‘What?’
‘Pretend that I could cope.’
‘When did you realize you couldn’t?’
‘I knew it all along. But I kept telling myself: you somehow stick to your normal routine. You go to work. You give your classes. You grade your papers. You maintain your office hours for your students. And eventually –
eventually
. . .’
‘Eventually . . . what?’
‘Eventually . . . you’ll be able to somehow manage.’
‘Why this need to “manage”?’
‘Why the hell do you think? I felt if I could manage I could somehow stay afloat.’
‘Even though you knew you were coming apart?’
‘Even though . . . all the while I felt as if my head was splitting open and the thought gradually began to overtake me that I couldn’t endure the agony anymore.’
‘But you weren’t thinking of killing yourself at that time?’
‘Yes, I was starting to think about that.’
‘What stopped you?’
‘Cowardice.’
‘But when this Adrienne Clegg suddenly showed up again with your ex . . .’
‘That incident . . . it was all rage.’
‘I’m sure. Would you mind taking me through it, please?’
‘Yes, I would mind.’
‘I know it’s probably not something you want to revisit. Nonetheless, it would be useful if—’
I raised my hand, like a traffic cop stopping traffic. Then I started to talk. Again I kept to the facts, determined to get through all this as quickly as possible. She only stopped me when I spoke about running off into the night after the attack.
‘Did you have any idea what you were going to do next?’ she asked.
‘No. Like the attack itself, it was completely spontaneous. Afterwards I raced into the street. The next thing I knew I was in a cab. We made my apartment in Somerville in ten minutes. I raced around the apartment, throwing stuff into a suitcase . . .’
‘Including all those Zopiclone . . .’
‘Including my passport, my laptop, as many changes of clothes as I could squeeze into a bag . . . and yes, my pills. I tossed everything into my car. I cranked up the engine. I roared away. Actually, “roared” is an inappropriate verb. I stuck to the speed limits. I drove in a very steady, inconspicuous manner . . .’
‘Because you thought . . .’
‘I thought there’d be an all-points bulletin out for me. I thought that if I stopped anywhere to spend the night, I’d be traced there. So . . . I just drove.’
‘Tell me exactly where you drove.’
‘I drove everywhere.’
‘What was the first road?’
‘The 90.’
‘Interstate 90?’
‘That’s right. I would only drive Interstates. I would only stay in Mom and Pop hotels – paying with cash, registering under an assumed name, not sleeping much.’
‘By not much you mean . . . ?’
‘One, two hours a night.’
‘The rest of the time?’
‘I would sit in a grubby bathtub, soaking in scalding water. I’d watch crap all-night TV. I’d think about hanging myself from the shower rail . . .’
‘What stopped you?’
‘I was just so exhausted, so deranged, so not here . . . and so terrified of the prospect, even though I was determined to leave the world. And when you are dead set on doing this you don’t want to make contact with anyone who might convince you to do other wise . . .’
‘“
Leaving the world
”,’ she repeated, trying out the expression. ‘I like it. It’s almost romantic.’
‘Suicide is often romantic.’
‘Except for the individual who actually commits it.’
‘Literature is riddled with romantic suicides.’
‘Was your attempt romantic?’
‘Look at my face and tell me if this is your idea of romance.’
‘I was being ironic.’
‘I know you were. But the road is romantic . . . especially for an American.’
‘And all roads eventually come to an end. Yours did in Montana. Why here?’
‘It’s all random, isn’t it? I must have clocked twenty-five hundred miles in all those days on the road and the one snowbank I chose is –
was
– here. Just think about that. Had I not decided, out of nowhere, to end my life at that one curve in Route 202 between Columbia Falls and Evergreen, Montana, you would never have known of my existence.’
‘There’s an old theory about people who get into their cars and head west. On one level they’re fleeing their past lives. On another level they’re heading towards a geographic extreme. The problem is, once they get to LA or San Francisco or Seattle, the only thing left for them to do is drive right off the edge.’
