Chances are damned good I’ll have another.
I have heart disease. There is no cure. It will kill me some day. I don’t want it to control me, but it does, snaking its way into every facet of our lives.
‘Want some more lemonade?’ Joey constantly asked.
Lemonade is safe. When we are so worried about fat and cholesterol and stress and all the things that might kill me, lemonade is safe. Obviously, non-fat. But it also takes me back to when I was a little girl. Mama used to make gallons of it when we’d go with her friends to the Midland County Zoo - ‘Our carnival of animals’, their radio ads blared. We’d eat sandwiches and drink lemonade and watch the animals.
I drove with Joey yesterday. I worried about it, but I had to get out. I grabbed my nitro pills and off we went. When I hit that front porch, got that winter sunlight on my face, most of my pain dissipated. Again, it was like being a little girl. I’d scrape my knee and Mama would bandage it. She’d pour me a glass of her lemonade and then cup my chin with her hand. With that touch, the world was fine. And when the sunlight cupped my face, the world was fine again. The medical bills, half paid by insurance, would figure themselves out. My lack of working - and income - would figure itself out. My constant need for pills and stress-free living would figure itself out. God alone knew how any of that would happen, but it would, the sun warming my face - cupping my face - told me so.
Joey drove and I bathed in the scenery. Trees and farms, rivers and creeks. The mountains. Mile after mile and every turn of the wheels left a bit more of the anger and pain behind. Eventually, Joey drove me to Sallee Park, on the outskirts of Denver’s industrial yards, but a beautiful park anyway. Winter grass stretched out like a brown wool blanket, while the evergreens towered over traffic. And this month’s art display? Metal animal sculptures. A ten-foot-tall lion, a tiger. An elephant that rose two storeys, a horse that was too small. Three dogs running. Bones of metal, skin of fabric, everything painted in primary colours. Those colours bowled me over. Everything since the attack had been muted, dulled, drab. But these sculptures were almost electric. Bright colour, digital colour, Technicolor.
We sat on a bench near a giraffe and the sun warmed us. For that slice of time, as long or as short as it might be, there were no pictures of my heart in our medical folders, there were no daily pill boxes to organise my regimen. Under this sun, on this day, everything was fine.
Joey ran across the street, disappearing back into the World, and returned with yoghurt.
‘Because I can’t have ice-cream,’ I said quietly.
‘Yoghurt’s just as good.’
Joey had begun watching our diet before I was even out of the hospital. I thought the key was moderation, but Joey cut certain things out completely. I hated him a little for that because I wanted my burgers, my enchiladas and barbecue. I wanted my pre-heart attack food. More than that, I wanted my pre-heart attack life.
I stared at the yoghurt. ‘I hate this.’
Joey put an arm around my shoulder. ‘I know it’s tough, it’s tough on me, too, but-—’
‘Chances are,’ I said.
‘Yeah, chances are. That’s why we do the right stuff. Change what we eat. Exercise. Take the medicine.’
‘It’s nine pills a day, Joey.’
‘You want to live, that’s what you do.’
‘None of that would have saved my grandfather. Or Mama. Two and counting, Joey. I didn’t tell you about the second.’
‘I know, Jennifer.’
‘She’s in a wheelchair, Joey.’
‘I know that, Jennifer.’ ‘She can’t even remember my name half the time, Joey.’
‘Jennifer, I know that, but—’
This wasn’t the conversation he wanted to have. He wanted to laugh and tell bad jokes and imagine a vacation - when I was cleared to travel - and were we going to Mark’s birthday party and all the other things that made up our lives.
Made up our lives before, I thought. Our lives are different now, informed by a heart attack and pills and exercise and anger and smouldering depression. I constantly talked about my grandfather - dead at forty-six - and about my mother - first attack at age thirty-nine, second at fifty-one, stroke two years later, nursing home at fifty-four - and about whether I was destined to die with a suffocating pain in my chest. It was becoming quite the obsession for me. Watch her,’ the doctor had said. ‘Depression is pretty common the second or third month after a coronary event.’
