The Life of the World to Come (20 page)

“I was just asking,” I said, “because I'm not sure, if it happens … I'm not sure how I'm going to handle it. I was just asking for a little perspective, if you've got it. I just wanted to know in advance how it feels. How it will feel, I mean.”

“It's okay. That's okay.”

“So?”

“So what?” she rebutted.

“So you didn't answer me,” I said. “Have you ever known a dead person?”

Her body demurred suddenly, and her dark eyes dipped. “Ah,” she uttered. “Ah! Uhh … yes. Yes, I … think I have known one, as a matter of fact.”

She began to nod, and almost immediately was nodding so vigorously that I thought that she might be approaching the verge of a panic attack.

“You don't have to—” I began, but:

“No! It's fine,” she blurted, steadying herself. “It's okay.”

“Okay.”

“So,” she started, now looking east, now west, now east again, now west again of the apparent tennis net of my face. Now east again. “So,” she started once more, “I had this friend back in college—you remember I was an art history major?”

“I actually didn't know that,” I said.

“Really?”

“I guess it's never come up? I always figured you studied … I don't know, molecular biology, or international diplomacy, or something. Nuclear fission. I have a hard time picturing you as an art history major—it seems like the sort of thing you'd consider to be too frivolous for you.”

“Well, I was,” she said. “And so was my friend. So was Charlie.”

She coiled up into her chair, a posture of defense, and blew daintily for four or five seconds onto the sheeny roof of a coffee that had long grown cold.

“So Charlie, he was a sweet kid; I remember the first time I noticed him he was sitting in front of me in this class—it was called
Rococo to Realism
, or something like that—and he was just sitting there, sketching these immaculate portraits of people in the class onto notebook paper. The likenesses were just incredible. They were perfect. He was a terrific artist—I can't even … tell you. This was sophomore year, in the fall. Anyway, he didn't seem to talk much, but I started talking to him a little, and we had other classes together too, and we sort of became friends.”

Across the room, a crashing of glasses startled us. Sona lowered her cup to the table with tremendous care, dipped her slender middle finger into the depths of the cool black swill, and, annexing my napkin, swabbed that digit clean.

“He tried to kiss me once, that spring,” she continued. “Why do you always have to do that?”

“What?” I asked.

“Men. Guys. You always have to ruin everything that's good, and it's always by kissing.”

“We do not.”

“You do,” she insisted.

“I've never tried to kiss you,” I reminded her.

“Only because you're scared that I'd push you away, or, worse, laugh at you. Which by the way is
exactly
what I'd do—laugh at you. But just because you haven't tried yet doesn't mean you haven't thought about it. You've come close. I know you have.”

“I have not,” I lied.

“Of course you have. All guys have about basically all women. It's fine. Remember when Boots set you up with that chick who used to play bass in his band? And we were all getting drunk at that roof party? Your bass lady was dancing with Emily and Boots, and you and I were talking about—I don't remember, but we were probably talking about Fiona—and for half a minute we were accidentally holding hands—hands of platonic friendship, I might add. You were definitely thinking about kissing me.”

“Oh please,” I scoffed, though she had me dead to rights.

“It's cool; it's not your fault. You're just an idiot. You know perfectly well—you knew then, even—what a terrible idea it would've been, how rapidly we would've destroyed each other. It isn't your fault; guys have, like, one spiked eggnog and they get so
bold
—so utterly romantic. It happens every time. You're just a moron sometimes. Anyway, it isn't important.”

“Can we get back to your friend?” I pleaded, smiling bashfully.

“We can,” she granted, smiling back, adding another point to the ledger between us.

“Grand,” I said.

“So Charlie tried to kiss me, and because I'm me, I turned away and, you know, played it very coy. He was wonderful—don't get me wrong—but I would've destroyed him too. Trust me.”

“I fully do,” I said.

