“He really is unbalanced, you know,” said Martin.
“& you & I are models of stability.”
“Just as an example, he thinks you’re Aetna Simmons.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I think he believed he was doing this for you. To shield you.”
I played with one of Kenji’s curls.
“You don’t have anything to say, Nabilah?”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“Where did he get that idea if he’s not seriously out of touch with reality?”
“He’s not crazy.”
“So?”
“I don’t know. You don’t have to stay.”
“But you will. & it would be inhumane for me not to be OK with that.”
“Honey, not now with the sarcasm.”
“He’ll have to go away. Rehab, you know, abroad.”
“Martin, please.”
He got fed up & left. But before he went, he whispered in my ear like a cold breeze from a haunted place.
“You lied just now, Nabilah. You know plenty more. He came clean as best he could. But you lied to him too, I bet. Makes me wonder if you know how to do anything but lie. Well, let me tell you something. I may have let you make a fool of me for years, but you & I both know I’ll find the truth, you understand? & I mean all of it.”
I’ve never been frightened of my husband before. Never been scared of Kenji either. I am now.
I made sure Martin’s car was gone, locked the front door, zoomed to the library. I found that awful Collected Works of Thomas Hardy & dumped it in a trash bag. I found The Hand of Ethelberta, that’s Hardy too. I pulled it out, behind it was the switch, one of those flat switches.
4 shelves full of books swung backwards into a closet. I stood there doing nothing for the longest while, staring at this thing straight out of “Narnia,” thinking could this really be the place I’d been coming to for years? The closet was too low to stand up in but quite deep, it went pretty far back into the wall. Inside there was a little lamp & some wooden cabinets. I remembered the key. Right on the kitchen counter where K said it would be, an old-fashioned brass key I’d never seen before. The cabinets were full of small velvety boxes & in the boxes were ugly poisonous shadows of a bright & beautiful stranger.
I went a little crazy when I swept them all away. Each of those tablets was another layer of deception. I ripped a drawer out of a cabinet, turned it upside down over a trash bag, same with the next drawer, every drawer (except the ones full of cash, those made me have to sit down) like I could make a truth out of him with a spring cleaning. I took the trash bags to the dumpster up the road, sealed the closet, sat on the floor with my back to Kenji’s books, & cried.
Any minute, I thought, I’ll wake up in Kenji’s bed, he’ll say there’s no such thing as Zohytin or Empyreal, just a silly nightmare, Nikkou. He’ll hold me in his arms while my heart learns the steady pace of his.
But then the real night came. I got in bed with him. Kenji had a fever & goosebumps at the same time, he was shivering like crazy, spasms arched his back & bent his legs & threw them down again. The internet said I should rub his abdomen “in a circular motion.” I did that, he didn’t notice. Not asleep, just under fire from inside. My phone found an article called “Brain Injury From O2 Deprivation Following Opioid Overdose.”
Brain damage. My sweet genius. A genius regardless of what Harvard had to say. Well, I panicked. I shook him, kissed him, pleaded with him. Kenji came around so slowly! When he opened his eyes, it was like no one was inside them. He said my name but wasn’t sure. He looked around, saw the Miró, his breathing became thick & hard, he stiffened everywhere & shut his eyes like he was wishing everything away. I said, “It’s OK,” & his eyes flew open.
“What’re you doing here?”
“We didn’t die, Baby, we’re home.”
Kenji pulled away & turned, I thought he was going to vomit in the trash bin by the bed. But instead he started sobbing! I tried to touch him, he shrugged me off, I tried again & he said, “No Nabi, just go, go now, Nabi, please.” I whispered, “It’s OK,” & Kenji screamed, “I SAID GO! GET AWAY FROM ME!”
I ran out, hid in his study. Kenji cried so much it made him sick. The sounds from out of him hurt something awful inside me.
& that’s how both my boys learned to hate me in one day.
I’ve forgotten how to pray, forgotten how to sleep. Kenji didn’t sleep all night, he vomited & vomited, diarrhea & everything. He shooed me if I followed when he staggered to the bathroom. I threw out the bag of vomit in the trash bin by the bed. I put a new bag in, flitted around straining to hear & not hear into the bathroom.
