Night Train полностью

So when I hit the street I was naturally very ‘dis­tressed.’ Mike, I was suicidal.”

I wanted to say: I’ll come over.

“ ‘Fuck him, give him five bucks.’ I thought that was pretty funny the first time around. Now it makes me scream with laughter.”

I wanted to say: I’m coming over.

“Oh, Christ. I just didn’t get it, Mike.”

That list headed Stressors and Precipitants—there’s not much left of it now. To keep myself quietly amused, I think about compiling another list, one that would go something like:

Astrophysics Asset Forfeiture

Trader Tobe

Colonel Tom Pop

Beautiful

But where’s the point in that? Zugts afen mir, right? We should all be so lucky. And even though we aren’t, we’re still here.

Stressors and Precipitants. What remains? We have: 7. Other Significant Other? And we have: 5. Men­tal Health? Nature of disorder: a) psychological? b) ideational’organic? c) metaphysical?

Now I cross out 7.1 cross out Arn Debs.

Now I cross out 5 a). After some thought I cross out 5 c). And then my head gives a sudden nod and I cross out 5 b). That, too, I excise. Now there’s nothing.

It’s 3:25 before it hits me. Yesterday was Sunday. The night train must have been through hours ago. Hours ago, the night train came and went.

On the evening Jennifer Rockwell died, the sky was clear and the visibility excellent.

But the seeing—the seeing, the seeing—was no good at all.

This is where I felt it first: In the armpits. On March fourth Jennifer Rockwell fell burning out of a clear blue sky. And that’s where I first felt the flames. In my armpits.

I woke late. And alone—though not quite. Tobe was long gone. But somebody else was just leaving.

The morning after she died Jennifer was in my room. Standing at the foot of the bed till I opened my eyes. Then of course she disappeared. She returned the next day: Fainter. And again, and always fainter. But this morning she was back with all her original power. Is that why the parents of dead children spend half the rest of their lives in darkened rooms? Are they hoping the ghosts will return with all their original power?

She wasn’t just standing there, this time. She was pacing, for hours, pacing swiftly, bent, lurching. I felt that Jennifer’s ghost was trying to throw up.

Trader was right: Making Sense of Suicide doesn’t make sense of anything much, including suicide. But yet it told me what I needed to know. Its author didn’t tell me. Jennifer told me.

In the margins of her copy of the book, Jennifer had made certain marks—queries, exclamation points, and vertical lines, some straight, some squiggly. She had marked passages of genuine interest, such as might have struck anyone who was new to the field: Like the bigger the city, the higher the rate. Other pas­sages, I can only think, were just being heckled for their banality. Examples: “Many people sadly kill themselves around exam time.” “When encountering a depressed person, say something like, ‘You seem a bit low,’ or, ‘Things not going well?’” “In bereavement, make yourself better, not bitter.” Yeah, right. Do do that.

It was way after Trader called and I was still sit­ting up, brain-dead from reading stuff like that—about how unfortunate suicide is, for all concerned. Then I saw the following, marked with a double query by Jen­nifer’s hand. And I felt ignition, like somebody struck a match. I felt it in my armpits.

As part of the pattern, virtually all known studies reveal that the suicidal person will give warnings and clues as to his, or her, sui­cidal intentions.

Part of the pattern. Warnings. Clues. Jennifer left clues. She was the daughter of a police.

That did matter.

The other end of it came to me this morning as I was clattering through the kitchen cupboards, looking for a pack of Sweet ‘N’ Low. I found myself dully star­ing at the bottles of jug liquor that Tobe seeps his way through. And in response I felt my liver shimmer, seeming to excrete something. And I thought: Wait. A body has an inside as well as an outside. Even Jen­nifer’s body. Especially Jennifers body. Which has con­sumed so much of our time. This is the body—this is the body that Miriam bore, that Colonel Tom pro­tected, that Trader Faulkner caressed, that Hi Tulking-horn tended, that Paulie No cut. Christ, don’t / know this about bodies? Don’t I know about alcohol—don’t I know about Sweet ‘N’ Low?

You do something to the body, and the body does something back.

At noon I called the office of the Dean of Admissions at CSU. I gave the name and the year of graduation. I said,

“I’ll spell it: T-r-o-u-n-c-e. First name Phyllida. What address do you have?”

“One moment, sir.”

“Look, I’m not ‘sir, okay?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. One moment. We have an address in Seattle. And in Vancouver.”

“That’s it?”

“The Seattle address is more recent. You want that?”