Tootsie and Jimmy timed my showers to keep me from running the water bill up too high. I had gotten up late that morning, too late to shower, and I was now hoping for one that was unmonitored. It was there in the soothing water that I could actually relax. I could cry and not worry about Tootsie appearing and seeing my contorted face—she had made it clear that “we don’t lock our bedroom doors around here,” so I often felt self-conscious falling apart even in the supposed privacy of my bedroom. Of course, it was hard to enjoy the refuge of the shower when any moment could bring her hard knuckles rapping on the door, gruffly declaring, “Time’s up!”
But as I turned the tap to hot, I heard the heart-sinking, burring noise of the garage door sliding up. As I stepped into the shower and heard the boys tearing through the house, yelling at each other and banging on their toys, as I heard the murmur of Tootsie and Jimmy’s typically passionless exchanges, my legs started to buckle under me. I sank to the hard plastic floor and drew my knees up to my chest, putting my hands over my face and biting the heel of my right hand to silence the sobs rising up through me. My hair hung heavily along my sides, swollen with water, the ends lying on the bathtub floor. I thought about how my mother would run hot, soapy baths for me when I came home from school crying, upset about some slight from a friend or a bad grade on a test. I thought about the quiet stillness of those baths, how I could linger there reading a book until the deep water cooled around me and the bubbles deflated and disappeared, while she cooked dinner. I would call out to her then and she’d come wrap me in a big fluffy towel, playfully scrubbing my head, then sit me down on the toilet seat cover and gently work the tangles out of my long hair.
My tears ran with the scalding water, my sadness a live thing within me, physically painful and clawing to get out. Almost worse than the sorrow of missing her was the fact that Mom’s death had revealed everything to be meaningless. So much of what I’d thought was true had turned out to be an illusion. I saw the people around me living by these illusions—that love and safety could be counted on, that life had meaning and the future could be controlled—and I did not feel that I could ever again share their suspended disbelief. I was swimming against a strong, cold current: I could see them there, playing on a sunny beach, but I couldn’t rejoin them. Continuing the struggle seemed not only incredibly painful but, even worse, pointless.
I picked up my shaving razor and cracked open the plastic head with a practiced movement, freeing the blade. I held the strip of sharp metal between my fingers, which were suddenly steady, and I stared at the beautiful, sexual gleam of the thing. A deep calm came over me as I thought once again about lying back and letting it all flow out—pain, loneliness, strength, everything. I was so very tired.
But then I thought of those little boys somehow finding me there, in the bathroom I shared with them.
And I thought of my mother, how disappointed she had always been when I gave up on something hard.
And then I heard a sharp knock on the door.
* * *
The thought of suicide stayed with me, in the shower, in my darkened bedroom, in the backseat of the minivan on the way to the grocery store. It hid behind the smile I forced at school, it cast a pale shadow over each happy moment. Sometimes suicide was like a door in my peripheral vision, a potential exit that I could step through at any time. I felt better and calmer just knowing it was there, that I wasn’t trapped. But most of the time, it was an object of desire, a thing with its own weight and texture, a deeply magnetic object whose pull varied in strength but rarely ceased.
Sometimes, the scary thing about suicide was that it seemed inevitable, the only logical end to everything that had happened. My mother’s death had shown me what the world really is: a constructed thing, made of elaborate social rituals and ties of love. To live in the world, I realized then and still believe, you have to participate, you have to make relationships and meaning for yourself, because there is no ultimate design. You have to pretend that it is impossible for a killer to come in the night and destroy everything. I will never forget that improbability is not the same as impossibility.
In those first few years, I participated—I hit all my marks, I shuffled through all the steps—but it was more a march than a dance. The charade was exhausting. But although much of what I’d known had proven to be false, there was still one thing I knew with absolute certainty: my mother would not have wanted me to die. So each day I found a new reason to keep living.
23
* * *
before
Denny finally prevailed over Tim, and during the first few months of their relationship, he proposed to Mom countless times. But Mom wouldn’t even think about saying yes until Denny had a ring. He couldn’t just talk about getting married; she needed concrete proof he was committed, that this wasn’t just an infatuation. But this condition was also a stalling tactic. She had serious doubts about getting engaged to such a young man, one she had been dating for only a handful of months, who was recently divorced. And she was starting to worry about his temper, about the fights they were already having, fights that were increasing in regularity and volume.
Naturally, Denny focused on solving the easiest problem first. So when the three of us went out shopping, he would drag her into jewelry stores. Mom would look at colorful gemstone rings and earrings while Denny tried to steer her to the engagement rings. I tried to keep my smudgy fingers in my pockets, hovering over the glass counters, all filled with rows of bright promises. I grabbed brochures by the handful, learned all about diamond grades, trying to use knowledge to bring the fantasy closer. I thought that if we could only get a diamond onto Mom’s finger, the engagement would fix everything. She wouldn’t have to worry so much about money. Tim would never return. Denny would love her and stay with her. There would be no more periods of disheveled sadness, when she didn’t even bother with her customary blue eyeliner, her bare eyes naked, exposed in a way I wasn’t supposed to see.
After his divorce, Denny had moved into a friend’s basement, but he was constantly looking for a place of his own, and often took us with him on the search. We would climb into his truck and he would play us country music—Travis Tritt, Garth Brooks, Patty Loveless. Tales of strength in the face of sadness, of devoted love that withstood time, of faith that flouted reason. To me, those songs were lovely daydreams. These trips could last all afternoon, the three of us wedged onto the truck’s bench seat, winding along dirt roads to drive slowly past Denny’s prospects. He would talk about moving us into the beautiful houses we peered at, while Mom deflected his stories and I swooned, oblivious to what she would have had to give up to move in with him. On the way home, we’d stop to pick blueberries in fields loud with grasshoppers, or buy ice cream from tiny roadside stands.
* * *