By the Time You Read This

18

FREDERICK BELL FINISHED HIS strawberry shortcake and scraped up the last dabs of whipped cream with his fork.

“Are you sure this is low-fat?” he asked his wife, Dorothy, who was organizing things in the fridge.

“I got it out of Heart Healthy,” she said, her voice muffled a little by the fridge door. “It’s not high-calorie.”

“But that’s if you only eat one serving. What if you find yourself lusting for another?”

“You don’t get another.” Dorothy laid claim to a large store of common sense. It had served her well in her years as a nurse, and it served her equally well as a psychiatrist’s wife. “If you have another piece, you’re just defeating the purpose of reduced calories.”

“I’ve devoted my life to missing the point and defeating the purpose. I don’t see why I should stop now.” Bell swallowed the last of his tea. It was cold, but he didn’t mind cold tea; tea of any kind was good. Some British habits died hard.

“I found a really charming little cottage near Nottingham,” Dorothy said. “I left the picture for you on your desk. I don’t suppose you looked at it yet.”

“Alas, I have failed you once again.”

“Frederick, what’s so hard about taking a look at a picture?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I just haven’t accepted this idea of retiring back in England.”

“We’ve talked about it. I thought we agreed we’d both be happiest there. It’s a pretty little place, a short walk from the sea. And it’s near the Trent river. You’ve always said you wanted to live near water when you retire.”

“Heroic figures never retire. It’s not in our nature.”

“You’ll have to, one day, and I’m not having you mooching around the house through these endless Canadian winters.”

“England’s too bloody expensive. The pound is sky-high.”

“It’s come down a lot, lately. We can afford this place, and it’s so cute.”

On this one issue, Dorothy’s common sense had deserted her as far as Bell was concerned. Here in Canada they had a huge place, almost a mansion. But back in England even the pokiest little houses cost close to half a million quid. Dorothy seemed to have an exaggerated sense of what a psychiatrist made over here. It wasn’t as if they were living in the States. Oh well, she enjoyed looking at her cottages and gardens, and it didn’t hurt her to dream.

Bell put his dish and cup on the counter and pinched his wife’s behind.

Dorothy turned and gave his wrist a light smack. “Don’t you start with that now. It’s the middle of the day.”

“Nothing could be further from my mind. I’ve got a patient in five minutes. I must prepare my gravitas.”

“Oh, yes. Mustn’t forget the gravitas. Where would we be without that?”

In their early days, back in London, Bell and his wife had been tearing each other’s clothes off constantly. But over the years they had settled into a more routine kind of sex life, and that was fine with Bell. They loved each other and looked after each other, and that was all he needed. Of course, Dorothy wasn’t in his class—not brilliant, not even a doctor—but she was good company. And still good-looking, even in her mid-fifties. She had the kind of thin face that ages well, and the slim figure of a much younger woman.

Bell washed his hands in the downstairs bathroom. He rolled his shoulders, then opened the door that separated the kitchen from the front hall and his office. A young woman with blond hair badly in need of a wash was sitting on the bench in the hall. Other patients might have leafed through a New Yorker or fiddled with an iPod, but this woman was just slouched in her coat, arms folded across her chest. This was Melanie, eighteen years old and the picture of misery.

“Hello, Melanie,” Bell said.

“Hello.”

Even in that single word he could detect a slowness, a thickness, that spoke of the enormous effort expended to express two syllables. Immediately, depression was a third entity in the room. Bell pictured it—him, really—as a silent figure, The Entity, caped and masked, invisible to the patient. Bell sometimes felt like the old priest in The Exorcist, fated to wrestle repeatedly an immortal nemesis. The Entity.

Melanie followed him into the office and sat on the couch, unbuttoning her coat and letting her shoulder bag slide to the floor. She leaned back and stared at her feet. Dr. Bell sat in one of the small chairs opposite, notebook on knee, not smiling, but face composed into an expression of calm expectation. It was important for the patient, after the usual pleasantries, to be the first one to speak; those first words revealed so much. But sometimes it was hard, as now, to wait for a client to overcome whatever it was they had to overcome before they could begin. The minutes ticked by.

Melanie looked a lot older than eighteen. She was small-boned and small-breasted, with something of a drowned-rat look, longish flat nose dividing stringy curtains of hair. The Northern University sweatshirt didn’t do a lot for her, either. When she finally did speak, she kept her eyes focused on her outstretched feet.

“I could barely come here,” she said.

“You found it difficult? Can you tell me why?”

