We Only Know So Much (4 page)

five

S
o, this part of the story is a bummer. Jean’s lover, the other man, the good man James, he kills himself. There’s no sense being delicate about it. He freaking hangs himself. It’s not a delicate thing. Jean finds this out in the worst possible way.

She and James had a standing date every Friday for lunch at the cabin he used as a studio. They often met at this cabin, down by the lake, less than a mile from her own house, but Fridays at noon were a regular thing. James had no classes on Friday afternoons and Priscilla worked. So Jean arrives at the cabin as usual, but this day she finds a note taped to the door, a folded piece of paper, the outside reading call 911, walk away. At first her mind does not go all the way to the worst place, but it’s a weirdly ominous message, and she doesn’t recognize the caps as James’s handwriting; the door is locked, he isn’t answering her knocks and the blinds are down, so she takes the note down and looks inside.
I’m sorry.
That’s all it says. Now she shoots off to the bad place. She’s got one thought—that maybe he’s breaking it off with her—because that’s a slightly better thought than the other one, the one where
I’m sorry
and call 911 mash together into something she’s utterly unprepared for. She tries to look through the blinds, but they’re all down, which isn’t completely unusual on the days when she comes, finally comes across the one broken slat, one missing six-inch length of slat where she can peek in. It’s not at the perfect height, about at her chin, so she has to bend her knees a bit to see what she wasn’t supposed to see: James, hanging from a support crossbar in the middle of the room.

The crossbar had been the subject of conversation between Jean and James on more than one occasion because of its distinct, yokelike construction—three wrought-iron bars coming together in an upside-down T-shape across the center of the room’s vaulted ceiling, one suspended from the ceiling, one on either side of the two walls, all three hooked around a plate-sized ring in the center. Jean and James had always found something sort of lovely, but also amusing, about it; they’d lie on the single bed in this cabin, with its blue rib-cord bedspread, stare up at the crossbar, and wonder together,
Was this the builder’s best idea about how to keep the walls from falling down?
Jean, it’s fair to say, will never unsee her beloved James hanging from the crossbar, his feet less than a foot from the floor.

Jean drops to her knees. She feels like she might throw up. She’s too shocked to cry, feels like she was kicked in the stomach. Feels like she can’t breathe, like she might vomit out of her eyes. How could he do this to her? Call 911? Walk away? How could he make her be the one to deal with this? Could he have been expecting someone else? They had a date. How is she supposed to just walk away? Does she have a choice? She’s not prepared to confess to Gordon, not prepared to break into the house, not prepared to figure out how to pull him down. She pulls herself up and looks through the slat one more time. Maybe it’s not true, maybe it’s not true. She takes one last look, closes her eyes, feels the tears coming, and does as he requested. She walks away and drives to a pay phone to call 911. Anonymously, of course. She makes up a weak story, she’s too fraught to do better than say that she was a jogger passing by, that she doesn’t want to be involved. She doesn’t tell them what she saw, but stresses that it’s urgent, and hangs up.

Of course, when someone goes and hangs themselves, it’s often the subject of much gossip and discussion, and this is no exception. So Jean’s kind of fucked right now, pretty much. In her head, anyway. She’s a mess. But she’s trying not to be a mess, because obviously no one is supposed to know she’s a mess. She has to pretend she doesn’t even know until the news hits the paper the next day. She does a good enough job hiding that she’s scanning the paper specifically for this news, but when it appears, in a small item in the Metro section titled “Beloved Teacher Found Dead,” she can’t stop herself from bursting into tears at the breakfast table. Gordon asks her what’s wrong, so Jean does her best to act as though this is the first she’s heard of it. But it takes a bit of reframing in her head before she knows how to answer.
It’s James, from my book group
, she says in a strange, slow voice that seems not quite her own.
He died.

Oh no
, Gordon says.
Well, that’s terrible. What happened? He couldn’t have been very old. Was he sick?

Jean takes another pause, considers the various meanings of “sick.”
It says an autopsy will be performed but that it appears he took his own life
, she says, shaking her head. Is this what grief for a book club friend looks like? She doesn’t know. Everything feels wrong.

Of course the book group all knew him, so it’s not surprising that the phone rings just as Gordon’s about to get started with some extensive commentary. Her friend Margot has also just read the newspaper, and expresses her shock as well, and says to Jean
I know you two were good friends
, which makes Jean’s heart rate speed up a bit, and she wants to hang up quickly, but Margot appears eager to chat about it, adding that maybe she shouldn’t be surprised
given that ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ was his pick.

