The Life of the World to Come

by Dan Cluchey

  [DASHER sits back down, sweat dripping from his brow, brooding with an emotion. Exhausted, he slowly pours himself a glass of water at the defense table. We cut to commercial.]

  There’s a science to putting people to death, an actual field of study with concepts and literature and its own name: ktenology. The Austrian-American psychologist Leo Alexander coined the term not long after serving as a medical advisor during the Nuremberg Trials; he’d observed a number of Nazi euthanasia experiments at Dachau, and was well-versed in the means by which a state might execute one of its own. He had a long career at Tufts, broke ground on multiple sclerosis research and the study of various neuropathologies, and even helped police crack the infamous Boston Strangler case. Dr. Alexander died in 1985, and my mother was fascinated enough by his impressive obituary in the local paper that it lingered in her memory for a full year: this is why my name is Leo.

  When the state of Georgia decides that they want you to die, here is what happens: the death chamber is a sort of operating theater, and they bind you to a long metal gurney that gets wheeled to the center of the stage; heart monitors are affixed to your chest; you lie in silence while masked attendants pepper you with intravenous hookups, dry for the moment, but not for long; a supervising technician paces the room with purpose, checking at various stations your vital signs and the apparatuses that shortly will kill you; the tubes in your arms coil through small holes in the concrete wall and terminate in another room, where waits a bag of saline solution and a bag of your deadly cocktail; the saline starts to flow; the warden says “alright,” and an actual curtain draws back to reveal a third room—this with a plexiglass window for viewing—where a smattering of prison officials, your lawyer, and your uncle by marriage are standing by.

  “I will shortly be granted my heavenly manumission,” said Michael Tiegs through the window, his voice faint but clear. It wasn’t his time to speak, though, and the warden motioned to the supervising technician, who motioned to Tiegs in turn.

  “I was thinking,” Tom Jones whispered, scratching freely at the thistles of his beard, “maybe this is what needs to happen. I think he’s ready. I think it’ll bring some peace to some folks; I know it’ll bring some peace to poor June.”

  On stage, they adjusted the gurney so that the onlookers could see. It must have been a one-way window; Michael didn’t seem to be aware of us, as close as we were. His face was severely etiolated, and his skin looked slick. The supervising technician seemed unimpressed by the proceedings—neither he, nor the warden, nor the officials huddled to my left, nor even old Tom Jones betrayed any hint of the day’s gravity. All was orderly, and the rooms were so much brighter than they’d been in my dreams.

  “Brother Leo!” rang out Michael’s voice from beyond the plexiglass, and I jolted and gasped. Then again: “Brother Leo!” I was frozen like that: jolt and gasp, paralyzed, mouth gaping, like a fish being hauled up into the suffocating sky for the first time in its life.

  “I think he’s talking to you, son,” whispered Tom Jones; I thought maybe he was whispering because of the prison personnel in the room.

  “I know,” I said, then, coming to, I turned to the closest official and asked if Michael could hear me through the window.

  “No sir,” he drawled, and though I hadn’t noticed before, I realized now that this was the man in the brown suit. “What you’re hearing from in there gets piped in over an intercom. That’s why the sound’s a little distorted. No, sir, these rooms are all soundproof.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Lotta times, you get the victim’s family in here to watch—mommas and grandmommas and orphaned children and all that; brothers with anger in their heart. Can’t have them spouting off at the prisoner. Not at a time like this.”

  The man in the brown suit went back to his cluster of officials, and I turned again to the window in time to hear Michael call out once more, in the throes of some delirium, some clear fever which terrified me to no end.

  “Brother Leo! This is a test! This is just a dying body! My sleeping soul, and this is only a test!”

  His eyes were wider than they’d ever been, wider than seemed possible. I looked away.

  “He’s raving,” whispered Tom Jones. “He’s stark raving mad. Just talking nonsense—what’s he even saying, now?”

  The warden motioned to the supervising technician, who imparted something quietly to Tiegs. Right on cue, one of the prison officials pulled up alongside me and Tom at the window, a notebook and pen at the ready.

