The Book of Living and Dying

by Natale Ghent

  No. Not poltergeists. John was definitely not malevolent—at least, not outside her dreams. And the others, the girl and the crying woman. They didn’t seem angry or violent either. They just seemed to want to reach her, to tell her something. Something she couldn’t understand or decipher.

  “Even Houdini couldn’t find his way back from the dead,” she said.

  Donna looked confused. “Did he want to?”

  “Yes, he wanted to.” Sarah leaned to one side of the booth. “He thought he could come back from the dead. It was a quest for truth.”

  “Is that why he was always jumping off the Harvard Bridge?”

  Sarah sighed. She was wasting her time. Donna didn’t really understand anything out of the ordinary, for all her professed interest in such things. Who was she, anyway? With her messy hair and her black-rimmed eyes? Even now, looking at her across the table, Sarah saw in Donna’s face the image of many young women, merging together, protean. At times distinct, familiar; at times blurred, as though suspended at the bottom of a swimming pool, her features wavering with the sunlight and wind over the water. Is that how it had been for him? Sarah wondered.

  The nurses’ faces one in the same, their bodies coalescing, individual traits erased by the longing for one thing. Morphine. That generous, ephemeral god, carried on the wings of a white-sneakered and temperamental angel.

  Sarah felt suddenly put out. She wouldn’t even have been at the Queen’s if Michael hadn’t been busy working on the secret project he refused to tell her about. But she had a project of her own. A plan she’d been hatching for a while. And she needed his help.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  Sarah picked her way through the woods, Michael in tow. He carried John’s guitar. There was a calm in the air, an immaculate stillness. Sarah stepped over a thick tree root that pushed up through the path like a gnarled hand. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” she asked.

  “Frost,” Michael said.

  She nodded distractedly, her breathing laboured from the effort of walking. “Yeah, it’s cold.”

  “Him,” Michael said, pointedly. “I was quoting the poet. ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep.’”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” He gestured toward the guitar.

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “I’m just afraid you may regret it.”

  “I don’t have a choice,” she said with unprovoked irritation. “I can’t think of any other reason why he keeps coming back.”

  Michael placed a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, I’m trying to help.”

  Sarah hung her head. “I know. But I have to try something.” She wrung her pale hands together as she walked off the path into the woods. “Over here,” she said standing before a large, rough-looking trunk. “This is an oak. A white oak. The tree in my dream is like this one.”

  As she spoke these words, a large buck appeared from behind the tree, regarded them, then stepped majestically into the forest and was gone.

  It’s a sign, Sarah thought, kneeling slowly in front of the tree. “We’ll leave it here.”

  Placing the guitar at the foot of the oak, Michael sprinkled the ground with flakes of tobacco from the leather pouch that he’d pulled from his coat pocket.

  “I divest myself,” Sarah murmured, touching the guitar repeatedly. That should do it, she said to herself. That should help.

  Michael held her tightly as they left, leaving the guitar at the base of the tree. In silence, they moved to the open field of the park, working their way along the low buildings and empty birdcages, navigating toward the boathouse, its doors and windows boarded up. As they walked past the boathouse, Sarah heard a sound.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “That strange scratching noise … listen.” She cocked her head to one side. “It sounds like it’s coming from the boathouse.” She scanned the building. The scratching grew louder, followed by the sound of broken fluttering. “There!”

  she exclaimed, pointing to a window near the top of the building where a board was missing, revealing broken glass and wire mesh, a large gap at the top of the frame. The bird lay collapsed at the bottom of the window, pale blue feathers blowing delicately through the wire, like flower petals in the wind. “It’s a pigeon or something, trapped in the window.”

  Michael moved to take a better look. The bird flapped mechanically, its long thin beak speared through a hole in the mesh, its wings folded awkwardly in the small space. “It’s not a pigeon,” he said. “It’s a kingfisher.”

  “Oh, Michael, do something!” Sarah cried.

  Standing on tiptoe, Michael reached toward the window, the bird flapping against the glass in violent bursts. “It’s too high.”

