* * *
Maggie closes the bathroom door behind her. Her sister-in-law has draped an assortment of fussy lace doilies over the back of the toilet tank. Several pots of face and hand creams are clustered together on the counter beside the sink. Rolls of fluffy pink hand towels are folded with unnatural neatness on a shelf above the toilet.
Maggie turns the brass key in the lock and hears it slide into place with a satisfying click. She doesn’t want to be disturbed. For months now, she has not had a moment alone. She craves peace and quiet and solitude and an end to the chaos. Her brother told her to go take a bath, then have a nap, and that they would talk once she had rested awhile.
She grips her hands on the edge of the counter now, bracing her weak body as she observes herself in the mirror. The girls were not allowed a mirror at the home, but it’s only now that Maggie truly wonders why they were denied one; she can barely stand to look at her reflection, meet her own eyes, heavy with an indescribable exhaustion she fears she won’t ever recover from. Her complexion is pallid, her features sunken and waxy. Her cheekbones are sharper than she’s ever seen them.
Maggie glances down at the stack of Chatelaine magazines in the rack beside the toilet. A fresh young brunette graces the cover with penciled brows, red lips, and full, rouged cheeks. Pretty and clean and new. She’ll teach you how to make the perfect Bundt cake for Sunday tea and settle a fussy child. How to clean your husband’s shirts to pure white perfection, starched and ironed and ready for him each morning. Maggie wonders if the smiling cover girl can also offer lessons on how to scrub away the sweat and blood of the past, the incriminating stains of transgressions and bad fortune. Lipstick from your husband’s collar in a shade you don’t own.
Maggie leans over the bathtub and turns on the hot water at full blast, barely tempering it with cold. She spent months feeling cold both inside and out, and now she wants her skin to burn. When the tub is full, she begins to take off her clothes, muscles aching as she unties her nightgown and pulls off her underwear. She steps into the water, wincing. The spot where she pulled the glass out of her foot stings in the heat. She settles herself down and lets her body float, her mind drifting along in its wake.
The house is silent, and situated on a quiet side street, but she can hear a muffled hum of traffic down on the main road a block away. A bar of her sister-in-law’s pink flowery soap rests in a seashell-shaped dish on the tub ledge. Maggie brings it to her nose and inhales deeply; the lemony rose perfume reminds her of her mother’s rosebushes, her pride and joy. Every summer her mother would pick fresh pink and white blooms from her garden and prop them in ceramic vases in every room of the house. She closes her eyes and imagines the windows open to welcome in the breeze, and the scratchiness of her Sunday church dress in the heat. Her mother in white gloves and a sun hat. Fresh lemonade and the smell of cut grass.
Maggie senses the tear tracks running down to her jawbone. How had it all gone so wrong? One night, that’s all it took. One event that separated her life into Before and After. One moment that will now define her life completely.
Her parents have disowned her. Her brother is allowing her to stay with him for the time being. But what happens when she wears out her welcome? How long can they keep her presence a secret from their parents? Will the police be coming after her?
Maggie blinks. Her eyes are so tired and scratchy they can hardly focus. She closes them again, but this time, all she can see is black. A black future with nothing in it, no landmark or point of reference to guide her. Just a never-ending expanse of darkness. She feels more exhausted than she has ever felt in her life. There is no way back. And no way forward.
Maggie runs the bar of soap up and down her arms, slowly. She has so little energy to spare. Her gaze slides into the middle distance and lands on the counter next to the sink. Her eyes focus now on the box of razor blades. Maggie stares at it for a while. Her mind is strangely blank. She isn’t even sure what exactly she’s considering. But she feels a pull toward the box.
They have already titled her a Fallen woman. How much farther can she fall? She can use one sin to erase all the others. And then she won’t have to care anymore. Her heart won’t feel like lead in her chest. Her skeletal body won’t need to recover. Her mind can finally be blank. That’s what she wants now. Darkness and silence.
Maggie raises herself out of the tub and shivers slightly in the cold air. She flips open the little box with a wet finger, leaving moist spots on the yellow cardboard. She picks out a razor, holding it gingerly in the pruned palm of her hand. There is a stillness in the air now, the heavy mist of the hot water has clouded the windowpane and condensed on the glass jars and bottles beside the sink. She hears a car horn from far away, but it is well beyond this dream.
Maggie swallows the lick of fear that has climbed up her throat and settles herself back down into the tub. She looks at her wrists. Her skin is soft from the bath, and she has no fat on her body anymore. That will make it easier.
It.
The thought hovers like a hummingbird in the air above Maggie’s head as she runs her thumb over the flat edge of the blade. This might even be easy. Likely painless. And then it will be nothing. She needn’t worry about anything beyond that. The thought settles itself down deep in Maggie’s core, warm and reassuring.
She doesn’t know what she’s doing, but it seems intuitive. Maggie lets out one last breath, then runs the blade along her wrist, pressing down as hard as she can, grimacing against the welcome sting. She doesn’t stop, even when her stomach feels as though it’s flipping over. Even when the blood pours into the bathwater, unfurling like red smoke beneath the surface. Even when every instinct in her body is screaming at her to stop.
Stop! she hears.
Soon.
Maggie!
It’s done now anyway.
Maggie lets the blade fall from her slippery fingers as the bathwater turns redder with each passing moment. She leans back against the hard ceramic.
Now she’s floating. She’s a child again, and all she can smell is roses. She can taste lemonade and hear the rustling of the maple trees. Her brother calling out her name across the garden. She plucks one of the roses. A thorn pricks her finger, and she sees a red pearl bloom on her skin. A woman’s voice, probably her mother’s, asking her what she’s doing. Grabbing her by the hand, demanding an answer, as always.
Maggie, you promised.
I am dying, Mother. And you cannot stop me.
Maggie smiles and slips out of her grasp as she fades into the fog of the past.
The bathtub is filling with blood as the curls of dark crimson waft from her wrist. The razor blade drops and sinks down into the dark water. She closes her eyes and her head swivels to the side, knocking the soap dish off the edge of the tub. It falls to the tile floor and shatters.
“Maggie?” Jack’s voice calls from downstairs.
Silence.
Moments later, a key jiggles in the lock. Jack is on the other side of the door, shouting to someone.
The door opens, and a gasp shoots through the misty air of the bathroom.
In a single lunge, Jack is at the edge of the bathtub.
“Lorna! Lorna, get my kit!” he screams over his shoulder.
Jack holds Maggie’s wrist tightly in one hand, his thumb pressing the wound. He reaches down into the tub and there’s an unmistakable plunk of the plug being pulled, the deep grumble and sucking sounds of the water swirling down into the drain.