by J. A. Jance
It struck Ali that Andrea’s comment about Reenie taking her own life without a word of warning to anyone was the workplace equivalent of Matt’s plaintive “Didn’t she love us anymore?” That was Ali’s complaint as well, and it took a moment for her to process the rest of what Andrea had said.
“You talked to her after her doctor’s appointment?” Ali asked.
“Yes,” Andrea replied. “She told me she was stopping by the bank and then she was on her way back here.”
“To the office?”
“That’s what she said, but she wasn’t here when I left. I assumed she’d changed her mind and gone home instead.”
“Which bank?” Ali asked.
“She didn’t say. That’s what the cops wanted to know, too—which bank? I told them I didn’t know. I think they use Bank of America, but I have no idea which branch. Detective Farris said he’d be able to find out. He said she probably needed to cash a check or something, but if she was going to drive herself off a cliff, why would she need money?”
Good question, Ali thought. “So you have spoken to the cops about all this?” she asked.
“Over the weekend,” Andrea said. “The first time was on Saturday afternoon. They came to my house. Then they came here again on Monday, after they found the body. They wanted to know if Reenie was upset about anything. Talk about a stupid question. With that kind of diagnosis, who wouldn’t be upset? Still, she acted more relieved than anything.”
“Relieved?”
“She’d been feeling sick for months—just not herself—and no one could tell her what was wrong. But once what was wrong had a name—even though it was awful—at least she knew what she was up against and nobody could call her a hypochondriac.”
“Somebody called her that?” Ali asked.
Andrea nodded. “Her sister. Sometime around Christmas. So once Reenie knew it was ALS, she was gung-ho to fight it. At least that’s what she told me. That she was going to research it, find out everything she could, and see if there were any programs she might qualify for—you know, experimental things that might help.”
“She said that?” Ali asked. “That she was going to try to be accepted into one of the ongoing protocols?”
“That was just a few days ago,” Andrea added. “What would have made her change her mind?”
Ali shrugged. “I can’t imagine,” she said.
Walking past Andrea’s desk, Ali took a step toward the doorway of what had been and still was Reenie’s private office. The office space itself was modern enough, but the furniture was old-fashioned wooden stuff that had come from the other building. Given a choice between purchasing new playground equipment for the day-care center or new furniture for Reenie’s office, there had been no contest. Playground equipment had won hands down.
Lots of people decorated their offices with framed degrees and plaques—walls of honor. None of Reenie’s degrees were on display. Instead, most of the walls were papered over with a colorful collection of greeting cards in all shapes and sizes. Scattered among the cards were pieces of childish handmade art.
“She did love cards,” Ali observed.
“Isn’t that the truth,” Andrea agreed with a sigh. “She went through more cards than anybody I ever knew. She sent cards for big occasions, little occasions, and no occasions at all. With her gone, that Hallmark store out at the mall will probably end up going out of business.”
Ali thought of the greeting card Reenie had sent her—the one that had arrived after Reenie’s death and was still in Ali’s purse.
“She couldn’t stand to throw any of them away,” Andrea continued. “When Detective Farris came by for the computer, I asked him if it was okay if I took the cards down, boxed them up, and saved them for her kids. He said not yet, that I should stay out of her office until they gave me the all clear. So that’s what I’m doing—leaving things as is.”
And that was how the office looked—as is. Files lay scattered here and there on the desk as though Reenie had just stepped out and expected to return to her work at any moment.
“Detective Farris took her computer?” Ali asked.
“He said he was looking for a note. He said if she wrote one it’s probably still out on the mountain somewhere and they haven’t found it yet. He thought she might have written it on her computer. I told him she wouldn’t have, that she’d have found a card—just the right one, too. I tried to tell Detective Farris that, but he looked at me like I was nuts, so I shut up.”
“She sent me a card that day,” Ali observed.
Andrea looked at Ali eagerly. “On Thursday? From Scottsdale?”
Ali nodded. “It was a cute card—a friendship card. She said she thought she was in for a bumpy ride. I don’t think she was talking about driving off a cliff.”
“That’s all she said?” Andrea asked. She sounded disappointed.
Ali nodded. “That’s all.”
“Maybe she was talking about Howie,” Andrea suggested softly.
“Howie?” Ali asked. “What about him?”
Chewing her lower lip again, Andrea stalled. “Nothing,” she said.
“Tell me,” Ali insisted
“I think she and Howie were having marital difficulties,” Andrea answered reluctantly. “She came storming into the office a couple of weeks ago and said, ‘Remind me again why I got married?’ And I said, ‘Well, you probably wanted to have kids.’ She shook her head and said, ‘Kids aren’t the problem. Husbands are.’ And then she came in here and slammed the door. Reenie wasn’t like that, you know. She didn’t do temper tantrums. She spent most of the morning on the phone that day. I know she made an appointment to see Mike Hopkins.”
“Who’s he?” Ali asked.
“An attorney here in town. He specializes in divorces.”
“She was going to get a divorce?”
