And now, here it was again—suicide, my unseen, lifelong shadow—sitting beside me on my bed. On our bed: the bed I’d shared for thirty years with Kathleen. Young, willowy Kathleen. Pregnant, rotund Kathleen. Dough-bellied, big-breasted, nursing-mom Kathleen. Weary working-mother Kathleen. Midlife, tennis-toned Kathleen. Swiftly cancer-stricken Kathleen.
I reached for the drawer of the nightstand and slid it open, then wormed my hand once more beneath the phone directory. Closing my fingers around the pebble-textured grip, I pulled upward and outward, removing the pistol Decker had loaned me a lifetime ago, back when I had mistakenly believed that what I needed to fear was a malevolent man, not a microscopic murderer called cancer.
I turned the weapon over slowly in my hands, inspecting its angles and contours, its meticulously milled surfaces. Pulling back the slide, I noticed the smoothness of the action, the precision and solidity of the metallic click as the weapon cocked. I turned the barrel toward me and studied the small round opening, a darkness as black and deep as my despair.
The siren song grew louder, accompanied by the sound of blood roaring in my head, roaring like the sea. Then I heard something else: I heard voices. Children’s voices. “Grandpa Bill! Grandpa Bill! Where are you, Grandpa Bill?” I heard two pairs of small feet running down the hall, running toward my bedroom. I hid the gun, tucking it behind my back, sliding it surreptitiously beneath my pillow.
Tyler was the first to reach the bed. Without breaking stride, he launched himself like a missile, soaring upward in a graceful, gleeful arc, then belly-flopping onto the mattress with enough force to rattle the headboard against the wall. Walker, smaller and slower, tried to emulate him, but barely cleared the edge of the mattress, landing like a spent fish—but giggling as exuberantly as his aerobatic brother. When I reached out and gathered them in my arms, holding them hard, Tyler squirmed halfway free and looked up at me. “Are you crying, Grandpa Bill?”
“No, honey,” I lied. “I just have something in my eyes.”
Walker snuggled against me. “I didn’t see Grandmommy in the kitchen,” he said. “Where is she?”
“Grandmommy’s gone, buddy,” I said hoarsely.
“Where did she go?”
“To heaven, stupid,” said Tyler.
“But when will she come back?” There was a new note of urgency in his voice.
“She’s not coming back, buddy,” I whispered. “She can’t.”
I could not have said who felt the worst: the yearning three-year-old, the heartsick fifty-year-old, or the tough-guy five-year-old, who was perhaps just big enough to reach the bitter fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and to grasp that something precious to him was lost beyond all finding, broken beyond all mending.
WE ATE THE TAKE-OUT PIZZA JEFF AND JENNY HAD brought as a surprise, or a gesture of kindness, or an act of pity. Sitting around the kitchen table, we made awkward small talk, all the adults careful not to look at Kathleen’s chair, which loomed monumental in its emptiness. I took a bite, but the crust felt and tasted like cardboard in my mouth, and I laid the wedge on my plate. The boys, on the other hand—their tears dried, their upset trumped by their hunger and the pizza’s aroma—wolfed down two slices apiece, then bolted from the table and ran squealing down the hall.
Jeff nodded at my virtually untouched food. “No dessert unless you clean your plate,” he said with a wink, echoing a line he’d heard from me a thousand times growing up.
I shook my head. “It’s good—and y’all were sweet to bring it. But I’ve got no appetite tonight.”
Jenny reached across the table and laid a hand on my arm. “I’m worried about you,” she said. “You’re skin and bones—like one of your skeletons.” She looked me up and down. “I’ve seen coat hangers fill out a shirt better than you do these days.” It was a good line, and I did my best to give her a smile, but it felt more like a grimace.
Down the hall, the rhythmic creak of bedsprings ceased, and the boys’ chatter changed tone, shifting from giggling to squabbling. Jenny noticed it first, of course. “I founded it,” protested Walker. “Give it back. Give it back!”
“You’re too little,” scoffed Tyler. “You’re just a baby.”
“Boys,” Jenny called toward them. “Cut it out!”
“Give it back!” wailed Walker. “Give it back!”
Suddenly a terrible realization hit me. “Oh dear God,” I gasped, leaping up so suddenly my chair toppled backward. “Please no.” I ran from the kitchen, my feet scrabbling on the tile as I made the turn into the dining room and dashed down the hall.
“Let go. Let go!” yelled Walker. I heard a growl like that of some wild, angry animal, and then a howl of pain.
My feet seemed mired in mud or concrete, moving in excruciating, exhausting slow motion. “Boys,” I called out desperately. “Stop! Don’t move!”
“Dad? What’s going on? Dad?” Behind me, as I ran toward the bedroom, I could hear panic in Jeff’s voice.