This was John’s personal driver, she gathered. Best-selling millionaire authors didn’t have to drive themselves around, especially when they lived in the Hollywood Hills. Pam took no delight in the palm-tree-lined streets, her first glimpse of the famous Hollywood sign. She felt like a whore for taking John’s money. At the dissolution of their marriage, she had insisted they split everything down the middle: selling the house, the cars, their meager stocks so that it could all be done in cash. Money had been the noose he kept around her neck for years. They couldn’t go on vacation or buy a new car or splurge on a dinner out because of money. To say John had kept a tight grip on the purse strings was an understatement. Everything was on a budget and even Pam was kept on an allowance. She seethed with hatred every time she thought about their life before, the way she had allowed him to control everything. How easy it must have been for him, how boring in its own way, to have so much power over her.
When John had gotten his first royalty check from Biological Healing, he had offered her a share of the money, but Pam had told him where he could deposit it. She had read the book at least three times by then, had gone to school where her students had read about the ‘pedestrian’ sex life she had shared with her husband. Her colleagues had read about how she had simply walked away when John had accused her of not loving their son. Her drycleaner knew that she had once told John that she was disgusted by the thought of being with him.
‘Take the money.’ John had reasoned, ‘I know you need it.’
‘You bastard,’ she had hissed. Her teeth were clenched, and she wished they were biting into his jugular, twisting it out of his neck like a root from the ground. She cursed him, something she never did because she thought cursing was base and showed a lack of intelligence. ‘Fuck you and fuck your money.’
‘I’m sorry you feel that way, Pam.’ His tone was reasonable, the same tone he had used when she questioned him about where he had been until one in the morning, why there was a key in his pocket that didn’t fit any of their locks. The tone that said, ‘Why are you being so silly? Why are you letting your anger ruin your life?’
She could even picture that smirk, that knowing smirk that said he knew that he had won. Money was his way back into her life, his way to control her again, to make her want nice things only so he could snatch them away at will.
As if she were a prostitute, he had offered, ‘I can send it to you in cash, if you prefer.’
Pam had slammed down the phone before he could say anything else.
Mostly, she got news of her ex-husband from magazines, television shows and helpful friends. ‘Did you see John met the Dali Lama? Did you see John spent the weekend with the president?’
‘Did you see that I don’t give a shit?’ Pam had said to one of them, but this had been a mistake because God forbid she should be bitter about the man who was helping heal the country. Funny how he never mentioned his affair, or how he had told her when she was pregnant with Zack that she was too fat to be attractive. Why were these amusing little anecdotes missing from his precious little book? And why was it that the world didn’t notice that disgusting smirk on his face every time he talked about the nature of healing your soul?
Pam’s mouth had gaped open when the Town Car pulled past the open gate and into John’s driveway. She had never seen a private home this large before. The school where she taught was not as big as this building. The same man who had ten years ago insisted they keep the heat off during a snowstorm could not own this stunning mansion.
‘Pam!’ Cindy, the gorgeous, young Pilates instructor/whore, had said. She looked Pam right in the eye, but Pam knew that as she’d walked down the front steps toward the car the woman had taken in her wide hips, the wrinkles at her eyes and the inappropriate braid.
‘He’s been waiting for you,’ Cindy told her. She had a bag of ice in her hand, the sort of thing you’d have if you sprained an ankle.
There was a man in a dark suit leaning against a white van that was parked in the shade of one of the many trees. ‘NuLife’ was written across the door, the print small and unassuming. Pam imagined they didn’t advertise much considering the morbid nature of their jobs. She had looked up the lab – if you could call it that – online when John had told her about it. Their secret facility in Arizona held dozens of heads and bodies in stasis, all awaiting reanimation. Fees were listed on the site as well. A neuroseperation (or decapitation, as it was known to the rest of the world) ran around two hundred thousand dollars. The whole body cost over half a million. For an additional fee, you could even store personal objects with the body so that when they were reanimated, they had some of their favorite things to remind them of their ‘first life’.
‘Let’s just get this over with,’ Pam snapped, and Cindy seemed surprised. Yes, Cindy was young enough to be John’s daughter, but she’d certainly read Biological Healing. Surely, she’d paid close attention to the chapter that talked about Pam’s coldness after Zack’s death, the way she had turned away from John, blocked him out and denied him the one thing that would bring them back together.
Sex played a large part in Biological Healing – not just sex, but lots of it. Sure, Pam and John had gone at it like bunnies until Zack was born, but then, as with most couples, their lives had changed when they had a child. Who knew that John was so interested in screwing? Certainly not his ex-wife. Apparently, it was the elixir of life, the succor through which both John and Pam would have reclaimed their marriage if only she hadn’t been such a frigid, uncaring bitch. The fact that John hadn’t been able to perform the one time after Zack’s death that they had tried to have sex had also somehow been left out of the book.
‘You’ve killed me,’ he had said after that failed attempt, rolling onto his back, more bereft about his flaccidity than he had ever seemed about Zack. ‘You have finally killed me.’
If only she had.
