Exit Lines

by Joan Barfoot

  One of the risks of remembering. There are larger ones.

  They had six, almost seven, precious post-retirement, pre-cancer years. Some couples find it difficult to be suddenly around the clock in each other’s company, but she and Bernard were accustomed to that. The only shock was in absence: of schedule and duty, of colleagues, of children—the whole great weight of care. Bernard took up gardening, which Ruth was pleased to admire. Her osteo, growing worse and more painful, made it difficult to travel far, but now and then on a morning whim they could take off in the car for a day of galleries, museums, streets elsewhere. Their excursions had to be modest, given the small pensions earned by those who try to do something good. “Maybe in our next life,” Bernard joked, “we’ll get to a few of the exotic spots on the planet.” They had their magazines and newspapers and books. “Listen to this,” they said, any hour, any day, “Look at that.”

  It’s possible she romanticizes life with Bernard, making the best of their times. No harm done if so, surely? Or as Sylvia says, “Memories—entirely portable, and they don’t cost a dime.”

  Or they may cost a great deal.

  When Ruth said, months ago, “Cancer,” she knew that Greta and even George, but particularly Sylvia, would understand that she was saying, and not saying, that Bernard died hard. That day by day he diminished, grew gaunt and exhausted, until he didn’t look like who he was any more. He went bald, of course, which was no great loss, and three times called Ruth “Mommy,” which was. Ruth sat with him, sang to him, talked to him, turned him, massaged his strange, thin new skin with unaffordable creams, fed him as best she could, loved, cherished and obeyed him just as well as she could.

  Lucy, his oncologist, having promised that these days pain could almost always be kept at manageable levels, stepped him up, up, up from one drug to the next, reaching eventually what she called “a kind of meta-morphine.” Of course there were losses under the influence. “Some awareness goes,” Lucy admitted. “Some degree of comprehension of what’s real and what’s not. But the goal is to not suffer.” As if distortion and unreliability of perception were not themselves a form of suffering. Moreover, they cost time just as time became a most urgent commodity.

  On good evenings Ruth perched beside him in bed feeding him small sips of Scotch, for which he retained an unlikely tolerance. “You shouldn’t mix alcohol with these drugs,” Lucy warned, but who on earth cared? What possible grim difference could a few sips of Scotch make? Doctors were funny. Ruth told Lucy so, and Lucy winced, shrugged and then also laughed.

  But here’s what Ruth has to say now, more foolhardy than any high-flying with rings and uneven bars. “In the end, I sped him on his way. It was simple, and it was hard, but I did it.”

  Instantly she feels the oxygen departing the room in one big, fast whoosh. Oh, say three silent mouths.

  Life, it seems, never runs out of shoes to drop. Suddenly, if they’ve understood her correctly, Ruth is as extreme in her way as a terrorist; certainly as Art Fletcher with his two whirling knives.

  Has she gone too far? Trust grows at its own pace; it’s rather like cancer that way. “He asked me, if I loved him, to help. He begged. I could see death was coming, but so cruelly. There was nothing that could ever help him again, except me. So I did. And I can’t be sorry, except for not being quicker about it. But once I got up my courage, well, I still believe the very best I could do, and did do, was to love him to death.”

  Everyone is so still, so gaping. “Honestly, George,” she says, because he looks, or half of him looks, more appalled, or perhaps frightened, than the others, but more because the moment needs lightening and that has to be up to her, “don’t worry, it isn’t a habit, it’s not going to be catching.”

  Oh, ha ha ha again, and that’s not it. It’s that never mind how frustrated and unhappy and angry or even confused or teary he gets, never mind how he longs, and on a strong day still aims, to be restored as a man who can do any damned thing he wants, and never mind that he keeps falling short and once fell right over, George refuses dead. People die—how many funerals has he been to?—but “Life,” he says loudly; meaning urgent necessity, the very opposite of unthinkable absence.

  Good news stories, not only terrible ones.

  “I know, but there it is. But I’m sorry to have upset you.”

