The Book of Living and Dying

by Natale Ghent

  “Hey, wait up!”

  Sarah walked faster.

  “Hey,” Donna said breathlessly. “What’d she say?”

  “Did you pay her?” Sarah asked bitterly.

  “Yeah, of course. What did she say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Sarah.”

  Sarah’s voice rose with acrimony and confusion. “I mean it! I don’t know. She didn’t make any sense. She was speaking French, Donna.” Sarah spat on the ground. “She’s just a crazy old drunk. You wasted your money.”

  Donna nodded. “Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter what she said.”

  “What?”

  She lit a cigarette nonchalantly and offered one to Sarah.

  Sarah turned away, running her hands over her face and through her hair. “Can we get out of here please?”

  At least Donna knew enough to leave her alone on the trip home. Sarah pretended to sleep while Donna occupied her time fiddling with the radio, changing stations furiously whenever a song came on that she didn’t like. From time to time, Sarah could feel her staring, desperate to talk but thankfully resisting the urge. She wanted to forget about the afternoon, the children in the graveyard, the smell of alcohol and cigarettes, the taste of vomit still lingering in her mouth, the woman’s voice. Sarah tried to shut her mind to the words and the feeling of terror they sparked in her. But the woman’s pronouncement hammered over and over in her head. Bury your dead. What had she meant by that? The look on her face, the conviction in her eyes. Those eyes. Sarah moaned lightly and swallowed. She squinched up her face, trying to block the images from playing out in her mind. But the dead weren’t easily fooled, were they? Oh, no. The dead were tricky. Restless. First sign of rain and they were popping up like mushrooms, fingers and toes poking out of the mud like rotting carrots, desperate relatives sneaking around at night to cover them up again, hide the bodies, preserve the family name. And what was it that she had said in French? Something about a message?

  Sarah started awake as the car rolled up to her house. She had managed to sleep after all. Donna was looking at her, her face half lit in the glow from the street lamp, the other half in shadow. Like Two-Face, Harvey Dent from Batman, Sarah thought. She laughed to herself. Michael had said that once about Donna.

  “We can go somewhere for a drink,” Donna offered. “If you don’t want to go home right away.”

  “No, I’m so tired,” Sarah said. She thought she saw something in Donna’s face. An apology, maybe? Whatever it was, it was too late. She opened the door and stepped from the car.

  Donna drove away as Sarah struggled with the key in the lock. The deadbolt resisted. The door wouldn’t open. For one frantic moment she was convinced that it was John, holding the door handle from the other side. “Don’t freak yourself out,” she told herself as she walked around to her bedroom window. Inching the frame up with her fingers, she squeezed her hands in the opening and pushed the window up. She tossed her bag onto the bed, stuck her head through for surveillance and crawled into her room. Once inside, she walked as bravely as she could to the bedroom door, opened it and looked out into the living room.

  “Mom?”

  The house was dark, except for the light from the street lamps casting ghostly trapezoids over the living-room floor. There was the familiar musty smell from the basement. It seemed stronger than usual. Sarah clicked on the light, banishing the trapezoids to the street. She sighed. The house was so small. Barely enough room for her and her mother, let alone any errant ghosts. Moving from the living room to the kitchen, she began turning lights on, calling out for her mother as she went. She even turned the light on in the bathroom.

  A pile of dishes greeted her from the kitchen sink, a carafe of coffee cold on the element, the ashtrays—several of them—littered with cigarette butts. Sarah looked through the window in the kitchen door to the yard, expecting to see John staring back at her. But there was only the tangled silhouette of the locust tree near her side of the house. On the patio stones, an overturned lawn chair sprawled wantonly, several forgotten plastic tumblers littering the ground at its feet. Gathering her resolve, Sarah drew the curtain shut. She was spooked, that was for sure. She had even called out for her mother.

  In the bathroom, she took the bottle of codeine and extracted two pills again, pushing the bottle to the back of the shelf afterwards. She held the tablets in her hand as she crouched in the kitchen, surveying the fridge. It stood under the counter, an old bar fridge her mother had scored at a second-hand store when their regular fridge went on the fritz. Sarah checked the contents. An open can of ginger ale, flat. Some margarine tubs containing mystery leftovers. Old celery wilting in the cracked plastic drawer of the vegetable crisper that magically turned everything to limp spaghetti. A few puckered tomatoes. It was worse than hospital food.

  The lifeless vegetables, obviously frozen from a bag, the puréed mush in the morning posing as oatmeal, pale toast soggy with margarine. There were runs made to the deli and even McDonald’s to compensate. It wasn’t long, though, before food was no longer an option, the orderly stopping outside the door three times a day to check the charts at first, only to roll the food cart past the door and over to the next room. Within days the routine was established. There was to be no food of any kind delivered to 319. This was most difficult for the visitors, who had been used to arriving with cans of soda and bags of chips. It made the days seem even longer for everyone.

  “Ugh,” Sarah grunted, slamming the fridge door shut. The thought of food made her sick anyway. She took an etched whisky glass from the cupboard, the last vestige of her father, and turned the tap in the sink. After waiting several minutes for the water to run clear, she filled the glass. No ice. The bar fridge freezer didn’t work. “Straight up,” she said as she threw the codeine tablets back with a gulp of water. A wave of nausea swelled then receded. She refilled the glass and carried it to her room, the precise click of the door latch sharp against the quiet of the house.

