I barely make it to the toilet before I throw up.
Beads of sweat trickle down my forehead.
I can’t do this.
I can’t read anymore.
There’s too much. Too much and it’s too hard and I’m too sick now to keep reading.
I somehow pull myself off the floor and make it to the sink. I wash my hands. I cup them under the stream of water and bring my hands to my mouth, swishing the water around. I do this several times, washing the taste of bile out of my mouth.
I look in the mirror at the scars that run from my cheek to my neck. I pull my shirt off and look at the scars on my arm, my breast, my waist. I run the fingers of my right hand up my arm and neck, over my cheek, and back down again. I run them over my breast and down my waist.
I lean forward until I’m flush against the counter . . . as close to the mirror as I can get. And I really look at them. I look at them with more concentration than I’ve ever looked at them before, because what I’m feeling is confusing me.
It’s the first time I’ve ever looked at them without at least a trace of anger following close behind.
Until I read Ben’s words, I never knew how much I blamed my father for what happened to me. For so long, I’ve hated him. I made it difficult for him to grieve with me over what happened. I found fault in everything he said. Every conversation we had turned into a fight.
I’m not excusing that he can be an insensitive jerk. He’s always been an insensitive jerk. But he’s also always loved me, and now that I have a clearer picture of what happened that night, I shouldn’t blame him for forgetting about me anymore.
I only stayed at his house once a week, and he had just found out someone he loved had died. His mind must have been wrecked. And then for me to expect him to react with perfect precision when he sees his house is on fire is way more than I should expect of him. In a matter of minutes, he was grieving and then angry and then panicking because of the fire. To expect him to immediately remember that I had texted him twelve hours earlier to let him know I was sleeping at his house that night is completely unrealistic. I didn’t live there. It wasn’t like living at home with my mom and me being the first thing she would think about in a panic. My father’s situation was completely different, and I should treat it as such. And even though we’ve kept in touch over the past few years, our relationship isn’t what it used to be. I take half the blame for that. We don’t get to choose our parents, and parents don’t get to choose their children. But we do get to choose how hard we’re willing to work in order to make the best of what we’re given.
I pull my cell phone out of my pocket and open a text to my father.
Me: Hey, Dad. Want to have breakfast tomorrow? Miss you.
After I hit send, I pull my shirt back on and walk back into the living room. I stare down at the manuscript, wondering how much more I’ll be able to endure. It’s so hard to read, I can’t imagine Ben and his brothers having to live through this.
I say a quick prayer for the Kessler boys, as if what I’m reading is happening now and Kyle is even still around to be prayed for.
And then I pick up right where I left off.
Ben’s novel—CHAPTER THREE
Age 16
“Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name.”
—Dylan Thomas
You know what’s worse than the day your mother kills herself?
The day after your mother kills herself.
When a person is in a lot of physical pain—say they accidentally slice off their hand—the human body produces endorphins. These endorphins act similarly to drugs such as morphine or codeine. So it’s normal not to feel very much pain right after an accident.
Emotional pain must work in a similar way, because today hurts so much worse than yesterday did. Yesterday I was in some kind of dreamlike state, as if my conscience wouldn’t fully allow me to believe she was actually gone. In my mind, I was holding on to that thin thread of hope that somehow, the entire day wasn’t really happening.
That thread isn’t there anymore, no matter how hard I try to grasp it.
She’s dead.
And if I had money and connections, I’d numb this pain with whatever drugs I could find.
I refused to get out of bed this morning. Ian and Kyle both tried to fight me into going to the funeral home with them, but I won. I’ve been winning all day, actually.
Eat something, Kyle said at lunch.
I didn’t eat. I won.
Aunt Chele and Uncle Andrew are here, Ian said around two o’clock this afternoon.
But they’re gone now and I’m still in bed, so I won.
Ben, come eat dinner. There’s lots to eat, people have been bringing food by all day, Kyle said when he stuck his head in my bedroom around six o’clock.
But I chose to stay in bed and not touch those sympathetic casseroles, making me the winner yet again.
Talk to me, Ian said.
I’d like to say I won this round, but he’s still sitting on my bed, refusing to leave.
I pull the covers over my head. He pulls them back down. “Ben. If you don’t get out of bed I’ll start overreacting. You don’t want to force me to call a psychiatrist, do you?”