Andrea shrugged. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I do know she made an appointment to see him. Then when the diagnosis came in, she canceled it. I guess she figured that with everything else that was going on, there wasn’t much point in going to the trouble of getting a divorce—that she’d just put up with whatever was going on for a while longer.”
“Do you know what was going on?” Ali demanded.
“It’s just gossip. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“Tell me,” Ali prodded.
“I heard Howie has a girlfriend,” Andrea said in a small voice. “I think she’s one of his students.”
Out in the car, Ali could barely contain her outrage. Reenie had found out she was dying and that her husband was having an affair all at the same time. That was more than a mere “bumpy road.” She drove by the house on Kachina Trail on her way out of town. She wanted to confront Howie. She wanted to ask him whether or not it was true. Fortunately, he wasn’t home. Still. And maybe that was a good thing, she reflected, as she headed on down the road toward Sedona. Reenie was dead. So what if Howie was having an affair? What business of it was Ali’s? Besides, how much of the anger she felt toward Howie should have been directed elsewhere—at Paul, for example, for being a two-timing clod? Or at herself, for being stupid?
She was so distressed on the way back to Sedona that listening to Samantha screeching from the back-seat was a welcome diversion. Once back at the house, Ali stowed Samantha’s cat carrier in the corner of the living room and the litter box next to the washing machine in the laundry room. She filled the water dish and put that and the food dish on the kitchen floor. Leaving the door to the cat carrier open, Ali went to her computer.
For a long time, she sat with her fingers poised over the keyboard. There was a part of her that wanted to go off and lob incendiary bombs in Howie Bernard’s direction. But there was enough old-fashioned journalism still flowing in Ali’s veins that she couldn’t rant about something that was nothing really but unsubstantiated rumor, especially since it made no difference.
Finally, mastering her emotions, she forced herself to write something els
e.
cutlooseblog.com
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
My friend is dead. Two young children have lost their mother forever. Their lives are in total disarray. The children are with their grandparents who don’t even live in the same town. They’ve been pulled away from school, from their friends, and from everything familiar to wait for a funeral that will happen eventually, but at some unspecified time and place. (Funeral arrangements can’t be made until the medical examiner releases the body, and he has yet to say when that will happen.) In the meantime, their cat is here with me.
I don’t like cats. Never have. The idea of what I’m going to have to do with the litter box that is even now lurking in my laundry room is more than I want to consider—and probably way more information than you want to have, either. But the truth is, there wasn’t any choice. Sam (short for Samantha) had nowhere else to go. With their father preoccupied, the children needed to know that someone would look after their beloved pet. Since the kids are with their grandparents and since their grandfather turns out to be highly allergic to cats, that job fell to me.
Sam is not a beautiful animal. She’s huge. She’s missing an eye and a big part of one ear. (I would have thought that male cats did more fighting than female ones do, but maybe that’s the reality behind what men like to refer to as “cat fights.”) Even though I left the carrier door open, she’s still inside it and glaring at me through that one good eye. I don’t think she likes me any more than I like her, and I’m afraid once she leaves the carrier, she’ll disappear somewhere here in the house and I’ll never be able to find her again.
The kids had warned me in advance that Sam hated riding in cars. Now I believe it. The drive back to Sedona from Reenie’s place in Flagstaff only takes half an hour, but it felt much longer with Sam in the car because she cried the whole way. Make that SCREAMED!! AT THE TOP OF HER LUNGS! It made me wonder how fifteen or so pounds of cat could make that much of a racket. I was afraid people in other cars could hear her, too.
I keep reminding myself that I came here to help. For today, taking care of Sam is what needed doing for Reenie and for her family. So, uneasy though Sam and I may be with our current arrangement, the cat is here.
My life is in almost as much turmoil at the moment as Sam’s. I seem to be getting a divorce, not because I necessarily wanted one but because I have it on good authority that my husband has not one but two girlfriends. Two! Maybe he picked them up at Costco. Isn’t that where you always have to take two of everything, whether you need two or not?
That would be his case—he didn’t really need them. Considering he already had a wife, me, I should have thought he didn’t need any girlfriends at all. But it must have seemed like a good idea at the time. For him.
It’s not a good idea for me, however, so I’m telling myself it’s probably time for me to move on. One of the two girlfriends is evidently busy telling everyone who gets near her about her plans to marry the man who is currently my husband. That being the case, I’ve decided to take the hint, get a move on, and let her have him. I’m not interested in sharing him and I certainly don’t want him back. If she does marry him, she’ll know in advance that he’ll be as likely to cheat on her as he did on me.
But at least I can move on. For me moving on is possible. With any kind of luck, I’ll be able to pick myself up (again), dust myself off (again), and see where the road of life will take me. My friend Reenie can’t do that. I don’t know everything that was going on in her life. I know she was having health issues. There could have been other stresses at work in her life as well. If there were, she didn’t mention them to me.
The general consensus, however, is that, for whatever reason, the burden of living had become too much for her. The authorities continue to search for a suicide note. As much as I don’t want to believe that my friend took her own life, I’m more than half hoping such a note will be found. I’m hoping that whatever is written there will offer both answers and closure for the people who are grieving her loss. That it will put an end to the speculation and help us understand why Reenie might make the choices she did—why she might choose to be gone when the rest of us weren’t nearly ready to let her go.