  Placing the glass on the milk crate, she lay down on the bed, listening. She was sure she could hear something. She strained her ears. It was the woman, crying faintly from somewhere in the house. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Sarah sat up and toed the corner of the rug that covered the trap door to the basement. She listened for a moment longer before getting up from the bed and inching the rug back slightly, then mustering her courage and throwing it to one side, exposing the plywood door.

  The door was heavy. Her fingertips could barely pry it open and when they did, she could only lift it enough to stick her head into the dark hole. “Anybody down there?” The smell of damp and mould greeted her. With a whoosh of musty air, the door dropped back into its frame. Snapping the rug neatly like a bed sheet, Sarah replaced it over the plywood and lay back down on the bed. The picture of the skeleton on horseback glinted in her mind as she rubbed her forehead, praying for the codeine to kick in.

  Outside, a low rumble rattled the window, followed by the erratic strobe of distant lightning. The tentative prelude of raindrops began, thrumming lightly against the glass, its ceaseless little hands searching endlessly. Fingers and toes sprouted spontaneously in Sarah’s mind. She covered her eyes with the heels of her hands and held them there. Who can fathom the needs of the dead? The old woman’s voice filtered through her thoughts. You are searching for an answer. A clue. The pieces are in front of you. They always have been. Sarah repeated the words, softly. She said them several times over, emphasizing a different word each time. What did it all mean?

  The rain drummed harder, threatening to wash everything away. The way it had once at the hospital.

  Pounding down with a force too great for the antiquated sewer system, causing the streets to flood. The bowels of the hospital eventually swelling with a brown soup, the rooms transformed, water cresting over gurneys and wheelchairs. Plastic bedpans floating with transparent snakes of medical tubing, boxes of wayward syringes bobbing along the surface like schools o
f skinny blue-nosed fish. An orderly, stripped down to his shorts, wading in to rescue a crate of bandages, despite the tears of one of the nurses who cried out in fear that he would be electrocuted. And the doctor, singing to all the patients about living in the belly of a whale.

  Lightning lit up the room, thunder cracking menacingly on its heels. The lights in the house flickered. Sarah couldn’t help thinking that it was John, trying to terrify her. If he was going to come, why didn’t he just get it over with? She released the pressure on her eyes, dropping her hands with finality to her sides. Her fingers brushed against something in her jacket pocket. She felt around, pulled it out and held it up to her face. It was the card Donna had given her. Turning it over, she saw that it was a small photograph. A photograph of Michael and Donna. Together.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sarah ran through the rain, the lightning hiccuping in fits through the sky, illuminating the trees in lurid flashes. Along the street, the houses hunched like sullen dogs in the downpour. She was soaked to the bone, freezing. Sneakers flopping, photo clenched in her hand, she splashed across the bridge to the park, the rain gushing in deep channels past her feet and swirling over the sewer grate on the other side. “That witch!” she spat through clenched teeth, thunder punctuating her words.

  The park grinned wickedly in the storm, the lightning crackling along the hydro wires, snapping up the towers. The rain hammered down, icy fists hitting her skin. It pooled over the grass in electric puddles. Sarah ran toward the parking lot, sloshed over the slick pavement, skidded, swore when her knee hit one of the cedar posts that circled the lot like savage teeth, then continued to run. Slipping and sprawling along the jagged path, arms wheeling for balance, the muck running freely, splattering her legs and her face, she screamed before she even reached the top of the hill. “Michael!” She stepped on the rock beneath his window, sneakers squeaking as her ankle turned, sending her to the ground with a shout. She sobbed, the rain hitting her face, her chest heaving as she dragged herself up. Balancing on the rock again, she began smacking his bedroom window with her open hand. “Michael!”

  When he did not appear the last of her reason was engulfed by incendiary notions of him with Donna, the two of them, together, plotting against her. She was searching for a rock to heave through the window when it clattered open.

  “Sarah!”

  She staggered back, reeling. “You liar!” she screamed.

  His face disappeared from the window and in a moment he was running around the corner of the house, stopping short when he saw the look in her eyes.

  “You liar,” she sobbed, throwing the crumpled photo at him. It fell into the mud, the edges unfurling slowly like an odd flower.

  Michael picked the photo up and looked at it, confused. He stepped toward her. “Please, Sarah, I never lied to you.”

  “Don’t come near me,” she warned, her eyes lit with rage.

  “We never did anything,” Michael insisted.

  “I trusted you,” Sarah wailed. She covered her face with her hands, the rain beating down on her, on both of them.

  “Please, Sarah, it’s a mistake …” He reached out to take her hand.

  “Don’t touch me,” she cried. “Now I know why Donna hates you so much. She always said you were a creep. You must think I’m a complete idiot—a fool! Is anything you’ve told me true?”

  “This doesn’t mean anything, Sarah,” he said, waving the photo in the air.

  “It means something to me!” she yelled as she turned and plunged into the night.

