Suicide Blondes

by T. Blake Braddy

  I hold the phone up like a subpoena.

  “You called me,” I say. “Remember?”

  She regards my device suspiciously. “Ah, yes. My, days feel like weeks at this point.”

  One hand rubs mindlessly at the IV in her wrist. She says, “They’ve got me on so many drugs, and plus I bumped my head this time...”

  She trails off, as if expecting me to finish her thought, but I don’t. I feel sick. I feel completely helpless and unnerved. Like most people of my generation, I was not raised with the poise to deal with loss. I was given a trophy for everything. Also, ever since Dad, I’ve always been repulsed by hospitals.

  Death’s waiting rooms.

  “Well, what are you going to do with yourself while I, erm, recuperate?”

  Mouthing out the word as though it’s an impossibility for her. I’m still not entirely convinced this is the big one. Part of me wonders if it isn’t some grand hallucination meant to punish me.

  “There’s a reunion...thing, um, happening with all the girls from DDA.”

  “Huh.”

  Immediately, I fall into the old call-and-response, a child desperately trying to seem competent at the feet of a judging parent.

  “But I probably won’t go,” I say.

  A long silence settles between us, the quiet mediating this situation like a non-judgmental psychologist, and for a moment I think she’s gone away again.

  But she sighs, a gesture I’m well aware of. And I can almost guess at her next words.

  “Goodness, what a development,” she says. She scratches at the IV again. “Haven’t you suffered enough at the hands of those evil harpies? Me, here dying, and you go off to fill your social calendar. What world do we live in?”

  “I never said I was going for sure,” I reply, “but there are people I’d like to see beyond them, Mom.”

  A total lie. Were I to go, it would be for the purpose of ogling these people, to silently judge them from a distance and then go back home and maybe masturbate to the thought of their misery.

  Not something I’ll tell my mother, obviously.

  “I know you hold in your heart a delicate spot for the people who wronged you. But I was there. I knew them. I’ve known girls like them all my life, and they never change. No matter how much you want them to be different, they won’t be. Underneath the shimmery crust, they’re all black with rot. You just remember that.”

  In these moments, I have a vague sense that my mom is going to lean over and tell me she hates me, that she despises for following Madeline St. Clair to the ends of the Earth.

  Instead, her mouth twists around, and she smiles. “Either way,” she says, “I’m glad to see you. It’s been such a long time.”

  I balk at the opportunity to volley the sentiment back to her. The words get stuck, but thankfully, a doctor interrupts and asks to see me in the hospital’s wide corridors.

  The opinion of the medical wonks at Vanderbilt is that mom is beyond help. In fact, it’s so bad, I kind of blackout halfway through the doctor’s chat and nod as I wait for someone—anyone—to offer me a Kleenex. My whole face is wet, and I can almost feel the mascara on my cheeks. The doctor glances down every so often but continues with his escorted tour into my own personal Hell.

  At least he doesn’t sugarcoat anything, I guess.

  “She has severe mobility issues, and she apparently struggles to remember to take her myriad medications. I also understand she has been in less than optimal shape for some time.”

  I shrug. “At least that’s what she thinks.”

  “Unfortunately, this is a long-term problem that cannot be solved with short-term solutions.”

  He goes on, and though there’s some medical-ese, it all washes over me like a religious conversion.

  The doctor even goes through the options for care. The most obvious, it seems, is to shovel her off to one of the many assisted living communities springing up around the city, like multi-floor cattle pens for the elderly.

  “Unless, of course,” he adds, “you are willing to take on the role of caretaker.”

  I shrug, telling him I’d need to think about it. The truth is, I have no interest. I’m no caretaker. I can barely take care of myself. I’m a hot mess. I don’t eat. I drink too much. I’ve had one-night stands with disinterested men and women but have never been involved in a single long-term relationship.

  Sometimes, I think I’m just slowly disintegrating, like aspirin under the tongue, and I don’t mind it. I think it’s probably the best thing for me.

  Sad.

  Whatever.

  3

  NOW

  After an awkward hospital goodbye, I cruise in my rental car to my temporary residence, a boxy-looking Airbnb off 51st in The Nations, where all the streets are named after states. There’s an Indiana and a Georgia and even a Tennessee, which I’ve always found odd.

  The house is clean but empty, like it’s being shown for a sale, so I can’t quite get comfortable, at first. I snag a beer from the fridge—so far as I know, it’s all there for me—and then I snag another. Before I know, it’s dark, and I find myself graying out on the upstairs porch with my phone in my hand.

  I don’t use my real name or a real picture on my accounts—that would be social media suicide—and so I’m able to comfortably exist without harassment. I made the mistake of using the name Mary Ellen Hanneford on MySpace, and it took me years to get rid of my account. I was getting a dozen harassing messages per week, each and everyone telling me some variant of how I should kill myself and go to Hell.

  After that, I thought, fuck the terms of service.

