Central Park

by Guillaume Musso

  He traps my fists in his big hands.

  “Calm down now!” he orders in a firm voice. “We did all of that to help you.”

  A gust of wind. I shiver. It’s true; I was so obsessed with the investigation that I almost forgot about my condition.

  I can’t believe that I’m going to die. This morning, my mind is clear and sharp. The windows of the Shelby reflect a flattering image: a still young and slender woman with a pretty face and hair that is blowing in the wind. And yet I now know all too well the ephemeral and deceptive nature of appearances. I know that the senile plaques are attacking my neurons, slowing down my brain. I know that time is running out.

  “You have to agree to undergo the second part of the operation,” Gabriel insists.

  “What’s the point? That thing of yours won’t do any good. It’s just something you designed to rip off desperate people. Everyone knows there is nothing that can be done to stop Alzheimer’s.”

  He speaks more gently. “That’s true, and yet it’s also false. Listen, I don’t know what you’ve heard about this operation. But I do know that this clinic specializes in the electrical stimulation of memory circuits and that the procedure has shown excellent results.”

  I listen to him. He tries to explain it to me.

  “We use very thin electrodes to send a small continuous current into a couple of strategic zones in your brain: the fornix and the entorhinal cortex. This stimulation generates tiny tremors that have an effect on the hippocampus. We don’t yet understand all the mechanisms, but the idea behind it is to improve neuron activity.”

  “But it doesn’t cure the disease.”

  “In many patients, we notice a modest but significant improvement in episodic and spatial memory.”

  “Modest? Wow, great.”

  “Alice, what I’m trying to tell you is that we don’t have enough experience to be certain of the results. It’s true, this is not an exact science. In some patients, lost memories return, and the symptoms regress or stabilize; in other patients, nothing happens and they continue, sadly, to be overcome by the disease.”

  “So you can see why I—”

  “What I can see is that nothing is certain. The symptoms can accelerate and lead to death or they can slow down. In young people where the disease was spotted early, there is a significant probability that we will be able to slow its progression. That is your situation, Alice.”

  I repeat to myself: “Slow its progression…”

  “If we can slow down the disease, we can win you more time,” he says. “Researchers are making progress every day. There will be advances in the future, that’s certain.”

  “Sure, in thirty years.”

  “It could be thirty years or it could be tomorrow. Look what happened with AIDS. In the early eighties, being diagnosed as HIV-positive was equivalent to a death sentence. Then came AZT and combination therapy. Now there are people who’ve lived with the disease for thirty years.”

  I lower my head and say wearily, “I don’t have the strength. That’s why I panicked after the first operation. I wanted to go home to France to see my father one last time and…”

  He comes closer to me and looks into my eyes. “And what? Put a bullet in your head?”

  I stare back defiantly. “Something like that, yes.”

  “I thought you were braver than that.”

  “Who are you to talk to me about bravery?”

  He takes another step closer. Our foreheads are almost touching; we’re like two boxers before the start of the first round.

  “Your unhappiness has blinded you to your good luck. You have a friend who is financing this treatment and who pulled strings to get you a place in this study. Maybe you don’t know this, but most people have to go on a long waiting list before they get this treatment.”

  “Well, there you go—I’ll be freeing up a place for someone.”

  “Fine. You clearly don’t deserve it.”

  Just when I least expect it, I see his eyes shine. In those eyes, I can read anger, sadness, defiance.

  “You’re young, you’re a fighter. You’re the most stubborn and determined woman I’ve ever met. If anyone can beat this disease, it’s you. You could be an example for other sufferers, a role model.”

  “I don’t want to be a role model, Keyne! This is one battle I can never win, and you know it. So spare me the bullshit.”

  “So you’re just going to give up?” he demands angrily. “Well, you’re right—it’s much easier that way. You want to put an end to it all? Go ahead! Your bag’s on the back seat and your gun’s inside.”

  And with that, Gabriel strides off toward the hospital.

  He is provoking me. He is irritating the hell out of me. I’m so tired. He doesn’t realize that he shouldn’t lead me out to that place, that I’ve spent too long walking on the edge of the abyss. I open the door of the Mustang and grab the satchel. I unbuckle the straps. The Glock is there, along with my cell phone, the battery almost dead. Without thinking, I put the phone in my pocket, then check the magazine and shove the pistol into my belt.