  She didn’t stop running until she reached the bridge, her chest aching from the effort and the force of the rain. Heart jackrabbiting between hatred for Donna and contempt for Michael, she lifted her face to the sky, letting the rain pound her eyelids and lips. Now she understood the look on Donna’s face in the car. She wanted Sarah to see what a conniving liar Michael really was. Okay, you won, she thought, her mind whirling with a mixture of torment and fury. You won.

  And yet. And yet. Still the old woman’s words would not leave her. Trust him. But who was the him that she spoke of? How could Sarah be sure? She felt so stupid, so ridiculously small. The Fool. Wasn’t that one of the cards the old woman had set before her? Silly little fool. Pressing her fists into her temples, she let out a deep, frustrated yell, doubling over on the sidewalk, the rain gobbling up the sound. All she wanted was to be home, in her room, in her own bed. But John could be waiting there. The realization sent a shock wave of fear through her brain. “What do you want from me?” she howled. She crumpled onto the curb and stayed there until she was too cold and weary to care about ghosts, or broken promises, or anything else, and made her way home.

  She noticed the wet footprints immediately, drying near the foot of her bed. His footprints. Grabbing a rag from under the kitchen sink, she furiously scrubbed the prints from the floor, her knees leaving their own wet marks, like dark sunbursts, where she had knelt. After, she slipped a roll of duct tape and a carving knife from the kitchen, taped her bedroom door closed, then waited, the knife blade glinting next to her in bed.

  When she woke, to her horror, the tape was gone and so was the knife. Fighting back hysteria, she searched the room, beneath the bed, under the sheets. She even checked under the rug that covered the trap door. When she could not find the knife, she bolted into the kitchen, tearing open the drawers. The knife shone in the cutlery drawer, exactly as she had found it, the tape in its usual spot, one drawer down. Gaping in terrified disbelief, she convinced herself that it hadn’t happened at all and kicked the drawers shut with her sock foot.

  The sound of Mr. Kovski’s voice was eroding her mind. It was almost as bad as the questions that dogged her waking hours and tracked her ceaselessly in sleep as well. How long had they known each other? Why hadn’t Donna said something about Michael before? And what had made her decide to hate him? Sarah stared out the classroom window. She could feel Michael’s eyes on her, the way they used to be before they had started seeing each other. Only now she wouldn’t acknowledge him. She couldn’t stand to see the pained look on his face, couldn’t control the grenade blast in her skull whenever she thought of him with Donna. To stop the pain in her heart, she dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand. Would she ever learn the truth about the situation?

  There had been a note slipped through the gills of her locker. She hadn’t read it, hadn’t even opened it in case she might be swayed to reconsider. In an act of bravado, she’d crumpled it, thrown it into the garbage as she’d walked to English class. Then thought about it all day. Thought about retrieving it and sneaking away to read it. It infuriated her that she cared. But she did. She couldn’t deny it. Now she was sitting in calculus, waiting for the lesson to end.

  It didn’t surprise her to see Donna in class. Come to rubberneck the damage, no doubt. She wasn’t striking her usual delinquent pose but was facing the front of the class, pretending to listen to the lecture. She hated that Donna had been right about everything. Hated the underhanded way she had used to expose Michael. She decided not to tell her about finding the photo. Let her sweat it out. The worst part was that Donna was being so nice, waiting at her locker, speaking in saccharine tones, tiptoeing around Sarah like she had just discovered that she was dying of some horrible disease. Wasn’t that what happened with John? All at once, everyone treating him differently—his friends, her mother, the nurses and doctors—all speaking in falsetto, mincing around, as though he were a bomb about to explode.

  Their expressions animated with feigned cheerfulness, quaking voices reaching for a higher timbre. Until eventually the strain wore the façade of levity away to reveal the true face of enduring grief.

  Sarah thought of Michael, of everything that had happened between them: the video, the photo, his admission of love. Donna was jealous, she concluded. Wasn’t that obvious? Still, there was the fly-buzz of doubt, the faint possibility that perhaps Donna knew something that she didn’t, that she’d been acting the part of th
e good friend. Maybe Sarah had been wrong, dismissing Donna’s concerns because she wanted to believe the best about Michael. It made her sick just thinking about it, the argument whirling around and around in her head until she thought she would scream. It would be easier to assume that Donna had acted out of jealousy. Michael couldn’t possibly be interested in her, no matter what the photo implied. But he was a liar too, keeping such secrets from her. Maybe they were perfect for each other. This last conclusion nearly broke her.

  She fingered her journal listlessly. She had tried to recall the old woman’s words, writing down as much as she could remember. Recording the images as best she could. After class, she planned to do some research in the library to find the meanings of the cards. Looking down at her page, she saw that she had drawn dozens of spirals over the margins.

  Mr. Kovski stopped to consider the brilliance of his last statement, then turned to the board to prove it in chalk dust. Sarah held her head in her hands. She was so tired. She could hardly keep her eyes open. If she could only put her head down, rest her face against the cool wood of her desk. She was thinking this when she became acutely aware that everyone was staring at her, including Mr. Kovski. He stood, chalk poised dramatically in the air.