At home Sid and Alexis sat outside, drinking wine next to the heat lamps. They half-heartedly invited me to join but I refused. They didn’t truly want me there, and I wasn’t in the mood to converse. I was so overwhelmed with thoughts I decided to grade papers. I needed a task that consumed me, nothing imaginative, no room for digressive thinking. I had learned to focus during my PhD, when I had to read complicated texts for hours at a time. People want books to absorb them, but one could force attention upon a book. It would be back and forth for the first half hour, but if you meant it, you could rope your mind into sublime and single-pointed concentration. I printed, stapled, and arranged my students’ papers on my desk and with great effort began to read and mark them. My whole body felt as though I wanted to bolt from my chair but I put a stress ball between my legs and pressed hard against it with my thighs. Eventually my mind settled and I worked fluidly—underlining interesting sentences, correcting muddled paragraphs, questioning sloppy word choice, and writing a paragraph of evaluation on a piece of yellow legal paper that I attached to each of their documents. After two and a half hours I rose from my desk, creaky and stiff. It was midnight. The girls had gone to sleep, there was no light coming from beneath the bedroom door. Alexis had brought her white noise machine, which blared the sound of a rolling rainstorm. Something about the aural barrier caught my breath, and I felt a sob collect behind my upper cheeks. I pictured Alexis pulling Sid into the bedroom like Cynthia had pulled John into the building, enclosing them in their own private world, leaving me alone, bereft, in the dark. I checked in the guest bathroom to make sure there were clean towels and saw that Alexis had hung her neat, segmented toiletry bag on the back of the bathroom door. Feeling rude and unloved, I opened it.
I suppose I could have deduced that anxiety-ridden, perfectionist, high-powered Alexis would have some pharmaceutical products. I noted that in one clear zippered segment of her bag she had a variety of prescriptions. When I examined them I saw that among a few medications I couldn’t identify, she had a bottle of Xanax and a bottle of Seconal. They were full, and I had no doubt she was measured in her use of them in a way I never could be, meting them out sparingly—taking them only in extreme circumstances, on an airplane or an insomnia-ridden night before a big court day. Pull This Lever in Case of Emergency.
Seeing the pills, I felt an inspiration begin to form. I thought of the white, cracked crumple of John’s hands running frantically over Cynthia’s hips. How much the lure of her taut beauty must ensnare him, turn him into a child, material she could manipulate, an object she could possess. Even when I had been her age and yes, somewhat beautiful, I had never let myself own a man in the way I assumed she did. The afternoon all those years ago, when David failed to meet and run away with me, I hadn’t chased him down and tried to lure him back. I hadn’t used the sexual power I knew I had over him to bend fate to my will. No, after lying on the ground for half an hour I had risen, bought a submarine sandwich （not a food I usually allowed myself）， ate it in the car, semolina dust and bits of lettuce falling all over my lap, returned home, and unpacked my suitcases. After two failed attempts to meet him for a coffee and discuss what happened, I gave up, telling myself that closure was a myth, a concept fetishized by people under thirty.
Such a missed opportunity, I thought. And as I looked in the bathroom mirror at the webbing around my eyes, my frowning jowls, and the shriveled space between my clavicles, I felt desperation at the idea that I would never captivate anyone ever again. A man might make a concession for me based on mutual agreeability, shared crinkliness, but he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, be in my thrall. Images of Sid as a two-year-old rose in my mind as well, the way she looked at me then, fixed and obsessed, like I was the sun and the entire world, the origin and limit of consciousness. All that was gone forever. It was true, wasn’t it, I would never experience power over another human being again for the rest of my life. I thought of Vladimir and tried to picture him as he might be in this exact moment, in his natural habitat. He was in bed, asleep but sitting up, a scratchy old camp blanket over his knees, wearing a cut-up college T-shirt, one hand clutching a book, the other, himself.
As I conjured him, I found my hands unzipping Alexis’s toiletry bags, opening the caps of the Seconal and Xanax, and removing two of each pill. Like a painter might conceive of the outlines of their next piece, a plan began to form itself in my mind, blurred but distinctly edged. Yes, there was something I could do, some action I could take. I didn’t have to accept what I was allotted and pretend I was grateful for it. I put the pills in a vintage pill case I used for travel and placed it in my underwear drawer. No, I was not required to accept the world’s rejection of me without a bit of a struggle. I went outside and smoked, trying to keep both my eyes and my mind on the stars. I changed into my night shirt, performed my skin regimen, and, fearing that my active mind would prevent my rest, took another Seconal from Alexis’s bag, swallowed it, drank three large glasses of water, and read until I blacked out.
The next day, one day before our fateful meeting （as I have taken to calling the whole event）， I prepared. I packed a large suitcase with both John’s and my clothes, and my elegant daytripper with toiletries. I filled a sturdy canvas bag I had gotten from a conference with books and some other administrative supplies. I loaded them into the back of my car, along with a case of wine and a bottle of vodka, sweet and dry vermouth, bourbon, bitters, and a bottle of cacha?a. I would visit the grocery store the morning of our meeting for the rest of the provisions. I tidied up my correspondence, finished my grading, drove to campus, and gave my students’ papers with my notes to the department admin for them to pick up when and if they wanted. I went to the Y and yanked dementedly at the handlebars of the elliptical trainer for seventy-five minutes until I was drenched in sweat. That evening I smoked the last cigarette in the pack. After I extinguished it I emptied the flower pot that had served as my ashtray into the large trash bin, pulled the bin to the street to be picked up the following morning, and firmly resolved to smoke no more.
XIII.
On the morning of October 20 I showered, then turned on the harshest light to shave and pluck and trim every errant hair I could find. I massaged my cellulite with oil and clipped my nails. I used a blow-dryer, smoothing spray, curling iron, hair powder. I took twice as long as usual applying my makeup—priming, concealing, blending, setting.
Lately John tended to sleep in past eleven or twelve, but today he was up as early as I was and cornered me in the kitchen, where I was taking a few moments to finish my coffee before leaving for the grocery store. He was shaved and wearing a suit and looked quite handsome, really.
“D-Day,” he said. “I’m going to meet Wilomena in town before the hearing begins.” I could tell he was nervous: his face was pale and fixed, his breath high in his chest.
I looked out the window at our maple tree, its yellow-red leaves fidgeting in the wind. I knew that if I took in too much of his worry I would cave with compassion and decide to accompany him to the hearing after all. “Remind me when it is?”
“It starts at eleven.”