Jesus Fucking Christ!
I sit up in bed and punch the pillow. “Just let me fucking sleep, Ian! Dammit!”
He doesn’t react to the fact that I’m yelling. He just stares at me complacently. “I have been letting you sleep. For almost twenty-four hours now. You need to get out of bed and brush your teeth or shower or eat or something.”
I lie back down. Ian pushes off the bed and groans. “Benton, look at me!”
Ian never yells at me, which is the only reason I pull the covers from over my head and look up at him. “You aren’t the only one hurting, Ben! We have shit to figure out! You’re sixteen years old and you can’t live here alone and if you don’t come downstairs and prove to me and Kyle that this didn’t completely fuck you up, then we’re probably going to make the wrong decision for you!”
His jaw is twitching, he’s so mad.
I think about this for a second. About how neither of them lives here. Ian is in flight school. Ben just started college. My mother is dead.
One of them is going to have to move back home because I’m a minor.
“Do you think mom thought of that?” I ask, sitting up on the bed again.
Ian shakes his head in frustration. His hands drop to his hips. “Thought about what?”
“That her decision to kill herself would force one of you to give up your dream? That you’d have to move back home to take care of your brother?”
Ian shakes his head, confused. “Of course she thought about that.”
I laugh. “No, she didn’t. She’s a selfish fucking bitch.”
His jaw hardens. “Stop.”
“I hate her, Ian. I’m glad she’s dead. And I’m glad I was the one who found her, because now I’ll always have the visual of how the black hole in her face matched the black hole in her heart.”
He closes the gap between us and grabs the collar of my shirt, shoving me back down on the bed. He brings his face close to mine and talks through tightly gritted teeth. “You shut your fucking mouth, Ben. She loved you. She was a good mother to us and you’ll respect her, do you hear me? I don’t care if she can see you right now or not, you’ll respect her in this house until the day you die.”
My eyes rim with tears and I’m suffocating with hatred. How could he defend her?
I guess it’s easy when his memory of her isn’t tarnished by the visual I got when I walked into her room.
A tear falls from Ian’s eye and lands on my cheek.
His grip loosens from around my neck and he turns around and buries his head in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice tearful. “I’m sorry, Ben.”
I’m not.
He turns around and looks at me, not even attempting to hide his tears. “I just . . . how can you say that? Knowing what she was going through . . .”
I chuckle under my breath. “She broke up with her boyfriend, Ian. That hardly constitutes misery.”
He turns until he’s facing me on the bed. He tilts his head. “Ben . . . did you not read it?”
I shrug. “Read what?”
He sighs heavily, and then stands. “Her note. Did you not read the letter she left before the police took it?”
I swallow hard. I knew that’s where he went yesterday. I knew it.
He runs his hands through his hair. “Oh, my God. I thought you read it.” He walks out of my bedroom. “I’ll be back in half an hour.”
He’s not lying. It’s exactly thirty-three minutes when he walks back through my bedroom door. I spent the entire time wondering what could be in that letter that would make the difference between me hating her and Ian feeling sorry for her.
He pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket. “They can’t release the actual letter yet. They took a photo and printed it out, but you can still read it.” He hands me the piece of paper.
He walks out of my bedroom and closes my door.
I sit back on my bed and read the last words my mother will ever say to me.
To my boys,
I’ve spent my entire life studying writing. No writing course . . . no amount of college . . . no life experience could ever prepare a person to write an adequate suicide note for their children. But I’m sure as hell going to try.
First, I want to explain why I’ve done this. I know you don’t understand it. And Ben, you’re probably the first one reading this, since I’m sure you were the first to find me. So please read this letter in its entirety before you decide to hate me.
I found out four months ago that I have ovarian cancer. Brutal, unbeatable, silent cancer that spread before I even developed symptoms. And before you get angry and say I gave up, that’s the last thing I would do. If my illness was something I could fight, you boys know I would have fought it with everything I have. But that’s the thing about cancer. They call it the fight, as if the stronger ones win and the weaker ones lose, but that’s not what cancer is at all.
Cancer isn’t one of the players in the game. Cancer is the game.
It doesn’t matter how much endurance you have. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve practiced. Cancer is the be-all and end-all of the sport, and the only thing you can do is show up to the game with your jersey on. Because you never know . . . you might be forced to sit the bench for the entire game. You may not even be given the chance to compete.
