“It is my sacred duty, Jerry. For the honour of my family.”
“There’s no honour in murder.” His headache was fading.
“It is an execution, not murder.”
“That’s what this guy’s great-grandfather thought, too, I bet.”
“Yakov Yurovsky murdered innocent children. He murdered me!” Gervaise stopped struggling, although he was still conscious, barely.
“‘Vengeance is mine, saith The Lord’, or something like that. Would God want you to avenge your family? Isn’t that something only He can do?”
“But—” She lowered Gervaise to the couch and loosened her grip enough to let him breathe.
“What would God want, Shvibzik? What would Alexei want? Or Tatiana, Olga, or Mashka?” He stepped up beside her and put his hand on her arm. “Would they want you to become a murderer, like the Bolsheviks who executed them? This man didn’t kill your family. This man didn’t put a gun against your head and pull the trigger.” Suddenly Jerry understood it all. Understood not just how to get through to Ana, but why. “What would Grigori want you to do?”
“Forgive him?”
“Exactly. But not just him. Forgive his great-grandfather. There was too much bloodshed and horror in 1918. End it here. Be the better person. Be the Grand Duchess that Queen Victoria would have been proud of. Right here and now, the Last of the Romanovs holds in her hand the power of life and death. Reverse all of the mistakes your well-meaning father made before you. Do what your Papa is not here to do. Forgive.”
“But . . .”
Sirens approached. Someone must have heard the shots and called 9-1-1. Jerry had no idea how he was going to explain all of this. He scooted over to the fireplace and grabbed the poker. He wasn’t at his strongest, but he was pretty sure that the fight was out of Gervaise. “Ana, my Love, forgive him.”
“He killed Mashka.”
The sirens were nearly there. “Ana . . .”
“And Jimmy. What could my puppy ever do to your precious revolution?” She tightened her grip once again.
“Ana! Shvibzik!”
She released Yurovsky’s heir, and the man slumped, barely conscious. She looked at Jerry and nodded, then dropped to her knees in front of Gervaise. She took his hands in hers and lifted them to her lips. She kissed the dark, curly-haired back of each, straightened her back, and lifted her chin. Three or four car doors thumped shut out on the street, but Ana paid them no heed. “Jakob Gervaise, descendant of Yakov Yurovsky, I forgive you, and your forefathers; not in the name of the Russian Imperialist Romanov family, but merely in the name of my Papa, Nicholas, my Mama, Alexandra, my sisters Olga, Tatiana, and Maria, my little brother, Alexei, and myself, Anastasia. I forgive you.”
Jerry could hear glass smash down the stairs at the street level and indistinct shouts. The cavalry had arrived.
ANA COULD SENSE that something was seriously wrong. She looked up at Jerry, thinking that maybe he was having a seizure, but her vision started to mist over. Panic set in and she shook her head violently, trying to shake her head clear, but the flat she had called home ever so briefly wavered and faded. She tried desperately to solidify, but something fought against her.
She stood quickly, rushing into Jerry’s arms, confused, but she ran right through him! She spun around and reached for him again, and he dropped the fireplace tool and reached for her, but she was undone. The new half-life she had come to love so much was being ripped from her and she had no idea what came next. The flames in the fireplace seemed to grow, to seek her attention, like a hungry beast, and within the flames something stirred. A darkness moved like a flame, but it was completely without light or warmth. It writhed weakly and reached for her, finally making its move, after nearly a century.
Then the tension deep within her snapped like a rubber band stretched too far and all of her fear, all of her worry, all of the terror for her future vanished. She was free.
“Vremya prishlo, Shvibzik.” It’s time.
Ana spun at the voice. Standing tall and straight, Alexei stood beside the Christmas tree, some of the needle-filled branches appearing to grow right out of his arm and a glass ornament sort of hung from his elbow.
She looked at Jerry to see if he could see what she was seeing, but her darling only stared at her, stunned. She looked back to Alexei. “Lyoshka?”
He saluted her and smiled. “That is Lance Corporal Lyoshka, to you.” His smile saddened just a bit. “It is time to come home, Shvibzik. We have been waiting.”
“‘We’?”
“The family. Everyone.”
“In Nebo? Heaven?”
“Da, I believe so. Even Jimmy.”
“They have dogs in heaven?”
