by Winton, Tom
There was no going back in time and I no longer wanted to move ahead. So the only option that made any sense was to leave.
By the time I finished the sixth beer, my eyes were burning and their lids had grown incredibly heavy. The engine still running, everything had gone fuzzy and I began to feel like I was floating, like my soul had left its shell of a body, like it was drifting, levitating toward the sun. In my mind's eye I watched the roof of the house shrink along with the rest of the neighborhood as I rose skyward. The oppressive heat intensified as I soared higher and higher toward the stark-white, blazing subtropical sun. Then everything went black.
Chapter 23
By all rights I should have died. But, just like my mother's first suicide attempt in that closet and another one fourteen years later - and the vast majority of all attempted suicides - mine failed. It failed because I bungled it. Drunk as I was when I decided to end it all, I overlooked one small detail: there was only an eighth of a tank of gas in the van. My scheme had literally run out of gas. I don't know how many minutes, or seconds, or gallons I was from death, but I doubt it was many.
God only knows how long I'd been unconscious when my brain picked up a faint signal, a very weak sensation. Though my shoulder was being jostled vigorously, it only felt like a series of ever-so-slight nudges. Then I heard something, a frantic voice way off in the distance. Distant whispers. But gradually those whispers grew to screams. Fear-filled desperate screams. The Supremes returned too, singing louder and louder. The voice was familiar. Not Diana's, the first one I'd heard, Maddy Frances’s voice. She was in a panic, shaking me, shrieking desperately, "OH MY GOD! NO! DEAN, DEEEEAAANNN! JESUS, NO! HONEY, COME BACK! CHRIST, NOOOOO!"
Slowly, ever so slowly, my eyelids parted, two light-blinded slashes above my cheeks. My throat was desert-dry but my clothes were drenched with perspiration. My tank top and shorts clung to my body like wet newspaper. So relieved that I had come back, Maddy, still in her work clothes, leapt on top of me and threw her arms around my soggy neck. She held my head tight against her chest.
"Ohhh, Dean, what's wrong honey? Are you alright? Why'd you do this?"
Before I could answer, her grip on me loosened, she leaned away and lovingly wiped the sweaty strings of hair back from my forehead. Then, holding my pitiful face in her hands, looking at me so adoringly, she asked in a calmer voice, "What's wrong honey? Why in God's name would you try something like this? Is it me, Dean?"
Of course she'd had no problem figuring out what I'd been up to. The garage wreaked of emissions, all the idiot lights on the dash were still lit red, my body was soaked, there were beer cans strewn all over the floorboard, I looked like I'd been on a round trip to hell, and the music was still blasting. Somewhat calmer now, yet still visibly disturbed, Maddy reached over me and the steering wheel and shut off the tape. Then she froze in that position, stretched across my slumped, limp, worthless body. Even in the condition I was in, I knew something was wrong. Then it dawned on me.
She'd seen the picture, face down, on the passenger seat. "What's this?" she asked quizzically, picking it up, turning it around. "What's … who … who's this?" Then it hit her., hard, square in the solar plexus. It knocked the wind right out of her. All the color left her face. She'd turned sheet-white. She was devastated. It was as if I, her, everything, the person she lived for, had thrust a hand inside her chest and yanked out her pumping heart. Her voice trailed off as she continued, "Ohhh, Deaann, don't tell me … It's that girl … that … that Theresa, isn't it?"
Despite my grogginess, I realized the awful significance of this situation. I tried to make the first part of my explanation more convincing than was possible when I said, "Maddy … that was a long time ago, before I met you…years before I met you. I told you how crushed I was back then. But that's not why I did this, honey." With that over, the rest was easier because it was true. "It's just that life was so much simpler back then. Wasn't it the same for you … when you were a teenager, before all the hard times we've had to scratch, kick, and fight through? Hell, Maddy, if it weren't for the hard times, you and I wouldn't have had any times at all. You know what I mean. All the times I've been out of work, us always driving around in beat-up cars--struggling to keep them on the road, the never-ending repairs, keeping the kids in clothes. Not even being able afford to get our fuckin' teeth fixed properly. I'm sorry. I shouldn't talk like that … but look how long we've put off getting that cap you need."
I paused, took a deep breath, rubbed my temples, then looked this way and that evaluating the unpainted block walls surrounding us. "Even with both of us working, it's been a battle, busting ours month after month, for what? Just to make the mortgage payments on this old salt box is why. Shit! The American Dream! We're here, what, close to ten years? Ten years and the goddamn bank still owns three-fourths of it. Stay in it thirty years … miss just the very last payment and guess what … they can legally take it from you, doesn't matter that we would have paid twice the price of the house in interest alone. They could and would take it. Don't pay the sky-high taxes and big brother takes it away. On top of all that, now we need a new roof. Three thousand bucks! It might as well be a million. And how 'bout all those times we had to get cash advances on the credit cards, just to get by? That interest is eating us alive. All that and now I can't even write anymore. The one thing left in life that I really enjoy doing, can escape to, and now it seems like I've lost that too."
