Will, or The Unworthy Life

Will, or The Unworthy Life – Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

Cora will wake before her alarm, eyes opening to darkness threaded with gold. The blinds will be imperfect guardians against dawn, allowing thin blades of morning to stripe her ceiling in parallel lines that she will count with ritualistic precision. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Time will collect in these amber filaments, and Cora will understand that she has been granted another day.

She will reach out, silencing the alarm before it can begin its daily accusation. The sheets will release her without protest, cool cotton sliding away like water. Her feet will find the floor, toes curling against the wood that will have absorbed the night’s chill. The room will hold her like a specimen under glass: bed, dresser, chair, none touching. She will move through space as if navigating the narrow passageways of her own making, shoulders squared to avoid disturbing the air more than necessary.

The bathroom cabinet will open with a soft click, revealing rows of bottles arranged by size. Seven pills to maintain life in a body that has already proven its unreliability. She will swallow them anyway, honouring the principle of care even when the outcome is determined.

Cora will select each one with care, the orange plastic warm against her fingertips. She will place seven pills in her palm, a constellation of medical intention. White for bones, yellow for the immune system, green for tissue, pink for blood, blue for brain, orange for digestion, scored white for sleep. The taxonomy of survival, categorized and contained.

Water will run from the tap, clear and cold. Cora will fill a glass three-quarters full. She will place the first pill on her tongue, feeling its chalky resistance, the promise of continuation. Her throat will work, muscles contracting in a dance as ancient as thirst. She will take each subsequent pill as a communion of chemistry and faith. Her reflection will watch her with clinical interest, neither approving nor condemning this daily sacrament. When the last pill disappears, she will rinse the glass, dry it with a paper towel, folded, and return it to its place on the shelf, handle facing out.

The shower will hiss to life, steam rising in tendrils that ghost against the mirror. Cora will remove her nightgown, folding it into a neat square and placing it on the closed toilet lid. She will step into the water’s embrace, letting it baptize her in heat and pressure. Her hands will perform their daily inspection, fingers mapping the geography of her altered body.

The tissue will feel different from the rest of her skin, both part of her and separate, a boundary between before and after. Her fingers will have found it on a morning like this, a small hardness that should not have been there, the body announcing its capacity for betrayal. The grain of sand will feel different—denser, cooler, more permanent. As if the cancer will have been practice, a rehearsal.

Her palms will cup her breasts, scrutinizing them with dispassionate accuracy. The left will be smaller now, sculpted by surgeons’ hands into an approximation of what was lost. The right will remain as it was, a control sample in an experiment she never volunteered for. She will note that neither feels entirely like her own anymore, these territories claimed by medical exploration and then abandoned, left for her to reinhabit as best she can.

It will be here, under the steady pulse of water, that Cora will feel it again: the certainty. Not in her breast, where cancer once bloomed like a dark flower, but deeper, behind her sternum. A smooth grain of knowledge, light and cool, neither malignant nor benign, simply present. She will press her fingers against the bone, feeling the solidity of her own structure around this foreign certainty. Unlike the fluttering panic of diagnosis, the trembling hope of remission, this will be still, immovable. Not a question to be answered, but an answer without a question.

She will turn off the water, each knob rotated until the pipes fall silent. Her towel will absorb the droplets from her skin with efficient hunger. She will dress with the same attention she gave the vitamins: underwear aligned, bra fastened on the second hook, pants pulled up with a single, smooth motion, shirt buttoned from top to bottom. The clothes will settle around her like a second skin, neither tight nor loose, simply adequate.

In the kitchen, bread will enter the toaster with a soft mechanical sigh. Coffee will drip into a white mug, black and bold. Cora will slice a banana into seven equal portions, arranging them in a perfect circle around the edge of her plate. The toast will emerge transformed, and she will spread almond butter in a thin, even layer to the crust’s perimeter. She will sit at a table empty of companions, the chair across from her pushed in to where the seat’s edge met the table’s shadow.

The newspaper will still be in its mechanically rectangular shape, where nation-wide disasters sit above the fold and local tragedies collect in the back pages like sediment. Cora will unfold it with careful hands, smoothing the creases flat against the table’s surface. Her eyes will scan the headlines until they catch on a small article near the bottom of the page: “Unidentified Woman Found in River.” The words will burrow into her consciousness like splinters.

The woman will be described in measurements and absences: approximately five foot six, approximately one hundred and thirty pounds, approximately thirty-four years of age. No identification. No reported missing persons matching her description. No obvious cause of death. The water will have taken her fingerprints, softened her features, rendered her a collection of approximations. Cora, thirty-three, five foot five, one hundred and twenty-eight pounds, will feel certainty shift beneath her breastbone, settling into a new position.

