I hate knowing that from now until forever my life will be divided into Before Daddy Died and After.
So far, the After really sucks.
I’ve tried hard to figure out exactly why he did it—it was the big question everyone asked at the wake, studying our faces as if my mother and I knew why or, worse, had done something to cause it—searching back through the weeks leading up to his death to find the single, definitive moment that shouted, Here it is! This is it! This is the reason your father killed himself!
But it isn’t that easy.
I can try to guess why, trace a path of events that I think are right, but I still can’t find one absolute cause, nothing big and glaring, only a steady, unrelenting and growing pile of misery being heaped on his shoulders, burdens that, taken one by one, were difficult but not deadly, stuff he could have easily handled . . .
Had it not been for the depression.
But nobody wants to believe it could be as quiet, as simple and as complicated as that.
They want a reason, an event, something they can pinpoint and steer clear of. One solid, understandable betrayal that pushed him over the edge, one horrible, unbearable secret found out, one something that was huge, ugly and intolerable, concrete and seeable, touchable and ultimately avoidable.
And I have nothing to offer them but the sad, slow drain of a chemical imbalance.
I shift and take a drag off of my cigarette.
Tilt my head back and exhale, dispersing a cloud of gnats.
Take another drag, pull it deep enough to make my chest ache.
When my father was alive I could have stood up with absolute, unshakable belief in his good, strong, reliable heart and told the world he was a man who cared, a man who always went above and beyond to protect and serve, a man you could trust with your life.
A dog barks, out near the road.
But I don’t know what’s true anymore, don’t know what to believe, don’t even know if he kissed me good-bye one last time while I was sleeping that morning, if he stood over me in the soft, predawn light, heartbroken, needing to go, wanting to stay, or if he did nothing, never came back upstairs at all, just picked up his .38 and slipped out the door to die.
I don’t even know that, and it’s all I want.
I just want to know if I was worth saying good-bye to because . . .
He didn’t even leave us a note.
I wipe my eyes. Look down at the cigarette smoldering between my fingers for a long moment. Lean over, stub it out in the dirt and, rising, wander over to flick it in the road.
The dog barks again.
I look up, following the sound to see a chubby woman with a Rottweiler power-walking by on the overpass.
It isn’t Eli.
I knew it wouldn’t be and yet . . .
I’m starting to wish it was.
Chapter 41
I fumble my key from my pocket, unlock the door and step into the porch. The windows are shut and the air is close, stagnant, smelling faintly of dirt, smoke and litter boxes. The room is crowded with bags of potting soil, gardening tools and flowerpots that weren’t used this year, unopened bags of birdseed stacked against the wall and a brand-new feeder that never got hung.
Three of my father’s jackets still hang on the pegs, his gloves still sit on the shelf, his worn slipper mocs are still lined up beneath them.
A spider’s built a web in one of them.
I slip off my sandals, nudge them into the corner.
Cleaning out the porch was next on his old to-do list, still posted on the fridge. His last project was painting the dining room, but nobody’s eaten in there since my mother finished it.
It’s hard to have a family dinner without a family.
“I’m home,” I mutter, and ten anxious, milling cats race to greet me, tails high, eyes bright, twining and rubbing against my ankles. “Hey, guys. I guess you haven’t eaten yet.” I bend and give each of them a quick, reassuring pet, then plow gently through the herd and into the kitchen.
Stripe is sitting and waiting amidst the huge stacks of unopened mail scattered across the kitchen table.
“Come on, Stripey. You know you’re not supposed to be up here,” I say, picking him up and setting him on the floor. He gazes up at me, questioning, solemn, and when I still don’t miraculously turn into the one person he’s been waiting so patiently to see, he turns and, tail twitching, stalks off to sit by the empty food dishes.
I disappoint him every day by not being my father.
It’s been three months but he still looks up, eager and alert, whenever the door opens, and still has his hopes dashed every time. It’s awful. I wish I could find a way to make him understand that his best friend is gone and never coming back so it’s all right to stop waiting, stop hoping . . .
But how can I, when a corner of my own heart is still waiting and hoping, too, even in the face of all evidence against it?
Somewhere in these piles of unopened mail littering the kitchen table is a big manila envelope from the county medical examiner’s office, and in it is an autopsy report. Evidence of death. Of suicide.
I noticed it when it came in, told myself that knowing is always better than not knowing, that this was about my father lying defenseless and alone on that cold steel table and that for all the times he protected us, in the one moment when he needed protecting, we were not there for him.
Facing it felt like the least I could do, so I opened the report. Read his name, his vital statistics, and thought, hands shaking, papers rattling, that I could do this. I could read what they discovered because he was my father and I loved him, but when my gaze slid to lower lines and other pages, absorbing the words rigor mortis, lividity, slice, vitreous, basilar skull, charring, fragments, stomach contents, brain, incision . . .
I’d gone dizzy, couldn’t breathe, frantically stuffed the report back into the envelope, but it was too late.
