Suicide Supper Club

by Rhett DeVane

  Abby reached for her coffee and knocked over the cup. “Crap!” She mopped the desk with a handful of tissues. The printer beeped twice and spit out a stack of schedules.

  “Really, Sophie? In red ink no less?”

  It was going to be a shoot-fire fine day, a typical cliché of a Monday.

  The fast food tuna fish and veggie sub Abby wolfed down in about five minutes threatened to repeat throughout the early afternoon. That’s what she got for not picking off the green pepper slivers. She liked them; they did not like her. No one in the office. Good. She bellowed a belch. Give it a while, and it’d start from the other end. At the rate she was going, Abby would do more damage to the Earth’s ozone layer than a herd of cows and a baker’s dozen of over-sized SUVs.

  She dug in her purse and found a partial roll of stomach mints. The foil-lined wrapper clung to one side, the other open to God-knows-what. Desperation called for drastic measures, even eating soiled antacid tablets. She popped two into her mouth.

  A tap sounded at the glass reception window. What now? Couldn’t be the first patient of the afternoon. She speed-chewed the antacids and swallowed. It was only twelve-thirty, still a half-hour of her lunch break left. Abby cupped her hand over her mouth, checked for bad breath. Forgot to order it without onions again too. Sheesh.

  She slid the window open slightly, then pushed it back all the way. Postal carrier Ben Calhoun handed a neat pile of envelopes through the window. “Sorry to interrupt your lunch, Abby.”

  Ben Calhoun had the kind of face most normal women instantly trusted. A big brother kind of face. Blue-gray eyes, a thin nose, and an even, white smile corralled by a thick handlebar mustache. His light brown hair, thin at the temples, was neatly combed.

  The rest of Ben’s body reminded Abby of the character Ichabod Crane from that old Disney movie, all spindly arms and legs, and so tall he had to stoop forward to enter doorways. Add to the look, the slate-colored postal carrier stripe-down-the-side walking shorts, and Ben approached comical. His browned legs were shapely and not overly hairy, a saving grace.

  “Had to pick up my pace a bit. Taking off early for a doctor’s appointment over in Tallahassee.” He handed over a second stack of magazines and flyers.

  “Nothing serious with your health, I hope?” Abby prayed none of the bread had grouted her front teeth.

  “Nope. Yearly check-up. That and the eye doctor. I try my best to make multiple appointments whenever I have to go to Tallahassee. Traffic’s awful right now. The college students are back. They drive like sprayed cockroaches.” Ben laughed. Not loud and boisterous like so many Southern men.

  Words crowded Abby’s throat. Who are you, Ben? What do you think about life, politics, music, art, the world? Maybe we could . . . share lunch one day. Her smile quivered then failed.

  Ben adjusted his messenger bag. “You have a good remainder of the day, now.” He stepped from the front door, Ichabod navigating a game of Twister. Abby vaguely recalled him having a wife and kid. The wife had died a few years back from some kind of sudden thing. Cancer? Stroke?

  Ben seemed to be such a steady man. In an old Western, he would’ve played the part of the expedition leader, rounding wagons in a circle, protecting the women and children while he took aim at the raiding party. Why in the heck couldn’t she have ended up with someone like him?

  Abby couldn’t force herself to get past the lump that formed every time she tried to talk to a man, even one as non-threatening as Ben. Only one person to blame for that. William Harvey Hansel. His name growled in her head.

  The long hand on the black and white wall clock clicked past the twelve mark. One o’clock. As if some kind of hunting horn had sounded, three lines rang at once. She stifled a belch, took a sip of water.

  Weary sadness settled over Abby, her private shroud. Alone, alone, alone. And she’d stay that way. Her chest constricted and she forced herself to breathe and jab the first lighted button.

  Loiscell Pickering paused in her foyer and looked at the grouping of family photos. There I am, new wife, not a mother yet. The fuchsia cocktail dress, those pumps dyed to match, even the earrings the same shade. Thick wavy auburn hair. Shamrock green eyes. Porcelain skin with dots of rose on high cheekbones. Cupid bow lips painted liquid pink, smiling. Tall, leggy—five foot eight—not an ounce of fat anywhere. The next photo—at Panama City Beach. Pin-up posing across a stripped towel like Marilyn Munroe. Mid-thirties. All boobs and cleavage. Where had that woman gone?

