The Belief in Angels (47 page)

It’s exhilarating! I can’t remember a moment in my life I’ve felt more in control, and I’m relishing the moment.

I glance at the clock. Close to midnight. I hadn’t thought about a time, but midnight seems an appropriate moment. I came into the world at 11:59 p.m., according to Wendy.

I swallow the first three pills—the small white ones. These are from the prescription bottle labeled
Seconal Sodium,
and I know they’re barbiturates. There are many of them spread out on the rug. Several others, unfamiliar to me, are from the film canisters full of unlabeled drugs. Many of them are sedatives—at least I’m pretty sure they are, based on the way they affect Wendy when she takes them. I’m ready to take my chances. Besides, I have enough barbiturates to seal the deal even if I choose a few pills that might not have the desired effect.

Next to the rug sits a huge bottle of Orange Fanta, which I purchased yesterday for this purpose. I am going out with my favorite beverage.

I hadn’t thought about a last meal except to note that the pills will probably work better if I have an empty stomach. This is not an isolated experience for me, dietarily speaking, anyway. Food hasn’t appealed to me much lately.

I usually have trouble swallowing pills, so I place each of the larger pills separately on my tongue. Once I swallow them down, I make my next selections. The design I created with the pills was more about following the pattern on the rug and less about putting them in order of intended intake. I select three more of the small white pills and swallow them with a sip of Fanta.

My bed is carefully made. Two letters and two books sit atop the bedspread. One letter for Wendy, one for David. One book for Leigh, one for Timothy. There are no apologies, no blame, and no explanations beyond one central expression of truth: I have no desire to be alive any longer.

I swallow another of the larger pills. I have no idea if forty pills are going to
accomplish anything, but I figure if it doesn’t work, I can go back to the source and continue the quest. I decide to quicken the poison. I imagine the pills are candy. I take a few more at a time, and fairly quickly, with the help of the Fanta, I finish.

The rug takes on an almost mystical energy. It was my grandfather’s family’s rug. I start to believe that its threads hold secrets, their colors worn in a pattern reflecting the lives of which it’s been a part. Like a genetic memory.

Where it came from originally, I have no idea. It belonged to my grandfather’s
bubbe
and his parents brought it with them when they immigrated to America. Peeling back the corner of the rug, I find a faded tan label sewed to the underside.
Product of Iran.

Iran? How did this Iranian rug arrive in the Ukraine all those years ago?

I wish I knew this story. I realize I have no knowledge whatsoever of my grandfather’s childhood. Wendy never talks about it; she rarely brings up her father at all. I wonder if she has any idea about his family. Once I asked where his family came from and she answered, “the Ukraine,” but that was it. She doesn’t know anything else, which, I think, is weird. My grandfather never talks about most of his family, except to say they died in World War II. I never saw Rose, his sister, after I was a toddler. She lived in Brookline at one time, near him, but she died in Florida around the time that Moses and my Grandmother Yetta died.

I miss my Grandmother Yetta. I love Ruth, and my grandfather seems happier in many ways than I’ve ever known him to be, but I’ve seen him less and less since they got married.

Ruth mails checks to Wendy and me since we aren’t visiting often. I think Wendy feels a bit jealous of her new stepmother. She barely speaks to her when she does see her.

I begin to feel dizzy; I lie back against the rug. I wonder if this happens when people lose their minds. In being lost to the world, I seem to have found a more direct link to mine.

I wait for what I hope will be a slow, sleepy descent into death. Instead I find myself becoming even more aware.

I study the carpet design. The wool threads become individually interesting. Each thread holds its own secrets, its own portent. Each detail on the rug, and in the room itself, is strikingly crystalline in its definition.

My skin becomes warm, then prickly, as each pore opens and perspires.

My scalp, first warm, then unbearably itchy.

My eyes at first unfocused, then sharply tuned to each color.

Images pop across my retina with the rapidity of subliminal messages in a
commercial ad: The jacquard design of the curtains. The letters with their carefully scripted names on the envelopes that lay across the bed. Timothy’s copy of
Illusions.

