The Book of Living and Dying (18 page)

She let out a small moan, ducking guiltily behind a stack of books when the girl looked over. Sarah crept low between the shelves for several rows before standing upright and walking, one finger cruising gently over the spines, stopping for a moment to withdraw and inspect a book on trees, then replacing it. She continued until she reached the section marked “Occult.” Most of the books were well worn, the spines wrinkled with use. A hardcover entitled
Sabbats
caught her eye. She cracked it open. There were pages missing, the photos and important bits removed with a razor blade. “Nice,” Sarah said, returning the book to the shelf and pulling out another. Again, pages carefully removed. “Haven’t you heard of a photocopier, you jerk?” As she said this, she noticed a familiar title leaning to one side at the end of the shelf. It was
The Book of Living and Dying,
with its worn black cover and white bone lettering. Sarah gaped in disbelief, as though she had just witnessed an impossible sleight of hand.
How could this be?
She quickly chose two others and, holding them furtively against her chest, searched for a study carrel.

All the desks along the window were full, the students bent in intellectual labour. Past the window seats in the corner by the bathroom there was an empty carrel. Not her favourite place, but it would do. Placing the books on top of
the desk, she pushed her knapsack underneath at her feet. On an impulse she pulled her chair off to one side so that her back was facing the aisle, concealing the tarot books, then instantly changed her mind. Why should she care if anyone knew she was reading books on tarot? There were lots of girls her age who were into the craft, into the metaphysical.

A deck of tarot cards fanned across the cover of the first book. Sarah flipped impatiently through the pages. It was some type of history of the cards, with very little written on their intended meanings. She shut the book and pushed it to one corner of the desk. She opened the next.
The Tarot Deck.
Each page showed an illustration of the cards with a written description underneath. Sarah flipped to the front, started to skim through the tiny print and immediately experienced the downward slide of defeat. It seemed that tarot readings were more complicated than she’d imagined. It wasn’t just the meanings of the individual cards that mattered; a proper reading took into account the influence of the cards on each other. To make the situation worse, the order of the cards had to be considered as well as their orientation, either right-side up or upside down.

Sarah threw the book down in disgust. She couldn’t remember in what order the cards had fallen, whether they were upside down or not. Now she would never know their true meanings, no matter how much she read. She tapped her pen against her journal, tossed it down and thrummed her fingers on the paper. Opening the book again, she turned angrily through the pages, stopping at the Magician. The illustration showed a young man in a robe, infinity symbol hovering above his head, one hand outstretched and lowered, pointing, the other raised, clasped around some two-ended object like a short staff. There was a chalice on a
table in front of him, a sword, a stick of sorts and a circle with a pentacle. A tangle of flowers grew in the foreground: lilies, roses, some kind of vine. Sarah compared the illustration to the one in her journal, adding in the details she had overlooked or missed. When she was finished drawing, she read the description.

“Skill, diplomacy, self-confidence, will. Reversed: mental disease, disgrace, disquiet.”

Mental disease.
A spectre rose to the surface of her imagination and rolled languidly over. Michael’s father on the edge of the bed, gun gleaming, its dire promise proffered in metal. The twitch of a finger, a single sharp syllable between here and the hereafter. She thought about John and his request.

The doctor standing nervously at the side of the bed, eyes averted. Hands stuffed in pockets. The body language of disapproval and refusal.

Something similar had pushed Michael’s father over the brink, sent him crawling toward the redemption of a bullet. She decided that she would never tell Michael the terrible thing that John had asked. She didn’t want to connect herself to him in that way, didn’t want the weight of John’s illness associated with his father’s spiritual dilemma. Besides, she thought, justifying her feelings, how could she be sure the story about the gun was even true? A picture of Michael and Donna asserted itself in her mind. Of him kissing Donna, the way he had kissed her. Sharing laughter. The intimacy of discovered commonality. Had he made a video of her, too? Laughing bitterly, she whipped through the pages of the tarot book, stopping only when she reached the Fool, because she was sure that card had somehow repre

sented her, and because she couldn’t bring herself to explore the meaning of the black-armoured skeleton on horseback—yet. She read the description, her eyes resting on the final word:
nullity.
Something null, ineffective, characterless. What did any of it have to do with her?

