And Miles to Go Before I Sleep

by Jocelyne Saucier

  Suzan has known Frank Smarz for years; she knows he is clumsy with his words, unable to express nuanced feelings, and, during that day when everything was in a flurry around him, he was uncharacteristically prudent, weighing and reweighing his words, and repeating with a rare and bewildering patience that she needn’t worry about Lisana. The woman had travelled the long road of despair without ever doing what can’t be undone, he said. They should be worrying about Gladys instead; they had to figure out how to get her back to Swastika.

  The long road of despair, strange words indeed from this man’s mouth. His voice, his words, his prudence, his refusal to force open the door or a window (‘Good lord, Frank. I’m not asking you to go at it with an axe. A screwdriver, a crowbar, and you’re in. It’s simple.’), his increasingly expeditious way of cutting short the conversation each time she called, and Suzan’s dark instinct went into overdrive.

  She came to believe that the neighbourhood friends had abandoned Lisana to her suicidal obsessions so that, when Gladys returned (‘and that was all Frank cared about, Gladys’s return – nothing else mattered to him’), she would be free of her unhappy daughter.

  ‘I don’t trust what I can dream up sometimes. I have often had to take a step back because I scare myself so badly with what my brain can come up with, and in that instance, I was imagining the worst.’

  And yet she believed in the dark horrors of her brain. Enough to convince her to make the trip to Swastika. Which was a three-day affair, because she had to wait for her son, who was arriving in the afternoon by Budd Car, wait for the Budd Car the next day to go to Sudbury, and make the trip the day after that with her son and his old clunker of a car to Swastika, not knowing whether she would get there in time.

  I spent a long time wondering about the intentions of the neighbourhood friends, and I still don’t know what to think. Can friendship lead to passive murder? Can you be guilty of assisted suicide through a failure to assist? Did these people, who welcomed me at their table, who were so generous and likeable when I was travelling regularly to Swastika, were they capable of hiding in their houses, with their good intentions and ill will, waiting for the neighbour to slit her wrists? Gladys’s friends and neighbours, ugly, wicked people? Murderers without knowing it?

  My friend Bernie was as perplexed as I was. He has known these people forever. He runs into them at the grocery store, the hardware store, soccer games. They are as familiar to him as the air he breathes, as organically connected, and he won’t have his air contaminated. But he didn’t weigh in, didn’t say a word when I told him what Suzan had imagined. It was only later, when we were talking about something completely different, that his concern came back: ‘Those are just presumptions, interpretations, nothing concrete – you’re going to stick to the facts, right?’

  I dread the moment he reads these lines.

  Because the presumptions remain. Despite the time that has passed, despite her refusal at times to believe it herself, Suzan still talks to me with resentment about her arrival in Swastika. The curtains were drawn; nothing was stirring around the house or at the neighbours. No one came to the window to see what was going on. No one came to protect Gladys’s house when she arrived with her son and his crowbar ready to pop the hinges of the front door.

  I tried different approaches with Frank Smarz, Brenda, and the other neighbourhood friends. I was hoping to clarify this episode, but it is the nature of the unspeakable not to be spoken. I got nothing that would chase away the doubt that Suzan planted in my mind. The neighbourhood friends are doomed to appear in this chronicle with unspecified ill intentions.

  Bernie, my friend, if you’re there, I ask that you not stop at these lines.

  Because the adventure isn’t over. There is still a great deal to record and illuminate. Gladys’s disappearance on the Northern trains is full of minefields. I am on day six of Gladys’s journey, and at this point in the story, there have only been tenuous answers to questions that raise yet others.

  On this sixth day, Janelle and Gladys took their seats on the Toronto–Montreal train. They had a five-hour trip ahead of them. They were exhausted. Janelle hadn’t really slept since her departure from White River. She settled Gladys in the window seat with a pillow and a blanket and lowered the blind, hoping the cozy nest would do its job and she would be able to sleep too.

  A man went down the aisle with the snack trolley. Janelle had a coffee, and Gladys had an orange juice that she swallowed with a handful of pills. A slew of questions from Janelle, no explanation from Gladys.

