So we’re not that different, he said. We can understand each other.
Contrary to his claim, it was very difficult to understand him that dark, damp morning. It was difficult to locate my attention and to direct it to him. My lack of focus, my isolation. Was that what the poets called solitude? When we become adults, we leave behind the solitude we once enjoyed as children. Perhaps I was overwhelmed by this person from my teenage years, someone who saw fourteen-or fifteen-year-old me, now sitting in my childhood kitchen under the worst possible circumstances. In fact, when he told me he was from my high school, and not just my high school, but from my homeroom, I thought I was hallucinating. He continued to say things, occasionally I discerned the phrases tumor in the mind and immense mental and emotional pain, and threshold of pain and will to live. The will to live! Was he talking about my adoptive brother? I wondered. I felt I had to say something.
But Chad, have you talked suicidal people down from the abyss?
He held up his hand at me like a traffic guard, continued speaking, and let his hand fall smoothly to his side. He was very pleased with himself and his mannerisms. He must have gone to Europe to learn that, I thought, he must have the conscience of a metal beam. Smooth and metal. A smooth, metal beam for the construction of a brand-new sleek and terrible building in a bad part of town.
I saw myself say excuse me and I stood up and wandered over to the kitchen sink and stared out the window above the sink but I was really looking at my own reflection because it was dark out, as if it were the middle of the night, and then right through the reflection of my face I saw a black street that snaked its way into a town where people spoke a dying language, population 666.
It was very simple, this black street that went through my face and through the window. It stretched on forever like an infinite snake. I made myself dizzy staring at my own reflection for too long, the reflection of my blotchy face, and my impossible, thick, coarse, and heavy hair that took up most of the window.
If you want to think of something sad, I said, think about all of the suicides people commit each day, hundreds of them do it, and consider the family members and husbands and wives forced into my position, the investigator! Behind every suicide, there’s a door. If you open the door you might find out things you wish you never knew. Some people never open the door, they prefer not to know anything about the circumstances of the suicide, and they walk away and wash their hands clean.
No, I said. I will rip open the door immediately. I’m certain the door is made of paper. I will shred it into pieces, then step calmly through the frame.
Helen, I’m so glad you’re talking with Chad, said my adoptive mother. Do you remember him from high school?
She approached me from behind in a white bathrobe. The reflection of the white bathrobe grew until it swallowed up the entire window. It looked like a ghost! She seemed pleased with herself for remembering the connection.
He has been extremely helpful to us, she whispered, he has been like a beacon of light.
I helped myself to a glass of refreshing water.
I don’t remember him. What is he doing here?
I’m here to offer my support and guidance to you and your family, said Chad. I’m always available during a familial crisis.
No one told me this would happen, I said. I wasn’t given any kind of warning!
Helen, did you get good sleep last night? interrupted my adoptive mother. You look a little tired.
It occurred to me that I had never been healthier, physically, in my life. Since coming to Milwaukee, a persistent and annoying day cough had gone away. My knees no longer ached from standing. My eyes were clear instead of fogged with mucous. The swelling of my ankles went down. My stomach settled. My hands stopped shaking. Pieces of earwax fell out.
I’m fine, I said. It just took me all night to unpack my suitcase.
My adoptive mother looked at me worriedly, while Chad smiled.
She says she’s fine, he said, and she’s probably right.
A few months ago I went to a free therapy clinic. It was free, I found out later, because they were conducting a study for a medical journal article. I only went because I wanted to know if there was a way to tamp down my anger, to stop disrupting the peace, my own included. You need a plan, said the therapist, who was actually a therapist-in-training. He prescribed a plan of thirty minutes of cardio a day, yoga twice a week, and one career aptitude test. I never went back.
Helen, said Chad, when was the last time you went to church?
I didn’t say anything.
Don’t be rude, said my adoptive mother. Helen, say something!
The reason we’re gathered here like this, I said, is because someone killed himself.
My adoptive mother took out a tissue from her robe and began dabbing her eyes.
A lot of people kill themselves, I said, but it seems like most of them do it when they’re older, like after they’ve reached middle age. We try everything we can to preserve ourselves and yet eventually something catches up with us, something dreadful creeps up, and we just can’t do it anymore. Then we throw our lives away, into the trash heap of suicides.