I took another long, deep breath, but again seemed to get little oxygen. Glancing into the rear-view, I noticed that Maddy had opened the garage door. I turned back to her hurt-filled green eyes, put my hands on hers, and went on, "I love you Maddy … you know that. It's just that … life … for me, has become too difficult … too demanding. I'm tired of getting beat up, honey."
With the white's of her eyes all pink and misty now, valiantly fighting back new tears, she said, "I can understand all that … almost all of it, but what about this picture?" She leaned across me, put it back on the seat, face down. "I've tried so hard to make you happy, Dean."
My shameful eyes fell between my feet to the floorboard. Theresa's ankle bracelet laid there. I had dropped it when I blacked out. Stealthily, with my right foot, I brushed it beneath the seat. This sneaky act completed, I looked back up at Maddy. Seeing the painful disappointment, no, the heartbreak on her innocent face, I truly wished I had finished myself off. I wished it even more when she touched the bracelet on my wrist and said in a defeated tone, "And what is this, Dean?"
I felt like she'd just caught Theresa and me in bed.
"Nothing, it's stupid, just something she gave me. Maddy … it was more than twenty years ago. Like I told you before, we were just kids. I love you, Maddy.”
Then, though I hated myself for it, I lied a second time, "These things are just silly sentimental memories from another life!"
She was trying to believe all this but I knew deep inside she couldn't. Not totally, anyway. You don't live with someone for as long as she had, particularly with a lousy liar like myself, and not be able to discriminate the truth from bullshit. But still, as always, Maddy Frances let me off the hook. Though she was willing to endure this heavy heartache, I knew from that moment on she would have to live with another dead spot in her heart, a spot alongside the existing scar, the one she suffered when the kids were small, when she arbitrarily had to relinquish her God-given-right of motherhood for a lousy pay check.
Maddy helped me into the house still disoriented from the beer and toxic fumes. Once again she supported me, this time with her arms tight around my waist. I remember thinking, as we stepped onto the kitchen linoleum, what a lucky fluke it was that the kids hadn't been there for this horror show. Dawn had gone to a friend's birthday party after school and Trevor to baseball practice. Thank God they would never find out that their seemingly sturdy, philosophical father had been so weakened by life, that he'd sunk so deep into the black eerie depths of despair. Thankfully, I suppose, only Maddy and I w
ould bear the weight of this dark secret.
After the ordeal, I began living life more tentatively, day by day, one step at a time, one depression at a time. I'd have to make a concentrated effort to handle whatever fate slung my way. No longer certain of my own emotions, how I would handle them, what they might lead me to, I forged ahead best I could.
The one and only time Maddy ever mentioned my suicide attempt again was the day after it occurred, when she made me promise never to try such a thing again. "Leave me if you have to, Dean," she pleaded. "I could almost handle that. Go away from me … from our life together … for a week or two, if it'll help. Find out what you want. Leave me for good if that's what you really want. But, please … don't ever try to hurt yourself again. If anything ever happened to you, I wouldn't be able to go on. I wouldn't want to."
I swore up and down I'd never again try such a stupid thing, though deep down inside I wasn't all that sure. Now knowing that I had the capacity for such a thing scared the hell out of me when I thought about it. So I tried not to. Nothing is more frightening than fearing oneself. As for Maddy, she would remain true-to-form, always keeping her immense pain and dejection inside. But it had to be devastating to her, knowing that her husband, the man she lived for, had tried to end their life together, knowing there was always the possibility of a repeat performance and that she would probably always share his love with another woman. But I could only imagine how these things tore at her because Maddy Frances exiled them all deep inside her heart.
As time went on, I'd sometimes try in some small way to make up for what I'd done to my wife. But each time Maddy would give me this look, a perturbed look. Like, please don't patronize me, Dean. Let's get on with our life together. I'm trying to bury this thing.
And I'd back off.
Chapter 24
In the weeks following the garage incident, I forged on, going to work at Searcy's, putting all my free time into my novel.
Yes, I was writing again. Just two days after I tried to (it's still hard to say) kill myself, the wall that had been blocking my writing simply collapsed. I wrote faster than a homesick stenographer on overtime. The words came so quickly my right hand could barely keep pace with my brain. In just two months, I finished the first draft of 'Look What They've Done To Our Dream'. With a year and change wrapped up in it, I was both relieved and sad to have finished. But, there was still work to be done. The next step was the long, arduous task of typing the story, almost three handwritten spiral notebooks, into my garage sale computer. Of course, after setting it up on cinder blocks and wooden planks in a corner of the living room, the printer wouldn't work right, so we had to go out and spring for a new one. The son of a gun set us back more than we'd paid for the whole damn shooting match. Maddy and I both hated like hell to put it on plastic, but knowing how important it was to me, she insisted.