  “We have to help it!” Sarah said, her voice breaking. “We have to get it out of there!”

  Michael gestured to a small house across the park. “That building … there’s supposed to be a caretaker there.”

  Sarah ran toward the house, Michael beside her. Tripping up the stairs, she opened the door and rushed into an empty room. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

  A gruff-looking man appeared through a doorway at the back, wiping his hands on an old rag. “Can I help you?”

  “There’s a bird trapped in the boathouse,” Sarah breathlessly explained. “A kingfisher. We have to save it.”

  The man surveyed her coldly, continuing to wipe his hands.

  “We have to get it out!” Sarah insisted. “We can’t leave it there. It’ll die!”

  “Probably half dead already,” the man said.

  “Look, have you got a ladder or something?” Michael interjected. “I can’t reach that bird without one.”

  “Sure, sure.” The man sauntered back through the door and returned moments later, carrying a metal stepladder.

  Taking the ladder, Michael lifted it easily through the door and down the stairs, Sarah trotting behind him, the man watching indifferently through the window at the door. When they reached the boathouse, Michael popped the ladder open. Sarah braced it on either side with her hands as he climbed up.

  “I don’t know how a kingfisher got stuck here,” he said. “I thought they migrated.”

  “Hurry Michael,” Sarah begged, clinging to the ladder as it listed to one side with his weight.

  The bird scrabbled to get away, one wild yellow eye glinting as Michael struggled to loosen the mesh. “It’s no good,” he said. “We need a hammer … or a set of pliers or something. I’ll have to ask that man.”

  Sarah was nearly beside herself with anguish by the time Michael reappeared from the house, running, pliers and hammer in hand. He skipped up the ladder and began working at the corner of the mesh with the claw of the hammer. Staples pinged through the air as Michael pulled the wire up, curling it forward. He reached his hand in, fingers outstretched, the bird flapping frantically before it collapsed.

  “You’ve killed it,” a contemptuous voice proclaimed.

  It was the caretaker, standing behind them, a supercilious smile across his face. Michael pushed his arm in farther, the wire pressing against the crux of his elbow. Folding his hand delicately over the back of the bird, he pulled it carefully along the glass to the opening, eased the bird free and released it.

  Sarah swooned as the kingfisher fell lifeless toward the ground, until suddenly, in a burst of instinct greater than fear, its wings shot out like switchblades at its sides, slicing the air, lifting it over the trees, across the glistening pond and down the slate-coloured river. They watched as the bird contracted to a tiny speck in the winter sky.

  Michael turned, flattened the wire against the window frame with a few good hits of the hammer and climbed down the ladder. Resting the tools on one of the rungs, he reached out to Sarah. She collapsed in his arms, sobbing against his chest, her body shaking, the taste of wool and tears in her mouth. He held her until her body was still, then lifted her face with his hand. Th
e man watched as Michael brushed the hair from her lips and eyes, kissing her devotedly. Without a word, Michael wrapped his arm around Sarah’s shoulders and began guiding her across the parking lot, their bodies falling in rhythm, their feet matching steps.

  When they reached the house, Michael helped her to the front door. He worked the key in the lock with one hand, holding Sarah firmly with the other as though he were afraid she would disappear should he let go. She clung to him with equal need as he pushed the door open and ushered her into the house. Using the ball of his foot to help secure the latch in the jamb, he closed the door against the cold. They moved to his room as a single unit and stood before the bed. Her hair danced with static as he removed the knit cap from her head and unwound her scarf. Fingers trembling, she fumbled with the smooth machined plastic of his coat buttons. They bent down together in a mirrored dance, knees touching as they reached the buttons at the bottom of each other’s coats, pushing the shoulders down, the coats sliding off in two dark heaps like lifeless skins against the floor. They moved to the bed, his mouth on hers, his hands working the buttons on her blouse. Placing her hand to his mouth, she kissed his lips between her fingers. He pulled her down on the bed, sliding her blouse over her shoulders and wrists, dropping it to the floor beside the coats, their bodies mingling at last in a tangle of skin and hair.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The secret project was finally out of the bag. Michael had animated the girl, in the same way he had given life to the images of John. “I wanted it to be a surprise,” he said. And it was, especially since he had given the girl Sarah’s face.