‘It’s a nice metaphor, hitting the Pacific Rim and having no other recourse but to fall off the precipice of the continent. Too bad Margaret Atwood already used it in one of her novels.’
‘Am I being accused of plagiarism?’ Dr Ireland asked mildly.
‘No – I’m just something of a fussy academic when it comes to sources.’
‘Remind me never to take one of your classes, Professor.’
‘There’s no chance of that. I’m never teaching another class again.’
‘That’s a rather definitive statement.’
‘Because I’m
rather
definitive about it. My academic career is over.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Yes, I do – and that probably disappoints you. No doubt, you want me to find a way back to my old life . . . as that would mean accepting loss and all that.’
‘Is it an “old life”? I mean, you were teaching classes up until two weeks ago.’
‘Everything to do with that part of my existence is now “old”. I won’t be visiting it again.’
‘Even though the chairman of your department informed me just a few days ago that he would like you back?’
‘I don’t want to say: “How dare you.” But . . . how dare you?’
‘How dare I what?’
‘How dare you contact my employer and—’
‘He actually contacted me.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘The police had to call the university when they discovered your New England State ID in your wallet. They spoke with Professor Sanders. He, in turn, actually went to the trouble to contact us here to see how you were faring.’
‘The man always considered me a liability.’
‘That’s not what he said. Even the President of the university called the hospital administrator to find out your condition.’
‘He’s the type who wouldn’t even dream of speaking to anyone below the CEO level.’
‘And you are understandably bitter because . . .’
‘I now hate the world.’
There was a long pause as Dr Ireland took that in.
‘As I said to you the other day, you will not put this behind you. You will, in time, reach some sort of accommodation with it. But I will not attempt to sweeten that which is totally appalling. Your daughter is—’
‘Shut up,’ I hissed.
‘The thing is, you tried to silence that thought forever. You failed. You are back here among the living. You again have to deal with that terrible reality. Or you can repeat history and kill yourself the moment your insurance runs out and the hospital administrators decide that, as you are able enough to walk out of here, off you go . . . even though I will do everything possible to keep you here. Because I would prefer to save your life. But I can’t do that if you are so determined to end it. And you can reassure me all you want, or act receptive to what I say, or even pretend that you’re getting better. But I won’t believe a word of it.’
I hung my head. I tried to think of a response, but the words wouldn’t come. I felt that drowning sensation overtaking me again.
‘I remember when I was a resident in Chicago, the leading psychiatrist emeritus at the hospital was this elderly Germanic woman. I’m pretty sure she was Viennese, but that goes with the territory, right? Anyway, she was also a survivor of Dachau – and I learned that her husband and two sons had died in the camp. Not only that, but she had been subjected to medical experiments while incarcerated. But the woman I met was this formidable, steely clinician who’d emigrated to the States after the war and had made a new life for herself, marrying a very big noise in the U. Chicago philosophy department. Once I heard her give a lecture on guilt – specifically, survivor guilt. Someone asked her: Given all that she had endured – the absolute sheer horror of it all – how had she been able to not go under? Her reply was extraordinary. She quoted Samuel Beckett: ‘‘
I can’t go on, I’ll go on
.’’’
‘It’s from
The Unnamable
,’ I said.
‘That’s right.
The Unnamable
.’
We fell silent. Then I said: ‘I can’t go on, Doctor.’
‘I know. But that’s
now
. Perhaps in time . . .’
‘I can’t go on. I won’t go on.’
Three
I
SHOULDN’T HAVE
made that comment. I shouldn’t have spoken without thinking. But I
was
thinking. I knew what I was saying. I knew I was articulating the truth. By doing so I had confirmed Dr Ireland’s worst suspicions. I was a hopeless case.
