Every Open Door

Andrew crossed the threshold of the Forever Wings entrance without knowing exactly why or how he was doing it. The place was housed in a storefront next to a defunct wig shop: Corrugated bars protected yellowed windows, a dim light slinging through the otherwise dark interior like a beacon powered by a distant lamp. Inside, a bell rang to mark his arrival. Nobody was in the shop. After standing around for a few minutes, Andrew almost turned around and left, but soon a man appeared from behind a curtain of wooden beads. The man was bulky and bald, a long beard frayed out like the end of a used rope. He walked to the counter and spread his arms wide, leaning with an expectant zeal. 

    “You here about the ad?” he said. His eyes darted from Andrew’s gaze to the ceiling. 

    “Yes,” Andrew said. On the wall to his right hung a nude poster of Madonna. “But I don’t really know what it is you do.” 

    The man just stood there, rapt in his own thoughts, which made Andrew nervous; he wanted to leave. 

    “Name’s Cartwright,” he finally offered. He held out his hand in a way that seemed like he wanted to start a shake, but his wrist bent in such a way as to render his hand unreachable. 

    “So I guess, what, this is some kind of charity?” Andrew said. The room seemed to be closing in on him, the growing darkness now more bold despite the small bulb hanging from the ceiling. Andrew had answered an ad requesting that the applicant “feel compassion on a daily basis,” and that the applicant should have previously “dealt with the loss of a close relative or pet.” His need for stable and reliable employment overtook any specific examples he had of empathy, or first-hand experience with death. 

    Cartwright turned his head up, face tightening almost to a laugh, but then he let out a long sigh through white lips framed by an enormous tuft of brown hair. “Some would call it that.” 

    Andrew shifted. “I don’t know — maybe I should go.” 

    Cartwright help up a hand. “Don’t let it scare you, kid. It’s all legal — on the up and up.” 

    “And what’s that, exactly?” said Andrew, scanning his mind as to what sort of charity could need such a reassuring description. 

    “Euthanasia, kid.” Cartwright bend down behind the desk and pulled out a neat, fat ledger. “Come with me.” 

    Cartwright led Andrew behind the building to the complex’s parking lot. He saw it immediately. 

    The van that Andrew would spend most of his waking life in as an adult wasn’t at first much to look at; it was a wreck. A rusted exterior was only one of many problems to deal with: A left side window wouldn’t roll up, the transmission was shot and would get stuck in neutral at odd times; there was a load-bearing issue, a CD player that could never read even the most spotless disk, a crack in the windshield that looked suspiciously like the outline of some Eastern European country, taillights that would or would not function given the temperature or day of the week. The sight of it almost made Andrew turn away. Cartwright insisted that he possessed a certain acumen for repairing cars, and that he could transform the thing into something worthy of the company. Andrew actually began to like it as it was — his initial reservations about the job began to ease up at the thought of driving it around. As Andrew would make his first rounds, and then into the dozens, the common name for the thing — spread around classrooms and casual daytime women’s parties, friends who had the time to bare their brains to their deepest secrets — was the Suicide Bus. 

Cartwright was fumbling in the dashboard for something as Andrew sat down in the driver’s seat of the bus. It was Andrew’s 112th case — he had counted every one. The windshield was a translucent white from the frost that accumulated the night before, and everything seemed to sit still from its grasp, cold and ancient. Andrew handed Cartwright a coffee, the lid slightly open, its steam swirling around the car’s frigid interior. Andrew took his own to his lips — always just enough cream to color the coffee — and let out a sigh. 

    “Got a geriatric today,” Cartwright said, grimacing at the sip he just took. “Cancer. Pretty easy, cut and dry. But you’re going to have to do the rights. A jew.” 

    Andrew always marveled at the way Cartwright could talk so bluntly about the business, the thing of what was so grotesque about it. The sight of a new needle gliding through almost transparent skin still invoked a sense of revulsion in Andrew, but he soon saw it as a moving-forward, a click, a check off the master list and the signal to move on. 

    The bus smelled like old smoke and turning piss cans. Cartwright had his coffee turned upside down now, his eyes closed. The radio played something that sounded like ice metal with drums in a haze. 

    “Let’s get on this shit,” he said and threw his empty coffee on the floorboard. 