  “It’s not really your face,” he explained. “I blurred the corners. You have to look at it very closely to know that it’s you.”

  It frightened Sarah to see the diaphanous image of herself moving through the cyber-forest Michael had created, floating up to the oak tree, turning, waving invitingly.

  “What does it prove?”

  “Nothing,” he said, “But maybe you can lay the whole thing to rest, now that the girl has a context.”

  “But it didn’t work for John,” Sarah said. “It just made matters worse. Everything’s falling apart. The girl—I dream about her all the time now. And the woman crying, it sounds as if she’s right beside me. I can’t sleep at night any more, no matter how much medication I take. Just look at me!” She spun around to face him. “I’m a wreck. Can’t you see that? I’m a horrible wreck!” She folded in a sobbing heap to the floor.

  Michael ran to her, helped her to the bed. He laid her down, pulled the covers up and over her shoulders, tucking them in around her. “Rest.”

  Sarah stared glumly out the window. In her hand she held a note from the school, on official letterhead, requesting an explanation for the days she had missed: seventeen and a half. She wondered briefly what constituted the half day as the letter dropped listlessly from her hand, tracing gentle arcs to the floor. She turned her attention back to the view in her window. The birds filled the tree branches—house sparrows—trilling courageously against the cold. Chirping. Twittering. These were not happy sounds. They made her think of spring, the urgent singing, heralding the beginning of another mating cycle. More birds fighting for the right to breed. More nests built. More eggs laid. More chicks to hatch and screech for food, only to be blown out of the trees at the faintest hint of wind, too young to fly. It happened every spring. The starlings were the worst, their numbers legion to beat the cruelty of nature’s odds. And so, come April, the sidewalks would be littered with fledglings, hop-hop-hopping innocently along, their parents calling out encouragement from the trees and telephone wires. Every moment outside would be spent herding the little birds off the road and onto the grass, only to hear their pitiful squawks as they eventually succumbed to neighbourhood cats. Later, out walking, she would find a half-feathered wing on the sidewalk, or a tiny leg, a tuft of down still attached at the top.

  It was fitting, though, that so much death be associated with so much life. Some must go so that others may come—that’s what the little birds had taught her.

  There was a problem with the intravenous. The veins, over months of abuse, had collapsed. Arms like deflated inner tubes. Patched and gaunt. The skin withered, wrinkled, like old plums. The nurses poked and poked, a macabre quilting bee, the needle stabbing through the skin and out the other side.

  “What in God’s name is going on here?” the doctor demanded.

  A call was put in to the expert. She arrived, neat and pressed as a cotton blouse from the cleaners, knelt beside the bed, her kit at her feet. She stroked the molested arm sorrowfully, tenderly as a flower petal. Inspected the punctures and bruises. Ran a finger down the dry riverbeds of empty veins. Her silver needle found the hidden spring on first attempt, the quick drip, drip, drip of intravenous solution, until the plastic wheel was rolled back along the tube to stay theflow.

  A meeting was called. The staff depended upon meetings. It was determined that the hospital was no longer needed. Home care would ease the emotional burden, they said. And the burden on the taxpayer’s dollar. There was no real treatment required. Only maintenance. Morphine and saline. The sickness was too far gone for much else. But then the fever arrived almost as if to say, “See? Committees can’t predict everything.” The file was stamped “pending.”

  It was in the shower that Sarah discovered the stain on her ankle. Lathering her leg with soap, she scrubbed at it with a sponge. But as the suds swirled down the drain, she could see that the mark was still there. A wine-red stain, like a butterfly. She couldn’t reconcile it being there, so she ignored it. Although later, as she dressed, she couldn’t help but glance down and acknowledge it, a dull red Rorschach blot.

