I figured the easiest way to do it was carbon monoxide. There I was, 41, no kids yet, probably no kids ever – admit it, Beth – and he walked out on me. To Lindsey. Lindsey with the tits you could strike a match on. And no lines on her face. I went to the garage.
Tom built it some three years before tossing my life up like a child pulls a tablecloth, as a workshop for himself, but he called it a garage to make me happy. The windows and doors weren’t flush, which he paid no attention to at the time, but come winter he froze out there and abandoned it to me. He was an artist, not a carpenter.
I drove the Stratus in. It had four doors, so I could load kids I’d never have in and out of it easily.
Then things started to get complicated. I needed a length of garden hose. I sight-measured how long the hose needed to be to get from the tail pipe to the back window. I marked it with a ballpoint, but the ink didn't show up very well. I found a marker in the kitchen junk drawer. Black marker molecules slid off and clung together in a smeary mess.
Back to the junk drawer I went, for tape, to mark where I needed to cut. Dragging the hose back out, I knocked a shamrock plant off its stand. The pot broke and dirt plumed outward on the rug. I went to clean it up, but decided it didn't matter. Let someone else do it. Let Ms. Perky do it. It would have had to be done before he sold the house to get his half of the equity out. He wouldn’t do it – he didn’t even know how. Maybe when he asks her to do it she'll figure out what a jerk he is. Maybe not.
I carried the hose out to the garage and laid it on his shop bench. He’d arranged all his shop tools on pegboard when his enthusiasm was fresh. There were little outlines in white tape where his tools used to be. The hole I noticed was where the garden shears were supposed to be. Those were mine, damn it, and they would have come in handy right then. I hunted in the drawers, which were also mostly empty except for some expired seed packets.
Back to the kitchen. I hated all the wasted time. By then I should have been reading US magazine by the light of the silvery dome, kicking my feet over the heated leather seats, and feeling pleasantly sleepy. I found steak knives, a butcher knife, and some kitchen scissors. I tried the butcher knife first, hoping that with one chop I'd sever that baby and be on my way. I raised it high over my head, both hands on the handle, and brought it down. It bounced off.
The kitchen scissors gnawed the hose like a dog on a postman's leg – some damage done, but no amputation. I sawed away at it with the steak knife. It took me at least ten minutes, switching hands back and forth to relieve the cramps, but I finally lop it to the right size. I put one end in the tail pipe. There was a gap between the hose and the pipe. What if all the gas seeped around the hose and not into it? Into the bathroom I went, for a condom, which he also left behind . . . why? Because they didn't need it? If he has kids with her... I couldn't even think about it.
I cut the top off the condom and stretched it around the tailpipe and the hose. No gap. I breathed deeply. Almost home. I hadn't left a note. That was histrionic. No, I wanted to be stoic. Everyone would know it was his fault, anyway. Maybe this will make her wake up and smell the coffee and leave him. Maybe not. I took the hose around to the passenger's side.
It didn't reach.
My fingers must have slipped when I set the tape. I can't do anything right.
It was after ten o'clock at night, which eliminated the option of finding something sharper to cut with. Safeway was the only place open and they had nothing but cheap kitchen knives, if I was lucky. I couldn't feature going through all that again. I gave up on carbon monoxide.
I thought of cutting my wrists. I tracked back to the bathroom. I lit some candles. I couldn't decide whether to do it in the bathtub or sitting on the toilet. If I did it in the bathtub, they would have found me naked. I didn't want strangers looking at me au naturale, and you have to be naked if you're going to kill yourself in a tub or people will think you're crazy. On the other hand, at that moment, after what I'd been through that evening, I could use a nice hot bath. If they found me naked, so what? It's not like I was going to die of embarrassment. I didn’t look half-bad, either, despite my husband of 19 years dumping me for a baby the age of the one we aborted.
I opened his drawer, the one to the right of the sink, to get a razor blade. I smelled that blend of toothpaste, aftershave and hair dye that makes up his scent first thing in the morning, and I cried. Nothing was in the drawer. I tore through the rest of the drawers, throwing crap every which way. In the end all I found is my pink Daisy razor. It gave me leg gashes more than once. I drew the bath, stripped, and got in. I stayed there, listening to the wall clock tick until my piggies wrinkled. Time to go, I told myself. I broke the pink protective cover off the Daisy and drew the razor across my wrist. Little beads of blood sprung up in an orderly line. If I was going to kill myself this way, it would take a good long time. And it hurt. I thought of the garden hose and gave up on slicing my wrists.
I didn't want to have to see him, them, when we discussed “equitable distribution of assets?” What did that mean? He was the big photographer, Tom Delong. Who was I? What were my assets? I spent mine on him. What was my life worth, 21 years spent sitting in a felt-covered cubicle all day then tracking his submissions, arranging his exhibitions, keeping the world away so he could chase the light, because I believed in him? I believed him. Just a few more years, things are really taking off, I can’t take this kind of pressure right now, he’d said and said and said.
