Julian ran inside the bedroom. Ava was sitting with her back to him, tilted to one side. She had stopped speaking almost completely except for one word she kept repeating over and over. “Once,” she kept saying. “Once once once once once once once.”
“Ava, what’s the matter?” Julian said, turning her chair to him and staring into her unfocused eyes. “What are you saying? Can you sit up? Just hold on to me, I’ll call the doctor.”
“Only once more,” she said, gripping his arm as she fell sideways. “Once.”
AVA HAD A STROKE. SHE LOST HER MOBILITY, AND SHE LOST her speech. She was kept in the hospital until the doctors decided there was nothing more they could do for her. Either she was going to get better on her own, or she wasn’t. “She is close to eighty,” the on-call genius said.
So the fuck what, Julian wanted to say. He once knew a treasure hunter who scoured thousands of miles of London’s underground sewers looking for his vanished father, and he was eighty. He once knew a man who helmed a whaleship in the Antarctic ice storms, who flensed his own seals—among other things—and he was eighty.
Devi and Julian decided to move Ava to the Hampstead Heath convalescent home. It was familiar, clean, and the nurses were kind. “Plus it’s not far, and we can visit her,” Devi said.
Yes, said Julian, studying Devi. What did Ava mean by once? Was it the rantings of an unwell woman? Julian wouldn’t have given it any more thought, except it had been the only clear word out of her mouth after everything else got muddled.
“How am I going to make the trip two more times?” Julian said to Devi in a black cab, on the way home from Hampstead Heath. “I don’t mean in a whiny sense. I mean in an actual physical sense. All the bones in my body are unstable, like I’m about to fracture.”
“Why are you still boxing nonstop if you are such a fragile creature?”
Julian shrugged. “Plus I’m handicapped now.” He raised his right hand, as if Devi was confused by what Julian meant. “No matter what I want, I don’t know if my body can survive two more trips.”
“That’s good,” Devi said. “Because you can only go back once.”
Julian stopped feeling sorry for himself. “Twice, you mean.”
“Once.”
“You don’t think I can count to seven?”
“I don’t think you can, no.”
Julian stared at the back of the driver’s head, wondering if he should close the little window between them before he continued. He decided to plow on. “You said seven times. I didn’t imagine it.” Julian was almost sure the dry-witted Devi was messing with him. “I’ve gone five. 1603, 1666, 1775, 1854, 1911. That’s five. Next is six. I suppose if I fail again, then will come seven. That’s twice more. One of us can’t count.”
“That would be you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Devi signaled to the driver to stop by Marble Arch. They paid and got out, and when they had walked a little way down Bayswater Road, the cook spoke. “Her seventh and last incarnation is as Ava’s daughter, Mia. In L.A. With you.”
Julian waited for more.
“With you, Julian.”
“I don’t understand.”
“But who are you that is hobbling next to me? Aren’t you Julian?”
“So?”
“Where are you going to go?”
“You mean it won’t come again?”
“That’s not what I mean. It might come again. What I’m saying is, you can’t be there when it does.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re already there.”
Julian stopped walking.
“Come with me,” a sighing Devi said, pulling on Julian’s arm. “Let’s go inside the park, walk through the fountains in the Italian Gardens. It’s a nice day. For the first time in weeks, it’s not raining.”
The diminutive Asian man held on to Julian as they ambled in the blinding late February sunshine, both shielding their eyes from the blinding waters of the Serpentine. Or was it Julian who was holding on to Devi? Where did he go wrong, where did he go so far off the path? They didn’t speak until they found a secluded bench under a barely budding tree near the ducks on the Long Water.
Kneading the beads in his hands, the Hmong shaman stared at the people ambling by, at the ducklings swimming after their mothers.
“There’s a fallacy in your approach to this,” Devi said. “I can see you’re shellshocked, but you don’t have to go back even once more. You’re still a relatively young man. You have a little money now. You could travel a bit. There are places other than London and Invercargill. You can run a boxing gym. I see the way the other guys listen to you, spar with you, even with your mangled claw. They like and respect you. You have a knack. You could use your skills to remake men who need your help into better fighters and every day be around what matters most to you. What a gift to yourself that would be—every day to be around what you love. You can do that here, or in L.A. Your mother, I’m sure, would prefer to have you back. You might meet someone. The long-suffering loner is a popular option with some women. So much is still possible for you, Julian. Going back is only one of your choices.”
Motionless, Julian sat.
“When you first met her,” Devi said, “you thought you had forever. And the first time you went back for her, you thought you had forever. The second time at the Silver Cross, you were afraid and didn’t know of what. The third time, you felt doom but didn’t know when. The fourth time with Mirabelle, you knew exactly when. And last time, for the first time, Shae herself knew what was coming. How did that work out? What’s next for you two, I do not know. What is left for you to show her and for her to show you? Perhaps how to live amid death, as we all must learn. But”—Devi folded his hands—“if you choose to go back, it will be for the last time.”
The ducks in the Long Water were flapping, splashing. Somewhere a baby cried. Two women walked by, wrapped around each other. A man and woman perched on a bench, licking around the same cone of ice cream.
“You said seven.”
“Did you listen to a word I said?” Devi exclaimed. “Why do you keep repeating things over and over? You had seven.”
“The first time doesn’t count.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was just my life. I lived it.”
“It may have been your life, but it was her last life. That counts, no?”
“No.”