To her credit Dr Ireland didn’t bring up this comment again. She simply increased my dose of Mirtazapine by 15 milligrams. They did knock me out, but they did nothing to alleviate the unalloyed grief that seemed to permeate every waking hour. Courtesy of the pharmaceuticals, I was managing to sleep nine hours a night. When I woke there was always a minute or so of pleasant befuddlement, during which I would wonder where I was. Then my tongue would touch my stitched lips and everything would instantly rush back. How I wish I could have preserved that moment between sleep and consciousness when my brain seemed to be devoid of a memory; when I was just living in a woolly moment. Because once the mental trigger was pulled – and all retained thought was returned to me – I simply wanted to die.
Nurse Rainier was always on duty first thing in the morning and she seemed well aware of the processes by which the post-wake-up gloom would descend upon me. Within five minutes of me opening my eyes she’d be handing me a glass of orange juice and ordering me to get it into my system as soon as possible.
‘It’ll push your blood sugar up,’ she’d say.
Nurse Rainier never spoke again about the child she lost, nor did she ever mention my failed suicide or the sorrow that haunted every waking hour.
Sorrow
. It was too controlled a word for what I was feeling right now. There were moments when I felt seriously unhinged; when I was convinced that I would never,
ever
, recover from what had happened, when it was absolutely clear to me that life from this point on would be constant agony . . .
Though I tried my best to hide this incessant despair, Nurse Rainier let it be known she was on to me. If she found me curled up in a ball in my bed, she’d tap me hard on the shoulder and say: ‘I’m sending you to the physio now.’ If she sensed that I was lost in gloom, she insisted on turning on the radio by my bed and getting me listening to NPR. If I was uncommunicative she would force me to talk with her.
Every morning she managed to drop a
New York Times
on my bed, telling me she’d found the one shop in Mountain Falls that sold it and commanding me to ‘read about the world’. Even though the leg was still encased in a cast, she made me walk around the hospital for at least a half-hour twice a day, initially with a walker, but after a week or so with a cane. And when the bandage came off my eye, she brought a television to my bedside and forced me to watch an hour of news every day.
I knew why she was getting me to read a proper newspaper and listen to NPR and see what was happening in the world at large. It wasn’t merely to distract me and fill up time, but also to somehow make me engage with something beyond my anguish.
Dr Ireland was also trying to push me towards some sort of acknowledgement that there was life beyond this hospital and all that it represented. She didn’t return to my statement that I couldn’t live with the grief. But she did insist that I talk about my daughter, recalling as much as I could bear to talk about – which wasn’t much because every time her name crossed my lips, it was as if I had been seized by an impossible sadness. But she kept pressing me – just as she also wanted to know everything about my relationship with Theo and how my heightened anxiety in the final weeks had made me distracted for that crucial moment when the dog broke free in front of us and . . .
‘Do you blame Theo for what happened?’
‘He wasn’t there. I blame myself.’
‘But his business failure – the debt he ran up with that woman, the angry creditors, the very real fear you had that your home might be taken away from you . . . surely you must somehow feel that if these pressures hadn’t been piled up upon you . . .’
‘I take responsibility for what happened.’
‘But don’t you hate him for it?’
‘“Hate” is a terrible word.’
‘You’ve been through a terrible experience – and his irresponsibility, his complete disregard for your feelings, your welfare . . .’
‘Stop attempting to make me feel better about what happened. I know the game:
when bad things happen to good people
and all that self-denial crap. I won’t buy into that.’
‘Or maybe you’d simply see that the accident was just that – an accident. And that you yourself were, at the time, coping with terrible pressures, terrible—’
‘I despise Theo Morgan, OK?’
‘And I’m here to tell you that everything you feel is valid and—’
‘Oh,
please
. Everything I feel is awful. Maybe when I’m watching the nightly news that Nurse Rainier insists I watch I have a half-hour when I am distracted from it all. And thanks to your high-powered pharmaceuticals I do manage to sleep. But that’s it. Otherwise it’s there, day in, day out. Omnipresent. Hanging over every thought, every action.’
‘Your lawyer called yesterday,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘The switchboard, acting on your instructions, didn’t put the call through. But he did speak to me.’