She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this, Thou know’st how dry a cinder this world is.
—DONNE
The hospice room is impersonal beige. It is a monotonous room, semi-private, with an opaque curtain between the beds. There is a faint aroma of flowers. The flowers are withering. Ross Porter sits in a plastic tubular chair beside the bed. Emily is sleeping now. He gazes vacantly out the window at the white, bitter world that is home. Outside a blizzard howls and ice pellets rap against the window with frigid, merciless fingers.
Three weeks ago they had come home. Ten days later, here: into the pastel uniforms and the stainless steel beds and strange apparatus of sickness, into the reassuring voices whose eyes told another tale, into this room with flowers wilting and tubes in her arms and plasma bags hanging from a chrome-plated tree.
Into metastasis.
As the cancer grew it contracted their world, collapsing it into this single room, and outside was a winter so different from the warm, sunny place they had left behind. She would not go to hospital in Florida. Too far away from her family and the comfort of ending where she had begun. She did not say this but he understood. The French teacher, too, understood. She was out of the house by the time they arrived having found an apartment and, leaving their home almost as she had found it, expressed in a note her sympathy. She was a fine young woman. He was sorry he had resented her.
For a week they lived there, at home. Other than visits to the doctor, they saw no one but family. Robert and Anne came every day. Anne made dinner each evening. They would eat at the table with one empty chair. Emily took what food she could in her bed. Ross would serve her after dinner and the kids would go home to put Justin to sleep. The boy had come with them just once. Emily was so happy to see him. But she fell asleep while he visited her and he cried when she would not awaken. After that they thought it best to leave him at home.
Ross took the phone calls which started coming and thanked everyone for their concern. Eventually he used the answering machine so he would no longer have to employ his brave voice. And quickly, so quickly Emily was brought to the hospice. The cancer had metastasised faster than any doctor had predicted.
And now she sleeps in her own small world, in a beige room where consciousness comes and goes at a whim and agony has become her lover. She can hardly speak for the drugs. This morning she did not recognise Ross. The pain lover blocked all things out but itself. And Ross, sitting there exhausted, tormented, once again found himself impotent.
“It’s me, Em,” he said softly. But her eyes were glazed and did not see him and even when he took hold of her hand there was nothing in return; just a small, dry hand lying in his own. He cried then; even while sitting at her bedside he felt already abandoned. He cried for her, for her suffering, and cried as well for his empty future. He wished death for her to end her agony yet willed her more life for himself.
And now he sits while she is asleep and looks out the window at the white world. It is silent here in this sterile room. The patient in the next bed is a stranger. She does not speak. She listens to her headphones behind the dividing wall of the curtain. The white cold pelts against the window. Despite the blizzard Ross remembers another time: he recalls Emily in their garden. Tulips bloom up to her knees as she stands in their midst, blooming as well: brown from the sun, pale yellow dress, smiling for the camera as he takes her picture.
Glimpses.
“Oh Ross, what a wonderful day!” she says laughing, and he laughs with her for on days like this which roll by long and sunny one never thinks beyond the mirage. Flowers do not die. Not really. They resurrect each spring. Emily’s eyes shimmer with life. Her body is beautiful. In a yellow sun dress. Ross kisses her softly her lips pressed to his, her back warm and smooth beneath his hands with the smell of her fresh as spring flowers and she is so ... alive.
“Ross?”
The murmur snaps him back to the white world and her gaunt face gazing up at him for the first time this day in recognition. At her temple he glimpses her pulse quivering. He takes her hand once again and is thrilled to his heart by its response. She squeezes his hand in return, weakly, but still she is present and loves him and he is no longer alone.
“Emily,” he whispers.
“How long was I sleeping?”
“A while.”
“Have you been home? How long have you been here?”
“I won’t leave you.”
“Don’t be foolish.”
“Don’t worry.”
A muscle twitches below her eye. She closes her eyes, steeling herself. He can only guess at her pain.
“Should I get a nurse? Do you want something? More medicine?”