“Silly Shvibzik, it would not be Heaven without dogs.”
Tears coursed down Ana’s face. She was ready to explode from the magnitude of the emotions bouncing around in her heart and head.
Alexei held his hand out. “Come, big sister. You have done what the rest of us could not. Father is so proud of you.”
Ana took a final look at Jerry, his tears matching her own. She had felt so at home with him. Like she had never belonged anywhere until she was with him. And now she had to leave. Alexei tugged her sleeve. The flat was fading quickly. Before it was too late, she signed “I love you” to Jerry and blew him a kiss.
JERRY COULDN’T BELIEVE his eyes. Ana was leaving. She walked through the couch, toward the Christmas tree. Fading fast, Ana turned and her fingers flashed the signs he had taught her. He flashed back “I love you, too!”, but she was gone. Did she hear him? Did she see his signs? Did she know that he loved truly her? That he always had? He felt like his heart was being torn out of his chest, then the door to the stairs flew open and police in SWAT gear charged in with their weapons drawn.
JERRY SAT, STARING out at the rain again, empty. Why hadn’t he told Ana sooner how he felt about her? The police came and went, taking Gervaise, the revolver, the six mysteriously flattened slugs, and his statement. They could tell that he wasn’t well, so the lead officer gave him his card and asked him to come by tomorrow and answer a few more questions. He refused their offer of medical assistance, so they left him alone.
He got up and looked around. He wanted to smash his fist into the brick wall surrounding the fireplace, but restrained himself and simply started a fire to chase away the damp chill that seemed to permeate Victoria since he’d arrived and only subsided when Ana was beside him. Once he was sure the kindling had caught and the flames wouldn’t sputter out, he shuffled around the loft in his pyjamas, restless. The headache wasn’t any better, but it wasn’t any worse, either. He dropped a few flakes of food into Sushi’s bowl, but ignored the Betta when it looked at him from just below the surface of the bowl while picking at breakfast.
“Maybe I just need a little caffeine to ease the pain,” he said to no one in particular. There was a dull pain in his chest and a lump in his stomach that didn’t seem to be connected to the agony in his head.
Switching on the single-cup coffee maker, he knew he’d find his salvation in coffee. It was another minute before the “Ready to Brew” light came on and with a push of the button, Jerry had sweet flavoured elixir dispensing into his mug with gurgles and splashes and a wafting scent of delicate caramel teasing him. With mug in hand, he went in search of his painkillers. He knew they were obviously right where he’d left them, but it took him a few minutes of hunting to remember that he’d left them in his pants pocket. The caramel washed down the pair of capsules as he made his way to the desk, turned on the laptop, and started ruthlessly deleting emails from people he’d never see again. Part of him just wanted to curl up on the couch and cry, but he could almost hear Ana’s voice telling him to stop wallowing in self-pity.
Halfway down the page, he saw an email from Haley, back in St. Marys. “What does she want?” He opened the email and read it aloud. “‘Dearest Jerry, I hope your new life in Victoria is all you’d dreamed it would be.’ Yeah, I dr
eamed of cancer and death and losing the woman I loved just when I found her. ‘I miss you, Jerry. Things are not the same here at home since I came back.’ Of course not! You walked out on your husband and girls because you were bored and then wandered back into their lives because you were curious if it could be better, not because you wanted to actually work on it and fix it. ‘I wish I was out there with you, feeling sand between our toes, watching the whales swim past, and making love in some little inn overlooking the ocean.’ There’s more to love than sex, Haley. Sorry. Dee-lete.” He clicked on the trashcan icon and the email was gone.
He scanned his email inbox, saw nothing more that caught his attention, and pushed the laptop away. “Enough of that junk. I don’t need to enhance my performance, collect my Ethiopian inheritance, or lose weight like Jennifer Biels; I need a cure for Stage Four, terminal, brain-sucking cancer. I need . . . whatever.” He stomped over to his couch cocoon, turned the big screen on, and went through the tedious process of booting up Netflix. Once he was in, he searched for Ingrid Bergman’s Anastasia.