Being just me, Beth, trust fund administrator/babysitter to people who can’t be trusted with their own wealth, felt like being nothing.
Pills. The medicine cabinet. I ate everything in the medicine cabinet – allergy pills, sleeping pills, laxatives – except the St. John's Wort, figuring it was a little too late for that. I brushed my hair, put on my robe and crawled into bed with a quart of Chunky Monkey ice cream and a spoon, but didn’t eat much because the pills swelled my stomach. I felt drowsy, like I was floating. About two o'clock I woke up with my insides on fire. I managed to raise my head enough to throw up over the side of the bed onto the carpet, instead of on the bed, but it was a near thing. It took me a while to choke it all out. Next thing I knew, it was morning. I stuck to my pillow when I woke up. The birds were chirping. Fucking birds.
The din in my head followed me as I dragged around the house, going from room to room and not knowing what in the hell to do. I didn't want to look at the back of his hand, the broken tan line where his ring wasn't. I didn't want him to smile at me, didn't want to see any evidence at all that he was happy and feeling better without me in his life. I couldn't.
Until then, I'd avoided the more aggressive options, but it dawned on me why men are more successful at suicide than women. My Dad's old shotgun hung in the basement, if Tom didn't take off with that, too.
Luck was with me. The shotgun hung on the wall, long nails supporting its length. I took it down. Dad would not have approved of this. He always drilled us on gun safety. Among cobwebs and mildew, in the dank corner of the basement behind the water heater, I found some shotgun shells. I put them in and raised the shotgun to my head. My arms were not long enough to pull the trigger when the gun barrel was on my temple. I tried swinging it around to the front and opening my mouth. I tasted basement grit and oil. I inched my fingers back down the gun, but still couldn't reach. I tried every position I could think of. Nothing doing.
Buying a cute little purse gun took three days with the background checks and he was coming over in less than 6 hours. My friend Sadie had a handgun but she would have asked what I wanted it for. Plus, it would have hurt her feelings if I killed myself with her gun.
I backed the car out of the garage, headed for highway 287, the two-lane. I looked like death warmed over. There was puke in my hair, grit in my mouth, and bags under my eyes. My stomach hurt. I was still in my bathrobe.
It was a Sunday, late morning. All the good people were in church. It was the truckers and me and the occasional minivan on the highway, which boded well for my plan of taking a sharp left into a semi. Less people meant less chance of someone else getting hurt. Swinging into the semi wouldn’t hurt the driver any. I didn't want to kill some innocent person on my way to the hereafter. Talk about starting off on the wrong foot. With luck, my body would burn on impact so nobody saw me looking like that.
What the hell was I doing? I didn’t want to kill myself. I wanted to kill the grief. I needed to cut the strings that ran from his mouth to the knife in my gut, so it didn’t twist whenever he smiled, but I didn’t see how. I drove down the highway twenty miles or so, not wanting to die but not knowing how I could live the way things stood. I thought about driving as far as I could and checking into a hotel in a strange town – hoping the gas would hold out until at least Wyoming, where I didn’t know a soul. My purse squatted on the seat next to me, frayed handles and all, where I’d forgotten it yesterday. Underneath the papers and receipts sprouting out of the top, somewhere, was the credit card.
Lindsey had a sexy little black bag just wide enough to hold a toothbrush, a credit card and lip gloss.
I could just imagine her reaching across the bed – opening up that slip of leather – slicking the gloss over her pouty lips – and him watching, exhausted from six straight orgasms, barely able to twitch the muscles in his mouth upward. My eyes glazed over.
A Wal-Mart truck, with two trailers behind it, was coming right at me. I yanked the wheel to the right, an inch before hitting. The driver swung to the opposite shoulder and his truck went into the ditch, on its side. I pulled right over and ran across the road. I climbed over the mammoth wheels and stuck my head in the open window. First I saw a brush of short red hair, then a freckled face – smiling – which I thought was odd. He held up his right arm and I grabbed it and pulled. A picture of two red-headed kids grinned sideways at me from their place on the dash.
He came up out of the wreck and sat on the wheel well, smiling hard enough to draw dimples. A cold burst of wind told me why. My robe had come open, and I never did put my pajamas on last night. I retreated back to my car and waited for the cops, thanking God or Luck or whoever was in charge of such matters that despite my best efforts, I was alive. I was me again.
I got a ticket for reckless driving and the driver’s phone number. I called him, too. Why the hell not? He seemed uncomplicated, like someone who might paint my toenails when I was too pregnant to do it myself. No more artists. First, I went home, showered, and put my game face on. He was coming, and he was bringing her.