Jumping up from the desk, Sarah shoved her journal into her knapsack. There would be no more reading about tarot today. There would be no more reading about it ever. It was all so pointless. The spark of anger flashed in her heart again at Donna, for what she had done. Putting ideas in her head, forcing her to examine things. All because she wanted to expose Michael for the fraud that he was. Sarah knew that she should be angry with him, too, knew that it was he she should be hating. But she didn’t feel that way. The truth was, she missed him, terribly. It was Donna that she wanted to hate.
Shoot the messenger.
Wasn’t that the way it worked?

A low, animal groan worked its way from her throat. The whole situation was so awful. But standing there, next to the study carrel, she vowed not to succumb to feelings of loneliness, no matter how much she longed to be with Michael. “I won’t see him. I hate him,” she said aloud. Several students turned to look at her. At once she was aware of her surroundings, aware that she was not alone. Trotting between bookshelves, Sarah wove her way back to the “Occult” section. The book was still there, and it seemed now that it was somehow mocking her. Snatching it up, she stuffed it behind the other books on the shelf, then ran to the stairs and padded down the worn marble steps, the soft
shush shush
of her sneakers punctuating the solemn hush even as she stepped into the frosty night.

Every bulb in the house was burning. Sarah lay in bed. No knives or tape this time. But it was lights on from now on. She was in control of the situation. Sheer will would overcome her fear. But what of her thoughts of Donna and Michael? They needed to be controlled as well. They were devious, sprouting full blown from the fertile soil of her mind. Time to weed that garden. Pull those nasty thoughts out by the roots. She took several codeine tablets, washing them back with the glass of water she now kept by the bed at all times. She knew she would have to take more soon to make it through the night; her tolerance to the medicine was growing. That was the way it worked.

The nurses slowly increased the dosage of morphine to keep step with the advancing pain. They made careful calculations. The blue cap popping neatly from the needle, its silver tip puncturing the intravenous tube to administer its reward. The needles were eventually abandoned altogether for the efficiency of a pump when the dosages got too high, the smooth plastic button resting just beneath the thumb for ease and unlimited access. Concern over addiction and self-control was no longer an issue once death became a certainty, the nurses depressing the pump on schedule when fatigue and fantasy led to forgetfulness.

Sarah woke to find John hovering in the doorway again. Trying to quell her pounding heart, she closed her eyes lightly so that she could watch him undetected. He took a couple of
halting steps toward the bed and reached for her, then brought his hand to his face in a posture of misery. Sarah scrunched her eyes shut, said a desperate prayer in her head.
Make him go away.

There was another note in her locker:
“Please let me explain.”
And then another.
“It meant nothing.”
Sarah crumpled the notes unceremoniously, and discarded them. She took pains to avoid Michael, changing seats in class so that she wouldn’t have to look at him, wouldn’t be tempted to so much as glance in his direction. Once, while rushing out of school, she bumped into Peter. She smiled before she remembered to frown and was disappointed with herself for slipping up. His face was hard and unyielding, giving her nothing. She started avoiding Donna, too, preferring to read at the library (she didn’t divulge this information) or to go home and lie in bed, her thoughts slipping through the weave of her blanket, in and out, rising and falling with the pattern, the hundreds of little loops and holes of the cotton thread occupying her endlessly.

The great expanses of time where no one arrived, elastic lengths of time that seemed to stretch on and on for days, when, in fact, it had only been hours in between visits. Lying on the bed, TV blinking, knees up, knees down, curled to one side, pillow squashed between bony thighs. The patient drip of intravenous measuring the moments like water on stone. The disease, equally ceaseless, working its way by undetected
increments, moving silently among the blood cells bumping like small cars through the veins, filtering deeper.

Sometimes Sarah would raise her knees, forcing mountains into her blanket landscape just to see how the shadows would change things. At night she kept vigil, senses honed to the slightest variance in sound. When she did manage to sleep, her dreams were occupied by the girl and the oak tree, or confused by the sound of the woman crying. She thought she saw John, too, in fleeting glimpses, outside the room, beside the bed, in shadows, breaking the light that glowed at the base of the door. In a codeine-driven state she even dared him to appear, but a gold-and-green beetle arrived instead, made its way painstakingly across the floor to disappear mysteriously behind her slipper.

And still the notes persisted.

“I’m working on a secret project. Don’t you want to know what it is?”

“I love you.”

And finally,

“It is finished.”

Sarah mulled this one over. She didn’t crumple it, but slipped it into the side pocket of her knapsack. She knew what it meant. She was weakening, she knew that too, her rage diminishing like the sound of the chords she used to strum on John’s guitar, just the suggestion of it now, the vibrations resonating in the air around her. Besides, anger was exhausting. It took too much energy—something she seemed to have very little of.