  “I’ve been asked to say words,” came Michael’s voice through the intercom. He paused a moment, and shut those eyes for the last time, and spoke.

  I knew what was coming—he’d recited those words for me just three days prior on my last visit to the neon-lit room. The moment he finished, the warden motioned to the supervising technician again, and a stream of pentobarbital coursed into Michael’s arm, anesthetizing him almost immediately. A second signal brought the pancuronium bromide, which petrified his muscular system and stopped his breathing; here he began to seize violently against the gurney. The warden’s final motion ushered in the potassium chloride, relieving his spasms and arresting his heart.

  “May God have mercy on that boy,” whispered Tom Jones as he placed a heavy hand on my shoulder.

  We watched the light spill out of him, calm in the going, and this world ended.

  * * *

  When I left Georgia for the last time, I was drunker than I’d ever been in my entire life. General Sherman burned this state to the ground in 1864; he marched boldly to the coast, ensorcelled by carnage, while James Buchanan waited out the embers of his second life in Pennsylvania. One hundred and fifty years later, I fled Atlanta in the very last row of a walty jet, so close to the beverage cart I could hardly catch my combustible breath. We tangoed with every stiff wind the Eastern seaboard had to offer, dipping and diving and quaking and I swear making these sounds like breaking metal parts. Each new bit of turbulence required a corresponding cocktail—such were my suffering nerves—and I landed in New York a plastered mess, geminating the Earth with my woozy brain.

  As I filed off the plane, it occurred to me that I would not have to fly again in the near future. And though I felt depleted, emptied out by the thing that I had seen, for the first time in months I knew that I was safe from harm. Emily—a terrific friend, as it turned out, and the only person I knew who owned a car—had offered to pick me up on the occasion of my final voyage home. As I crossed briskly from the jetway into the terminal, I was struck by something: it was a motorized baggage cart. On the way to the ground, a part of my knee that was not generally permitted to twist in a certain direction did, in fact, and snapped. The airport spun with the dual force of intoxication and searing pain, and I fell silent as an army of navy-sweatered personnel gathered above me; all I really heard was soft jazz and a lot of bored folks saying “sir?” One queasy hour later I found myself in a hospital I’d been to (as a visitor) once before—when could that have been? There were X-rays and hushed conversations and I ended up crutching over to a bright new wing. Medicated and spent, I dozed off in a waiting room until I heard a voice, soft and even, say: “I have a theory about your knee.”

  NINE

  MY EYES BOLTED OPEN AS MY MOUTH parceled together the raw materials of an apology—I was being addressed by a woman in scrubs.

  “I said, ‘I have a theory about your knee,’” she repeated, adding: “You’re not still drunk, are you?”

  I had to think about it for the full six seconds it took to prop myself up in the chair.

  “Oh,” I said. “I mean, no. I’m not. That was for … I’m kind of a nervous flier. I mostly just drink on planes. And I had a—I had a difficult week, at work.”

  “Uh-huh,” she mumbled casually, jotting something down on her frayed clipboard. The room was strictly yellow, and beyond the waiting area I could make out sleek machines.

  “So I know that this is the sort of question t
hat a drunk person would ask, but … is this still the hospital?”

  “This is in-patient physical therapy,” she replied without looking up.

  “And you’re my doctor?”

  “I’m your physical therapist.”

  “Oh,” I muttered humbly. “Right. You’re dressed like a doctor.”

  “We dress this way here,” she answered back coolly, still jotting.

  My vision came to rest on the nametag which hung from her cornflower smock: J. Dailey. She was angular and tall, with good posture—or maybe just average, perhaps, for a physical therapist—and a farrago of auburn curls.

  “Got it,” I said, although she didn’t seem to hear.

  The ordeal was beginning to come back to me, and I used both hands to prod at the thick black spongy brace wrapped vice-like around my tumid left knee.

  “So what’s your theory?” I asked, and she looked up quizzically. “You said you had a theory about my knee?”