    Cartwright sat alongside Andrew, bouncing up and down as Andrew shifted gears. They began to traverse through the particular part of town that had uniquely undulating streets, trees overgrown making long, stretched shadows on the sidewalk; there were old houses made of brick with green yards and foliage meant to block out anyone that would venture a peak. They’d been out here most often — an area ripe for the older, desperate crowd. To the side of the road, against the setting sun, a woman waved and pulled her puddle on its leash, her hand stuffed with mail. They passed the eruv pole and wire, the boundary markers for the faithful, the demarcation for those who Andrew now looked back on with pity and dread. Andrew ached as the passing of the eruv made him feel the Tefellin against his skin for morning prayers, tight and wound against his arm, a loyal prayer to Heshem budding from his open mouth; he could see his Tznius mother there in long skirts and sleeves, her hair covered by a Tichel, never let down long and flowing and black down to her knees as she sometimes let Andrew see her when he was young; he saw his father in the austere black suit, peyos down to his nipples, his black beard neat and tidy. As Andrew slowed down the van, he thought of his father’s words the day before, the day he showed up out of nowhere to the house Andrew shared with his girlfriend. He hid in the shadows, chastising in his polite way, but saying this again and again: She needs you Aryeh, please, speak to her. His father went inside to look in the mirror before he left down the apartment stairs.   

    Andrew stepped on the brake a little too hard. Their destination was old and dark. A gate with sharp poles stood transfixed against the elongated, forced perspective of the residence; it had a peaked roof, two windows on the second floor, and it was all made of a grey brick. A single door opened to the first story, although the place looked abandoned and Andrew couldn’t dream up who or what would come out of such a door. He turned to Cartwright, who just sat on the curb, staring at his phone. 

    “She’s coming out soon here,” Cartwright said. 

    “Who?” said Andrew. 

    “The girl who called.” 

    “What is she?” Andrew said through a choked voice. “Like a relative?” 

    “Spouse, apparently.” Cartwright looked up from the curb and squinted. The dull shade made his bald head even grayer. 

    About ten minutes later, a woman appeared and leaned against the doorframe. Her hair was long and curved, wet against her arms. She was eating something. With the other hand, she beckoned them inside, the other hand held to her mouth. 

    Everything in the interior was bare; the white carpet had lonely shadows of just being vacuumed, the walls blank yellow, some holes latticed where some pictures once were. The woman led them into the master room, which was unlit save for a small opening in the blinds. She offered her limp hand and whispered her name: Hannah. 

    “Do you have any questions for us?” Cartwright said, setting his gear on the carpet and looking down. 

    “How long does it take?” Hannah said. She held both hands on one hip. 

    “Five minute prep, thirty second execution.” 

    She seemed to consider this thoroughly and with vigor as she stared at Andrew. To him, her face was beyond pretty; her small nose and plump cheeks gave off a playful cuteness, but her eyes remained set off, cast dark and exuding a deep maturity. When they met eyes for a second, Andrew felt his skin tighten. He looked away just as her eyes locked in with his. 

    “And then he’s gone gone?” she said with a certain air of relief in her voice. 

    “As per the signed contractual agreement,” Cartwright said, holding out his hand, “and the received will, yes.” 

    She pursed her lips and waited in silence for a few seconds. “Can I get you guys anything?” 

    “No,” Cartwright said. 

    “Water, please,” Andrew said. 

    Andrew followed her into the kitchen and she drew from the tap, holding each glass under the stream of water as if they were precious stones. 

    She turned. “So, do you just like death?” 

    Andrew reached out and grabbed a water glass. “Not particularly.” 

    “Uh huh.” She began to twirl her dark hair with her index finger. She looked up at the ceiling. “Are you just, like, used to it?” 

    “I wouldn’t say that.” 

    “What would you say?” 

    “It doesn’t get easier, that’s for sure.” 

    She smiled. “Is that what you tell everyone?” 

    “I guess so,” Andrew said, setting the water glass down. “Because it’s true.” 

    They left the kitchen. Hannah led Andrew and Cartwright to a back room, which was almost hidden to any undiscerning visitor who would walk through the house. The old man was hooked up to life support there. Various beeps and loops echoed in the room as both something out of a time long past and something in the future. His bald head rested on the pillow. His face turned upward into the ceiling, wrinkled and stark white, two glowing eyes set deep and narrow on his face. To Andrew, the man’s skin was a flowing river, his veins blue milk. Hannah wiped tears from her eyes, standing against the bed with a hand grasped in the clutch of the man’s mangled fingers. 

