The Sarah Book

by Scott McClanahan

  When Hot Girl invited her, Sarah thought it would be a camping trip or something like that but she wound up holding picket signs of dead babies. Of course, Sarah didn’t want to hurt Hot Girls feelings at the time. In the memory Sarah shouted louder and shook her sign harder. She was only fifteen years old. She was a good friend.

  So Sarah thought about this in the clinic parking lot and laughed. She got out of the car and went inside the clinic. She stood inside the waiting room and a woman came to the window. Sarah signed in, filled out the paperwork and handed the woman a check.

  The woman smiled and said, “Okay Sarah, why don’t you come this way.”

  The woman was perky and she was saying all of these perky things. “Well, it’s a pretty day outside isn’t it? Oh gracious I hope it lasts.”

  The woman had Sarah sign some more papers and then she said, “I really like your purse.”

  Then the nurse gave Sarah a gown and Sarah put it on. The nurse examined Sarah and gave her an ultrasound. The jelly felt cold on Sarah’s stomach and she shivered.

  Of course, Sarah was nervous about her dad seeing her bank statement and wondering where the money had gone. Then the nurse explained the procedure again. There would be:

  1) An anesthesia.

  2) Then an instrument would be inserted and the procedure would start.

  Sarah laughed at this word “instrument.” It made her think about her brother who played in the band. She thought about how her mother used to pop the pimples on her brother Jack’s back and she thought about her own enjoyment at popping pimples. Pop. She saw far into the future when she would be known as the best pimple popper among the nurses at AHH Hospital.

  “What is it that you like about it?” One of the nurses would ask Sarah. Sarah would say, “It’s like a pleasure thing. Like I just get satisfaction out of it. It’s what I do. I pop pimples.”

  But now it was years before and Sarah was at the abortion clinic and she was still listening to the nurse’s explanation about the procedure.

  3) There would be bleeding and nausea afterwards and if Sarah noticed heavier bleeding when she got home or bleeding that was a darker red, then she needed to go to the emergency room.

  Sarah rested on the table and the doctor came in and he was whistling.

  What song?

  Sarah couldn’t tell.

  The doctor asked her if she was comfortable.

  Then the nurse said, “I was just telling her about how much I love her purse.” The doctor looked around and saw Sarah’s clothes folded on a table and her purse on top of them.

  He said, “O yes. It’s a very nice purse.”

  Sarah thought. “Fuck yeah, purses!”

  After the procedure was over they wheeled Sarah into a room where she could lie down and relax. It was full of cots and hospital beds and the beds full of a few women. There were hospital curtains around the beds. And there were women drinking orange juice and there were women taking care of other women. And there were women waiting for somebody to come and pick them up. And Sarah saw the women and thought it looked like a civil war battlefield full of bodies and Sarah saw there were wars waged on all of us. She sat down on a bed with a curtain around it and rested on her side. She tried to sleep but there was a woman on her side in the curtained room across from Sarah’s. The woman had her back to Sarah and the woman was crying.

  Sarah wished the woman would shut up. Sarah thought, “It’s just an abortion. Good god. Book yourself a trip to the beach.” But the woman kept crying. Then the woman finally turned over and Sarah could see who it was through the curtain.

  It looked like Hot Girl, but Sarah couldn’t tell for sure.

  The next time when Sarah saw Hot Girl, she didn’t talk about it and Hot Girl didn’t say anything either. Sarah didn’t talk about summer days when they were girls and they used to play in the woods and Sarah didn’t talk about how she used to be able to watch Hot Girl’s house and she could even see Hot Girl climbing the fence when she came over to see Sarah. When they went on walks in the woods, Sarah always wanted to lead the walk. And they didn’t talk about playing with Ouija boards and their boyfriends and how they were going to marry these boys or when Hot Girl went through a rebellious phase in the 8th grade and shaved her head or horoscopes or skipping school or when they got drunk and messed around together or leaving the door to their own houses unlocked. They left the doors unlocked so they could sneak back into each other’s houses after the parents went to work and skip school. And then to sleep for a few hours together.

