The first time I heard about it – the reunion, I mean – was from a friend of a friend of mine. He’d heard about it from an old classmate of ours, who was also a friend of the friend of my friend. At that point it wasn’t scheduled to happen for a good six or eight months. I didn’t really care anyway; I had no plans to go. But I nodded and smiled when I heard, adding the usual “Huh” several times for good measure.
Then one day, completely out of the blue, I got a call at work from one Utah Jones. The name was at first a blank to me; only after a few moments concentration did it ding a distant bell. Meanwhile, “Remember me?” he was asking, unhelpfully, as I struggled to do just that. I gathered from his tone that he was one of those people who strive to be cheerful at all times, as if it were a kind of duty. Or maybe he was just used to being forgotten and shifted into a stance of automatic cheerfulness as a way of dealing with the ongoing insult. “Umm . . . yes, I think I do,” I said. And I did – but only verrry slowly. I was mentally shuffling through old snapshots – no, old yearbooks – as we spoke. High school, grade school even. Yes, he was in there, somewhere, but as I recalled we’d only existed on the peripheries of each other’s worlds; if we’d spoken as many as a dozen words to each other during all those years I’d be surprised. Which is why I found this sudden burst of friendliness on his part so odd, a little intrusive even. Ah, well. Thinking about it helped to wake me up, to focus. To focus, that is, not on the deskful of work I needed to get done but rather on this sudden renewed contact with a bare acquaintance . . .
“You’re a hard man to track down!” Mr Jones exclaimed, even as I was calculating the ways and means by which he’d managed to accomplish just that. He had to have found out via the mutual friend of a mutual friend where I worked, and then looked up, or at any rate inquired somewhere from somebody about the number to my office – and so came, eventually, to find me –
“Oh,” I replied. “Am I?”
“Yes! But now that I have you, it’s great to talk to you!” he beamed (not that I could see him of course, but his voice beamed). “How’ve you been? What’re you up to these days?”
“Fine,” I said, “I’m fine. I’m a manager here at – at – But what was it you were calling about?” Professional courtesy kicked in at last. “How may I help you?”
He laughed, cheerfully, and told me he was one of the organizers of our upcoming high school class reunion. “The fortieth!” he cried. “Can you believe it? It’s a big one. You’ll be coming, won’t you?”
“Oh,” I said. “Umm . . . no . . .”
“No?” He was, funnily enough, surprised. “Why not?”
I considered, and considered some more, and when enough time had gone by as to make the truth seem almost inevitable I decided to go with that. “I’m just not interested,” I said.
“Oh . . .”
That’d sucked the wind out of his sails. In fact, the apparent incomprehensibility of what I had just said seemed to have left him more or less speechless. The remainder of our conversation, such as it was, mainly consisted of him trying to prod out of me why I wasn’t interested. But what could I say? I just wasn’t. I didn’t particularly care about those people, that crowd of strangers I’d once gone to school with. Neither did I wish them harm; I just didn’t ‘treasure’ them, or the memory of them, that’s all.
“Well, gee, can I have an email address, maybe your home address too – so we can send you a reminder, just in case you should change your mind. I sure hope you will . . .”
Polite firmness I deemed the shortest route to the end of this conversation. I gave him my email address – almost automatically actually, before I’d really had time to think. But I refused point blank to tell him where I lived, or to give him any further personal information. And I hung up quickly.
I think he got the point.
It was maybe a month or so later that the emails started. Not that there were all that many, though there were enough; it’s that even one was more than I wanted. Some were impersonal, part of a batch mailing sent out to members of a list, any and each of whom might be a potential reunion attendee and therefore was being sent all the info they’d need to stay ‘in the know.’ Others were individually written, and these are the ones that began to bother me, as they were growing increasingly personal in tone. “Could you let us know if you’re planning to come?” pleaded one. Already answered that, I thought, and trashed the message. “We all hope to see you there!” exclaimed another, “I know I do!” Once again I sent the email diving. I stopped looking at them soon after that; yet another, then another, then another one came, and finally I did open one up, in the spirit of exasperation. It greeted me by name. Then: “I really hope you’ll come to the reunion,” I read, noticing with some relief a calmer, if still insistent, tone; “I’d really enjoy talking with you.” This sounded to me suspiciously honest, and I double-checked to make sure I knew who my correspondent was. I’d assumed it to be the irrepressible Utah Jones – but no, it turned out to be someone else involved in the reunion cause, a certain Hendrix ‘Rix’ Batton. Happy to Know You! I read. It was printed, in italics, below his name.
