An Astronaut's Life (2 page)

So you go.

Things settle quickly into a routine. You pace your return to work with a day here
and there, and in your spare time you renovate the back room into a nursery. The
sanding and painting are meditative and you appreciate the time for contemplation.

One night, the nursery almost complete, Melinda shuffles in to admire your work.

‘It's wonderful,' she beams. ‘Remember, happy
families are all happy in the same
way. You remember that?'

‘No. What?'

‘From the book.
Anna Karenina
?'

The reading again. She won't let go of the reading.

‘You know I don't remember.'

‘Try? Try harder.'

‘I've tried my very hardest. The hardest I'm ever going to try, and I don't remember
anything you said to me. I was unconscious.'

You're holding the tiny paintbrush, the one you're using to highlight the foam on
the waves you've painted across the cupboard doors. You gesture with it as you continue
talking.

‘And, if I do remember anything about that quote, it's probably from before.'

You and Melinda have divided your life together into ‘before' and ‘since then'. In
your conversations there is no coma. There is only the reading and your stubborn
lack of memory of the reading.

‘So you do remember something?'

Melinda is eight months pregnant and she's still at work. It's a growing point of
conflict between you and your mother. Pregnant women who have husbands
should be
allowed to rest. Husbands who have pregnant wives should work extra hard to make
a life for their family.

Your pregnant wife is still in her work clothes, her face tired and lined, stockinged
feet no doubt aching.

‘I don't remember anything.' You wave your tiny paintbrush. ‘All I remember is something
from before.
All unhappy families are unhappy in their own way
.'

‘You do remember!'

‘I don't.'

‘You don't even know if you do or not. You can't say exactly where that memory came
from.'

‘Then what difference does it make? You've obviously misunderstood its meaning anyway.'

‘Can't you just appreciate something? Can't you just say, “Maybe I do remember, maybe
your reading saved me”? Just maybe. Give us maybe?'

The
us
, of course, meaning Melinda and your mother, whose differences seem forgotten
in the face of your continuing refusal to recall.

‘Maybe you should leave me alone.'

Later, you hear Melinda on the phone to your mother. You're out on the patio, sanding
your sister-in-law's old
cot. You don't listen because you know the theme of the
conversation:
He wasn't like this before
. It's as if the other you, the one from
before, grows larger and greater with each night that passes. And you, the ‘since
then' you, can only become colder and sadder in his shadow.

After a while, you realise you've pulled a muscle in your shoulder so you stop sanding
and go in. Melinda is already in bed and the house is quiet. You head into the study,
a tiny cupboard-like room that holds a chair and some books and an old filing cabinet.
You sort through the books. Melinda has left them to jog your memory. You pick up
Anna Karenina
and read the first line and console yourself that Melinda has barely
remembered it herself. There are some others in the pile:
Great Expectations, To
the Lighthouse
. William Faulkner's
As I Lay Dying
. You can't believe they read that
to you while you were in a coma.

You turn out the light and head down the corridor to bed.

Late at night, Francis's wife would collect him from his place on the sofa.

‘Come, my darling,' she'd whisper, then look at you as though to say:
Again? Is this
necessary?

‘We're on the verge of something,' you told her once. ‘He is. It could be huge, change
the world.'

‘One world-changing discovery isn't enough for a man?' she said.

‘But can you imagine? If we understood? His theories about the mind?'

Francis woke and shuffled out, his shirt creased and belt undone. His wife slipped
her hand around his waist.

‘Goodnight,' she whispered.

In Francis's absence the urgency of his work was only greater. The weakness that
overcame him at the end of each day, and the hint of some illness he had not confided,
only heightened your sense of purpose. Francis never once woke to find anything less
than a complete version of his notes, typed with footnotes and annotated for review.
In his quiet home, into the early hours of the morning, you worked to piece together
the questions that remained and the pathways that might emerge; that might take you
to a more complete understanding of the human mind.

By the time you undressed for bed your body was heavy with fatigue. In the darkness
of your second-floor room you'd slip into sleep even as your clothes fell. Under
the covers you slept solidly, hardened against the
nighttime doubts that plagued
regular people. You'd wake soon; Francis would be waiting.

You start back at work full-time. You don't want people to think you're not trying.
By people, you mean Melinda and your mother. No one else seems to think there's a
timeline for recovery. In fact, most other people expect a coma should have changed
you. You should be more spiritual now, or more adventurous. Instead, you make painstaking
efforts to appear exactly the same as you were
before
.

At lunchtime on Tuesdays you drive to your mother's to organise her medication because
the labels are too small for her to read. You sort pills into a tray with a section
for each day of the week. She resents it, every time.

‘Doctors,' she sniffs, as if either one of you would still be alive without them.

‘Doctors,' you say back.

‘They don't know everything.'

‘No. They don't.'

‘Neither do you.' She's satisfied.

‘Mum?' you begin. ‘I'm sorry I've been different.'

‘You've changed. Totally different from before.'

‘I know. I have. I'm sorry I have, but I want you to know I really appreciate all
you did. The reading. Sitting by my bed.'

‘I'm not dying, am I?'

‘Not right now.'

‘You?'

‘No. Not with any urgency. I'm just trying to do the right thing. Get us back to
normal.'

‘You used to be so—'

‘No, Mum, I am. I'm back. Okay?'

