Her limbs felt heavy, and her arm reached out to open the door as if someone else were moving it for her, and she were nothing more than a marionette. The officer that stood on the other side of the door removed his cap as the wooden barrier that had separated them swung open.
“I’m sorry,” he offered.
Julia looked away.
“If you can just show me where he is then we’ll get through this as soon as we can.”
Julia looked past the officer and noticed another man in uniform standing reverently by a squad car. This second officer also removed his hat when Julia’s eyes passed his.
“Ma’am?” the first officer asked. Julia could tell that he wanted to come inside.
“Of course,” Julia stuttered. She stepped aside, and both officers passed through the open doorway.
“Which room is he in?” the first officer asked again.
Julia pointed to Thomas’s door. The first officer walked towards it while the second stood about awkwardly, trying to take in the room, and at the same time doing everything in his power to avoid looking Julia in her eyes. The first officer jiggled the door handle.
“Ma’am? Did you lock the door after you saw him?” the second officer asked. The opportunity to speak professionally seemed to relieve his nervousness.
“No,” Julia answered. “I haven’t been in there.”
“You say you haven’t been in there?” the first officer asked from across the room.
“No,” Julia answered.
“Then how do you know?” the first officer continued.
“I got a note from him that said,” Julia began. “You can open the door with the spare key. We keep it in the kitchen.” Julia retrieved the key from a drawer in the kitchen and handed it to the first officer.
“Feel free to sit on the couch while we go in,” the second officer offered. Julia obeyed and sat on the couch and closed her eyes.
“Just breathe,” she told herself as she inhaled deeply.
“It looks like you were right,” the first officer said as he met Julia in the living room. You understand that we have to make a formal investigation anyway.”
Julia had no idea how much time had passed since she’d sat down on the couch.
“Of course,” she answered.
“Now you said that he left a note,” the officer prodded.
“Yes.”
“We’ll just confirm that it was his handwriting and that he did plan on killing himself, and we’ll leave it at that.”
“No,” Julia whispered.
The officer looked at her with new eyes. “What do you mean?” he asked. The sympathetic kindness had vanished from his face.
“It’s personal.”
“I understand. But we’ll need to have a look at it all the same.”
“Is there any other way?” Julia asked. She pleaded with her eyes.
The second officer stepped out of the room and whispered something into the first officer’s ear.
“I think we can confirm this one without the note,” the first officer said after a moment of silence. “But if not, we’re going to have to take a look at it.”
“Thank you,” Julia said, making eye contact with the second officer for the first time. She went to the living room and sat on the couch. She opened the note again and let her eyes pass over the words, this time taking the time to really read it.
Julia,
Our little devil was right—maybe you think I should call him my little devil, but he really belongs to both of us. He once told me that we always act on our true beliefs, and all our actions are merely a physical manifestation of those beliefs. He couldn’t have said anything more true. But you were right too, and I want you to know that I realized this before the end. I now know that you’re right even now as you read this, though I won’t be there. And, while our little devil couldn’t have said anything more true, what you said was truer than anything he could have ever come up with. You were right about everything from the very beginning, and you’re outside my door as I write this because you’re right. And here I am trapped inside by your love because I know that I’m wrong.
I thought that I would find the truth in the first half of my experiment, but all I found was that all of life is meaningless, but you already knew that; you could’ve told me before I’d ever conceived my little experiment, though I wouldn’t have believed you. As I looked for that thing that would give me fulfillment, even while I preached that the idea of fulfillment only existed as a socially constructed value, I came to realize that we’re all hypocrites: the philosophers, the scientists, and the religious. Every last one of us is exactly the same, preaching one thing, but deep down we all believe something different. If we really believed what we preach we would act on those beliefs and nobody ever does. All of our incongruous actions only confirm that we don’t believe any of what we say we believe—what we want to believe. Maybe that’s why we try to convince others. We want the world to believe for us when we can’t. At least I did.
But even when confronted with my truth I could’ve ignored it. That’s the advantage of being a hypocrite; it’s so easy for all of us to turn our backs on the truth. Everyone’s a hypocrite, everyone in the whole world, except for you, Julia. I know that you believe what you claim to believe because you’re outside my room crying. If you’d gone to bed or blown me off, we’d both wake up tomorrow morning and have breakfast as usual.
