Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland
“Jeremy, I can’t not answer the phone for much longer.”
“What time is it?”
“Six-thirty.”
“Call them back, then, but remember: you hold all the cards, not them.”
The next time the phone rang, I picked it up. It was Ken the Sleep Consultant telling Jeremy to be in the next morning at nine-thirty. Almost the moment I hung up, William called.
“Lizzie, it’s me, and I just flew back from Europe to meet my new nephew.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“A cab. I’m five blocks away. Come down and let me in. Mother says your buzzer’s busted.”
* * *
William’s company is called ImmuDynamics. The name makes his life sound dull, but this isn’t the case. William travels the world, bribing government officials and gaining access to databases that tell him where to find a particular country’s oldest citizens. If you’re under 110, don’t even bother wasting William’s time. There isn’t even a word for people in the age bracket William is interested in. One-hundred-and-tensomethings? No. William says one consistent trait of these creaking old bats is that they almost always want a thousand U.S. dollars, for which they’ll cheerfully donate a syringe full of DNA-rich blood.
What does he do with this blood? It’s shipped—or perhaps smuggled—back home inside picnic coolers filled with dry ice. The samples are removed and placed into centrifuges or some other wicked machine. From this, ImmuDynamics hopes to locate the data that confers longevity on all those old folk. The thinking is that if they multiply a hoped-for gene into something modular like a slice of processed cheese or baloney, they can then slip it into whatever parts of a sick person’s DNA sandwich need beefing up. William says every family has at least two trap doors: weak hearts, cancer-prone breasts or prostates, lazy livers or Alzheimer’s or what have you. Fix those trap doors and life goes on and on and on. Frankly, I don’t see the point, life being nasty, brutish and dull as it already is; but then I’m not the eighty-six-year-old founder of a Fortune 500 company with a gouty toe and kidney cancer.
* * *
“William is going to be here in a minute.”
“Back from Europe?”
“Yup. How are you feeling?”
“Bet you fifty bucks I can sell him a mattress.”
“William? Good luck. You’re on.”
Walking down the stairs, I felt like Jeremy and I had morphed into a pair of circus carnies. My brother was knocking at the door. “William, you look like hell.”
“So do you. I came right back as soon as I heard the news.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Lizzie, let me enjoy this.”
Once I was inside, I made quick introductions, and Jeremy shook William’s hand from the couch. William squinted his eyes in a way that said, What a rude little shit, he can’t even stand up to meet me.
“Jeremy has MS, William.”
“Right! What awful luck. Lizzie, got any booze?”
“I have ouzo. I’ve no idea what it tastes like. It’s been here since the Reagan administration.”
“I’ll chance it.” William turned to look at Jeremy. “So, it’s really true, then. You’re you.”
“Yes, I’m me.”
“Let’s have a good look at you, then.”
“William, he’s not a cocker spaniel—”
Jeremy said, “No, it’s okay.” He sat up straight.
William, being male, looked only for bits of himself in Jeremy’s face. I walked in with the ouzo and a glass, and he said, “He looks a bit like me, don’t you think?”
“Oh, brother. You, you, you.”
“My ouzo. Well, it’s better than nothing.” He turned to Jeremy and lifted his glass in a toast. “Great to meet you. Ghastly news about the MS.” He drank a shot and said, “Bugger me, that’s dreadful stuff. Pour another, please.”
Jeremy, almost as a joke, asked William what the movie was on the plane.
“Something with zombies and car crashes. At the end of it, melon-breasted cheerleaders save the planet.”
Jeremy said, “I feel like a zombie a lot of the time.”
“Well, you would.”
“The only thing that makes it better is a good night’s sleep.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Yes, a good night’s sleep is crucial.”
Sly of Jeremy to cut to the sales chase so ruthlessly. I caused a brief detour by asking, “What’s the deal with zombies—does anybody know?”
“What do you mean?”