At first Jean doesn’t get Margot’s meaning at all.
What are you saying?
Jean asks her friend, feeling her face grow hot. Margot explains that she always thought it was interesting that James had picked a book by a guy who killed himself and
What do you suppose
that
means?
Jean raises her voice but stops a fair bit short of yelling. She’s never been a yeller, but she is feeling something odd and churny in her.
Well, if you thought it meant something, Margot, why didn’t you say anything about it at the time?
Margot tells Jean she was kind of just thinking it was interesting. Jean wants to make the point that when they read
The Bell Jar
no one had thought Alisa was suicidal, but finds herself hard pressed to go any further into the discussion without implicating herself. So she tells Margot she has to go and hangs up. Gordon puts a hand on her shoulder, seeing that she’s upset, but she gets up abruptly and tells him she has to go take a shower.

IN THE DAYS THAT follow, Gordon provides several discourses on the nature of suicide, the relationship of James’s profession to suicide (this knowledge gained during his time at the hospital working on the psychiatric floor), as well as a tangent on the pros and cons of certain meds. Jean tries to make a comment here and there, without crying, without too much expression that goes beyond general compassion, something that seems along the lines of what someone else might say about it,
Such a shame
, what have you, but she feels transparent.

Of course
, Gordon says,
it’s well known that there is a higher rate of suicide among artists. The corollary between depression and this field is well-documented. And they say there are always signs, if you know what to look for, like withdrawing from relationships and giving away possessions.
Gordon often does this thing with his hands when he talks—it’s a little hard to describe, but picture: he has all five fingers on each hand spread as far apart as they can go, sometimes bending down all but the pointer and the thumb but not, not meaning to point but sometimes pointing anyway (a particular peeve of Priscilla’s); the elbows are bent and there’s a lot of wrist action, almost as though to wave the arms would be too dramatic, as though limiting the motions to the hand is somehow more dignified. This impassioned gesticulating is exactly one of those things you find engaging when you’re first dating someone,
Oh, he’s so expressive with his hands!
, that kind of thing, but which carries a high likelihood of becoming one of those things you’ll later come to find weird, affected, or just plain annoying. Right now it’s all those things for Jean, with
annoying
rising to the next level, a plateau just below rage. Jean opens her eyes wide, tries to go somewhere else in her head when her husband does this—Maui or Malibu, places she’s heard about on TV that seem tranquil and surfy—because when she listens, she kind of wants to scream and run at him with a tenderizing mallet. There were no signs. She saw no signs. None. No signs. No, there was, there was one sign, when she arrived at the cabin and saw him freaking hanging. That was the sign.

six

J
ames’s memorial service is as small a service as Jean has ever been to, held in his brother’s backyard, just his parents, a few students and colleagues, and the book group. Minus one. When Jean asks her friend Margot where Alisa, the missing friend, is, Margot reports back that Alisa had said she
wouldn’t feel comfortable
. Jean’s eye starts to twitch when she hears this, wonders how her friend got the idea that a funeral is for her personal comfort. She thinks of a thousand bitter things to say, none of them terribly clever. We’re not going to a spa, she thinks. Out of anyone, Jean thinks, she would be the one with a right to lock herself in a bathroom.

James’s younger brother, Hal, is the first one to speak. He sobs a great deal, off and on, talks about how much he had always looked up to his brother, talks about depression, the struggle James had had for years, his first suicide attempt, when he was in college, how his parents had done everything they could, or believed they did. Jean, needless to say, is stunned by this. James had never mentioned his depression to Jean, never seemed depressed, and to discover he had actually tried to kill himself once before is a complete shock. Jean begins to wonder, if she hadn’t known this critical thing, if she’d really known him at all.

One of his students, a weeping sophomore girl who’d been in his class, talks about how encouraging Mr. D always was, even if your art kind of wasn’t so hot, like hers, how his enthusiasm for art had inspired her, how he’d made her see how it connects people, and could, you know, change you. Mott sidles over to the girl and lays down at her feet while she’s still talking, and she looks down at him for a moment, smiles sadly, says how much Mr. D had talked about his dog, Mott the Hoople, and how he was named after some band from when he was a kid, that he’d brought him to class once and how much they’d laughed when he knocked over a jar of paint with his big tail. When she’s done, Hal stands up to mention that the dog needs a home, his wife is allergic, his parents can’t take him. Jean knows right then that Mott the Hoople is going home with her today.