  The sun is quite high in the sky now.

  I look into the distance and blink, dazzled by the silver reflections dancing on the surface of the lake. Without a glance at Gabriel, I walk away from the car and toward the dock.

  There is a peacefulness to the landscape that radiates a kind of power, serene and harmonious. Up close, the water looks clear, almost turquoise.

  Finally, I turn around. Gabriel is no more than a silhouette in the driveway. Too far away to intervene.

  I grip the polymer butt of the Glock and take a deep breath.

  I am devastated, exhausted. I feel like I have been falling, falling, falling for years.

  I close my eyes. In my head, I see fragments of a storyline whose ending I already know. Deep down, didn’t I always believe that it would end this way?

  Alone, but free.

  The way I have always tried to live my life.

  28

  With One Heart

  I PLACE THE COLD gun barrel inside my mouth.

  So I can stay in control. Not become a woman with no memory, a sick, helpless person locked up in a hospital room.

  So I can decide, to the end, the path my existence should take.

  While my mind is still lucid.

  No one can take that away from me.

  My last freedom.

  Eyes closed, I see moments of happiness from my life with Paul rush past. Thousands of images that the wind will sweep away, carry up into the atmosphere, opening a way to heaven.

  Suddenly I see him, holding his father’s hand. The child whose name we hadn’t even chosen yet, who will never have a name. The child I will never know but whose face I imagined so many times.

  They are there, the two of them, in the welcoming darkness. The two men of my life.

  I feel tears rolling down my cheeks. I keep my eyes closed, the gun in my mouth, my finger on the trigger, ready to fire. Ready to join them.

  And then the child lets go of Paul’s hand and takes a few steps toward me. He is so beautiful…no longer a baby. He’s a little boy now. Wearing a checkered shirt, his pant legs rolled up. How old is he? Three, maybe four? I stare at him, fascinated by the purity of his gaze, the innocence of his expression, the promises and the challenges that I read in his eyes.

  “Mommy, I’m scared. Come with me, please.”

  He calls out to me. He holds out his hand.

  I’m scared too.

  The attraction is powerful. I choke on a sob. And yet I know that this child is not real. That he is only a projection of my mind.

  “Come with me, Mommy, please…”

  I’m coming…

  My finger is poised on the trigger. An abyss opens up inside me. My whole body tenses, as if the yawning gap that has existed inside me since childhood is widening.

  This is the story of a sad, solitary girl who never found her place in the world. A human bomb, about to exp
lode. A pressure cooker simmering for too long with resentment, dissatisfaction, the desire to be elsewhere.

  Do it. Squeeze the trigger. The pain and fear will vanish instantly. Do it now. You’re brave enough, lucid enough, weak enough…it’s the right time.

  A trembling along my thigh.

  The cell phone vibrating in my pocket.

  I try to keep them with me, but Paul and the child evaporate. Sadness gives way to anger. I open my eyes, pull the pistol from my mouth, and, in a rage, answer my phone. I hear Gabriel’s voice:

  “Don’t do it, Alice.”

  I turn around. He is fifty yards away from me, coming closer.

  “We’ve said everything there is to say, Gabriel.”

  “I don’t think we have.”

  In despair, I scream: “Leave me alone! Are you worried about your career, is that it? A patient blowing her head off on the grounds of your beautiful clinic…bad for the image, right?”

  “You’re no longer my patient, Alice.”

  I frown. “What do you mean?”

  “You know the rules. A doctor is not allowed to be in love with his patient.”

  “Are you kidding? Is that the best line you can come up with?”

  “Why do you think I took all those risks?” he says, continuing to move toward me. “I felt something for you from the moment I saw you asleep on that bench.”

  “You’re ridiculous.”

  “I’m serious, Alice.”

  “We don’t even know each other.”

  “I think we do, actually. Or, rather, we recognized something in each other.”

  I balk at this. “Come on, you’re not in love with me. You’re a womanizer. You told me so yourself—a girl in every port. You think I forgot that?”

  “That was a lie. Part of my jazz-pianist persona.”

  “You check out every girl you see!”

  “I think you’re incredible, Alice. I love your bad temper, your quick wit. I’ve never felt as right with anyone as I feel with you.”