He didn’t even make it through the opening credits before he was up off the couch, suddenly restless. He knew he was hungry but had no idea what to eat or why he should even bother. It was all so senseless. Why was he even going through the motions of life when it was going to be over soon? Now that the seizures had started, Jerry knew the stark, lonely reality was that he maybe had weeks left. Weeks. Weeks of what? Seizing, puking, sleeping? And he had his ever-positive, always-loving mother coming out for a weekend. Yippee.
The world expected him to put on a brave face and fight this stupid disease right up to the end, his chin held high as he lost weight, lost his hair, and died from the inside out. But that’s not how he wanted to die. It’s not how anyone wanted to die. What was it the Palliative Care woman had said? “With dignity and peace”, or something like that? Surrounded by people watching him fade away, tears of pity in their eyes, but secret thanks in their hearts that it’s not them whose light is being snuffed out in slow, agonizing increments. Someone would hold his hand, someone would say some crap like they loved him, and then everything would go dark.
Jerry knew he wasn’t going to get to come back like Ana. When he was done, he’d be done. No mystical, Hindu reincarnation. No waiting virgins, no welcoming arms seated to one side of God. No blaring trumpets, no wings, no reunion with his father while they ate cream cheese and drifted in the clouds. One second he’d be alive, and then he wouldn’t. Game over. So why didn’t he just get it over with right now? Why didn’t he tell the pain and the disease to just piss off? It’s too bad he hadn’t let Gervaise finish him off. Instead, he’d have to hang himself, or cut his wrists in a tub of warm water. Yeah, the tub would be best. The mess would be contained and he’d already be naked so they could just tag and bag him and shove him in an oven so they could cremate him down to fit in a pickle jar and be shipped back home where his mother could dig a hole on his father’s grave and drop him in. That way she could visit and natter at the two of them at the same time. She’d love it, and he wouldn’t care.
He pulled a clean plate out of the dishwasher, trying to decide what he should eat, but all he could think of was an untouched bucket list and the ruins of his wasted life. Jeremy George Powell. Twenty-four. Never married. Never had kids. Never wrote that novel. Never learned to fly a plane or ride a motorcycle. Never swam with dolphins, or tried stand-up comedy, or rocked the house in a band. Never made love in an inn overlooking the ocean. Never spent a month in Paris soaking up French jazz. Never traced his family roots back to Ireland. Never really, truly, fell head-over-heels-spend-the-rest-of-eternity-together in love . . . until now, at the end.
He cocked his arm back and threw the plate. It smashed against the tile backwash over the sink and shattered, shards flying everywhere while the biggest pieces crashed down into the sink. Next, the coffee mug hit the faucet, broke into two, and bounced away.
“All right. End of the pity party, people. I need air and I need it now.” He snatched his baseball cap and coat off the tree and that’s when he noticed Ana’s book. His breath caught in his throat. He’d managed to keep the book because he told the officers that he had no idea what Gervaise was doing in the loft, and Gervaise was oddly silent as they led him away.
He tucked the book in the jacket’s inside pocket and clomped out of the loft. He made it three steps down off the building’s stoop before he realized that not only was he still in his pyjamas, but he was also barefoot and it was still pouring rain. He stopped, felt stupid for a second, and then continued on. “Screw it. At least I’m wearing a hat and my skull won’t fill with rainwater.”
Chapter Twenty-two
@TheTaoOfJerr: “The only truth is music.”
~Jack Kerouac
BY THE END of the block, Jerry was soaked and shivering. “This is getting to be a habit, buddy.” He looked ahead, left and right, down streets he was only vaguely familiar with. He glanced over his shoulder. He was alone. No fellow pedestrians, no taxis, no horse-drawn carriages, no Ana chasing after him. The frigid rain pounded down on his cap, ran down his back, soaked him from top to bottom, bottom to top, inside and out . . . and it washed away his hurt, his frustration, and most importantly, it scrubbed him clean of the fear that had been threatening to overwhelm him.
He turned around, slipped a bit on the cold, wet cobblestones. It was time to face the world, and he would start back in the warmth of the loft. He went home. At the front door to the building he jammed his hands into the coat’s pockets and found his keys buried at the bottom of the right one, under a layer of fast-food napkins and plastic-wrapped restaurant mints. He looked Heavenward. “Thank you.”
