A Woman on the Edge of Time Read Free Page B

that I needed to see Simon for myself — needed the knowledge of seeing his body, the evidence, the truth.
    Simon’s wife and boys have been at my father’s house, but they are back home now, and Judy wants to go to them. On the way she drops me at the hospital. I am familiar with this place — both my girls were born here, I have had my own head stitched up here — but where a nurse now takes me is further back than I have been before, further back than I imagined the building goes, through doors with no entry signs on them, down hallways where patients do not go.
    I wait outside while the nurse prepares him. When she calls me in, he is lying on the bed, his arms crossed on his belly. I am surprised to see him in a hospital gown. I had imagined him still wearing his jogging clothes.
    â€˜You can touch him if you want,’ the nurse says, lifting one of his hands and letting it flop down again to show me how it is done.
    I have seen death before. As a young journalist in Africa I walked through a meadow of bodies — a hundred rebel soldiers cut down by the Ugandan army, young men and women, their skin punctured with bullet holes. But this is different. This is not a nameless body, not a story. This is my brother.
    The nurse asks if I want to be alone with him, and I nod and she bustles away. I move forward to the side of the bed. I both can see that he is dead and do not entirely believe it. His skin is waxy, lifeless, but one eye is slightly ajar, and a sliver of blue iris gazes upwards.
    I am not used to being so close to him. When we were boys, if I came this near I was likely to be clouted. The story, the explanation, I have heard, that Simon told me once himself, is that Hannah was too young when she had him, that she found it easier to love me when I came along, and this is what lay between us. I am not sure I believe this either, but for as long as I remember, Simon and I have been wary of each other, and though as adults we eventually found a way to be friends of a sort, I have never entirely lost my fear of him, his strength, his anger.
    And now I stand over him and look down at his handsome face. His curls have fallen back from his brow, and I see how far his hair has receded, how he must have cultivated these curls to fall over his forehead. And though I am still afraid of him, I pick up his hand the way the nurse showed me.
    While my sisters and sister-in-law gather each day to work out the arrangements for the funeral and to comfort each other, I cannot sit still — I am filled with energy, a sense of purpose. Later, I will realise this is adrenalin, crisis arousal, though now I wonder if it is what it is like to be the oldest, as I am now.
    My most urgent conviction is that we must lose no time in saving memories of Simon. I come up with the idea of collecting words and phrases that describe him or that we associate with him, and I call family and friends for suggestions, and type them up for the funeral handout. I drive to my daughters’ school to borrow a couple of easels so that people can write down more words or memories at the funeral. I send out emails asking for longer contributions to a memory bank.
    But when it comes to the funeral itself, while my sisters, my stepmother, and several of Simon’s friends make eloquent, moving speeches, and tell funny stories about him, what I say when I stand up to speak is barely coherent, even though I am the writer in the family, the storyteller. It is partly that my feelings about Simon are so confused. But it also comes from the understanding that once a life has been turned into stories it becomes those stories, and I am not ready for that.
    In the weeks that follow, my restlessness gives way to other moods and feelings. I try to comfort Simon’s boys, to be with them, but it is awkward between us. In time we will become close, but for now I am, I suppose, too much like Simon and not enough — some strange half-ghost