Rix Batton. Ah, yes, I remembered him, a little bit anyway. Average height. Average weight. Slender build – which is to say, typical teenaged scrawniness. He played sports of some kind – what was it, swimming? Wrestling? Tennis? Something. He had, as I recalled, rather coarse-looking longish sandy-colored hair. It came down in two thick waves on either side of his face, a style not uncommon for the time. Average face, as I remembered. Details blurred. Oh, I don’t know, his nose was maybe a little biggish. His chin was firm, a bit sharp – but his eyes, that’s right, his eyes were . . . A little smallish, I thought with a snort. No, but that was true though; his eyes were smallish – or narrow, or . . . something. I sighed. Details blurred.
In fact, the only reason I remembered even that much about Rix Batton was because in high school I had felt, albeit only intermittently, a potential connection to exist between us. A connection of only the most tenuous and uncertain kind, it is true – but when I thought of Rix I thought of one or two occurrences which, though they were minor, were also just peculiar enough to continue to stick in my mind even after all these years. For instance, it seemed to me that I had, though it may have been only, say, three times in a school year, caught him staring at me from across a classroom we shared, or from a neighboring row in the auditorium at a school rally. The cafeteria. Someplace like that. Staring at me with a steady, narrow-eyed gaze. Curious, or knowing? Certain? Or trying to ascertain? I could never tell. Maybe the stare would have been more penetrating had it found its mark, or some reply at least, in me. But it had only happened a few times, and I felt bewildered more than anything else by what appeared to me to be a series of random if oddly intense gazes: they lacked, after all, for me, any relevant social or personal context. I dismissed them from my mind almost immediately and would have probably forgotten them altogether were it not for the fact that I attached them, for no reason beyond mere intuition (not, in me, a highly developed skill), to two other rather odd events that happened to me during that same period of time.
I remember in one instance walking down a hallway at school – this was during a change of classes; there were people moving all around me – and somebody tripped me. For no reason, yet on purpose I was sure. I felt a foot deliberately stuck between mine, tangling them, so that I almost fell; regaining my composure I glanced about me quickly at the throng of students passing by. No one looked guilty or sorry or ashamed; no one was laughing either. I don’t think I even saw anyone I knew. And yet I had felt that purposeful foot. So that was one time. The other time I was again walking down a busy hallway at school, and this time I felt someone pinch my ass. I remember I jumped a little – there was no mistaking that pinch. Again I looked about me, left, right, behind; again no one seemed to be giving me the slightest notice.
These memories, I admit, had a dreamlike quality to them. But they were dreamlike mainly because the experiences they described seemed devoid of any connection to an identifiable causality; also because memory is by definition a dreamy and inaccurate faculty. I could not even now state with the assurance of certain knowledge that any of these events had occurred. They felt like dreams; it was only the sharpness of their recollection, and the persistence of their recollection over time, that convinced me of their validity. And that, so far as I understand it, is how we determine the validity of any active remembrance from the past.
I sighed. Lifting my eyes from the computer screen with a shake of the head, lifting my mind from the swamp of the past, I thought, Well, that was a nice little trot down memory lane. Yes, it was very interesting and all – but it was also enough. I trashed the email. So far as I was concerned, I’d had my reunion.
I don’t know how long it was after that – six weeks, eight weeks – but there came a night when something happened. I’d been home from work several hours, and the next day was the weekend, which meant I could stay up late, because in the morning I could sleep in . . . So I was lying on the couch, watching tv. I’d eaten awhile ago; now I was thinking of having a bowl of weed for dessert. Then maybe some porn-lite subscription viewing on the tube, and off to bed. Wherefromin I’d watch some more tv, preferably a happily mindless sitcom. Then I’d switch on an audiobook. An Agatha Christie tonight, I thought, sounds fun. Turn out the light and toddle my way into sleep . . .
That’s when there came a knock at the door.
It was Rix. I didn’t recognize him at first, but then, I astonishedly did. Rix. Of all people. Rix Batton. Huh.
I said hello. You know, “Hello, Rix! Well . . . look at you! Rix, mmm . . . Batton! That’s right. That’s right.” I nodded vigorously, waiting for my alarm at the sudden appearance of this unexpected apparition to settle down. Once it had, I paused another moment to see if he might suggest something I could do for him quickly, right there at the door. He didn’t, so I asked him in – that is, I asked him to, please, step inside. He did, but then just stood there, grinning awkwardly at me in the fuzzy dark of the entrance hall. After another, shorter, and on my part slightly impatient pause, during which time it became clear he was not going to offer any explanation for his presence without further invitation, I asked if he’d like to step into the living room. “Yes,” he said. “I would. Thanks.”
