Ava let her off lightly, not because she believed her cancelling to be slight – she didn’t – but she did not want Helen to know that seeing her mattered, and that not seeing her mattered even more. She already felt worthless and Helen’s actions merely added to the dust.
She had always thought that to refer to death in the present continuous was an oxymoron. I am dying. You are dying. He, she or it is dying. There was life and there was the winding down of life that would eventually lead to the split-second finality of death. But she had been wrong. This gradual erosion of ability, this slow-motion wreckage of everything that made her life worth living – she was dying, no doubt about it, this disease with its sinister navigations was killing her.
She had no intention of going gently into the dark night. Although she had discovered how punishingly difficult it was to kill yourself. Heroin was a possibility but injecting it posed a problem. She had considered hiring a car and driving it over a cliff but was afraid of being left alive and physically disabled. Her courage failed at the hair-dryer-in-the-bath method, if indeed it still worked with modern electrical circuitry. She had never been able to tie a good knot so hanging was out of the question, and the logistics of robbing a vet’s surgery for Nembutal, the drug of choice, defeated her. Without a garage, carbon monoxide was not an option; paracetamol was too inexact; household cleansers were painfully cruel, and having failed once on the Valium-plus-plastic-bag approach, even with the addition of helium which she had learned would neutralise the carbon dioxide build-up, she was not inclined to try it again. She discounted option after option – the situation was laughable in a tragic sort of way – before settling on drugs. Barbiturates. Fast-acting and one hundred per cent lethal. And Nembutal the best drug of all. The only problem: where to get it.
One afternoon when Helen had cancelled, Ava slipped out to an internet café to investigate pharmacies on the web. There were many online pharmacies but none had a listing for Nembutal. There were pages on Nembutal but not how to buy it. A search on barbiturates yielded abundant results, but despite reading the side-effects, precautions and overdose information for several of them, it was not clear which would reliably lead to death. She suspected there was something wrong with her search technique, but when you’re looking for a drug to end your life you are not inclined to ask for assistance.
The future stretched before her as unremitting horror. Ava Bryant would disappear and demented Ava would take her place, demented Ava who couldn’t read or write or speak or understand, who needed to be bathed, toileted, dressed and fed. Demented Ava at home in the passive voice, a despoiled creature in a despoiled existence. Ava could not understand how people in her situation would see it to the end – not that there was anything wrong with the actual end, blessed relief as they say, it was the getting there that was so horrible. In the absence of depraved predilections – and given the more shocking outposts of human desire Ava assumed there were dementia fetishists – there were no winners in this game.
She needed someone to do the research she could no longer do. And she needed someone to obtain the drugs for her.
Ava sat in front of her computer staring at the still-familiar screen with its screensaver of a snowy owl in flight.
‘You,’ she now said to the bird, ‘be my guiding angel.’
It seemed she would be sliding around in her fraying atheism right to the end. Although it occurred to her that dementia might just be the non-believer’s trump card, that dementia, incontrovertible proof of human fallibility, might provide sufficient proof against an infallible deity. For if there were a God, she reasoned, he would allow dementia only as the worst of punishments. Yet an appraisal of her own life, although it revealed many actions of which she was not proud, produced none so reprehensible to justify dementia.
Dementia, the ultimate proof against God. Yes, she liked that. And yet she longed for faith. Faith would mean that instead of plumbing the depths of her crumbling mind to organise her death, she could pass without anxiety into passive voice oblivion, confident of leaving everything to a capable, all-loving God with an eternity plan for her. But without faith and saddled with diminishing faculties, it was up to her.
Stephen Webb had saved her once, to satisfy his own desires to be sure; now she wanted him to do it again – this time for her benefit alone. She had never harboured ill-will against him, how could she when he had provided her with her life? It would, however, have been different for him. He had been in his forties, she had been a teenager; that sort of imbalance makes for a hefty debt.
She clicked onto the internet and googled Stephen Webb. There were nearly two hundred thousand matches from which to choose. She read the top twenty before linking her search with fountain pens: she had no doubt that if he were alive he’d still be collecting. Still more than ten thousand matches, so she limited her search to Parker pens, and finally to the Parker Duofold. Forty minutes later she was left with four possibilities. She allowed herself a sweet moment of triumph: she was not immobilised in the passive voice yet.
She emailed all four with an innocuous but nonetheless painfully difficult to compose ‘If you are the collector whom I knew years ago in Melbourne, Australia, please contact your old friend Ava.’ And set about to erase her search tracks as best she knew how.
That afternoon while she waited for replies she took up smoking again. Not in the way of a restrained indulgence, but a cigarette whenever the fancy took her, and a second unopened pack in the drawer. She lit up and embraced the light-headedness, the familiar foul taste, the slow leisurely waft of time. Such a pity smoking wouldn’t kill her, yet so much pleasure in guilt-free smoking. When Harry returned home, he saw the cigarettes and watched her light up but made no comment.
After dinner he had work to do, a dozen phone calls, he said, from Tokyo to London. And while he would far prefer to spend an unbroken evening with her, it shouldn’t take too long. He left the room and soon afterwards she followed him across the courtyard. She could hear his telephone voice rising through the floor of her study; when it stopped, so must she.
