The 28th was a Sunday, and Anna took him to church, a Lutheran church not far from the apartment. “Besides us,” she told me later, “there was almost no one there. I gave no commentary on what was going on. Where would I have begun? We had not talked about God. Maybe that should have been the first thing we talked about.”
That evening, the three of us were at the table, having dinner together. Alan asked us what was the best time we’d had together, Anna and I, when we were young. Anna told him about the day we spent driving around northwestern Iowa in my old Volvo, and about stopping at that roadhouse in Le Mars for steaks and sweet potato fries. Alan wanted to know if sweet potato fries were different from the french fries he ate at every opportunity. Anna told him. She told him, also, that years later, long after I’d left Iowa for New Hampshire, with Sara, that she and her husband would go dancing at that same roadhouse.
“I would like to dance,” Alan said.
I thought he was merely musing. So did Anna, apparently.
“I would like to dance,” Alan said again, looking at Anna.
“With me, you mean?” she said. “You want to dance with me?”
Once, early in our domestic adventure with Alan, Anna told me, “There are too many times with him, when I say something, something I believe is innocent, guileless, and I hear how flirty it sounds.” There was nothing flirtatious about her now.
“Yes,” he said. “I would like to dance.”
Anna found some music on the radio, and they danced in the living room of the apartment. I recognized the song they danced to. It was “Dandelion Wine.” Anna tried to teach him the box step, but he couldn’t get it. He was clumsy and self-conscious—the floor was carpeted, which didn’t help—and seemed to have almost no rhythm. I was self-conscious, too, watching them dance—I was surprised he’d let me watch—and would have been, in his place, equally clumsy. Alan quickly got frustrated, and they stopped.
Anna was desperate he not feel defeated. Before he could go to his room, she said, “Hold on, Alan.”
“What?” he said.
“Would you like a girl?” she said. “Would you like me to get you a girl?”
“You’re a good dancer,” he said. “I’m the bad one.”
“You’re not bad,” she said. “You’re inexperienced. You haven’t danced before. You’ll be good. But I don’t mean that.”
“I won’t be good,” he said. “What did you mean?”
“I mean, do you want me to get you a girl?”
“A girl to dance with?”
“A girl to be with,” she said.
Alan looked at her. He was incredulous. You could see him think it over. Then he said, “No, thank you.”
When Alan had gone to his room, Anna turned to me and said, “Can you believe it?”
“Can I believe what? That you offered to get him a girl? Or that he turned you down?”
“Both,” she said. “Either. If he’d wanted me to, I would have figured out how to do it. You would have told me.”
“I wouldn’t have known,” I said.
“Well, I would have done it. I think I would. Can you believe it?”
“No,” I said.
Alan is dead. He died last evening, the 30th of September, at approximately ten o’clock. He was twenty-one, or twenty-two. We can’t be sure how old he was. Anna and I were with him. He’d decided to die, and we cooperated, helped him do it.
We’d thought it through. The three of us. Alan was thinking clearly. I was floored by the clarity, the acuteness of his thought. He was calm and, in his fashion—which I’d grown accustomed to and, impersonating him in this report, fond of—articulate. He was analytic. “It was like listening to you,” Anna said before she left. “The way you talked, back in Iowa, when you used to talk, when you were interested in ideas, in people. Like you at your most alive and direct, least qualifying.”
By the end—some days before the end, really—Alan had become fixed, unshakeable in his intention. There was nothing we could say, nothing we could do, except refuse our help, to stop him. (It’s not clear how he might have proceeded without our help.) Anna’s position—she held it to the end—was that she didn’t want him to do it, no matter what might happen once they took him. Still, when it came time, she helped him. Because—about this there was no doubt—she loved him, and didn’t want him to suffer. I had no position. I preferred neither of the possible outcomes, found them both objectionable. (“Objectionable?” “Prefer?”) There was no choice to make—his was a choiceless choice—but I think, in part, perhaps, because I was ready to die, he made the right one. But I didn’t want him to suffer. I would try to be of use.
We were with him. Anna handed him the pill. She filled the glass with water. Menial tasks that made her his executioner, me her accomplice. Say what you want, we are responsible for his death. I watched him die. His head was in Anna’s lap.
Anna thought to make the night of the 30th routine and uneventful, slow and sleepy and idle, on the ghost of a chance that Alan had lost track of the date. I believed what she had in mind for the next morning, should we all get through the night, was to plead with the Tall Man to give her just a little more time.
We ordered out for pizza and ate it in front of the television. I can’t tell you what we watched. I watched Anna. She was agitated, alert to Alan’s mood and behavior, tracking the time.