  I’ve got a real problem. When my thumb touches the little blue icon that brings up my obsessively personal app, I begin to tremble. I feel a warmth rise in my jeans, and all the blood rushes to my face. It’s a high that shortens my breath and lengthens my orgasms. Anonymously peeking into the lives of people, even people I never really cared about, is erotically amusing to me. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s the way things went down senior year, or maybe I was always programmed to get off on obscurity and namelessness, but I spend more time flipping intently through the photos of my classmates than I do working. I bring home takeout Chinese or just a fifth of vodka, and I begin my nightly rounds, like a security guard for a business that hasn’t hired one.

  I attended a somewhat prestigious all-girls high school because of my dad’s job—he sold life insurance—and so for a brief period of time I was in a small sorority, of sorts, even if they no longer claim me. Over the years, my name has been scrubbed from the official records of Dallas-Dudley Academy.

  It’s like I’ve been excommunicated.

  Either way, after a few glasses of Tito’s, I land on a post by a familiar face in the DDA Official Group. Even though I’m a lurker—obviously—I have it set so I receive notifications anytime someone posts an event to the social calendar.

  I need to see the notification.

  I just do.

  This is my version of hypochondriasis.

  I click through to the invite, consisting of a picture taken at the ten-year reunion—to which I wasn’t invited—and I feel that old, familiar feeling return.

  If only they knew they had incidentally invited me—or, rather, “Margaret Sherwood,” an actual alum who isn’t even on social media—they’d have shit a brick.

  Come one, come all! The invitation says. Alumnae mixer for any DDA graduates, circa 1995-2000.

  A photo appears below the invite. It’s the official DDA page’s admin, a former classmate of mine.

  Audrey Winstead, once the lapdog of the Queen Bitch of Belle Meade, now runs her own equity firm or advertising firm or something. It’s a way of massaging funds away from the nouveau riche under the auspices of “networking.” She provides them with a service of some kind, and they provide her with boatloads of cash.

  Audrey is pretty, a blonde. Like me. Like all of us. Or like all of us used to be. She has sloughed off the role of obsequio
us sidekick, but the look in her eyes on the DDA page tells everyone who used to know her that she is now her own person.

  Audrey, with her botoxed eyebrows and photoshopped profile pic, has everyone fooled, that she was once a monster and is now a normal citizen, just going to work and paying her taxes, but I remember the other her, the high school her, the Audrey who once wondered aloud if she could convince Everett Coughlin to wrap his lips around a shotgun. The rest of us laughing, getting in on the action, trying to outdo one another. I can get him to leap off the Batman building. I can hand him a rope and have him dangle from the sign at Ernest Tubbs’ Record Store.

  And so on. It was all a game: a simple, sick, twisted, solitary game, played by girls who had no idea how much power they had. It ended with a kid dying face-down in his parents’ garage.

  That is who Audrey is to me.

  I’m not going to go, I tell myself, but the inkling to do it, the urge to see everyone’s reactions, is undeniable. It’d almost be worth it just to throw their smug, self-congratulatory bullshit back in their faces.

  Look at how sophisticated we are.

  Oh, to be the cockroach in their midst.

  This is my fantasy.

  It’s never coming to fruition, of course. To be there, to go into that room of well-dressed vipers, would make me physically ill. It’s just something I have to contemplate, to envision, like my mother with her cancers and neurological diseases.

  But just as I’m about to close the app, a message appears. Not a notification, but a message, sent very obviously to me and me only.

  I don’t get messages, because I am an island. I am a digital Keyser Söze. I do not comment on statuses, nor do I react or share them. My online life is as empty and meaningless as my real one, and I like it that way.

  I have to. It keeps me safe.

  I maneuver the mouse over the red dot filled with the number 1 that indicates someone has typed out some form of communication to me.

  Silly, I tell myself, even as my heart thuds rhythmically against my chest.

  It’s an honest-to-goodness message from someone I went to school with. Gillian Meitner, one of my high school...accomplices, just like myself, has sent me a direct message.

  Hey, there, Mary Ellen.

  The greeting causes my breath to catch in my throat. The fact that she’s picked me out of the thousands upon thousands of friends of hers as THE Mary Ellen is something of a miracle. My shock is only outpaced by my curiosity.

  > Been a long time, right? Don’t worry. I’m not going to blow your cover. I’ve been looking for you online for some time now, and something about the name and avatar on your profile has always bugged me. Today, I decided it was because the person you claim to be is, in fact, you. How do I know this? Secrets, Hanneford. We all have to keep secrets.

  > Anywho, I decided to take a chance. There’s this...thing tonight at a place called Dorsia, over off of 12th. I don’t know what’s happened to you. At some point, I heard you lived in Portland or somewhere, but if you’re in town, you should definitely stop by. It’d be good to see you.

  At first, I ignore the message, but Gillian persists. She’s always been persuasive.

  > I know what you’re thinking, but it won’t be that way. The people there will be one hundred percent CHILL. If you’re worried about...you know...don’t be.

  When people tell me not to worry, it’s a sign I should run in the opposite direction. But I don’t. Instead, I stare at the screen, feeling the tingle of an old desire. It goes against my personal edict to be invisible, but that’s probably what is enticing about it.

  But eventually the more cautious—and, one might say, more intelligent—side wins out, and I follow through with the message I had been crafting in the back of my mind.