    As per his duty, Andrew pulled out the Hebrew bible, the Tanakh, from his work bag. He clutched it as if it were something new and foreign, apt to give him a disease or some unfortunate luck. His parents’ overzealous faith and distaste for the things in the realm of the material caused Andrew to approach spirituality skeptically, much like a curious dog regards an injured bird for the first time. 

    Hannah waved a hand. “He doesn’t want the rites.” She put her hand on the old man’s head. 

    Cartwright gave a slight shrug and pulled out the two syringes: Secrobarbital and Pentobarbital, the cocktail of endless night. Cartwright’s face, steady and unconcerned, leaned over the old man’s expressionless gaze. “Would you like to say anything?” Cartwright said, soft but enduring. “To Hannah here?” Cartwright handed Andrew one of the syringes, although he couldn’t say which particular drug it contained — he wasn’t supposed to know. 

    The old man, in an attempt to sit up, instead slid down his pillow and looked around. In his grey, deep-sunken eyes, something like a sense of wanting splashed across his dour face. 

    “Can you speak?” Cartwright said. 

    The old man pointed a motionless finger at Hannah, who was now crying breathlessly into her fist. 

    Something rattled in the deep of his throat. “Closer — come closer,” said the old man. 

    Hannah blinked, expressionless. She stepped forward and leaned over the old man. 

    “Closer,” the old man said. 

    Hannah touched the white film of skin sloughing off the man’s bald head, putting her face into his; her auburn hair covered the two like a dressing divider in the afternoon sun. 

    “Tell them,” the old man began. “Tell them to —“ He stopped and shook his head. Hannah leaned back, her lips tightened in an attempt not to cry. 

    But the old man stopped. He nodded to Cartwright. Cartwright then signaled to Andrew, and they both inserted the needles into each arm of the old man. Somewhere, Andrew heard the seagulls find their lunch; outside, the cats never went to bed. 

    Before they had a chance to leave, Hannah ran toward the bus, calling out. Her hair was a soft fire in the light, translucent as the sun’s rays illuminated the red pigmentation. Her mouth was drawn down, reflective, and her eyes darted forward past Cartwright. She motioned for Andrew to roll the window down, which he did after a couple of seconds in disarray. 

    “—Help you?” Cartwright said without hesitation. 

    Hannah looked down, then up again, this time with a smile on her face. “Just take this. If you have any questions or anything.” She held out a piece of paper. 

    Cartwright took it. “Will do.” He tipped her an invisible hat. She turned and ran back into the house. 

    When Andrew started the bus, Cartwright looked at him straight in the face. “That’s death’s most enduring gift there, son.” 

The apartment that Andrew shared with his girlfriend was on the third story, an often arduous trek after long days of administering death at intervals too frequent for Andrew to muster. He walked the steps, breathing in for one, out for the second, alternating until he could see the light against the plastic blinds and Sasha’s silhouette moving steadily, hunched over. She was a music composition major at the university, specializing in 21st Century avant-garde composers. Andrew could always discern the moments of her deep study and concentration by honking horns, tape static over looped feedback, and percussion slapped in every direction on objects not meant to be drums. 

    He could already hear the disjointed melodies emanating from their window; a soft wind carried hints of a bowed instrument layered over muffled voices, so soft that they seemed to add to the density of the music more than anything. Staring into the window, Andrew watched Sasha’s frizzy hair bow up and down in correspondence to the intricacies of the tune. He imagined her smooth, bare legs, light brown, folded up on the couch, her fingers typing away at her laptop. Rather than going inside, he watched her unaware, like some hungry voyeur, imagining himself obsolete and bringing to life the images that the shadow outlined — features of her face, her full lips, the way she looked over her shoulder at some sound or noise coming from their meager kitchen. The sun was going down, only rendering it easier to resist the temptations of the shadow, starkly bold against the dying light, and conjure the living mesh of the inside of the apartment. 

    When Andrew finally came through the door, Sasha squared him up gingerly and ran up to him, kissing his lips like taking a sip from a school water fountain; the pecks soon rained down on his cheeks, neck, and forehead. He took her head in his hands, leaning back. 

    “What’s the racket you’re playing there?” Andrew said. 