Glancing around, he complimented me on the look of the place (it was nicely furnished, an eclectic mix of found-everywhere American blah), and took a seat at the end of the couch. I sat at the other end and took stock of my unintended guest. Rix Batton. Sooo. Hmm, nooo, my dear fellow, nooo, you don’t look entirely well, do you? He was stooped slightly in the shoulders (or had they always been rounded?); the hair that had once hung in crisply flowing waves about his face was now shorn close to his scalp, revealing a receding hairline of sandy gray. His skin looked too pale, though maybe that was just the hour or the light. His eyes were still small though; they looked somehow squashed into his face, like raisins in raw dough. That much I recognized. That much I remembered. I rested in the slight reassurance of that trivial familiarity and waited.
He did speak, eventually. “I was just at the reunion,” he said, his voice low and quiet, as if uncertain how to begin.
“Oh?” I said. “So that was tonight, huh? Well, well. How’d it go?”
He said it’d been fine but a little boring, as he’d seen everyone at the last reunion and things hadn’t changed much since then, and after that fascinating start we began to slowly stumble our way through the opening gambits of a renewed (or new, frankly) acquaintanceship. First we described our personal situations (we were both divorced, he after fourteen years of marriage, me after eleven); then we moved onto our jobs (we were both small-town store managers and of course both hated our bosses blah blah blah); next we completed a brief survey of the few classmates we’d both known plus a few more that I only knew about – all of whom had followed the usual path: married; had kids and careers, of whatever sort; now they traveled and tended gardens, collected books, collected pottery, analyzed politics, analyzed films. This last, however, turned out to be a fortunate topic to have broached, and it ended up occupying us for some little time: for we were both, surprise, surprise, amateur film buffs.
So the small talk went on (and on), and still Rix never got to the main point – whatever point it was, that is, that I assumed had brought him to me. I could have asked him straight out, of course, but I hesitated; I was afraid he’d tell me. It seemed to me my best bet was to just tire him out, exhaust him of whatever energy it was had driven him here, then send him on his way. This could be done, I knew; I’d done it before. Patience was required, that’s all. Patience and a certain tactful misdirection . . .
As time wore on, however, I began to notice an unexpected change coming into the atmosphere. For one thing, Rix began shifting about in his seat and certain noises were emanating from him that suggested he was feeling distinctly unwell. Bubbling sounds and gurglings starting in his midriff rumbled up into his chest and out his throat. At one point – I believe I was expounding on the virtues of the Classic Hollywood style of film making at the time – I noticed his face beginning to screw up on itself in a most disconcerting manner. His skin took on a waxy hue and his eyes glazed, and the odd shapes his mouth was making continued over the next few minutes until finally, wielding an upraised hand, he brought my mini-lecture to a halt. “Do you have anything I could take for an upset stomach?” he asked. Well, sure, I did: I rose and quickly fixed for him a glass of baking soda and water, a concoction which tastes absolutely terrible – ‘like liquid fart’ is probably the best way to describe it – but does have the twin virtues of regulating acidity while simultaneously producing a series of unusually loquacious belches. He swallowed this down, and I sat back to observe the effects. He wiped his brow. We both fell silent, waiting to see what would happen next.
“I haven’t been well lately,” he explained in the interim.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I fear I sounded just a touch impatient. This is probably because I felt it. He wasn’t belching, and he looked like he might be getting really sick, and I hadn’t asked this man here in the first place and really, really didn’t want him getting sick all over my couch. Still, to soften my tone I inquired: “Did you mean, umm, just for a few days, or longer?”
Politeness can be a tricky thing. It can so often be misinterpreted as genuine concern. Rix’s confession to me, introducing itself here, took a particularly visceral form. With a yelped “Excuse me!” he leapt from the couch, ran into the bathroom (which fortunately was not far) and vomited. Then he vomited again. And again. In fact, measured from start to finish, and counting the many dry heaves that followed the wet ones, he vomited for quite some time.
I sat and waited uncomfortably on the couch for it to be over. Finally he stopped, and somewhere over the sound of the flushing toilet and the whir of the exhaust fan (thank god that came on with the light) I heard a thin, wavering voice calling out my name. Once, twice . . . I heaved a sigh and waited. Third time and the voice was growing stronger, more insistent too. I heaved myself up off the couch and went to find out what it was he wanted.
The bathroom, despite the exhaust fan, stank – but, oh well. He was the awful surprise. He had leaned himself up against the sink, one hand clutching its edge, knuckles white, while the other was braced against the glass wall of the nearby shower stall. A jittery smile played over his lips; his tiny eyes, which I noticed for the first time were pale blue, gleamed unnaturally. The skin surrounding them looked spongy, their puffy enclaves damp with a mixture of eye leakage and clammy sweat.
