Heartstrings in B-Flat Minor

by Scott Johnson

  Grudgingly, with it still rubbing her wrong, she buys into his spiel. Despondent anyway, she feels like she’s painted herself into a corner. “Yeah,” she sighs. “Sure, I get it. Something good for others. Always first taking care of others.”

  “Absolutely, darling,” he confirms with a kiss.

  “What about taking care of me—and us?”

  “Once we’re reunited on the other side, the devil himself couldn’t pry us apart.”

  “How comforting.”

  Theatrically, he predicts, “With any luck, the bus driver will catch all green lights, and I’ll be home before I start gassing up. I certainly don’t want to croak on a bus!”

  That gets Sheryl smiling, wishing he would croak in a bus. How perfect. Together, they share disingenuous chuckles. She’s mostly back in shock mode, tuning him out as much as possible. Sterling rechecks his watch and then dramatically chugs down his sickening solution.

  While hugging and kissing Sheryl, Sterling slips the empty glass into a pocket, further instructing, “Leave your foreclosure and dunning notices on the table.”

  “Nobody will have to look far to find all that.”

  He smiles like a wolf, promising, “I’ll be looking for you in the next plane.”

  Sheryl can’t think and talk simultaneously yet somehow manages to respond, “I’ll be looking for you too,” but there is no tenderness behind the words.

  At the door, Sterling emphasizes, “Don’t forget to lock up tight from inside.”

  “That’s routine.”

  “Good.”

  Before edging away further, he adds, “Don’t forget to drink your pop, my love. That wouldn’t exactly be playing fair since I’ve already finished mine, now would it?”

  “No, dear, it wouldn’t,” Sheryl says in an obedient monotone. She figures her deadpan face betrays her resignation to suicide. Something beyond her comprehension is compelling her along this crazy path without any brakes. Certainly, there is no enthusiasm for the journey.

  Sterling seems to question her sincerity, though. Sternly, he says, “Hey, listen, this is no joke. We have a deal—kissed on it. I’ll be bleeding my guts out soon enough for you.”

  She declares clearly, “You know my word is good.” Inwardly, truth be told, Sheryl is horrified at feeling in some way obligated to down her own glass. She’s anxious for him to leave. “Go! You don’t want to miss that bus.”

  Contrarily, Sterling removes his hand from the doorknob. “I’ll sit and die at your neighbor’s door if you don’t drink that stuff now, while I’m watching. A deal’s a deal. Time for games is over.”

  She struggles, wondering whether or not to drink. To hell with him! she thinks.

  However, Sterling stares her down in his well-practiced manner. She looks away, lost. Her meandering gaze takes in a tight panorama symbolizing the overall mess she’s made of her life. Nightmarish living conditions conspiring with thoroughly spent emotions succinctly summarize her plight, more clearly than ever.

  “Much to regret, little time to wallow,” she soberly grumbles.

  “Say what?” Sterling barks like an impatient drill sergeant.

  “Nothing,” squeaks Sheryl. Softly, she adds, “Okay, you’re right. A deal’s a deal.”

  Immediately gentler, he says, “I knew your integrity would win out.”

  “I don’t know about that anymore. But I guess this life of mine—ours, whatever—with so many years of lies in the making, won’t be too much to miss. I guess.”

  “You’re doing the right thing, dear. We’re doing the right thing. And we’ll be reunited before you know it, in a better place—with those gone before us, for sure.”

  “Right, I guess. We’ll see.”

  “Don’t worry, Sheryl. You will see.”

  “If you say so.”

  With great deliberation, as though coming out of an isometric clench, she slowly raises the foul glass to her lips and drinks it down. Its rancid taste immediately sticks to her taste buds, coating her tongue. The frothy mixture freefalls fast into Sheryl’s stomach, churning her innards. Panic! screams her entire nervous system.

  With a smirk, Sterling simply says, “Good girl,” and leaves.

  Sheryl locks up behind him using several door bolts she’s always been proud about having installed on her own, thanks to a toolbox Dad long ago put together for her. Got pretty handy, I guess, she thinks, grievously reflecting on her part in this do-it-yourself project gone wild. “What’s done is done,” she says quietly, fully terrified over the internal bonfire blowing apart her innards. Grimly, she forces a faint smile at what she fears will be her last clever thought. I’m going nowhere fast, forever inconsequential.

