Right to Die

in the war and all.”
    “What year did your wife pass away?”
    “Year?”
    “Year.”
    “Watergate. Was Watergate on the TV when we got back from the funeral.”
    So call it seventy-three or so. To have been a war orphan, his Heidi had to have been in her early thirties by then. Not much of a life for her, but then, maybe a lot better than she remembered from childhood.
    “What happened to your daughter after your wife died?”
    “Oh, she—like I said, she took care of the house and all. Was just the two of us, but it was a good life. Good as could be without Florence . But then Heidi...”
    Doleman squirmed in his seat. Marpessa became agitated and flapped her wings, making the cry I’d heard over the telephone and thundering, in that small, quiet room, over to a windowsill near the inner door of the spacelock.
    Doleman gave no indication that he noticed the bird. “Heidi took sick. Doctors said they didn’t know what, but they did. They just didn’t want to tell me. Didn’t want me to know what they told Heidi. She was a brave girl, none braver. She never wanted me to worry. But you could just see it in her. The way she didn’t have any get-up-and-go. Didn’t want to eat, losing weight.” Doleman rested his forehead in an upturned palm. “Was the leukemia.”
    I said gently, “And when was that, Mr. Doleman?”
    “Started a year ago, a year ago this month. They took her to the hospital, then she’d be home, then in again. The MTA and the folks at her job, they took care of most of the bills. The doctors said there wasn’t anything to be done. But they was wrong!”
    Doleman seemed to come back to life, fill himself with a past energy. “Heidi was a strong girl. She’d survived before, in Germany , when everybody around her was dying. Strong and brave. She could have beaten it, weren’t for her.”
    The way Doleman pronounced the last word, there was no question who he meant.
    “She wrote this!” He stabbed the book with his index finger so hard I was afraid he’d jammed the knuckle. “This piece of deviltry. Of despair. Don’t fight, she says in here. Don’t resist the Reaper. And don’t just give in. Help him along. Take your own life because it belongs to you, not to anybody else, like your family who loves you and depends on you. Oh, no. It’s okay to be selfish, see? It’s okay to give up.”
    “Your daughter read the professor’s book.”
    “She did. I didn’t know a thing about it. Can you believe that? Me, her own father, Heidi never told me. Just let on how she was a burden, how it was hard for her to do things anymore. But not a word, not one word about suiciding herself.”
    I thought back to Beth. The conversations we had, the idea just below the surface. I had the feeling Heidi told her father as best she could, but that he just hadn’t been listening.
    “One morning in August I got up, didn’t smell the coffee. Heidi always brewed the coffee, strong enough to knock you over. Well, I got up that day and didn’t smell it. Didn’t know what was wrong at first, because it was something that wasn’t there instead of something that shouldn’t have been there, like a noise. Then I realized I couldn’t hear her either. I went to her door, knocked like I always did since she was old enough to... old enough anyway, and I didn’t hear her and I knocked louder. Still nothing, so I opened it. And there she was, in her bed, covers up over a nightgown I never saw before. Her hands were folded on top of her chest, and her mouth was open a little, nothing coming out. I touched...”
    Doleman’s Adam’s apple rode hard at his collar. “I touched her hands and I knew... knew she was gone. Then I saw the little pill thing next to her, vial or whatever you call it, clear so you could tell it was empty. Sleeping pills. And the book. The goddamn book with her note sticking out of it. The note said, ‘Papa, please forgive me. Please read this and maybe you’ll understand. I’m sure I’m going to be with Mama, and we’ll look after you always. Heidi.’ ”
    I changed positions in my chair, Marpessa making a clucking noise behind me.
    Doleman fixed me with his eyes. “Well, mister, I started reading this book. Chapter a night, every night. Still read it. Still trying to figure out what the devil’s bitch could have said to make a fine girl like Heidi turn her back on her family and take her life like that. But I can’t. And that bitch can’t either. Never answered my