I looked at him a long moment. “Better now?” I asked hopefully.
His wobbly grin widened. Really, he looked quite horrible. “No,” he breathed, “no. The fact is, you see, that I . . . Well, I’m pretty sick.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, and suddenly barked out a laugh. “Oh. I guess you could see that already. But the fact is, well . . . the fact is that I’m very ill. In fact, what I’ve come here for . . . Well, I what I came to the reunion for, what I’ve come to town for, in fact, is to look for someone . . . Well, you see I’m very ill, and I’m looking for . . . for someone to help me . . . die.”
I said no, of course. No, I would not help him die. I didn’t even really have to think about it, though I didn’t say it right away: first I frowned aggressively; I did that right off. Frowned aggressively and pressed my lips together – it was my honest response. And the meaning of that response was clear. I couldn’t help it: I have that kind of face.
He swayed a little against the sink at that; I could see him trembling. Frankly, he looked pretty ghastly. An impossible mess. I wondered vaguely if he always had been.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really,” he said. But then, as if to ‘fill me in,’ or as if we were still continuing to exchange information as we’d done earlier in the evening during the introductory phase of our little mini-reunion, he told me first the name of his disease, then of how he’d discovered he had it; what his quality of life was at present, and what he could expect it to be in the future. He told me a story of doctors, of medical tests, waiting rooms and hospital beds, of potential therapies and useless drugs. What it all boiled down to in the end was that the time for the end had come. And he had decided to handle that by taking his own life. Not immediately, he stressed; but soon, probably. Which is why he was hoping to . . . why he was looking for . . . well, for someone . . .
Somewhere in the midst of all this I began to shake my head. “No-o,” I was murmuring. “No-o . . .”
He stopped talking then and stared at me, all his words draining away, his mouth going suddenly slack. I scratched my nose and tried to gather myself together. When all else fails, I thought, sometimes honesty really is the best policy. “Look,” I said, “I’m sorry, but . . . I’m just not the one. Not the one you need, I mean. Not the one you ought to have. I’m just . . . not. I hope you understand. It doesn’t make sense for you to want someone like me, someone who . . .” I shrugged helplessly. “I mean, we don’t even know each other . . .”
He gave me a wan smile and waved my explanations away.
I left him to collect himself. It was beyond useless to say anything more – words were like a hedge between us now, and I knew he would try to peek through every chink, part the leaves wherever he could and poke his fingers through, trying to touch. And it was no use. I did not know him. And I did not want to know him.
When he emerged from the bathroom, pale cheeks and brow and thinning hair wet, he apologized once again, for the vomiting he said, and for ‘putting me on the spot’. In other words, he took it. My decision. He still looked a bit wobbly and I gave him a glass of water, which he drank thirstily. After that he insisted on leaving right away. At the door we did not embrace. That would not have been honest. But we did shake hands. And as we did so I wished him the very best of luck. And that I meant.
But think of the anguish, I thought as I turned back towards the living room again. Think of the drama. And think what else might be involved – could be the police. In fact, probably would be. There could even be an inquest. He’d told me that if I didn’t actually participate I couldn’t be held legally responsible. I could even ‘find him’ the next morning and call for help then . . .
But, think of the days, the weeks, the months even between now and whenever ‘then’ might be. What was I to be to him in the meantime? Friend, comrade, brother? Hand to hold, shoulder to cry on, father confessor? No. I did not know him. Which had made it, oddly enough, easier to be frank with him. “No,” I’d said, “I’m sorry, but I’m not the one.” Just like that. Easy to say because it was so true. His eyelids had fluttered a little – the corners of his mouth jerked. But he took it.
And all I wanted now was to flop back down on the couch and watch some mind-numbing show on tv. It was too late for that, of course: I was too tired; but even imagining it as I stood there in the doorway comforted. How desperate he must have been, I thought, the words coming unwanted into my head, to have come to me like that. I couldn’t even imagine it, that level of desperation. I closed my eyes and tried. I tried to imagine it: no one to turn to, emptiness all around. No one there to hear my call. And me wanting them to. Me wanting them to very much . . .
Huh.
And then, when that had failed, his coming to me, of all people. What to make of that? For one thing, had there been others before me? But there must have been. Had to have been, I thought. I wondered how many, how many others he had to have tried and failed with for him to have finally washed up here, at the furthest shores of . . . well, humanity, in a way. I mean, we barely knew each other! So, why? Why had he come to me? Because no one else had heard his call? Because no one else had cared enough to answer? Because no one, no family member, no ex-lover, no friend, no colleague, wanted to help rescue him from the emptiness of his life – or even of his death?
That last thought made me open my eyes . . .
I mean, what the hell was wrong with the man?
END