“Zombies are like normal people until they’re bitten by another zombie. Once they’re bitten, why don’t they just die? Why do they have to become zombies too?”
Jeremy said, “When you become a zombie, your soul vanishes. There’s no heaven or hell for you—there’s absolutely nothing—which is why zombies are so terrifying. Your relationship to the profound is taken away from you, and there’s no hope of retrieving it.”
William swirled his second ouzo’s dregs in the glass. “Well that’s fucking cheerful.”
Jeremy said, “Growing up, my parents used zombies as metaphors for people trapped in secular humanism.”
I said, “Some of Jeremy’s foster families were religious.”
“Families?” William changed the subject. “Where’s Mother? Where’s Leslie?”
“I haven’t responded to their messages yet.”
“Smart decision. Jeremy, have some ouzo. You too, Lizzie.”
I found myself fetching two more glasses. William poured ouzo into them and said, “Cheers, then—welcome to the family.”
We clinked and drank the Greek turpentine. William yawned.
Jeremy said, “Tired?”
“Jet lag. First class was full and—oof!—those torture chamber airline seats in coach.”
“Bad back support can wreck not only your sleep but your waking time as well.”
“Oof. Tell me about it.”
“How many hours a night do you normally sleep?”
“Me? Six. Maybe six and a half if I’m lucky.”
“You could fix that so easily. And without chemicals, too.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah.”
Within a half-hour William was snoring on my bed, Jeremy had sold a king suite and I was fifty dollars poorer. My annoying sister-in-law, Nancy, was coming to pick up William, who was groggy from being ripped out of a deep alpha-wave sleep, and cursing the ouzo. “You could strip paint with that stuff.”
“Go wash up. You know Nancy likes to nitpick your appearance.”
In the living room, Jeremy said, “I’m going to paint one of your walls for you.”
“What makes you want to do that?”
“I don’t understand people who can only paint a room if all the walls are the same colour—or people who move into a house, stick the sofa here, a table there and a picture on a wall, and then say to themselves, Finished. I’ll never have to think about this room ever again. A house is just as alive as the person who lives in it.”
“Which wall? What colour?”
“By the phone. Red. Japanese lacquer red.”
The notion of a red lacquer wall was, at that point in my life, only on the cusp of imaginability. “Really?”
“It’ll take five coats, but it’ll make this place live and breathe.”
“Painting walls is hard work.”
“Pffff! Painting walls is nothing. It was another one of those things I did when I moved into a new foster home to make me seem useful.”
I heard stones tapping at my window. It was Nancy. I went down to let her in. In the elevator she was too busy scolding Hunter and Chase to ask about Jeremy. Inside the apartment, William looked awful. Nancy said, “Comb your hair.” Then I introduced her to Jeremy, but she was restrained in her greeting.
Chase said, “Mom told us you had a disease. It’s that telethon disease where they put you in a wheelchair and then people push you down a hill
William and his family got into a squabble and I wanted a few moments to myself. I slipped into my bedroom, shut and locked the door, then sat on my bed—nice and cool and cottony. I lay down and felt the sheets draining the heat from my body. I was intensely happy to have this room to myself, and to not be out there with the family.
William knocked on my door. “Lizzie? Lizzie, drag your ass out here. I need you to help civilize things.”
I said nothing.
“Have it your way, then.”
I heard Nancy ask, “What’s her problem?”
“Just having one of her mood swings.”
What? I ran and opened the door, ignoring William. “Nancy, I am not having a mood swing. I’ve only ever had one mood in my entire life, and you know that. It’s impossible for me to have moods between which I can swing. Just be quiet for once, okay?”
William said, “Time to go. I’ll call tomorrow.”
Goodbyes were made, and before the sky was fully dark, Jeremy and I were both asleep.