“Good. By senior year, we'd gotten much closer, and we used to take long walks through the woods in town—there were these great bike paths and walking paths close to campus. We'd talk: heavy things, sometimes, the way that you and I do occasionally. Only darker, if you can imagine. He wasn't anything like you, or anything, but one thing you had in common with Charlie is that he liked to discuss big things—the biggest things. Life and death and art. He was a phenomenal artist, like I said. That year, he started working on his thesis. His favorite painter was Gustave Courbet. Do you know him?”

“I don't,” I said.

“Nineteenth-century French realist. Charlie was writing his thesis on him, and got it in his head that he wanted to accompany the written thesis with a painting—which was all he really cared about. He didn't have to do this, didn't get any credit for it or anything; he just wanted to paint. And Courbet—you don't know him, but he was incredibly successful in France before being exiled to Switzerland, I think. I remember he died there. Drank himself to death in Switzerland, or wherever. Anyway, one of his most well-known works was this self-portrait: it's of a man staring directly out of the canvas at you, the viewer, with these sad, wide eyes, both of his hands clutching at his tousled hair. It's called
The Desperate Man
, and it was Charlie's favorite. He decided to paint himself in the style of that Desperate Man—in the style of Courbet—and pretty soon he was painting more and more and we were walking and talking less and less. He became obsessed with it, really. I tried—a lot of people tried to talk with him, and he just seemed to grow more inside himself, more internal than ever, over the course of that year. He'd sit in his room, touching it up for hours, but he was never satisfied. Never just done with it. And you'd try to get him to come get lunch, or take a walk, or go see a show or whatever, and he'd just say: ‘I'm working. I need to work.' I'd go to visit him, and I'd see the painting—it was beautiful, honestly, but it always looked the same to me. In December, in February, in April—it always looked the same. It looked like a completed work to me, so I don't know what he was doing, just touching it up, constantly. We stopped hearing from him for days at a time, but nobody was too worried; he was an intense guy, you know? It wasn't out of character for him to get sucked in, especially when it came to his art. The day we were all supposed to hand in our theses, a group of us went over to his room—we wanted to go celebrate. And he'd—I never know if it's ‘hung' or ‘hanged'—we found him there. He hanged himself from the pipes on the ceiling.”

Sona breathed in and out a few times (“One second,” she told me), then sipped from her cold coffee.

“The painting was there, on an easel, and it was beautiful, like I said. It was him—a perfect likeness—in the exact pose of the Desperate Man. There was a piece of notebook paper scotch-taped to the bottom of the painting. And the only thing it said was: ‘I'm finished.'”

I waited a while, then weakly said, “Jesus.”

“I know,” she said, cracking just an ounce. “Pretty heavy, right?”

“I mean, Jesus, Sona.”

“I know. It was chilling. I've figured out how to think about it less and less, but sometimes…”

“Yeah,” I offered.

“Yeah,” she breathed, then uncomfortably giggling away the onset of a tear, said louder, “Yeah!”

“I didn't know,” I said.

“I didn't tell you.”

“‘I'm finished?'”

“Yep. Spooky, right? It was like the portrait was, I don't know—”

“It was attached to the painting?”

“Yeah.”

“'Cause then it could mean—”

“I know,” she said. “I thought about that for a long time after it happened. ‘I'm finished' could mean—”

“Two things,” I interrupted.

“Yep.”

“Perfected…” I said.

“Or destroyed,” she whispered, finishing the thought.

“Right. God. Right. Maybe it doesn't matter, in the face of everything, but do you ever wonder which he really meant?”

She leaned back, slacking the weight of the conversation off of her narrow shoulders.

“Maybe both? I don't know. I don't like to think about it, but there it is. That was someone I knew, and he died. Like you asked. Does that help? That can't be helpful, right? I don't have any suggestions; there wasn't any lesson. It was only awful. Death is a monster.”

“It helps,” I said.

“How?”

“It helps me brace for it—I mean, you saw something nobody should have to see, and here you are.”

“Yeah,” she said, “but I'm pretty screwed up.”