A feather from my bedspread floats out and over the bed, landing softly beside me at the edge of the carpet and the wooden floor.

This does not seem peculiar, but merely a pleasant offering.

My hand reaches for the feather, but as I do it becomes a fascinating tool, an entity—its intention unknown and sinister.

I pull my eyes away, terrified.

My bureau with its array of perfume bottles. I can smell each bottled scent individually as I look over them one by one. Lavender. Rose. Cinnamon. Musk.

My drawings and paintings, which cover the walls, come alive. The pop art painting of a Raisin Bran box breathes its purple package like a lung. I smell sugarcoated raisins.

Shutting my eyes, I tell myself
it’s not real.

My hearing becomes highly alert. The brush of my hand against the wool of the rug. My throat clearing, my breathing, the sound of my heart beating against its chamber walls.

I begin to have odd, floaty feelings, although they aren’t the feelings I hoped for. This is not a peaceful drift into sleeping death.

The pattern in the rug. I trail my fingers through the wool threads, admiring the colors, which have become quite vibrant and glorious. I can see the paisley, the complexity of the pattern, in ways I’ve never noticed before. The design takes on a remarkable richness and artistry. I never noticed how the midnight blue paisley is dotted with black lines and surrounded by magenta shadows. Even the beige background is not truly beige, but dabs of chestnut brown speckled with grass green, glinty gold, and magenta, spoke-like circular flowers on a creamy canvas. As I run my fingers over them, the colors each feel different. The blue paisleys are velvety and soft. The reds are coarse. The gold is silky like stockings. The multicolored flower spokes have three-dimensional textures.

I have a sudden vision of the time Wendy drugged me with acid and I climbed the backyard willow tree. I remember the boy who came into the backyard and tried to stop me from jumping from the branch limb. The boy I thought was Moses. I wonder who he was.

The phone rings. I glare at it disbelievingly, then I speak to it.

“What?”

The phone responds with another set of rings.

I let the phone continue until whoever is calling hangs up.

I sit up, my heart beating fast. So fast I worry.

What if I accidentally took hits of acid with the sleeping pills? I realize this could easily be what the unlabeled film canister drugs were.

What if I end up living with a completely scrambled brain?

What if the call was Wendy in trouble?

What if it was David in trouble?

What if someone needs something, and because I’m unavailable—and so useless—something terrible is happening right now?

It occurs to me my last human act toward another person might be ignoring his or her phone call, and in doing so providing an opportunity for chaos for that person.

I am, of course, filled with guilt.

I thought I’d carefully calculated guilt out of the act I’m about to complete. Now here it is anyway, in what I know are my last moments.

The telephone rings again. I glare at it and roll over to where it sits by my bedside and lift the receiver out of its cradle.

“What?”

Timothy’s calm voice says, “What are you doing?”

I laugh. I’m thinking his question imitates the phrasing in the seductive tones of a crank caller, “What are you wearing?” Knowing him, he has no clue he’s come off like that.

I feel sure the effects of the drugs are hitting me, because I can’t stop laughing.

Timothy’s voice breaks through. “Why are you laughing?”

“I thought your question might be followed by ‘Talk dirty to me,’” I choke out through my laughter.

“Talk dirty to me,” he says, joking.

I answer without hesitation: “Slime, mud, piles of rubbish, moldy carpets, red tides …”

“Stop,” he says. “I couldn’t sleep, and I had this feeling you might be up too. What are you doing?”

I can’t answer. I didn’t count on anyone sensing what I might be doing. I was as casual as ever when I said good-bye for the semester to my teachers.

I wonder if he suspected what I was up to or if he truly wants to connect and figured I’d forgive him if I’d been sleeping soundly and his call woke me.

“Are you all right? I had this feeling you might not be all right.”

I try to unwind our conversation. What did I say? What have I done to alert him?

I have trouble finding words. I have trouble thinking words.

I find a few.

“I’m fine. What are you doing calling?”

I hoped my lack of response would be interpreted as sleepiness, but he persists. “You were awake, weren’t you?” I can’t lie to him. “Yeah, I’m up.” “Are you okay?”

