The Bradbury Report

by Steven Polansky

  “No,” she said.

  “Please, Anna, do what I say. Go into my closet and take out the duffle bag. Please do this.”

  She got the duffle bag.

  “Put it on the bed, okay?”

  She did that, too.

  “Now take out my stuff,” I said. “Just dump it on the bed.”

  “Tell me what I’m doing,” she said.

  “You’re dumping out my stuff.”

  “Why?”

  “I want you to leave the boot socks in the bag. That money is yours.”

  “I don’t want the money,” she said.

  “So you’ve said. At the bottom of the bag there’s an envelope. Do you see it?”

  “Of course I see it,” she said.

  “Leave that in the bag, too. It’s a copy of my will. If you lose it, the lawyer has a copy. My estate goes to you.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Then give it to your children. Or put it aside for their children. Or give it to charity. You can do with it whatever you like. When you feel settled, contact the lawyer. His name and number are on the document. He’s the executor. Tell him I’ve died. Tell him how to contact you. It’ll take a year or so for the estate to clear probate. But you’ll have the money in the socks to tide you over.”

  “You haven’t died, Ray.”

  “I want you to put a few of your things in the bag, and then I want you to get out of here. Get a cab. Go to the airport. Get on a plane. Go somewhere nice. Fly to Vancouver. Or Victoria. Go back to Montreal. You liked it there. Leave the country. Go to Europe. Scotland. Italy. Go anywhere you want. Anywhere you’ve wanted to go.” I admit talking to her like this, giving commands, taking charge—whether or not she was giving me, as a parting gift, the illusion of control—felt good. “When you get there,” I said, “buy yourself whatever you need. A whole new set of clothes. A new suitcase to put them in. After a while, send for your children. Or you go to them.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “This is what I want you to do, Anna. This is what I need you to do, right away. I don’t want to discuss it. I just want you to do it.”

  “What about Alan?” she said.

  “The Tall Man will be here at noon. He’ll take care of Alan.”

  “He’ll be furious,” she said.

  “I won’t care.”

  “What if he doesn’t show up?”

  “We have that reader. Leave it with me. When you’re gone, when I’ve finished the report, I’ll push the button. If that doesn’t bring him, I’ll smash the thing. He’ll get the idea.”

  “What will they do with him?”

  “What can they do with him?” I said. “They’ll bury him. Cremate him. Whatever they do.”

  “What if they use him?”

  “How?” I said. “For what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “How can I not?” she said.

  I admit, too, I was surprised that without further argument, she seemed, then, to acquiesce.

  I’ve nearly done.

  I’d like to think that in this report I will have accomplished something worthy.

  It took Anna about an hour to get her things together. She was in and out of Alan’s room, which must have been terrible for her. I’d gotten back into bed and begun writing the last section of my report. She came into the bedroom. She’d washed and dressed and packed. She was ready to go. She sat down beside me on the bed.

  “I’ll get up,” I said. “I’ll see you off.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” she said. “I know the way.”

  She put her hand on my knee. “I’ll miss you, Ray. You know what? I’ve spent too much of my life missing you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too,” I said.

  “It’s kind of you to say that.”

  “I mean it.”

  “And thanks for the money. The socks and the other. I won’t know what to do with all of it. You’re a generous man.”

  “Who would I leave it to?”

  “No. I should have said that before. I didn’t want to think of you dying.”

  “You don’t have to think of it,” I said.

  “I’ve come untied, Ray. And I’m afraid.”

  “Me, too,” I said, which wasn’t the truth.

  “Oh,” she said. “What about the pill?”

  “Do you want it?”

  “I don’t,” she said.

  “Leave it then.”

  She stood up. “I never had a chance, did I?”

  “That’s not how I’d put it,” I said. “I’d say you lucked out. You deserved better, and you got it. You’ve lived an enviable life, Anna.”

  “I have,” she said. She smiled. “I want more of it.”

  “Good. Good. Then go.”

  “I will go,” she said. She moved towards the door. “I seem to lose you again and again. I’m happy to see I was right about you all along. You aren’t such a shit.”

  “So you say,” I said.

  I will finish, then take the pill.

  Sara and I had agreed that last Christmas not to buy each other gifts—the baby would be our gift to one another—but neither of us had any intention of abiding by the agreement. When I came down the stairs on Christmas morning, I saw, resting on the mantle, propped against the wall, a large, ornately framed Audubon print of a bald eagle. (She must have gotten up in the middle of the night to put it there.) My present for Sara was wrapped and underneath the tree, where I’d placed it the night before, after Sara had gone to bed. Christmas Eve afternoon—the last minute—I’d driven to Hanover. In a fancy shop there I’d bought her a pale green linen sundress. I liked her in that shade of green, and I liked to look at her in sundresses, to see her arms and neck and shoulders and legs exposed. And I wanted to remind her that she would once again be elegant and lissome, to remind her, in the teeth of winter, that spring would come again.

  I have lived more than a year with Anna and the clone. I have lived. I have done that which was asked of me. I had forgotten who I once was, who once I might have become. I have been made to remember.

  This is my report.

  Acknowledgments

  My debts are many and large.

  I am most grateful to Ann Patty, the book’s first editor, and to Doug Stewart, my agent. Without these two wizards, there would be no book. I am grateful to my sons, Benjamin and Michael Polansky. It was in discussion with them this book was conceived and elaborated. And to Richard Florest, the book’s second editor, who rescued it. Thanks to Judy Hottensen, Kristin Powers, and Katie Finch at Weinstein Books, and to Jamie Byng and Francis Bickmore at Canongate. I thank my longtime friend, Flip Brophy, of Sterling Lord Literistic, and Marcy Posner and Seth Fishman, of that same agency. Thanks to my brother, the composer Larry Polansky, for setting the standard high. To Alvin Handelman, my kinsman and colleague, for his support and advice, and to David Delvoye for reading a manuscript version. Substantial parts of this book were written at Melvyn’s Cafe in Alnwick, Northumberland, and at the Copper Rock in Appleton, Wisconsin, and I am grateful to the proprietors and staff of these establishments for their patience and hospitality.

  For some of what I know and say about human cloning, I am indebted to Leon Kass’s fine essay, “The Wisdom of Repugnance: Why We Should Ban the Cloning of Humans.” What I know and say about heart transplants, I owe to Jean-Luc Nancy’s essay, “L’Intrus” (English translation by Susan Hanson). The description of how it feels to suffer cardiac arrest, I owe to Michael Wanchena. For my thinking on the subject of self-love, I am indebted to Harry G. Frankfurt’s The Reasons of Love.

  My apologies to Ray Bradbury; my intention was only to honor him. My apologies to Dr. Anna Lewis, whose friendship I have not forgotten. My apologies to Penelope Fitzgerald, from whom I stole a lovely metaphor.

  Finally, I am grateful, for her faith and encouragement, to my wife, Julie
Filapek, who gave me back my life and, as well, a daughter, the remarkable Sylvia, thief of hearts.

  Copyright © 2009 Steven Polansky

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher.

  For information address Weinstein Books, 345 Hudson Street, 13th Floor, New York, NY 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-602-86131-2