I started to say something but he stopped
me.
“Just think about that last eighteen
hours,”
he said.
“I see you having an altercation with a respected
attorney.
Find you here in the middle of the night pretending to be a deputy sheriff. And when I tell you to be in my office first thing this morning, you show up
over
an hour late.
Showing up late to
work
on a day like today of all days—”
“
A
day like today?”
“When I gave you an order to be in my office first
thing.”
“Oh, that kind of
day,”
I said.
“Actually,
I
wasn’t
late. I was
early.
I was called in to deal with an attempted suicide. I came to your office following that.”
“Oh, well . . . okay then. But you should’ve gotten
word
to
me.”
“Sorry,”
I said. “I figured you
knew.”
I stopped short of saying I thought he knew everything that went on in his institution.
He started to lean back, but stopped and took a sip of coffee from a Styrofoam cup on the edge of his desk. The sip was loud, accompanied by various swallowing sounds––the kind made
by
the unselfconscious and uncouth. In big and small
ways,
Matson was the sort of man who gave no consideration to anyone else in the room. In any room anywhere.
When he did lean back in his
chair,
he straightened his tie.
I
wasn’t
sure if the cheap black tie was the only one he owned or if all the ones he owned were identical to it, but he
wore
it or one like it every
day.
Black poly/cotton, flat-front work pants. Black Polyurethane lace-up shoes. White cotton shirt with button-down collar. Black too-wide tie. Never a coat. Never any variation. A self-styled uniform as severe as the middle-aged man wearing it.
“Now,
on to these other
matters,”
he said. “What do you know about the young woman killed last night?”
“Absolutely
nothing.”
“
But––”
“I saw her a few minutes before I left
Potter
Farm,” I said. “She seemed like she might need
help.
I gave her my card. I never even got her name. Did you see her?”
“
Me
?”
“At
the
farm
I mean. When you were in the house or out in the pasture before you left?”
“Oh. May
have.
I’m not sure. So you
don’t
know anything about her?”
I shook my head, wondering why he was so keen to
know.
It may
have
just been because she was found at the prison, but it seemed like more.
“And
you got called because her card––I mean
your
card was in her . . . on her person?”
He seemed flustered, something
I’d
never seen before.
I nodded.
“Not because
you’re
going to be investigating her death.”
“I was called because of the card,” I said.
“If you do your job the right
way,
there
won’t
be any time left for anything else. And like I’ve said all along . . . if you want to be a detective then be that.
You
might be good at it––better than chaplain. Just stop trying to be
both.”
I
didn’t
say
anything.
“But the most troubling issue I needed to talk to
you
about is what Chris
Taunton
said at the gathering last night. I’ve asked around. I
didn’t
just take his
word
for it. He
was
drinking . . . and I wanted to be sure. I’m now satisfied that I know the answer––and it appears to me that it goes far deeper than what he even accused you
of.
But I’ll ask
you
directly.
Are you living in sin with another
man’s
wife?”
Phrasing it the
way
he had, the
way
so many
do,
made Anna sound like
Chris’s
property,
like he owned
her,
like the real question
wasn’t
what we were doing but did we
have
his and
society’s
permission to do it, did I
have
property rights to
her.
One of the aspects of prison chaplaincy I liked most was the privacy it afforded me. Unlike when I pastored a church, as a chaplain I
didn’t live
in a fishbowl, watched every second by parishioners who felt like they owned me and that I owed them. As a chaplain, my personal life
was
personal.
At least until
now.
“I am not living in
sin,”
I said.
What Anna and I had was sacred. There was nothing sinful about it. Matson was not the kind of man who could understand that.
Anna’s
relationship with Chris was
over.
We
planned to
marry
as soon as her divorce was final, but
we
were not going to wait until then to be together.
We
had waited for far, far too long
already.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I simply do not believe
you.”
Something inside me broke loose a bit and I just
couldn’t
hold back any longer.
“Believe
this,”
I said. “I’ve loved Anna Rodden my entire life and will
love
her for a million more lifetimes long after the sun has burned itself out and the universe has collapsed. Nothing will ever change that. Not
Anna’s
duplicitous husband, not any laws of man or social conventions, not you or the Department of Corrections. My
private,
personal life is just that.”
“No chaplain of mine is going to be shackin’ up with another
man’s
pregnant
wife,”
he said. “Believe that. I’ve reported this to the chaplain supervisor of the state and the secretary of the department. I’m waiting to hear back from them on exactly how to proceed. Until then, do your job and nothing else. Understand?”
“S
ometimes I think about killing
myself,”
Mom said.
I
didn’t
say
anything.
Just listened. “That surprise you?” she asked.
I shook my head.
Actually,
my mom was already dying from suicide
—
the slow suicide of alcoholism, cirrhosis eating
away
at her body—her pickled brain and nervous system failing, shutting down. She had fought the good fight during her illness, she had regained her faith, her
sobriety,
and her
family.
