Right to Die

Twenty days down to Bridgewater for observation in the rooms with the cushy walls? Shit, we’re letting real bad dudes walk now, there ain’t enough cells in all the slams to hold ‘em.”
    “Good point.”
    “Yeah. Hey, look, I don’t wanna come across like some lug, got no feelings. Jesus, I was the one getting these notes, especially the one by hand in the mailbox there, I’d be jumpy as a pregnant nun too. It’s just, even if you do the best you can here, it ain’t gonna be that much.”
    “Listen, Neely, I appreciate your being so open with me on all this.”
    “Don’t mention it.” He seemed to sniff something in the air. “Say, you pressed or we got time for dessert?”

= 8 =

    When we finally left Victoria Station, I asked Neely to drop me off in South Boston . The weather was bell clear, and I hadn’t made a visit since Thanksgiving.

    I bent over stiffly, laying the bunched poinsettias lengthwise to her.
    You getting old on me?
    “No.”
    John, you’re creaking.
    “Finally decided to try the marathon, Beth.”
    What, the Ironman Triathalon was already booked up?
    “You’re supposed to be supportive of a poor widower rising to a challenge.”
    Even when he’s being stupid?
    I looked down at the shoreline, the chop smacking against the foot of her hillside. Half a mile out, a Coast Guard cutter was knifing its way toward the harbor. During every season, the cod boats have to be watched over and the drug smugglers watched for.
    Something besides the marathon’s on your mind.
    “Tommy Kramer approached me to help a professor who’s getting threatened.”
    And?
    “The professor is a woman who pushes for the right to die.”
    A pause. Why does she bother you?
    “I don’t know.”
    I half expected Beth to say, “That’s not an acceptable answer, Mr. Cuddy.”
    John?
    “I guess because when her husband was dying, in a lot of pain and frustration, she helped him to die.”
    Another pause. And that makes you feel...? “Uncomfortable.”
    Why?
    “I suppose because it makes me think back. To your being in the hospital.”
    John, we talked about... ending things then.
    I stood up. “No, we didn’t. We talked around it.”
    And why do you suppose that was?
    “Because I saw it as helping the cancer take you away from me.”
    Instead of helping me get away from the cancer. “Right.”
    John, what we decided to do, or not to do, shouldn’t cloud you on other people’s views.
    “Of course it should.”
    Another pause. There’s something else, too, isn’t there? I kicked at a gum wrapper that somebody should have picked up. “ Nancy .”
    Trouble?
    “It’s the holiday business.”
    In what way?
    I told her about Nancy ’s dad and the blow-up over the tree-lighting.
    You remember our first Christmas?
    “Yes. You insisted we have a real tree, even though we couldn’t afford a stand for it.”
    So you took that glass jug that held—what was it? “Grape juice.”
    So you took that jug and filled it with water and put the tree in it.
    “Right.”
    And what happened?
    “I left the window open, and the water froze solid, cracking the glass.”
    Remember the row we had over your lack of holiday spirit?
    I remembered. “But that’s the point, Beth. While the holidays didn’t ever mean all that much to me, at least I remember them, even the tree and the argument and all, as real life, something I was part of.”
    What about the holidays since?
    “Empty. I don’t know, maybe like a foreigner watching a baseball game.”
    And now?
    “Now?”
    With Nancy ?
    I thought about it. “Not completely a stranger, but not completely a participant either.”
    An invited guest?
    “Who’s maybe a little afraid to join in.”
    Given her family situation, don’t you think that’s what Nancy really needs? Someone to join in with her?
    “Maybe.”
    John, you want to give it a chance with Nancy, don’t you?
    “Yes.”
    Then to give it a chance, you might have to take a chance too.
    The other pieces of stone and I watched the Coast Guard cutter pass a point of land and snug back into the harbor.

    After a purchase at the Christmas Shop on Tremont, I got to the Suffolk County courthouse about four p.m., going through the metal detector on the first floor. In the district attorney’s office the receptionist told me where to find Nancy .
    I walked into a courtroom on the ninth floor. High ceilings, nondescript carpeting, failing sunlight fuzzing the large windows. There were a few people