by KL Evans
Fuck you, Charles Reid, I want to scream at it. Fuck your idiocy and misplaced values and fuck you very much for what you didn’t do for your daughters and for what that did to them. May you rest in pieces, asshole.
“Give me a few minutes,” I say, pushing the door open and stepping out.
It’s too damn bright outside. I have to keep my eyes closed as I walk toward her front door, and all I can see in my mind’s eye is Dave pulling her incapacitated body out of his car. I see myself picking her up. I see her neighborhood lit by creepy street lamps and long-casted shadows, and I remember hearing that creepy voice for the first time. The voice that ended up being my own fucked up intuition; my intuition that knew she was going to die, but not how to prevent it.
I arrive at the front door. I reach for the knob, but abruptly retract my hand and double over because I’m about to spew coffee and stomach acid all over her porch at the mere thought of what I’m about to see in there. What I saw here not even forty-eight hours ago.
“I don’t think I can do this.”
I spit on the concrete and then rub my face as I stand upright. I stare at the door and wonder why exactly I want to go inside. Is this for closure? How much more closure can I possibly get than being there when her plug was pulled? I don’t know, but I take a deep breath and decide to do it anyway.
I place my hand on the doorknob and turn. It’s locked. In my pocket is the key because she gave it to me. Just a couple of months ago, she gave it to me right here in this exact spot by leaving it under—
I pull my hand back again as a thought comes over me. I don’t need to go inside. I don’t need to go inside because the large rock is still sitting there inconspicuously in the dirt that used to be a flower bed. And I know any additional closure I could possibly want or need is hidden underneath it because that is exactly what Charlie would do.
I nudge the rock with my shoe and, sure enough, there’s the corner of an envelope.
Sitting cross-legged on the porch with my back leaning against the door, I lift the rock and pick up the envelope. It’s fat; stuffed with several pages, clearly indicating she had a lot to say to me. The front is covered in hot pink marker; Seth McCollum drawn in big, bubbly, utterly inappropriately-cheery letters, and I chuckle involuntarily, which almost unleashes a tidal wave of sobs. I can’t open it just yet and press my nose against the paper, knowing it will smell subtly of lavender.
Scent is so powerful. A mere scent can instantly transport a person to another time, another place, and this particular scent catapults me to so many times and places that, had I been standing, my knees would have given out.
The letter inside has an even stronger scent of lavender, as if she’d just put on lotion prior to writing it.
I’m sorry, Seth McCollum.
I quickly lower the paper out of my line of sight because I don’t know if I can read it right now. I consider putting it away and saving it for later. Way later. Maybe five years later. But curiosity is just as powerful as scent, and I’m a glutton for punishment, so I lift it back up to the level of my eyes.
I’m sorry, Seth McCollum. I know you’re upset and really mad at me because I remember the way you felt after my overdose. I know you’re disappointed in me and my choice, but I hope you can at least keep that in mind. This is my choice. This was never anyone’s choice but mine because this is my life and I get to choose. Nobody gets a say in this except for me because nobody else has to live with what I have to live with. You and all of those people at the psyche ward couldn’t seem to understand that sometimes life isn’t worth it and the only people who should choose what a person does with their individual life is the person who is living it. Not everyone around them who think they know what’s best for that person. Not even Jade. You were right, Jade would be pissed at me for this, but she could go ahead and be pissed at me. She’s not me and even if she were here, she wouldn’t have been allowed to choose this for me either.
So before I get to everything else, I need you to suck it up and get over being mad at me because, after everything that happened, it should be obvious to you that this wasn’t a spur of the moment, dramafied outburst, or some kind of cry for attention or help. I’ve had a long, looooooong time to think about what I wanted after Jade died. I have been weighing the pros and cons of this choice since the doctors first told me what was going to happen to her. Jade was all I had in this world. She was honestly all I’d EVER had in this world, long before my dad went to prison, long before our mom died, for my whole, entire life. And frankly, there’s nothing in this world that would ever even come close to replacing that. If there is or would be someday, I have zero interest or motivation to wait around for it or look for it or wait for it to find me. And maybe that makes me lazy or short-sighted or whatever, but I really don’t care. Life is really long and I don’t want to do it without my sister. Even if good things happened, all I would be thinking was how much I wished Jade could be there, so then even good things would make me sad. Do you understand? This was a meticulously calculated decision. Plan A was my stash of meds. I was pretty sure that would do the trick, but I never planned on you. Still, I knew there was a possibility it wouldn’t work, and that’s why I had my dad’s revolver. He put it in the backyard shed and left it there for Jade and me to have some kind of protection if he got busted, which is exactly what happened, except a gun doesn’t do much to protect someone from a car accident, does it? But, in a way, out of all the stuff my dad did to try to provide for me and Jade, leaving his gun in the shed was the best provision he could’ve given me because he gave me a way out.