She settled at her desk and opened her email. She couldn’t believe it! There were three replies and her email sent only a few hours ago. She forced herself to calm down, for with her brain silting up, she’d learned that any heightened emotion made it harder to think.
She opened the first email, glimpsed a long message – a good sign – lit a cigarette, read the warm greetings, an offer of friendship, an outline of the sender’s interests and significant life events. He offered her a 1960 Parker 21 forest green with lustraloy cap as evidence of his good intentions, and, if all went well, marriage was an option, even children should she want them. He was a Pisces and open to all other star signs except Aries. His name was Steve, Steve Webb, and he lived in Nevada – although he was willing to relocate.
She was about to delete the message when she found herself caught by his circumstances, poor sad creature he was. She hit reply and wrote: I’m an Aries, sorry, and sent it off.
The second email was very short: It’s not me. Have never been to Australia. Hope you find him. She deleted it and clicked on the last email. It was laid out like a proper letter. There were four short paragraphs, each indented. The letter finished with ‘Toujours – S’. The very first words, ‘Dearest Girl’, she recognised immediately.
She had found Stephen, she had found her Stephen Webb.
Harry was fond of saying that email was as secure as a door sealed with sticky tape and about as private as a peep show. Ava used email only to establish that Stephen was in good health, long divorced, no partner, lived an hour south of London in Kent, was retired and travelled widely.
Two days after the initial contact during another of Helen’s cancelled visits, Ava slipped cigarettes and mobile phone into her pocket and left the house. Once in the park she went straight to a seat out of sight of the main path and laid out cigarettes, phone and the piece of paper on which she had written Stephen’s telephone number
. She settled herself down and dialled. She had hardly begun when she lost her way in the string of digits. She cursed herself for not having stored the number, started again, was nearly finished when a breeze lifted the paper and blew it across the grass. Bloody bloody thing, she said as she grabbed it, bloody bloody everything. She didn’t want to make this phone call, she didn’t want to manage the practicalities, she didn’t want to be Ava Bryant with dementia, she didn’t want to die, she didn’t want to live.
And that was the nub of it.
She calmed herself through the duration of a cigarette and then used the pack to hold down the paper. She picked up the phone and said each digit aloud as she pressed the tiny keys. When she was finished she stored the number, then waited a moment before selecting it. She heard the play of the numbers, then a long pause, followed by a ringing tone. Silently she counted the rings. Four, five, six and then an answering machine. His name, his voice, that still-familiar voice. She hadn’t planned on a machine. No words came, not even her own name, and suddenly a click, someone picking up, a voice, his voice, ‘Hold on while I turn off the machine,’ and she immediately disconnected.
It took another fifteen minutes and a circuit of the oval to collect herself. She created an opening sentence and rehearsed it as she walked. She returned to the seat, waited a couple more minutes, then she called again. There was no answering machine this time. As soon as he said hello she spoke her opening line – rather too quickly, but it would have to do.
In the pause that followed she heard the scrape of a chair, a fiddling with the receiver.
‘You sound exactly the same,’ he said at last.
‘If only.’
And suddenly her nerves settled. With nothing to lose and no reason to delay she told him she was sick, that she was dying of an old person’s disease.
‘I have a rare form of dementia,’ she said.
There was a long silence, more fumbling with the phone, then a rush of questions: Was she sure? Did she have the best specialists? Could nothing be done? She answered his questions, he sounded so distressed, the girl he remembered was now dying of dementia.
She found herself calming him: There, there, she said, don’t worry. I’ve a good husband, the best doctors. I’m all right, she heard herself say. It’s not so bad. But she wasn’t all right and it couldn’t be any worse, and she tossed aside her niceties and told him exactly what she wanted.
‘Nembutal,’ she said. ‘From an online pharmacy or anywhere you can get it and send it to me.’
Too blunt, too direct, more demand than request but desperation surely brokers some licence. He said he needed to think, he needed to do some research, he would call back in a couple of days.
It was safer, she said, that she ring him, and asked for his mobile number. He laughed, the only time during the call. He did not use a mobile, one stationary phone was more than sufficient for him. They arranged a time for her to ring him again.
On their second phone call he agreed to do as she wished.
‘But I won’t send the drug,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring it myself.’
3.
Time slid by. Late in the afternoons while Harry was still at the office, Ava would go to the park and telephone Stephen. They spoke every day, sometimes two or three times. They were making plans together. Stephen would fly from London to New York then to San Diego, the best stepping-off point for Mexico where Nembutal was readily available. Ava bought him a mobile phone, prepaid and anonymous, and mailed it to him for his use in Australia. She told him to throw it away when it was all over. She told him he would need to change his home phone number.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ve already thought of that.’
Don’t worry, he said. And she allowed him to take over more and more of the planning.
Despite her public life, she thought it unlikely he had upgraded his memories of her. What would have been the point? And she was aware of feeling sorry for him, that seeing her as she was now would be as profound a death of his long-ago love than her actual death would be.