But I’m not at all sure closure exists. Everybody talks about it, but maybe they’re all pretending. Maybe closure is no more a reality than the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. Still we all maintain that once the remains of a loved one are put to rest or once the criminal is sentenced in a court of law or a murderer is put to death that there’s “closure” for the grieving survivors. I’m worried that it’s a fabrication—an emotional crutch we all cling to in hopes that some day we’ll feel better than we do right now. And I suppose that, as far as Reenie Bernard is concerned, that’s the only hope we have.
As for me? I think it’s time I gave myself a swift kick in my self-pitying butt. Reenie Bernard has lost everything. So have her children. Compared to them, I’m a wimp.
Posted: 2:20 P.M. by AliR
For a while Ali read through the surprising number of comment e-mails that had come in since Chris had posted the notice about The Forum. She read through them, posting them as she went.
Don’t be so selfish. Your friend didn’t abandon you. She spared her family and you from having to see her go through what was coming. I have ALS, too. It’s not that bad yet, but I know it will be. I don’t have the same kind of courage your friend had. I would never be brave enough to drive myself off the edge of a cliff. Instead, I’ve saved up some sleeping pills, enough, I hope, to do the job.
The trick will be knowing when to take them. Swallowing is already getting difficult. I’d like to live long enough to see my daughter graduate from high school next spring, but I know that if I wait too long, I won’t be able to take the pills on my own and I’ll lose the ability to have my own say in the matter.
Please give your friend credit for leaving on her own terms. It was her choice.
Anna
* * *
Ms. Reynolds,
Suicide is a mortal sin. It is wrong. No matter what! Your friend is going to hell. I’m sorry.
Midge Carson
The next comments referred to Ali’s absence from the newsroom:
* * *
Dear Ali Reynolds,
Please come home. The kid they have sitting in your spot at the news desk needs a high chair. And a haircut. She looks like she’s fresh out of high school and just stuck her finger in an electrical outlet. I’m writing to the station saying that they need to take you back. If not, I’ll watch my news somewhere else.
Bob Preston
* * *
Dear Ali,
If they were going to fire someone, why not that tedious windbag with the dreadful toupee? When you get hired on another station, please let me know where. I hope it’ll be one of the stations from around here so I can still see you from time to time. You are the best thing that ever happened to the Evening News.
Wanda Carmichael
* * *
Dear Ms. Reynolds,
Someone is selling an autographed picture of you on e-bay. Do you think it is real. Will it be more valuable now that you’re fired. How much do you think I should pay. Please answer back right away. The online auction is supposed to end tomorrow morning.
Also if you ever want to buy Beenie Babies I have a lot of those and some of them are very rare. I would give them to you at a good price now that you’re unemployed.
Sylvia
Ali was still puzzling over that one and wondering if she should laugh or cry when the phone rang. “You’re home,” Edie Larson announced. “How are things?”
It was a simple question with no easy answer. There was so much Ali needed to tell her mother—so much she had yet to tell her—that she had no idea where to start. Just as she had in the blog, Ali avoided the land mines by using Samantha for emotional cover.
“Matt and Julie are down in Cottonwood with Reenie’s folks. They asked me to look after their cat, so Sa
mantha is here with me.”
“You don’t even like cats.”
“Exactly,” Ali agreed. “But somebody had to do it.”
“How are the kids holding up?”
“They’re dealing with it,” Ali replied. “Matt had read the paper. He’s aware the cops suspect Reenie committed suicide. Matt’s big worry is that Julie’s going to find out.”
“They’ll be better off if someone comes straight out and tells them,” Edie said. “Howie should do it, or else Reenie’s parents.”
“But is that what happened?” Ali objected. “Somehow I just can’t get my head around the idea that Reenie would kill herself. No matter what.”
“You and I haven’t walked in her shoes,” Edie said. “It’s easy to say she wouldn’t do this or wouldn’t do that, but until you’ve actually been there…”
“According to her secretary, Reenie was going to fight,” Ali returned.
Edie sighed. “She probably changed her mind.” “Look, Ali,” Edie added. “It hurts like hell to lose someone you’re close to. Your Aunt Evie may have been my sister, but she was also my best friend and my partner. When she was gone out of my life all of a sudden, I didn’t know how to cope. Something would happen and I’d want to tell her about it. Or I’d wonder what she’d think about it. And I still miss her every day. You just have to get through it, that’s all. And one way to do that is to take care of yourself. Did you have lunch today?”
That was vintage Edie Larson. Caring but utterly practical, and bent on providing food for the body as much as food for the soul.
“No,” Ali admitted.
“I didn’t think so. Chris and your father left for the Snow Bowl a little while ago. I know how much Chris loves pot roast. I’m cooking up one of those because I know it’ll hold until they get home, whenever that is. The only question now is, do you want to come down here for dinner or should I bring it up there?”