At the reception, Jean and her book group friends pay their respects to the family. Not being able to talk to the family about their relationship is crushing. She has a vision of an entirely different life she might have led, one with these people as her in-laws. It’s easy for her to see where so much of what she loved about James came from, even if the sadness on them is creating new lines she can practically see forming in their faces. She hugs Hal for an entirely inappropriate length of time. He smells like James, a faint combination of turpentine and grass. They talk about Mott; she convinces him that her kids will love the dog (one-half true), that her husband won’t mind (she has no idea, right now doesn’t care), and she leaves her lover’s memorial service with a 120-pound dog.

REACTIONS ARE PREDICTABLY MIXED when Jean arrives home with the dog. Otis is thrilled. Priscilla, eyebrows raised, says
Keep that drooly beast the hell out of my room.
Vivian says,
Oh my goodness gracious!
Theodore doesn’t say much, but reaches out a wobbly hand; Mott comes over, sniffs it, and licks Theodore’s face, which cracks him up. Theodore had had dogs as a kid, never one a quarter this big, and is tickled to have an animal inside the house. Gordon asks a question or two about why there wasn’t someone else who could have taken the dog, but the incident with Trudy is still distracting him, which is just as well since Jean knows she’s made an executive decision here, regardless of what Gordon wants. So he doesn’t push the argument, he just talks at length about the proper care and feeding of a dog, and what he knows about mastiffs, and how as long as it doesn’t sleep in their bed, it’s fine.

The day after the service, Jean stops by Hal’s to pick up Mott’s bed, among other things, pausing none too subtly to deeply inhale Hal’s familiar scent one last time. In fact, though Mott will often nap in his own bed, he will soon begin sleeping in Jean and Gordon’s bed. It’s not that there isn’t room; they have a king-sized bed, and they sleep with plenty of room between them. (In fact, they have not had sex in several years—since quite a while before she took up with James, actually.) Gordon isn’t thrilled about this arrangement and says so, to which Jean says flatly,
What’s the difference
. Gordon’s actually stumped, she’s got him there, and what he doesn’t want to say—what’s hardly more than a half-formed thought—is that he was hoping someday they would sleep together again. But the sight of Jean and the mastiff cozily spooning does not inspire confidence that this will ever happen, that he’ll ever even get as far as spooning his wife again, which looks awfully nice, and on subjects relating to their own marriage Gordon remains silent. On this page, they’re together.

seven

O
ne day, shortly after this, Otis stays home sick from school. When asked what hurts, he says
I dunno, just everything
, which Jean knows is more or less the same as
not really anything
, but this day she’s feeling a little lonely, so she lets him take a mental health day. Everyone needs one, Jean realizes more than ever. Jean herself could use a mental health week, month, life. She fixes Otis some tomato soup and a cream cheese sandwich on white bread, crusts cut off, cut into squares, puts it on a tray with a couple of Oreos and a glass of milk and takes it up to his room, where he’s working on a new crossword puzzle in his bed, Mott curled up at his feet.

Otis has gotten pretty good at making crosswords, filling in words in patterns, and creating clues, although generally his clues are for the specific audience of his family and would not work in wide circulation. The clue for 21 across, “What I’m sick of hearing every stupid day,” and its correct answer, “FREAK,” are unsurprisingly of concern for Jean, and they begin a discussion that’s essentially about depression, in which Jean looks for signs, tries to discern whether Otis is suffering from anything more serious than the typical fallout from sibling squabbles, anything she needs to worry about, given what she’s recently been through and—according to Gordon, her book group, and the entire local news media—missed. Jean’s overall worry level has gone up by a lot recently, to where everything—even seemingly good things—now seems like a possible sign of suicide: a taste for bananas, a sudden appreciation for a terrible sitcom, silence from her daughter in place of a snotty remark.

Later in the week, on the way home from school, Otis mentions to his mother that he might sort of kind of maybe like this girl, but probably not. Probably not, but kind of. But probably not. But kind of.
Considering she’s a girl and everything.

Oh, that’s wonderful, sweetheart. Tell me about her.