‘It was pretty bad, wasn’t it?’ I asked for the thousandth time.
‘You were unconscious for nearly an hour. They had you in the cath lab for two. Clogged artery, massive stress, overexertion. But it’s over now, Jennifer. Drugs, therapy, you’re going to live a million years.’
I snorted bitterly. ‘A million years of wondering when it’s going to kill me.’ I raised my face to the sun and closed my eyes. ‘It’s nice out here. Thanks for bringing me.’
‘I’m good for some things.’
I squeezed his thigh. ‘And what would that be … beyond taking out the garbage?’
‘I can make a mean macaroni and cheese.’
I laughed, and even to my cynical ears, it was a sweet sound. ‘A microwave chef. I love you, Joey, and I’m sorry you have to change yourself because of me.’
When he hugged me, his fierceness was surprising, almost scary. ‘God, I love you, too, but never again, okay? I don’t think I can take it.’
‘Never again, then,’ I said. ‘No more heart attacks.’ I looked out over the animals. Had they moved closer? Did they want to play? ‘Carnival of the animals.’
‘Saint-Saens,’ Joey answered.
I laughed. ‘Midland County Zoo.’
Yellow folded into blue, gave way to hints of orange and green. The snow flashed off and on, as though it were electric. Electric and surrounded by cars, trucks. Everything slid on the ice. Everything slammed into telephone poles and mailboxes.
He knew the intersection - Colfax and Race - and knew the pizza place on the corner - pepperoni and goat cheese. But after that, he had no idea. It was like a sinkhole had opened in his head, an abyss that could suck down cars on desert highways or houses on beachfront property. The how and why of this moment had fallen into that sinkhole.
It was because he was dying. Tilton and Reaper Bob had warned him. Bits and pieces will slough off, they said, like sheets of ice off glaciers.
Her name was Jen-something. She was dead. She was his wife. He needed to find her. Yet all he could remember was a white soup bowl. When he looked inside that bowl for her name, he found nothing.
They were close, the dead. Block over, block up. A quick walk, up the barely lit stairway, past the second-floor landing. To the third floor and the heavy door. To the waiting-room where the pimp with the cigarette waited with the whore.
If Joey went now, he’d be in that room, his heart beating again, before his face was snow-wet. If he went, he’d be resurrected.
Simple. Quick.
Alone.
she kissed me i remember that
He remembered that over and over. It was a kiss with no beginning, no end.
He remembered her limping to the car after being thrown out. Not to drag him out, but to say something. She spoke and he wanted to tell her he loved her. But the seat had twisted and his face was pressed against the steering wheel. He held her eyes tightly.
I love you, he wanted to say. Life didn’t exist until you came along.
Corny though it was, he tried to say it anyway.
She walked away and sat on the kerb and began punching her palm with her fingers.
Then Tilton had pulled Joey from the wreck, bandaged him, took him to Reaper Bob.
Joey’s memory was muddy, a dirty river in flood.
‘Fuck,’ he said quietly. He wanted to spend his last hours finding his wife. But his fear held him as tightly as the car’s seatbelt. It squeezed him until there was no air left in his lungs.
He wanted to be heroic.
/>
But he was scared of dying.
‘I love you, Jennifer,’ he said quietly.
Reaper Bob was two blocks away. In fifteen minutes, he’d be alive. Then he’d find Jennifer and give her a proper burial.
It’s a longer drive this time. It’s snowing, and even on slushy streets, it’s beautiful. The cityscape-lit snow constantly changes, one colour to another, one shape to another. In a strange way, it reminds me of our marriage. We are changing just as quickly as the falling snow. We have new diets, new exercises, new life plans.
I detest it.
Quit bitching, I think. Life is life. I’m alive so shut the hell up, Joey’s tired of hearing it. Even I’m tired of hearing it.
So I get my nitro pills and my cell phone and we drive. I believe it helps Joey to think of me reintegrating myself back into the World. When we drive, Joey’s face lights up. He’s like a kid on summer vacation. It doesn’t matter what happened yesterday because today is a new day, another chance to get it right. To me, today is just another chance I’ll have a coronary event.
