Extraordinary (10 page)
“Right. I remember that show.”
“I always liked that man, the actor who played John-Boy's father. Do you know his name?”
“No. But I remember the theme song.”
“Now we're
both
hearing it,” she said with a dry smile that made my heart contract.
***
More pills. I could hear her fingernails rattle against the side of the glass bowl.
The music changed. Glenn Miller's “Moonlight Serenade.” I hadn't heard it since that night with Chloe in the Montreal jazz club.
“Nice song,” I said.
She looked up sleepily. “Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman. One of those guys. I can't remember.”
We listened, both of us, those easygoing saxophones floating overhead like clouds.
“I have another favour to ask,” she said. “I want you to tell Chloe about this night we had. I want you to do it soon. I don't want her to think I died sad and alone. Will you do that?”
“I will.”
“Do you promise? Look me in the eye and promise.”
And I did. And I suddenly realized who the caller on the phone was.
She sighed. “Will you dance with me? I want to remember what it's like to be held in a man's arms.”
So we danced, the two of us. She dropped her crutches and I carried her, my chin to hers, and it struck me the way she nestled her chin into my shoulder that she was, after all this, still very much a girl at a teenage dance.
“Do you think there's an afterlife?” she said.
She was sinking into sleep. I said, holding her tight, holding her for my own life, it seemed, “If there
is
, will you let me know?”
A slow sigh, her eyes closed. “How would I do that?”
“Find a way to let me know. Find a way to tell me.”
For a second, I thought she had fallen asleep, but then her hand stirred and she said, “What would you do then?”
“I don't know. Maybe behave better. Or worse.”
“It's best not to know.”
“But don't you want to know?” I said.
Another sleepy pause, her head dropping down near her chest.
“I think I'd like to lie down. Will you help me?”
She was dead weight, her head bobbing against my shoulder. I lifted her in my arms and I took her and laid her on the couch on her back and straightened her legs and put a pillow under her head and sat beside her. I took her hand. It was still so warm, so lifelike. Her pulse fluttered like a tiny bird under her skin.
“When I was a little girl,” she said, “I used to go to sleep on the porch during the summer.They had a little bed out there for me. And sometimes, in the middle of the night, it'd start to rain. How I
loved
the sound of that rain. My grandfather used to come out, and he'd say, âSally, do you want to come inside?' And I'd say, âNo, Grandpa, I want to lie here. Will you stay with me?' And he'd say yes and sit down, and I could hear him settle into the chair and light his pipe, and I could smell the smoke drifting over to me, this delicious blue smoke, and I was so, so, so happyâjust the rain and my warm bed and my grandfather's tobacco. I was happy for eternity.”
“I'll stay with you,” I said.
“Will you?”
“Yes, Sally, yes, I will stay with you.”
For a long time, nothing, and then she mumbled something. I leaned over. “What?” I whispered. I put my ear to her mouth. “Yes?”
And then she said, or I think she said, “I'm almost there.”
Some quarter of an hour later, she took a deep breath, as though she was going to say something; and then she slowly exhaled. And then I never heard her breathe again. I kissed her on the forehead. I could feel the life leaving her body. I said, “I love you, I love you. Please take this with you wherever you're going.”
I had never before sat in the room with death. But I stayed with her because I have always suspected that there is something between dying and dying, a zone of after death that precedes extinction. And I wanted her to have company for it. Who knows when we're really born into consciousness or when we leave it?
I remained in my chair, holding her hand, speaking quietly to her. Suddenly, a wave of goosebumps covered my whole body; my voice broke; the tears streamed down my cheeks. “I'm so sorry,” I said. “I'm so sorry.”
Her hand grew still colder, and as it grew colder, I could feel a change come over her,
see
a change rather, and I understood for the first time in my life that we are born with a soul and that it inhabits our body our whole lifetime and when we die, reluctantly, like children leaving a park, our soul very gently disengages and moves off, like a shadow, and takes with it all that ever made us human, all that ever made us
us.
And behind, in its wake, is just a body, an uninhabited residence. The doors blowing open, the windows creaking. Grass growing up in the cracks in the floor.
So this is death, I thought. I touched my sister's face. It too had grown cold.
But still I stayed. “Will you tell me?” I said. “Will you find a way to tell me?” But from this body on the chesterfield in front of me, in its green dressing gown, her lips lipsticked, her brow unwrinkled, I knew that she had gone, and it felt as if I was talking to no one, talking to an empty room.
“Where did you go?” I said. “Where are you now?”
But there was no answer.
“Is there anyone there with you?”
I stayed with Sally's body until the sun came all the way up, a morning, I recall, almost metallic in its sheen. I taped the note about calling the police to the outside of her door. Then, certain the hall was empty, with the ashes of her son under my arm and my bottle of pills rattling like teeth in my pocket, I kissed her on the forehead. “Goodbye, Sally,” I said, “goodbye,” and then I went down the back stairs and went home.
Â
Â
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DAVID GILMOUR
is the critically acclaimed and internationally bestselling author of seven previous novels and one work of non-fiction. His books have been translated into 27 languages. For many years, Gilmour was a fixture on Canadian television as the national film critic for CBC's
The Journal
, as well as the host of his own Gemini Awardâwinning show,
Gilmour on the Arts
. He is presently the Pelham Edgar Professor of Literary Studies at Victoria College at the University of Toronto.
Â
Back on Tuesday
How Boys See Girls
An Affair with the Moon
Lost Between Houses
Sparrow Nights
A Perfect Night to Go to China
The Film Club
The Perfect Order of Things
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Extraordinary
© 2013 by Back on Tuesday Inc.
A Patrick Crean Edition, published by HarperCollins
Publishers Ltd
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E-Pub Edition: August 2013
ISBN: 978-1-44342-372-4
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