Like anyone, I suppose, I have known several people who killed themselves, including my best friend from childhood. Such a death leaves guilt in its wake. Every surviving friend and family member believes that he or she could have prevented it. Each person recalls a visit not made or a phone call cut short. We pore over our final interactions, seeking a retrospective portent of the future that came to be. We want a sign that it was not our fault.
I look at the painting now and wonder why it commanded my attention for so long. It’s an ugly thing made with brute force, the crude style echoing the figure’s dilemma. What began as a personal warning—don’t kill yourself—has evolved into a commentary about the nature of remorse. The man has a deep regret: I wish I hadn’t done this.
Twice in my life I experienced what I understood to be severe depression. Every action was unimaginable: getting the mail, rising from a chair, making the bed, taking a shower. The act of concocting my own extinction would be too much effort. Then there’d be the burden of the note left behind. Where to start and where to end? I tend to get depressed if I’m not engaged in a writing project, and it seemed supremely depressing that revising a suicide note might rescue me from the doldrums. Despite my fascination with the painting, I am not by nature suicidal. I have more of a gambler’s mentality—everything can change at any moment, so why make a move with such undeniable finality?
In 1985 I received a strange phone call from my parents, both on the line at once, expressing concern for my mental health and possible suicide. I was astonished and laughed it off until I understood that they were serious. There followed a flurry of calls over several days during which my parents retreated from their initial concerns and blamed my sister for putting the idea in their heads. My mother sent me a letter that said:
I don’t and didn’t think for one minute that you were in danger of contemplating suicide. You’re too curious about life, and are too afraid you might miss something to take your dying into your own hands. Therefore you would not take your own life. It was your father’s runaway imagination that produced the concern for you.
Not long ago I bought some new makeup, including rouge. Two weeks later Andy said he wanted to ask me something, very seriously. He was worried that something had happened to my face, one of my cheeks was discolored. No, it was the rouge and he waited two weeks before bringing it up.
Runaway imagination. Always looking for some complicated, dramatic reason instead of thinking of the simple. Surely you can understand that, since if anybody inherited the runaway imagination, you did.
I enjoy Mom’s positive spin on a grotesque situation, utilizing a certain cold logic to reach her conclusion. The succinctness of her anecdote, the blunt reasoning, reminds me that I am her son as well, half McCabe—pragmatic people who stare clear-eyed at obstacles and overcome them. My imagination is tempered by reason, grounded in harsh reality.
A few years later Dad began calling me late at night, maudlin from bourbon. He said he’d been thinking about suicide. He’d even picked out the place—the bathroom shower—so it’d be easy for Mom to clean the mess. He figured he’d use a shotgun but had run into a problem. His arms were too short to reach the trigger. My first thought was practical: use a forked stick. But I refrained from advice, and merely listened. He believed that putting the barrel against the roof of his mouth instead of his forehead would ensure success because the tissue was very soft. I said that made sense, thinking not about my father but about a buddy who’d shot himself in the temple with a small-caliber handgun. The bullet hit the skull and deflected, losing power from impact. Instead of ricocheting away, the bullet traveled around the front of his forehead below his skin. He lived, badly scarred and partially deaf. Another guy I knew deliberately rammed his car head-on into a coal truck at high speed, but only managed to blind himself. Three other friends had gotten the job done, so it was with a certain hardened ear that I listened to my father.
I wasn’t sure if he was serious or operating within delusion; for all I knew, I was talking to John Cleve. The last time he’d called drunk, he’d been in an exhilarated state, claiming he could fly. I told him that was great, he could come visit. “No,” he explained, “I mean really fly. I stand at the head of the steps and absolutely know if I jump, I will fly to the downstairs hall.” Presumably he never tried it.