  Sheryl coils herself up on the sofa, cradling her belly as though pregnant. She can feel the motion of gut-wrenching roiling substances with her fingertips. It is indescribably awful. “Ow!” she cries against ruthless pain. Suddenly, she thinks, Water! It could be her only possible salvation.

  She staggers to the kitchen sink. Opening the cold faucet, she sticks her mouth directly on the spigot, sucking down as much water as possible. An instinctive will to survive says maybe she has a chance since she’s not been eating much lately. There’s nothing in there to slow anything down, so maybe she can push the poison through as fast as possible—speed counts! The body can recover!

  “Ginger ale!” she shouts in pain. Taking two quart bottles of ginger ale to the bathroom, she vows to beat Sterling’s elixir with a homemade remedy of her own. Her spirits rise to midlevel, about as high as can be expected under these circumstances. Sitting on the toilet, gulping down gaseous pop, she replays the memory of Sterling swallowing his own deadly brew. A pleasant idea crosses her mind—perhaps Sterling was hit like this even before he made it to the bus. How perfect if he were to die on the street, she dreams for an instant before segueing into sobbing. “How did this happen?” she cries out. She’s at a loss to explain, and ginger ale is not the cure. “My God! What now? Please get me out of this! I swear I’ll get it together! Please!”

  Soliloquies halt at the sudden onrush of bloody stool. Severe intestinal burning follows, and nerve-rattling pain races through her entire nervous system. Electrical jolts flash ancient memories onto a corner screen of her mind, even while elsewhere, the realization sets in that imminent death approaches; the end, barring a miracle, is forthcoming. Groaning deeply, coarsely, at the edge of disaster, feeling like a self-murderer, Sheryl wonders, Am I headed for hell or purgatory? Lord knows it won’t be heaven.

  Verging on heaving, she jumps up and turns around to face the bowl, and not a second too soon, as a bloody mess erupts, splattering the seat. Contaminated toilet water splashes into her face. Cheeks dripping vilely, she staggers to the tub, shedding her pants in the process. Climbing in, she turns on the shower, using a flexible hose to deliver a powerful enema. Just gotta dilute this crap! she thinks desperately.

  Competing voices inside her head alternately cheer or jeer. A voice exclaiming, “Go for it!” shouts down one saying, “Forget about it, girl”—for the moment, anyway. However, her lower intestine explodes, splattering around her feet, quickly collecting in the backup of a slow drain. Surely, the ugly stew contains intestinal linings. Blood tints the broth red as it rises up above her ankles. Blood and guts, her remaining wit interjects. Maybe this is how a battlefield looks. My final battlefield.

  Need being the mother of invention, for good measure she shoots the hand-held spray down her throat, chugging away till the volume of water she’s absorbed seems surreal. She towels off and pulls on her robe, watching her own movements as though out-of-body, looking down on her last private performance. What a show. Scurrying about her cluttered world cradling her sore gut, she anxiously seeks her misplaced cell phone. Realizing it won’t be found, she is shattered at not even being able to dial 911. It’s probably cut off, anyway, she thinks.<
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  With time at a premium, Sheryl pulls on replacement pants to at least go out with a little dignity. She settles down on the sofa. Thankfully, the puking urge has dissipated. This gives her a peaceful moment to reflect on the reality of the end being near, very near. Oh my God, she suddenly thinks, my family! If I’m found like this, it’ll kill them!

  Another rumble in her gut says there will be no surviving this quandary. She thinks again of her family; now it will be plain for them to see, without a doubt, just how foolish she has been over so many years. A veil of shame crashes down upon her. “What have I done, Lord?” she cries out loudly.

  A bloody mess sops through her pants. Sheryl knows now for certain that nothing good can come from this, nothing short of death, and she’s almost there. It has to be better than this. “I’m doomed,” she whispers. “Some legacy I leave.” She wants to cry in the worst way but can’t. There’s no more allowance for tears. Not a drop. Waterworks have gone dry. Too bad—because maybe one can cry oneself to death, she hypothesizes. Feeling faint, she guesses, This is it.