  As she stumbled toward sleep that night, the codeine pushing her down the hill toward unconsciousness, she met the woman’s cries pushing their way up. Sarah could see the girl, too, waiting for her in the shadows. With great effort she forced her mind to turn around, sent it scrabbling back up the hill again and into the light where the trap door waited for her.

  She crawled out of bed and with much effort inched one of the boxes from the little closet in her room over the blue-and-green rug to secure the door.

  Sarah clutched the sheets on the bed, eyes rolling. Was she dreaming or awake? She could not move, her body as heavy as wet concrete oozing into the mattress. Her tongue worked in the dry cave of her mouth, searching for the edges of words, twisting helplessly like a sticky red slug. With the force of great willpower, she inched her hand, painfully, deliberately, to the side of the bed, worked her fingers over the mattress and down to the cold metal frame to trace the letters engraved there: T.G.H. John appeared, hovering in the doorway. He glided into the room, opened the codeine bottle and extracted three tablets, pushing them one after the other between her parched lips, then watched as she lay there, waiting, the bitter tablets dissolving slowly in her mouth.

  There were five boxes over the trap door now. They made Sarah feel better about the nightly traffic in her room, even though the boxes hadn’t stopped anything. The footsteps, the voices whispering. Sometimes she would sit in the dark with the hope of catching them, bolting upright in bed, snapping the light on furiously. Or she would doze, eyes half open, hoping to trick them into showing themselves.

  The girl was getting bolder too. In a voice distant and ethereal, she started calling Sarah’s name. Sarah struggled to move her feet, terrified should the girl lure her successfully to the tree—yet desperate to reach it all the same. And the tree itself had started changing, seeming to come to life through the girl, embodying her desire and intent. It transmogrified to deceive Sarah, the leaves shimmering gold, then silver, the bark glinting like cut glass, then milky and smooth as porcelain. Sarah tried to fool it, tried to break its hold on her by slashing the tree on her hip with a razor blade, the blood blossoming like strange red fruit from its inky green branches.

  And then the phone, ringing. She thought not to pick it up, but for some r
eason couldn’t stop herself and did. She heard the ambient buzz in the background as she slowly lowered the handset to the cradle, a woman’s voice calling out repeatedly over the wire. “Hello? Hello?” It was the girl. Sarah was sure of it.

  When John appeared next, Sarah was shocked to discover him sitting in the middle of the bed holding her hand. She buried her face in her pillow until she was sure he was gone. When she finally raised her head, she was incensed to find her mother, dour, pitiful, sitting where John had been. She wanted to shout for her to leave, to get out of the room. But the codeine was in control, stealing the words like a soft-shoed thief from her mouth. Because it was all she could do, she turned her head from her mother in wordless protest, the way he had done.

  Blankets moulded over the body, skin bleached white as sheets. Eyes closed. Mind reeling. Silence occupying the rightful place of voiced rage, the passive demonstration ultimately, disappointingly impotent.

  Alone, Sarah forced herself to get out of bed. Teetering on unsure legs like a newborn calf, she worked her way to the door in stages: leaning on the side of the bed, clinging to the edge of the dresser, grappling for the door handle.

  In the bathroom she grasped the rim of the sink, staring at the stranger facing her in the mirror. Sunken cheekbones, eyes ringed with fatigue. Hair dull and lifeless, coming away in her hands. Wiggling her fingers over the garbage can, she watched as the hair floated down, light as a prayer into the trash.

  Coming off onto the pillow in a kind of nuclear-blast shadow of the head

  The nightgown was stubborn, catching at her wrists and her chin. She caught her breath and tugged, dropping the gown to the floor. The lip of the tub cut into the back of her legs as she perched there, marvelling at the size of her kneecaps beneath the thin veil of skin. Leaning forward, she allowed herself to slide into the tub. She worked the taps, turning them by squeaking inches, the water trickling from the spout and eventually gushing into the bottom of the tub, swirling around her feet and buttocks. Engaging the shower lever, she wrapped her arms around her legs and let the water spray over her shoulders and back. She would go to see Michael, she thought. She would tell him about her knees.