I opened my eyes and looked around the room. I recognized the faded floral sleeve of my old nightgown. I believed the bed to be my own but the blue walls to be someone else’s. I knew there was no need to rise for work, but why exactly escaped me. My pillow was damp, puzzling until the memory of my jaunt to the ocean came flooding back, a memory so vivid yet so incomplete. Logistics, mostly—how I got there and how I got here. Then I knew everything. This brain of mine, slipping so spectacularly, then snapping back into action to deliver the hard truth of things so clearly.
The walk to the bathroom felt like a marathon. I startled Annie, who was sitting on the toilet, fully dressed and blowing smoke out the open window.
“Jesus, you nearly gave me a heart attack.” She opened her legs and dropped the cigarette into the bowl. “I was afraid Angela would show up and catch me, and I’m in no mood for a lecture. How are you?”
“Fading fast, apparently.”
I brushed my teeth while she kept a close eye.
“Listen, I asked my doctor to come and give you a quick check.”
“Annie,” I pleaded.
“Don’t you whine at me. You’re lucky I didn’t cart your naked carcass straight to the hospital last night.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry. Thank you for looking after me.”
“You can thank me by letting Dr. Patel have a run at you.”
Annie’s doctor gave me the once-over. She was concerned about my blood pressure, too low. Pulse, thready and jumpy. Arms and legs, weak. Memory, patchy. In other words, nothing new to report. As she was leaving, I asked her to pass me my phone and I called my own doctor. I left a message for her to ring me back as soon as possible. I hung up and Annie stepped into the room.
“Who were you calling?”
“My doctor. How did I get back here last night?”
“Cyril thought you were a bit off. He called me to come down and see to you. The one time I’m thankful for big mouths in a small town.” She sat on the edge of the bed and looked around the room. “I was thinking about setting up a table there by the armchair so we can have meals in here.”
I nodded. “Good plan.”
She brought me tea and toast in bed. I napped until my phone rang. Dr. Langley. I waited until the last second to answer. She told me that Annie had called her earlier that morning and filled her in on my latest adventure. She laid out a plan and I agreed. I got up, dressed, double-checked that everything was on right side out, then found Annie in the kitchen, washing a frying pan in the sink.
“Was that your doctor on the phone?” she said without turning around.
I sat at the table. “Yes.”
“What did she have to say for herself?”
“The thirtieth. Ten days’ time. Seven o’clock in the evening. She’ll be bringing a nurse with her.”
She rinsed the pan and laid it in the drainer, wiped her hands with a towel, then rested them on her hips. She stood like that for long moments, facing the window, saying nothing.
“Annie, it has to be done soon or I’ll lose my ability to consent,” I said. “And then where would we be?”
She turned around. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay.”
We sat outside in the cool fog and kept an easy silence. At first, I found a peculiar delight in knowing the exact moment of my death, a privilege not afforded to others. How many people in the world would die at that exact moment and not see it coming, all their unfinished business left dangling? I would plan my day, say my farewells, and make my tidy exit, all my affairs in order. I’d tapped the date into my calendar with a sense of cool detachment, no more feeling than if it had been an appointment for a teeth cleaning. But looking at that date on a calendar for a few fascinating moments was one thing. Living through ten days of it looming—now there was the rub.
“So what now?” Annie asked.
“More of the same, I expect.”
“This is a rough business, isn’t it?” she said, her voice breaking.
“Could be a lot rougher.”
“You go lie down. I’ll bring you some lunch in a bit.”
She came with a tray of food that I left untouched while we watched television. Through the window I saw that the sky had grown dark and threatened rain. Summer’s days were as numbered as my own, and I had a sudden hankering for one snowy hour before I left, sixty minutes of sparkly flakes that floated down, coating everything in sight.
Annie spent the rest of the day organizing my room. A card table with a white cloth, a portable CD player, and a thick stack of music she thought I would like. A vase of field flowers, a white plastic chair for the shower dug out from the basement (a holdover from when she’d broken her leg after a fall in the icy driveway years before), and a worn photo album filled with pictures from our glory days.
“My God, look at you. That was the day you won the English essay prize, remember that, Frances? And they made you read it at the assembly. I thought you were going to pass out you were so pale.”
She flipped the pages laughing and shrieking at her outfits and hairdos. I looked back through my life and saw the happiness in it. All the Christmases and birthdays Annie and I had celebrated together. The class photos, the ones of us at school concerts and dances—all documenting the ascending stages of our growth, with Annie blossoming like a wild rose and me doing my best to grab any leftover sunlight. And in every photo, either up front and centre or lurking somewhere in the background, a priest, a nun, a hanging crucifix. The reminders of the faith we’d once been ruled by.
Annie got up and walked to the bookcase and pulled out a small blue binder. “Here. I’ve been saving this one.”
She handed it to me, then left me alone. I opened it and gasped at the black-and-white picture of my mother and father standing side by side, squinting at the sun and smiling. It was the photo that had sat on the table beside their bed, the one taken moments after they were married. She wore a simple knee-length dress and a small round hat on her head. He wore a dark suit that hung loosely on his narrow frame, the same suit his brother had worn at his own wedding a year before. I ran my hand over the image. They were plain, the pair of them, but made beautiful by love and hope. I pulled the photo out of the binder and turned it over—“Georgina and Patrick Delaney, Wedding Day,” written in my mother’s hand. There were a couple more pictures of the two of them, a few of me as a baby, several more of the three of us together. Only about a dozen or so in total, but still a worthy collection for a family that didn’t even own a camera. I took the wedding day photo and another of me—age four, according to the back—sitting between them on a blanket near the shoreline. I propped them up against the vase on my nightstand, then limped down the hall to the kitchen.