She felt sorry for him but she needed him. Illness seizes far more than health and ability. Purloins far more. Purloins, the word fell into her mouth. She riffled her desk mess for an unused Post-it note, tried writing the word but couldn’t decide on the second letter. Purloins. Already the word was losing recognition. Purloins. Already losing sense. No time to yourself when you are sick. No solitary time. No privacy. Not that it mattered any more. Stephen was on his way, soon everything would be all right.
The following morning when Jack arrived, Ava greeted him more warmly than usual, or so Jack thought when he looked back on those last days.
‘If only more people were like you,’ she said, as they walked down the hall together. ‘You know the difference between care and company.’
He put his arm around her and felt her lean into him. At last he was giving her what she wanted.
He had brought chocolate éclairs for their morning tea, and the two of them settled in the lounge room with the cakes and coffee. Jack began with the latest news about Connie. He was nervous but optimistic about the second pilot, he was still drinking too much, and while paradise with Sara seemed a chaotic and treacherous place from Jack’s perspective, Connie was still insisting he was happy. By the time the éclairs had been reduced to a streak of cream, they had both agreed that Connie would be far better off if he returned to America and Linda – ‘If she would have him,’ Ava added. They then moved on to the Australian Wheat Board scandal and the Howard government’s denial of knowledge of three hundred million dollars worth of kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime. ‘Clearly the government has decided that gross financial incompetence is more acceptable to the electorate than illegal and unethical trade practices,’ Jack said.
Ava nestled into the corner of the couch and lit a cigarette. Jack was about to launch into a diatribe over the government’s slaughter of the Australian heart, when she asked him to play for her.
‘The blues,’ she said. ‘Play me the blues.’
Jack made no attempt to hide his pleasure; he had always loved playing for her. He began with ‘Cross Road Blues’, a rugged melancholic number, then moved on to T-Bone Walker’s ‘Mean old World Blues’, followed by Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘Dark was the Night’.
‘This selection goes back a long way,’ Ava said with a smile. ‘Almost as long as we do.’
Her memory for recent events was frail, and there were numerous holes in her long-term storage, yet she could remember that night, the first of many, when she listened to him play the blues. It was the night their love affair began and, if Jack was to be honest, when it should have ended.
‘You forgave me, didn’t you?’ Her voice was low, the words came slowly.
She had never before asked; in fact, she never referred to their brief time together. He walked over to her and knelt down by the couch.
‘Of course I forgave you,’ he said, taking her hand. And wanting to give her something in return added, ‘We found a different intimacy in our letters.’
She looked hard at him, she was so close, and laid her other hand lightly against his cheek. ‘You’ve always been special to me,’ she said, with a vague smile and was about to continue when a voice sounded from the passage.
‘Oh dear. Bad time. Sorry. Should have knocked.’
A tall woman dressed entirely in red stepped into the room carrying a baking dish. Her face was a gesture of helplessness. ‘The front door was open,’ she said.
A large dog pushed past her and headed straight to Ava. The animal nudged Jack aside, plopped down next to the couch and nuzzled Ava’s lap.
‘This is Bertha,’ Ava said, patting the dog.
The woman put the dish down and stepped forward, hand outstretched. ‘And I’m Minnie.’ Nodding at the guitar on the couch, ‘You must be Jack.’
Minnie was a good deal taller than Jack. Later she would tell him she was named after her very short grandmother who died
just before she was born – one of those failures of attribution that families commonly make.
Ava looked up at Minnie and smiled. ‘Did you think you were interrupting a …’ she hesitated a moment, ‘a secret assignation?’
Jack kept his face steady. Poor Ava. Often she was reduced to simple words or hackneyed sayings, other times she would alight on an absurdity like ‘secret assignation’. Not wanting to embarrass her he tried not to react. But she did.
‘Wasn’t that awful?’ she said laughing. ‘I mean the secret assignation bit.’ Her laughter was not convincing.
Minnie laughed too. ‘Half your luck,’ she said. ‘Not even a whiff of an assignation in my life.’ She put the casserole in the fridge together with written instructions for heating it up and returned to the living room. ‘Won’t stay now,’ she said to Ava, bending down to kiss her on the cheek. And to Jack, ‘Good to meet you at last.’
Minnie lived next door with her two school-aged children. Jack was surprised he had never met her before. ‘In fact, I don’t think you’ve even mentioned her.’
Ava shrugged, whether she had mentioned her neighbour or not didn’t seem important to her. ‘I see a lot of her. She works from home, a graphic artist. Designs art and craft materials for children. Stickers and glittery things.’ And as if it had suddenly occurred to her: ‘She’s Jewish. Like you.’
‘Husband?’ Jack asked.
Ava shook her head. ‘Apparently he was overwhelmed by the responsibility of children and headed north some years ago with a twenty-year-old. When his new love started to make noises about having children, he swapped her for another twenty-year-old.’
‘He and Connie would have a lot to talk about.’
Jack chatted on about Connie while he put his guitar away, and was about to join Ava on the couch when she stood up.
‘I want to give you something.’
He followed her across the courtyard and up to her study.
‘This,’ she said pointing to a sealed carton. ‘I’d be grateful if you’d store it at your place.’ And just in case she had not made herself clear, ‘I’d like you to look after it.’
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