* * *
The summer of 1997, Hale-Bopp rode the sky above Hollyburn Mountain every night for weeks on end. Sometimes it was buttery and weak, and sometimes it looked like felt cut with blunt kindergarten scissors—but not once did I ever get used to seeing the damn thing up there. It wasn’t natural. Nothing in the sky seems natural to me except the sun and the stars. Even the moon, for lack of a better word, is on probation. Why the thing can’t just stay full all the time drives me nuts. Crescent? Waxing? Waning? Oh, just make up your mind.
I’m grinding my gears.
Okay …
I suppose it’s important here to reinforce yet again that I’m overweight, nay, fat. I think all of us have a set of generic characteristics in our heads that we employ when we read stories. I’ve always been perplexed by books in which too much emphasis is placed on describing the protagonist—“Her hair was the colour of milk and almonds, and she walked with a pronounced limp,” or, “He was wiry and taut. His red hair formed a halo.” You catch my drift. In the end, what I call our “universal protagonists” fill the bills. It doesn’t matter what the book is about, or when or where it’s set, out come our inner heroes, as bland and predictable as any TV station’s six o’clock news team. My suspicion is that the universal female protagonist looks like a soccer mom in a lamé gown, while the man could be a roofing contractor dressed for cocktails. I, of course, am neither. I think the truth is important here, if only as a technicality. Let me describe myself a little …
I’m overweight, and my clothes are … serviceable—usually loose fabrics because they conceal my roundness. Bras? Don’t get me going. I like rattan purses because I can carry more things around with me that way—usually books, which I read alone in a booth at White Spot, where I also note the way people react to my presence. The little teenage girls in their spray-on denim and sparkling lip gloss take one look at me, recognize me as a cosmic danger signal, then never look at me again. Men of all ages don’t notice me, period. To them, I’m a fern. Women older than, say, thirty notice me and treat me kindly, but once they think I’m not looking, their faces betray depressed interiors—I’m what will happen to them if they don’t play their cards right. Restaurant staff, I suspect, are always waiting for me to be difficult, sending the hamburger back because the patty is overcooked or expressing dissent because the white wine is too vinegary. Why? Maybe they think I’m so desperate for interaction that a squabble is better than nothing.
I sometimes imagine spending a hundred grand on cosmetic surgery—making myself bionic, or a clone of Leslie—but I never will. One simple reason is that patients have to be picked up by a family member; taxis aren’t allowed—not even limos. The thought of Mother castigating me in the car while I’m swaddled in sterile linen mummy wrapping scotches that idea—wisdom teeth were bad enough. While I like Leslie—my glamorous sister the milk robot with her Hindenburg bosom—our closeness is based on her being the pretty one and me being the invisible one. She’d invent a reason why she couldn’t drive me. William probably would, but … I just don’t want to have anything done. I just don’t. I can’t put words to it. It’s primal.
So don’t imagine me as your universal protagonist. I am not Jaclyn Smith or Christy Turlington. I’m not Demi Moore, and I’m not whoever is the Demi Moore equivalent of your era. I’m me. I’m real.
* * *
I felt awkward driving Jeremy to work with his folding wheelchair, but he was cavalier. “And in any event, I might need it for real.”
“Aren’t you tempting fate somewhat?”
“Nope. And besides, I’m taking my meds again now, so I won’t be locking up or passing out.”
“Not seeing any visions, either?”
“Probably not.”
“You know best.”
I walked alongside him into The Rock, into its eerily timeless aura of chemicals, bleak furniture and unflattering lighting. I said goodbye and watched him wheel up to the counter. For the first time I witnessed the impact he and the gimpmobile made on strangers. Behind his back the women were enacting Isn’t-he-tragically-adorable? swoons, hands clasped over their hearts. Shoppers saw him coming a mile away and parted for him reverentially. It reminded me of high school when a football player walked into class, and all the girls went silent and twirled their hair.