Dawn made everything gray. That corner of the couch where I told Kenji loads of silly things I can’t remember. Kenji’s desk, his pens, his empty notepad. Kenji’s closed-down laptop, the “birthplace” of “Suicide & Suicide Notes,” “Document1,” & mysterious unfinished drafts—maybes & if-onlys that wouldn’t stand a chance without him, & there I was among them. The TV is dark, but it remembers us laughing. The books dream his touch & his excitement. The whole place is hollow & haunted.
“I wonder what to call you.” I think maybe he meant me! I’m not like Aetna Simmons, I’m not like Seabird or Martin. Maybe I thought about it in a time of frustration, but I can’t run off & abandon people. Kenji should know that already. My phone showed me the Unnamed like it’s just another file. Just another couple kilobytes & not Kenji wondering how long he could stand it. I looked for warning signs to beat myself up with. I looked for stuff to make myself feel better. “AccuWeather,” stuff like that. I saw how much I didn’t see. I saw that this is all her fault.
She knew that book about the girl who reorganized the Bible. I knew it was Hardy’s book. I said I have a friend. In one look, she knew all about my friend.
I pretended I hadn’t seen the look. I acted like it wasn’t a look that saw too much. Not like Martin’s “polygraph” look, weirder than that. Or less subtle or something. It wasn’t till much later that she admitted that she knew, she’d seen into my heart with that one look. Guess it was her job (!) to pick up on people’s secrets without needing to hear much else about them. It wasn’t her job to make my Baby “fall in love” with her & lure him into wanting to be nothing but wind over water!
Except it kinda-sorta was her job, luring people into thinking about suicide. Making people think other people wanted to die. She did it to strangers, professionals. Her words were that strong.
But only if you couldn’t hear them. Kenji fell under her spell cuz he couldn’t hear how scared she really was. She was a “guilty remainder.” Scared of being alone, scared of her own emptiness. I know cuz I could hear it. But she turned that fear & emptiness into power with too-long “fleshless” arms like radiation. None of us knew her, & look what she did to us.
Poor K was SO SICK we didn’t get a moment’s rest this p.m. & I am terrified. Changing the trash bag for the umpteenth time I found myself looking for excuses (!) not to go back in the bedroom, scared of the smell & liquids & convulsions, I mean Kenji’s never sick, Martin’s never sick, I’m never sick! Panic tries to tell me what’s suffering in that bed isn’t really Kenji. His head hurts bad, he squeezes it like it’s a blister. I’m scared to touch it, scared to hit the stitches, so where I’m touching him isn’t really where it hurts. & I know he’s the real Kenji, Kenji who knelt at my feet in the Arboretum doesn’t notice I’m beside him. Whispering, “It’s OK, it’ll go away,” I’m the one who sounds false.
Was I ever not false & helpless even in my “prayers”? Were they just me pleading with my useless self? Is that the whole story of me & K: “false & helpless,” “always already gone”? Just cuz I “signed a contract with Martin in a church,” I can’t love both them byes with all my heart? Kenji must know better than that. Making himself suffer cuz I don’t �
�belong” to him doesn’t make sense. (Do I “belong” to M or God or anybody, aren’t I my own self?!) Loving Aetna Simmons cuz she don’t belong to him or anybody don’t make sense either. Some parts of the Unnamed are for me, but what if that part was for her: “already gone”?
No, K thought I was her. That’s my fault. If the real her knew a real man loved her, a good man, she’d get spooked & take off just like she did, I guess. Which one of us does Kenji wish I was? Do I wish she was never born? No plane crash, no suicide notes, no mysterious theft, no Art Of Vanishing, no Seabird? If there’d never been any of that, could K & I have just kept going nicely like we were?
Begging night to end. Like that gray light coming back will make everything OK. Kenji still can’t sleep, can’t stand the light either. I turned on the bedside lamp like always & he groaned.
“No, turn it off, turn that _____ off. You want to do something, turn off the _____ water heater, I can’t stand that _____ noise. (The water heater makes one click twice a day.) & get rid of these _____ sheets, I can’t stand it. & on the bookshelf there’s—”
Poor Baby couldn’t even finish talking, the pains in his stomach & his back are HORRIBLE. They ripped his thought away, even that thought. I held him like we were a snail, I was the shell, I pressed his belly with my hand.
