She wasn’t just standing there, this time. She was pacing, for hours, pacing swiftly, bent, lurching. I felt that Jennifer’s ghost was trying to throw up.
Trader was right: Making Sense of Suicide doesn’t make sense of anything much, including suicide. But yet it told me what I needed to know. Its author didn’t tell me. Jennifer told me.
In the margins of her copy of the book, Jennifer had made certain marks—queries, exclamation points, and vertical lines, some straight, some squiggly. She had marked passages of genuine interest, such as might have struck anyone who was new to the field: Like the bigger the city, the higher the rate. Other passages, I can only think, were just being heckled for their banality. Examples: “Many people sadly kill themselves around exam time.” “When encountering a depressed person, say something like, ‘You seem a bit low,’ or, ‘Things not going well?’” “In bereavement, make yourself better, not bitter.” Yeah, right. Do do that.
It was way after Trader called and I was still sitting up, brain-dead from reading stuff like that—about how unfortunate suicide is, for all concerned. Then I saw the following, marked with a double query by Jennifer’s hand. And I felt ignition, like somebody struck a match. I felt it in my armpits.
As part of the pattern, virtually all known studies reveal that the suicidal person will give warnings and clues as to his, or her, suicidal intentions.
Part of the pattern. Warnings. Clues. Jennifer left clues. She was the daughter of a police.
That did matter.
The other end of it came to me this morning as I was clattering through the kitchen cupboards, looking for a pack of Sweet’N’Low. I found myself dully staring at the bottles of jug liquor that Tobe seeps his way through. And in response I felt my liver shimmer, seeming to excrete something. And I thought: Wait. A body has an inside as well as an outside. Even Jennifer’s body. Especially Jennifers body. Which has consumed so much of our time. This is the body—this is the body that Miriam bore, that Colonel Tom protected, that Trader Faulkner caressed, that Hi Tulkinghorn tended, that Paulie No cut. Christ, don’t I know this about bodies? Don’t I know about alcohol—don’t I know about Sweet’N’Low?
You do something to the body, and the body does something back.
At noon I called the office of the Dean of Admissions at CSU. I gave the name and the year of graduation. I said,
“I’ll spell it: T-r-o-u-n-c-e. First name Phyllida. What address do you have?”
“One moment, sir.”
“Look, I’m not ‘sir, okay?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. One moment. We have an address in Seattle. And in Vancouver.”
“That’s it?”
“The Seattle address is more recent. You want that?”
“No. Phyllida’s back in town,” I said. “Her guardian’s surname. Spell it, please.”
This information I flipped over to Silvera.
Next I called state cutter Paulie No. I asked him to meet me for a drink this evening, at six. Where? What the hell. In the Decoy Room at the Mallard.
Next I called Colonel Tom. I said I’d be ready to talk. Tonight.
From now on, at least, I won’t be asking any more questions. Except those that expect a certain answer. I won’t be asking any more questions.
Phyllida Trounce was back in town. Or back in the burbs: Moon Park. She herself had no real weight in all this. And, as I drove across the river and out over Hillside, I could feel a great failure of tolerance in me. I thought: If she wasn’t so nuts we could do this on the fucking phone. A failure of tolerance, or just a terrible impatience, now, to get the thing down? The insane live in another country. Canada. But then they come home. And sane people hate crazy people. Jennifer hated crazy people, too. Because Jennifer was sane.
On the phone, Phyllida had tried to give me directions, and she’d gotten lost. But I did not get lost. Moon Park was where I was born. We lived in the crummier end of it—Crackertown. This. Wooden cartons with add-on A-frames or cinderblock shacks with cardboard windows. Now spruced up with pieces of contemporary detritus: The soaked plastic of yard furniture, climbing frames, kiddie pools, and squads of half-dismantled cars with covens of babies crawling around in their guts. I slowed as I passed the old place. We have all moved on, but my fear is still living there, in the crawlspace underneath...
It was over in the Crescent that Phyllida and her stepma now resided. The houses here are larger, older, spookier. One memory. As kids we had to dare each other to do the Crescent on Halloween. I would lead. With a rubber ghoul mask over my face I’d use the knocker, and then, minutes later, a gnarled hand would curl around the door and drop a ten-cent treat bag onto the mat.
There’d been rain, and the house was on a slow drip.
“You and Jennifer, you roomed together at CSU?”
... In a house. With two other girls. A third and fourth girl.
“Then you got sick, didn’t you, Phyllida. But you hung on till graduation.”
... I hung on.
“Then you guys lost touch.”
... We wrote for a time. I’m not one for going out.
“But Jennifer came here to see you, didn’t she, Phyllida. In the week before she died.”
I’m putting in these dots—but you’d want more than three of them to get the measure of Phyllida’s pauses. Like an international phone call ten or fifteen years back, minus the echo, with that lag that made you start repeating the question just as the answer was finally coming through... By now I’m giving myself the cop shrug and thinking: I know exactly why Jennifer killed herself. She set foot in this fucking joint: That’s why.
“Yes,” said Phyllida. “On the Thursday before she died.”
The room was muffled with dust, but cold. Phyllida was sitting in her chair like a lifesize photograph. Like the photograph in Jennifer’s apartment. Just the same, only more beat-looking. Straight, thin, weak brown hair, over a gaze that traveled not an inch into the world. Also present was a guy: About thirty, fair, with a balding mustache. He never said a word or even looked in my direction, but attended to the buzz of the earphones he wore. His face gave no indication of the kind of thing he was listening to. It could have been heavy metal. It could have been Teach Yourself French. There was a third person in the house. The stepmother. I never saw this woman, but I heard her. Blundering around in the back room, and groaning, with infinite fatigue, as each new obstacle materialized in her path.
“Jennifer stay long?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Phyllida, you’re a manic depressive, right?”
I think my eyes came off brutal when I said it. But she nodded and smiled.
“But you have that under control now, don’t you, Phyllida.”
She nodded and smiled.
Yeah: One pill too many and she slips into a coma. One pill too few and she goes out and buys an airplane. Jesus, the poor bitch, even her teeth are nuts. Her gums are nuts.
“You keep a pill chart, don’t you, Phyllida. And a roster. You probably have one of those little yellow boxes with the time compartments and the dosages.”
She nodded.
“Do something for me. Go count your pills and tell me how many are missing. The stabilizers. The tegretol or whatever.”
While she was gone I listened to the steady buzz of the guy’s earphones. The insect drone—the music of psychosis. I listened also to the woman in the other room. She stumbled and groaned, with that unforgettable weariness—that indelible weariness. And I said out loud, “She got it too? Jesus Christ, I’m surrounded.” I stood up and moved to the window. Drip, drop, said the rain. It was now that I made myself a promise—a promise that only the few would understand. The stepmother stumbled and groaned, stumbled and groaned.