That’s me. I’m being forced to sit the bench until the game is over, because there’s nothing more that can be done for me. I could go into all the details, but the fact of the matter is, they caught it too late.
So now comes the tricky part.
Do I wait it out? Do I allow the cancer to slowly rob me of everything I have? You boys remember Grandpa Dwight, and how cancer completely swallowed him up, but refused to spit him out for months. Grandma had to alter her entire life to care for him. She lost her job, the home medical bills piled up, and they eventually lost their house. She was evicted two weeks after he finally died. All because the cancer took its precious time with him.
I don’t want that. I can’t bear the thought of you boys having to take care of me. I know if I don’t end my own life, I might be lucky enough to live on this earth for another six months. Maybe nine. But those months will rob each of you of the mother you knew. And then, when my dignity and my cells aren’t enough to satisfy it anymore, the cancer will take everything else it can get, too. The house. Savings. Your college funds. All the happy memories we’ve shared together.
I know as much as I try and justify my decision, it’s still going to hurt the three of you more than you’ve ever hurt in your life. But I knew if I spoke to you about this prior to doing it, you would have talked me out of it.
I’m especially sorry to you, Ben. My sweet, sweet baby boy. I’m so sorry. I’m sure I could have done it a better way, because no child should have to see their mother in that condition. But I know if I don’t do it tonight before you come home, I might never do it. And to me, that would be an even more selfish decision than this one. I know you’ll find me in the morning, and I know it will gut you because it’s gutting me just thinking about it. But either way, I’m going to be dead before you turn seventeen. At least this way, it will be quick and easy. You can call 911, they’ll take away my body, and it’ll be over in less than a few hours. A few hours for me to die and be removed from the house is so much better than the several months it could potentially take for the cancer to do its job.
I know this will be difficult for you to deal with, so I’ve tried to make it as easy as possible. Someone will need to clean up after they take my body, so I’ve left a card on the kitchen counter for who you should call. There’s plenty of cash in my purse. I’ve left it in the kitchen, on the counter.
If you look in my office, third drawer down on the right, you’ll find that I’ve prepared all the necessary paperwork to file for survivor benefits. Make sure you do this right away. Once the paperwork is filed, you’ll get a check in a matter of weeks. There’s still a mortgage on the house, but there will be enough left to cover tuition for each of you. I’ve set all that up through our lawyer.
Please keep the house until you’re all grown and settled. It’s a good house and despite this one thing, we had a lot of good memories here.
Please know that you three boys made every second of my life worth living. And if I could take away this cancer, I would do it. I would be so selfish about it; I’d probably give it to someone else to suffer through just so I could spend more time with each of you. That’s how much I love you.
Please forgive me. I had two poor choices to choose from, neither of which I wanted. I just went with what would be more beneficial to all of us in the end. I hope one day you can understand. And I hope that by choosing to do this, I don’t ruin this date for you. November 9th is significant to me, in that it’s the same day Dylan Thomas died. And you boys know how much his poetry means to me. It’s gotten me through a lot in life, especially your father’s death. But my hope for you is that this date will just be a date for you in the future with little significance and little excuse to mourn.
And please don’t worry about me. My suffering is over. In the wise words of Dylan Thomas . . . After the first death, there is no other.
With all my love,
Mom
I can barely read my mother’s signature through my tears. Ian walks back into the room several minutes later and sits beside me.
I want to thank him for making me read it, but I’m so mad I can’t even speak. If I had just read the letter before the police took it, I would have known everything right then. The last two days would have turned out so different. I may not have been in such a state of shock had I been able to read the letter then. I also wouldn’t have misconstrued everything and assumed a man had to do with her decision.
And I would have actually stayed home last night, rather than make the choice to get in her car, drive to a stranger’s house, and start a fire that went out of control.
When I double over from the sobs, Ian puts his arm around me and pulls me in for a hug. I know he thinks I’m crying because of everything I just read, and he’s partly right. He also probably assumes I’m crying for saying such hateful things about my mother, and he’s partly right about that, too.
But what he doesn’t know is that most of these tears aren’t tears of grief.
They’re tears of guilt for being responsible for ruining the life of an innocent girl.