  Upset. How mild. Sylvia is dumbfounded; she stares—who would not stare?—and what she sees is a strain and stretch in Ruth’s face that maybe comes not only from the bravely borne, persistent pains of osteo, but from the act behind this extraordinary confession.

  Then what strain of secrecy does Sylvia’s own face contain?

  But perhaps she’s making things up, now that she knows what she’s looking at.

  There’s Jackson fading and failing, although toward the end in the hospital and not in her hands. “How?”

  “He was very weak.” No, Ruth will not weep. She can feel weeping, though, in the fragility of her hands when they had to be strong, the ache in her back, the anguish of her straightened arms resisting resistance. “I took a pillow, and I smothered him. It’s a method that isn’t always unkind.”

  Any air that’s begun seeping back whooshes again out of the room: a sick, frail man held down, this little gnarled woman bending over him with a pillow—one whisked from under his head? With or without pillowcase? George starts to cough, something’s caught in his throat, and he can’t stop till Greta pounds his back lightly, then moves her hand in circles a few times as if gentling a baby. When he’s calm, she sits on his sofa, behind Ruth still perched on his coffee table, and reaches for her knitting—maybe it looks bad but she needs this—and click, click, click, the tiny, slow, percussive sound, which some days is as maddening as jackham-mering, grows into the rhythm of breathing. Which they are all doing still, in and out, in and out; and are aware of doing, which of course isn’t always the case. “Treatment?” she asks. “Were there not more ways to be tried?”

  Again it’s probably only Greta’s sometimes clumsy use of language that causes this to sound like a reproach: as if Ruth and Bernard didn’t bother putting enough effort into saving his life. For all of them, not just Ruth, these must be heightened, prickly moments. “Yes, he went through the whole smorgasbord, but it didn’t work, and Lucy was wrong about the pain, and he didn’t deserve that. Nobody does.

  “It’s what he asked for, and he only had me, and it still seems to me that the least a person can do, and sometimes the most, too, is just exactly what someone else wants.”

  Surely it’s more complicated than that.

  “Please, I’m counting on you all to not tell a soul.”

  What’s done is done, and they do look after each other, when that’s possible. No one else will, not day after day, voluntarily and not as a job. “Of course,” Sylvia says.

  “Thank you. I hope you understand that I haven’t told you out of some kind of guilt I can’t bear. I’ve told you because I want you to know it’s not an impossible act. I realize you couldn’t do it for my reasons, for love of someone in Bernard’s sort of misery, but you know, maybe from affection? Respect?”

  No one has an answer to that. “I think,” Sylvia says finally, “we can at least guarantee we’ll be thinking about it.”

  Will they, won’t they, will she, won’t she—never mind that it’s still summer, how chilly Ruth feels. And yet she hasn’t, after all, lost her balance, she hasn’t fallen or flailed. That’s good to know.

  On a black unstarred night, sharp and shocking headlights shoot over the rise of a hill. Sudden and merciful. Can she do this? Ruth thinks so. Just another heart-lifting grief; also good to know.

  19

  AT THREE IN THE MORNING…

  DRESS FOR THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT in an Idyll Inn corridor is necessarily informal. Pyjamas, nightgowns, robes, fuzzy pastel slippers and plaid hard-soled ones may not rise properly to the occasion, but like fatigues on a battlefield, nightwear is good camouflage.

  If discovere
d, they’re at least in unsuspicious, appropriate uniform, and if undiscovered, they’re at least comfortable.

  Robes have pockets, too, which are handy.

  Considerably less relaxed than their clothing is what’s going on inside. Three busy hearts leap and bang. Legs are wobbly, hands a bit shaky, flesh feels fragile. These pyjamas, nightgowns, slippers and robes are warm, but the skin beneath is unfairly goosebumpy, shivery.

  They are exceptionally alert to how warm, precious and vulnerable a body can be; and how quickly it can be none of those things. This is a mystery, although not one they’re likely to solve. It’s magic, too, although none of them would say at the moment that it feels like magic of any good kind.

  Just abracadabra: now you see, now you don’t.

  20

  WHAT FRIENDS DO…

  WHAT RUTH WANTS: “My time, my place, my way.”