  Gladys was going to drift off. Janelle observed with relief her head sink into the softness of the pillow, eyelids drooping, but before her body completely let go, Gladys had a jolt of energy and asked her in a voice that did not falter, almost with authority: ‘You’ll call her? Promise me you’ll call her.’

  Janelle promised, and Gladys let herself fall into a deep sleep. She didn’t move an eyelash for the remaining hours.

  The car was calm and hushed. Janelle was listening for Gladys’s snoring and trying to convince herself to make the call. The people around her were busy on their computers, tablets, and cellphones, people who regularly shuttled between Toronto and Montreal, an anonymous environment that she knew from having often made the trip from White River to Montreal and that was a break from the friendliness of Northern trains, where you have to respond to all looks, smiles, and invitations, however unwelcome.

  Janelle wondered what to say to this woman in a delirium who was probably expecting soothing words, encouraging words, or maybe not; maybe she expected nothing, maybe she just wanted someone at the other end of the line who would agree to follow her in her fantasies, and none of these options did anything to convince her to make the call. She preferred to think about Marie-Luce, her sister, who would be at the station in Montreal. Marie-Luce would know what to do. She always did. She thought of Marie-Luce’s apartment. It was nothing fancy, but Janelle had always felt at home there. Gladys could take some time to rest in the bedroom that had been Janelle’s for years. They would have to clear it out a bit. It was a mess – Gladys couldn’t sleep in the clutter of boxes and garbage bags. As for Janelle, she would sleep with Marie-Luce. For the rest of it, what should be done about Gladys, she would decide with Marie-Luce. And beyond that, the waitressing job and the internet beau waiting for her in Clova, she didn’t want to think about that; they would wait. And softly, in the tangle of her thoughts and Gladys’s snoring, the exhaustion of the travel overtook her.

  She awoke in the commotion that happens right before pulling into the station. A man with a paunch was leaning his weight on her as he tried to extricate his suitcase from the overhead baggage compartment.

  Gladys was still sleeping deeply. Janelle hesitated before waking her. She looked younger, her features smoother, her face rounder, almost like a child, completely given over to another world. She allowed her a moment of grace before lightly shaking her. Gladys opened haunted eyes. Her features sagged, the roundness disappeared; everything that had been at rest awoke brutally at the same time as the cough, wet and deep, that wouldn’t subside. Between loud wheezing and rattles, she managed to ask: ‘Did you call her?’ Janelle lied.

  ‘I lied because it was the only thing to do. Her eyes were burning with fever. I told her what she wanted to hear.’

  Her sister was there in Montreal, and they took charge of Gladys together, the wheelchair, picking up luggage, heading to the parking lot, and settling Gladys in the front seat. They stuffed the many large bags in the back. Janelle was waiting for the usual reprimands about everything she travelled with. Instead, Marie-Luce, direct and solid Marie-Luce, said to her: ‘What have you brought me? That woman is dying.’

  I know Marie-Luce, her apartment, her neighbourhood, and her incredible life force. I have stayed at her apartment many times, alone or with Janelle (readers – should I allow them to exist one day – will have understood that Janelle and I had an episode of near intimacy, emphasis on ne
ar), and I would go back there again if Marie-Luce didn’t have a boyfriend living there right now. Marie-Luce is a woman who is serious about love; she doesn’t flit about like her sister. She takes it seriously, and I don’t want to get in the way. I stay in a hotel when I go to Montreal.

  What happened in that apartment almost defies understanding. Despite everything they told me – we spent hours and hours, the three of us in that apartment, Marie-Luce, Janelle, and me, going back over the story of what happened – it is hard for me to understand. How could two women of sound mind have come to such a senseless decision? How could an old woman who was dying have imposed her will on them? How could the three of them have set out on an adventure that could end only in death, believing that it was the only thing humanly possible? And then to hear from Janelle these unimaginable words, considering her abject fear of death: ‘It was the most beautiful experience of my life.’

  They arrived at the apartment at the beginning of the evening. Marie-Luce is a woman who is organized and plans ahead. She had prepared soup and snacks, and she had done a first pass of Janelle’s bedroom. At the table, the two sisters exchanged news about friends they shared. Gladys, who was silent, dipped the back of the spoon into the thick vegetable soup to take up only the broth and, at the same time, take a pill. Which didn’t escape the nurse’s eye.

