David Vann - Legend of a Suicide

“No, no,” Gloria said.

“I think it should wait till another time,” I said.

“That’s all right,” Bill said.

I looked down at the linoleum. “Well,” I said, “why don’t we go to the table. I’ll bring over the halibut and sweet potatoes.”

“Sweet potatoes?” Gloria asked. “That sounds lovely.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I got them at the store.”

I hated sounding like an idiot. But I was shaking now for some reason, and I couldn’t think well. I took the tray of halibut out of the oven, where I’d been keeping it warm, used tongs to transfer the pieces onto a plate, and served up the sweet potatoes. I’d put miniature marshmallows on them, not because I thought that was a classy touch, because it isn’t, but because I had felt so warm and happy earlier, a rare and simple feeling I was trying to prolong, and this was how my mother had fixed them when I was a child. Now they looked a bit odd.

“Sorry about the marshmallows,” I said as I brought over the plates. “I was suffering from nostalgia earlier today.”

“I like marshmallows,” Bill said.

“Our own oven has seen them as recently as last week,” Gloria said. “Though we did pull the blinds to be sure no one else saw.”

I laughed. “That’s pretty good,” I said, but I felt sick. None of this was working out right. Gloria was not disturbed at all. I was the only one. Then this thought made me wonder whether I had been looking for some kind of revenge. “So what brought you out to Alaska, Gloria?” I asked.

The radio was playing Miles Davis, a rare moment in Ketchikan. Nothing was solid or reliable. I felt that maybe I was somewhere else.

“This halibut is delicious, Roy,” Gloria said.

“Yeah, it’s really great,” said Bill.

“Thank you,” I said.

“To answer your question, I came out to work in one of the canneries for a summer after my sophomore year of college, and I met Bill through a friend who came out with me.”

“Wow,” I said. “So you came out for a summer, and here you still are.”

“Yes,” Gloria said.

I let her pause for a moment to eat. I picked a few marshmallows off my sweet potatoes, saving them for last. As I glanced up, Gloria was looking right at me. She knew who I was; I was sure of it.

“I wanted to be an ichthyologist when I was a little kid,” I said, just to be saying something. “And now here I am cleaning out the strainers at a hatchery, not studying anything. I even have a college degree, but not a useful one for anything I want to do.” I raised up my fists in a boxer’s stance. “I coulda been a contender,” I bellowed. I have always entertained when I haven’t known what else to do. Gloria laughed. Bill laughed, too, though he looked confused.

“It’s never too late,” Gloria said.

“Can you pass the halibut, Gloria?” asked Bill.

I saw fingerlings falling end over end through the air, their eyes rings of blue-inlaid silver, huge, unblinking. “Jesus,” I said.

“What?” Gloria asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Sorry. I thought I saw something outside the window. Did you know these windows are real glass and they warp everything?”

“Really?” Gloria asked. She and Bill both got up to see.

“It’s dark out,” Bill said. “How can you see anything?”

“Go outside,” I said. “I’ll walk around the living room, and you can watch me.”

“All right,” Bill said. “But no funny business.”

Gloria laughed.

“You got it,” I said.

So the door banged shut and I stepped out across the floor as if for the first time. I couldn’t remember how I usually walked. My steps felt too small, and the linoleum made crackling sounds, I realized. The lighting in here was too bright. No decoration of any kind on the walls. I waved my arms a little for effect and puffed my cheeks out; I swung my head back and forth toward the ceiling; I wondered what all this meant. I wondered how soon I could end the dinner and not appear rude.

Bill and Gloria were laughing when they came in.

“No funny business indeed,” said Gloria.

“That was quite a show,” Bill said. “Like seeing myself in one of those funny mirrors, except it wasn’t me.”

“Bill,” Gloria said, “you’re waxing poetical.”

“I’m not waxing anything,” Bill said. “And I don’t do windows, either.”

I laughed. “Especially not these windows,” I said.

I sat back down and motioned for Bill and Gloria to do the same. I endured the small talk. I finished my halibut, sweet potatoes, bread, and even the marshmallows. I had a beer, then another beer. I talked about the fishing boats my father had owned, which was a mistake.

“Was your father a commercial fisherman?” Gloria asked.

“Sort of,” I told her. “He had a lot of jobs.” It struck me that Gloria was a very attractive person, that my father might have found in her first a kind of friend. Perhaps he had never felt this with my mother. Perhaps he had even been, to some degree, lonely. This was not the kind of thinking I wanted to take very far. My pity for my father up to this point had been limited to a man who had inflicted avoidable pain on everyone around him but who must have suffered some himself. I didn’t care to enlarge on this.

“But anyway, my mother’s working as an elementary school counselor now on Kauai,” I told Gloria and Bill. This was as much to escape my own thoughts as to escape the conversation. We talked about pineapples and sugarcane, about running around in bare skin all year and even the rain being warm. Then I added that I had run around naked at night right here in Ketchikan, which I of course shouldn’t have shared.

“Here?” Bill asked.

“What were you thinking?” Gloria wanted to know.

I spread my hands in the air, having no idea what to say.

“We probably shouldn’t touch this one, Gloria,” Bill said.

“Well,” I said, “maybe it’s getting late anyway.”

So I had them out the door, coats and all, but Gloria walked back as Bill was warming up the Monza.

“Back again,” I said.

“You know, Roy, I appreciate you having us over. Bill drinks a little more than he should, but I appreciate you having us over.” She put her hand on my arm, a simple enough gesture, but one that made me wonder nonetheless what my father had felt under her touch.

“That’s fine,” I said. “It looks like the car’s warmed up now.” I should have talked with her then, told her who I was, asked about my father and perhaps learned something real, but I didn’t have the courage. I couldn’t even look at her.

“Good-bye,” Gloria said.

Two a.m., standing knee-deep in the channel off Ketchikan, ashamed of myself. The water gnawing at the rocks. Loons hidden away somewhere at the edge of the trees calling. The dusk that never seemed true darkness thickening in the mist. All the stupid images of loneliness, a mockery.

I am wearing a coat, I thought to myself, trying to keep the tone light. My mother would be proud. And then I was crying again, and then I was disgusted again, and then I took a step deeper into the channel, my shoes sliding over the stones. My thighs were very cold now. The rest was numb. I’m standing here in the water, I told myself in an attempt to banish the feeling that perhaps the tragedies I had imagined for years, the divorce and suicide that I had let shape my life so permanently, had been something else altogether, or at least not as I had imagined. And what, then, of what I had become?

The mist in gauzy layers like summer cloth, which could only be deception. Salmon beneath me right now, beautiful silver salmon, their dark bodies slipping invisibly on all sides, running for the creek mouths, considering me what? Jellyfish, too, floating, and starfish orange and red. The rockfish my father called crappies and slammed against the side of the boat until their bodies flew off the jigs and sometimes only their heads remained. Red snapper swollen and discolored, eyes popping, exploded swim bladders protruding from their mouths like secondary, translucent tongues. Brought from a world where weight and air were known differently, a world held in place, as it turned out, by nothing at all.