  And who wouldn’t like that, but in the statistical scheme of things what are the odds of a made-to-measure leave-taking? Some people die in plane crashes, some from gunshots, some of disease, some falling downstairs, some of exhaustion or hunger, some tidily of old age in their sleep—who’s to know? Who does Ruth think she is?

  She thinks she is someone who has decided that my time will be her seventy-fifth birthday, now four long, very short months off, “a pre-dawn celebration, only without candles and singing” my place will be her own Idyll Inn suite; my way swift suffocation, with the aid of a little minor equipment, at the hands of her friends.

  She admits the timing is pure sentimentality, the location for optimum convenience, the method merciful as can be. Well, she’s the expert. “Bernard and I made do with what was at hand, but I’ve had lots of time since to do more research, and it turns out I was more or less right in the first place.” So she says.

  “There’s no way that’s both easy and foolproof”—is she calling them fools?—“but I’ve looked into the options. My birthday’s in December, so if the weather co-operated, I could sneak outside and lie down to freeze in a snowbank. I understand it’s not a terribly uncomfortable way to go, at least not after the first while, but it strikes me as, oh, too desolate. Plus, there’s that first while. Or uncooperative weather, no snow.

  “You’d think an overdose would be peaceful and reliable, but apparently drugs are hard to calculate, never mind that it’d be hard to get my hands on the right kinds and amounts, and I wouldn’t want to harm a doctor’s career. In any event, it sounds very easy to go wrong and wind up sick or brain-damaged or crippled. More so”—she smiles—“than I already am. Crippled, I mean, not brain-damaged. I don’t think I’m that.”

  Something must be wrong with her head, though. “I see your eyebrows, Sylvia. Nice of you not to say what you were just thinking.”

  It was, wasn’t it?

  “I couldn’t possibly manage to hang myself, and you couldn’t help—even professionals with all the right equipment seem to botch hangings. If we had bathtubs in our suites instead of showers, I could slide into a bath and slit my wrists—I gather really hot water dulls pain and makes blood flow faster, and then, too, a tub contains the mess. Otherwise some poor soul gets stuck with a nasty cleanup, which is just selfish and rude. But the therapy tub here is always either locked or supervised, so that’s out.

  “A gun makes a big mess, too, even if I could handle one, or even get my hands on one—it’s not as if I could add a pistol and ammunition to Diane’s shopping list. So it turns out that the best way is only a few steps away from what happened—what I did—with Bernard. For him.” She cannot say to Bernard, since he had his own desperate voice in the act. She cannot also reasonably say it happened, as if there were no agent involved.

  “It’s practical, and surprisingly quick and apparently merciful. As I said, I’ve read about people doing it for themselves, but I can’t get my arms up high enough, and if I could, my hands are too fumbly. But it’d be smooth enough with your help. Basically all it takes is a plastic bag, and just to make it easiest for everyone, some tape. Oh, and scissors for cutting everything away afterward. And that’s it.”

  “Homey items.”

  “Exactly. Things any of us might easily have lying around.”

  Now comes the deep breath, and the hard, real part.

  “The plastic bag goes over the head, the tape gets wrapped around the neck, and in a very short time that’s it. Maybe only a few seconds, since I’m not very strong.” Ruth means that despite her best intentions, her body could well lash out automatically in its own defence. Bernard’s—but that’s nothing she thinks about. “You’d have to be, though. Strong, I mean.”

  This is unspeakable. Although it seems that it’s not.

  “It’s also a method that’s not likely to be noticed. So nobody’d be in trouble, believe me, I know. You’d snip the tape free and whisk the plastic away and that’d be that.” Well, not quite. There’d be the morning to face.

  Not for Ruth.

  “And who else could I ask?”

  Who indeed? Isn’t that sad, that she only has them.