    She pursed her lips to the side and then smiled widely, her perfectly straight and white teeth almost glowing. She had soft freckles over soft brown skin, every one distant as she stretched her skin taught. “John Zorn. He’s sort of out there. Also a jew.” 

    They took out beers from the fridge and sat on the couch. Andrew needed these quiet moments, a deflation of the nerves after a long day in the field. Sasha sat with her feet on the coffee table, poking a manuscript with a red pen and conducting through the air with her finger. It was initially things like this that first caught Andrew’s eye — the affability, the stone-like adherence to hard work, the sometimes flighty but independent spirit she exuded. They had met through a mutual friend, an artist, a trust fund hipster who made sculpture out of mannequins with baby doll heads attached to lifeless torsos. They sat uncomfortably on a couch in his studio — which for all intents and purposes was merely a run-down restaurant devoid of tables or booths — and talked about Brahms and Shostikovich, the only two composers that Andrew had any familiarity with, thanks to a friend. Later that night, leaving early with an excuse that involved a derelict pet, they ended up at Sasha’s apartment and fucked against her desk that held textbooks and notes on various tenets of music theory. He still lived with his parents then, so he took to staying at her place until it was clear that Andrew wouldn’t leave. To Andrew, it seemed that Sasha didn’t mind; in fact, their relationship took on a new, meaningful trajectory during his initial run of staying at her place. 

    Sasha took a sip of beer and cuddled up to Andrew. “She called again.” 

    Andrew grimaced. His mother had called for the fifth time that week. He avoided her at all costs, not out of any sense of ill-will, but rather as a way of further escaping the life he chose to leave behind when he turned eighteen. 

    Andrew moved Sasha’s legs to the side and stood up straight. He stretched a little and finished his beer in a quick gulp. 

    “What did she want this time?” he said. His voice was cold and dismissive. 

    “Oh, you know, she wanted to see how you were,” Sasha said. She looked to the corner of the room, and turning her head back, she bit her upper lip. 

    “That’s not all.” 

    Sasha hesitated. “She needs to tell you something.” 

    “What?” 

    “She didn’t say. She just needs you home.” 

    “I don’t care.” 

    “Really, Andrew,” Sasha said, getting up from the couch. “What’s the harm? I mean, it’s your mother.” 

    Sasha’s own parents were well-off academics who taught at the university, her mother an evolutionary biologist, her father the chair of economics. The worst Sasha could say about her childhood, Andrew thought, was that she was encouraged too much. 

    “My dad hates me,” Andrew said, getting up. He went to the fridge and pulled out another beer. “He’s always hated me.” 

    “That’s not true,” Sasha said. She put her arms around Andrew’s torso. Under the faint, blinking light of the kitchen they looked like sick angels. “He’s just religious.” 

    “That’s exactly the point. I could never be as devoted as he expects I should be.” 

    There was a point before he left when he was eighteen that Andrew came close to admiring his father’s reverence, his clutch onto the esoteric and the spiritual, the adherence to law and order. But all of that had faded in a combustible mixture of doubt and teenage angst. 

    Andrew went in to kiss Sasha, but she pulled back, her eyes drawn up to the ceiling. “You’re being unreasonable,” she said. 

    “What does that even mean?” 

    “Something in her voice — it sounded urgent.” 

    Something was always urgent for his mother. Since he was born, his world consisted of such a small space that nothing could ever touch him, yet his mother feared life in that sphere to a point of regret and agitation that Andrew had never known. He had never known much of anything before he left and enrolled at the university. Still, that same sort of fear followed him — the will to death, the transparency of himself in a dangerous world, the expectations of living a new life after dismissing the old one. 

    Andrew stared at Sasha into those dark brown eyes beneath long lashes. “Not gonna do it.” 

    Without another word, she went into the bedroom. As she slept, Andrew stayed up drinking and listening to records. Why did Sasha care so much? She had never laid eyes on his mother, much less talked to her at any length worthwhile. He paced around the room, frantic and jostling to the sounds of Dinosaur Jr. on the turntable. From one side of the room to the other, he thought about his mother, the life he left behind; he imagined her in that lifeless house, preparing kosher meals in the dark kitchen and waiting for his father to end his evening prayers. 

    Finally, he turned off the record and pulled out his cellphone. He was going to call his mother — not out of any concession to Sasha but out of sheer interest; his curiosity always got the better of him. 