“Not yet,” she says, fighting hard now against the spasm. “We have to talk ...”
“What is it? Anything, Em.”
“Don’t ... try not to be frightened, Ross.”
“I won’t ...”
“After I’m gone. Try not to give in.”
“I’m alright. Really.”
“Don’t lie to me. Get some help. Please. If not for yourself then do it for me. I don’t want to leave you so frightened.”
“Emily, what am I going to do?” he answers hoarsely. He rests his head on the bed by her side and feels her frail hand run soft through his hair. Even now she comes to his aid.
“I’m not scared anymore,” she says softly. “I was before but not now ...”
Her hand quivers in his hair. He looks up at her and sees someone there he has never seen. Her eyes dark now, ringed, pierce through him. She seems to look somewhere beyond him to a place he cannot follow. Her breathing has quickened. It comes in short gasps. Her eyes never waver.
“Emily?”
She does not answer. Yet she is conscious. He knows she is conscious. He should get the nurse. His wife is in pain. She needs medication. But she is with him. How can he leave? Her hand is icy. He leans over the bed, over her body putting his hands on each side of her face, his own face inches from hers.
“Emily!”
The eyes focus. He sees her recognise him.
“Water,” she whispers, her voice like air.
“Yes. Right away.”
He pulls away from her reaching for the thermos on the tray by the bed. His hands are shaking. He pours the water clear as diamonds, flowing like rainbows, into a tumbler. He spills some. It splashes off the tray in a minuscule fountain. He sets the thermos in the forming pool. Wavelets ring out around its base. He takes the cup in both hands and leans over her.
Her eyes are open. They are no longer blue. They are colourless.
And he is alone.
In his hands the water cup rests like an offering then slips through his fingers: tipping, spilling, sparkling, shimmering, to the floor.
Dank, green chlorophyll twilight around him, on each side of the path impenetrable foliage forces him down its narrow course; tree branches reach out to scratch him. Their leaves are sharp, their bark stubbled with thorns. His arms are bleeding and a gash in his temple drips blood with the sweat that rolls down from his hair. It is oven hot in the passage; a sticky, stifling heat which makes each step arduous, each footfall more lethargic. The ground beneath him is mossy mud and his shoes sink into the earth and the earth tries to suck them from his feet. He is surprised by his shoes: dress shoes. They are wing-tipped brown leather. He cannot understand why he would wear such things here. They leave roundtoed footprints in his wake, filling with water, quickly submerged.
He wants to stop, turn, heave himself back up the suffocating trail. But there is some presence in the trees and the earth and the black oily water which urges him on. For beneath its terror lies a strange promise; a pledge so nebulous he cannot comprehend it. And yet it is there, beckoning, pushing him down the narrow, wet passage bathed in emerald twilight.
He trudges on in his wing-tipped shoes.
At first he has a vague feeling of being watched. He begins to glimpse faces inside the verdure. Almost unseen, he catches them with peripheral glances but as soon as he turns they are gone. Then others appear and instantly dissolve into the leaves and snaking branches. He catches sight of them in the ground peering up through the brackish water, green like moss. He feels his shirt drenched with sweat. He is wearing a suit. Charcoal double-breasted. Why, in this hellish place, is he wearing a suit and wing-tipped shoes and a striped tie hanging like a leaf down his belly?
Ridiculous. He is ridiculous.
Then the laughter begins: the faces chuckling at first, then giggling, then building to harsh, mocking mirth. He keeps turning and turning but he cannot spot them. He sees only glimpses of tongues like pink petals rising and receding. Laughing, moving flowers. Why are they laughing?
“I have a right to be here!” he screams.
They cackle on. Yet now he thinks he knows them. He can tell from their voices. Emily. Emily is laughing at him. And he hears his father. And Robert and Anne snorting together. Jimmy White sniggering. Andy Taylor joins in and then the higher pitch of Justin. Devil Justin. Child mocking his grandfather. All of them louder. The air moving from their breath.
“Shut up!” he shouts. “I know who you are! Shut up!”
And they stop.
