Yet what the eye does not see, the brain can’t register. The effort of remembering was exhausting. Her head was pounding. Her eyes ached. Her throat was dry and acrid and the inside of her mouth tasted of ashes.
They hadn’t ransacked the upstairs. They hadn’t found her purse, her wallet and credit cards. They’d respected the privacy of her bedroom …
She had no reason to think that her niece had been involved.
Maybe Kelsey had tried to stop them. But Triste and Mallory had threatened her.
Agnes would never know. She could never ask. She tried to tell herself, It doesn’t mean anything—that she doesn’t love me. It means only that they were desperate for money.
Yet she called her sister to ask for Kelsey. Coolly her sister said that Kelsey didn’t live with them any longer, Agnes must know this.
Where did Kelsey live? So far as anyone knew, she lived with “friends.”
Kelsey was no longer attending the community college. Agnes must know this.
Bitterly her sister spoke. Though relenting then, realizing it was Agnes, the widowed older sister, to whom she was speaking, and asking why she wanted to speak with Kelsey.
“No reason,” Agnes said. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
It was terrifying to her, she would probably never see her niece again.
Yet I still love her.
What was exhausting, when she wasn’t “high”—she had to plead for her husband’s life.
Hours of each day. And through the night pleading, No! Not ever.
Not ever give up, I beg you.
As soon as the diagnosis was made, the doctors had given up on him. So it seemed to the stricken wife.
Repeating their calm rote words: Do you want extraordinary measures taken to sustain your life, in case complications arise during or after surgery? And her husband who was the kindest of men, the most accommodating and least assertive of men, a gentle man, a thoughtful man, a reasonable man, one who would hide his own anxiety and terror in the hope of shielding his wife, had said quietly what the doctor had seemed to be urging him to say: No, of course not, doctor. Use your own judgment please. For this was the brave response. This was the noble response. This was the manly common sense response. In mounting disbelief and horror Agnes had listened to this exchange and dared to interrupt, No—we’re not going to give up. We do want “extraordinary measures”—I want “extraordinary measures” for my husband! Please! Anything you can do, doctor.
She would beg. She would plead. Unlike her beloved husband she could not be stoic in the face of (his) death.
Yet, in the end, fairly quickly there’d been not much the doctors could do. Her husband’s life from that hour onward had gone—had departed—swiftly like thread on a bobbin that goes ever more swiftly as it is depleted.
I love you—so many times she told him. Clutching at him with cold frightened fingers.
Love love love you, please don’t leave me.
She missed him so much. She could not believe that he would not return to their house. It was that simple.
In the marijuana haze, she’d half-believed—she’d been virtually certain—that her husband was still in the hospital, and wondering why she hadn’t come to visit. Or maybe it was in the dream—the dreams—that followed. High, I was so high. The earth was a luminous globe below me and above me—there was nothing …
After he’d died, within hours when she returned to the suddenly cavernous house she’d gone immediately to a medicine cabinet and on the spotless white-marble rim above the sink she had set out pills, capsules—these were sleeping pills, painkillers, antibiotics—that had accumulated over a period of years; prescriptions in both her husband’s and her name, long forgotten. Self-medicating—yet how much more tempting, to self-erase?
There were dozens of pills here. Just a handful, swallowed down with wine or whiskey, and she’d never wake again—perhaps.
“Should I? Should I join you?”—it was ridiculous for the widow to speak aloud in the empty house, yet it seemed to her the most natural thing in the world; and what was unnatural was her husband’s failure to respond.
She would reason, It’s too soon. He doesn’t understand what has happened to him yet.
Weeks now and she hadn’t put the pills away. They remained on the marble ledge. Involuntarily her eye counted them—five, eight, twelve, fifteen—twenty-five, thirty-five …
She wondered how many sleeping pills, for instance, would be “fatal.” She wondered if taking too many pills would produce nausea and vomiting; taking too few, she might remain semiconscious, or lapse into a vegetative state.
Men were far more successful in suicide attempts than women. This was generally known. For men were not so reluctant to do violence to their bodies: gunshots, hanging, leaping from heights.
I want to die but not to experience it. I want my death to be ambiguous so people will say—It was an accidental overdose!
So people will say—She would not live without him, this is for the best.
What a relief, that Kelsey and her friends hadn’t come upstairs to steal from her! They’d respected her privacy, she wanted to think.
How stricken with embarrassment she’d have been if Kelsey had looked into the bathroom and seen the pills so openly displayed. Immediately her niece would have known what this meant, and would have called her mother.
Mom! Aunt Agnes is depressed and suicidal—I thought you should know.
At least, Agnes thought that Kelsey might have made this call.
“Zeke! Thank you.”
And, “Zeke—how much do I owe you?”
From a young musician friend, a former student, now years since he’d been an undergraduate student, she’d acquired what she believed to be a higher, purer quality of “pot”—she’d been embarrassed to call him, to make the transaction, pure terror at the possibility (of course, it was not a likely possibility) that Zeke was an undercover agent for the local police; she’d encountered him by chance in an organic foods store near the university, he’d been kind to her, asking after her, of course he’d heard that Professor Krauss had died, so very sorry to hear such sad and unexpected news … Later she’d called him, set up a meeting at the local mall, in the vast parking lot, she’d been awkward and ashamed and yet determined, laughing so that her face reddened. To Zeke she was Professor Krauss also. To all her admiring students.
A Ziploc bag Zeke sold her. Frankly, he’d seemed surprised—then concerned. He’d been polite as she remembered him, from years ago. She told the ponytailed young man she was having friends over for the evening, friends from graduate-student days, Ann Arbor. He’d seemed to believe her. No normal person would much want to get high by herself, after all.
As soon as she was safely home she lit a joint and drew in her breath as Kelsey had taught her—cautiously, but deeply. The heat was distracting. She didn’t remember such heat. And the dryness, the acridity. Again she began to cough—tears spilled from her eyes. Her husband had said, What are you doing, Agnes? Why are you doing such things? Just come to me, that’s all. You know that.
Mattia.
Running her forefinger down the Mattia listings. There were a surprising number—at least a dozen. Most young people had cell phones now. The Mercer County, New Jersey phone directory had visibly shrunken. Yet there was a little column of Mattias headed by Mattia, Angelo.
His first name hadn’t been Angelo—she didn’t think so.