Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland
It was those damned nodules of dead proteins in his brain, like raisins in raisin bread, that stripped Jeremy of the motions and tics and gestures that make us alive. I have to remind myself of the medical view, because I could see no message from God there—no mercy, no higher logic or moral sense to describe the sight of him on my couch, as fall merged into winter, as Hale-Bopp came and went, and as, near the end of November, he finally lost his winning smile.
I was giving him a haircut one afternoon. He looked at me and said, “Mom, come on, it has to be showing. I’m trying here.”
“Sorry, honey.”
“Crap. That smile was going to coast me right through my golden years.”
By December, Jeremy had lost so many of his Jeremy-isms that the loss of the winning smile seemed, to him, anti-climactic. To me it was hard, as it was his winning smile that had carried me over to his side of the universe. Remember, this is a man who had me crawling down a highway in rush hour on the first day we met.
Dr. Tyson came every few days, powerless to do much except watch and prescribe more pills. She went beyond the call of duty and taught me about practical issues like drips, tubes and wheelchairs. I pride myself that I was competent in that respect.
William was good for a visit every few days, and when he came he brought snippets gleaned from the medical underground—yes, a medical underground exists—and these snippets provided us with dim glimmers of hope. It’s amazing how far you can go along bartering with a disease. If we could just fly to Baltimore to try this new antibody therapy, all our problems would be solved! Denial was easy; bargaining was the toughie. Stem cells now offer genuine hope, but as recently as seven years ago—zip. Mother and Leslie did their part too, which was simply to visit.
I also kept on hand the best medicine of all: volumes of literature on farming, which Jeremy enjoyed reading or having read to him. When he was too prostrate to do anything much, I read aloud the dos and don’ts of allowing alfalfa fields to go fallow, the proper procedures for piglets who won’t suckle, or the advantages of renting a light plane and viewing your land from above. Along the windows we had a small farm of runner beans and radishes growing in a variety of Styrofoam containers. If I ever go on a quiz show and the topic is farming, just watch me win that minivan with the built-in Warner Brothers TV package.
* * *
Okay, I see what I’m doing here—I’m using medicine and science to deflect attention away from what it was that made my son himself and different in a big way: his visions—his, oh God—I don’t care what you call them at this point. Whatever it was, Jeremy saw something uncanny. Period.
One afternoon I was reading a magazine and he said, “Can you see them?”
I said, “What?”
“The air in front of us. It’s filled with metal tubes.”
“Tubes?”
“Like for road drainage. They’re floating around in front of us—and now they’re entering my body. I have holes going through my body. Tunnels.” He was looking at the ceiling as he said this.
I wrote down his words as he spoke. “What else do you see?”
“I’m looking down at the ground, but I’m not casting a shadow. Instead of my shadow there’s light.”
“And?”
“I’ve walked into a dark room. There’s a planet in front of me now. Earth. It’s maybe your height. It’s glowing like the old NASA footage—in the middle of the room. Floating.”
“What’s it doing?”
“Nothing. Hovering. If I went up to it and blew, I could cause a hurricane anywhere I wanted. I just touched Antarctica. It’s cold. And now I’m looking at my fingers.”
“Go on.”
“The earth is so bright. My hands are glowing bright red from the blood inside them.”
“Okay.”
Jeremy went quiet for awhile.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“No. Nothing.”
“Keep trying.”
After a few seconds he said, “I’m never going to know you properly, Mom. You know that.”
“I do.”
“I should have contacted you years earlier.”
“Nonsense.”
“I’m not going to be seeing any more pictures in my head.” I was about to protest, but he said, “Mom, no. It’s over. You’re the one who has to do it now.”
“I can’t.”
“No. If I can inherit something as stupid as being able to sing backwards from you, you can certainly see a few pictures in your head.”
It was late afternoon, a weekday, and I breathed in a few times and closed my eyes, at which point Jeremy said, “Try to find the farmers.”
And so I tried.
What do any of us see when we close our eyes? Nothing and everything. I’ve often wondered what sort of dreams people have who are born blind. Do they dream in sound and temperature? Has anybody ever documented this?
For obvious reasons, I’ve thought about “seeing things” a great deal since then. For starters, I think humans are the only animal to know the difference between sleeping and dreaming. It doesn’t matter if you’re a lion cub, a jellyfish or a fern—wakefulness and dreaming are the same thing to them all. I think that until recently, maybe a few thousand years ago, that was the case for humans too. But then there was somebody out there who broke the cycle, who told people the difference between the two worlds. And so, for a few centuries, people became used to thinking of real life and dreaming as two different places. And it was someone like Jeremy who did the telling.
But then something else happened. While we knew about dream life versus real life, we still didn’t know about the past, present or future. A day was a day was a day.
tomorrow = yesterday = today = the same thing = always
There had to be somebody out there who made a radical leap—someone who told the others that there existed this place beyond us that was different than anything we’d known, namely the future. And because of the future, all human lives became different. Our children’s lives became different, better than ours. We could apply our minds to being more efficient in the way we did tasks. And it was someone like Jeremy who told people this.
