Free Right To Die - Jeremiah Healy by Jeremiah Healy Page B

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 cha1lenge."
    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."
    J ohn, 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 standing around, but no judge, no
jury, and no