  “I ought to go on a TV talk show. A woman’s trip down the hill.” She pulled a worn pair of gardening gloves from a basket by the door.

  Disease had wrecked her body since those pictures. Loiscell had noticed the first lump beneath her right armpit one evening as she showered off the afternoon’s sweat and garden grime. About the size of a pea, it rolled a little beneath the skin.

  Fifty-two years old at the time, she worked at Florida State Hospital for barely above minimum wage. The kids had grown and moved away, and her husband was deceased from a heart attack. Two rounds of chemotherapy and radiation later, minus her right breast, Loiscell got her wish to shed the pounds childbirth and menopause had gifted. Her appetite vanished. Food tasted like moldy cotton. Pounds melted away.

  Some prayers the devil answered.

  After the bone-weary tiredness subsided, she had rebounded. Lots of fresh vegetables and fruit. Exercise. Hair growing back in. Face ruddy with sun. She begged vintage rose bush clippings from fellow gardeners, added hardy native plants, and delivered handfuls of cut flowers to neighbors.

  Five years passed—victory over the Big C!—before Loiscell noticed the thickened, stippled skin beneath her left nipple. Odd. Back to the oncologist. More x-rays, ultrasound, needle biopsy. “Mrs. Pickering, your cancer has returned.” Left breast lopped off like spoiled meat. Follow-up chemo and radiation. The energy to heal her wounds sucked her hair from its follicles. It grew back in nappy dull red patches, crisp-brittle.

  Loiscell grabbed a slip of bright cotton from her collection of bandanas and tied it around her head. Wispy hair stuck out around the edges. People associated her with the hair wraps—the bolder the print, the better. Her new signature look.

  She stepped outside, where the heavy morning air promised another day of intense heat. Loiscell loved her yard. Two ancient live oak trees cradled the sky, their sweeping arms draped with long strands of Spanish moss. Loiscell moved to the side of the house, to rows of rose bushes—her babies—passion red, dusty pink, coral, yellow. Happy little plants since she’d moved them to the spot beside the rock pathway. Roses needed full sun licking their barbed arms. The fenced-in back yard was less formal, reminiscent of an English country garden. Loiscell had planned it that way, the mix of tamed and random. She started at one end of the rose patch, deadheading the spent blooms. The little darlings did better when some parts were clipped off.

  A trickle of perspiration oozed into the space her cleavage had once occupied. Loiscell ran one hand absently across her flat chest, a chest that looked like the pounded, scarred armor of some medieval knight. Should she get tattoos to add a little artsy touch? Reconstruction—a new set of insurance-funded boobs? No. No more surgery.

  She spent the next two hours working her way through the flowerbeds.

  “Hey!” a familiar voice called.

  Loiscell stood upright, arched her back to uncramp the muscles, and shielded her eyes with one gloved hand. “What brings you out this morning? I thought this was . . .” She tapped her chin. “What is Monday? Bathroom day, right?”

  Sheila grinned. “That’s Tuesday. Monday is kitchen day. Done. Got started early. Thought I’d stop by and see if you needed anything.”

  “Not unless you have a cure for this devil-spawn dollar weed. Wicked stuff grows behind me as I pull it up.”

  “I brought some fresh cinnamon rolls.” Sheila held up a quilted carrier.

  Loiscell shucked the garden gloves and wiped her face with a rag. “It’s about time for
me to go in out of this heat. I got out here so early, I forgot to eat breakfast. One of those rolls sounds perfect. My stomach’s beginning to feel like my throat’s been cut.”

  Loiscell led the way into the two-bedroom cottage.

  “Bet this bothers you,” Loiscell said when she noticed Sheila’s gaze taking in the room.

  Sheila’s hand fluttered to her heart. “Why would you say that?”

  “My daughter says this house is over-stuffed. But I love my books and mementos.”

  “I’ve always found it welcoming, especially the flowers.” Sheila walked around the room, touching first an embroidered pillow, then a chunk of pink quartz. She leaned down to sniff a tea rose blossom. “I wish my house could look like this.”