She will read the article three times, each reading yielding the same sparse facts, the same unanswerable questions. The woman’s age will press against her consciousness with particular weight. Thirty-four. One year older than Cora. A future she might have had, submerged and discovered by a man walking his dog at dawn. The coincidence will not feel random, though Cora will not be able to articulate why. It will simply sit with her, another certainty joining the grain in her chest, as she will finish her toast, her banana, her coffee, each consumed in measured bites and sips, the routine unbroken despite this new knowledge.

The newspaper will be refolded along its original creases, placed in the recycling bin next to the compost bin holding the discarded banana peel and coffee grounds. Cora will wash her plate, her knife, her mug, drying each and returning it to its designated place in the cabinet. The hard certainty will remain, solid and undeniable, as she prepares to leave her apartment, keys in the right pocket, phone in the left, wallet in the back. Her day will begin, carrying this knowledge like a secret offering, held close beneath her ribs where cancer once grew and died.

The office will absorb Cora like a drop of water into sand, her presence neither creating ripples nor leaving impressions. She will move through the fluorescent landscape with the careful neutrality of an anthropologist in the field, observing rituals she understands but no longer shares. The elevator buttons, the security badge, the haphazard arrangement of pens in the cup on her desk—all will be noted, catalogued, respected as artifacts of a civilization still earnest in its pursuit of continuation.

Tony from Accounting will be holding court by the coffee machine, his voice an enthusiastic cadence rising above the hum of computers and air conditioning. “The elevation gain is brutal,” he will say, hands sketching invisible mountains in the air, “but the view from the summit—” He will pause here, fingers splayed as if trying to capture something too vast for words. His audience—two women from HR, a man from IT whose name Cora will never quite remember—will lean forward, invested in this future ascent, this promised vista. Their bodies will angle toward Tony like plants seeking light, hungry for the nourishment of possibility.

Cora will pass them with a nod soft enough to acknowledge their existence and not so pronounced as to invite inclusion. Her steps will carry her to the far corner, where her desk will wait, a rectangular island bordered by fabric-covered walls the colour of faded sage. Three photographs will stand guard over her keyboard: one of a beach at sunset, another of a mountain lake, a third of a forest path in autumn. None will contain people. None will be places she has actually visited. They will have come with the frames, perfect strangers’ memories serving as placeholders for experiences she has never prioritized acquiring.

At the desk across from hers, two junior analysts will debate project deadlines with the fevered intensity of those who believe outcomes matter. “If we move the Miller account to next Thursday—” the one with the red tie will begin, only to be cut off by his companion, whose fingers will tap an urgent rhythm against a stack of folders. “We can’t push Miller again, not after last month’s delay. Hendriks has to be the one that slides.” Their voices will rise and fall in the ancient song of negotiation, each inflection carrying the weight of small ambitions, minor fears, the precious currency of professional reputation.

Cora will power on her computer with a single, deliberate press of her finger. The machine will hum to life, pixels assembling into the familiar grid of icons, each a doorway to tasks that once seemed essential. She will enter her password—fourteen characters combining uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols, a code more complex than any she will use to describe herself to others. The screen will bloom into colour, her email inbox already filling with messages marked urgent, important, time-sensitive. She will sort them not by sender or subject, but by a private taxonomy: things that will matter tomorrow, things that will not matter in a week, things that will never have mattered at all.

Her first spreadsheet of the day will open beneath her fingertips, columns of numbers stretching into digital infinity. She will input data, each cell receiving her full attention, as if the proper calculation of year-to-date expenditures might be her final contribution to the world. Her colleagues will attack similar tasks with either harried impatience or glazed resignation, but Cora will move through the numbers like a monk transcribing sacred texts. Present, precise, aware that each completed cell is both meaningless and perfect in its bounded completeness.

The grain of certainty will sit more noticeably in her chest here, among the five-year plans and retirement accounts, the vacation schedules and career trajectories. Around her, lives will unfurl in presumed linearity: the pregnant woman from Legal rubbing her swollen belly as she walks to the printer; the new hire arranging family photos on his desk, young children captured mid-laugh; even Tony, his hiking plans extending into theoretical weekends that have not yet arrived. Their futures will balloon around them, invisible but palpable, crowding the air with expectations yet to be met, disappointments yet to be weathered, joys yet to be celebrated.

Cora’s own future will feel different. Not absent, but contained, held within the perfect geometry. She will pause in her data entry, fingers hovering above the keyboard as she presses her hand against her chest. Through cotton and skin and muscle, she will feel it: the solid, undeniable presence of knowledge without content. Not a premonition, not a fear, simply a certainty that has carved out space within her, as her cancer once did, but cleaner now, more defined. She will hold the pressure for exactly seven seconds, the same number as the stripes of light on her morning ceiling, before returning to the spreadsheet, the moment of communion complete.

