Reunion (31 page)

Considerations of God and afterlife were irrelevant to a lifelong atheist, and while the feelings of those who loved her were not, she knew that Harry, her friends too, would not want a half-strength Ava. She had seen far too many elderly women with glazed stares led through public gardens by jolly smiling daughters or long-suffering husbands – ‘See the pretty flowers, dear. Aren't they lovely?' – or admiring the food at the market – ‘Smell the heavenly smells, dear' – or oohing and aahing over a baby in a pram – ‘Look at the tiny baby, dear' – or patting a dog in the street – ‘Feel the soft puppy, dear' – demented women led by the arm, or worse, by the hand and always lagging a little behind, never quite sure where they were. For Ava the situation was glaringly simple: if she couldn't work, if she couldn't
remember, if she couldn't reason or imagine, if she couldn't communicate, then she was in essence already dead.

Her face looked just the same, the hair that Harry sweetly if prosaically called her golden fleece looked just the same, she saw herself as she had always been, yet beneath the unchanged exterior she was rotting. She hated what was happening to her and she hated that she could do nothing to stop it. Harry would hold her face between his hands, ‘My own lovely Davey,' he would say, as if nothing had changed.

If a disease were to attack only her face like this thing was destroying only her mind, she wondered if she'd be less terrified, less angry, less helpless, less not herself. She had always operated with the confidence of an attractive person and had carried herself through a multitude of publics knowingly supported by the benefits which accrue. So how would she cope if her face were to be wrecked? And she was sure, as sure as one can be with hypothetical disasters, that as much as she would despise the way she looked, as much as she would rage against the unfairness of it, as much as it would cause her to withdraw from public life, she, Ava Bryant, would still exist. She could still claim words and thoughts and imagination and memory sufficient enough to confirm her self as herself. She could still work, and she could still enjoy the company of her husband, her friends, film, music, even travel. And equally she was sure she would want to live.

A degenerative brain condition, she concluded, was the worst that could happen to her. And there was no real respite. She might be reading or listening to music and for a brief time she would not be aware of her disintegration. But when the music finished or the book was closed, the loss together with what she was in the process of losing over-
whelmed. The good moments only reminded her of what she was becoming.

She knew exactly what she must do. But knowing did not stop her from resenting the situation, resenting the solution, resenting the loss of a future, resenting all that was left undone. If you know in advance you have only forty good years, then you live very differently than if you assume the usual eighty. She wasn't ready but circumstances had given her no choice. She and Harry would face this illness and its management together – management, what a pliable euphemism that was; with her competence no longer to be trusted, she needed him more than ever.

She waited for a Friday to broach the subject, giving them the whole weekend to make plans. She went to the market to buy food for a picnic dinner and was forced to take a taxi home when unsure of which tram to catch. She spread a picnic rug on the living-room floor, arranged cutlery and serviettes, put the food on platters and the platters on the rug. When Harry arrived home he found her dithering over the oysters and fresh prawns wondering whether she should put them back in the fridge. He off-loaded his work gear and came to admire the array. The cheese first, and such a delight to see his favourite ewe's milk blue, then the seafood selection – the South Australian oysters really took his fancy as she hoped they would; the antipasto platter with olives and roasted capsicum and dolmades was worthy of a Cézanne, he said, and the baguette with a chewy rather than crusty texture could be straight from Paris.

‘This,' he said, ‘is a perfect picnic.'

They settled on the floor. He poured the wine and they helped themselves to the food. Before he had tasted a thing
Harry turned to her and hugged her close. She heard his muffled, ‘I'm so proud of you – although I've never doubted you. Never.' And a pause: ‘We'll manage.'