  Sheila removed her sunglasses. Loiscell noted the yellow-green and blue smudge beneath one of her friend’s eyes. “Mercy, where’d you get that shiner?”

  The tips of Sheila’s fingers flickered to the tender skin. “Oh that . . . I was scrubbing the baseboards and lost my balance. Fell right into that set of spindle candleholders by the hearth.”

  “Good thing you didn’t put your eye out!” Loiscell noticed how Sheila moved with stiff, mincing steps. “You no more get rid of one scrape, then you have another.”

  Sheila’s lips stretched into a tight smile. “Yep. That’s me. Silly, clumsy me.”

  Loiscell studied her for a moment before motioning toward the kitchen. Sheila set the platter of cinnamon rolls on the white wooden table and moved to put on a fresh pot of coffee. Wasn’t it wonderful, how true female friends knew each other’s kitchen cupboards like their own?

  “Heard they’re starting a yoga class at the Women’s Club,” Loiscell said. “Might be good for both of us. Meditation. Flexibility. Could even help your balance.”

  Sheila’s gaze dropped to her feet. “I’ll check with Glenn.”

  Nine weeks before suicide, Saturday

  Glenn Bruner’s favorite breakfast spread out before him, cooked halfway decent for once: three eggs over easy, two long links of country sausage, grits, two buttermilk biscuits, homemade fig preserves, and strong black coffee thick with cream.

  “Glenn, may I ask you something?” Sheila said, her voice soft.

  “Humph?”

  “They’re starting up a yoga class at the Women’s Club. Loiscell asked me to come. On Monday nights from six-thirty until about eight.”

  “Yoga? You?” He laughed then took a loud swill of coffee.

  “It’s supposed to be good for balance and flexibility.”

  God, he hated it when her voice went all high and squeaky like that. He chewed a hunk of biscuit heavy with butter. “You are damned klutzy, for sure.”

  Sheila poured more coffee. When he met her gaze, the bruise accused him in ways his wife never would. Leave it to Sheila to ruin his morning.

  “Monday’s poker night. What do you expect me to feed the boys? Potato chips and dip out of a dadgum can ain’t going to cut it.”

  “It won’t be any trouble at all. I can make things ahead and set them out before I leave.”

  Might be kind of good to have her away from the house. She was always hovering, simpering. Big Glenn’s advice popped into his mind: “Women have to be kept in line, son. Otherwise they’ll make your life a living hell. Give ’em a little affection time to time. But never, never let them get the upper hand. Key is to keep them off balance.”

  Maybe it was time to throw a dog a bone. “You can go. Long as it doesn’t cause any problems. You hear?”

  Sheila smiled. Brushed his cheek with one of her cold dry kisses.

  “I’m leaving for the day,” he said on his way out of the door a few minutes later, not stopping to gauge her reaction. Sheila knew better than to ask why, where, or when he would be home. Woman visited retards and old people for the church on Saturdays, and he wanted no part of that.

  Driving—whether in his truck or boat—gave him time to think. Without Sheila’s mousy pestering. Without those dipsticks at the prison barking orders. Glenn eased the metallic-fleck, cherry-red F150 pick-up back into the right lane. Good thing CR 269 toward Greensboro had little traffic. This time of day, he was lucky to pass one car going the opposite way. What made a person’s mind keep doing something like steering a truck when he was busy thinking? One of them mysteries of life.

  “You’d be proud of how my choice for a wife has turned out,” he said to his father’s ghost. “Way to success is not to go after the purty girls, you told me. No sir! They are trouble with a capital T. Get a plain one, just not butt-ugly. She’ll be so happy to have a man, she’ll roll over.” Need something better, go find it. Like that little whore unit secretary who’d give him a blow job in the supply closet, for a pack of Virginia Slims. Gotta admire a working gal.

  “You need a little change, go buy yourself a little strange.”

  Good one, boy, he praised himself. You sound more and more like Big Glenn every day. Glenn took a swig of his first cold beer of the day and laughed.

  “Sheila lives and breathes for me. She has nothing to complain about. She don’t have to work and has a roof overhead and food in her belly. And I ain’t got to worry about her slipping out on me.” Who would have her? Took booze and a dark room for him to touch her.