I couldn’t erase the terrible new images swirling through my mind.
They had cut him apart.
Evidence of death.
There is more.
There is always more.
We still have the clothes my father wore that last morning.
My mother wanted them back and the funeral parlor gave them to her, everything. She brought them home, her face as white as the plastic bag they were bundled in, the handles tightly tied, and then she . . . what?
What did she do with them?
I put a trembling hand to my forehead. It comes away wet with sweat.
I don’t know. I never saw them again.
His wallet is here, soft, worn-looking brown leather curved from his back pocket, still sitting on the windowsill by the sink, where it’s been ever since the police returned it to my mother that morning.
Breathe.
Was it in his pocket when he died, or did he take it out, put it in plain view on the dashboard to make identification easy for whoever found him?
Probably. He was always thoughtful that way.
I grope my way to the table and drop into the closest empty chair.
My father’s chair.
“Oh God, Daddy,” I whisper, covering my face as a wave of pain envelops me. I don’t want this, don’t want any more freak death thoughts, can’t wrap my mind around the idea of that bag sitting somewhere in this house with his jeans and shirt, socks and shoes and underwear folded up inside, can’t stand wondering if they were washed before we got them back or if his blood is still on them, if all of the pain he felt as he lifted the pistol and placed it to his temple is somehow still bound up and lingering in that cloth.
“Stop,” I whisper, pressing my fingers to my forehead, but it doesn’t prevent the rest of the memory from rising, doesn’t stop me from remembering how my mother looked that day when she returned from the funeral home, how she stood in the doorway, shattered, and how what she said seemed to make such perfect sense at the time.
“These are his things, and they belong here at home with us
.”
And that was it. She turned and left the room, taking the bag with her, and I’ve never seen it again, never even thought of it until now . . .
And never want to think of it again.
Chapter 42
“Rowan? Is that you?”
“Yeah,” I say, sticking my head around the door and into the living room, where my mother is still curled up on the couch exactly where I left her; under an afghan, a cup of coffee and stack of books on the end table within reach. The ashtray is full of cigarette butts. “I’ll feed the cats.”
“Oh, thank you,” she says, but her smile is only a ghost of her real one. “I guess the day kind of got away from me again.” She yawns and sits up, smoothing the limp brown hair from her forehead and exposing an inch of gray roots. “Grandma and Grandpa were here earlier. Grandpa cleaned out the gutters and Grandma left noodles and cabbage, if you’re hungry. You know Grandma.”
“Food is love,” I say automatically, and even though I don’t feel hungry, my well-trained stomach growls in anticipation. “Do you want a bowl?”
“If you’re having one,” she says, studying my face. “Rough day?”
“Eh.” I shrug because really, what am I going to say? “I forgot the bagels, though.”
“That’s all right. I’m not in the mood for them, anyway. But you know what?” she says, voice brightening, and stretches out a hand to Peach, one of the three small, fuzzy kittens she brought in to live with us a couple of weeks ago. “Come in here for a minute, Rowan. Sit down.”
“Now?” I say, but still trudge in and perch on the edge of the love seat. The cats have been sharpening their claws on the arm and the burgundy damask is pebbled with pulls. I smooth them down, tug at a long, loose thread but it doesn’t give.
“Yes, now,” she says, sorting through the pile of books. “I want to show you something.”
Oh God, no, please. I’ve looked through that stack and every book in it is about coping with grief, loss, the death of a spouse, a parent, and worst of all, the psychological impact of suicide on the surviving family.
I opened that last one on a very dark day about a month ago, desperate for some kind of comfort, for reassurance that I wasn’t going crazy feeling this bad, that it was normal and would someday end, paged through it despite my rising dread at the cold, clinical language and landed on a sentence that made my head spin: It has been established that individuals who have had a suicide in their family are at greater risk for suicide than those who have not.
I don’t know how long I sat there chilled, shivering and staring at that sentence, but when I finally looked up dusk had fallen and it was time to turn the lights on.
I never told my mother about that, either.
She’s probably read it herself by now, anyway. Almost all she’s done these last months besides sleep, cry and collect cats is read constantly, as if examining her pain, tracking, exploring and confirming it, will somehow help her through it.
But I’m not her. I don’t want to dissect it. It’s hard enough just living it. Sometimes I wish I could just go into a coma and not wake up until I’m better.
“Here we are,” she says, sliding two thin books with paisley covers from the pile and holding one out to me. “It’s a grief journal. I got myself one, too. It has places to write your feelings, inspirational sayings and a month-by-month suggestion list that’s supposed to help heal.” She shrugs, suddenly self-conscious, and opens her journal. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s stupid.”
“No, it sounds great.” I reach out and take it. “Thanks, Mom.” I set it on my lap but don’t open it because even one cutesy, inspirational saying or suggestion to Smile! will make me scream right now. “I appreciate it.”