Don’t think I’m blaming you for what I’m about to do. It’s not your fault. But if you’d said that you loved me and then gone to bed, if you’d barged into my room, if you’d done anything to show that you didn’t really love me, I could have gone to sleep tonight. But you, you’re crying outside my door because you love me too much to barge in, and you love me too much to leave me alone. You could stop what is about to happen, but then again you can’t; it would be against your nature as someone who loves. You can’t stop what is about to happen because you’re the only one who isn’t a hypocrite, because you really believe in God. I know I’ve already said that, but I write it again for emphasis—everything I repeat I do on purpose for emphasis; yes it all has purpose now, Julia.
As I was saying before I got off track, everyone else says they believe, but you really do because you love—or do you love because you believe, maybe they’re the same; I’ll never know. But I know that if God didn’t exist, then nobody could believe in him. They could believe like the hypocrites, but not like you. I believe now too. For the first time in my life I truly believe, and my actions will confirm my belief, though I imagine that they’ll be quite different from your own, they will be the first actions of a man living from his beliefs.
I want you to know that you’re right, and that everything I’ve ever done was wrong. Follow what you’ve found, and tell the world. We won’t listen, but tell the world anyway. If I’d known earlier I might have changed everything. But there’s no time now for what if. I know you’re right, and if you’re right then I am guilty. Nobody else sees that guilt; it isn’t illegal. But I am guilty.
I wish that I could end this letter with love, but only you could write that without it being a lie.
Your brother,
Thomas
p.s. I don’t do this solely so that you can press charges without worrying about the matter of me being tried for assault, but that does work out conveniently for you. I had to point out this simple fact because I’m sure it would get lost in the commotion otherwise, but now that I think about it, I’m sure you won’t take any action against him so even this doesn’t matter.
p.p.s. Please forgive the grammar and spelling. Maybe there aren’t any mistakes, but if there are, but it seems silly to write about such things at a time like this. Still, I know that there is a correct way to write all of this with punctuation and that any mistakes are wrong, but there simply isn’t time to correct everything—if only there were time to correct everything. For you there’s still time. Tell the world. But now I’m only repeati
ng myself, and this time it’s not on purpose.
p.p.p.s. I didn’t want to write this, but something compels me. When I saw you in front of my door I could see something past your puffy cheeks. The lighting was bad, but I could see that despite all the turmoil, you were at peace. That must mean that there’s hope for you, hope for everyone—except me of course. I really can’t be thinking of this sort of thing now. The die is cast. It was cast a long time ago. I’m not quite sure when I passed that threshold, but it was a long time ago, maybe when I was a small child. Who can tell? Or maybe I haven’t passed it yet. Maybe I’ve passed a thousand thresholds, but there’s still one more that I haven’t gone through yet, and until I do there’s still hope. The hope that comes from that peaceful look in your face. But I shouldn’t let myself be thinking these things. No. The die is cast. I am guilty, and there is a standard by which I must be judged.
Julia folded the note and tucked it inside her front pocket. Several other officers had filed into the small house while she sat reading, and when she looked up bodies bustled about in every direction. The second officer, who must have been waiting, sat down on the couch next to her.
“You said that you hadn’t gone inside the room?” he asked.
“No.”
“How did you know that your brother had,” the first officer began to ask again.
Julia fingered the note in her pocket and looked away from him.
“Was it the note that he left?” the second officer asked.
Julia nodded.
“This looks like an obvious case, so we won’t need to read what he left for you.”
Julia thanked the officer.
“Do you want me to tell you how?” he asked.
“No. It’s all the same to me now,” Julia answered. “I don’t need to see, and I don’t need to know because it’s all the same in the end.”
“Some people need to know whether their loved ones died without suffering.”
“I’m fine,” Julia said with a gentle firmness.
The second officer took out a pen and a small pad of paper. He wrote something on the top sheet, then tore it off, folded it twice, and handed it to Julia.
“You don’t have to open it,” he said. “But I want you to have it, in case one day you change your mind about wanting to know.”
“Thank you,” Julia said. She saw men in uniform carrying out a body bag and turned her head away.
“This must be hard for you,” the officer stated. “I can give you a number to call if you want someone to talk to.”
“I appreciate it,” Julia said. “But I already have a few numbers I can call.”
“That’s good. We’ll be gone in a little while and you can call them.”
The officer got up from his seat.
“Wait,” Julia said softly. “Could you do something for me?”
“What?”
“Could you call my mother for me?”
“We can do that.”
Julia gave the officer Hannah’s number then looked intently at the note he’d given her, before putting it in her pocket next to Thomas’s.
“Wait,” she said to the officer who had already gotten up and begun dialing. “Did he suffer?”
