rue Christine
All she had seen was a flowing white shape, falling fast, but Mary was certain that it was a person. There was something about the way it moved so fast through the darkness, with the weight and velocity that made it clear – this was the end of someone’s life, an act so final and deliberate it could be nothing else. Mary had seen suicide before, but she had always had some knowledge of the person affected. It was either abstract and distant - an acquaintance or someone she had known as a child, or staggeringly omnipresent – a longtime patient or coworker, or, for Mary, her brother Charles. In either case, the victim (and as she saw it, there were always multiple victims of this kind of thing) was never anonymous. Somehow, this fact was making it all the more unnerving, knocking Mary off of any kind of equilibrium she’d learned to build around moments of extreme stress and loss. Yet, here she was, freezing without a coat, standing outside the door to the garage remembering vaguely something about a bottle of wine.
Mary opened and closed the door behind her, into the garage where it was less cold but still not warm. Her hands were cold enough to start stinging, but she knew, after so many Maine winters, soon enough they wouldn’t even be cold anymore, if she stayed out here. Which, of course, she wouldn’t. She also knew that even more painful than the shots of cold through her extremities would be the accelerated thaw once she got back into the blazingly warm house, cold wine bottles undoubtedly still pressed in each hand. That’s just the way, she thought, sometimes the thaw is even worse than what you’re thawing out from. Whoever it was that jumped tonight couldn’t or wouldn’t thaw. She imagined a vague person dressed in white, frozen in an ice block, unable and unwilling to move, even to blink. She tried to banish the image of that blank stare as she wrestled two bottles of wine from the cardboard box and trudged as quickly as she could back towards the kitchen door.
“So, you can either be silent and dress the salad, or pour me a glass of wine while this sauce thickens and tell me what it is that’s got you so worked up.” Tom said this, while breading chicken breasts, when he heard Mary close the door and start stomping the snow off her boots.
“Okay, hand me two glasses. I’ve decided I’ve hit my petulance quota for the day,” she replied, chuckling as she saw the corners of his mouth turn up into a subtle grin. She and Tom shared their offices as psychologists, and often poked fun of each other when exhibiting the very behavior they tried to discourage in others. They used to work together occasionally, advising married couples, before they realized the temptation to analyze their own relationship was too great, especially with the person who alternately delighted and enraged you sitting half a foot away. Now there were their three rooms, two offices with an adjoining waiting area, on the second floor of an old boarding house in Portland. They lived together, worked together, often traveled from home to office and back again side by side. Mary rarely thought about it, but she was hardly ever without him.
So, Tom sprinkled some flour into the skillet full of wine, broth, and mushrooms, sipping the Beaujolais throughout, as Mary attempted to tell him what happened. In the hour or so that she’d experienced it, the image had taken on an intangible quality in her mind, so she finally felt she had to be as abrupt as possible.
“I saw someone die tonight. Actually, it was a suicide. I’m quite certain it was.”
Tonight, we mixed it up. While roast chickens are amazing, they are definitely not a weeknight-friendly meal (unless you feel like eating at 10:45). So, we decided to make steak fajitas with sweet potato and chipotle. They were delicious, and very quick, thanks to our friends at Real Simple magazine, whose articles on organization and home makeovers make me want to be a better, less messy person.