But now she was
weary,
ready,
it
would
seem, for complete surrender.
“You’d
understand?” she asked, eyebrows raising
slowly,
unfocused eyes searching, entreating. “If I did, I mean.”
I hesitated a moment, but then nodded, and said, “I
would.”
The downstairs room Mom had chosen to spend her final days in reminded me of a confinement cell. It had the same hopeless sense of isolation, the same smell of
inactivity,
of sleep, the same view of the
world,
of life passing by outside of here, happening everywhere but here.
“You’d
be okay with it?”
I
didn’t
want my mama to die. I
didn’t
want to
have
to face a
world
she
wasn’t
in, though such a world
wouldn’t
seem to be all that different from the one I inhabited
now.
She
wasn’t
a big part of my life––and
hadn’t
been for a very long time.
My visits to her sickroom, my vigils
over
her deathbed, that was the extent of our interaction and relationship.
“I
would
understand
.”
It was not the same thing, and she nodded that she caught the distinction.
Before I left the institution earlier, I had made several phone calls and had found no connection between Lance Phillips and Miguel
Morales.
I had also followed up on a few inquiries relating to the murder victim from the farm. Both cases fascinated me, but I was pushing them back, keeping them at bay as best I could, doing
my
best not to let them intrude into this moment with Mom.
“You
don’t
think I should, do you?” she asked.
Mom had been so pretty once.
Now,
spent, her body older than its years, only occasionally did her eyes sparkle, her face brighten, the young girl she had been peek out of the infirmed old woman she had become.
“I think
it’s
not for me to
say.”
“
You
think
I’d
go
to hell?”
“
Absolutely
not.”
“Certain?” I nodded.
“Certain enough not to stop me?”
“Notions of punishment and reward are juvenile.
There is only
love.”
I thought about the old notions of suicide being a mortal sin––the kind only committed
by
those who had despaired of
God’s
mercy.
Of how those who had committed it were refused religious burial, their
loved
ones left behind refused comfort and reassurance.
Of course, that she could even ask me if I thought
she’d
go
to hell reminded me the notions
weren’t
just old
ones.
I
couldn’t
even think in those terms, and that she could made me feel like a failure.
“How can he sit
by
and watch me suffer like this?” she asked.
“Who?”
“God.”
“Is that what you feel like is happening?” I asked. She nodded her weak and weary head. “Sometimes.”
“I’m
sorry,”
I said.
“I know you are, and I appreciate it, but
I’d
really like to know what you think.”
“Honestly,
I
don’t
think
that’s what’s
happening.
I know there are no easy answers, but . . . The best is freedom, but even it falls short. Whatever the reason, I do believe––not just believe,
I’ve
experienced
––God suffers
with
us.
For
us.
Doesn’t
just
watch
us.”
The pain and conflict I felt incarnated into knots in my stomach. I realized how hollow my
words
sounded, how inadequate they
were.
She was hurting so badly she wanted to die, and I had nothing much to offer
her.
“I
haven’t
experienced that,” she said. I nodded.
“Maybe I still will.”
“I really think you will.”
Tears
formed in her eyes and she blinked several times. With an unsteady hand, she reached up and pushed her
dry,
brittle, early gray hair
away
from her pale face.
“How much pain are you in?” I asked.
“We
can—” She shook her head, wiped at her tears.
“It’s
not that.
I’m
okay.
Physically.”
She looked out the window a moment, but
didn’t
seem to see
anything.
Turning back to me, she said, “Most people
don’t
see their death coming, but I get to lie here and
watch
its approach like I’m tied to a railroad track.”
I nodded.
“That’s
what I want to end.”
“I . .
.”
“What?”
“It’s
just . . . if
that’s
your reason . . . I think
you’d
miss out on so
much.”
“What?” she said, anger accenting the edges of her frail
voice.
“Pain?
Suffering? Depression? Despair?”
“In part, yeah.
For
what’s
in and beyond them.”
“
You
might feel different if you were in my
place,”
she said.
I nodded.
“You’re
probably right. But the truth is
I
am.
We
all
are.”
Her lips twisted up into a frown and she seemed to think about it.
“It’s
not the
same.”
“No,”
I said,
“it’s
not. But think about the experience of God suffering with you, for you, you said you had yet to experience. I
don’t
want you to miss out on that. And cutting your life short just might.”
She nodded ever so
slightly,
more with her narrowing eyes than her head.
I glanced at the small table on the other side of her bed and saw amid the dirty dishes, TV remote, used tissues, and tiny brown prescription bottles, a copy of
Final
Exit:
The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for
the
Dying
by Derek
Humphry.
“How much thought
have
you given this?” I asked, nodding toward the book.