“Earth to Cora.” The voice will slide into her consciousness like a letter through a mail slot: expected but still startling in its actuality. She will look up to find the woman from the neighbouring cubicle standing at the entrance to her workspace, one hip leaning against the fabric wall, coffee mug cradled in both hands. The woman’s lipstick will be fresh, recently applied, a shade of coral that will suggest optimism. “I said your name twice,” she will continue, mouth curved in the universal shape of friendly concern. “Are you lost in those numbers again?”

Cora will offer a smile calibrated for the appropriate social response, lips curved upward precisely, teeth concealed, eyes crinkling at the corners to suggest authentic emotion. “Just concentrating,” she will say, voice modulated to match the office’s ambient volume. “Did you need something?”

The woman will lift her coffee mug in a small salute, the liquid inside trembling with the motion. “A few of us are heading to that new place around the corner for lunch. The one with the good soup you mentioned last week.” The invitation will hang in the air between them, buoyed by the kind of casual goodwill that assumes shared futures, communal experiences yet to unfold. “Want to join? Around twelve-thirty?”

The appropriate response will form in Cora’s mind, a calculation as complex as any in her spreadsheets. The word “No” will rise first, cleanly and simply, but she will set it aside. She will consider the woman’s coral lipstick, the effort of application, the hope embedded in the colour choice. She will think of the grain of sand in her chest, the dead woman in the river, the seven stripes of light on her ceiling. The gap between what she knows and what this woman with her coffee and her lipstick and her lunch plans cannot know will stretch between them, wide as a river.

“I suppose,” Cora will say finally, the words emerging softer than intended, almost gentle. It will be a small kindness, this pretense of participation, this affirmation of a shared future that Cora will understand is already dissolving, already gone. The woman will smile, pleased, and walk away, coffee mug swinging gently in her hand, the invitation accepted, the social contract maintained.

Cora will watch her go, noting the confident stride, the casual flip of hair, the way her body will occupy space with unthinking entitlement. Then she will turn back to her spreadsheet, to the perfect grid of numbers waiting for her attention, each cell a small universe of order that she will complete, aware that she is already absent from the future lunch, from the office, from the next cell and the next, even as her fingers will continue their careful work.

Evening will settle over the city like silt in water, particles of light and shadow drifting down through layers of air until they come to rest on concrete and glass. Cora will step out of her office building into this suspension of day’s end, her body moving from the artificial certainty of fluorescence into the more complex ambiguity of dusk. The air will carry the memory of afternoon heat, softened now by the approach of night, and she will inhale it carefully, feeling the expansion of her lungs against the smooth knowledge lodged inside.

Her path home will never vary—not out of habit or fear, but from a kind of respect for the mathematics of space. The most efficient route will always be the same, a theorem proven daily by her footsteps. She will walk measured paces, neither hurried nor dawdling, her shoes making soft percussive sounds against the pavement. Around her, the city will perform its evening transformation: windows illuminating in sequential constellations, traffic condensing into arteries of red and white light, pedestrians quickening their steps as if pursued by the encroaching dark.

Cora will observe it all with the calm detachment of someone no longer auditioning for inclusion. She will note the businessman checking his watch with religious devotion, the teenage girl trailing her fingers through her hair as she talks on the phone, the elderly couple walking a small dog that will stop to investigate every scent with the desperate thoroughness of the dying. Each tableau will be registered and filed away, evidence of lives still being composed, still straining toward resolution.

The corner market will announce itself with the smell of overripe fruit and the harsh glow of naked bulbs. Cora will turn toward it with deliberate steps, drawn not by hunger or necessity but by ritual. The glass door will sigh as she pushes it open, bell tinkling above her head in a bright, insistent note. Inside, narrow aisles will create a maze of packaged desires. Chips and cookies and instant meals promise satisfaction, convenience, the illusion of choice. She will ignore these, moving directly to the produce section at the side, where bins of fruits and vegetables will wait like offerings at an abandoned altar.

The apples will be stacked in a careful pyramid, red and green and gold, each curved surface reflecting the fluorescent lights above. Cora will approach them with the reverence of a pilgrim reaching a shrine. Her hands will hover above the display, not yet touching, simply measuring the distance between intention and action. Then, with precise movements, she will begin her selection process. Each apple will be lifted, rotated, examined from every angle. She will test the firmness with gentle pressure from her thumb, inspect the stem for signs of early picking, check the skin for imperfections that might suggest internal decay.