    He dialed. A man’s voice picked up. “Hello?” Andrew immediately hung up. His father on the end was a surprise — he never answered the phone. 

Cartwright called up Andrew the next morning to let him know he was running late; he said he was sick, but he was probably just hungover or crashing from one of a myriad of substances he had been known to ingest on a daily basis. When he got in the car — shaking and finding it hard to control his vocabulary — he told Andrew about the next job: A lady with terminal brain cancer whose husband had recently blown a hole through his head with a shotgun, apparently too distraught to live with a wife who was slowly crawling toward a painful and bitter end. 

    “Should have turned it on her,” Cartwright said, putting his hands behind his head, “could have saved us the trouble.” 

    “You’re a piece of shit,” said Andrew. 

    “I never said I wasn’t.” 

    “Clearly.” 

    “I saw her,” Cartwright said. 

    “Saw who?” 

    “The jewish girl. The one from the job yesterday.” 

    “You’re a piece of work, you know that? She’s a client. A vulnerable client.” 

    “Again, not the nicest of guys, I’ll give you that. And also not a client. A former client.” 

    “What happened?” Andrew almost ran a red light. He could hear the cars behind him honking. 

    “Let’s just say she’s a passion project.” 

    “Fuck you.” 

    “Had to drop her back home this morning. Hope she doesn’t get the wrong idea.” 

    They made it to the house with time to spare. In the bedroom, an older lady sat on the comforter. She had a floral dress on, her long grey hair cascading over both shoulders. She sat expectantly with a smile as the light from the window obscured the wrinkles on her face and the tiredness in her eyes. She held up an arthritic hand. 

    “Oh, hello,” she said. Her voice rang out, unwavering. “You must be the young men here to — take me away.” 

    Andrew nodded. The paperwork was on the desk inside the bedroom; everything was in order. As Andrew opened up the gear bag, he was overcome with a sense of helplessness. He felt as if he were going to throw up. 

    “Do you know where my husband went?” the lady said. “To Hawaii. Isn’t that grand?” 

    “Yes it is,” Andrew said, looking at the paperwork, “Mrs. Houghfeld.” 

    “Please, call me Dotty.” 

    Andrew shook her hand and told her to relax on the bed. He pulled out a syringe, and Cartwright followed suit. She would be under immediately. When Andrew turned around after filling the syringe, he found her completely naked, on her back. Cartwright yawned violently and covered up his mouth. 

    “Somewhere,” she sang, “beyond the sea, somewhere waiting for me —“ 

    Andrew felt like running. He sat beside her instead. “Is there anything you would like to say, Dotty?” 

    “Can you please stroke my hair?” 

    Andrew slid his right hand through her grey hair and inserted the syringe into her left arm, into a bulging, blue vein. Cartwright was late with the right, but he managed to push it through. Her expression then turned rigid, her chest no longer heaving for breath. It was only after the chest stopped that he took his hand from her head. 

    Cartwright stopped just before the front door as they left. He picked up a watch from a small table, examined it, and put it in his pocket. 

    “Put that back,” Andrew said. 

    Cartwright shrugged and snorted out a laugh. “You aren’t in a position to be giving orders, kid.” 

Andrew dropped Cartwright off and headed back to the office to do some paperwork. As the sun was setting, blinding as he drove west, he put down his visor as the bus filled with a radiant light that made the dust sparkle. The streets were empty, the roads devoid of traffic. Mattress shops and florists cruised by like some lonesome hitchhikers traveling. 

    A figure was slumped over a parking barrier as Andrew pulled the bus into the office’s parking lot; the woman’s red hair flowed down, obscuring her legs, and her face was hidden beneath. She looked up as he pulled into the bus’s singular parking spot — it was Hannah. She looked up and parted her hair down the middle and smiled. Her jeans were torn at the knees as she hugged her legs, and she had on a Slayer t-shirt — so unlike the formal, traditional clothes she had on the day before. Andrew noticed she was braless by the outlines of her nipples on the shirt. 

    “Well, look who it is,” she said. She stood up, her face downcast. She walked up to the buss as Andrew got out. “The needle boy.” 

    He walked to the front door and fumbled with his keys. 

    “Where’s Cartwright?” she said, bending down to make eye contact with him. 

    “He called in sick.” Andrew managed to get the door open. His key never seemed to work, but Cartwright always refused to make a duplicate, swearing the Andrew was merely turning it wrong. 

