She shook her head. “It was good.”
She shook her head again.
“Do you want to show me what you bought?” I said.
Without taking the pillow from his head, he said, “Did you ask me that question?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to show you what I bought.”
“What if Anna shows me? I’d like to see.”
“No,” he said.
“I’ll put the bag in your room,” Anna said.
“Thank you,” he said.
When that night, after reading with Alan, Anna came to bed—it was, again, awkward for me to sleep with Anna in the same room, but her presence, as nurse-at-ready now, was reassuring, and the medication I took before bed made it easy for me to sleep—I asked her what had happened.
“He’s got a bagful of junk,” she said. “And he knows it’s junk.”
“Just junk?”
“He bought himself a camera.”
“That’s good,” I said.
“That is good,” she said. “We’ll need to download the pictures onto the computer.”
“All right.”
“And he bought some sort of contoured pillow for his bed.”
“Okay.”
“A pair of mirrored sunglasses. A backpack. The rest is junk. A pen in the shape of a hockey stick. A pair of alligator slippers.”
“Made of alligator?”
“Chenille. Alligator heads you stick your feet into. He bought a pedometer.”
“What for?”
“I have no idea. For something to buy. He bought a doll.”
I had visions of something inflatable. “What kind of doll?”
“A cheap little plastic thing. Like a Dolly doll.”
“Not here, surely,” I said.
“No. This is ‘Pony Girl.’ I assume for the Stampede. Different dress, same exact doll. He had to have it,” she said. “Of everything he bought, the doll was the thing, the only thing, he seemed really keen on. I had to push him to buy the camera. We went into four or five stores where I thought he might find something worth buying. He got discouraged, pretty quickly lost interest, asked if we could stop. We had something to eat, then we came home.”
“Sounds grim.”
“Not grim so much,” she said. “Sapped. Lifeless. You could see him trying to be good company, indulging me. Finally, he asked if there was something I wanted, something he could buy for me. The whole time he was very polite, concerned I not be disappointed in him.”
“Listen, Ray,” Anna said the next night. The bedroom was dark, the shades closed, as much to muffle the street noise as to keep out the light. We kept our door open so we could hear Alan. There was a nightlight in the bathroom down the hall, but the bathroom door was closed, and the pallor didn’t quite make it to our room. No light shone from beneath Alan’s door across the hallway. I had fallen asleep. Anna may have had to say my name more than once. “Ray. I need to talk to you about Alan. Are you awake?”
“I’m awake,” I said.
“Have you got your wits? I need you to know how he’s feeling.”
“I’ve got them. Shoot,” I said.
“I will shoot,” she said. “He was traumatized by what happened to you. Seeing you go down like that in the street. He thought you had died. We both did. Then seeing you in the hospital, lying there so weak and frail. It scared him. And coming, the way it did, on the heels of his finding out who and what he was. He was shattered. Wrecked. How could he have been anything but?”
“That’s a rhetorical question, right?”
“Come on,” she said. “Just listen. I can’t say exactly what you are to him. His twin, technically, only technically his brother. ‘Original’ uncomplicates your relationship. ‘Friend’ is grossly inadequate. He loves you. I know this to be true. As much as he is able to love. In the way he is able to love.”
“What do I say?” I said.
“When you were in the hospital, I did my best to bolster him, to piece him back together. First thing I did, I bought him the signet ring.”
“He’s not wearing it.”
“As soon as he put it on, which he did grudgingly, I could see it was wrong. It was an old man’s ring, incongruous on him. He wore it the first few days, to please me, then managed to lose it. I combed the apartment, which I see now was cruel. He pretended to help me look. I think he dropped it down a vent. We went for a walk in Prince’s Island Park. We had lunch in a different restaurant each day. I could hardly get him to eat. One morning we drove up into the mountains. We went bowling. Nothing helped. I thought about buying him a puppy.”
“Don’t. Good lord.”
“I won’t,” she said. “He slept a lot. Too much. You see it. When he wasn’t asleep, all he wanted to do was talk.”
“About?”
“He wanted to know about you. Not just about your heart, though I had to keep reassuring him you weren’t going to die, that you’d be coming back. He wanted to know about your life.”
“What did you find to tell him?”
“He asked how we’d met. He was interested in that story. I wondered how you’d tell it.”
“I don’t know how I’d tell it,” I said. “I was a jerk.”
“Not when we met. That story’s sweet. He wanted to know what college was like. Where we slept. What we ate. How and what we were taught. Did we ever get drunk?”
“Did we?” I said.
“I was abashed by the truth of it, which is that I never did get drunk. I never have been drunk. Not even alone with my husband. You have to wonder why not. He wanted to know if we’d made love. I told him we hadn’t, and that, at the time, I regretted it.”
“You didn’t miss anything,” I said.
“That I regretted it still. Afresh. He wanted to hear about Sara, and about why you had never had children. I told him Sara died in childbirth. I described Sara to him as I remembered her. He asked about New Hampshire. I told him I’d been there only briefly, and that he should ask you about it when he saw you next. Has he asked you about it?”
“He hasn’t yet,” I said.