With the system back in operation, I was hunting and pecking every chance I got. On weekends, when she had a little down time, Maddy would tap the keys for a couple of hours. As well as she could type, making headway was a slow, tedious process. Her and I both had an awful time deciphering my horrendous penmanship. Nevertheless, we eventually did get it all into the computer. And, when we printed out the draft, it almost looked professional. I said 'looked'. In a lot of places, as is expected, it sure didn't read that way. So I started all over again. From page one I began rearranging sentences, changing nouns and verbs, kicking out unneeded adverbs and adjectives, and correcting my spelling and punctuation. Then I did it a third time and, after that, one more before I was reasonably satisfied.
When I read some parts, I couldn't believe that I, Dean Cassidy, had written them. They were so eloquent, so convincing, so seemingly publishable. I remember Maddy remarking once, after I read her a passage, that it sounded like I'd read it from a real book. I told her, "I sure hope so," and we both had a well-deserved laugh. But, other parts of the story, no matter how many times and ways I revised them, remained, in my opinion, far from great. Again, I'm a pretty ruthless critic.
After polishing my work the best I could, I went about the business of trying to market it. First I sent query letters directly to publishers, three different batches at three different times. A few wanted to see the first three chapters, and one small press in Newark, New Jersey, actually asked to see the whole thing, but in the end they were all rejected. Then I sent a bunch of queries to literary agents. When their rejections started to pile up, I felt like chucking the whole thing. I didn't even want to check the mailbox anymore. But Maddy kept pushing me, insisting that 'Look What They've Done to Our Dream' was a terrific story. But with something like thirty-three rejections at that point, I lost all hope. Despite Maddy's encouragement, I knew what I'd read in more places than one was true, that a writer's spouse is almost always his or her kindest critic.
For four months those rejection letters came in as fast as the queries went out. Some were cold, impersonal form letters. Others didn't even waste paper on me. They just scribbled on top of the query I'd sent them (maybe not in these exact words but pretty damn close), "Thanks, but no thanks." I had all but given up, when that one positive response came from Jersey. They wanted to see the whole manuscript. But, after reading it, their interest waned and so did the last of my hopes. When I checked the mail one day and saw that big manila envelope stuffed inside the mailbox, I knew it was over. Although it was just another rejection, the editor was nice enough to include a polite personalized letter with the manuscript. It was kind of a consolation prize when in the letter he wrote, "Although you are obviously a very talented writer, Mr. Cassidy, we are afraid that your work isn't quite right for us at this time. I want to wish you the best of …" Crushed as I was, his compliment made me feel a little better. But, it was too little too late, and I gave up on 'Look What They've Done To Our Dream'.
The only upside to the whole experience was that I handled all that bad news without putting another contract out on myself. Nevertheless, I was disgusted as all hell. I kept telling Maddy to forget it, it's no good. Fortunately, she didn't listen.
I was having a typically unremarkable Saturday afternoon at Searcy's. It was maybe three o'clock when the office manager's blanched voice announced over the loudspeaker, "Mister Cassidy, line two … Mister Cassidy, line two." When I picked up the phone and heard Maddy screaming, "Dean! Dean," it scared me to death. I thought I'd pop a rib or two the way my heart started bouncing, pounding, flipping around in there. Both my arms heated instantly with a flush of adrenaline, and the short hairs on the back of my neck stiffened like bristles. I thought, oh shit, something's happened to one of the kids. You see, Maddy was always, and I mean always, low key. That's her nature. I'm the excitable one. The way she was acting on the phone I thought for sure there had been some kind of family tragedy.
"What is it Maddy? What's wrong?" I pleaded, rushing the words out of my mouth so I'd get an answer faster.
Fighting to contain her excitement she said, "I just got a phone call from New York, from a publisher. She said she loved your story. DEAN, SHE WANTS TO PUBLISH YOUR BOOK!"
I got instant chicken skin. Shit, this was better than Ed Mcmahon and his entire entourage, balloons and all, coming to the door with a giant check. Knocked for a loop, almost winded, I said,"No shit! What publisher? Nobody except that small house in Jersey even asked..."
"Yes they did, honey … I'm sorry, but I didn't tell you. I was afraid you'd get more depressed if they shot it down. After that last rejection, I sent out a few more queries. I didn't tell you these people wanted to see the first three chapters because I didn't want you to get your hopes up. After they read them they wanted to see the rest. God, Dean, you have no idea how hard it was for me not to tell you. But, Dean, none of that matters anymore, this-lady-wants-you-to-call-her!"
"When? Right now?"
"Yes! Right now!" she said, her voice still hurried but suddenly choking with emotion. "She said she normally doesn't work Saturdays but that she had to do some thin
gs in her office today. She'll be there about another half hour."
My arms were still covered with those goose bumps and, hearing my wife now, this sure-to-be-canonized saint who had put up with my screwy antics for so long, crying with joy, brought tears to my own eyes. For a few moments we savored this positive news together. We basked together in the bright rays of happiness it brought, a level of happiness so pure (and alien) that I had to dilute it. Just a little, mind you. It’s got to do with my pessimistic nature. I remember thinking keep your guard up man. Good stuff like this just doesn't happen to people like you. This can't last, something's got to go wrong. But the apprehension had a short life and I quickly got back into the moment with Maddy.