Iris looks about wildly. She considers making a run for it, she considers leaping into the car and driving off, she contemplates the stones beneath her feet and thinks about hurling a handful at Alex. 'Stop it,' she falters instead, 'just stop it. It was… it was all so long ago and we were just children and-'
'No, we weren't.'
'Yes, we were.'
'We weren't. But I'm not going to argue the toss with you about that. We're not children now, are we?' He grins at her as he releases a cloud of smoke. 'The point is that you know it's true. It's only ever been you and you know it's only ever been me.'
Iris stares at him. She cannot see how to respond. Her head feels blank, smooth, optionless. Suddenly, somewhere behind her, there is a flurry of feet on gravel and Iris turns, startled. Two carers in white uniforms are hurrying towards the home. One is holding a pager. Iris scans the front of Kitty's building. There is a quick movement behind one of the windows, which vanishes when she looks.
'The thing is, Iris,' Alex says, behind her, 'I just think-'
'Shush,' she urges, still looking at the building. 'Esme…'
'What?'
'Esme,' she repeats, pointing at the home.
'What about her?'
'I have to…'
'You have to what?'
'I have to,' she begins again, and suddenly something that has been snagged at the periphery of her mind seems to slide forward, the way a boat might loosen from its moorings and float free. Mine all along. Wouldn't let go. And do you have a picture of your father. Iris puts her hand to her mouth. 'Oh,' she says. 'Oh, God.'
She begins to move, slowly at first, then much faster, towards the building. Alex is close behind, calling her name. But she doesn't stop. When she reaches the door of the home, she wrenches it open and sprints along the corridor, taking the turns so fast that she glances off the wall with her shoulder. She has to get there first, she has to reach Esme first, before anyone else, she has to say to her, she has to say, please. Please tell me you didn't.
But when she reaches Kitty's room, the corridor is filled with people, residents in slippers and gowns and people in uniform spilling out of the door, and faces are turning to look at her, pale as handprints.
'Let me through,' Iris pushes at these faces, at these people, 'please.'
In the room are more people, more limbs and bodies and voices. So many voices, clamouring and calling. Someone is telling everyone to move off, to please return to their rooms immediately. Someone else is shouting into a telephone and Iris cannot make out the words. There is a frantic movement by two people leaning over someone or something in a chair. She glimpses a pair of shoes, a pair of legs. Good-quality brogues and thick woollen tights. She turns away her head, closing her eyes, and when she opens them again she sees Esme. She is sitting by the window, her hands laced over her knees. She is looking straight at Iris.
Iris sits down next to her. She takes one of her hands. She has to prise it from the grasp of the other and it feels very cold. She cannot think what she was going to say. Alex is there with her now, she feels the brief pressure of his hand on her shoulder and she can hear his voice telling someone that, no, they can't have a word and will they please back off. Iris has an urge to reach out and touch him, just for a moment. To feel that familiar density of him, to make sure it is really him, that he is really there. But she cannot let go of Esme.
'The sun didn't go in,' Esme says.
'Sorry?' Iris has to lean forward to hear her.
'The sun. It never went in again. So I pulled it anyway.'
'Right.' Iris clutches Esme's hand in both of hers. 'Esme,' she whispers, 'listen-'
But the people in uniform are upon them, muttering, exclaiming, enveloping them in a great white cloud. Iris cannot see anything but starched white cotton. It presses against her shoulders, her hair, it covers her mouth. They are taking Esme, they are pulling her up from the sofa, they are trying to extract her hand from Iris's. But Iris does not let go. She grips the hand tighter. She will go with it, she will follow it, through the white, through the crowd, out of the room, into the corridor and beyond.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to:
William Sutcliffe, Victoria Hobbs, Mary-Anne Harrington, Ruth Metzstein, Caroline Goldblatt, Catherine Towle, Alma Neradin, Daisy Donovan, Susan O'Farrell, Catherine O'Farrell, Bridget O'Farrell, Fen Bommer and Margaret Bolton Ridyard.
A number of books were invaluable during the writing of this novel, in particular The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980' by Elaine Showalter (Virago, London, 1985) and Sanity, Madness and the Family by R.D. Laing (Penguin, London, 1964).
THE MAGICIAN'S ASSISTANT by Ann Patchett
Copyright © 1997 by Ann Patchett
to
Lucy Grealy
and
Elizabeth McCracken
At the Intersection of George Burns and Gracie Allen
PARSIFAL IS DEAD. That is the end of the story.
The technician and the nurse rushed in from their glass booth. Where there had been a perfect silence a minute before there was now tremendous activity, the straining sounds of two men unexpectedly thrown into hard work. The technician stepped between Parsifal and Sabine, and she had no choice but to let go of Parsifal's hand. When they counted to three and then lifted Parsifal's body from the metal tongue of the MRI machine and onto the gurney, his head fell back, his mouth snapping open with no reflexes to protect it. Sabine saw all of his beautiful teeth, the two gold crowns on the back molars shining brightly in the overhead fluorescent light. The heavy green sheet that they had given him for warmth got stuck in the guardrail lock. The nurse struggled with it for a second and then threw up his hands, as if to say they didn't have time for this, when in fact they had all the time in the world. Parsifal was dead and would be dead whether help was found in half a minute or in an hour or a day. They rushed him around the corner and down the hall without a word to Sabine. The only sound was the quick squeak of rubber wheels and rubber soles against the linoleum.
Sabine stood there, her back against the massive MRI machine, her arms wrapped around her chest, waiting. It was, in a way, the end of Sabine.
After a while the neuroradiologist came into the room and told her, in a manner that was respectful and direct, the one thing she already knew: Her husband was dead. He did not pluck at his lab coat or stare at the floor the way so many doctors had done when they had spoken to Parsifal and Sabine about Phan. He told her it had been an aneurism, a thinning in a blood vessel of his brain. He told her it had probably been there Parsifal's whole life and was not in any way related to his AIDS. Like a patient with advanced lymphoma who is driven off the freeway by a careless teenager changing lanes, the thing that had been scheduled to kill Parsifal had been denied, and Sabine lost the years she was promised he still had. The doctor did not say it was a blessing, but Sabine could almost see the word on his lips. Compared to the illness Parsifal had, this death had been so quick it was nearly kind. "Your husband," the doctor explained, "never suffered."
Sabine squeezed the silver dollar Parsifal had given her until she felt the metal edge cut painfully into her palm. Wasn't suffering exactly the thing she had been afraid of? That he would go like Phan, lingering in so many different kinds of pain, his body failing him in unimaginable ways-hadn't she hoped for something better for Parsifal? If he couldn't have held on to his life, then couldn't he at least have had some ease in his death? That was what had happened. Parsifal's death had been easy. Having come to find there was no comfort in getting what she wanted, what she wanted now was something else entirely. She wanted him back. Sick or well. She wanted him back.