  But Sarah didn’t say anything about this when she saw Hot Girl. They were full of secrets now. They were like us. They were adults.

  When the guy who got Sarah pregnant came to get her at the clinic he was smiling. He was with a buddy and they were drinking out of a giant plastic cup. They were drunk and they wanted something to eat.

  They wanted to go to Burger King. So they left and went to Burger King and Sarah ordered chicken fingers and tried not to feel nauseous. She dipped the chicken finger in the chicken finger sauce and watched the sauce sticking to the chicken’s breaded skin and she felt like a ghost watching herself and then she put it in her mouth and swallowed and it felt nice. The guy drove her all the way back to Beckley and no one said anything. So he dropped her off and no one said goodbye or I love you or I’m so sorry or what the fuck just happened or why is life so goddamn fucking weird?

  Sarah thought about all the things that happened in this life that didn’t make any sense.

  Sarah turned to the guy before he drove away and said,

  “Thanks for the Burger King.” The guy said, “Yep, you’re welcome. Burger King is good.” And then he was gone. Sarah walked inside the house where she grew up. And yes. Burger King is good. And sometimes she thought about it. Sarah knew it was silly but sometimes she used to hold something invisible and pretend that there were hundreds of lives apportioned to each of us.

  In one life we are married.

  In one life we are dead.

  In one we are rich.

  In one we are poor. In one we are parents. But always we belong to others.

  I really wanted to kill myself, but I sucked at it. I had a bunch of Tylenol PM and some Pepto Bismol but I knew you couldn’t kill yourself with Pepto Bismol. The next day after Sarah said she wanted a divorce I stopped by the house and picked up some stuff. I told her I was going to kill myself, but she didn’t say anything. So I checked into another motel and looked through all the crap I’d picked up from our medicine cabinet. I opened up the first bottle of Tylenol PM and took out a handful of pills and then I drank them down. I started wondering why Sarah didn’t say anything to me when I told her I was ending my life. Maybe she didn’t hear me. I decided to call her up to let her know, but the call went immediately to her voicemail. I took another handful of pills and swallowed them down in a gulp.

  Then I said, “I just wanted to let you know that I don’t think I can take it anymore. I don’t like it when you call me mangina sometimes. I’m an emotional man and you knew this when you married me. You’re a great mother and a great wife but I don’t know what went wrong. But just know I love you. Please tell the kids I love them too. Bye.”

  Then I poured out some more pills into my hand. I watched the pills wiggle out of the bottle as I shook them out. Then they rolled around in the palm of my hand like they were alive. I tried to swallow them but my mouth was too full of pills and beer and so I got choked and they came out in a gooey melty mess in my palm. I realized trying to kill yourself was hard and that’s why people didn’t do it more often. People didn’t kill themselves more often because they’re lazy.

  I put the pills back in my mouth and then I drank them down and they were gone. I thought, “What if something happened and Sarah never got my voicemail. Maybe I should leave another just in case.”

  I called her phone again and it went to voicemail and I left another voicemail. I said, “I just wanted to let you know that I can’t take
it anymore. You’re a great mother and a wonderful wife. And I don’t think you should call people names because it hurts their feelings. Please tell the children I love them. Bye.”

  Then I thought, “O shit. That’s going to seem so weird if there are two messages that are the same.”

  So I called back and said, “I know it might be weird but I just wanted to make sure I left a message in case the first one didn’t take. Okay. Bye.”

  I took the rest of the bottle and then I opened another. I popped the safety seal with my teeth and then I pulled out the cotton. “Fucking cotton,” I said and then I poured some more pills into my palm. I took the first handful of pills and then I took the second handful of pills and then I took a third handful of pills. I realized something. Killing yourself with Tylenol was pathetic.

