“Tell me about the night you put the gun in your mouth.”
“I don’t know what more there is to tell. I remember the taste, metal and gun oil. I thought, So this is what it feels like. And I thought that all I had to do was do it, and I thought that I didn’t want to.”
“And you took the gun out of your mouth.”
“And I took the gun out of my mouth, and didn’t do it again. I thought about it some, living alone in New York, bottoming out on the booze. Of course I didn’t have a gun anymore, but the city gives you plenty of ways to kill yourself. The easiest way was to do nothing and just go on drinking.”
She picked up the gun, turned it over in her hands. “It’s heavy,” she said. “I didn’t realize it would be that heavy.”
“People are always surprised about that.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t expect it. It’s metal, of course it’s heavy.” She put it on the table. “I had a pretty good week,” she said. “I’m not in any great rush to use this, believe me.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“But it’s a relief to have it in the house. I know it’s here for when I need it, and I find that very reassuring. Can you understand that?”
“I think so.”
“You know,” she said, “when people find out you’ve got cancer, you’re really in for it. I haven’t run around telling people, but I can’t go to meetings and not talk about what’s going on in my life. So a lot of people know about it. And as soon as they know that your doctor’s given up on you, that what you’ve got is hopelessly incurable, then they come at you with the advice.”
“What kind of advice?”
“Everything from macrobiotic diets and wheatgrass juice to the power of prayer and crystal healing. Quack clinics in Mexico. Getting your blood replaced in Switzerland.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“I forgot him, but his name gets mentioned a lot, too. Everybody knows somebody who was given fifteen days to live and now they’re out chopping wood and running marathons because of some stupid thing they tried that worked. And I’m not even saying they’re full of crap. I believe these things work sometimes. I know miracles happen, too.”
“There’s a thing you hear around the program—”
“ ‘Don’t kill yourself five minutes before the miracle.’ I know. I don’t intend to. I believe in miracles, but I also believe I had my quota of miracles when I got sober. I don’t expect another one.”
“You never know.”
“Sometimes you know. But here’s what I was getting at. Here are all these people trying to help, each of them bringing me something and it’s all useless. And you brought me the one thing I can use.” She picked up the gun again. “Funny, huh? Don’t you think it’s funny?”
The sun had been shining that morning, but the sky was clouded over by the time I left Jan’s loft. A week ago I’d had to go home in the rain. At least it wasn’t raining yet.
Back at my hotel, I had five hours to get through before my dinner date with Jim. I thought of a way to get through them, and looked over at the telephone.
Like not drinking, I thought. You do it in manageable increments, a day at a time, an hour at a time, even a minute at a time when you have to. You don’t pick up the phone, you don’t call her, and you don’t go over there.
Piece of cake.
Around two I reached for the phone. I didn’t have to look up the number. While her husband’s taped message ran its course, I thought instead of other words from the grave, those of John McCrae. If ye break faith with us who die…
I said, “It’s Matt, Lisa. Are you there?” She was. “I’d like to come by for a few minutes,” I said. “There are a couple of things I’d like to go over with you.”
“Oh, good,” she said.
I went straight from her apartment to the restaurant. I showered first, so I don’t suppose I could actually have been carrying her scent upon my skin. On my clothes, perhaps. Or on my mind.
Definitely on my mind, and several times I was on the point of saying something to Jim. I could have. One of the roles a sponsor plays is that of a nonjudgmental confessor. I strangled my grandmother this morning, you might say. She probably had it coming, he would reply, and anyway the important thing is you didn’t drink.
I didn’t mention it to Mick, either, although I might have if we’d made what he calls a proper night of it. I walked Jim home after the Big Book meeting at St. Clare’s, then dropped by Grogan’s, and one of the first things he told me was that we wouldn’t be able to see the sun up together.
“Unless you want to drive up to the farm with me,” he said, “for I’ll be on my way in a couple of hours. I have to sit down with O’Mara.”
“Is something the matter?”
“Not a thing,” he said, “except that Rosenstein has it in his head that O’Mara might die.”
Rosenstein is Mick’s lawyer, O’Mara and his wife the co-managers of the country property he owns in Sullivan County. I asked if O’Mara was ill.
“He is not,” Mick said. “Nor should he be, living the life he does, out in the open air every day, drinking the milk of my cow and eating the eggs of my hens. He’s lived sixty years, has O’Mara, and should be good for sixty more. I said as much to Rosenstein. Ah, says he, but suppose he died, then where are you?”
“You’d have to hire someone else,” I said. “Oh, wait a minute. Who’s the owner of record?”
His smile held no joy. “O’Mara himself,” he said. “You know I own nothing.”
“The clothes on your back.”
“The clothes on my back,” he agreed, “and nothing else. There’s another man’s name on the lease of Grogan’s, and another that owns the building itself. The car’s not mine either, not legally. And the farm belongs to O’Mara and his wife. A man can’t own anything or the bastards’ll be after taking it away from him.”
“You’ve always operated that way,” I said. “At least as long as I’ve known you. You’ve never had any assets.”
“And a good job, too. They had their hands out last year when they were trying to make their RICO case, ready to attach any assets they could find. Their fucking case fell apart, thanks to God and Rosenstein, but in the meantime they might have grabbed my holdings and sold them off. If I’d had the misfortune to own anything.”
“So what’s the problem with O’Mara?”
“Ah,” he said. “If O’Mara dies, and herself with him, although women live forever—”
Not always, I thought.
“—then what happens to my farm? The O’Maras have no children. He has a niece and nephew in California, and herself has a brother, a priest in Providence, Rhode Island. Who stands to inherit depends on which O’Mara outlives the other, but sooner or later my farm’s to be left to the niece and nephew or to the priest. And, Rosenstein wants to know, how do I propose to tell O’Mara’s heirs that the farm is my own, and they’re quite welcome to slop the hogs and collect the eggs, but I’ll have the use of it when I see fit?”
Rosenstein had suggested ways to safeguard the farm, ranging from an undated and unregistered transfer of ownership to a codicil to O’Mara’s will. But any arrangement could be dismissed as a legal fiction if the federal authorities ever took a good look at the situation.
“So I’ll talk to O’Mara,” he said, “though I don’t know what I’ll say to him. ‘Take care of yourself, man. Stay out of drafts.’ But I know the answer. You must go through life owning nothing.”