Cindy led her into the house, which had the largest set of oak doors Pam had seen outside of a castle. The foyer was huge, their footsteps echoing up to an enormous chandelier as they walked into what must have been the living room.
‘They’re from NuLife,’ Cindy said, indicating a man and a woman sitting on a couch beside the fireplace. They had coolers stacked around them, the kind you would find at a family picnic, and they were each scooping ice into baggies similar to the one Cindy held in her hand.
Cindy said, ‘They’re just waiting.’
‘Waiting for –’ Pam started, but Cindy interrupted her.
‘He’s in his study,’ she said, leading the way down a long, art-lined hallway. The Pilates instructor’s shoes were strappy little things, the kind that Pam had never been able to wear because they made her back hurt. The flip-flip of the sandals echoed in the hall as they made their way to the back of the house. Outside, there was a courtyard with a fountain. The windows and doors were open so that the splattering of the water mixed with the flopping of the shoes, some kind of mad cacophony that served nothing but to annoy.
John’s study was slightly different from the converted garage space they had made for him back in Decatur. No flimsy pine paneling buckled off the walls, and the antique leather-lined desk was a far cry from the two sawhorses and piece of plywood that had held his computer for all those years.
He was lying on a hospital bed in the back of the room, facing the large windows that overlooked the fountain in the courtyard. The glass doors were open here, too, and the water was more soothing now that Cindy had stopped flipping her idiotic shoes. A ray of light beamed down from the heavens, showering the bed in warmth. Pam would not have been surprised if he had hired a chorus of angels to sing beside him, but no, there was just the usual apparatus of lingering death: an oxygen tank, a heart monitor and the requisite plastic pitcher on the table beside his bed.
‘Honey?’ Cindy asked, her shrill voice cutting into the soft hiss of the oxygen tank. ‘Pam is here.’
A frail voice echoed, ‘Pam?’
‘I’ve got
to go fill up more bags,’ Cindy said, then left, more like an overworked nurse announcing a visitor than a lover. The girl couldn’t be older than nineteen, Pam thought. The fact that John was dying must be something she took as a personal affront rather than a fact of life.
And dying he was. As Pam walked toward the bed, she could smell death, the same odor that had clung to her mother as she rotted away from breast cancer several years ago. John’s skin was yellow and his beard was completely white. He had always had a full head of hair, but most of it was gone now. Some of it had obviously been shaved by a doctor – she could see the healing scar where a surgeon had cut into his head – some probably chased away by whatever medications they were giving him to keep him alive for a few more days.
As if he could read her mind, he moved away the oxygen mask and said, ‘It won’t be long.’
She was facing him now, seeing an older version of John, the face of his father, his grandfather. Would Zack have looked like this if he had managed to survive that accident? Would her son have aged this badly if the first, second, third, millionth time Pam had told John that she thought Zack had a drinking problem, instead of saying, ‘He’s just a boy,’ he had said, ‘Yes, you’re right. Let’s do something to help him.’
Would Zack be alive if for just once in her life Pam had stood up to her husband and said, ‘No’?
There was a large cooler beside John’s bed, and she could not help but shudder at the sight of it. Were they going to chop him up and throw him in the van?
‘Open it,’ he told her, and despite her better judgment, she did. What had she been expecting to find? A head-sized thermos? A steaming vat of liquid nitrogen? Certainly not the little baggies of ice she found.
‘To preserve me while they …’ his finger made a dragging motion across his neck.
‘What?’ But Pam understood. She could see where his finger had traced across his throat, a cut that would be real soon enough.
‘Of course … the procedure is … illegal,’ he managed, his breath raspy so that he had to put the mask back over his face.
‘What do you mean?’ she demanded. When he did not answer, she found herself staring at the bags of cubed ice as if they were tea leaves and she a wise old gypsy.
‘In California,’ he finally gasped. ‘It’s illegal to cut off …’ He took another breath of oxygen. ‘The law considers it mutilating … a dead body.’
‘Well, it is mutilation,’ she said, letting the cooler lid slam back into place. Of course it was illegal to cut the head off a dead body – even in this Godforsaken loony bin of a state. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’
He laughed, the old John bringing a sparkle into his eyes.
‘You’re absolutely insane,’ she told him, but she laughed, too. My God, over twenty years with this man. A house, a home, a son, a life. Twenty years of her existence meshed in with his like the weave of a blanket.
‘Don’t cry,’ he said, reaching out for her hand. Before she could stop herself, she took his hand, felt the coldness of his skin. Had it been like this since Zack’s death? The truth was that the reason she couldn’t make love to John was because his touch sent a deathly chill through her. Had John been a ghost all this time? Had he cried so many tears, wept for so many nights, that the life had seeped out of him?
He was wearing silk pajamas, a dark burgundy that only brought out the sallowness of his skin. There was a blanket folded at the end of the bed, his feet resting on top of it.
He said, ‘Gross,’ and she took a minute to realize he meant his toenails. They were long and yellow, disgusting to look at. ‘John Hughes.’
‘Howard Hughes,’ she corrected before she could stop herself.