That marked the end of the perfect picnic. She took his ‘we'll manage' as her starting point: how pleased she was he had raised the topic, how he had always understood her so well, how fortunate she had been in her marriage, how much happiness they had enjoyed. And while they had assumed there would be a good many years more, with her brain turning to mush they would do what needed to be done, and do it together, and –

‘Hush,' he said, ‘hush. You're wrong. It's not over. Nothing's over. For better or for worse, and I meant it.' He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her towards him. ‘I've stuck by you through some pretty bad times and I certainly don't plan to stop now.'

He surely couldn't be referring to Fleur. She didn't stop to ask, had to stay on the main track. But he fought all her arguments, he fielded all her objections. He was, and he could not have been more emphatic, utterly opposed to ending her life. And besides, he said, she was being precipitous. ‘We don't even have a proper diagnosis yet.'

According to the neurologist, a diagnosis often could not be made until post-mortem examination of the brain. She was about to remind him of this when she ordered herself yet again to stick to the point. She moved away from him and perched on the edge of an armchair.

‘Every week I'm worse.'

To help end her life, he said, would be a betrayal of the very love she had always relied on.

‘But if you truly loved me then you'd want what's best for me.'

‘I know what's best for you.' He was implacable. And before she could interrupt, he continued. ‘I've never been one of those fools who kills the thing he loves, and I'm not about to start now. And I mean kill,' he spat the word out. ‘Such acts are entirely self-defeating.'

‘But this concerns me,' her voice was very quiet, ‘not you.' She stood up and moved even further away. The smell of the food was making her sick. Something was.

He disagreed. ‘You and I have been married half our lives. I've loved you and cherished you and cared for you all that time. And I'll continue to love you and cherish you and care for you. I don't see that anything essentially has changed.'

‘Everything has changed. Already I'm not myself.' She grabbed a serviette and blew her nose. ‘I can't believe you're doing this to me.'

‘I loved you at your most unappealing.'

‘An affair is not the same as a degenerative disease, Harry.'

He remained impervious. ‘I loved you when you were revealing your worst. Whatever changes
may
occur as a result of this illness will be less unappealing than those I've already witnessed.'

She guessed what he meant without struggling through the negatives.

‘You're not thinking of me, Harry. Of what I want.'

‘I love you, Ava. You can't expect me to kill you.'

Briefly it occurred to her she might be better off without him, that he would sap her strength at a time when she most needed it. But she could not manage without him when she was well, so there was absolutely no question now she was ill. So, angry, resentful and hurt as she was, she told herself to move forward. With Harry continuing to love and care for her
as he had always done, she should manage to take charge of this one area in which he had failed her.

2.

The following week Harry suggested Ava invite the friends around for a Sunday night meal.

‘Just like in the old days at Oxford,' he said.

He was thinking of what would please her, for given the state of the NOGA fellowship program Connie, Jack and Helen were the last people Harry would choose to entertain. He made the suggestion and, with an entirely different agenda in mind, Ava arranged the evening. Now all of them were congregated in the kitchen with drinks and savouries and catching up on one another's news while Harry prepared a cheese and caramelised onion tart for their dinner.

Connie was finishing his second glass of wine and while he looked as haggard as Ava felt, his spirits had clearly lifted. Nothing to do with Sara, in fact since his arrival he had hardly mentioned her. His TV series was on the move again; a new pilot had been scheduled, with a new production team and a whole new approach. Harry, who must have been briefed on these developments, did not look up from rolling the pastry.

Helen seemed stripped of her usual spark; even her clothes, a scatter of browns, were uncharacteristically dull. Luke did not want to leave Australia, she said. And while he was old enough to make his own choices, she had decided to delay her own return to the States in the hope he would change his mind.

Of them all, only Jack seemed happy. He talked about his latest essay, ‘The End of Originality' – ‘The artists are giving it a wonderful reception,' he said. ‘And a publisher has approached me about a collection.'

‘And your new Islam book?' Harry did not sound pleased.

‘That can wait,' Jack said.