  “I think you sprained your ACL pretty badly,” she said, dropping right back down to her clipboard.

  “Just a sprain? I felt something snap.”

  “You were drunk.”

  This was fair. The therapist finished her notations with a flourish, sighed, then looked me over.

  “We won’t know anything for certain until a doctor goes over your X-rays,” she went on. “But they wouldn’t have brought you here if they thought it was something terribly serious. And they definitely wouldn’t have left you here, drunk and unsupervised, if they were worried you might cause yourself any long-term damage. I’m going to be assisting you with some things that will help you heal—twice a week, until you’re back to normal. Do you go by Leonard?”

  “Leo,” I said.

  “Leo. We’re going to get you back on your feet very soon. I’m Jane.”

  When I hobbled into Aunt Luz’s apartment later that afternoon, Lita was in her rocking chair, knitting serenely. Though I’d been gone for nearly two weeks and was now returning injured—luggage jerry-rigged to my crutches—she did not seem to notice my labored arrival in the living room. Rafael Uribe Uribe confronted me uneasily as I poured myself onto the couch. I offered him a hand of peace and fellowship along with a weary “Hola, Rafi,” and he skidded away in terror.

  “Hola,” said Lita at last.

  “Hola, Lita,” I replied, adding the now requisite, “cómo estás?”

  “Bien, bien,” she answered back with a far-away smile. She was nearing completion on what looked to be a superlatively warm sweater. “Y tú?” she ventured on after a moment. “Estás herido?” This was rapidly developing into our longest conversation ever, and the Spanish was already threatening to surpass my understanding. Herido. Herido.

  “Sí,” I said, steering the discussion back into the safest harbor of my vocabulary. As a second act, I opted for, “uh, qué?” This seemed to amuse Lita, and she spoke now with sing-song deliberation.

  “Te … lastimaste … a … ti … mismo?” she incanted, before slowly tapping a long needle against her knee.

  “Mismo!” I exclaimed, idiotically. “Sí!” My face had been buried in the cushions of the couch, but I turned to her now in preparation for the coming explanatory effort. “Mismo is ‘hurt,’ like ‘miserable.’ And you’re asking me if I’m hurt—no! You’re asking me how I hurt myself. Well.” I gathered myself, and ventured on: “Yo … la tengo … mismo … para … una … motorized baggage cart. Ooh! Aeropuerto. Airport. Yo la tengo mismo para una motorized baggage cart dans la aeropuerto. Sí?”

  Lita looked me over sympathetically. She tapped her knee again with the needle, then pointed it at my crutches. Rafael Uribe Uribe had wandered back into the room, and it was difficult to say between the three of us who was most confused by the proceedings.

  “Lay-knee,” she articulated carefully, “en qué trabajas?”

  I had this one. Trabajas was work.

  “Yo soy una,” I began, then faltered. What is a lawyer, anyway? “Yo soy una avocado?”

  I didn’t have the words to tell her what was wrong, or what I did, or what I’d seen. She nodded quietly, then began again to knit—content, it seemed, to let the conversation drown in the vast and spectacular sea of my linguistic ineptitude. It was a mercy killing.

  * * *

  I knew a guy back in high school who joined the Army right around the same time the rest of us were heading off to college; his name was Jack, and in my memory he is smart and good-natured. When I heard he was signing up to fight, I couldn’t understand it; I hated that I couldn’t understand it. How could a person be so willing to give up his life like that, and for what? His country? I felt strongly that I loved my country, but not with anything approaching the same fervor with which I loved being alive. Subjugating that love—subjugating your whole being—struck me as more than merely a gallant sacrifice. It seemed wasteful. A waste of your self, this individual who would not be making a repeat performance. There was a war then, and I know Jack went to fight in it, although I do not know what happened to him there.