A little before nine, Alan stood up. “I’m going to my room,” he said.
“Are you going to bed?” Anna said.
“I’m not going to bed.”
“Will you come back out?” she said. “Shall we wait for you?”
“Yes,” he said. “Wait for me.”
It took Anna only a few minutes to clean up from dinner—she went at it as though her life, somebody’s life, was at stake—just a pizza box to flatten and dispose of, three plates and glasses to wash. As she finished, Alan came back into the room. He was wearing my clothes. A pair of my dark dress slacks, a white button-down shirt of mine, and my sport coat, the glen plaid. He was in his stocking feet, in his own socks. He was holding one of the two ties I’d brought with me. I’d not worn either of them.
“You look smart,” I said.
“What did you say?” he said.
“You look good,” I said.
“Handsome,” Anna said.
He held the tie out to her. “I don’t know how to tie it. Will you tie it?”
“If I can remember how,” she said. “What about you, Ray?”
“You do it,” I said.
“I used to do this for my husband,” she said, “and for my boys. It’s been a while.” To Alan: “Come here to me.”
He did as she asked.
“First we need to unbutton your collar.”
“My collar is unbuttoned,” he said.
“I mean these two little buttons here.” She undid the buttons at the points and turned up the collar. He tilted his head all the way back to give her room to work. “There,” she said. “Now turn around.”
“Why?”
“That’s the only way I know how to do it,” she said.
He stood with his back to Anna. She reached around his neck and tied the tie. She made a simple knot, nothing fancy. It was better than I could have done. “Face me now,” she said. She buttoned the collar down, then pulled up the knot and straightened the tie. “Step back,” she said. “I want to look at you.”
Alan stepped back.
“Not such a good job,” she said. “Let me try again.” She was using whatever was at hand, rallying what little remained.
“No thank you,” he said. “Don’t try again.”
“You look sharp,” I said again.
From this point on, I would only watch.
“Very snazzy,” Anna said.
“Did you find a way for me?” he said to Anna.
I’m sure her instinct was to feign ignorance, but, to her credit, she didn’t. “I don’t want to, Alan. I don’t want you to do this.�
��
“You said when the time came you would find a way for me. The time came.”
“Please,” she said.
“I say ‘Please’ to you.”
“Let’s sit and talk,” she said.
I felt my heart sag.
“What is the way, Anna?” he said. “How do I die?”
Anna sat down on the couch. Alan remained standing. “Did you find a way?” he said.
“I have a way,” she said.
“What is it?”
“Give me a minute,” she said. “I need just a minute.”
“All right.”
“Sit beside me. For just a minute.”
Alan sat down. She took his hand in both of her own. “His hand was dry and cool,” she would tell me later.
“I don’t want you to die,” she said.
“I want to die,” he said.
“I know you do. I know you do.”
“What is the way you have?”
“Sit here,” she said. “Stay here with Ray.” She got up and went into the bedroom that was again Alan’s. She’d put the envelope of pills the Tall Man gave us in a dresser drawer, underneath her socks. She took one of the two pills out of the envelope, and put the envelope back in the drawer, not bothering to hide it. There is no other way for me to imagine this.
She came back into the kitchen and filled a glass with tap water.
“Come with me,” she said to Alan. He followed her to the bedroom. I followed him.
“Have you got the way?” he said.
“I do,” she said.
“I don’t know how to do it,” he said.
“I know you don’t. I’ll help you. Why don’t you lie down?”
“Lie down on the bed?”
“Yes.”
“In my clothes?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Is that how you do it?”
“That’s how you do it,” she said.
He lay down on the bed.
“Take this,” she said.
If this were going to happen, I wanted it over with. She handed him the pill and, without looking at it, he put it in his mouth.
“Drink some water,” she said.
Alan raised himself up, and he drank.
“Is this how you do it?” he said.
“Yes.” She sat down beside him. “Put your head in my lap.”
“Okay,” he said. “Do I close my eyes?”
“You can close your eyes,” she said.
He closed his eyes. “Thank you, Anna.”
She put her hand on his head. “What a fine boy you are.” She stroked his hair. “What a good man.”
I’m not sure he heard her say these things.
I left her alone with him and went to bed.
The Tall Man will be here at noon.
I have just enough time to end this.
I had not taken my medicine, and I did not sleep.
I had not before watched anyone die. Let alone . . . I don’t know how to finish that sentence. I did not watch my father die. Or my mother. I was asleep in a chair beside her bed when Sara died. I stayed with her afterwards. I never saw my son.