Are you getting this, Seth McCollum? I know you have big opinions about the way the world should be and what people should want out of life, but your idea of what’s right isn’t necessarily everyone’s idea of what is right. What you think is right for someone isn’t necessarily what they feel is right for them, and remember, it’s their choice. Not yours. So, you get to be mad for a minute. Maybe for like a day. You can give yourself that much time to be pissed at me, but then you need to get over it. Stop thinking about yourself and your ideas about the world, and realize I do what I want and I did what I wanted.
Okay. Now that we have that out of the way, I want to tell you how much you mean to me. This is the part I want you to think about when you think about me and this little thing we had. Don’t think about how you’re mad at me. Think about the fact that I love you. I totally, completely, insanely adore you. I am totally crazy about you. I have liked a few guys in the past, but I am in love with you. I have never been in love before and I am totally in love with you. Every time I ever told you that I love you, I wasn’t being silly. I really meant that, Seth McCollum. I think I’ve been smitten with you since the first moment I got a really good look at you in the Las Vegas Trail pub. I’ve absolutely loved our time together. I know all of this started with you just trying to do your job and I basically ruined that on more than one occasion, but I just couldn’t help myself. I know I sound like a silly little girl talking like this, but I have a really good reason.
After I overdosed and you were so angry with me, you stuck around anyway. Even after I slapped you (sorry). You didn’t have to be there for me as much as you were, but you were there anyway and that means the world to me. And then, after all of my desperate, embarrassing begging, you gave me the one and only thing I wanted in the whole world. Maybe I’m weird, but I really, really didn’t want to check out without getting to do that. I guess it was the one thing on my bucket list. And I think if I had run out of time without meeting you, I probably would’ve done it just to do it, and I probably would’ve had to settle for someone I didn’t really like or care about. But I didn’t. Somehow, someway, you stumbled across my path and you were perfect. You ARE perfect. IT was perfect. It was so perfect, Seth McCollum. It was so perfect that it was almost enough.
I had this moment… it was the day Christian went to court and I had this thought. I know we were never an official couple or an
ything like that. You never belonged to me and I never belonged to you, but that day was pretty deceiving. You holding my hand and introducing me to your friend, Missy, and us going to lunch afterward… in that moment, it felt like something we could be and have. And I thought about talking to you about it. I thought about asking you what we were and what we were doing, but I don’t know. I was afraid to bring it up because I had no control over what would happen after I brought it up.
For one, I did promise you from the very beginning that I wouldn’t get clingy and I didn’t want you to feel like I was getting clingy with you. And two, what if we did actually get really serious for a while? What then? I already knew it would never last forever because no matter how much I love you and want you, the fact remains that I miss Jade more. I would always be sad about her and that would get to you after a while. So then after two or five or however many years, we’d have already spent all this energy on each other and we’d be so emotionally invested in each other—I mean YOU would have been so emotionally invested in ME, and then when I finally did what I had to do, it would destroy you. I know it would because you’re such a big-hearted person. And that’s why I couldn’t bring it up. I couldn’t let you get too attached to me. That’s why I kept asking you that, as much as I know it started getting on your nerves. I just had to know. I had to be sure.
So when we talked this afternoon (BTW sorry for pestering you and I really hope whatever the crisis is works out) I knew for sure you would be okay and that it was time. I’d been thinking about it this week a lot and I realized we were probably getting to the point of this lasting too long. Time itself would cause you to get too attached to me. So I finally got the gumption to do it. And today is the day.
And I know you’re mad. And I know that you’re also probably hurt because I know that you do care about me, Seth McCollum. You care about me because you’re a good person and you care about people. That’s why you write these articles about sad people with sad lives that you have to spend a bunch of time with instead of being a regular news reporter. That’s why you chose to spend so much time with me. And that means everything to me.
This is not easy, Seth McCollum. It’s not easy. It’s actually really hard. And since I’m being 110% honest with you right now, I’ll admit there is a part of me that doesn’t want to do this. There’s a part of me that’s hoping you’re about to burst through my front door again and stop me. But that part of me is just a wish. It’s a wish that things could be different. It’s a wish that I’d had a different life. It’s a wish that I’d had different parents. It’s a wish that Jade had been more careful on her way to school that morning. It’s a wish that I had met you as a different person than the one I’ve become. It's a wish that all of that had been different so that when I met you, we could’ve been different. But that’s all it is. A wish. Because if all of that had been different, I never would’ve been in the fountain that day, you never would’ve followed me across the metroplex, you never would’ve wanted to write an article about me, and we never would’ve had all this time together. And this time we’ve had together has been a sweet gift to me at the end of my life. It was a gift you gave me. Thank you. From the bottom of my sad, little heart.
I hope you read Charlotte’s Web again.
“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
Please find a nice home for Grey. I love you, Seth McCollum.
I feel like a storm. Like a hurricane. I could hit something. Destroy things. I could leap off this porch and sprint to the dilapidated pile of wood and tear it down with my bare hands. I could pick up the rock and pitch it through the front window of her house. I could punch the concrete siding until my fists were obliterated into floppy, bloody, masses of flesh.
But what I really wish I could do was argue with her because what the actual fuck did I just read?
