“I noticed there aren’t as many vodka bottles in the trash lately,” she said.
The trash room in the condo was down the hall. The only exercise June got was taking her trash there. Since she refused to use her walker or a cane, taking out the trash became a full-fledged outing. She tied up a garbage bag and held it in her right hand. The left hand steadied her by inching ever so slowly down the outside wall. When she reached a doorway, she stopped, planted her feet firmly, and balanced herself before taking the three of four steps needed before her hand reached the wall again.
The door to the trash room was left propped open because the other residents saw her and took mercy on her. She left her bag on the floor or dropped the vodka bottle in the recycle bin before repeating the walk home. June headed straight to the patio to smoke once that chore was completed.
“You can’t tell her we called you. You must promise us,” Rosemary begged.
A picture of June with a cast iron frying pan in her hand chasing Rosemary down the walkway entered my mind. What on earth were these people afraid of? How could she possibly bring any harm to them? She only wanted to be left alone to die.
Since moving either Richard or I called her every few days. Richard told her stupid jokes like “Why wouldn’t the cat climb the tree?” June would think a few seconds before giving up.
Richard would say, “Because he’s afraid of the bark.”
The two of them would laugh and giggle like they were in the same room. I’d ask if she needed anything. Once she said she couldn’t find her glasses so I put a couple pairs of cheap readers in the overnight mail. We tried as best we could to make sure she didn’t fret.
I answered that question for myself. Responsibility. June must have spoken to her friends often about how I had abandoned her. They surely agreed and had no qualms about calling the nearest relative to relieve themselves of liability. The family must take care of aging members not the neighbors. They had come to her rescue this time but that was their limit. The ball had been thrown into my lap. It was now my turn to do something about her. They did the right thing by not honoring June’s wish to keep a secret from me.
“I won’t tell her. Don’t worry I’ll figure out something.” I had no idea what I was going to do next, but it was clear something had to be done.
***
I admit I waited a day before I called June in deference to Rosemary’s request. That is how totally clueless I was about how to help her. Was it selfish on my part? I’ll say selfish. I have a long history of selfish. Even though I had plenty of free time, I wasn’t working, had a good car to get me there, and plenty of friends in the area who would love for me to visit. I simply didn’t want to go. Richard and I had found a new home and didn’t want to be dragged back into the old. I really had abandoned June, like she told everyone I had. I jumped overboard into a new part of the ocean, a place she thought too difficult to navigate at this time of her life. I had the life ring ready and waiting only she couldn’t see it and didn’t have the energy to reach for it.
“Hi June. It’s Linda.” For years anytime I called I simply started talking without introducing myself. Lately I began by saying my name.
“How are you?” she answered. Her voice sounded more soft than usual with a slight tremor. Different.
“I’m good. How are you?” I said.
“I’m so confused. I don’t know what I’m to do,” she answered.
“What are you confused about?” I asked.
“My desk is a mess and I don’t know what to do about it.” I heard her breath hitch. “I think I fell. Joe came and helped me up but ever since then I’ve been confused.”
I didn’t let on I knew about the fall. I found myself under Rosemary’s spell not wanting to stir up June’s anger. Beside the stubbornness June also had a temper. When it was in full swing, no one wanted to be around. That went for my father too.
“How about I come down to see you and get you un-confused?” I delivered my well thought out line with ease.
“Would you do that for me?” she whimpered.
“Of course I would, June. How about I come down on Monday and I’ll spend the week with you?”
“That would be nice,” she murmured.
I wouldn’t arrive soon enough to satisfy the neighbors but June didn’t suspect I knew anything. That’s the way I wanted to keep it.
After I lined up a full week for June, interviewing home aids, taking her shopping, getting her bank accounts in order and bills paid. I called her on Sunday to remind her I was coming.
“I know you’re coming. Will you call me before you leave home?” she asked.
“Of course. See you tomorrow around three,” I said.
“I’m looking forward to it,” she replied.
I had some appointments in the morning so my plan was to leave after lunch. I packed my things in the car, kissed Richard and Ginger goodbye and drove off. With one hundred and forty miles to organize the thoughts in my head, I second guessed the arrangements I made to help June. Were they even necessary? Yesterday she sounded like herself, lucid and clear.
I know I had promised to call her when I left home but being unsure of her sense of time, I opted to wait until I reached Fort Pierce. Fort Pierce is the halfway point to Delray. Interstate I 95 and the Florida Turnpike meet here and the exit has one fast food joint after another with a few sleazy hotels and a video sex shop sprinkled in. I pulled into Burger King.
“June. It’s Linda.” She picked up the phone on the first ring.
“Are you on your way?” she asked.
“Yes. I should be at your house about three thirty.” I responded.
“Ok. I’ll see you then. Do you have your key?”
“I do,” I said, and the phone went dead.
Clouds loomed thick and gray the entire drive, adding to the feeling that two hours in the car felt more like two days. The sky spit rain as I pulled into the parking lot of the condo. Parking spaces were numbered in some kind of code. The theory being since the apartment number didn’t match the parking spot number, no one would be able to figure out whose car was whose. I thought of this sarcastically as a brilliant security policy.