  Correcting Sheila was like kicking a dog, and always left a scrim of guilt. A few kind words would soothe her. A good roll in bed. All in all, Sheila was easy. But she could make him so damned mad. Like this morning and that bruise around her eye, purple-black. Could’ve covered that shit up with some make-up.

  He pounded the steering wheel. “Why does she have to push me?”

  The rage always came over him like an oily black curtain. When it lifted, some part of his wife wasn’t the same as before. Small fingerprint-sized marks on her upper arm. A blush of ruby on her face or under one of her eyes. Only once had Glenn succeeded in breaking a bone in her hand. Was it his fault that she was so fragile?

  What kind of hot babe would’ve been his if the accident had never happened? His senior year of high school had been his shining time. Glenn Bruner—linebacker, bulked-up big man on campus. Rumor had it, he would be a draft pick for FSU football.

  Then life went to hell. One instant, one split second, changed the rest of his life.

  Hit below the knee on the right side during one of the final games of the season. Surgery, pins, and hardware put him back together. He would walk, but he could not run. The college and pro football dreams dried up like sunbaked road kill.

  So what’d he have now? Work as a guard, minimum-security prison for juvenile boys. Come home to a pain in the ass wife, eat, drink, fish, hunt, and train at the camp. His life: one flaming hot pile of crap. ’Cept maybe for the fishing and hunting and drinking. And weekends at the camp.

  Glenn glanced skyward for a moment. “Help me out here, Daddy. Got my eye on a purdy little 18-foot bass boat, painted to match this here pick-up. Got a sweet Mercury outboard that will throw a tall fishtail of water way out behind. Yes sir, I can see me flying across Lake Seminole!”

  On his salary, the vessel loomed so far beyond him as to be a blip on the horizon. But by the time Glenn turned into the chained entrance to the top-secret paramilitary training camp in the deep piney woods, the boat was so fixed in his mind, it might as well have been sitting in a new custom covered garage beside his house.

  He’d find a way of getting it, or harelip Hell trying. Man’s gotta have something.

  Abby McKenzie glanced around the living room and blew out a breath. Clutter infested every corner, every surface. Hers. Her parents’. Mixed into a mish-mash. So organized at the office, why not here?

  At one time, she had dreamed of a spacious house, decorated like a House Beautiful picture. Glass tabletops and fake plants that never turned brown at the edges. Real framed artwork. A row of gleaming colored art glass in front of a long window. When the morning light hit just right, the room would dance with rainbows.

  Today, she would do it. W
here to start? She kicked a tall stack of empty cardboard boxes down the hall. Sort and pitch, just like they did on those hoarder reality shows.

  Abby opened the door on the nightmarish third bedroom closet. Take a deep breath, start at the top and work down. When she tugged on a plastic storage bin, an eight by ten wooden frame slid forward, teetered for a moment, and fell toward her upturned face. One corner smashed into her upper lip.

  “Yowsa!”

  She dashed to the bathroom. A line of warm blood snaked to her chin. Face wounds bled like nobody’s business, especially the lips and soft tissues inside the mouth. Abby pressed a piece of toilet paper to the cut long enough to slow the hemorrhage. The slice was slight, less than a couple of millimeters. She gently lifted her upper lip and checked the incisors. Everything looked intact.

  “This is going to swell.”

  Minutes later, she returned to the offensive closet with a small ice pack held to her lips, ready to work one-handed. Her family’s life history lived on these shelves. Old framed photographs. Cardboard boxes—most without labels—leaned haphazardly. Coats and jackets. A broken telescope. Her father’s yard shoes. A cracked mirror. Throw pillows in out-of-date colors and patterns. A flat basketball.

  Something had shifted when her parents died—Father, then her mom two years later. Abby had moved from the cramped one-bedroom apartment where she had lived since her ill-fated marriage, into the wooden-framed forest green home of her childhood. The accumulated bits and pieces from her parents’ marriage and life curled around her like a glove, or noose.

  She shut the door with her free hand. Might as well start in the most important spot, if she was going to do this. She kicked the stack of cardboard boxes in front of her to the master bedroom. Her lip throbbed.

  The ghost of her mother’s floral cologne stopped her the moment she opened the closet’s bi-fold doors. Why hadn’t she swallowed the pain and done this years ago?