  I stare at him, unable to speak. The sincerity I sense in his words petrifies me. He risked his life for me, it’s true. I very nearly shot him last night.

  He keeps talking. “There are so many things I want to do with you. Talk to you about the books I love, show you the neighborhood where I grew up, make you my special truffle mac and cheese recipe…”

  Tears blur my vision again. Gabriel’s words wrap me up in their gentleness and I want to abandon myself to this feeling. I remember the first time I saw his face on that bench in Central Park. There was a complicity between us from the first second. I see him again in that toy store, wearing his cape and performing magic tricks to amuse the children.

  But I interrupt his flow of words. “This woman you claim to love, Gabriel…you know perfectly well she’ll vanish in a few months. She won’t recognize you anymore. She’ll call you monsieur and you’ll have to lock her up in a hospital room.”

  “That’s a possibility, not a certainty. And I’m ready to take that risk.”

  I drop my cell phone as the battery finally dies.

  Gabriel is standing in front of me, less than thirty feet away. “If anyone can win this battle, Alice, it’s you.”

  Now he is only inches away. “But winning doesn’t depend on me.”

  “We’ll fight it together, Alice. I think we make a good team, don’t you?”

  “I’m scared! I’m so scared…”

  A gust of wind blows dust into the air and makes the golden needles of the larch trees tremble. The cold burns my fingers.

  “I know how difficult it will be, but there will be…”

  There Will Be…

  There will be bright mornings and others obscured by clouds.

  There will be days of doubt, days of fear, gray and futile hours spent in waiting rooms that smell of hospitals.

  There will be moments of lightness, moments of hope and youth when the disease will be forgotten.

  As if it had never existed.

  And then life will go on.

  And you will hold tight to it.

  There will be Ella Fitzgerald’s voice, Jim Hall’s guitar, a melody by Nick Drake.

  There will be walks by the sea, the smell of cut grass, the color of a stormy sky.

  There will be days spent fishing at low tide.

  Scarves tied around necks to protect us from the wind.

  Sandcastles that stand up to the salty waves.

  And lemon cannoli eaten as we walk down the streets of the North End.

  There will be a house on a shady road. Gas lamps with colored halos. A ginger cat purring in your lap. A large dog barking its welcome.

  There will be a winter morning when I’ll be late for work.

  I’ll rush downstairs, kiss you quickly, grab my keys.

  Door, driveway, start the car.

  And at the first red light, I’ll realize that the key fob is a pacifier.

  There will be…

  Sweat, blood, a baby’s first cry.

  A shared look.

  A pact for eternity.

  Baby bottles every four hours, packets of diapers, rain on the windows, sunlight in your heart.

  There will be…

  A changing table, a baby bath, endless ear infections, a menagerie of stuffed animals, hummed lullabies.

  Smiles, outings to the park, first steps, a tricycle in the driveway.

  Before bedtime, there will be stories of princes defeating dragons.

  Birthdays and first days of school. Cowboy outfits; drawings of animals stuck to the fridge.

  Snowball fights, magic tricks, toast with jam at four in the afternoon.

  And time will pass.

  There will be other stays in the hospital, other exams, other alarms, other treatments.

  Each time, you will go there fearful, your stomach in knots, your heart beating fast, armed only with your desire to keep living.

  Each time, you will tell yourself that, no matter what happens now, you would not give up any of those moments torn from the hands of fate.

  And no one will ever be able to take them from you.

  Acknowledgments

  To Ingrid.

  To Edith Leblond, Bernard Fixot, and Catherine de Larouzière.

  To Sylvie Angel, Alexandre Labrosse, Jacques Bartoletti, and Pierre Collange.

  To Valérie Taillefer, Jean-Paul Campos, Bruno Barbette, Virginie Plantard, Caroline Sers, Stéphanie Le Foll, and Isabelle de Charon.

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  About the Author

  Guillaume Musso is the number one bestselling author in France. He has written seventeen novels, including the thrillers The Reunion, which is in development as an international TV series, and Afterwards…, which was made into a feature film starring John Malkovich and Evangeline Lilly. He lives in Paris.

  Also by Guillaume Musso

  The Reunion

  The Girl on Paper

  Where Would I Be Without You?

  Will You Be There?