“I’m not myself, Norah. I’m sorry, I can’t.” He tucked my hair behind my ear. “I don’t feel all that good today.”
He looked beaten. I felt victorious. It wasn’t me. He grasped the back of his neck. “I can’t think. I’m hearing two voices all the time and I don’t know which one’s me, I don’t know which one’s right. I can’t concentrate on anything and it’s hurting me.”
A giggle bubbled up my throat, but I gulped it down and furrowed my brow. Listening is bonding too. I’d bring him back. I stroked his hair and it felt soft and faint, not greasy like I’d expected at all. I guided his head down to my lap, and he sank into me, forgetting that I was another person and not part of his body. All the while, I wore my worried face, and a little piece of me tried to work out why I didn’t care. It was sort of nice to have him limp and semi-conscious across my knee. All I wanted to do was make sure he didn’t fall too ill, so sick that he needed official intervention. I could handle this. Hot broths. Blankets. Vitamin C. Ibuprofen. Easton Grove couldn’t know.
If they caught wind of this, everything would go wrong.
I wonder now how things would have turned out differently if I’d just talked to him, or dragged him by his hair from that study, even when the door looked so firmly closed.
When the world was quiet, I sent Art up to bed while I turned off the lamps. The last room to do was the kitchen, and as I emptied our glasses down the sink I took a good hard look at the houseplants I’d arranged on the windowsill before New Year. They were dry as straw, their leaves emaciated and dark. The trunk of my yucca plant had become a thigh bone. Maybe the fertilisers hadn’t been enough. Chemicals on chemicals. Fire on fire.
In the centre of the row, Aubrey’s succulent still held her petals though they were in significantly lower numbers than last time I checked. Art must have thrown them out without telling me.
I looked past the boneyard into the garden beyond. The light from the kitchen only reached so far, illuminating the funereal bluebells. The far end of the garden was a void, but I swore I could still see the outline of the berry bush by the far fence, its branches stretching towards the house like arms. No matter how many times I went out with the hedge-trimmers, those limbs kept returning – reaching out into space for something solid to grasp onto.
13
Trash TV became my friend. You can trust the fair-weather faces of actors and news presenters to tell you the truth, and even a pre-written, cold script can warm the heart. It’s selfish pleasure, guzzling it down because we don’t have to give anything back. No pretending.
From coming home from work to going to bed I never switched it off, and yet never watched a single show all the way through. I couldn’t lose myself in it like I used to. The characters seemed artificial, hollow, and I found myself picking my nails, pulling at loose threads on my clothes. Sometimes the TV schedule changed without notice and regular shows were replaced with feature length films featuring case studies of Easton Grove. A year earlier and I’d have guzzled these down, I might’ve even taken minutes. But now the only mental notes I made logged the glazed eyes of the “star”, the way their hands sat clasped tight and white on their laps. And the things they didn’t say. Whether there looked to be chains beneath the table, or a shadow of a puppeteer overhead. Whenever the show’s focus moved to the ovum organi I switched over. I couldn’t stomach it.
No. The only programme which had a chance of waking me up was the news.
One night that November, I was watching a “breaking news” bulletin on the sofa while I massaged Nut’s shoulder blades. The announcement had been really built up, with teasers during the ad breaks all evening. When the time came, the newsreader could hardly contain her glee. She grinned from ear to ear, her finger scrolling through her tablet as the story unfolded. “A new development in the gifting of life”, she called it. Her voice oddly clucking, she continued to explain that a new programme had launched officially today, and now older people with incurable illnesses could offer to donate their organs to the young as replacements or spares. These “persons in prime” had to be a blood relation and compatible, and in return the older donors received a premium to fund their funerals and settle their affairs. If the donation was a life-terminating one or they died within six months after the procedure, they also received an additional premium to go to a recipient of their choice.
This system had been in and out of the news for a few years but it wasn’t until then that the law had finally been passed. The breathy newsreader cut to an interview with a flushed governmental official and a weak-chinned NHS senior manager, before showing footage of cheering families standing outside of their local hospitals, the blazing, unnatural sun making their skin glow. The report didn’t say if the hospitals behind the young people reaching for the sky were regional branches of Easton Grove, or whether they were newer organisations springing up around the country, but I’m sure I caught the odd gleam of bronze pinned to the most crisply pressed lapels.
I tasted bile.
Though I could appreciate the sense of balance between the old and the new, what frame of mind must you be in to relinquish your life like that? Even if you’d been told your end was coming, what must it feel like to be willing to just give up?
In amongst all the officials and happy