“How long have you had those photos?”
“Years. They were in the box with your books.”
“Years?”
“Frances, why are you shouting?”
“When were you going to show them to me?”
“I was saving them for you to have when your time was winding down.”
“Cutting it a bit close, aren’t you? What if I’d died before you showed them to me?”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I could have.”
“Then I’d have to get ‘World’s Worst Friend’ tattooed across my forehead, wouldn’t I? But you’re still alive, so stop yelling your damn head off and say thank you.”
I was too tired to continue with my pout. “Fine. Thank you.”
“Much nicer. I believe this dying is playing havoc with your manners.”
“I’m not doing manners anymore,” I said and went back to bed. I was still sleeping when Edie called.
“You look tired, Frances. Are you getting enough sleep?”
“All I do is sleep, it seems. But you look great. Tell me what’s happening in Edieland.”
“Mom met Tareq and she was sweet as pie to him, so points for that, but the minute he left, she was in my face about how I was in over my head with a guy who had no business being interested in a sixteen-year-old, blah, blah. Then she starts in on how terrified she is of me getting pregnant, which you and I both know is a colossal joke. So now we’re not speaking. It’s a mess, but I figure I just ride her out, right?”
“She’ll find her way over to your side. What choice does she have?”
“Exactly. It’s not like she’s putting me off him. I mean, how does she see this playing out? Me climbing out my bedroom window at midnight and her chasing me down the driveway with a rolling pin? I’m telling you, she’s doing me in. I’m hoping Hillary will talk some sense into her. She was here last night, and I could tell she was already over to my side. Oh, she said to say hello to you, and that she misses you at the library.”
“Ah, Hillary. She’s a good soul. Tell her I miss her too.”
“I emailed Annie to ask her how you were doing. Like, really doing. But she said I had to ask you.”
“I think things are winding down for me, Edie.”
“How do you know?”
“I can just feel it.”
“What does it feel like? Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t ask.”
“No, no, it’s fine. Physically, it’s just more of what you’ve already seen, but otherwise it’s not all bad. It’s like everything is clear and sharp, like the faces on the screen at the movie theatre. Or how everything looks after the sun burns through fog. I don’t know how to explain it. I guess it’s that life has a way of coating things and death has a way of scrubbing them clean. I don’t know if that makes any sense.”
“No, I get it. I guess it’s that there’s nothing competing for your attention anymore, right? Like there’s only one thing to focus on.”
“There you go. Smart girl.”
“Yeah, tell my mother that, will you? She thinks I’m throwing my life away.”
“You’ll prove her wrong. Of that, I have no doubt.”
“You’ll still be here for me to visit again, right?”
“I can’t promise you that, love.”
She welled up but rallied quickly. “Just do what you can, all right?”
“I will.”
“I guess I better go. I’m supposed to be tidying my room.” She moved her phone around to show me the disaster zone I remembered so well.
“Edie Cleary, I swear one of these days they’re going to find Jimmy Hoffa under your bed.”
“Who’s Jimmy Hoffa?”
“Good night, Edie.”
“Later, Frances.”
I held my phone in my hand long after she’d disappeared from the screen. I knew she’d eventually find out how I died. But I also knew she’d make peace with it. It was just her way.
Annie came in with a plate of supper for me, but I had no desire for it. “I’m sorry for being cranky earlier,” I said.
“Please, you’ve met my daughter. You’re an amateur crank.”
She got in the bed and spooned in behind me. At the four o’clock alarm, she got up, fed me my medicine, and stroked my hair until I fell asleep again.
THE NEXT DAY, SHE took me down to the shore and slowly led me to the dory. Nine more days. When we stopped at the store on the way home, every item seemed to be ninety-nine cents or nine ninety-nine—nines everywhere I looked. As we drove, the squid pressed play on the loop: cloud nine, the back nine, a stitch in time saves nine, the whole nine yards, dressed to the nines, nine lives. I had to turn on the radio to drown it out.
“I feel like we’re wasting time on some sort of massive scale,” Annie said.
“How do you mean?”
“Like we should be doing something more important than sitting in an old boat and eating macaroni and cheese and watching movies we’ve seen before, you know?”
“What’s more important than that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been racking my brain to come up with some flashy send-off and I’m stumped.”
“I’m hardly the flashy send-off type.”
“Still.”
We pulled into the driveway and Annie shut off the car.
“I just don’t want you to get to the last day and feel like you missed the chance to do something you’ll never forget. Something truly spectacular.”
“Annie, believe me, I’m doing that every minute of every day.”
I pictured her carefully packing away Stephen’s possessions and rolling the paint on the bedroom walls. I thought of the boxes of books and pictures gathering dust in attics for decades. The lash of her voice against Angela’s indignation, the sound of her laughter at the tavern. The taste of her mouth and the gift of her touch. Her coarse demand for Cyril’s silence. The flowers beside my bed, the weight of her foot on mine, and the warmth of her breath on my neck as we slept. Spectacular.