C. B. Parkway

She called me on my cell phone at noon. Precisely at 12 noon. How did she know? How had she guessed that I was sitting in my office, 14th floor office tower, thinking about suicide? I knew how I would do it. I knew that I would go home and take 90 sleeping pills. I would change into jeans and a long sleeve polo shirt, the one that fits me most comfortably. The blue one. I would brush my teeth first (I don't know why), and put everything in order, and then take the pills and lay down in my bed and not wake up ever again. But she called me when I was thinking all this. How did she know?

Of course, she didn’t know. She called simply because she cares about me, and she knew that I was not doing well. I've lost thirty pounds, and I don't talk to anyone, and I worry. Even the children have noticed and my daughter who is six years old asloks incessantly, "Daddy, are you happy?" I lie to her, "Of course I am honey!" I say. But I know that I'm fooling no one, not even myself.

At work, I've told them that I have cancer, or that I think I have cancer. I survived a cancer scare last year, when they found a 5 centimeter polyp in my colon. That explained why I was bleeding all the time. And three years before that I had my thyroid removed due to cancer. So I think maybe I have cancer now too, because I'm loosing weight, and I have no energy, and nothing matters to me. Nothing that ever made me happy matters any more. When the kids come to my house on the weekends, I sleep. It seems that it rains every weekend, and I pull the windows open and listen to the rain drop while I stay in my bed. My girl and my boy jump on top of me, and they clamor, "Daddy, let's play! Let's go somewhere." But I have no energy, so I tell them that I need to sleep because I'm tired, because Daddy has no thyroid and he's not as energetic as other fathers who still have their thyroids. But it's all a lie and we know it. They and I know it's not my thyroid. It's my mind, it's my heart. It's my feeling of uselessness and hopelessness. So I call it cancer.

The kids have been going back home after visiting me, and telling her that I spend a lot of time sleeping. She wants to know what's going on. She's not challenging my parenting (though she should since I've simply not been there for the kids lately). She only wants to know that I'm ok.

"What's going on?" she says.

“I’m depressed. I can’t take it anymore.”

“Why? Is it work? What is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s everything. I don’t want to live anymore.”

“You’re not going to do anything stupid are you?”

I lie. I’ve become such a good liar. “No,” I say.

There’s silence on the other side. I hear one of her subordinates calling her. She’s back on the phone now. “Look,” she says. She sounds worried, but rushed. “ I have to go to a meeting, but you have to promise to take better care of yourself. There’s nothing wrong with your life.”

“If anything happened to me, you would be ok. Wouldn’t you?” I ask.

She doesn’t like this question. “Of course I would!” she says sharply. “But nothing is going to happen to you. Buckle up! We’ll talk later.”

“Bye,” she says, “Bye,” I say. But I don’t utter what I really want to speak. I don’t mention that even though we are divorced, that even though I’m the one that left her and “ruined her life!” as she once told me in raw anger, that even so. . . I still love her.

The phone call didn’t help. In fact, it gave me the courage I needed. She confirmed that she would be ok without me. I always suspected as much. She’s an intelligent and accomplished person, a loving mother, a good soul. I’m worth more to her dead than alive. With my 401(k), my insurance policy, the equity in my house, she could actually quit work and raise the kids comfortably. I’ve done all these calculations.

My phone is ringing incessantly. I’m working on two transactions at the same time. I need to walk away from them, and from everything else. My secretary is not at her desk; she’s at lunch. My paralegal is in her office. I feign a reason to speak with her, “Look,” I tell her. “I’m sick as a dog right now. If I don’t come in tomorrow, would you have my ex-wife check in on me? It’s a weird request, I know, but I live alone and I want someone to check in on me in case I don’t make it in tomorrow.”

Susana looks at me oddly. I’ve made a lot of odd requests before, but nothing like this. She’s a cool one though. It takes a lot more than one oddball attorney to ruffle her feathers. She figures it’s me being a drama queen again. “Go home,” she says calmly. “We’ll check in with you if you are not in tomorrow.”

“But you have to call my ex-wife too!” I reminder her.

“Don’t worry,” says Susana, still calm. “We’ll call Anne too. Now go home and rest. I think you’re delirious. Do you have a fever? You really don’t look so good.”

***

The C. B. Parkway is beautiful in April, particularly this April. We’ve had a lot of rain, and the trees are very full and colorful. I’m surprised that I haven’t noticed this before. Actually, I’m more surprised that I am noticing how beautiful the parkway can be. Lately, nothing has struck my attention. All I want to do is sleep.

There’s a very soothing calm that has taken hold on me in this last car ride. My last commute back home from the office. My last car ride ever. Every tree I pass, I consider, “I will never see that tree again.” When I cross the tiny little bridge that connects the parkway to Bethesda, I think, “I will never cross this bridge again.”

I wonder if the other commuters know what I’m thinking. Do they realize that this man driving on the C. B. Parkway, this man who drives a Prius because he cares about the environment, this man who once thought he would conquer the world with poetry. . . , do they know that this man on the C. B. Parkway is going home early, a little after 12 noon, in order to commit suicide?