  ‘Hydromorphone?’ Marie-Luce asked.

  Gladys nodded.

  ‘Cancer?’ (‘It wasn’t even a question,’ Marie-Luce told me. ‘I was sure of it.’)

  Her gaze steady, Gladys didn’t answer. She knew that Marie-Luce knew.

  ‘Lungs?’

  ‘ … ’

  ‘Aggressive?’

  ‘ … ’

  ‘Terminal phase?’

  The questions were surgical, leaving no room for appeal. And Gladys no longer seemed concerned. Her expressionless eyes wandered over Marie-Luce.

  Marie-Luce would not let herself be thrown off. Her decision was made.

  ‘Tomorrow morning, we’re taking you to the hospital.’

  ‘No, tomorrow morning, I’m taking the train to Senneterre. I want to die on the train.’

  It was determined and delirious. They didn’t believe her, this old woman delirious with fatigue. They quickly cleared the table to get Janelle’s bedroom set up and put Gladys to bed. In no time, they had piled Janelle’s mess at the end of the room that runs the length of the apartment and serves as the living room, kitchen, and dining room. Janelle went back to the bedroom to get Gladys’s travel bag, ‘I’m going to do a bit of laundry,’ but Gladys was already deep in sleep.

  They had the entire evening to discuss the situation and decide what was next. It was a difficult evening for Janelle, because Marie-Luce kept scolding her as she learned about her sister’s foolhardy journey. Three successive trains in twenty-four hours and not for one moment did she realize she was trailing a dying woman behind her.

  ‘My sister’s life is chaos, but in her head everything is neatly arranged, properly categorized: love with love, sex with sex, money with money, and so forth. A machine that runs like clockwork. She is equipped for chaos. When she senses hassles coming that aren’t hers, she packs her bags and is out of there. Somewhere else, escape, that’s all Janelle knows. But this time she had stepped in a quagmire that wouldn’t be that easy to get out of.’

  If there was any further doubt about the quagmire they were in, they had it confirmed when Janelle set about doing ‘a bit of laundry’ for Gladys. At the bottom of her travel bag, they found inhalers and codeine syrup, and in her tote bag there were prescriptions for hydromorphone and fentanyl, signed by a doctor from Kirkland Lake. Everything pharmacologically required for the end of life. Gladys knew what awaited her when she left home.

  And death, her fear of it, came crashing down on Janelle. Death was right there, close by, in her bed, something horrible, hideous, slimy, black, repugnant. Janelle has no memory of what Marie-Luce said to snap her out of it, ‘a complete blackout,’ but the image of the horror that had invaded her bed is still vivid in her mind: ‘I thought I would die from Gladys’s death.’

  Marie-Luce is familiar with her sister’s panicked fear at the idea of death but had never seen her in that state. ‘The blood drained from her face before my very eyes; I wondered whether she was going to faint. I made her lie down on the sofa, her legs raised, and I rubbed her whole body to get her circulation going, and I talked and talked and talked. I explained that there was nothing to fear that night. Gladys wasn’t going to die that night or the next day; she still had a few more days. We would take her to the hospital first thing the next day. They would take over, give her all the care she needed, and she would drift off peacefully. But it wasn’t enough. I could tell by her terror-stricken eyes.’

  A phone rang; it was Janelle’s, abandoned in an armchair, a musical ringtone that filled the air and shook off the fear. Janelle quickly extricated herself from her sister to go see to her iPhone. She recognized the number from Swastika and let the phone warble. ‘I was in no shape to talk to Lisana or anyone else.’ The phone finally stopped ringing, and Marie-Luce asked who it was.

  At that point, the evening took another turn, because hundreds of kilometres away there was a woman who also wanted to die. A woman who was living with the anticipation, obsession, and fear of the act that would set her free. At least that was how Janelle saw it. Lisana didn’t want death so much as living with the idea of death. That was what Marie-Luce thought too. She wasn’t all that impressed. She had seen bloodied wrists in the emergency room at the hospital. None of those men and women had managed to bleed to death. Slashing your wrists is not a guaranteed way out; you have to hit the radial artery, and Lisana had made too many attempts not to know where the radial artery is.

