“Shit, well it sounds like the worst night ever, but okay.” She laughed. “Did you buy the tickets already?”
“Not yet,” I lied. “I didn’t want to buy tickets to something you wouldn’t go to.”
“Lots of things I’ll do for love.” She rubbed the dishwasher with extra vigor. I rolled my eyes when she wasn’t looking.
“That’s really nice of you, Fig. He’s going to be so excited.”
Yeah, he was. Jeff Bridges gave him an emotional hard on; I was hoping my thoughtful present would give him a real one. Fig, he’d say—you’re so good to me. I bet you’d feel good, too. I immediately felt guilty for that thought. Jolene was a decent person and my friend. She’d never done anything but encourage me. It was me. I was the bad person. I fantasized about having what she had, but I would stop. It wasn’t her fault that she was so fucked up, things just happened to people.
Darius was excited when I presented him with his tickets. Not in the eternal jumping for joy way, but his eyes sort of twinkled and his voice went an octave higher when he thanked me. I preened under his attention.
“We can go out for dinner too,” I said. “Anywhere you like.”
“The Dude,” he said, in a gravelly voice. I was so pleased with his reaction, so pleased with myself. It had cost a lot of money, but could you put a price on love?
This was my future, this man. I loved him. He was everything I’d wanted when I was young and stupid, but instead I’d settled for George … dull, monotone, silent … George. He’d been waiting for me, only he didn’t know it yet. The two of us carved out of the same block of wood. But, he was coming around. I could see it in his eyes. He used to glow whenever Jolene walked into the room, now he looked skeptical … bored. I’d be bored with her too. She was exhausting in her stands against things. But, he’d never be bored with me—I’d make sure of that. We belonged together. It was only a matter of time.
I thought about killing myself at least twice a week. Not in a dramatic way of course—okay, maybe a little dramatic. I was a performance dancer for most of my teen years, after all. There was something about imagining the end, having the power to make it happen. Even if you didn’t actually have the guts to do it, you could if you wanted to. I’m not sure what made me more depressed: what could have been, or what should have been. I missed the idea of marriage, the one you had when you were young and emotionally unblemished. When you planned what your life was going to look like, you didn’t see a neglectful, silent husband with sweat stains under his arms. Or the empty way your arms felt when all of the other women were carrying children. I was thirty years old, and my chances of having a healthy egg fertilized were getting slimmer, unlike my hips and thighs, which were not slim at all. I was grieving and wasted in a dead marriage, with an emotionally dead man. Marriage was nothing but a lot of dirty dishes and pee sprinkled on your toilet seat.
With my social, emotional, and fertility doom weighing down heavily, I drove to Edmonds where the railway tracks skirt the Sound in a sort of weaving snake, and decided the best way to go was to jump in front of a train. I liked trains, liked the eerie blow of their whistles as they rumbled past. Every day for a week, I drove to the tracks and watched the trains go by, my feet hanging over the small cliff, the beauty of Washington spread out in front of me. This was the place to die, with the Cascades looming in the background, and the spread of blue icy water in front of them. The last thing I saw could be the glory of Washington. But, then the week I planned on actually doing it, I ran into a girl in the supermarket who’d worked with George. I’d only met her once at a Christmas party where she’d gotten drunk and told me she’d had a miscarriage two weeks before. It had been her eighth one, and she was ready to throw in the towel. I thought that was an odd thing to say about trying for a baby—like it was a business venture gone wrong. Throw in the towel.
She spotted me in front of the snack cakes and came over to say hi, carrying a baby on each hip. At first I hadn’t recognized her, she was plumper in the face and she’d cut her hair short—just below the chin.
I was breathless as she told me her story, two rounds of in vitro, and here she was with her miracle babies. Twins! I’d put my railway track plan behind me as I decided to focus on being positive and having faith, as she put it, in the future.
I told Jolene about all of this as we sat having tea one day in her kitchen. Mercy was sitting with us playing with measuring spoons and a bowl of water. Her tea grew cold as she held the mug between her hands and listened with her brow furrowed. When I was done telling my story, she set her mug down and took both my hands.
“Don’t ever think that again. You must tell me when you feel alone. Do you hear me, Fig? Life is a great big thing and you can’t let people ruin it for you.” By people I figured she meant George, but what she didn’t realize was that she was ruining it for me too.
I swallowed the giant lump in my throat and nodded, swiping at a tear hanging out in the corner of my eye. She wasn’t all that bad. And when she said things while holding my hands, I actually believed her. Of course she didn’t want me to die, she didn’t know I was a threat to her perfect life. Or seemingly perfect, at any rate.
“I’m trying not to be that person,” I said. “I’ve been fixated on trains for a while now and I’m stepping away!”
“Train,” Mercy said, looking up. “Trains go choo-choo.”