I felt relieved when Rosemary’s red Cadillac was parked in its rightful place and not in June’s space as it often was. It seems June who never owned a car or learned to drive one, owned a much more desirable parking place without the branches of a dirty oak tree hanging overhead, waiting to drop its leaves all over the unsuspecting automobile. Thunder rumbled in the distance as I pulled into parking space number 218.
A stranger held the lobby door open for me so I didn’t need to buzz the apartment. The wheels of my suitcase clicked along the Chattahoochee walkway once I reached the fifth floor. The darkness of the approaching storm cast pallor across the building’s catwalk. I raised my hand to knock at apartment 512 and abruptly stopped. The door was open, slightly ajar but open.
Whenever inside June threw the deadbolt and hooked the chain no matter what time of day or the number of minutes before she intended to leave again. The door was never left unlocked let alone open, no matter what.
“June?” I yelled before pushing the door open. “June?”
The blinds across the sliding glass doors at the far end of the room were drawn. No lights were turned on. My eyes struggled to adjust to the afternoon darkness. I could barely make out her small figure walking across the living room toward the bedroom. She didn’t answer me. Still wearing her nightgown, I sensed something terribly wrong.
“June. What’s going on?” Why aren’t you dressed?”
“You made good time, didn’t you?” She stood at the end of the hallway blocking my view of the living room.
“I did. What’s the matter?” I asked.
The skin on her face drooped like old damask draperies hung long ago to frame a sagging window.
The ravages of sun and cigarette smoke settled in and made themselves at home invading every crack and crevice. She wore none of her usual gobs of liquid makeup in a shade just a tad too orange leaving a demarcation line between the jawbone and her pale neck. Her usual drawn on eyebrows, the right one higher and more rounded than the left, giving her a permanent surprised look were missing too. A blank and wrinkled canvas stared back at me.
“You can’t come in,” she yelled. “I don’t want you here.”
My hands started to shake.
“I thought this would be over by now.” Her wrinkles were now a shade of crimson.
“What would be over?” The gut feeling I had at the finding the door ajar had been right. Something was not as it should be.
“I just want to go to sleep. I’m so confused. I don’t want to do this anymore,” she cried.
For a split second a crack of lightening lit up the room. Booming thunder soon followed.
“That’s why I came June, to help you get un-confused. We’re going to get you some help.” A landslide of boulders tumbled in my gut while an avalanche of unrecognizable thoughts roared through my brain.
“I don’t want any help. I’ve had a good life. I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m going to kill myself,” she screamed as loud as her raspy, worn out vocal cords would allow.
Frozen. My feet stuck to the floor, arms stiff at my sides, but my brain raced a thousand hundred yard dashes, one right after the other, over and over. My own mother pulled this same stunt on her children many years ago, shortly after her divorce. I didn’t know what to do about it then and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do about it now.
The memory of Mom going off the deep end one spring day when both of my sisters were home from college and we were living in the apartment played out like a movie. Mom screamed and then threw the car keys at Susan saying she’d better take the car otherwise Mom was going to take it and drive it into a ditch so she could kill herself. Susan held me to shield me from the terror while she sobbed uncontrollably. Eventually the four of us left Mom at home and Susan with the keys in hand, ended up at the movie theater to see Gone With the Wind. It’s a long movie and we even stayed to watch the credits. When we got back home, Mom was calm and cool and dinner was waiting for us on the table.
At a young age, I didn’t understand the gravity my sisters felt, and that’s why I used the word ‘stunt’ to describe it. My mother threatened many things as a way to keep us in line and I learned over the years I rarely had to take her seriously. Being the youngest, I exerted much more apathy over these threats than any of my siblings dared to do.
In this case however, the looming thunder and lightening added a menacing pall over the situation. I wondered if I had heard June correctly. I came to help her live out the rest of her life comfortably, not to find her dead in her bed. I’ve never seen a dead person except in a casket at a funeral. That’s a far different experience than finding someone dead in his or her own home. I didn’t really want June to be the first. Plus death at your own hand is pretty messy in my mind. Was June tricking me or was she serious? I wasn’t able to tell.
Here I was standing in a dark hallway, in an apartment reeking of cigarette smoke, staring into a face that would scare the living daylights out of anyone in a Halloween haunted house, thinking what in the hell am I supposed to do now? I’m sorry dear Lord for swearing but I’m really at a loss right now. I came here to offer my assistance to get June organized and back in control of her life. Now I realized, I waited too long.
June pushed her way past me and sat down at the table in the kitchen. I followed. After lighting up a cigarette, she grabbed a note from the counter and forced it into my hand.
6/12/13
Dear Linda,
I’m sorry to leave things in such a mess. I’m totally confused and just want to go to sleep. I’ve had a good life. No regrets.
Have to smoke - no living facility. I’ve never smoked a cigarette I didn’t enjoy.
No funeral and no obituary. Please respect my wishes.