And then someone came along and told people that on top of everything else, not only was there life and death, but there was also life after death. And it was someone like Jeremy who told people this. Jeremy’s job was to be a teller, and now he’d decided to pass that job on to me.
Back in the living room that afternoon, I said I would apply myself to trying to see the farmers, with little hope of success.
* * *
Klaus Kertesz said, “You remember me, don’t you, Elizabeth?”
“No, I don’t.” It took everything out of me just to play it cool. Remember, I have no memory of Jeremy’s conception. Was this guy a rapist? Was I complicit in my own pregnancy? I couldn’t allow myself to be judgmental. The final fact of the matter was that he did give me Jeremy. Ends don’t justify the means, but I, Liz Dunn, once had a child. And I, Liz Dunn, also knew that if I wanted to hear the truth about my night in Rome, I would have to maintain a calm exterior. Accusations and tears would get me nothing, and I’m sick of nothing.
Klaus is also, as Rainer told me, almost stupidly handsome, and it’s difficult to speak with beautiful people. No matter how hard you try to pretend otherwise, you still want them to like you. We are a wretched, shallow species.
Klaus shook my hand, and as he did I briefly crumbled at the knees. We wait so long for moments like this in life, and when they finally occur, we blunder through them the same way we do everything else. Me? The last person on earth to be paralyzed by looks, but there I go. Stupid, stupid Lizzie.
He said, “You don’t remember me. I can see that. How sad. I remember you so well.”
That anyone ever remembers me at all is invariably a surprise, but to be remembered well? “Do you?”
“Of course. That trip to Rome. It was all of our parents sending us away so that they could
“Yes.”
“But you don’t remember me?”
“No.”
Klaus looked at Rainer. “Herr Bayer, I’m sure you’re the one who found Elizabeth.”
“You are correct.”
“But even having found Elizabeth, why on earth would you locate her? She is a …”—he looked my way—“ … happy evening from my very distant past.”
“It is my job to follow up on all possible leads.”
“Leads? Leads to what?” Klaus turned to me. “Elizabeth, why did you come all the way to Vienna from Canada—you still live there, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you come all this way to meet somebody you don’t remember? You both confuse me.”
It felt premature to mention Jeremy. I was stuck for words. I didn’t know if I wanted to kill this man or lick his neck and stick my tongue in his ear.
He seemed truly distraught that I didn’t remember him. He asked me, “What has Mr. Bayer told you about me that was so inviting?”
I said, “Not much. That you make religious … assaults on women. That’s probably the wrong phrase. But you must know what I’m speaking about.”
“Oh yes, but you see, I no longer do that any more.”
Rainer cut in here. “What do you mean, you no longer do?”
“I’ve been given medicines. Paroxetine. I started to take it three weeks ago, and it’s already turned off the part of my brain that needs to do that.”
Rainer was dubious. “That’s bullshit, Herr Kertesz.”
“If you want to believe that, then please do. But I passed two of my previous, uh, friends this morning, and I had no desire to talk with them. I have been diagnosed as an obsessive-compulsive, and that is a condition that, in 2004, is now quite controllable. Fifteen years of Freudian therapy, an adulthood wasted, for nothing. Suddenly I take this little pill and voilà! I am normal, just like everybody else. Tell me, Elizabeth, do you have friends who leave their houses then panic and run back inside to see that the stove is switched off?”
“Yes. Jennifer from Human Resources. She’ll go back to the cafeteria kitchen four or five times until she’s calm. She once wrote the word Off on her forearm.”
“Exactly. The way medicine is being designed now, I’m sure they’ll have a drug called Stovex that will act specifically on people with stove compulsions.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Thank you. Now could you please tell me the real reason you came?”
Rainer nodded at me. I reached into my purse and pulled out a pile of snapshots of Jeremy—dozens that I had taken (winning smile included) as well as the two sad little pictures from his social worker. I laid them out on the table in a long row. Most were at the condo, but some were at the beach, and one was taken at the top of Grouse Mountain on the clearest of days, the city behind him glinting like a summer lake. As Klaus’s eyes hit the first shot, I felt it was compassionate to say, “I’m sorry to tell you he’s dead, Klaus. About seven years ago.”
Zealot or not, what a horrible dose of good news/bad news to get at once. He sat down at the table, holding a few of the shots, and I wondered if I’d done the right thing in coming.
“What was his name?”
“Jeremy.”
“What type of man was he?”
“He was a nice guy. I only met him four months before he died. He was adopted at birth. I never knew him until he found me.”
“How did he die?”
“Multiple sclerosis.” I looked in my purse. “I brought a VHS tape here with me, but it won’t work on European machines.”
Rainer said, “We can take it down to the station. Our system can handle your format.”
I sat down opposite Klaus, as did Rainer. Out of respect, we let him look at the photos without us scrutinizing him.
Rainer asked how my head felt. I said, “It’s actually much better. I think it’s the jet lag and everything else catching up with me.”
“Of course it is.” Rainer was a bit too quick with the of course.
“Thank you for the codeine pills.”