I woke up last night with the pain. Maybe I slept crooked, maybe I pulled a muscle. Possibilities both, but I knew it was coronary-event pain. Clutching the cordless phone, I went to the bathroom and put two nitro tablets under my tongue. I waited. The pain didn’t get worse, but it certainly didn’t get better. Another pill and I waited. The label says, ‘If no relief after three doses, call 911’. I took a fourth pill, the last in a bottle of twenty sublingual pills.
I waited.
Ten minutes later, the pain was mostly gone and I threw up, my stomach as knotted as the arteries in my heart, as the thoughts in my head. And the cold, from the blood-thinners, hit me like a ton of stents.
Back in bed, I lay awake all night, waiting for the pain again.
While Joey was at work today, now working fifty and sixty hours a week, I had the nitro refilled and delivered. It costs more for delivery, but I’d rather do that on the sly than have Joey realise I’ve taken them all.
‘Look at that,’ Joey said as we drove.
We were passing the park with the animals. The snow had covered just the tops. It was like the animals were so huge the clouds covered them.
While we were both looking, the car hit a patch of black ice. We slid sideways and my heart flew into my throat. My hands grabbed the dashboard and my feet pumped brakes that weren’t there.
‘Hang on,’ Joey yelled.
We slid sideways, banged into the kerb. The car shook like a Tonka truck being played with by some giant boy.
‘God, I’m so sorry, Jennifer,’ he said. His face was as white as the snow on the animals; his anxious breath steamed the windshield. ‘You okay?’
My teeth rattled as badly as if I had been standing in the snow naked for days. They bit into my tongue. Warm blood flooded my mouth.
‘Shit,’ I yelled. I slammed a fist into the dashboard. ‘I bit my tongue. For fuck’s sake, it’ll bleed for forty-five minutes.’ Courtesy of the blood-thinners.
‘Shhhhh,’ Joey said. ‘I’m sorry about that, I wasn’t paying attention.’
Part of me wanted to scream at him, but part of me felt sorry for him. He was trying to make the best of a situation that wasn’t his fault. Not the icy roads, not the sliding car, not the heart attack. He was an innocent man dragged along, like someone had chained him to the back of a moving truck.
I hugged him and kissed his cheek. ‘It wasn’t you. Don’t worry about it.’ I sucked down some blood. ‘I’m fine. Let’s go home.’
‘No shit,’ he said. ‘Watch the rest of Kabukiman and have some hot chocolate.’
The snow was getting heavier, the streets icier. The snow wasn’t beautiful any more. It didn’t sparkle with street light or twinkle as it hit the ground. It was just grey and slushy, marred by dirt and tyres and footprints.
I’m tired. I’ve been tired since that moment on the sidewalk. And everything since that moment has made me more tired. My nitro pills shouldn’t have to be refilled. Imagined conversations with Mama shouldn’t be with her standing over my coffin. Joey shouldn’t have to deal with my bad genes. I shouldn’t have to go insane wondering when the next massive coronary event will occur.
My medical arc will include more pills, more therapy. Eventually, heart surgery of some sort. And in the end - if I make it to the end - chances are I’ll be my mother.
I don’t want that.
And I don’t want Joey struggling to pay bills we can’t really afford.
I love him and that’s what I’m saying when I unbuckle my seatbelt and then twist the wheel as violently as I can. Before the car hits a parked truck and flips, I cup his face like Mama used to do to mine.
They use poultices.
Strips of the dead who didn’t make it. Reaper Bob presses those against the wounds. Blood squeezes out of them, runs over the wounded skin of those who can still live.
The pimp and whore were gone. But Tilton was there. Relief flooded his face when Joey walked in. He snapped his phone closed and shoved it into a pocket.
‘The phone,’ Joey said with stark realisation. ‘She called you.’ It was why Tilton had been there so quickly. She hadn’t been punching her palm, she’d been dialling her cell phone.
‘I’m glad you’re back, Joey.’