The freezing cold caught up to him and he stumbled up the stairs, fumbled with the keys and lock, and would have broken in the door if he’d had the strength. Eventually the key fit the lock and turned. He shuffled into the loft, placed Ana’s book carefully on the mantelpiece, then shed his rain-soaked coat and shuffled into the bathroom where he peeled off his soaked pyjamas and the hat, dropped them on the floor, stepped into the tub, pulled the plastic curtain around himself, and turned on the shower. He didn’t wait for it to warm up and really didn’t need to since he was much colder than even the cool spray that preceded the hot. He sat there, curled up under the spray, numb.
WHEN THE SHOWER began to cool after he’d used up all of the hot water, Jerry shut it off and climbed out, ready for nothing more complicated than sleep. Sleep, and more painkillers. The frigid rain and the hot shower had washed away the headache, but his soul ached and throbbed and was numb, all at once. He went through the motions of drying off with the big bath sheet. Eventually he tossed it over the shower rod and wandered out into the heat of the loft proper.
Standing naked by the bed, he couldn’t find his pyjamas at first. Then he remembered the wet lump on the bathroom floor, and instead grabbed sweatpants and a hoodie from the ever-present pile of clothes on the chair next to the dresser. He swallowed two more capsules and curled up in a fetal position with the pillow hugged close. Once again, sleep found Jerry, and he welcomed it.
A CHIME SOUNDED in Jerry’s dream and he reached for the old, black dial phone on the desk next to his dream self. He picked up the receiver. “Hello?” No one answered. “Helloooo? Is there anybody out there?” The chime sounded again and he concluded that it wasn’t the phone. He looked around the vintage office of his dream but it slipped away, revealing the walls and framed photographs and dim light of the loft. “What?”
The chime sounded a third time, and he finally clued in. “Skype?” Who the hell would be calling him? Not his mother, that’s for sure. Maybe Carole. By the time he got to his desk and the laptop, the chime was silent. The caller ID was still on the screen, and although he had to squint, he could see that it was Isis’ number. With a couple quick taps of the laptop’s touchpad, he called her back. While it rang, he dropped his butt into the desk chair. Isis couldn’t have gone far from her
computer because she answered quickly.
“Jerry! You’re there!” She signed rapidly. “I love you I’m sorry I hung up on you Mom is mad as shit at me for doing it!”
He waved at her to stop, and signed with strong gestures to get her attention. “Isis! Slow down! You’ll melt your nail polish you’re talking so fast. It’s okay. My mom almost hung up on me, too, when I told her last night.”
“So it’s true? You have cancer?”
“Yes, it is. It’s not something I would joke about.” He found himself comforted by talking with Isis. His anger at being awakened thinned and dissipated.
“You’re dying?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Probably within the next month or so. The doctors think I have longer but I’m not so sure.”
“Am I going to get to see you again, before you go?”
“I’m not sure. I’m flying my family out to see me this weekend, while I’m still healthy enough, but I hadn’t planned on doing any travelling, because of the seizures I’ve started having.”
“Oh. Can I come visit you?”
“I don’t think your parents would be too impressed with their fifteen-year-old daughter flying out to see an old man.”
“They’re cool with it. It was Dad’s idea. He cried as hard as me when you told us you were sick. That big tough cop is just a softy inside. If he can come, he will, but he says Mom and I can come out if you let us.”
He thought about Ana and how much she would have loved meeting Isis in person. “I’d love to see you, but let’s see how the next week or so go. I may need some recovery time after my mother’s visit.”
“Is it okay with Ana if we visit? I’ll ask her myself, if you think that would be better, more polite.”
Shit. “Um, Ana isn’t here anymore, Isis. She’s gone.”
“What did you do?!” Her signs were sharp and angry. “I could tell by the look on both your faces that she is the best thing to ever happen to you! I don’t care what you do, you get her back!” He tried to say again that he had no idea where she went, but Isis didn’t let him get a sign in edgewise. “Call her number every ten minutes, go pound on her door, email her, text her . . . I don’t care what you have to do. You need to have someone there who loves you and, most important, you deserve to have love in your life. Haley is a bitch and I’m glad you got away from her, and I’m too young for you, so find Ana and be in love.” Her hands slowed down so that he could make no mistake in the translation. “Or I will fly out there and kick your ass myself. Is that understood?” She folded her arms over her breasts and waited for his answer.
Waking Anastasia Page 25