  No thanks, I respond in the messaging app, and just like that, I’ve walled off another part of my life, like closing the door to a room where someone special died.

  Only, then something happens, and later I will spend a lot of time wondering what in the hell I ever answered my phone for, but the phone rings, and I answer it. The excuse I will use with myself later has to do with the hospital. I’m worried about my mother, so any call can be the call, and I don’t recognize the number, and yadda yadda yadda, but the truth is probably somewhere askance of that.

  “Hello?”

  My voice feels thick in my throat.

  The one on the other end isn’t, though. It’s light and airy. “Is this Mary Ellen?”

  I hope like hell it’s a nurse telling me to haul ass back to the hospital to sign some insurance forms or give a fucking pint of blood.

  But it’s not.

  It’s a reporter from a local station, vying for the chance to interview me.

  This lady has no clue. I don’t do interviews.

  By the time I catch up with the elevator pitch, she’s already halfway through her second paragraph. It isn’t until I hear his name that I perk up and pay attention.

  “...or some kind of interview to coincide with the recent cable special.”

  My knee-jerk reaction to these sort of sit-down interview requests is to say no or to give them runaround and then disappear, so that’s precisely what I do here.

  Except, it doesn’t quite work. I’m a little rusty and don’t stick the landing.

  Instead of saying never in a million fucking years, instead I blurt out, “I haven’t scheduled any interviews since the documentary came out.”

  My response leaves an opening for the fame-hungry reporter to give me the business.

  “Why don’t you sit down with me and set the record straight? Believe it or not, people want to hear your side of the story.”

  “I don’t want to do that,” I manage to say.

  Her response is cool and rehearsed. “You can do what you want, but I think the people are ready to know the truth about the death of Everett Coughlin.”

  It feels like a small knife being inserted under my rib cage.

  “I’m sorry?”

  My brain is a bit sluggish, and I have trouble coming up with the necessary words to get her off the phone. I veer insanely close to the phrase Go fuck yourself, lady but manage to hold off.

  Instead, the woman’s off to the races again.

  “In recent years, questions have been brought up about what really happened and how much involvement you even had in—”

  “I am Bloody Mary Ellen,” I respond with vitriol, “and I did everything the cops alleged I did. Everything else is just tabloid magazine gossip.”

  I have a response cocked and ready for such situations—I’ve been dealing with this for two decades—but she cuts me off before I can even get to it.

  “I have it on good authority that you took a substantial settlement from the other families—undisclosed and all that—and did the time to protect your friends. Is that true?”

  “Not in the least,” I respond.

  Maybe a little, I think.

  “If you’re worried about the publicity this will cause,” she says, “then you can speak to me on background. Just give me a quote for attribution, and then everything else—”

  “No.” I’ve made a pact with myself. The past stays in the past. Digging anything up will cause everything to come up, and I do not want that.

  “Listen,” she says in a conspiring tone, “I know it has to sting that all of those country club bitches have used you as a whipping post for the last two decades—”

  “Who are you?” I ask. In the past twenty years, I’ve seen my fair share of attention-starved cable TV hosts, but this one is on a different level.

  She has a short bark in place of a laugh, and I’m trying to imagine what she looks like. A sharp-nosed, bright-eyed wannabe starlet with cold ambition in place of genuine feeling and good humor.

  She’s a lot like me, I guess.

  Save for the ambition.

  “I’m the woman who can tell your story so you’re no longer the tragic scapegoat.” She pauses for drama
tic effect. “So, what do you say?”

  I give her an equally long pause. “I say you can sit on your microphone sideways. Now, leave me the fuck alone and give me my privacy.”

  “But—”

  Before she can try to steamroll me, I hang up and block the number. She’ll have to get a new phone before she can call me again.

  I stare at the screen for an inordinately long time, feeling the weight of the device in my hands. There is much more than gravity pulling down on it, and I try to recognize it every time I use one of these things.

  And the weight drags me down into it.

  I re-open the app and find Gillian’s message. The message comes in fits and starts, but eventually, I get it all on the screen.

  > Okay. I guess I can make an appearance.

  There is an immediate reaction.

  > I knew you’d answer! Okay, so I can’t promise some people won’t turn and look, but it’s been twenty years, M.E. I’d like to bury the hatchet, put water under the bridge. All that. Plus, I can give you indelible gossip about the rest of the girls from our graduating class.

  And just like that, everything in my entire life is knocked sideways.

  4

  THEN

  Gillian Meitner’s dad is a tech nerd, and so when he brings home a state-of-the-art desktop computer outfitted with Windows 98—which no one realizes is a big deal—his attempt to connect with his daughter on a social level is met with cries of derision.

  “Dad, you really need to get your D&D group back together, because we are not going to use this stupid thing. It’s just going to sit and collect dust.”

  Because these girls know who they are, or at least who they aren’t.

  They are more Clueless than Hackers. More Dazed and Confused than The Net.

  Even You’ve Got Mail appears to be something out of a Philip K. Dick novel when compared to the current iterations of their lives. They are social, and it isn’t until the prospect of chatting online with strangers and enemies becomes a possibility that any single one of them takes it seriously.