Joey began to cry. ‘I can’t find her. She wasn’t at the house and I don’t know where else to even look.’
Tilton held Joey tightly. ‘We gotta worry about you.’
Joey nodded. ‘We’d better do it quick, too, because my memory is getting awful spotty.’
Tilton banged on the interior door, behind which Reaper Bob worked. ‘He’s here, let’s do it.’
When Reaper Bob appeared to take Joey inside, Joey didn’t move. His guts were twisted and frozen. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’
‘Yeah,’ Tilton said. ‘But you got me.’
‘Yeah.’ Joey squeezed Tilton’s arm. ‘But I miss her.’
‘I know.’
The strips of flesh were ragged, as though they’d been torn from the dead rather than cut. Reaper Bob asked Tilton to press them against Joey’s wounds. Joey backed away.
‘It won’t hurt,’ Reaper Bob said. ‘They’ll help you. They’ll save you.’
‘And Jennifer will die.’
she cupped my face
‘Joey,’ Tilton said. ‘Please, just let him do it.’
‘She grabbed the wheel. She killed herself.’
Tilton shook his head. ‘It was an accident. Joey.’
‘No. She wanted it to look that way … so the insurance will pay .. . but she was tired. She had a couple more attacks since the big one, did you know that? She tried to hide it, but she was eating those nitro pills right and left.’ Hot tears stung his cheeks while Reaper Bob worked. ‘She said she loved me.’
‘We both do.’
‘And she said something else, but I can’t remember—’
Zoo, he realised.
‘Holy fuck.’ Joey jumped up, his body on fire. ‘I know where she is.’
‘Joey, no,’ Tilton shouted. ‘Damnit, leave her be or you’ll die.’
‘She’s at the park, Tilton. She’s with the animals.’
‘What?’
Joey dashed down the steps, taking two, sometimes three, at a time. ‘The last thing she said. “I miss the zoo.”‘
I can hear them. It’s vaguely surprising; I thought I’d be dead by now. Joey’s voice, usually so sweet and tame, is edgy and jagged.
‘I’m so sorry … I should have been there for you.’
He thinks it’s his fault. He thinks I did this because of him.
‘She’s dead,’ Tilton says. ‘I’m sorry, Joey, but we’ve got to get you back.’
I came here to die. My skull has a hole in it and my right arm is broken in three places. I can’t count how many breaks my left leg has. I cough up blood and it hurts when I take a deep breath. It’s probably broken ribs puncturing my lung.
Joe
y falls to his knees at my side. I don’t see him, my eyes have swollen closed, but I feel him. ‘We can save her. Damnit, we can save her.’
‘It’s too late for her. We’ve got to save you.’
I want to open my eyes then. I want to yell at him. Why is he still dead? I want to shake him and maybe slap his face five or six times.
I did this horrible thing so he’d get on with his pre-heart attack life. To make sure he’d have life insurance money for bills, to make sure he could go back to who he had been before our lives changed.
‘You don’t understand, Tilton.’ He grabs my hand and kisses it. His lips are cold and rough. ‘Why are you so fucking worried about me?’
‘Because I love you, dumbshit. Are you that blind? I love you and I don’t want you to die.’
That was it, wasn’t it? I’d known, I think, for all of our marriage. Tilton and his boyfriends who always looked and acted a little too much like Joey.
‘I’m dead already,’ Joey says.
‘I can save you.’
‘Damnit, I’m not dead because I’m dead, I’m dead because Jennifer is dead.’
No, I want to shout. No, no, no!
‘Help me,’ Joey says.
‘There is a long silence, but finally Tilton says, ‘Fine, but you can’t carry her, you’re too injured. Let me do it. You get back as fast as you can, I’ll get her there.’
Joey, my love, cups my face. It’s not the warm touch I spent the last ten years with. He’s cold. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ he whispers. Then he cries as he leaves me behind. He has been scared since my heart attack. He was scared for me, absolutely, but he was scared for himself, too. I came too close to death for him to come away unscathed. He saw, in my foxtrot with mortality, his own dance card being filled.
Dark Terrors 6 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 7