Ava stood at one end of the kitchen propped against the bench, observing each of her friends as potential solutions to her problem. Jack was replenishing her drink and passing her food, clearly delighting in his role. But for all that he was easier in her company, she knew that for much the same reasons Harry couldn't help her neither could Jack. As for Connie, festooned with his own concerns – his boys, his divorce, Sara, the new pilot – and drinking far too much, he was not a reliable prospect. That left only distracted, anxious and working-eighteen-hour-days Helen.

Her friends chattered on. At first she tried to follow, but the effort required was too much. She let the words sink into meaningless noise, responding only to the rhythms of the conversation, smiling when the others smiled, looking concerned when they looked concerned, shaking her head, grimacing, raising eyebrows, shrugging shoulders in unison with them, folded into a sort of semi-conscious limbo space unknown to her before she became ill. Harry must have noticed, for as soon as the tart was in the oven he came and stood beside her, taking over from Jack in looking after her. She didn't mind, she understood his need. She only wished he understood hers.

 

The meal was finished, they were lingering at the table over coffee and chocolates. Ava looked at Jack, Helen and Connie in turn, she rehearsed her opening line, then she began. ‘There's something I need to tell you.'

Harry leapt out of his chair and joined her down the other end of the table.

‘There's something I need to tell you,' she said again. ‘You may have noticed –'

‘Ava's not well,' Harry cut in.

She looked at him and shook her head: this was her illness, these were her friends.

But he was determined. ‘Nothing is certain,' he said, ‘nothing is conclusive. Considerable mystery surrounds her symptoms –'

‘But there is something wrong.' She gave each word a pronounced shove.

Harry met her gaze. ‘Yes, there is probably something wrong – or rather it's unlikely that there is nothing wrong.'

Connie, Jack and Helen looked confused – not surprised and certainly not shocked, just confused.

‘What is this illness?' Helen finally said. ‘Is it serious?'

Ava silenced Harry with a firm hand to his arm. She had a job to do. ‘The neurologist referred to a form of semantic dementia.'

They all looked horrified, exactly as she had been when the neurologist first uttered the terrible word.

‘You're too young for dementia,' Connie said. ‘Aren't you?'

Ava composed a wry smile. ‘Apparently not.'

‘No one knows the precise condition nor its cause,' Harry said quickly, ‘nor any notion of its progression –'

‘Or treatment,' Ava added.

‘You mean this illness can't be fixed?' Jack looked to be in pain.

Ava shook her head.

‘But what will happen to you?'

Again Harry went to respond and again Ava stopped him. ‘There are many different types of dementia,' she said, as if
reciting from a textbook. ‘They begin with different symptoms, but all of them,' and she looked at Harry, ‘all of them end up exactly the same way.'

‘But Ava and I will manage,' Harry said. His eyes were wet and he reached for her hand. ‘We will manage.'

Ava wanted to shake him off, not because she didn't feel sorry for him, not because she was unmoved by those rarely seen tears, but she needed to get on with the job. Although as she took in the stunned, distressed faces of her friends, she realised there was probably nothing more to be done now. In a few days, after the news had settled, she would approach Helen.

 

‘You must have access to any number of lethal substances,' Ava said, as she and Helen strolled through the university on their way to lunch the following week.

‘A smorgasbord of them,' Helen replied. ‘Although more a well-stocked bank vault these days. The restricted stuff is kept under lock and key. It needs to be signed for in duplicate, in triplicate, in quadruplicate. It's time-consuming and a blasted nuisance.'

When you have only one issue on your mind and there's only one reason for making a statement or asking a question you assume your motives are transparent. Encouraged by Helen's tone and taking for granted she knew the point of this conversation, all that was required, so Ava thought, was for the two of them to plan the heist.

‘So what would be the best way to get what we needed?' And after the briefest pause, ‘I assume you know what would be the most effective?'

Helen stopped and turned to face Ava. She squinted behind her glasses. She spoke slowly, carefully. ‘Let me get this
straight. You want me to supply you with something from the lab? Something lethal?' She spoke as if the words themselves were poisonous.