  They were in the dining section of the room, sitting across the table from each other, a beer in front of each of them. Overwhelmed, silent, Marie-Luce got up to peek in on Gladys. When she came back, another beer was waiting for her, then another (‘We almost emptied a case of twelve’), and they continued in silence a conversation that was getting them nowhere. The night was gloomy. Janelle was struggling with thoughts that were foreign to her. ‘I felt like an animal caught in a trap.’ She looked at the night growing deeper through the window. She would have liked to disappear into it, to stop thinking. Marie-Luce was contemplating the same night. She was unravelling a complicated tangle of thoughts and searching for the missing thread.

  ‘Call her back,’ Marie-Luce finally said. ‘Your Lisana is in distress; you can’t leave her like that.’

  ‘I called her back hoping she wouldn’t answer. But she picked up on the first ring, and I heard a “Mom?” that was so shrill, so alarmed, that I put the phone on speaker because I didn’t want to be alone with her.’

  ‘Your mother is sleeping. She’s exhausted. She’s sick,’ Janelle immediately said, her voice firm. (‘I didn’t want to hear all the nonsense, karma and all that.’)

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Very sick. She has cancer.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But don’t worry, I’m with my sister Marie-Luce. She’s a nurse.’

  ‘I know. You already told me.’ (‘Her repeated I knows were irritating. But reassuring. I had her attention.’)

  ‘Tomorrow we’re going to take her to the hospital … here … in Montreal. Hôpital Saint-Luc … ’

  ‘I know. She’s going to die.’ (‘A distant tone, as if she were announcing the weather.’)

  ‘ … ’

  Marie-Luce came to the rescue. She explained that they would take good care of her mother at the hospital, that it had everything she needed, that it was the best place for her under the circumstances, and she assured Lisana that they would give her daily updates about her mother’s condition.

  ‘I want to die at the same time as my mother.’

  Marie-Luce didn’t let her go on. She told Lisana what she wanted to hear, that it was her right, that it was her life, that no on
e would try to stop her. She didn’t give her a pep talk about life, and Lisana, relieved not to have to sit through it, listened attentively without saying a word. Marie-Luce ended the conversation by pointing out the time, the need for all three of them to get a good night’s sleep, and Lisana, in a calm, almost civil, voice, wished her a good night in turn.

  The room fell silent again. All that could be heard was the snoring from Gladys’s room. A gentle, steady snoring that reassured Marie-Luce about the night ahead. Gladys was sleeping peacefully. They would not have to watch over her.

  Janelle wasn’t in the same frame of mind. She wouldn’t stop looking at the bedroom, listening for the sounds emerging from it.

  ‘Come on,’ Marie-Luce said, and she led her to the bedroom.

  Gladys was sleeping a calm, tranquil sleep, sprawled beneath the covers, her face turned toward the window where street noises were coming from. As if she were breathing to the rhythm of the echoes of conversation, laughter, and the clacking of steps on the sidewalk. As if life were coming through the window to gently greet her. That was what Marie-Luce wanted Janelle to see. An old woman resting in the acceptance of death.

  The sisters slept together, huddled against each other, like a single body. A dreamless night with no disruptions, without the heavy anticipation of the day that awaited them.

  The day managed to advance, hour after hour, with constant tension, until a decision imposed itself and finally calmed them – that’s what they tried to get me to understand. How they ended up bowing to Gladys’s will. How they wound up agreeing at the end of the day to what appeared to be the only thing humanly possible. A decision in which they found strength and relief despite everything they said and did to avoid it.

  Because they fought, they resisted, they did the impossible not to end up here, and now that there is no going back, they know that nothing could have resisted Gladys’s will, the strength in her eyes and the accompanying smile. More than the look in her eye, it was Gladys’s smile that wore them down as the hours went by. A smile that refused to yield despite every objection they offered, a smile that was already firmly in place in the morning, when she refused to go to the hospital.