“Quit that & go,” Kenji gasped.
“It’s gonna be OK. Everything feels bad right now, but it’s—”
“I shouldn’t feel anything. I shouldn’t feel anything. I shouldn’t have to think anything.”
He meant cuz he should be dead. My Kenji. Mercy, it’s too much. I can’t do this, I can’t see Kenji like this!
“I couldn’t even die.”
“Kenji, you mustn’t die.”
“I couldn’t even do that.”
“Don’t think about it anymore. I love you. Think about that.”
Baby turned to me, he was in agony but he tried to wipe my tears away. The emptiness in his eyes filled up with the pain of wishing, his hand shook, I leaned into it & saw him drain out of himself like a soul ditching its earthly shell. His voice sounded like somebody stuck it in the Panashred.
“I asked you to leave me, & I meant it.”
“No, Kenji.”
“Don’t you get it? I can’t anymore.”
“I need you.”
“No you don’t. No you don’t, Nabi.”
He turned away, didn’t want me to touch him. The words & tears & kisses I poured onto his shoulder with his back to me obviously seemed empty to him. So I mean he’s writhing in pain, I’m wracking my brain for a way to make him choose living, Kenji’s fighting to resist everything that has to do with living, “the crew of the Ethelberta” in the most horrible stalemate I can think of, & what makes it worse is that we love each other!
“Stuff in the book. Big Hardy book. Please, Nabi.”
“No, Baby, no more of that.”
“Please! I’ll get it myself.”
“Kenji, no, lie still. (Mercy, I haven’t told him about Hardy!) Let me do my thing. (Whatever that may be!) I’m scared too, Baby, but—”
“Then go to your saintly all-put-together husband.”
“It’s not about my husband, Kenji, you wrote, ‘What are we?’ Well, I don’t know, I just know even after I promised before God that Martin’s my whole life, I kept coming back to you. ‘Acegirl keeps showing up,’ you wrote, remember? Even across the ocean I had to hear your voice each day. Even with a good man for a husband, I can’t hardly last 3 days without seeing you up close & feeling that you, Kenji, you are here with me.”
Maybe the words got buried in my hiccups, I don’t know, Baby looked at me like I was babbling Icelandic.
“If you ever loved me, Nabi, bring the book.”
Sigh.
I ended up sort of pinning him. It wasn’t hard. My leg across his waist is too heavy for him now. I put kisses on his head, my arm across his chest. Kenji gripped my arm like I’m a prison fence. He turned his head away & suffered.
She came to BHS instead of those guys up de country cuz I’m a woman. Like that’s supposed to mean I can understand better how to wipe a whole person away & not let it hurt. She comes in my building saying delete this & that, so I say: Sweetie, I know you said no questions, but say we actually succeed at this, what you gonna do once you got no passport, no bank accounts, no birth record, no nothing, once you’re dead to the whole world? She didn’t answer me.
I don’t know what she was thinking, whether it was just about the airplane or she wanted to protect Char Richards that much that she wanted every trace of what they did to “un-happen” (?) or she hated Char Richards so much that she wanted to blow up everything they’d worked for. Did acegirl think her own suicide would somehow make up for the other ones she faked? I don’t know, I don’t care anymore.
I remember I said, like I’m her “spiritual adviser”: Let’s think this thru together. Must’ve hit her up with some Biblical foolishness. “Pray, Love, Shop, You Go Girl!” Whatever it was, it worked. & it wasn’t a big deal, telling somebody keep on breathing when they can’t help but keep breathing. “Pray, Love, Don’t Give Up,” that’s just the kind of thing church-loving Furberts do. & now I almost hate myself for it cuz I went off triumphant & made “Seabird” her new life, she’s trotting around with her new passport, but I can’t think for the life of me what I said to make Aetna Pauline Simmons change her mind about the meaning of “Vanishing,” I’m just too much in a panic, so I mean I can’t make the man who loves me want to live!