The counselor at school, back in June, when I was delusional enough to try to go again, told me that grief is not my enemy; it’s my body’s natural response to a trauma too intense to handle all at once. Grief numbs me, protects me; shields go up and come down again inch by inch, only allowing me to see as much of my wretched new reality as I can handle at the time.
I guess she was trying to help but the idea that it was going to get worse, that this pain would intensify as my protection faded, was too much to hear that soon, and so I stopped going to school and finished the work from home.
I don’t know what I’m going to do when junior year starts in September.
Maybe the grief journal will solve that for me, too.
“Well anyway, I just thought maybe it would help,” she says quickly, paging through it. “Here, like this one for the first stages of grief: shock, denial and numbness.” My mother tucks her hair behind her ear and glances over at me, as if to make sure I’m still listening. “Be gentle with yourself, for you have suffered a great blow and you will heal at your own pace. Or this one: Don’t be afraid to feel.”
“Right,” I say dully, wrapping my arms around myself and gazing down at my feet.
There’s a blade of grass stuck to my big toe.
“There are some good ones in the second stage. Let me find them.” She ducks, scanning the pages as if she’s afraid I’m going to leave before she gets there. “Okay, here, we’re three months in and I think this is where we are, at least some of the time. Take a first step. Do something different. Surround yourself with life.” She glances pointedly across the couch at Peach, who is stalking her bare feet. “Do your mourning now; don’t avoid it. Or this”—she gives a little laugh—“which is good because I’ve been doing it all along: Don’t be afraid to talk or write to your loved one about unresolved issues. It can lessen the burden and help you heal.”
I shake my head and look away.
“Supposedly every emotion we have during this journey is necessary, even if we don’t understand it.” She pages further. “Trying to avoid the pain, blocking it out, self-medicating with drinking or drugs—”
Okay, enough.
“—only stalls the healing. The unresolved pain is still there, trapped inside and—”
“So is that what you were going to show me?” I interrupt, reaching down and flicking the grass off of my toe and onto the rug, where Plum immediately pounces on it. “Come on, I want to go eat.” I glance up, see the hurt on her face and immediately feel like crap for shutting her down. “Sorry. Go on.”
She pauses a moment longer and when she resumes reading the animation in her voice is gone. “The next stages are fear, anger and depression—”
“Great,” I say, unable to stop myself. “More depression.” I stand up. “Want some noodles?”
“Rowan, wait,” she calls as I go into the kitchen. “It’s all right. This is a good thing. They’re saying we won’t feel this bad forever. The final stages are understanding, acceptance and recovery.”
“Are they, Mom?” I mutter, and, grabbing a spoon, dig a big hunk of noodles and cabbage out of the bowl and dump it onto my plate. “Even for the survivors of suicide?” Stick the plate in the microwave and punch in two minutes. “ ’Cause that’s not what the other book says.”
“What?” she calls, and now there’s an odd note in her voice.
It has been established that individuals who have had a suicide in their families are at greater risk for suicide than those who have not.
“Rowan?”
“I said do you want some noodles?” I yell back.
I wish I’d never read that stupid sentence.
Grief Journal
Daddy, please.
I can’t take this silence anymore.
So if you won’t talk to me, then I guess I’m finally going to talk to you.
It’s what you always wanted me to do, right?
Talk, especially when I was in trouble and couldn’t figure things out on my own?
Well, here I am.
God, I don’t even know how to begin.
All I know is that my heart is broken, I miss you so bad.
You’ve never left before, not even for a week, and now it’s been ninety-two terrible, empty d
ays and that’s long enough for me to finally start getting it through my head that you’re really not coming back, that you’re gone forever and it’s not a sick prank or a nightmare or anything I can change, no matter how desperately I want to.
The numbness is wearing off too, leaving all the other emotions exposed like live wires, raw, tangled and dangerous.
Totally out of control.
You always thought I was so smart but I don’t feel that way now. I don’t know why I tried so hard to ruin that pride you had in me. Maybe I was testing it, testing you to see if you would still love me if I made choices of my own.
Stupid, hurtful choices.
So do you? Still love me, I mean?
Because I’d give a lot to take at least one of those choices back.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda.
They’re like curses now.
You left me cursed by my own stupid, irreversible actions and by yours.
How am I supposed to live with that?
I should be mad at you but I can’t be because before, when we got mad at each other, we were in the same place at the same time and talked, questioned, explained, and somehow we always got past it.
But we’re not anymore, so the side of me that was left ripped open and bleeding when you went can never be healed now, can it? We will never resolve this the way I need to, you will never answer me and knowing that makes me want to scream.
And that’s not drama. That’s the truth.
So how do I keep going when you’re not here to listen, understand, and forgive me? How can I be mad at you for leaving when it won’t change anything, when I’ll never know if you’re sorry that you hurt me, so then I can say I’m sorry that I hurt you too, and we can both forgive each other like we used to?
How can I make it through if we never talk again?
I’ve waited and waited for you to say something, do something . . .
Are you sorry?