  Look: maybe I was a coward, and maybe that’s the root of it. Maybe Jack knew something I did not about the purpose of our lives. I understood the appeal of heroism and the nobility of valor; I appreciated the supposed romance of war from reading Hemingway. And I admired Jack. But to give everything up? I was never willing to make that sort of sacrifice. For years, I felt awful for having this belief—then, as I got older, it became more difficult to tell the difference between being a soldier and being anything else. Though I never wanted to be anything other than alive, before long, I was subjugating my love to everything.

  In Georgia, I piled my body onto the cause of abolition—a war by another name, albeit one which required no bravery whatsoever and which carried scant risk of a sudden death. Rachel thought briefly about throwing herself upon me, but we each recognized the quagmire that lay in store—hence our mutual retreat. Fiona enlisted in fantastical stardom; the casualties included her integrity and the home we’d built together. Emily and Boots surrendered themselves to each other, and forged a lasting peace. Everyone I knew was engaged in some hue of a conflict. We were all at war, even if no one died. But no: somebody died. Michael died.

  I’ve never stopped picturing him as he was in the moment he slipped off of the Earth, and I never will. Candent flesh and utter stillness, his whole self limp, his parched lips home now to unbreakable silence, his eyes trapped forever under the ice of those two heavy lids. When I saw his body in that instant, I understood right away that he would not be back again, not ever, and that all the possibilities we’d opened ourselves up to were false avenues—there was only one future, not infinite but finite, and our trajectory is a single unbending line from light to ash. Michael was gone.

  Michael was gone, and Fiona was gone too. Not her body, of course—I could see it still on television whenever I wanted—but the spirit had fled from her. I guess everybody goes after a while. When we die; when we give up what we love. When we let the future become the past, or when we make it so (not with ruthless time but with our own cold wants). And that’s just the thing: I can’t imagine wanting anything other than to be here forever, even sad, even alone, even after everyone else had gone. I’d gladly be the last one at the party, remembering the party; I’d stay to see them turn off the lights, and even after that, I’d stay.

  My favorite poem is “This Solitude of Cataracts,” by Wallace Stevens. Fiona read it to me one night not long after we first moved in together; I was hardly listening until I heard her say this: “He wanted to feel the same way over and over.” It captured me, this thought, and the poem ends with its narrator desiring nothing more than, among all things, timelessness: that the record might skip on and on forever, petrifying his senses, abolishing “the oscillations of planetary pass-pass,” leaving this bronze man free—simply, sempiternally—just to breathe “his bronzen breath at the azury center of time.”

  When I saw her for the very first time at that awful par
ty, and flailed and failed to dance alongside her fluid form; when we sat together in the self-lit campus theater; when we adversely possessed the whole of the Earth from crusty owners who could never understand our ways; when I lay with her on a hospital bed, and we hatched a plan to find each other long after the world went dark; when each moment made its momentary promise to put an end to the tyrannical regime of calendar and clock—I wanted to feel the same way over and over.

  She snatched that feeling away from me, yes she did. She unspooled all of it: future, present, past, all into this jumble I’ve got now. She took my precious time, and I won’t forgive her for that.

  In interviews, her voice is different now from the one I know—it’s stripped of lilt and quirk, and that slight Wisconsin accent has given way to a universal normalcy. On screen, her body flows in a different way than it once did: more calculated, less burdened. Every place I see her, she is changed, her wonders compromised, her nature tamed, her vulnerabilities scrubbed clean. Her heart—I don’t know her heart. Maybe it’s this, and maybe this was the problem:

  Fiona’s heart was a doe: slight, pretty, and fleeting. Fast as hell. You can’t approach or it goes.

  My heart was a buffalo: old and slow, grotesque and noble in equal measure, and for a long while I was certain that she had used every part of it.

  * * *

  “When I ask you to do these stretches at home, it isn’t a suggestion,” Jane Dailey scolded me ten minutes into my second therapy session. I was flat on my back, staring up at a patternless array of ceiling tiles, with my twisted knee raised high in her insistent hands. Every fifteen seconds, she plied that knee into a previously uncharted pose, giving little if any credence to basic ideas about which way legs should bend, or to this particular leg’s long, proud history of inertia. She was right, too: I hadn’t been doing my stretches.