    Andrew turned on the lights, flooding the room with a brilliant shellac from the luminous bulbs overhead that continued to flicker, which in turn crystalized the room and transformed it from dark to light. He sat at his desk and started to fill out some forms, important documents for the legal side of the job; it seemed as if more paperwork was needed for someone to die than to keep them alive. He scanned in some handwritten forms, and after that was done, uploaded them into the database that acted as a sort of official tome for all the country’s euthanasia cases. Hannah sat on the floor against the desk, picking at her nails and running her fingers through her hair, removing kinks and knots. She sighed in a dramatic fashion. Andrew asked her if she wanted a chair, but she declined, claiming she was relaxed where she was. She kicked her legs out like a child throwing a tantrum, bouncing her feet against themselves. 

    “Did you mean that?” she said. She looked up at him, her forehead wrinkled. 

    “What’s that?” Andrew said. 

    “That it never gets easier — death.” 

    “I guess so,” he said. He still had a pile of papers an inch high on his desk. 

    “I still can’t believe it,” Hannah said. She looked at her nails. “All that suffering and he’s just gone with no memories or nothing of life.” 

    Andrew felt his stomach take a turn. There was no reason to be unfriendly to a person who just lost a husband. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just can’t take the stress sometimes. I don’t like to talk.” 

    Hannah pouted her pink lips. “You helped kill my husband. I think if I can talk, you can.” 

    Andrew couldn’t really argue. He started to feel bad, but he couldn’t let her know. 

    She walked around the room under the brilliant, white light of the bulbs. She walked in circles on the balls of her feet, her head down and trailing something invisible. Andrew wasn’t really sure why he brought her here in the first place; she was merely a client, a stranger, and it was severely breaking protocol to have her in the office — not that Cartwright ever cared about protocol. 

    “Do you like your job?” She had stopped in the middle of the room. “Even though it’s hard?” 

    “I guess — no.” Andrew rolled his eyeballs. 

    “Why not?” 

    “Why not?” Andrew got up from the stack of papers. “Maybe all this shit I have to do. Maybe it’s watching people die. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the alienation of the laborer.” 

    “The what?” 

    “It’s Marx. When the laborer is separated from everything in his true nature by a capitalist system, he is no longer himself.” He motioned toward the door, as if something would come in at any moment and prove his demonstration. 

    Hannah smiled, leaning her head to one side. Then she held her hand to her mouth. White liquid spurted through her fingers. Andrew grabbed a trash can as fast as he could. 

    “In here, in here,” he said. 

    She lowered her head into the bucket. Andrew went around the desk and held her hair back as she vomited. Her heaves came in two second intervals, and Andrew prepared for each one by grabbing her hair tighter and bracing the garbage can. Then, she spit twice and looked up. 

    “Sorry,” she said. Her face didn’t have the pallid hue that one would expect from a sick person. 

    “It’s okay,” Andrew said, even though it wasn’t okay. He looked at his pile of paperwork, at the computer humming and the scanner waiting to light up. He thought about continuing as if it hadn’t happened, but after a few abandoned attempts at signing some orders, he gave up and looked at Hannah. She sat with her back to him, crying low. He decided to write a letter to Cartwright, explaining the whole thing; he typed it up and taped it to the desk. 

Hannah lived in a duplex painted the color of old Pepto Bismol, complete with a courtyard sporting a dry fountain replica of some saint. Andrew got out of the car, telling himself that he should just leave her. He’d already gone far enough. But, as a certain looming feeling of trepidation surceased, Andrew followed Hannah across the threshold of her house. The place was dimly lit, but he could make out the outline of a cast iron stove in the corner, a room leading off to the left; the light was blocked out by a series of tapestries with mosaics on them. 

    “Want a beer?” she said. She stood in the center of the darkness and held her hair up as she put it into a ponytail. A slant of light poked out from a crack made between the window and the mosaic tapestry; it illuminated her. 

    “No,” he said, growing impatient. He felt as if an ice pick were digging around in his brain. “So, what’s this? I thought you had that house with your — husband.” 