“That's true, but I'm willing to bet you were always that way. And anyway, you're a high-functioning person. We should all be so screwed up.”

“So your Georgia friend?” she asked, downing the last of her drink.

“Right. Michael—my client—I think he might be, you know, finished, too. He's on death row for murdering his therapist, only there are people who think his girlfriend did it and he's just covering for her.”

“Do you think that?” she inquired.

“I haven't met her. She won't talk to us. So it's hard to—but Michael, knowing him, it's hard for me to imagine him doing something like that. He's a man at peace; I just can't see him being vengeful like that. So I don't know. I don't get to know, I suppose is the thing.”

“I understand,” she said.

“He never confessed, but he never really put up much of a fight, either. When I see him in that prison, he's so serene, it's like he belongs there—like it's his ultimate destination. He doesn't seem to want to get out. That's what I mean when I say I think he might be finished.”

“Well, wait,” she said. “What
do
you mean? Do you mean finished like ‘done for,' or finished like ‘completed'? Perfected or destroyed?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“Do you have to know?”

“I don't know,” I said, adding, “You're right, though. Death is a monster.”

“It's okay, Leo,” she responded kindly, resting her hands limply on my own. “Life is a monster, too. Don't get me wrong—I wouldn't trade it for the world. It's beautiful, but it's a monster too.”

“I wonder how you're supposed to know when you're finished,” I thought aloud. “I mean, Christ,” I said sadly, “even if you do get to know—how are you supposed to know which one you mean?”

*   *   *

On the day that Thomas Edison died, his son was tasked with an unusual favor by none other than the tycoon Henry Ford. The two famous inventors had become close in their later years, and Ford wasn't keen on the prospect of a world deprived of his brilliant friend. As Thomas prepared to be gone, his son came through: carefully, Charles Edison held a glass test tube up to his father's waning mouth, and captured for posterity the old man's terminal breath.

This was 1931, and the tube was discovered nineteen years later, after Ford and his wife Clara had each themselves expired. A museum docent found it, sealed with paraffin wax, alongside Edison's hat in a box of the Fords' effects; the breath remains undisturbed to this day. The story goes that Henry believed in the human spirit, a catchable essence that fled the body at the precise instant of death. He was a believer in reincarnation, and held fast to the notion that, by preserving his friend, he might somehow uncover the means through which he could deliver Thomas Edison back to the Earth anew.

More than half a century went by, and my hand rested flatly on the small of Rachel's back as she pleaded with our client to assist in his own salvation. It was our third and final trip to Georgia, and Martha and Peter had sent us back to take one last shot at uncovering whatever truth there was to be had concerning Therese Calley's role in John Jasper's death.

“A week, Michael—maybe less,” she explained to him. “That appeal is coming down from Atlanta, and if we don't
do something
—not talk, but
do something
—they are going to kill you. I know that, deep down, that has to matter to you.”

“And we ain't doing something here, Sister Rachel?” he replied with that far-off, mystic grin.

Rachel looked at me sharply, quickly, and answered, “Michael, we are not.”

I knew she'd been frustrated—our chances of a successful outcome felt as though they'd dwindled to zero, and for a long time now, despite her best efforts, Michael had spoken of nothing but death and its consequences.

“We need to introduce doubt, Michael—reasonable doubt—and we need to do it quickly enough to ensure a stay of execution,” she continued. “Do you understand what that means?”

He looked to me as though I might help stop this, but I stayed silent—which helped no one—and he stayed silent too.

“If you didn't kill John Jasper,” Rachel went on, her voice quavering with the room's last rations of rationality, “then it is exceedingly likely that she did. Therese had motive, and she probably had an opportunity—but we can't do anything unless we can talk to her. We need proof.”

“So talk to her,” Michael muttered. He sounded so low.

“You know she won't answer our calls,” said Rachel. “But you—she loves you, Michael. She'd talk to you. The next time she comes to visit you—”