Night Train полностью

I came to know the graphs and diagrams of suicide, their pie segments, their concentric circles, their color codes, their arrows, their snakes and ladders. With my Suicide Prevention tours, back in the Forty-Four, plus the hundred-some suicides I worked in the Show, I came to know not just the physical aftermaths but the basic suicide picture, ante mortem.

And Jennifer doesn’t belong here. She doesn’t belong.

I have my folders out on the couch, this Sunday morning. Going through my notes to see what I got:

· In all cultures, risk of suicide increases with age. But not steadily. The diagonal graph-line seems to have a flattish middle section, like a flight of stairs with a landing. Statistically (for what stats are worth around here), if you make it into your twenties, you’re on level ground until the risk bump of the midlife. Jennifer was twenty-eight.

· About 50 percent of suicides have tried before. They are parasuicides or pseudosuicides. About 75 percent give warning. About 90 percent have histories of egression—histories of escape. Jennifer hadn’t tried before. So far as I know, she did not give warning. All her life she saw things through.

· Suicide is very, very means-dependent. Take the means away (toxic domestic gas, for instance) and the rate plummets. Jennifer didn’t need gas. Like many another American, she owned a gun. These are my notes. What about their notes, and what percentage leave them? Some studies say 70 percent, others say 30. Suicide notes, it is assumed, are often spirited away by the decedent’s loved ones. Suicides, as we have seen, are often camouflaged—smudged, snowed. Axiom: Suicides generate false data. Jennifer, apparently, did not leave a suicide note. But I know she wrote one. I just feel this.

It may run in families but it’s not inherited. It is a pattern, or a configuration. It’s not a predisposition. If your mother kills herself, it won’t help, and it opens a door...

Here are some other do’s and don’ts. Or don’ts, anyway:

Don’t work around death. Don’t work around pharmaceuticals.

Don’t be an immigrant. Don’t be a German, just off the boat.

Don’t be Romanian. Don’t be Japanese.

Don’t live where the sun doesn’t shine.

Don’t be an adolescent homosexual: One in three will attempt.

Don’t be a nonagenarian Los Angelean.

Don’t be an alcoholic. It’s suicide on the install­ment plan, anyway.

Don’t be a schizophrenic. Disobey those voices in your head.

Don’t be depressed. Lighten up.

Don’t be Jennifer Rockwell.

And don’t be a man. Don’t be a man, whatever you do. Tony Silvera was, of course, talking through his ass when he said that suicide was “a babe thing.” To the contrary, suicide is a dude thing. Attempting is a woman thing: They’re more than twice as likely to do that. Completing is a man thing: They’re more than twice as likely to do that. There’s only one day in the year when it’s safer to be male. Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day is the day for felo de se. How come? I wonder. Is it the all-you-can-eat brunch at the Qual­ity Inn? No. The suicides are the women who skipped the lunch. They’re the women who skipped the kids.

Don’t be Jennifer Rockwell.

The question is: But why not?

The first person I’m going to be wanting to talk to is Hi Tulkinghorn—Jennifer’s physician. Over the years I’ve come across this old party a bunch of times at the Rockwells’ (barbecues, cocktails on Christmas Eve). And, recall, Colonel Tom had him in to look me over, when I was drying out there: DT-ing for a week in one of the children’s bedrooms on the first floor. Which I don’t remember a whole lot about. Small, bald, clean-eyed, Tulkinghorn’s the kind of elderly medic who, over time, seems to direct more and more of his doc­toring know-how inward—to keep his own little show on the road. The other kind of elderly medic is a drunk. Or he’s drying out. When I was drying out, Jennifer used to come into the room in the evenings. She’d sit in the corner and read to me. She’d feel my brow and fetch me water.

Now. I had called Tulkinghorn’s office on March eighth, almost two weeks ago. And how about this. The old prick was on a poker cruise in the Caribbean. So I had his secretary page him and he came squawk­ing in from The Straight Flush. Told him the news and said I was following up on it. He said to make an appointment. I called his office again, and got talking. It turned out that it isn’t Tulkinghorn who plays poker. It’s his wife. He gets nice and tan on a lounger—while she’s crouching at a table in the saloon, blowing the second home on her two pair.