  I’d always planned on hanging myself on the bar above my parents’ garage door, but I knew that would hurt. I remembered a friend from high school whose girlfriend broke up with him and so he shot himself. It didn’t work though because he just blew off the bottom of his face and his family found him and rushed him to the hospital. He lay in a coma for weeks but he survived. The only good part of the story was that his girlfriend felt sorry for him and so they got back together. They’re still together now and a have a couple of kids. I thought maybe I should try shooting off part of my face instead. Maybe this would bring her back. I thought of the New River Gorge bridge and jumping. I sat on the floor of the Econo Lodge and I swallowed the rest of the second pill bottle. The pills were so bitter and bubbling up into my mouth and I burped and it tasted a pill taste on my tongue. Then I reached into my book bag where I’d dumped the medicine cabinet and then I stared at the third bottle I’d brought. It wasn’t Tylenol PM even. It was something else. The third bottle I had to kill myself with was a bottle of children’s Tylenol. I knew I couldn’t kill myself with a bottle of children’s Tylenol. I decided to throw up. I went into the bathroom and I tried. I leaned over the top of the toilet. Then I put my finger down my throat and I gagged. I imagined people making fun of me.

  “How did he try to kill himself? He tried to kill himself with children’s Tylenol and Pepto Bismol.” I saw myself in a hospital bed surrounded by Sarah and her fellow nurses. They were all laughing at me and saying, “Mangina, mangina” and whispering what a fuck up I was. I jammed my fingers in my throat and then I gagged again but I couldn’t throw up. So I took one finger and took two fingers and then three. I gagged until I felt the skin in the back of my throat. I felt the little thing that hangs down on the top of your throat and that nobody knows the name of and the warmth of air coming up from my stomach. I gagged gah. I tried to make sure I was throwing up quiet because Sarah always hated how loud I threw up. “It’s like the most melodramatic vomiting I’ve ever heard. It’s like someone who is making fun of someone vomiting.” Then we laughed inside the memory. But then I realized Sarah wasn’t here so I could throw up however loud I wanted. I stuck my finger deeper and then I gagged and vomited like who I was. I was the loudest vomiter in the world. Fuck yes. I was the champion of puke. So I puked up a clump of medicine. And it stopped. Then I did it again and all at once it started. I vomited up all of the memories and I vomited up all of the things that passed through my mind. I vomited up kisses and love. I vomited up the way she smelled like cigarettes and tropical fruit gum. I vomited up lists of the dumb things that we used to say when we were dating and made fun of one another over. I said, I want to be as legendary as cheese and she said, Ok, I’m going to go piss our baby out.

  I vomited up the dumb jokes and the moments that were just moments and not stories.

  I woke up the next morning to my cell phone ringing and Sarah scared in a voicemail. I texted her and she agreed to meet me later that day at the park where Iris and Sam were playing. When I got there, Sarah didn’t really say anything except I scared the shit out of her. Then she told me I scared her pretty much all of the time now. Then she tried to change the subject and she started talking about work at the hospital. She told me that Rhani was mad because a patient looked at her and said, “That woman would sure look good behind a plow.”

  She told me she’d been having to digitally dis-impact this one patient who was bedridden. I asked her what that meant and she told me that it meant someone was constipated and their bowels were impacted with feces. Then she wiggled her finger around to show me how she digitally disimpacted asses. She said, “You have to get in there and pull out the feces with your finger.” I shook my head and she smiled with joy. She said, “Seriously, you haven’t felt true happiness until you digitally disimpact another human being.” She told me most people die long deaths. Long deaths of shame. And she told me I should let her practice on me. I just shook my head no. I was depressed but I still didn’t want her finger in my ass. Then she giggled crazy. She wiggled her finger around like she was digitally disimpacting me. It made me shiver. Sarah told me I should be happy I was alive and not dead. She pointed to Iris and Sam. I watched Iris and Sam playing in the rocks. I told her it was stupid what I did the night before and what an ass I was. I told her it was dumb anyway because you can’t kill yourself by taking a couple of bottles of Tylenol.

