mind. No, she had certainly not invited her. That came only after.
“I followed someone there. You met him, I saw you talking to him,” Lea went on. Her voice was calm now, the accusatory note gone. “An older man, monoethnic, Asian. His name is Kaito.”
Kaito. Yes, Anja remembered him. The wanderer. The kind, quiet man who you’d have thought would be quite content to be at home. Yet he had gone out into the world, seen all that, decided it was enough. He’d had a lot of pain. Said something about outliving a son, she remembered. A non-lifer.
“Kaito Kirino,” Lea said, staring straight at Anja.
“Kirino. You mean—”
Lea nodded.
“Oh, Lea,” Anja said. It all made sense now.
Lea’s hands were in her pockets again, worrying some fingernail or lint ball, and her teeth ground down on her lips. “Aren’t there special dispensations for cases like these?” she said, staring at Anja’s mother again. “How many others are there like this?”
She shrugged. “Who knows?”
“And, what, you’re just expected to wait until she—her body—stops?” Lea narrowed her eyes. “Just like that?”
“No, there are—places. Hospices, they call them, but really they’re just warehouses. And they’re expensive, nonsubsidized, if you have black market replacements. So if you can’t pay—and of course most of us can’t—you send them to the farms: same thing, but they use the decomposing bodies for nutrients.”
It didn’t make her wince or cry to talk about it. Strangely, she felt better, stronger, just because Lea was here. She would get a car, she thought, after Lea left. She would go to the Markets.
Lea was shaking her head. “It seems wrong. I wish I could help you.”
Anja nodded. There was a lump in her throat.
“Surely in situations like this, the Sanctity of Life Act doesn’t hold,” Lea went on. “Or the Club could help! Can’t they do something?”
Anja swallowed, still thinking of Lea’s father. “That’s not the problem.”
“You can’t bear to,” Lea said, the realization dawning slowly. “You could do it, of course you could. T-pills. But you don’t want to.”
Anja blinked.
“So then surely you understand?” Lea said, her voice rising. “You know what it must be like, for me? I can’t let my father do this. Can’t you help? Can’t you stop him?”
Anja felt a hot pressure gathering behind her eyes. She didn’t know what it was like, no. She’d lost her mother, but it had been a different kind of loss, for her mother was, in theory, still there. It had been a slow, gradual loss. The kind of loss that seeped in under the door like a poisonous gas, slowly filling the room, killing the plants, making you numb inside before you even realized it was there.
But she didn’t know how to tell Lea this. She didn’t know how to tell her that helping people like Ambrose was the only thing that, since her mother had taken to bed, had made her feel useful, less powerless. That if she couldn’t help her mother die, at least she could help others.
/> “I can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do,” Anja said. “You realize, he doesn’t need us to help him die. He could do it himself, easily. He’s come to us because he wants his death to be useful, because he believes in something. But even if I say no, even if I don’t allow it to happen—even then, he would simply find another way.”
Anja saw the realization hit Lea. It seemed strange that she hadn’t thought of it before, but Anja understood. She understood the tunnel vision, the sheer force of will that arose in situations like that. She knew what Lea must have been thinking, for she had thought something similar before.
If only I could get hold of T-pills. If only the clinics would help. If only the Club would. If only. If only, if only, if only. It had taken Anja a long time to realize that the problem had never been the rest of the world.
“Right,” Lea said. “Right. Another way. I see.”
Anja felt sorry for her, but there was nothing she could do. She had her own problems to deal with, for time was running out.
“I’m sorry, Lea,” Anja said firmly. “But you’ll have to go now.”
Lea stared at her, as if not comprehending. But then the air seemed to go out of her. She nodded and turned to leave.
At the door, she stopped, looking at Anja’s mother one last time.
“Good luck,” Lea said. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes glittered. What was she thinking? “Good luck to the both of us.”
Before Anja could reply, Lea turned and left. The door clicked shut.
And then it was just her again, her and her mother.
THIRTY-TWO
Back out on the street, Lea shivered in the evening chill that was beginning to descend. Orange rays cut through the slits between buildings, casting long shadows over the streets. The foot traffic was lighter now. It was just after rush hour, and people would be at home, downing their daily nutrient rations or working out in their condominium gyms. She imagined her office building emptied out, each floor dimly lit by the soft after-hours light. She imagined Jiang with his wife at home, sitting with his feet up on the coffee table, still reading emails on his tab. She imagined Natalie, probably in a place not dissimilar to her own apartment.