“I have many more if you like. My job.”
Klaus looked up and said, “Please, let’s go to the police station.”
We drove to the station in Rainer’s car, with me up front, Klaus in the back, silent and grimacing out the window. There were clouds of pigeons, flocks of Japanese tourists, and masonry so ornate and delicate that it seemed to be dreaming.
At the station, we passed through several elevators and corridors and ended up in a room with a VCR. Klaus sat down while Rainer showed me how to use the machine.
I said, “This is from my birthday party in November 1997, at my mother’s house. Jeremy still had some control of his facial muscles then. We were all a little bit drunk. He died about a month after this. It was the last night that everything worked all together at once.”
“Please, let me see it.”
I turned it on, and as always I was surprised the tape hadn’t eroded since then. There was some crackling and a squeal and then the sound of me, Jeremy, Mother, William and William’s two brats, but not Nancy, who that evening had decided to sulk at the far end of the room. Leslie and her family were hiking on Vancouver Island.
I was the evening’s cameraman. I started filming with William saying, “Come on, Jeremy, we need to give you a man’s challenge.”
“I can take whatever you can throw at me, you great spinner of lies.”
My mother and I hooted, and the kids squeaked.
“Okay,” said William, “try this …” William inserted a tape into the deck, a Japanese model with backward and forward motion. He turned it on, and on came “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” lightning-fast words, Fire on the mountain, run boys run/ The devil’s in the house of the rising sun …
Jeremy shouted, “You insult me! Turn off the machine and let me sing my song!”
William fiddled with switches, and Jeremy promptly sang it backwards. Everybody turned to William. He replayed the tape—Jeremy had nailed it. It was a fun evening.
Klaus asked, “What were you doing?”
I paused the tape. “Singing songs backwards. It’s a weird talent Jeremy inherited from me.”
I turned the tape back on. William was saying, “Okay, buster, there’s no stopping you. Why don’t we have a crowd-pleaser?” William turned to the camera (me) and said, “Are we ready to rock!”
The two kids said, “Dad, shut up.”
William said, “Are we ready to rock!”
“Dad, shut up. You’re being a goof.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, the crowd pleaser of all time: ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’!”
… I see a little silhouetto of a man …
Jeremy said, “Man, I cut my teeth on this song. Sir William—hit your recording button!”
Jeremy stood up, a surprise in itself, and with full body control mimicked a Three Tenor. We were so floored by his performance that, when he was done, we went mute.
“Well?” said Jeremy. “A playback if you will?”
The playback was moot. We knew it’d be perfect, and it was.
I said, “Jeremy, is there anything you’d like to say to posterity?”
One of the kids asked, “What’s posterity?”
Mother said, “Posterity is whether or not people remember you, dear.”
Jeremy looked at the camera and slowly blew a kiss to the lens. “Hello posterity. Lovely to meet you at last.” It was a pretty moment, like when a gust of plum blossoms hits your windshield in April. “Glad you could make it to our party.”
“Speech!” Mother was lost to cognac.
“To posterity, and to everyone here in the room, I wish you peace, and prosperity, and a long and fine life.” He blew another kiss at the camera. “See you later. Be nice.”
The room remained quie
I turned off the VCR. “There’s more. We had a karaoke marathon. William’s kids can sort of sing backwards. William can’t do it at all.”
Rainer said, “I’ll make you a copy of this tape later.”
Klaus was rocking gently. Rainer left, and I sat down beside Klaus on a swivelling office chair. “Rainer never said if you had children. Do you?”
He was defeated. “No.”
“Have you ever been married?”
“Me? No. I wish, but my compulsions always frightened the young gazelles.”
There was a silence, and he asked if he could watch the tape alone. I left him there.
* * *
A few years ago, I started eating lunch at the hospital cafeteria every now and then. The food was passable, and my aim was to people-watch, trying to figure out what interior dramas preoccupied my fellow diners. This activity helped make my otherwise drama-free life three-point-seven percent more interesting. I mention this because, a half-hour later, Klaus emerged from the room with the TV set and, as he did, he reminded me of people in hospital lobbies—the disbelieving posture, the obviously churning soul, the stare that comes from helplessness. Rainer called him into his office to join us.
By then Klaus had connected all the dots, and understood why I’d come to Austria. He said, “You think I raped you, don’t you?”
“I—really have no idea.”
“You don’t remember what happened?”
“No.” There was another silence. I said, “Please. Tell me.”
He said, “I doubt it’s what you think. We went up onto the roof of that horrible discotheque—there was a group of us—eight maybe? We were all a little bit drunk, but you were far drunker than us.”
“I remember that part.”
“My friends were being stupid teenagers. They were spitting and throwing firecrackers down on the street. I probably would have joined them, but you were drunker than I thought. I was worried about you. My friends were all saying, ‘Sissy! Nursie-poo!’ That kind of thing. They wanted to go downstairs and pick up your girlfriends, and so they left us. I was trying to think of a way of taking you downstairs, but that was hard. The roof wasn’t flat—it was covered with pipes and metal boxes and wires. And you were quite …”