Janet Fitch - White Oleander

I searched the bedside table, the floor. On the far side, I found the pills on the floor, along with the empty sherry bottle. It was what I’d heard falling when we were talking through the door. The pill bottle was open, the pills spilled out, small pink tablets. Butalan, the label said. For Insomnia. Do Not Take With Alcohol. Do Not Operate Machinery.

The sounds I was making were no longer even screams. I wanted to throw something into the fat ugly eye of God. I threw the Kleenex box. The brass bell. I knocked the bedside light off the nightstand. I pulled the magnet box from under the bed and threw it across the room. Ron’s keys and pens and clippers fell out, the Polaroids. For what? I ripped the blinds off the French doors, and the room blinked bright. I took a high-heeled shoe from the foot of the bed and smashed through the windowpanes with it, cut my hand, couldn’t feel it. I took her silver-backed hairbrush and threw it overhand like a baseball into the round mirror. I took the phone and beat the receiver against the headboard until it came apart in my hands, leaving dents in the soft pine.

I was exhausted and couldn’t find anything more to throw. I sat back down on the bed and took her hand. It was so cold. I put it against my hot wet cheek, trying to warm it up, I smoothed her dark hair away from her face.

If only I had known, Claire. My beautiful fucked-up Claire. I lay my head on her chest where there was no heartbeat. My face next to hers on the flowered pillow, breathing in her breath that was no longer breath. She was so pale. Cold. I held her cold hands, slightly chapped, the wedding ring that was too big. Turned them over, kissed the cold palms, my hot lips on the lines. How she used to worry about those lines. One ran from the edge of the hand and crossed the line of life. Fatal accident, she said it meant. I rubbed the line with my thumb, slick with tears.

Fatal accident. That thought was almost unbearable, but possible. Maybe she hadn’t meant to do it. Claire wouldn’t have planned it like this. She hadn’t even washed her hair. She would have prepared, everything would have been perfect. She would have written a note, explaining everything two or five ways. Maybe all she wanted was to sleep.

I laughed, bitter as nightshade. Maybe it was just an accident. What wasn’t an accident. Who wasn’t.

I picked up the squarish white bottle still half full of pills. Butabarbitol sodium, 100 mg. It practically glowed in my hands. The worst always happened. Why did I keep forgetting that? Now I saw this was not just a bottle, it was a door. You climbed through the round neck of the bottle and came out somewhere else entirely. You could escape. Cash in your chips.

I looked deep into the jar of pink pills. I knew how to do this. You took them slowly. Not like in the movies, where they took them by the handful. You’d just puke them up. The trick was to take one, wait a few minutes, take the next. Have some sherry. One by one. In a couple of hours, you passed out, and it was done.

The house was still. I heard the tick of the clock on the bedside table. A car drove past in the street. Fresh air came through the broken windows. She lay with her mouth open on the flowered pillow in her red bathrobe in the brightness of the morning. I rubbed my cheek against the wool of her robe, the robe Ron got her, she hadn’t taken it off for days. God, I hated that bathrobe, its cheery red plaid. It was always too bright. He never really knew her.

I put the lid back on the pills and dropped them on the bed. I had to get rid of that robe before anything. It was the least I could do. I pulled down the covers. The robe was all twisted around, bunched up in the back. I opened the belt and pulled her out of it, how thin she was, how light, her ribs were individually displayed. I laid her back down, careful, careful, I could hardly look at her. Like Christ in her shell-pink underwear. In her dresser I found a soft mauve angora sweater. This was more Claire, the soft color, the plush wool. I put my face into it, hungry for softness, let it soak up my tears. I sat her up. It was hard, I had to lean her against me, overwhelmed by the scent of perfume and her hair. I could hardly breathe, but somehow I pulled the sweater over her head, somehow threaded her arms through, pulled the softness down over her bony shoulder blades. I sat and hugged her, pressing my face to her neck.

I arranged her on the pillow like a princess in a fairy tale, in a glass coffin, a kiss should awaken her. But it didn’t work. I closed her mouth, smoothed the sheets and blankets, found the silver brush in the debris and brushed her hair. I found it comforting, I had done this for her when she was alive. She never even said good-bye. The day my mother left, she didn’t look back either.

I knew I should call Ron. But I didn’t want to share her with him. I wanted her all to myself for just a little while more. When Ron arrived, I would lose Claire for the last time. He didn’t know her, he could bloody well wait.

I couldn’t get it out of my head, I was right there when she died. If only I’d woken up. If only I’d imagined what could happen. My mother always told me I had no imagination. Claire called me and I didn’t go to her. Wouldn’t even open my door. I had told her the worst thing was to lose your self-respect. How could I have told her such a thing? Christ, that wasn’t the worst thing, not by a long shot.

Outside in the garden, the grass was uncut but very green in the clear winter sun. The Chinese elm wept like a willow. The bulbs were done, but the roses bloomed furiously, the red hallucinatory glow of Mr. Lincoln, the pale blush of Pristine. The ground underneath was pooled with red and white petals. In here, the room was steeped in L’Air du Temps from the bottle I’d shattered. I picked up the top, the frosted birds. Now they looked like something to decorate a headstone.

In a drawer, I found the book of pressed flowers she made from the gleanings of our walks on the McKenzie that summer. How happy she’d been in her Chinese hat, tied under the chin, canvas bag full of discoveries. Here they were, labeled in her round feminine hand, pressed on pages tied together with taupe grosgrain ribbon, Lady’s Slipper, Dogwood, Wild Rose, Rhododendron with their threadlike stamens.

What do you want, Astrid? What do you think? No one would ever ask me that again. I stroked her hair, her dark eyebrows, her eyelids, the delicate formation of cheekbone and eye socket and temple and brow, the sharpness of chin like a drop of water upside down. If only I’d gone to her right away. If only I hadn’t made her wait. I should never have left her alone with our disgust, Ron’s and mine. It was the one thing she couldn’t stand, to be left alone.

At ten o’clock, the mail came. At eleven, Mrs. Kromach practiced her electric organ next door, her parrot squawking along. I knew her entire repertoire. “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” She liked state songs: “Gary, Indiana.” “Iowa Stubborn.” “California, Here I Come.” “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City.” She made the same mistakes every time. “She’s doing it to drive us crazy,” Claire would say. “She knows how to play those songs.” She’d never have to hear it anymore

At noon, a leaf blower droned in the air. At one, the Orthodox nursery school let out. I heard the high-pitched voices on the street, the cheerful querulousness of the Hasidic neighbor women in their guttural languages. How they frightened you, Claire, those simple women in their long skirts with their infinite broods, arrogant sons and big oafish daughters, strong enough to lift a truck but timid in gaggles with bows in their hair. You always thought they were trying to hex you. You made me paint my hand blue and print it on the white stucco above the doorbell, a spell against the evil eye.