And Ross Porter awakens. The clock radio jabbers noisily on the table by his bed. His heart hammers a painful tattoo. He is soaked in sweat. He slaps his hands over his face. Then he looks at them. They are shaking. The blue veins on the backs of his hands look like tree limbs. Peering past his hands he sees on a chair at the foot of the bed his charcoal suit, the wingtip shoes on the floor beneath it. Winter half-light seeps in through the window. It is eight o’clock, the announcer tells him. Time to get up. Time to shower the sweat from his body, dress in his suit, clear his mind. Time to shut out the laughter. There will be none of that today.
He groans as he rises. His body aches. For a moment his vision flattens and black comets cross his eyes. He can feel his pulse pounding deep down. The room is stuffy, its windows closed to a winter morning. It will be cold today at the funeral, he thinks. He must wear a T-shirt beneath his dress shirt so he will not shiver. Someone might take it the wrong way.
The room in the funeral home is bone white with burgundy chairs and a carpet worn beige from the trudge of mourners. Banks of flowers ring the casket. A soft little man with wire glasses, black suit and tie and soft little shoes pads here and there through the room, preparing. He plumps up the bouquets of flowers, checks his watch, straightens a couple of chairs and joins Robert by the double doors at the entrance. He speaks in whispered condolences. Ross does not like the man. He may be a good man for all Ross knows, but right now he is the manager of the business of death, and he walks too softly.
Ross sits in a chair against the white wall. Robert joins him: Armani suit, silk shirt, rich and soft and strong. He possesses the qualities of his mother.
They are not mine. That is certain.
“We’re going to go back to the lounge now. George wants to open the doors soon.”
“I’ll stay here.”
“It’s better if you come with us. George will take care of seating people. He has to close the coffin, dad.”
“I know. I just, want to be alone for a couple of minutes.”
“Of course. I’ll tell George to hold off.”
“Tell him to leave too.”
“Alright. I’ll come back for you shortly.”
“You’re a wonderful son, Robert. Thank you.”
“Are you okay?”
“I just need some time here.”
She lies, soft and fragile alabaster, the work of the sculptor mortician in the satin folds of the coffin. She is dressed in pale blue and her hands are clasped. The cancer ravages have been erased and so many have said how beautiful she looks, how peaceful. He has not looked at her until now. He has been busy receiving: warm, too long handshakes, embraces, kisses and condolences until he cannot clearly remember a single moment of these past nights. The visitations have passed like shadows. He looks down at her now and does not find her beautiful. Her beauty lived in her sparkle, in the way she would cock her head or flutter her hands, in her sense of humour and the passionate flame of her living. That was her beauty. Now she is nothing.
A cinder.
He moves away from the coffin, terrified. He backs down the aisle toward the closed doors at the end of the white room. His mouth is dry. Comets slash his vision again. Something snaps in the back of his mind. He turns and opens the doors and leaves. He passes the soft padding funeral man but no longer sees him. He walks out into the cutting winter wind in a trance.
George runs to find Robert. This will not do.
After ten minutes Robert finds Ross by the garage where the hearse is waiting. His father is leaning on the hearse. He seems to be looking at wind, his face a blank slate.
“Dad?”
“Huh?”
“Dad!”
“Rob?”
“Are you alright?”
“Yes. Uh, I am now. Thanks, son.”
“It’s time to go in.”
“I ... I know.”
The two men link arms and re-enter the building. They wait with their family in the lounge. They are given the signal from George and go into the service. Ross sits through it all very quietly. The people attending watch him carefully. He thinks they whisper to each other how strong he is, how courageous. But he is not with them at all.
He will not accept this service, even as he hears it.
This minister speaks of an afterlife.
We all guess and hope.
It ends. It just ends.
No. It is something more.
It comes in the final words of the dead, mystical, as it came from Emily.
Water.
That which gives life.
A sacred water.
In a secret place ancient and deathless.
I have read of this.
From the past comes knowledge.
I was meant to do this.
All my life.
I will find this water.
Emily told me.
I will find the water of life.