There was a flash in his eyes, but he didn’t pursue it. The John she knew would have never let her get away with correcting him. For the first time since she had heard from him, Pam realized that he really was dying, that this was it. No matter what she did with her life, where she went, she would do so with the knowledge that John no longer walked the face of the earth.
Granted, he would be in stasis in a vat of liquid nitrogen somewhere, but still.
‘Remember,’ he began. ‘With Zack … you bit … his toenails.’
She felt herself smile at the memory. Once, very early on, she had accidentally trimmed one of Zack’s nails to the quick. Her heart had broken at the sight of blood, and Zack’s screaming still reverberated in her ears if she thought about it long enough. After that, she had used her teeth to clip his nails, terrified she would hurt him with the sharp metal clippers. Standing beside John’s deathbed, she could almost feel Zack’s thin nails between her teeth, taste the sour, baby-soft skin of his feet.
‘I …’ John moved the mask back over his mouth and nose, and she could see his chest rising and falling. ‘I need to …’
She shushed him. ‘It’s okay.’
‘I want to …’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, thinking that if he apologized now, she wouldn’t know what to do with herself.
He took a few deep breaths, his eyes slitting almost closed. Suddenly, he opened them wide as if he remembered that he could die if he closed them too long. ‘I … I left you something.’
Years had passed, but she could still remember the shame she had felt when she’d had to ask him for lunch money because she’d run through her allowance before the week was out.
He had refused her request and told her to be more careful the next time.
‘I left … you … something.’
She tried to keep her anger down, saying, ‘I told you I don’t want your money.’
‘Not money,’ he said, his lips twisting in a half-smile. ‘Better.’
‘Don’t give me anything, John. I don’t want anything from you.’ Why had she come here? Why had she agreed to get on a plane and fly all the way out here?
To watch him die. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she had known it all along that she wanted to watch him die, watch John succumb to something over which he had no control. She had wanted to see death wipe that knowing smirk off his face and she wanted to be standing over him while this happened, watch him realize that there was one thing out there that he could not get the better of. Let the World think of him as their loving healer, but let Pam watch him die with them both knowing what a lying, conniving piece of shit he was.
The heart monitor gave an irregular beep and the oxygen mask cleared of fog from his breath. She waited, counting … one … two … three … until he took a gulp of air into his lungs, the machinery of life moving forward.
Pam felt ashamed. What kind of person was she that she could take such pleasure in his pain? How could think these things about the father of her child?
John’s chest rose with effort. ‘Need to tell you …’ he tried again.
‘No,’ she said. She couldn’t hear his apology, not now, not after hating him for so long. ‘Please don’t.’ She could not bear more shame.
He waved his hand out, saying, ‘Sit.’
She went to his desk to get the chair, but stopped when she saw the stack of old notebooks piled on top. She recognized the journals, remembered them from their married days when he would sit in his chair, scribbling down his private thoughts. Pam had been tempted, especially after the affair, but she had never read them, never violated his privacy.
Pam started to roll the chair over to his bed, but he waved her away. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Read.’
‘I’m not going to read your journals.’ She didn’t add that it was hard enough reading his damn book.
‘Read,’ he insisted, then, ‘Please.’
Pam relented, or at least appeared to. She rolled the chair back, her hands gripping the soft leather. God, he had probably paid more for this chair than she had for her car.
She sat at the desk and opened the first book she put her hand on. She did not want to read the journal, could not handle the further blow to her self-esteem of reading his early diatribes on her failures. He
r fingers found a letter opener, and she winced, jerking back her hand as she felt the sharp edge slice her skin. The letter opener was actually a stiletto. The small knife looked to be made of brass. Jewels decorated the handle, and the blade was finely sharpened as if John needed to defend himself from strangers entering his office.
The only person he would ever need to defend himself from was Pam.
‘Read …’ John admonished, his voice weaker than ever. ‘Please …’
Pam sighed, giving into curiosity as she picked up one of the journals. She thumbed to the first page. It was dated three years into their marriage, and she skimmed the parts about whiny students and a blister he’d gotten from grading papers.
Her eyes stopped on one word: Beth.
Pam finished the journal in under an hour – a year of John’s life encapsulated in the blink of an eye.
Another year, another name: Celia.
Year six brought two names: Eileen and Ellen.
The door opened and Cindy asked, ‘Everything all right?’
Pam could not open her mouth to speak. She nodded.
‘He just needs to check,’ she said, letting in the man Pam had seen in the living room. He went to John, pressed a stethoscope against his chest for a few minutes, nodded, then left.
Cindy told Pam, ‘We could use some help out here with the ice if you’re –’
‘No,’ Pam said. Her tone of voice was alarming, the kind she used to stop students in their tracks and elicit confessions of chicanery and cheating.
The door clicked shut and Pam returned to the journal.
Mindy. Sheila. Rina. Yokimito.
Every position imaginable and one that, even with her doctorate in human biology, Pam would have needed a diagram to understand.
She turned the page.
He had drawn a diagram.
From the bed, John wheezed. Pam thumbed through the journals, looking for the year of Zack’s death. She found the day before, February sixteenth. John’s cramped scrawl revealed that he had finally found love. He had been with a woman named Judy the day before their son died.