A Suicide Note

He smiled at her, a private smile, the way you might smile at a dog, or a good meal you’ve just finished making for yourself when you’re home alone. His eyes were bright and I always thought that they looked at you like he wanted you to think that you interested him. I’d avoid those eyes at all costs, except that sometimes if you don’t see them you’ll fall apart, his strings that hold you together all loosened and frayed like you measured all wrong and your clothes came out like wilted flowers.

She hardly looked back at him. Just an empty glance that contained no words. His eyes promised truth, or something bigger that you can only see a piece of at any time, like a television screen. Her’s only illuminated the bars of a vacant cage. But she smiled just the same.

They were on the way back from the beach. He was driving up that meandering hillside that used to make her so seasick she’d puke until she started taking medication for it. Even now, he took those turns like he was carrying a shipment of fine china. This road they’d taken a hundred times before, always shrouded in thick green shade where the temperature was the same whether it was summer or winter. Coming home from potlucks or bringing the dogs to play or walks along the sand listening to the waves and the rumble of trains along the coastal tracks and speaking in hushed tones until dusk came and the park closed for the night. They were well past the days when that wouldn’t stop them.

The road was smooth here, and their new hybrid hardly murmured a note. As it lazily climbed those old hills, on that new street that had been repaved within the past few years, it felt even more still than if it hadn’t been moving at all. Alien, unnatural-like. And even with the quivering rustle of the trees and the hum of the electric engine, it was more noiseless than silence.

Her name was Jewel. She liked her name, clung to it so tightly that sometimes I was scared she’d kill me if I spoke it. She used to say that it meant “generous.” I don’t know if that’s true, but she certainly was. Generous, I mean. She was so generous that she hardly had anything left to herself but her name.

His name was Ben. He didn’t think of it much at all, except that sometimes, late at night, he would think that maybe his name should have been Robert, or Ryan, or Sheila, and then he would sleep and dream of bigger lives.

He came home one day and she was sleeping on the couch, a grocery list and a pencil still clutched in her hands. He took them from her with a smile at his lips, and her eyes opened. She saw him there and she saw the early evening light that turned half his face to gold, and she realized she’d forgotten to make dinner. He must have seen her eyes anxiously widen because he put a hand on her stomach and looked at her with those eyes that understood too well.

“You should wake up, or you’ll ruin your sleep,” he said.

“You’re right,” she said, and she rolled off the couch and into his arms.

“I’ll make some spaghetti,” he said, releasing her. “I’ve been meaning to use the frozen meatballs.” She nodded and followed him into the kitchen. Only a few more minutes remained of that deceptive, horizontal light that made some things clear and other things muddy, and where even with all the colors filled in the world still looked like a crowd of silhouettes. She wanted to watch how it transformed them.

He had come home later than usual. Work ended around four most days, but it was almost seven now. He didn’t look tired, but then, he never did.

She worked at the desk on weekdays. He worked in the office upstairs and he’d tip his imaginary cap and flash his imaginary smile at her every day as he walked in, passing her desk on the way to the elevator. The look in her eyes took nothing for granted.

She came from a long line of seamstresses who hailed ultimately from eastern Europe, but she herself worked as a nurse in New England for many years before moving across the country to find a man and a better job. She found the former; he was a bank manager downtown. She wanted a child from him, and he was perfect because he wanted one, too. But sooner or later they discovered it wasn’t meant to be. Month after month, he found her crying all quiet in the bathroom, eyes stuck to that alien stick clenched in her hand. He’d wrap his arms around her and his voice would get all low and soothing, and he’d say “we’ll keep on trying. But I love you no matter what. And we’ll get through this together. And there’s things we can do, things they can do.” But she always pushed him away.

She never did find that job she was looking for. She worked as a hospital administrator for some time, until they decided they didn’t need her anymore. She received the email just before dinnertime. Her breath caught in her throat, and Ben was there in an instant to ask what had happened. Hand pressed against her collarbone, she told him in a hard voice.

“Okay,” he said, that piercing understanding in his eyes shadowed by doubt for so little time it was almost like they lit up with the opposite. “We’ll find you another job.”

She didn’t even object to the way he said “we,” and meant “I.” The words in her throat hardened and didn’t come out. She ate in silence and she went to bed in silence. And in the morning, silence reigned even as she opened her mouth to speak.

He spoke to some people; she imagined him laying his pretty words across a charcuterie board, a nibble here and a nibble there to make you feel like you were in the right place. Somehow he got through to them, and she got a job working the desk at the bank. He was happy they were working together, there, at the same place. But sometimes she’d imagine him the other way, head bowed to the floor, tears welling up in his eyes, asking the ones that pay their bills to please give her life a little meaning.

It’s just me in the house now. I’ve been thinking more coherently since they’ve been gone. I can remember myself more clearly now. She told me something once, it was so long ago it feels like I shouldn’t be able to remember it any longer.

“Jewel,” she told me, “you’re going to be beautiful and you’re going to be smart and kind and everything like that, and maybe you’ll even have a little bit of money to spend, but you have to promise me something. No matter what, you have to promise me something. You have to promise me that whatever you do, you make sure you’re the one who’s taking. Never accept anything from anybody. Never receive. You understand me?”

I did understand, even at the time. Not her words, but the way her voice broke over her commas, I knew I was being conscripted for something bigger than myself. Something that went back further than even she could remember. But in the face of all that bigness, I only shook my head. Her expression went dead for a moment before her eyes lit back up again.

“Don’t go about trusting some man,” she said, and her little voice whined a little.

“What about daddy?” that’s what I said.

“All men are abusive, honey. One way or another. Once you let yourself go, you can never take it back.”

I’ve written many things, starting from when I was very little. I tried to replicate what I saw my favorite authors do, but I couldn’t understand it yet, so it came out like nonsense. Later, looking back on it, I only felt embarrassed, and I threw it away and started anew. And starting like that, I wanted clarity. Interpretation is the death of art, content is the death of energy, so I wanted to eliminate all of it, represent myself like I truly was without any room for someone to twist it into something that hardly resembled me. But now even those days have passed, and I sit here by the light of a cell phone screen with my pillow beneath my armpits and a knife over there on the floor where I left it, and my parents in their bedroom with their arms wrapped around each other and the sheets wrapped around both of them and so many things forgotten, and I don’t want that clarity anymore. I want to be skinned, to be poked and prodded until all that’s left of me is lifeless clay moistened by oily fingers. I want my ambiguity to be crystallized into lies, my life to be created and then eviscerated along with my five senses and the sixth they keep hidden. I want my notebooks plundered and those beautiful knots I knot so well untangled until they can measure waists. I want you to lay me on your bed and put my clothes in a neat pile in the corner and carve your initials into my stomach with one of those little knives they use to split oysters. That pain you write so beautifully, I want it drawn across my body. I want those letters to give me one last breath of air, one last puff of whatever it is I’ve been missing. Take my power. Look at how you hold me in your hands.