“He was interested to know what you looked like back then. How you combed your hair. How you dressed. I told him you looked like him, which he already knew, and that your wardrobe hadn’t changed a bit.
“He asked me about your parents. His parents. I had to tell him I didn’t know anything about them. Except I remembered how troubled you were when your mother died. More troubled than sad, I thought.”
“Probably true,” I said.
“He asked about me, too, of course. He was especially interested in my life as a child, about what it was like to grow up with a father and mother. It puzzled him to hear my father left us when I was very young. We talked about marriage. He wanted to know how old I was when I got married, and how old you were. Had I wanted to marry you? I told him I’d considered it, but that it had not been up to me. We talked about divorce. He wanted to know how many times you could do it. He asked if I’d ever had cancer. I said I hadn’t. It turned out he was under the impression that, sooner or later, everyone had cancer. He wanted to know what menopause was. He’d heard about it on TV. Had I ever had menopause? I sure had, I said. I told him more than he wanted to know about that.”
“Sounds grueling,” I said.
“No. Not at all,” she said. “It’s exhilarating to have someone to talk to who is so interested.”
“I’ll bet it is,” I said.
“That wasn’t a dig.”
“It’s true,” I said. “I don’t listen well.”
“Well, he stayed interested and engaged no matter what the subject, so long as I was talking about my life, or yours. About life as we’d known it.”
Again she was silent. We lay in the dark for a minute or so, and I tried not to fall back asleep. It was nonetheless jarring when she spoke.
“Still, all the conversation seemed to make him no less sad, no less discouraged. I tried to get him t
o speak about his life, before he came to us. I thought, after I’d spoken so freely, jabbering on about my life—whatever else you want to say about it, it’s been full—if ever he’d be willing to talk about what it was like for him inside the Clearances, that might be the time. I was wrong. ‘I don’t remember,’ God help him, was all he’d say.”
We are into September. I began writing this report in June. If, by some miracle, I live through November, I will be sixty-seven. Already I have made it to an older age than either of my parents. I have outlived my wife and son by nearly four decades. Today, not pressing our luck, Anna threw a party. A cake—decorated with plastic hockey players and a net—candles, and pointy hats. She decreed it everyone’s birthday, Alan’s and hers and mine. I was able to get out of bed and sit for a few minutes at the table. Anna and I each had a small piece of cake. We sang “Happy Birthday.” Alan would not eat or sing.
The Tall Man did not show up at the end of the month as we’d come to expect, then surprised us with a visit two weeks later, in the middle of July. We had not seen or communicated with him since early June, our first day in Calgary. He came in the morning, early, when Anna and Alan were still in their pajamas. I am all but perpetually in my pajamas. They’d been reading Adam Bede, which both of them preferred to Dickens, though parts of the book, one character in particular, infuriated Alan. I haven’t read Elliot. We’d just sat down to breakfast, mine a somewhat rare appearance at table.
“Good morning,” the Tall Man said. “I hope I’m not too early.” To me, he said. “Glad to see you up and about. How are you feeling?”
“Same,” I said. “Tired.”
“Are you able to work?”
“Some,” I said.
“How’s it coming?”
“I don’t know how to answer that.”
“Is there something I can read?” he said.
“When I’m finished.”
He smiled. “I’ll look forward to it.”
“Would you like breakfast?” Anna said to him. “I can fix you something.”
“Thank you,” the Tall Man said. “I’ve already eaten breakfast. It’s my meal of the day. I’m religious about breakfast.”
“Don’t come here,” Alan said. He had not looked at the Tall Man since his entrance, and, so far as I can recall, had never spoken to him. “It is not time for you to come. We are eating. Do you see?”
“I do see.” The Tall Man smiled. “It’s you I’ve come to see. I thought we should talk.”
“Ass fuck,” Alan said.
Anna said, “Alan.”
“Now that’s impressive,” the Tall Man said. “A year with you, and he says, ‘Ass fuck.’ ”
He meant this as a joke, I thought, but it lacked all light and warmth.
“Don’t talk to her,” Alan said.
“Where might we go, he and I?” the Tall Man said, again to Anna.
“Stop talking to her,” Alan said. “Talk to me.”
“That’s why I’ve come,” the Tall Man said.
“That’s why you’ve come,” Alan said.
“To talk to you. Yes.”
“To talk to me.”
“Yes,” the Tall Man said. To Anna: “This repeating he does. What’s it called?”
“Echolalia,” Anna said.
“He’s got a mild case,” I said, as if we’d actually got a diagnosis.
“Interesting,” the Tall Man said. “And tedious.”
“Stay with it,” I said. “He’ll surprise you.”
“Shall we talk?” he said to Alan.
“No,” Alan said.
“Why not? Do you not want to talk to me?”
“I want you to leave,” Alan said.
“I’ll leave after we talk.”
“I want you to leave now.”
“You’ve come at a bad time,” Anna said.
“I need to talk to him. To see what he can do.”
“Ass fuck,” Alan said again.
“Besides that,” the Tall Man said.
“He’s been really dark since Ray got sick,” Anna said.
“What did you say?” Alan said.
“I said, you’ve been sad since Ray got sick.”