    She stood like an egress and took off a shoe. “No, this is my house,” she said, wobbling while taking off the other shoe. “He insisted that I have it. He paid the rent, and I could come and go whenever I pleased.” In the dark, Andrew could see a faint smile by the outlines of her teeth. Hannah grabbed the bottom of her shirt, flipped it over her head, her breasts bouncing when coming loose. She then unbuttoned her jeans; she slipped out of them in an instant. “Our situation was arranged before hand, of course. He was one of the good ones. He didn’t hold me to any standard or expect anything from me.” 

    Andrew grew red and looked away; he could feel the heat rise from his cheeks. 

    “Well, I’m taking a bath,” she said. “You should come in.” 

    “What?” he said. He couldn’t believe it. 

    “Come on,” she said. She grabbed his arm. “Like it’s a big deal.” 

    If Andrew had been told that he was going to be following a girl who wasn’t Sasha into a bathtub, he would have violently denied it. But there he was. He held out his arms as she took off his t-shirt. She went down to unbutton his jeans, but he waved her off; he didn’t want her anywhere down there, even if she was going to see everything anyway. She stood up and turned around, leaving Andrew to pull off his jeans and underwear. She walked over to the faucet and started the water running. 

    “You first,” she said and pointed to the tub filling up with a languid flow of water. 

    Andrew sat down in the tub; the water was hot, but not so much as to burn him. He felt good. He felt safe, somehow. 

    She tossed a leg over the edge of the tub and sat down in front of Andrew. Then, she drew close to him, clinching her flesh against his chest, wiggling up to his groin and grabbing his arms to fold around hers. Andrew grew hard and tried to reposition himself, but the closeness of her left him nowhere to go. He didn’t know what to do next. 

    “Relax now,” she said, as if reading his mind. He felt it hard to concentrate; his mind bobbled up and down. Everywhere he looked he saw moral failure, physical misdeeds. Hannah just laughed curtly to herself, as if she knew a secret nobody else could. 

    “How could you do it?” said Andrew. 

    “Do what?” said Hannah 

    “Make that decision for your husband. To help him kill himself.” 

    “It wasn’t my decision to make. It had nothing to do with me.” 

    “Maybe it had something to do with you.” 

    “The day he got back from the hospital after being diagnosed, he told me he wanted out. He wrote it down. Had it notarized.” She blew her nose into her hands. “In a way, it was an act of love. I guess I loved him.” 

    Andrew shifted his weight out from under Hannah, adjusting the angle of his body. “Sorry, I feel weird.” He moved to the far end of the tub at her feet, sighing. He ducked his head under the water to wet his hair. As Hannah lifted up her leg out of the water to wash it, he saw something that made  him swallow aggressively: She had deep, penetrating scars on her inner thigh; it looked as if some wild animal had been running wild and attacked her delicate skin there. He turned his head in an attempt to show that he in fact hadn’t noticed the evidence of whatever harm she had suffered, whether it was self-inflicted or otherwise. 

    “I was pretty fucked up for a long time,” she said, as if she could read Andrew’s mind. “Didn’t you say you were orthodox, too? Or do you just have that look about you?” 

    “I guess I have that look about me.” 

    “Then, you know what I mean.” 

    “Yeah, I guess I do.” 

    Andrew feigned washing his back with a scrubber, going through the motions but still leaning over the cliff of paranoia, waiting for the long descent into madness. He sat up and regarded Hannah; her breasts weren’t large, and her shoulders were narrow, but other than that, from what he could see, she was attractive enough. 

    “My mother is dying,” said Andrew. The sounds of gentle splashing stopped. 

    “What?” 

    “She’s dying. She has an inoperable, malignant brain tumor.” Andrew let out a sigh. “My parents have been trying to tell me for a while now. They put in an order to Cartwright the other day.” 

    “Isn’t that kind of —“ 

    “Hypocritical? Yes. Very much so. It goes against everything they believe in.” 

    “So what’s going to happen?” 

    “I’m not sure,” Andrew said, getting up out of the tub. After searching for a towel for what seemed like years, Hannah told him to look in the closet. He grabbed one — a Tinkerbell pattern over white — and tied it around his waist. As they dried off, Andrew said, “Hey, if you need anybody to talk to, let me know.” 

    Hannah rolled her eyes. “I think I’m doing quite well on my own, thank you.” 

    “I’m sorry.” 

    “What? You think just because you’re male and you think I’m attractive that you can just ride in like a white knight and save me?” 

    “We just took a bath together —“ 

    “So what? I don’t owe you anything. You didn’t save me from anything. You’ve got to unlearn so many things if that’s what you think.” 