I can’t lie to him about this either. He sounds concerned, and I know that if I do lie it will leave him with absolutely the wrong idea about his last interaction with me.

I feel frustrated and trapped. If I say I feel fine, he’ll think he missed it. His chance to save me from my death.

He will have the same legacy I’ve been trying to escape. I can see the recrimination, the guilt, the remorse, the endless questioning.

If I tell the truth, though, my plan will be shattered. The instant I think this, I’m realizing that it’s true already; my plan is shattered.

I haven’t responded for quite a while. I lie there, trying to form an answer. To give word forms to my scattered feelings. I’m not sure how much time has gone by. I become acutely aware of the beating of my heart.

“Why are you calling me?” I ask.

“I’m coming over,” he says.

“How will you? Are you going to fly from Cambridge?”

I imagine I can see my heart beating out of the T-shirt I’m wearing. It’s faint, but I can definitely see movement toward the center of my chest. I remember it must be my lungs moving with my breath. But it’s such a small area; shouldn’t the rise be on both sides?

I can see a small beat, very definitely the beat of my heart,

Off-center left.

I feel faint, lying back against the rug again with the phone in my hand.

Jules, 17 years | December 23rd, 1978

THINK OF ME AS AN ANGEL

TIMOTHY’S VOICE SHOUTS at me, and I notice my hand, which is holding the phone an arm’s length away. His distant, tinny yells bring me back to focus.

I pull the phone over to my ear. This is a slow, laborious process of joint enervation. I am acutely aware of each part of my arm’s pull and the muscle mechanism taken to achieve the task.

When the phone is against my ear I hear Timothy’s voice clearly shouting: “Jules, Jules, are you there? Can you hear me? I’m home, and I’m coming over.”

“No!” I shout.

I am deeply ashamed. I’m ashamed for shouting: I have released the demon I save for my fights with Wendy. I feel ashamed for my anger.

This is the part where I share the side of me I have never wanted anyone else to know.

I also feel ashamed at my actions this night. The pills, this pathetic suicide drama.

I’m still thinking these thoughts when I see Timothy standing above me. I had no idea he he’d hung up the phone. I thought he might still be deciding whether to respond.

“How did you get here so fast?”

“It took me the usual amount of time.”

I locate the phone by my ear and roll over on my side to put it into its cradle.
I notice how slowly I’m moving. I try to cover it by getting up quickly, but as I’m kneeling to stand, a blanket of dizziness hits me, and I’m falling backwards.

In the next moment he’s holding me, he’s under me and we’re falling, him backwards, onto my bed. The movement is unbearably slow, and I can barely feel my body. But I know he’s holding me. I can see his arms surrounding me.

I experience something like wind around me, covering him, pushing him with its force, blowing us where we land, him thudding on top of the letters and books, me without substance. I cannot feel my body any longer. I have become a sail.

Timothy talks in my ear, arms still around me. His voice is soft and deep, and I can taste it. It tastes like chocolate pudding. His voice has a cedar and ivory soap smell.

“What’s going on Jules? Have you been drinking? What’s all this?”

He’s pulling the cards to Wendy and David, the books I left for him and Leigh, out from underneath us.

Timothy is almost six feet tall, and his body is contorted with the effort of pulling these things from underneath us, but I can see his focus is complete.

He’s unaware my body still covers him. In any other circumstance, we might find this extremely uncomfortable. But now, in this moment, while I’m highly aware of his body, the fabric of his green wool sweater and his jeans, I cannot feel myself, and he is distracted, and it’s comfortable.

I’m realizing I’ve never touched Timothy. We’ve only gotten to know one another in the past few years, during what has been a physically awkward time for both of us.

“Oh.” I cannot find words to cover what I now know he will know.

Now he lifts me off of him and swings his legs over the bed, opening up the copy of Richard Bach’s
Illusions
I’ve given him. He has dropped everything else. He finds the letter I’ve written inside.

I panic. “No.” I am trying to grab the letter, but I am still dizzy and I find myself falling off the edge of the bed. Timothy reaches out an arm to catch my fall, but it’s not enough to stop my trajectory forward. I am rolling onto the rug when a wave of nausea hits me.