Alan didn’t confirm or deny this assertion. Instead—perhaps he was offended by Anna’s apologizing—he went to his room. We heard him shut his door.
“Dark,” the Tall Man said.
“Maybe another time?” Anna said.
“There’s not much other time left,” the Tall Man said.
“Next time,” she said, “I’ll make sure he speaks to you.”
“Listen,” he said to me, “I know you’ve been in the hospital. I know about your heart attack.” He sat down at the table, and I took this as the kindness it was: he was much less fearsome sitting down, which, of course, he knew. “I also know you decided against a transplant.”
He was sitting close, speaking quietly.
“I did.”
“It might have been the strategic thing to do,” he said. “To go back to the States. Get the transplant. It might have confused them.”
“The Dolly Squad.”
“Then again, it might have led them straight here.”
“I wasn’t thinking about them. Should they actually exist.”
“They exist, and, I’m sorry to say, they’re after you, too, now.”
“They’d better come quick,” I said.
“They’re trying,” he said.
He shifted in his chair, trying to find a comfortable position. He was unable to fit his legs beneath the table. He pushed his chair back. Finally, and with considerable effort, even for me painful to watch, he managed to cross one leg over the other.
“So,” he said, “I’m sorry this happened.”
“Thanks.”
“I want to tell you I respect your decision. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy one. It was admirable. There’s no other way to see it. But I have to say this. It’s one thing to make the decision for yourself. Anna’s husband, for instance. Quite another to make the decision for someone else. Denying them available care.”
“You’re speaking from personal experience.”
“I am.”
Anna took Alan to the library. He didn’t want to go, but Anna got him out the door. Her program for cheering him up had begun to wear on them both. There is a satellite branch quite near us, but they went to the Central Library on Macleod Trail. A new building. Lots of steel and tinted glass and a shadeless plaza with a fountain in its center. “Ill-conceived,” Anna said that night. She was talking about the fountain. “Cruel, really. Figures of children linked round a jet of water, dancing in the spray. The figures are sentimental. They’ve put a metal sign in front of the fountain: ‘Do Not Play In The Water.’ What were they thinking? Hot as blazes, and poor Alan in his long sleeves. I showed him the sign. I pointed out the provocation. He understood, but he didn’t react.”
She hoped Alan might enjoy—she told me she’d known this hope was unrealistic—or at least be diverted by seeing all the books. It was something to do. They took the bus, still a novelty for Alan, who insisted they sit in the very back. At the library, already crowded when they got there, it turned out the books were hard to find. Except for a capacious children’s section—which, in addition to toys and stuffed animals and child-scaled furniture, was, Anna said, brimming with books, and, on this summer day, with parents and their kids reading them—the rest of the main floor was given to rows and rows of partitioned carrels, each with its own computer and headphones.
“We went to the information desk,” Anna said. “I asked the librarian where the books were. ‘Is there a particular book you want to see?’ he said. I said, ‘No. We just want to browse.’ He said, ‘I’m sorry, but the stacks are not open to the public. The catalog is on-line. If there’s a book you want, just click on it, and a staff person will bring it to your carrel. It doesn’t take long.’ ‘Is there no way to see the books?’ I asked him. ‘I’m here with my son. I wan
t him to see what a library is like.’ The old man smiled at us. ‘This is a library,’ he said. ‘I mean a library with books,’ I said. He repeated that the stacks were private. I asked him, by the way, where they were. ‘They’re on three levels,’ he said. ‘Basement. Sub-basement 1. Sub-basement 2. Only library staff is allowed down there.’ ‘Listen,’ I said to him. ‘We just want to look. I promise we won’t disturb anything. We won’t touch the books. We’ll be five minutes, tops.’ The man said he couldn’t let us go. ‘What if someone goes with us? Just for a minute.’ ”
“You wore him down,” I said in the dark, from my bed.
“I did,” she said. “ ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a break coming in ten minutes. If you guys want to wait, I’ll take you myself.’ I thanked him. ‘So long as it’s on the q.t.,’ he said.”
“He said that?” I said.
“He was sweet. Alan was not happy having to hang around. He found the men’s room, and he stayed in there. I had to call in to get him out. There was a door near the information desk. The librarian opened it with a key attached to a wooden paddle. We followed him down one flight of stairs to the basement, where he unlocked another door, and we were in the stacks. ‘Literature and History and Philosophy on this floor,’ he said. ‘You guys go and have a look around. I’ll stand right here. You can take your time. I’ve got a few minutes.’
“I led Alan down the central aisle, to give him a sense of the size of the place, which was huge, cavernous, maybe a hundred yards square. Low ceilings. No windows. There was metal shelving, I’d say ten feet high, on all sides, with almost impassably narrow aisles between the rows. A few yards from the end—we could barely see the librarian—we turned off into the thick of the stacks. We walked, single-file, about twenty yards in the near dark. Though the books were close on either side of us, it was difficult to read their spines. I slid a book out at random. It was something by Henry James.”
“What luck,” I said.
“I turned to show the book to Alan. I can’t really say what I wanted him to see—at that point I wasn’t sure why I’d brought him there—and I knew nothing about Henry James to tell him. Have you read James?”
The Bradbury Report Page 31