    “I didn’t mean anything by it. Calm down.” 

    After they both got dressed, Andrew left and got into his van. Hannah didn’t even bother to say goodbye. His hands ached, and he felt like a villain for triggering something in Hannah that made her go off like that. He started the engine and rode off down the road, her image in the rearview mirror getting smaller and smaller the farther he got until, finally, she disappeared altogether. 

His mother and father were waiting for him when he returned home. Sasha gave an expectant, fearful look at Andrew as he walked through the door, and he knew something was wrong, that some palpable air of truth was about to come knock him down. Andrew’s father — tall, gangly, with his wide-brimmed hat, glasses, and peyos even longer than he remembered — got up off the couch and approached him with his arms open. The two men hugged, and his father began to sob into Andrew’s chest. Andrew looked over at his mother, who sat still with a smile on her face on the couch. She wore her wig — a long, brown piece that glowed under the light from the lamp, and she put her hands to her mouth as she watched Andrew hug his father. Her hands looked thin and white, weak with the wrinkled paleness of age. 

    “Aryeh, what a great woman you have found,” said his father. He squared up his son’s shoulders, smiling, as if leaving home and everything else behind was no big deal, as if he forgot everything he tried to do to get Andrew back into the community. 

    “It’s Andrew, dad.” 

    “Okay, Andrew then.” His father turned around to look at his wife. She got up and walked over to her son. 

    “My Aryeh. My Andrew,” his mother said. She kissed him on the cheek and held his head in her hands. 

    Sasha looked on in the corner, starting to cry. 

    “Mom, I can’t do what you’re asking.” Andrew let her hand down and held it. 

    “I know it’s a lot to ask,” said his mother as she pinched his chin. “But I will greet death one way or another soon.” She turned her head up, looking at the ceiling, at G-d through the clouds and into the sky. 

    Andrew’s father put a hand on his shoulder. “Please, son. I can’t be there when she goes. At least be there when she leaves us.” 

    “Stop it, dad. For fuck’s sake, just act like normal human for once.” Andrew stepped away from his mother and looked at his father. “What is this? How can you allow this, given all the grief you’ve given me these past couple of years?” 

    “Sometimes things change. Your mother is very ill.” 

    “I can’t do this. I can’t,” Andrew said. 

    “Aryeh,” said his mother. She looked up into his eyes. She blinked, searching for something in his face. “Forgive your father. We are all here out of love. For our family.” Her face digressed into a crestfallen, somber expression, her muscles relaxing all at once. 

    Andrew looked at Sasha, at his mother, and his father, who was already taking his place on the couch again. 

    He left the house and went to his van. After opening up the back, he hoisted the case containing his equipment. Sasha came out of the house and stood beside him. 

    “Are you okay?,” she said. She took a hold of his arm. 

    “No,” Andrew said, “I am not.” 

    “I think it’s the right thing to do. Be there for her,” she said. “Be there like you haven’t been for the last couple of years.” 

    Andrew stopped to think. Maybe this was the right way to do it. Maybe, someday, he could be forgiven. 

    Once inside, everybody congregated in the back bedroom. His mother removed her wig, exposing her thin, balding head. It shocked Andrew to see her like that. He remembered when he was a kid and they would walk to school together; one day, he had accidentally stepped on a lizard, and she scolded him, teaching him compassion for all living things. For his fourteenth birthday, he had really wanted a drum set — instead, she bought him a guitar, perhaps mistaking the instrument he desired, perhaps encouraging him, in some way, toward another outlet of creativity. He played the guitar until his fingers bled, and then he played some more. 

    Andrew’s mother lay on the bed in the bedroom, a soft light from the lamp casting shadows over her face. She smiled as she looked at Andrew. His father read from the Tanakh in Hebrew, but Andrew couldn’t make out the words. It had been too long since he read them, and their meaning remained lost on him, never to form any sense of understanding again. Sasha held Andrew’s hand. He shook her loose in order to open up the case that held the syringes. 

    “Nothing ever stays the same,” his mother said. Her voice was choked, weak, feeble, and lost in the air. 

    “We have too much time to say goodbye,” said Andrew. 

    Outside, the wind rattled the trees against the window. His father’s words, now all that he had, coursed through the air like smoke, and their sounds disappeared as quickly as they came.