Otis doesn’t quite have the words to describe the tumble-y sensation in his stomach when he sees her, really isn’t at all sure yet what he feels. They’ve hardly spoken.

I dunno. She has two ponytails.
He doesn’t mention that they spiral into small shiny coils at the bottom, like perfect, soft little Slinkys, and that every day he has to resist the urge to gently pull on one just to see it spring back up.

You mean pigtails?

I guess.
Otis takes a minute to contemplate what’s different about the tails of a pony and a pig, can’t quite translate it to girl hair.

What’s her name?

Caterina.
The slight lilt in the way Otis says her name, the way he takes care to pronounce each syllable distinctly (to make sure his mother doesn’t think he’s saying Katrina—he hears Caterina correct people almost every day) tells Jean everything she needs to know.

That’s a pretty name
.

Otis nods and shrugs at the same time.

Jean tells Otis about the first boy she ever liked, when she was around his age, and Otis perks up a bit, feels like perhaps the situation isn’t hopeless (even though all signs point to hopeless right now: Caterina, the girl he sort of kind of probably likes, has never said much more than a word or two to him).

Apropos of nothing, Jean segues into some thoughts about love that are very clearly about her relationship with James.
Love is a
—
it’s a
thing
, Otie, it’s a thing that isn’t always what you think it might be.
Not only is this far too abstract for Otis, it also leads him to believe that she’s talking about his dad, which isn’t exactly the case. She does mean to tell Otis the story of how she met Gordon, but before long the stories of her two lovers have begun to twine.
When I first met your father
, she tells her son,
I was truly in his thrall, as they say. He was so worldly and handsome in a certain way, I thought, and I was so young. Time has a way of changing things like love, and so what it means now is different from what it was then
—
stability, that sort of thing. That’s a kind of love. James has reminded me of a different thing that love can be.

Otis is clearly confused by the introduction of the name James.
James? Daddy’s name is Gordon
, he says tonelessly, as though she truly has just gotten mixed up. Otis gets mixed up all the time. Jean takes a pause, looking at her son. She sees something, we don’t know yet whether it’s actually there, or whether maybe we shouldn’t pass judgment yet or something, but she sees something in his eyes she reads as
I will understand and hold in complete confidence anything you tell me.
It’s not that this is a misperception, either, it’s just that what this means to Otis is somewhat different from what it means to Jean, and he knows next to nothing about sex or anything like that, and if he’s expecting anything from his mom, it’s probably just something like,
Oh, don’t tell your father but the chocolate cake that he loves so much comes out of a box.

Except it isn’t. What it is is that Jean proceeds to tell her young son that she has met a man named James, and that he has died and that they had been very close friends and now she was very sad. That’s what she tells him the first time it comes up. Otis offers a solemn nod. He had learned the meaning of “died” two years earlier when his pet turtle Bishop stopped moving, although he still does not have the clearest impression of what any of this really means—love, death, sex, none of it. Otis hasn’t had his first boner yet, so the sex part of the equation, perhaps mercifully, is absent. Nor does he appear to be even slightly traumatized by the idea that his mother has been spending time with another man, that’s how it appears to Jean, and she is correct. As of now, at least, the idea that this scenario could potentially remove his mother from his picture—or possibly create a second picture into which he and members of his family and some new man might enter and exit—has not yet occurred to him. Right now it’s just a bit of information that, to Otis, seems only like a sort of free-floating fact, one with little direct impact on him. And, actually, he’s kind of right in that way.

So, okay. Plus, on this day, what Otis is really waiting for is how this all relates to him, how this might help him with his interest in Caterina, the girl whose cubby is next to his. That information doesn’t come now, and it may never come. Jean fixes dinner for the family. Gordon discourses on the difference between sweet potatoes and yams. Theodore gets up for a Popsicle before he’s half done; Jean reminds him he’s not done, so he shuffles back to the table. Vivian, as always, eats only half of what’s on her plate. Efforts to put half-portions on Vivian’s plate have resulted only in her eating half of that. This is how she watches her figure, you see. Priscilla slumps in her chair and texts during most of the meal, and Otis looks as serenely odd as always. Maybe slightly twitchy, because he’s thinking about Caterina, and the way she chews the tip of her pigtail during science, when she’s a little bored. He’s unfazed, anyway. And of course Jean, as she has been since her secret lover’s death, is somewhere else.