I was sad to see Alan die. I was also relieved. That he would not have to face what he was facing. That Anna would not have to see him taken. That it was over for him, and for us. Above all, I confess, I found Alan’s death, the manner of it, his manner in it, instructive and inviting.
It was three in the morning when Anna came in. I could see her by the dim light of the lamp she’d left on in Alan’s room. She sat down on the other bed.
“I’m awake,” I said. “If you want to talk.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I do want to talk.”
“Then please.”
She did not respond.
“I am sorry, Anna. Are you okay?”
“Not really,” she said. “Are you?”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“I didn’t cry,” she said. “I haven’t cried.”
“If you want to, go ahead.”
“I sat stock still,” she said. “His head was in my lap. I looked at him. His eyes were closed. I was grateful for that. I didn’t move. I was afraid to move. As though I might wake him. I didn’t sleep, or only minutes at a time. I don’t know. After a couple of hours, he was stiff and cold. I may be wrong about how long this took. I thought about taking the second pill myself. That would have been melodramatic. It would have been perverse. I want to see my children again. I’m ashamed to say I allowed myself to feel some relief.”
“Of course you did,” I said. “How could you not?”
“No. And I took comfort—I’m ashamed to say this, too—reminding myself that I love my sons and daughter, my grandkids, more than I ever loved Alan. If I loved him. I told myself I was now free to go back to them.”
“You are,” I said. “You will.”
“I’m not free,” she said.
She stood up and began to undress. She took off her blouse. “What am I doing?” she said. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter.”
“Why doesn’t it matter?” she said. “Because I’m an old woman?”
“Because I’m an old man,” I said. “And we’ve been through it.”
“We have,” she said. “We have been through it. We did our best. Didn’t we?”
“You did,” I said. “You were great.”
“Thanks. I couldn’t have done it alone. You hear people say that. But I could not have done it alone.”
“You could have,” I said. “You pretty much did.”
“Maybe I could have. But you’ve been a great help to me. You’ve been brave. And steady.”
“I’ve been tired,” I said. “Worn out.”
She finished undressing.
“He was a beautiful, sweet boy, Ray.”
“He was a good kid,” I said.
Then she said, “I’m coming in with you. I need to be held. I need to be close to someone.” Before I could object—I might well have objected—she got into my bed. “Not just anyone,” she said. “I need to be close to you. Do you mind?”
“No. That’s fine,” I said.
It had been forty years since I’d slept with someone in the same bed. I was as unhabituated as one could be.
“I just want to be close,” she said.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“Then relax.”
“I’m worried I don’t smell very good.”
“You smell fine,” she said. “You smell like an old man.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m no gardenia,” she said.
“What if I snore?”
“I’ll move over.”
“What if you snore?” I said.
“You’re out of luck.”
We were quiet a while, then she laughed brittlely and said, “I’m a girl who’ll stop at nothing.”
She didn’t say another word. She began to cry. She tried to be quiet. I closed my eyes and listened to her sob. I held her. She held me. We were like two . . . I don’t know what. Like two old stagers sharing a doom. Like failed conspirators. War buddies. Not like lovers. Or family. Like two old friends, come together one last time.
She fell asleep in my arms. In the morning, at six, when I woke her—I didn’t sleep; sleep would have been superfluous—she was on the other side of the bed.
“What’s going on?” she said. She was not fully awake.
“I’m sorry to wake you like this,” I said, “but I need to talk to you. Can you get up?”
“Has something happened to Alan?”
“Nothing more.”
“I feel like I should check on him,” she said.
“I don’t think you should, Anna. I don’t think you should see him.”
“What’s happened, Ray? What time is it?”
“Six.”
“Jesus.”
“I’m so
rry.”
“No,” she said.
“I can’t talk like this,” I said. “Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to get out of bed and put your clothes on. Will you please do that?”
“All right,” she said.
When she was dressed she said, “Can I go pee?”
“Sure,” I said. “But come back.”
She left the room. When she came back, I was sitting on the edge of my bed. She sat down on her bed. “That poor boy,” she said.
“Listen to me,” I said. I’d spent the night planning what I would say. “I want you to get your things together, a few things, and then I want you to get out of here. Right away.”
“Whoa,” she said. “Where am I going?
“Wherever you like,” I said.
“I’ll stay with you,” she said.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“I want to,” she said.
“I need you to go, Anna. I want to be alone now. I want to finish my report before the Tall Man gets here.”
“And then?”
“Then I want to be alone. I’m tired. I want to rest.”
“I’ll let you rest,” she said. “I’ll help you.”
“No,” I said. “I won’t need your help. You need to go. All right?”
The Bradbury Report Page 34