  Sarah didn’t say anything for a little while and then she said, “Yes you can.” She said people do it all of the time. They take a bunch of Tylenol thinking they won’t really die and to get attention, but then they go into liver failure. She said they go into liver failure and a liver failure death was the longest and most painful death imaginable. She said “Who knows maybe if you hadn’t decided to throw up you would have got what you wanted.” Then she said, “Besides people kill themselves every day in acceptable ways.” So I thought of people buying TVs and killing themselves. I thought about people buying houses and killing themselves. I thought about people working jobs they hate and killing themselves. I thought of people writing books and killing themselves. So Sarah put her hand on my shoulder and then she got up. She gave me a look like “Hang in there,” and I was full of self-pity about my self-pity. I watched Sarah gather up the kids and put them in the car. Then she buckled them in their car seats and I watched them drive away. I saw into the future and I saw myself buying TVs and killing myself. I saw myself buying a house and killing myself. I saw myself working a job I hated and all of the tiny suicides of life. I knew there were a million ways to kill myself and I couldn’t wait to try them all.1

  1 I’m sure there is a Buddhist somewhere who is saying, All pain comes from wanting things and believing you possess things, but we truly own nothing in this life.

  And I say to this Buddhist: FUCK YOU, BUDDHIST.

  Seven years passed after Sarah and I watched the play. But then one day I decided to go to the mall. I was working as a teacher and I decided to go to a restaurant in the mall and eat lunch. In the seven years since I last saw Sarah, I’d searched for her number. She emailed me one time, but I accidentally deleted her email without writing back. Then time passed and I went to the mall one day and I had a cheeseburger and a diet coke and then I ordered a beer. I drank my beer and then I wondered whether I should go back to work or not, but then I decided to do something else. I decided to go to the bookstore at the end of the mall. I paid for my food and I walked to the bookstore. And then I saw this woman coming out of a store and it was Sarah. She was carrying a bag from the store and then she saw me. I waved at her and I smiled and she smiled back at me. I walked over to her and she held out her hand like she wanted me to shake it. Then we both laughed and I gave her a hug. I told her I was working in Beckley now and she said we should get together soon. So I asked for her number and she gave it to me. 3048275412. So I wonder who she would be if I called that number tonight. Would she be the Sarah from long ago?

  And so this is a boring story about how I went to the mall one day and ordered a cheeseburger and my life changed because I ordered a cheeseburger. I didn’t know it then but the story of our lives is the story of ordering cheeseburgers.

  A w
eek later I called Sarah and we went on a date except Sarah said it wasn’t a date. She said we were just friends and that we were going to eat breakfast and then go back to her house and take a walk in the woods. Then she repeated. “Do you understand? This is not a date.”

  I was kind of happy it wasn’t a date because my last date ended so badly. It ended with me in a mad dash running to a gas station bathroom after eating a ton of spicy food that didn’t agree with me. “Well, did you make it?” Sarah said after asking me what my last date had been like.

  I just smiled and shook my head, “No.”

  Sarah laughed and told me that this was the worst date she’d ever heard of and why was I honest with her. She told me shitting your pants is probably not the best way to get a second date with anybody. Then she just shook her head and started filling up her plate with breakfast food from the restaurant buffet.

  I filled up my plate too. And then we sat down and talked about our lives. We talked about her schooling and my job. She told me about her last boyfriend and then she kept making fun of me about the gas station bathroom incident. She said,

  “You just tell me now if you need to go to the restroom. I don’t want any accidents this morning.” And then she ate some more and we talked. We talked about some of the movies we’d seen and then we talked about her family. She asked me what I’d been reading recently and I told her about this Buddhist monk who spent years writing a letter about what he knew about love and the human heart. I’d been reading how the monk studied and meditated for years and never let anyone inside his shrine where he always worked on his letter. After he died the other monks opened the letter up and it was blank. He’d written nothing. We both laughed at what a shitty monk the guy was. Then we talked about other things. Sarah told me funny stories about her dog and then she played me a funny voicemail from her dad.