The Last Living Emily
Liz Shannon Miller
It's been a terrible, wonderful hundred years, Emily thinks to herself in the silence. A whirlwind of time. But she's fortunate, the luckiest old lady she knows, because she remembers each day, every single one. Not one grain of sand has escaped her grasp. She has held on tight.
She thinks back on the old days during the late nights, laying in bed, looking out her skylight at the stars. She sleeps little, in fits and spurts, but knows she needs rest. So she spends eight of each twenty-four hours in bed, waiting for the dawn, reading books while she waits. So many books she's meant to read in her lifetime, and so many distractions in the way. Men, music, women, and wine. But she always knew she'd eventually have time to read, so she never really minded. She saved the greatest works of literature for her twilight years. But she didn't know how badly she'd need the distraction.
She used to know dozens of Emilys her age, but with each year she's deleting more deceased friends from her address book. Last year, every other newborn daughter was named Cerie (the year before, Shyanne) and instead of being Emily C., or Redhead Emily, or Emily the Twin, she's just herself. Seulement.
She eats alone in the mornings, with the sunrise, out on the porch of her little house. Fruit, sliced the night before. Bacon, fried up in her instant cooker. She was a vegetarian for decades, but came back to meat when she turned eighty, after the second great world famine, the one even fewer survived. She managed, though, because that's what she does. Survive.
Around Emily, the world has crumbled. First, her favorite cafe, her local stores. Shopkeepers dying, businesses going broke. First her neighborhood, then her city, then her country. At the time it felt like she was sitting very still, watching it all happen -- but the truth is she was moving too, only occasionally paying attention. Usually not until it was too late. But it couldn't be helped, she figures. She was busy, had things to do. A life to live. Change came with every sunrise, every day.
But one thing she's noticed about becoming an old lady is how much longer it takes to get used to those changes. She's less quick to adapt, challenged every day by some new device. Amy used to be able to explain some things to her -- Amy, for some reason, never had the same troubles she did. But that was then. That was when Emily had a sister.
She's watched so many worlds fall apart, over the past hundred years. Worlds big and small.
She doesn't linger over breakfast -- she eats quickly, sharp little bites, and orange juice flows easily down her throat. No coffee, not anymore. She gave up coffee when she hiked South America, top to bottom, in those crazy solar-powered boots which seemed like such a good idea at the time. The memory of flying with each step now makes her full stomach a little queasy, but every morning, as the tips of her fingers brush over the few coffee mugs she's kept around for sentimental reasons, she remembers how the O2 deprivation got her higher than caffeine ever would, how the sun drifted down past her to the tree cover.
It's an easy meal to clean up after, and Emily does it quickly, because she has things to do. Duties. That's the thing about being the last one to leave the party -- you always get stuck with the clean-up.
As always Emily can hear Amy breathing, shallow and slow and even, the moment before she enters what she still thinks of as the spare room. The name doesn't quite fit, though: Emily's spare room hasn't been spare since it became a place of machines, of half-life. Since she brought her sister home.
They were twins, identical at first, until a helicopter accident scarred Emily's back and Amy's thighs became a mess of stretch marks. Amy never wanted to bound around continents, and Emily never wanted children. But between them, they lived something like a complete life.
The books occupying Emily's nights are dense and meaty, all the subjects which bored her as a young woman. During the day, though, she reads Amy lighter fare. Science fiction, mostly, old twentieth-century pulp their father loved. Amy had never really enjoyed the genre as much as Emily, but it's familiar for them both, and Amy's in a coma, anyway. Emily would be thrilled if she decided to complain.
Emily has a lot of feelings towards her sister, but none of them involve pity. Amy got herself into this situation, after all. It's her own goddamn fault. After all, Emily spent thirty years dancing on the knife blade between life and death -- she knows how fragile the body is, how easy it can be to lose everything. So she really can't understand how her sister fucked up her own suicide. The doctors explained it, sure, showed her pictures of the bullet and the trajectory and the scarring left behind. But Emily still finds it a bit implausible. Amy had managed to kill Jake just fine, after all.
Jake's death wasn't murder, it was a mercy-killing, and Emily isn't worried for Amy's soul on that count. The disease had been slowly twisting Jake into knots for years, and science had no idea how to untangle him. Every day was pain, and Emily knows her sister did Jake a favor.
It's the suicide that nags at her sometimes, a riddle without words. She knows she shouldn't have been surprised by it -- Emily had heard Amy say, all those times, that she loved Jake more than life itself. Amy believed in her love for Jake like a Baptist believes in Jesus; she believed it would save her. Emily was never sure, though, what Amy needed saving from.
Emily says these things out loud while she putters around the room, tidying up, checking the readings, rubbing lotion into Amy's dry skin. It's helpful for her, gives her a way to vent all the things she can't express. She does it to keep her mouth as busy as her hands. She does it because she can.
"Don't you agree?" she says to Amy, frozen in the past, so far away from the world. Amy says nothing. They get along so well, these days. They never clash, never squabble, and Amy's always there to listen.
It took some time. It took a few years more than it might have, long ago. But Emily's grown used to the silence.
For in the end, Emily has plenty of regrets, but all in the abstract. There's little she'd actually take back. There's little she actually misses. Aging has been the slowest sort of time travel she can imagine. But she would never have wanted to go any faster.
Who knows what she might have missed?