He’s lying beside me breathing hard & fast, refusing to look at me, while I scrawl my freakout in my book cuz that’s all I can do. Doesn’t he remember the drop-off boxes? 40-50lb apiece, I’m seen him lifting 2 at once cuz he likes to be the one to carry them to Max Sec from out the front just so he can walk past my office & give me a smile. That’s not a little thing, I swear I thought Kenji knew it’s an amazing thing. So why didn’t he write it in “Document1,” some example of how strong he is, how strong we are, how our love is always alive everywhere? I try reminding him, “Kenji, you know the drop-off boxes…?” He can’t hear me, I don’t think. Pain is deafening.
Morning turned the sky the color of a dirty burlap bag. I freaked out till 8:00, left K rolling around, slipped into the hallway, called my GP. “No, not my husband, a close friend.” Sigh! Whined about the hospitals & freaked some more till Doc agreed to a house call.
Kenji begged her for Zohytin. He pretended a hospital @USA Rxd it but he’d lost the Rx (!). Doc refused. K begged for Vicodin. She refused, he said Anything!, Doc said Tylenol. I SOSed Iesha, she went to the pharmacy. K was overwrought. Me too, thank you very much! I tried activating my Managing Partner setting. I told Baby (it was true) Doc said I’d have to call the ambulance if he kept refusing fluids or (blubbering again) he could get heart failure (!!!!!) from dehydration.
“Are you threatening me, woman?!”
“No, but Baby you gotta try, blah blah.”
“Who the _____ do you think you are, telling me what to etc.”
My best friend & lifelong love thinks I’m the Evil One. No one knows how much this hurts. No one.
Supermom Iesha offered to give him what for. She didn’t see it’d only make things worse, but thank goodness she backed down. She showed up with hugs & advice & home-fried chicken & Gatorade. She also brought the stuff I’d left at her house & forgotten when I ran to the hospital with nothing but my phone & trusty book:
My briefcase. My laptop. Aetna Simmons’ HD clone!!
It looks on the outside like any portable HD, but I almost shrieked when I grabbed it from Iesha. My poor patient sister, she has no idea! I shoved the thing in the cutlery drawer in Baby’s kitchen. I turned down Iesha’s offer to pray together, I said I hope my nieces never learn to love like me. Iesha must think I’m gone off my head.
Kenji w
anted to keep the Tylenol beside the bed, but I said no, no way. He said, “What do you care,” & well I’d been had it with the cold shoulder, I took my book & put myself on the couch. I thought: I hate this. I thought: If this was Martin (this would never be Martin), I’d talk everything over with K. Then I panicked cuz I’d left my Baby struggling alone, I rushed to the bedroom, he was curled up in a ball, he shook me off when I touched him: “What can I do? Just tell me what to do.”
He didn’t answer. All he could think of was Zohytin, I just knew it, & it wasn’t fair, but I kept thinking: If you were always already gone…
Martin came to check on me at noon. We sat in the living room & said nothing.
Well, I guess Martin said, “How’s he doing?”
Little question like that closed my throat. I shook my head. Tylenol wasn’t helping, Kenji couldn’t keep it down, I’d spent the morning squeezing his hands against the pain. Truth is I could only hang with Martin cuz everything got so bad Kenji had sort of fainted. Almost gave me a heart attack, but it was the closest thing to sleep he’d had in forever. I leaned close to hear his breathing (“every sound a terror & a treasure”), to hear Kenji breathing & remember him not breathing (“living on the edge of a precipice…”).
“How are you doing?” said Martin.
Well! Ya girl was barefoot, my kimono rumpled & soggy, my hair like I’d stuck it in a hurricane, my nerves like I’d stuck them in an electric socket. I was scared to fall asleep, I felt like everything I said & did was the wrong thing, I kept reading in K’s Unnamed file that my life wasn’t what I thought I’d been living, I was scared to think more than 5 mins into the future, & suddenly I felt it all at the same time. I keeled over on Martin’s shoulder like a falling-down tin shack (the kind of shack that don’t exist anywhere on this Island!), hugging this set of Kenji’s PJs I’ve started carrying around.
Drafts of a Suicide Note Page 38