  Except, in the unlikely event that Sylvia, Greta or George came to such a decision, who could they ask? At the best of times children have limits. As far as George can see, Colette has neither the time nor the will for grand acts of engagement, much less for something like this. Greta’s girls are too tender-hearted toward her, and too respectful, and Greta would be too tender-hearted and respectful toward them to ask. Only Sylvia’s Nancy might come through for her mother, but then it’d be for distinctly wrong reasons. And Sylvia too wouldn’t ask, not altogether from pride, but because there’d have been no point keeping certain information from Nancy all these years, then requesting of her something even more shattering. Ruth can be brutal about this if she wants; a mother, even Sylvia, really cannot.

  Still, every life, and every death too, should have a witness. Not everyone gets that. Maybe it’s lonely to be Ruth, with no one but them to ask her great favour of, but it seems that in her place, with her desire, they’d be just as alone.

  “I expect it sounds pretty strange,” Ruth says, “but finally discussing it makes me feel lighter. Not insubstantial, but light.” There’s no arguing with that, is there, no logic to weigh against lightness? Nevertheless. There have to be limits to what one person can ask of another, as well as to what any person will do. What they need to figure out, and this is most unexpectedly interesting, is exactly where their limits, separately and together, will lie.

  Ruth waits, Greta knits, George half-frowns, Sylvia looks almost angry. But they still have four long, very short months, so—they will see.

  21

  WALKING DOWNSTAIRS IN THE DARK…

  IT’S SAFE TO SAY NOBODY LOOKS AT RUTH quite the same way any more. George is leery—although pleased by the word leery returning out of the blue—because never mind she made that crack about killing not being a habit, and never mind she’s the one who kicked off his rescue when he took that topple—if she got it into her head to do him harm, who knows where it might end?

  Not that she would, that’s a crazy idea; but even so, there are times when the others are busy or out and Ruth suggests wheeling him around to the dining room for an afternoon concert—it’s not so comfortable any more knowing she’s right there pushing, behind him.

  Other than that, he’s going to flat refuse to think about what she’s been talking about. It’s beyond him, and anyway, if he hasn’t done it to Alice—for Alice—why would he help do it to—for—a woman he’s only known a few months?

  He could have done it. When Alice, brain being ravaged, memory blasted, begged for help back when she still had the words, he supposed what she wanted was to be freed and restored, which was out of the question. Even if most days hope is hard, though, and some days impossible, it doesn’t mean anybody wants a pillow mashed down over their face, does it?

  How about if they were reversed, would sweet-faced Alice be sitting here confessing to putting him out of his misery? Not much is
impossible in women’s hearts, and vengeful women have long, detailed memories; except, as with Alice, when they have no memories at all.

  When Colette was here—when? A long time ago, wasn’t it?—and visited her mother, she reported that “Mom hardly ever gets out of bed any more. She doesn’t even know who I am. It’s just tragic.” He could see she’d been crying. When she asked why he didn’t go to see Alice, and he said just “Too hard,” she frowned, but he meant any number of things he couldn’t put into words, including but not limited to the real horror of what a once-familiar, mostly gentle human can come to. Alice’s absence wipes out decades. She’s immune to every moment of their lives, good and bad. She takes the ground of history right out from under him. “Too hard,” he said, and Colette had such a look.

  He could sit beside Alice. He could even hold her papery little limp hands and say anything.

  But moods come and go. Feelings and impulses. Same with Ruth, probably. Hopefully.

  It would be ludicrous to be frightened of Ruth, but to be honest, Sylvia is also uneasy. True, Ruth didn’t precisely cause her husband’s death, that was the cancer, but she sped him along, she did do him in. Someone she claims to have loved that much. With her own two hands, and without leaving a clue—Sylvia catches herself staring at Ruth’s small sedate fingers holding a newspaper or a cookie or teacup and—imagine!

  Sylvia regards her own hands: longer-fingered but gnarled, wrists and knuckles lumpy and ugly. Ruth’s desperate circumstances—her husband’s desperate circumstances—are sadly common; one view might be that Ruth, unlike most people, simply rose uncommonly to the occasion. Whether because Sylvia cared for Jackson too much or because her care was insufficient, she was not so brave. On the other hand, who knows exactly what a man means when he’s crying out for the blessing of help? Or whom he’s addressing? Ruth may have misinterpreted. Or Sylvia did. Or they both did, or neither.