Sarah stood on the street across from the library. She was too tired and restless for books so she turned back toward town instead. She would walk past the Queen’s, just to look in. After cutting through the parking lot of the school, she came around the corner of the building and saw a group of men standing at the far end of the alley. Hesitating, she wondered if she should go around before realizing it was Michael in some kind of altercation with Peter and his friends.

She heard Peter say, “What are you going to do now?” then saw him shove Michael backward, sending him stumbling over his knapsack.

“Hey!” Sarah shouted. Peter glanced at her, then shoved Michael again. “Hey!” she yelled louder. She dug in her purse for her cellphone and held it in the air. “I called the cops, Peter!”

Peter lit out with his friends, but not before kicking Michael’s knapsack across the alley. “Next time it will take more than your girlfriend to save you,” he warned.

Sarah ran over to where Michael was standing, brushing himself off. She picked up his bag, wiped the dirt off and handed it to him. “Are you okay?” she asked.

He didn’t look at her but took his knapsack, slung it over his shoulder and spat on the ground. Pulling a squashed pack of Marlboros from his bag, he inspected it ruefully, then pulled a cigarette out and lit it with a small green disposable lighter he produced from his pants pocket. He offered the pack to Sarah, who eyed it suspiciously. “It’s okay,” he said, acidly, “they won’t explode.”

“Since when do you smoke?” she asked, taking a rumpled cigarette and trying to straighten it before putting it to her lips. “And since when do you smoke Marlboros? That’s my brand.”

Michael shrugged and engaged the lighter, holding the flame up to Sarah’s cigarette. “Did you really call the cops?”

Sarah tossed him the phone. He looked at it, pressed a few buttons.

“It’s broken,” she said. “It hasn’t worked for a while. I just keep it for old times’ sake.”

He tossed it back to her. “Well, I, for one, am glad you had it. But if that little prick had the balls to fight without his army of mutants, I wouldn’t need you to come to my rescue.” His voice softened. “Let me buy you a coffee.” He looked at her hopefully, saw that she was going to decline. “Or how about a drink, or a sub, or something … I know, a new cellphone …”

Sarah forced herself not to smile. “I’m still mad at you, you know.”

He nodded. “I know. But I always make an effort to buy off the people who save my life … At least let me show you John’s video. It’s done and I think it’s good—if I do say so myself.”

“Can’t you just bring it to school for me?” Sarah asked, trying to puff nonchalantly on her cigarette.

“Come on, Sarah.” He stood in front of her. “I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

“So help you God?”

He raised his hand in burlesqued oath. “So help me God. But we should go—in case Peter and his merry men figure out the cops aren’t coming.”

He turned toward the street but Sarah stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Let’s take the back way,” she said. She didn’t want to risk Donna seeing them together. She felt guilty. Guilty for allowing her resolve to be so easily eroded. Guilty for being afraid to be alone. But she couldn’t help herself. She didn’t want to end up like them.

The forgotten chronic care patients, dispossessed and doomed to measure out their final dreary days in prescribed doses. Few visitors called on the residents in the rooms of the west wing’s third floor. Except for Room 319. There was almost always someone there, playing cards, chatting, sitting quietly and reading, working crosswords or word finders. But it soon became evident that visiting a resident in chronic care was not an exclusive experience, with patients looking eagerly on from wheelchairs, or propped up in beds by hallway windows, or even standing in the doorways of their rooms. More than once she had stopped to help a patient in distress, cover an exposed torso with pants that had slipped open and rumpled impudently to the ground, adjust a blanket that had lodged itself in the spokes of a wheelchair or just say hello to those in desperate need of company—in particular, Mr. Ellis next door in 317. She had started making rounds, like the doctors, to try to quash some of the loneliness. She wished Mr. Ellis wouldn’t moan the way he did, his haunting voice high and detached, floating through the halls, calling for absent relatives too weary or uncaring to shoulder the burden of his illness, a ghostly hand shadowed against the white curtain, clawing to pull the fabric back. “I’m pining. I’m pining away in here. Tommy, Tabitha, will nobody come and talk to me?” Then calling out the lyrics of an old love song, his spiritless voice unbroken by cadence. Until she would appear and pull back the curtain so that he could see the world around him, his voice vanishing mysteriously in the air.