She starts to cry, and it's as though you've woken up from the coma all over again.
You feel guilty for hurting her.

‘I'm sorry,' you say again.

‘I'm sorry, too.'

‘You've no need to be.'

‘That's true. It was Melinda who thought you'd never wake up. I knew. I never gave
up hope.' She reaches out to hug you and knocks the tray of tablets. They spill out
onto the table and you have to separate them. White ones from yellow ones.

‘Melinda never stopped hoping, Mum. Look what she did—all the books, the reading.'

‘I did that, too.'

‘I know. You both did. You both saved me.'

‘For a few weeks it was. The reading was both of us. The other thing? That was her.'

‘What thing?'

‘The thing with the baby.'

‘What about the baby, Mum? It's mine, isn't it?'

‘Oh yes, of course yes. What do you think?'

‘Then what?'

‘I watched the door,' she says. ‘I didn't look in. She said you weren't coming back,
and I knew you wanted a baby; you'd want it if you were awake. So she got it out
of you. While you were sleeping.'

‘I wasn't asleep. I was in a coma.'

‘Exactly. A coma.'

All the tablets are in their little boxes, but you can't slide the lid on. You force
it too hard. The edge snaps off and you curse—
Fuck
—which makes your mother cry again.
She hates bad language.

On your last morning together, Francis was at your door before eight.

‘Wake up, my friend.'

You climbed out of bed, even though you'd slept three hours, at most.

By the time you came downstairs to the pool, Francis had finished his breakfast.

‘Not too much sleep, then?' he said.

You tightened your robe, took a seat. A plane passed overhead, a distant scrape.
‘We're running out of time,' he said.

Your eyes met over the table.

‘Tea?'

He poured. Francis was already dressed, his silver hair combed. The notes you'd typed
the previous evening were on the table beside him, his comments added in red. It
was good to be there, his co-conspirator, his confidant—yet you so often felt powerless
to lighten his load.

‘This sense of urgency,' you offered, ‘this feeling, like all feelings, it's the
result of an assembly of nerve cells. That's all, right?'

You were trying to think like Francis: inputs, nerve cells, conscious sensations.

He smoothed his jacket, smiling. ‘My dear chap,' he said. ‘There's so much to discuss.'

You decide not to tell Melinda what your mother has said. Instead, you stay late
at work. Everyone else leaves
and they shoot you little glances of concern as they
flick off the lights at each end of the building. Soon there's only you at your desk,
the printer flashing because someone else's print job is jammed.

You've avoided reminiscing. Lately, you've focused on the present: the baby, making
up for lost time. It's always in your lowest moments you think about the way it used
to be. At your desk, you Google
Francis Crick:

There was a time when that wry smile met yours each morning over a glass with a tiny
umbrella in it—his reply to something witty or insightful. ‘Wake up, my friend.'
His voice.

Francis H.C. Crick, 88, best known for his contribution to one of the major scientific
findings of the twentieth century, the recognition of the double helix structure
of DNA as the blueprint of life, died Wednesday at San Diego's Thornton Hospital.
He had colon cancer.

Before you leave, you open the printer and drag out the jammed page. Paper shuffles
and shunts through the machine as you walk out the door and onto the street.

Francis died in 2004, so it's impossible—all of this.

He had colon cancer.

You plan, again, to make amends. There's time, on the way home, to figure out a way
to talk to Melinda. You'll start over.

When you arrive the house is dark and there's this note on the kitchen table:

Water broke. Check your phone. This is it. Hospital.

‘The potential for consciousness,' Francis began. ‘Is it present in even the smallest
particle?'

You sipped your tea. The flavour was sharp, the porcelain smooth.

‘It feels like it must be,' you said, although you'd never thought about it before.
You strained to keep alert to every detail, as if a second level of consciousness,
being aware of being aware, might somehow reveal the mechanisms underlying the conscious
state, but you couldn't keep it up and your focus divided into a third level, before
the layers of it all collapsed. Your mind wandered. A plane overhead.

You turned to him.

‘In some ways, consciousness is a function of interaction,' you said.

Francis smiled. He settled his teacup into its saucer. You could hear the sound of
his thumb and forefinger rubbing together as he thought things over, but you couldn't
tell anything from the look on his face. His impressions remained unreachable.

‘Go on, my friend,' he said.

‘Francis, I don't remember anything before you.'

He stood, knocking his teacup to the ground. Although it seemed delicate it did not
break, and you
reached down to set it right. You ran a finger inside the rim; it had not even cracked.
You put it on the table.

‘Never mind,' Francis said and indicated you should stand, too. He rested his hands
on your shoulders as you faced one another, then he slid his arms all the way around
you. His embrace was firm, despite everything. You let him hold you.

You can't remember a moment when you've ever felt so safe.

By the time you arrive it's under control. Melinda's having contractions, but they
say there's still a way to go.

‘Just sit tight,' the midwife orders, and you smile back until she's gone and you
can only hear her shoes and a jangling pocket of keys receding along the hall.

Left alone, you realise this isn't the best time to talk. ‘Can I get you anything?'
you say instead.

‘I'm fine. My back hurts a bit, that's all.'

‘I'll rub it for you?'

‘Thanks.' Melinda tugs up her nightgown and you sit on the bed.