  Sleep comes upon her but brings no REM.

  Elsewhere, north on Lake Shore Drive, as Sterling settles into bed, he thinks about how his final performance on Sheryl’s stage played out flawlessly—right down to the smuggling in of arsenic for her and a flask of nasty but not deadly brew for him. Just an old-fashioned shell game. He laughs to himself and drifts off to sleep like a baby. He needs his beauty rest for a night of dancing at the Drake. Proving indeed that he is an equal-opportunity opportunist, his newest mark is a wealthy widow from Kenwood who’s already smitten with good Dr. Jackson.

  Back in Lincoln Park, before long, sunlight glimmers on a watery horizon outside Sheryl’s window. As the sun emerges from below the waterline, its powerful beams of light ricochet off Lake Michigan, breaking through Sheryl’s dusty windowpanes to awaken her. She can’t believe that it’s already daybreak or that she’s still alive.

  Instantly, with the intuitive power gained from having slept on something, it dawns on her that Sterling might have pulled a sleight of hand in their insane toast last night, or that he might have had some antidote to take in the elevator ride to the lobby. “Duped again, maybe,” she taunts herself. “The final insult. That asshole!” The more this thought sinks in, the more she gets beyond “might have.”

  She is fully awake fast, with the nonstop pain tossing Sterling from her mind. “This is unbearable, Lord,” she whispers. “What’s taking so long? I just want it to end!”

  Unable to linger longer on the sofa, this being her last daybreak—a thought hard to handle—she flops to the floor and splays out, recalling moments when she wondered, How does it feel? Or more to the point, How would it feel to off oneself?

  After concluding that feeling sorry for oneself is the lone balm that cuts the pain, even if only ever so slightly, she figures offing oneself simply is the ultimate form of self-pity, unless a person is mentally unhinged, drunk, or on drugs. She knows she’s not drunk. Diving further into loss of self-respect, she stares straight up from her position on the floor. The ceiling itself now is spinning. Yet her mind multitasks like never before. Rationalizing away the revolving ceiling as a mirage of her hemmed-in world, Sheryl feels everything grind down to slow, so slow.

  It’s the homestretch, ready or not. The ceiling rotations pick up speed. Stars dance like fireworks on the periphery of her vision, as if real. Hinting that death’s sharp edge draws near, these brightly popping constellations steady the spinning ceiling somehow, seeming to bring a sense of calm. Equilibrium returns.

  She gets to her feet, thinking about a speech for St. Peter, as if she will have a chance of meeting him. He and the Lord above must be furious with me, she tells herself. A surge of stinging tears drains any remaining spine from her backbone. Limp, she falls back to the floor. “Throwing away life like this,” she murmurs. The ceiling spins ever faster. “When do actual flashbacks begin?”

  Sheryl sobs upon remembering she already has had some. In reality, they’ve been coming for months, leaving her to wonder how long she has really been trekking along this death march. Her busy bowels interrupt her thoughts. Though near death, she still can’t allow herself to unload where she’s flopped, if avoidable, and she senses she can make it to the bathroom. “Let this be the last toilet run,” she says as she stands up and stumbles down the hall.

  In her cramped but familiar bathroom, sitting for the last time upon her trusty toilet, Sheryl decides one final shower is appropriate. Climbing into the tub is a struggle, and she shortens the process by cleaning up only below the waist, but by the time she’s toweling down, she is glad for having made the effort. She opts for a sweatshirt and jeans, trying again to look not so bad while speculating about who will find her. Maybe days from now, her odor will attract attention.

  Hold on! an inner voice calls out. I can’t just sit here and die! This is too much! She fears both eternal punishment and an agonizingly slow death while trapped in her own home, and even higher levels of panic kick in than before. Waiting it out in itself could be a fate worse than death. At warp speed she develops another theory: what if the poison worked just well enough to almost kill her, and she’ll be found alive? However, surviving with the damage done would be devastatingly tragic. No quality of life left, that’s for sure, she rationalizes.