Of course Jeremy was totally aware of his effect, and the little ham played it up for all he could. I thought, Good for him, but his shamelessness still worried me. Driving away from the mall and over the bridge to work that morning, I felt like I was entering a new life but was somehow being dragged back into an old one. Life before Jeremy seemed so far in the past. Usually on the way to work I’d be obsessively making lists and planning the evening to come, doing what I could to minimize loneliness. Instead I was wondering if Jeremy was still going to see his visions now that he’d started taking his meds again. I thought of what a shame it would be for him to lose them. They were bizarre, but they were genuinely his and his alone.
I then began to wonder how I’d feel if I’d had a girl instead of Jeremy. I’d be equally as protective, and equally as blessed, yet I’d feel awkward about looking her in the eyes. Why? Look at the eyes of a single woman at twenty, at thirty and at forty. I’m thinking of Jane, say. At twenty, she can’t wait to be corrupted—is even giddy at the prospect of so much inner fuel just waiting to be burned: Use me! Dump me! Turn me on to freaky stuff! Amyl nitrate! Whips! Just pick me! But at thirty, those same eyes will send a different message: Okay, I know what it’s like to get burned, and just don’t try to burn me, okay? I can see the tan line left by the wedding ring, and *69 tells me you live in a suburb with lots of trees and plenty of elementary schools and soccer fields. Obviously, there’s a bit of fuel remaining—just enough to get you back to civilization, should things go horribly wrong.
But look at those eyes at forty. There’s a potent echo from two decades before: Use me! Dump me! Turn me on to freaky stuff! Pick me! But at the same time, the fuel’s pretty much spent, and you don’t want to be used and dumped and exposed to leather and enemas, and any guy you meet is going to look at your papers, see the absence of long relationships or marriage, and quietly move on. Maybe he’s the one who’s damaged goods, but does it matter? Sixty seconds after he’s dropped you off for the last time, he’s singing along to Supertramp on the AM radio. You’re not even a memory; you’re a speed bump. Were you asking for much? Just don’t interrupt my daily routines, and please enjoy watching Law & Order reruns as much as I do.
I don’t know if I’d want to see any of this in the eyes of a daughter of mine, regardless of age. The change would be too hard to bear.
* * *
My return to the office was a non-event. I felt like some sort of magic rock that creates no ripple when thrown in water. Donna gophered her head over her cubicle wall and asked me how my jaws felt, and the word “Fine” was barely out of my mouth before her head bobbed down and she was on t
I booted up and looked at my screen. My usual ritual when beginning my day had always been to count the number of days until I die based on government statistics telling me that women born in 1960 could expect to live to seventy-six. In my mind, my birthday in 2036 has been my checkout date. This sounds macabre, but how many of us quietly do this—treat our lives like time-coded dairy products on the fridge’s middle shelf, silently fermenting beside a doomed bag of lettuce? Now, for the first time in years, I didn’t feel like checking my expiry date.
I also have another program that tells me my one thousandth birthday will fall on a Friday. My five hundredth birthday will fall on Monday. I used to have fun seeing whether or not my one millionth birthday fell on a statutory holiday. But that morning when I returned to work? I checked my birthday in a billion years, and it falls on a Wednesday, and the whole death obsession seemed a bit passé. Thinking about my death like this was, I suppose, akin to my fascination with actors portraying corpses onscreen.
Theodore and Mike from the LAN team came by to ask me if I wanted to join their lottery pool. I thought about this for a moment and passed.
“You sure, Liz? ‘Embittered Co-worker Goes on Lottery-Loss Bloodbath Murder Spree.’”
“I’ve had enough fate for one week.”
They looked at me blankly.
“I’ll pass.”
“Your loss.” And they were gone.
Lonely lives are filled with ritual to ward off the void of evenings spent alone, but for the first time in my life I didn’t feel this way. It took me an hour at my keyboard, doing nothing, for this to sink in. I spaced out and lost all sense of time. When I snapped out of this, I thought of all the times in my life when I’d been driving from A to B and suddenly realized I’d gone five miles with no memory of having driven them. And with that came the feeling that I got away with something. That sort of sums up my pre-Jeremy existence: arranging my life so that I could forget about it while it was happening.