The Book of Living and Dying (21 page)

“Open the window,” Donna said. She helped from the other side as Sarah reached clumsily across the bed and forced the window up.

“What are you doing here?” she mumbled. “It’s freezing out.”

“Come to the Queen’s with me.”

Sarah stared blankly back at her. She wanted to go to Michael’s. But he was busy, working on his secret project. “Give me a minute,” she said. “I’ll meet you out front.”

The window rattled shut and Donna disappeared from the frame. Sarah rubbed her face with her hands and got up from bed. Plucking a pair of blue dress socks from the pile of dirty laundry, she sat on the bed, crossing one leg over the other, her bare foot stuck in the air to receive the sock. It looked odd to see her foot like that—suddenly exposed—like his feet.

Sprouting out from beneath the sheets like old turnips. Yellowed. The nails hard and overgrown. Seemingly detached, as if placed there for a gag. It took several rounds with the nail clippers to tame those nails, the clippings firing wildly across the room. And the lotion. Gallons of scented emollient applied by the hour to the gentle hum of a lullaby. Hands folding and unfolding like a dove’s wings, taking special care over the birthmark on the left ankle, a butterfly-shaped bloodstain.

It wasn’t right for the living to be obsessed with the dead, Sarah concluded disdainfully, working the socks over her feet, then leaning drunkenly on the bed, drained from the effort. She reached down and recovered her jeans, inching them slowly up her legs and over her hips, past the oak tree tattoo. Pulling an old sweatshirt over her head, she didn’t even bother checking her face in the mirror or brushing her teeth before shuffling into the hall for her boots and coat.

The expression on Donna’s face when Sarah emerged from the house caused her to search her purse for her compact. Looking in the small round mirror, she laughed softly at her own indifference.

“Don’t worry about it,” Donna reassured her. “You look like you know all the right people, if you know what I mean …”

At the Queen’s, Sarah chose their usual booth at the back of the shop, away from the other students. Donna ordered fries and coffee. Sarah ordered tea. She noticed that Donna didn’t smoke. Didn’t even pull out her Zippo the way she normally would. She caught Donna’s eyes flickering over the burn on her hand. Unspoken concern. They sipped their drinks self-consciously, trying to ignore the uncomfortable silence.

“I found footprints by the bed,” Sarah finally said. She took the bottle of codeine from her purse and swished a couple tablets back with a gulp of tea.

Donna’s cup stopped midway to her lips, her gaze shifting momentarily to the near-empty bottle of codeine.

“That’s how I knew he came into my room,” Sarah continued.

Donna nodded, her face blank.

She doesn’t believe me,
Sarah thought. “He took the knife, too,” she persevered. “I’m sure of it.”

“What knife?”

“The one I took to bed with me.”

Donna seemed to ponder this for a moment, then started in about malevolent ghosts. Hadn’t Sarah seen
The Haunting,
or
The Woman in Black?
Some ghosts attach themselves to one person in particular and make it their business to haunt that person to the end of their days.

Make it their business.
Sarah found something amusing
in that, in the face of everything. The business of ghosts. Even in death, the drive to pursue a higher purpose. No malingering for you, ghosts. Get off your spectral duffs and make a name for yourself! Sarah laughed out loud.

“Poltergeists,” Donna persisted. “Sometimes they’ll even follow you if you move away, so there’s no sense trying to outsmart them. They’ll find you, no matter where you go.”

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. The 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.

T
he 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.