Three apples will be chosen this way—a trinity of perfect specimens—one red, one green, one gold. She will place them in an impossibly thin plastic bag with ceremonial care, the kind of attention usually reserved for artifacts or newborns. The bag will be twisted closed, the ends tucked beneath with a single motion. Cora will carry her selection to the counter where a bored cashier will scan them without looking up, without recognizing the sacred transaction he is facilitating. The price will be displayed in red digital numbers: $4.27. Cora will tap her phone to the reader. The exact amount will transfer, penny-perfect.

As she will turn to leave, a sound will fracture the market’s dull hum—voices raised in argument, emotions spilling over the carefully maintained boundaries of public decorum. A young couple will stand by the refrigerated section, their conflict creating an invisible perimeter that other shoppers will instinctively avoid. The woman will be speaking rapidly, words tumbling out with the reckless momentum of a confession too long contained. “You always do this,” she will say, her hands cutting through the air in sharp, declarative gestures. “Every time I think we’re moving forward, you retreat. I can’t keep having the same conversation.”

The man will run his fingers over his mouth and down his chin, a gesture that will suggest both frustration and shame. “That’s not fair,” he will counter, voice lowered in a futile attempt at privacy. “I’m trying, but you need to understand this is difficult for me. I can’t just flip a switch and be what you want.”

Cora will pause, twisted bag of apples suspended from her fingertips, and observe them with anthropological precision. Their faces will be flushed, eyes bright with the peculiar luminosity that comes from believing outcomes still matter, that hearts can be changed through the perfect arrangement of words, that trajectories can be altered by the sheer force of emotion. They will argue as if resolution exists, as if something might be solved, saved, reclaimed from the encroaching entropy of their separate desires.

A current of envy will pass through Cora, surprising in its intensity. Not for their conflict, with its messy edges and exposed nerves, but for their certainty that resolution matters, for their faith in the efficacy of trying, of saying the hard thing, of standing exposed in a fluorescent-lit market while strangers pretend not to listen. They will still believe in the narrative of growth, of change, of problems identified and overcome. They will not yet know what Cora knows: that some certainties arrive fully formed, impervious to argument or desire, smooth as river silt in the chest.

She will continue her walk home, the bag of apples swinging gently from her fingers in metronomic rhythm. The sidewalk will narrow as she leaves the main thoroughfare. The buildings will be brick and limestone, built when the grain trade made fortunes. Trees will reach overhead to form an incomplete canopy. Streetlights will blink on one by one, their artificial suns creating pools of clarity in the gathering blue of evening. Cora will step from light to shadow to light again, her body passing through states of visibility with quiet acceptance.

The grain of certainty will move with her, no longer a foreign presence but an integrated part of her internal architecture. Just as her body has accommodated the absence of breast tissue, the presence of the scar, the chemical alterations of treatment, it has made space for this knowledge without content. The certainty will no longer press against her organs with the insistence of invasion; instead, it will have settled into the spaces between heartbeats, the pause between inhalation and exhalation, becoming as essential to her structure as bone or blood. She will touch her chest briefly, fingers pressing against the cotton of her shirt, feeling the solid reality of her continuing existence around this new centre of gravity.

Her brownstone will rise before her, brick facade darkening to rust in the fading light. She will climb the stairs to the parlour floor, her footsteps echoing on the concrete stairs, counting as she will ascend: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven risers. The key will turn in the lock with familiar resistance, then surrender. Inside, the hallway will smell of old carpet and someone’s dinner—onions fried in butter, the ghost of garlic.

Her own door will open onto stillness. The apartment will wait for her, patient as only inanimate things can be. She will place the apples in a bowl on the counter, arranging them in a triangle, red to green to gold. Her fingers will trail over familiar surfaces. The smooth wood of the table, the cool ceramic of a mug left from morning coffee, the soft weave of the dishtowel hanging over the over doorhandle. Each touch will be a confirmation of continuity, evidence that objects, at least, can be relied upon to remain themselves from one moment to the next.

She will move to the window, where the city will dissolve into a constellation of distant lights. Her reflection will hover in the glass, a transparent ghost suspended over the solid world beyond. Cancer will have taught her that bodies are unreliable narrators, spinning tales of wellness even as cells multiply in malignant sonnets. But this knowledge, this other weight in her chest, will be different—cleaner, more precise, like reading the last page of a novel first and then returning to the beginning, watching the characters move inexorably toward an ending already known.

Cora will press her palm flat against the window glass, feeling its cool resistance. On the other side, the world will continue its complicated dance of becoming and dissolution, oblivious to the woman watching with the certainty of an ending not yet revealed. The woman in the river will float through her thoughts, thirty-four and nameless, a future self already completed. Cora will stand very still, listening to her heartbeat as night claims the city completely, each pulse a small victory against time, each silence between a glimpse of the greater silence to come.

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