I love you,
June
P.S. I’m well aware that smoking can shorten my life.
I’m sitting here while she blows smoke in my face reading her suicide note. That is not how I expected to be spending this time with June. I thought we’d stroll around Macy’s together looking for some new clothes or go to her old haunt for dinner, Outback for a juicy steak. Instead I’m now in shock staring at a piece of paper reading what June wanted to be her final words to me.
Every Saturday at the grocery store, I waited for June to check out. She asked the cashier to get her a carton of cigarettes and usually suffered a lecture from the clerk or a person standing in line behind her. She hated that. I did too. I never condoned tobacco and never took up the habit myself. That first illicit cigarette I tried as a teenager behind a bush down the street left me feeling sick to my stomach. No need for me to continue with a habit that left me wanting to throw up and not wanting any more. My mother took up smoking after her divorce. At the time, she said smoking made a divorcee look cool and sexy. Now I think about it, she tried desperately to keep up with June.
Sometimes I think people just need to shut up and mind their own business. Especially in the grocery store. What if she’d been overweight? Would they tell her not to buy the bag of potato chips, two blocks of cheddar cheese and a half-gallon of chocolate ice cream in her cart? I doubt it. They were just pissed because she held up the line by writing a check and asking the cashier to go to the service desk for the carton of poison while they not so patiently waited.
“I know you mean well, but I’m not leaving home.” She pulled in a long drag on one of her signature skinny, slim cigarettes. “I’m sorry to do this to you.” Smoked curled out from between her lips.
“How were you going to do it?” I asked, afraid she had a loaded gun tucked under her nightgown.
“I’ll put a plastic bag over my head, pull it tight around my neck and that’ll do it,” she announced.
Obviously she gave this some thought. But a plastic bag? June loved to watch Law and Order and read mystery novels one right after the other. Tying a bag around her neck was the best she could come up with? Downing a bottle of Tylenol would have been a lot less painful and much easier. She had told me many times; she only wanted to go to sleep. That would do it.
“I want you to help me,” she begged. She took another long drag, exhaling the smoke directly toward my face, no longer bothering to turn her head away from me in an act of polite smoking etiquette.
I stopped breathing, my heart ceased to beat. Frozen in place I stared seeing nothing. Not the swirling smoke rings, not the dirty dishes on the kitchen table, not the sad, droopy face calmly waiting for my answer. My body sat stiffly in the wobbly kitchen chair, my mind floated far away from the turmoil.
“June, I love you but I can’t be a part of helping you kill yourself. I understand how hard this is and I only want you to be somewhere safe, where you don’t have to worry about anything,” I said. “Do you know what you are asking me to do?”
As much as I cared about June, I couldn’t possibly help her end her life. She obviously wasn’t thinking clearly if she thought I could. I understood she’s angry and frustrated but after spending close to fifty years of our lives interacting with each other she knew me better than that.
She banged her fists on the table. “Then I want you to leave. Right now.”
Just like that her mind took a u-turn from rational to erratic. Not that threatening suicide is rational, but she wasn’t spitting nails at me when she explained her method of choice. Her eyes turned red and glared with anger. I stood, grabbed my suitcase and opened the door.
“Call me if you change your mind. Either way I’ll be back in the morning.”
With June’s anger at such a fevered pitch, I feared she might strike out at me.
In her fragile state, if I had to restrain her in any way she could go into a full blown cardiac arrest. I didn’t want to end up in a physical fight and the way she pounded on the table I felt that was coming. She wanted to end her life right there and then in any way she could and morally I couldn’t be a part of that. The child taught to respect the adult walked out afraid as a coward.
“I love you,” a frail soft voice called out as the wheels of my suitcase clicked along the walkway. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t make myself do it.
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
- Winston Churchill
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I found a hotel nearby with a room available for the night. Numb, I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling for what seemed like hours. Nothing in my life or in my relationship with June prepared me for this. My father, I thought, would be appalled. He’d say “Junie, you’re being ridiculous,” and she’d stop. Maybe she stewed for a while without showing it, but in the end it appeared to me, she did what he said. Even though I was my father’s daughter, I never had that kind of power over my stepmother.
At some point, I got up, got ready for bed and crawled under the covers. My cell phone rang. I held my breath before answering it.
“Linda.” It was June. “I’m not going to do it.”
I heaved out a sigh of relief. “OK.” I said.
“But I’m not leaving my house. Do you hear me?” She spit the words into the phone.
“I hear you June. I’ll come over tomorrow and we’ll talk about it,” I said. I already had a schedule planned for the week and I wasn’t cancelling anything that pertained to June and her care.
“I know you and Richard mean well but I don’t need your help,” she said.
“I love you, June. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I love you.” Click went the phone.
This brief conversation was meant to give me some relief but it didn’t. I relived the events of the day in my head. What could I have done differently? Should I have called the police since I feared she was a threat to herself? If I had stayed against her wishes, would she have hit me? I’d never seen her that angry. Would her anger have killed her in another way dispensing with the need of a plastic bag?
A Bittersweet Goodnight Page 18