  Beyond treatment, rehabilitation, and expenses, it would take great dedication, a huge effort. And all the while, she would be depressed about how it had come to be. Then there would be the humiliation. That never would end. And how would I eat? What could I eat? she wonders.

  Sheryl wonders if her thoughts are profound or pathetic. Regardless, thoughts come so fast that she can’t keep up with them. The bottom line, though, is that the only escape from this wretched predicament is to jump. Or so she sees it. Come on, it’s not like I haven’t ever thought of it before, she thinks, with her usually living high above the ground whether at home or on the road. Such thoughts have come even more lately, since the now-obvious coaching Sterling gave her coming back from American Cuisine. So as much as the idea of jumping scares her, reeling from excruciating pain, she moans, “Jumping’s the only way. Do it! I say do it!”

  By this moment, the sun’s rising presence is growing stronger through her bedroom window. As her plan develops, that favored window becomes her doorway to the next plane. Its view is among her favorites anywhere around the world. Over the years, how glorious it has been for the globe-trotting traveler to know, upon returning home, that this view awaits.

  Zeroing in on the view, Sheryl takes comfort in thinking, How much more appropriate could it be than to leave this world by stepping through that window into the next? No turning back now, she decides. I’m going down for the count taking one last glimpse of the lake.

  That leaves only the writing of her epitaph—which won’t take long, she realizes in a bummer rush. Forever after, most everyone will remember her for having gone out a jumper, before anything else comes to mind. She knows so from her own previously held views on jumpers. How grim, she thinks, but I understand. That’s the lasting impression.

  Sheryl opens her window, immediately focusing outside on the air conditioner’s through-the-wall extension. It provides an extra ledge beyond the small windowsill for her to utilize in doing this deadly deed—a perfect launching pad.

  Her hyperactive mind jumps back to that American Cuisine night, when she and Sterling returned home stealthily via the Dumpster door. She looked up at her window from the ground, and eyeballing the distance in the dark, she figured it’d do the job. However, going out in tandem with Sterling on a suicide pact was way off her radar then. “That darn pact,” she grouses, knowing it ultimately is what has brought her here. Nevertheless, in a clear moment of honesty, she reasons, “I’ve maybe been on the brink of this for ages.” But who’s to say Sterling also didn’t have a hand in those previous flirtations with the brink?


  She studies the utility room roof below, guessing that to avoid it, she would need to jump out and away from the building about ten feet. Ten feet? No way! she concludes. But landing on the utility roof would make this most likely only an eight-story fall, not nine. Is that enough? wonders Sheryl. I don’t want to live through this! After brief reflection, she concludes, I’ll just lead with my head. That should work.

  Suddenly, she considers all the heavy-duty obstacles outside the utility room near the back door. Basically, it’s dicey ground, a garbage dump for her entire building. So even if some miracle or updraft were to launch her ten feet out from the window, she could end up in the compactor. She almost chuckles at the thought. Or, as bad, it could be the Dumpster, she thinks. Not funny.

  Sheryl shoves up the window as high as possible. Even still, it’s a small opening to duck through for air conditioner access. Seconds later, she can’t believe she’s crouching outside the brick exterior of her building’s walls. Terrified, she has no words, just steady breathing as survival mode self-starts. She wants off this perch, safely.

  Way below, fanning out a block or so, early-morning foot traffic, complete with someone happily whistling, foretells a brilliant spring day to come. Sheryl predicts that this day, one way or another, more than her birthday, forever will be her day. Time will tell.

  Sharply interrupting from somewhere nearby, a woman’s voice urgently shouts out, “Hey! What are you doing, dear girl? Please! Get back inside!”

  Her high-pitched plea for sanity makes Sheryl twitch and nearly fall. Catching her balance, she breathes a sigh of relief and then scans the rush of people and vehicles fanning out below to points beyond. Everybody and everything is coming alive for the day, except her in this mad dash to die. Some pedestrians stop in their tracks, looking up at her. One pedestrian hollers out, “Don’t jump! Don’t do it!”

  The first voice again desperately pleads, “Please, my dear, get back inside!”