Number one, I want to say to her, I do believe people should be allowed to choose what they want for their lives, but I don’t think this is really what you wanted. I think you had a chemical imbalance that made you think this was what you wanted. And if you’d just taken your God-damned pills the way they were prescribed to you, they would have corrected that. That’s what I and all of the people at the psyche ward were trying to get through your thick skull that whole time. But you were too hasty and stubborn, and now you’re fucking dead and I hate you.
Number two, I also want to say, I love you. I’m in love with you too, and I’ve never been in love before either, and why, why, why, why didn’t I just fucking say it? I’m so mad at you and mad at me and none of this had to be this way. I didn’t know, Charlie. If I knew… Jesus Christ. We both felt the same way and we were both too chicken shit to say so. You’re wrong, Charlie. It would have been enough. We would’ve been happy. That would’ve been enough. I know it would’ve been enough. I just needed to know and you just needed to know too.
I press the paper to my face, gripping it so hard that it tears in places, and I want to scream.
She’s dead because we weren’t communicating. She’s dead—for all intents and purposes—because of a misunderstanding. This didn’t have to happen and I didn’t believe a feeling of helplessness this intense existed.
The scent is also intense. Everything is intense; her words most intense of all. And it’s all way too much, and I am not a man who cries, but I can’t fucking stop myself.
With the letter still smashed against my face like a puny barrier between me and my friends in the car, who I know are watching, I unleash all of it. I sob. I howl. I wail. I am hysterical and soaking her last words with snot and tears, and I look like a lunatic, a head case, a nut job, but I couldn’t care less.
Out of nowhere, there is a sudden sting on my arm and a guttural growl, and I recoil. I pull the letter from my face. There is a sizeable scratch on my forearm and next to me is the gray cat.
He hisses loudly, his mouth wide and his fangs bared.
“What the fuck, man?”
He hisses again and swats at me a second time.
“I’m sorry!” I holler. “I tried! She’s not coming back this time!”
He utters another low growl.
“She’s not coming back.”
He bobs his head forward and squeaks, placing his paw on my thigh. I think that I’m probably batshit crazy because we’re staring at each other directly in the eyes and I’m suddenly connected to this asshole of a cat on a level that feels spiritual.
“I’m sorry.”
He hops into my lap, claws his front paws up the front of my shirt, and lays his chin in the crook of my neck. He begins to purr, intermittently uttering little squeaks, and his body language shows no intention of detaching himself anytime soon. I stroke the soft fur on his back and swear I can feel every ounce of his pain.
“I’m really sorry, Grey. I’m so sorry. I loved her, too. I miss her, too.”
He mewls and nuzzles the top of his head against the bottom of my chin, and there we sit. Holding each other, crying in our own ways, both of us grasping at straws to cope with the pain of a loss that shouldn’t have happened. Missing someone who had every reason to still be here.
This is what suicide really looks like. It’s not the empty pill bottles, it’s not a razor blade, it’s not a smoking gun, it’s honestly not even about the person who killed themselves, not anymore. Not after they’re gone. Once they’re gone, suicide looks like its aftermath. And the aftermath is somebody crumbled pathetically under the weight of grief that they didn’t ask for and that someone else’s choice thrust upon them. Suicide is the transfer of one person’s pain to another person by way of untimely and unnecessary death. And because of that, when someone you love is a victim of suicide, so are you.
Charlie believed she existed in a vacuum. She believed she wasn’t going to hurt anyone because she believed there was nobody left who cared enough about her that they would be hurt by her taking her own life.
She believed that, even though I was right
there. With her. In her house. In her bed. She believed that even though, as I’m weeping on her doorstep and hugging her mourning cat, two people who barely knew her are sitting in a car crying, too.
She believed that even though Ginny Baker had to duck into a supply closet during her shift, cover her face with a towel, and silently sob.
She believed that even though the kindly old janitor is never going look at a bag of M&M’s again without feeling sad.
She believed that even though a couple of days from now, Esther Harrison is going to get off the phone with me and have to close her office door for a good thirty minutes while she attempts to pull herself together.
She believed that even though AJ from the corner store is going to remove his greasy ball cap and hold it against his chest.
She believed that even though the bar owner and his wife are going to stare at me with a crestfallen expression and close the bar early on a Saturday evening.
She believed that even though all of those people are going to show up for her funeral, along with two hundred plus others who will read my follow-up article-slash-obituary and want to be there as a sign of solidarity.
Charlie believed she existed in a vacuum, but she was wrong. None of us exist in a vacuum. None of us are completely alone. There is always someone, somewhere who is willing to take us by the hand and say, “I’m here. I’ll walk with you,” but they can’t do that if they don’t know. And because of that we have to be brave enough to take one step toward them and hold out our hand.
She didn’t exist in a vacuum, but it feels like she created one. There’s a hole in my heart that wasn’t there seven months ago. A little Charlie-shaped hole that aches during certain times of the day, on certain days of the week, when I pass by certain parts of town, when I come home from work to a cat who’s a loveable asshole. There’s no antidote for the ache; no patch for the hole. It’s just permanently there. Just like she’s permanently gone.