“I don’t know …” A long pause while she remained still, except for one foot ticking from side to side like a metronome. “I’m just so sick of myself. Sick of thinking about myself. Sick of talking about myself. There’s nothing worth saying. So why come here? Why run through it all again and again?”

“You mean you feel that you’re not worth talking about? Or that nothing you say will help you get better?”

She looked at him for the first time, green eyes two pits of despair, then quickly back at her feet.

“Both, I guess.”

Dr. Bell let the silence hold for a few moments, let her feel her own exaggerations, or rather the exaggerations of the hooded figure lurking in the shadows just beyond her vision. The Entity always compelled his victims to speak like this: accuse themselves of worthlessness in order to prevent them from making the slightest effort to save themselves.

“Let me ask you something,” Bell said. “Suppose someone came to you—a friend, even a stranger, doesn’t matter—and said, ‘You shouldn’t even talk to me. I’m so worthless. I’m not worth even thinking about.’ What would you say to her?”

“I’d say she was wrong. That nobody’s worthless.”

“But you won’t accord yourself the same kindness you would someone else.”

“I don’t know … All I know is, I’m in this pain all the time. I’m sick of talking about it. Talking doesn’t help. Nothing helps. I just want it to be over. I even—”

“Even what?”

Melanie started to cry. After a moment Bell picked up the Kleenex box from the end table and handed it to her. She yanked out a couple but didn’t use them right away. She cried hard, hiding her face behind her hand.

“Why are you hiding?” he asked, and that only made her cry more. You could see the release in her shoulders, hear it in the jagged, breathy wails.

“God,” she said when the tears had left her.

“You needed that.”

“I guess so. Phew.” She sounded spent.

“You said, ‘I just want it to be over. I even …’”

“Yeah.” Melanie blew her nose wetly, still gasping and sighing. “Yeah. I was in Coles bookstore the other day and they had a book on suicide. Assisted suicide, I guess. It tells you how to do it—how to kill yourself—painlessly. Basically, you just tie a plastic bag over your head.”

“And?”

“Well, I didn’t buy it or anything. But I stood there in the store reading it for a long time.”

“Because you’d been thinking about killing yourself.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Straight factual question, Melanie—I need to know this: Have you ever actually tried to kill yourself?” He was sure the answer was negative.

“No. Not really.”

“How do you mean, ‘not really’?”

“Well, I scratched at my wrist with a razor blade once, but it really stung. I’m completely chicken when it comes to pain. I couldn’t even cut deep enough to make it bleed.”

“When was this?”

“Oh, a long time ago. When I was maybe twelve or so.”

“Twelve. Did you write out a note?”

“No. I guess I wasn’t serious. I was just miserable.”

“Worse than now?”

“No, no. Now’s much worse. Much worse.”

“How often are you thinking of suicide these days?”

“I don’t know …”

“You probably do, Melanie.”

It was impossible to make his voice any softer. He tried to suffuse every syllable with warmth and encouragement—above all, unconditional positive regard. You’re safe here, he wanted her to know, you can face any demon you can name.

“I think about killing myself a lot,” she said. “Every day, I guess. Mostly in the afternoons. The late afternoons. That’s when everything looks blackest to me. Another day is nearly dead and my life still amounts to nothing. I’m nothing. I hear my roommates laughing and talking on the phone and going out and having a good time, and they seem like, I don’t know, another species or something. I don’t think I was ever that happy. Four o’clock, five o’clock, another day down the drain. Another day trying to write an essay that is completely meaningless. Another day worrying about what my teachers think of me, what my friends think of me. That’s when I really dwell on it.”

“All these thoughts of suicide. Have you ever actually written out a note?”

“I’ve thought about it a lot, but I’ve never actually done it.”

“If you did, what would it say?” She doesn’t want to hurt her mother; it’s not her fault. Here she is in absolute agony, and it’ll be her mother she’s most worried about.

“I guess my note would say … I don’t know, exactly. I’d want my mother to know I don’t blame her. She did her best and all that. Bringing me up, I mean. Mostly on her own.”

“Melanie, I know you’re finding university a little demanding these days, the written work and so on, but I’m going to give you a little bit of homework, is that all right?”

Melanie shrugged. Tiny breasts shifted under her sweatshirt.

“What I’d like you to do is actually write that note,” Dr. Bell continued. “Put your thoughts in writing. I think it would be very good for you. It might clarify exactly what you’re feeling these days. Do you think you could do that?”

“I guess.”

“Don’t labour over it too much. It doesn’t have to be long. Just write out exactly what you would say if you were actually going to kill yourself.”