1) Slit wrists in the bathtub. The two of us once spoke about the ancient Roman way, which was said to be peaceful and painless, although the slashing part couldn’t possibly be painless and the peace would only come after enduring the violence of the slicing. We also discussed how this method was not very peaceful to the person finding the bloody mess of a corpse submerged in all the sickly pink water and the tiles and shower curtains splattered in garish red. Suicide is always an act between two people, isn’t it? The one committing it and the one who discovers it. I wondered how much she had considered that before doing what she did.
2) Pill overdose. A more likely choice for Veronica. Far more peaceful and painless than wrist-slitting but a long waiting period between the ingestion of the agents and the onset of the incapacitating effects needed to shut down one’s life-sustaining systems. The gap of time was a stumbling block for me because it required a high degree of patience, a virtue I would not under normal circumstances attribute to Veronica. So unless she was in some inspired state of beatific grace, I find it hard to imagine she’d summon enough forbearance to sit tight until the drugs were digested and assimilated into her veins and organs. Yet in blatant disregard of the above argument, I have made the choice to acknowledge this mode of self-destruction as her final act of will. I have convinced myself this is how it happened because I do not want to accept the abominable reality of what she most likely did to herself. Which not coincidently leads us to:
3) Hanging by the neck until she’s dead, dead, dead. Veronica once commented that the second-floor fire escape behind her building would make an excellent and effective gallows.
The day after I received the news I went down to her building, rang all the bells (except for hers), and was buzzed in. I walked past the trash bins, through the rear door, and into the backyard. There was no evidence of a crime scene. (It was technically a crime, wasn’t it?) I sat down on a rotted old picnic table and started to write her a letter. I didn’t look up.
thirty-six
My mother thought it might be a good idea for us to get out of town for a while. She first suggested buying plane tickets and heading off to Paris or Rome but I talked her out of going anywhere too far. So we settled on a tour of New England. My mother wasn’t up for driving and she felt a train or bus would be inconvenient, so she hired an older cousin of mine to drive us in his ’68 Charger.
Connie (short for Constantin) was five years older than me and we weren’t close at all. He was a short, squat fellow with thick-framed eyeglasses and long, poorly cut black hair. And he had terrible skin, pockmarked and pimpled.
I thought it was a bad idea to have Connie join us on the trip. He certainly wasn’t the brightest bulb on the family tree and he had a reputation for being clumsy, lazy, and dishonest; a winning combination for sure. Connie’s own mother fired him from the family restaurant in Astoria for stealing fish and cheese and selling it to other restaurants in the neighborhood. One of which was owned by another relative. Yes, we were in great hands for sure.
The plan was to head straight to Boston. Connie was excited because he had always wanted to see the Liberty Bell. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was three hundred miles in the opposite direction.
We left Manhattan at five thirty in the morning on a Friday. My mother asked Connie’s permission to sit with me in the backseat. He was fine with it. She was really worried about me and held my hand for most of the trip. Connie’s saving grace was that he didn’t talk much, so after about two hours on the road, Mom and I fell asleep for a long time. Long enough for Connie to reach Boston, where his keen navigational skills failed him. He couldn’t figure out what exit to get off the freeway and he missed the city entirely. When my mother and I woke up we were thirty miles north of Boston in Salem, Massachusetts.
I took this as a very bad sign but didn’t want to say anything to my mother. It would have been useless to say anything to Connie, who wanted to find the factory where they made the cigarettes. He was hoping for free samples, once again astounding me with his peerless geographic knowledge.
We went into a little restaurant for breakfast. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the ride up (Connie had three) so I wasn’t hungry and ordered just a cup of tea. Connie was a little hungry so he ordered three fried eggs with bacon, sausage, ham, potatoes, toast, and a chocolate milkshake. My mother asked for coffee and cinnamon toast.
“We don’t serve it,” said our waitress Molly, who wore a name tag in the shape of a conical witch hat.
My mother tried to politely explain what cinnamon toast was, but Molly the Witch cut her off: “I know what it is, lady, we just don’t serve it.”
My mother gave up: “I guess I’ll just have some corn flakes then.”
“It’s bread, cinnamon, sugar, and butter. You don’t have those four things?” I spoke up in my mother’s defense.
My mother turned toward me surprised.
“It’s not a matter of whether or not we have the ingredients, it’s a matter of what’s on the menu and what the chef—”
“Are you fucking stupid or just a nasty bitch?” I really let her have it.
“Matthew!!” My mother was mortified.
“I think it’s best if you people leave,” Molly said. She