The officer looked away, then turned his head back to her. Julia could tell that he was forcing himself to look her in the eyes and resisted the urge to turn away from him. “Yes,” he said after a brief pause. “I would imagine that he suffered considerably.”
“And once he started suffering could he have stopped it?” Julia asked.
“He probably could have stopped the suffering,” the officer answered.
“But he didn’t?”
“There’s no evidence that he made any attempt to stop the suffering.”
“And he never made enough noise to wake me up,” Julia muttered.
The officer looked at her intently, and then, as if realizing that this last phrase hadn’t been meant for him, turned away. Before he could pick up the phone again or blend back into the bustling stream of bodies that filled her house, Julia took the officer’s note from her pocket and handed it back to him.
“That’s all I wanted to know. Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome,” the officer said as he took the note. “And again I’m sorry to have to put you through all of this.”
* * *
Hannah hung up before the officer could finish explaining the situation. Then she picked the phone up again and dialed. She trembled as the phone rang.
“This is Abigail. I can’t come to the . . .”
Hannah hung up. She started to dial Andy’s number but didn’t let herself finish.
“If I call him then it’ll be personal between us,” she told herself. “It’s all biology now, but if I call then we’ll never be able to go back.”
She sat by herself for a moment, but knew that even talking to Andy would be better than nothing. If only she had someone else. She picked up the phone one last time and dialed.
“Is Jenny in?” she asked.
“She’s in with a client now,” said the receptionist’s nasal voice. “I can have her call you as soon as she’s available.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“I just need your name and a number where we can reach you.”
Hannah gave the receptionist her information, though she felt certain that it was already stored somewhere in their system.
“Thank you. I’ll have Jenny get in touch with you as soon as possible.”
Hannah hung up the phone and got up to pace back and forth in an attempt to make the time pass. She remembered how in past years Peter had annoyed her when he’d done the same thing.
“I understand why he couldn’t sit still,” she thought. “And now I’m just like him.”
She turned on the stereo system and put in the first CD that her hands found. “Sometimes you just can’t take the silence anymore,” she thought. She turned up the volume so loud that she hardly heard the phone ring a few minutes later. She rushed across the room to turn down the volume before answering.
“Hannah?” Jenny’s voice asked.
“Thank you for returning my call.”
“What can I do for you?”
Hannah didn’t know where to begin. “Something’s happened. I didn’t know who else to call. Is there any way you could squeeze me in?”
“I don’t have an opening now,” Jenny said apologetically. “Can you tell me what the problem is?”
“It’s not the sort of thing that I want to talk about over the phone. I’d like to come in and see you face to face.”
“I understand, but I’m completely booked until Wednesday. What day is your appointment?”
“Tuesday,” Hannah said.
“Can you wait until then?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll tell you what I can do,” Jenny said. “I normally only work a half day on Saturdays, but I can stay late if you want to come in then.”
“We could even do lunch together,” Hannah suggested.
“I appreciate the offer, but I think it would be best to meet in the office. It’s easier to maintain the patient counselor relationship that way.”
“Of course.”
“But you can make it?” Jenny asked.
“I’ll be there.”
Hannah hung up the phone. She looked at the artwork that she had hung on the walls, trying to absorb herself in the images. For the first time she noticed how busy the room looked. “Or is it just cluttered?” she asked herself. She walked back to the stereo and turned the volume up again, then paced across the room, staring intently at the plethora of images that surrounded her.
* * *
Lewis sat in his room trying to figure out how Tina had rolled the paper so tightly. He had no desire to smoke its contents, but only wished to become proficient in the art. He’d rolled it perfectly a few minutes ago, but had undone his work to try again. Now he felt that his previous success had been a fluke
. He set the paper out on his desk and tried to flatten it out again. Somewhere he felt a slight tinge of conscience, wondering if what he intended to do was right or wrong, but a greater wave of acceptance overwhelmed his thoughts.
“Why do people say that this is bad?” Lewis wondered as he tried again to roll the paper. He thought about all the images he’d been inundated with for the past several years, pictures of scary red-eyed monstrosities smoking, or doing drugs. The pictures and warnings he’d seen didn’t bear the slightest resemblance to that group who had taken him in without even knowing him. They didn’t vandalize school property, they didn’t get in fights, and they didn’t look down on him.
“Lewis, I need to talk with you about something,” Hannah said from outside the closed door that blocked her from entering his room.
Lewis called back to her from the other side, insisting that he had homework that he needed to do.
“The homework can wait,” Hannah said.
“I don’t want to talk,” Lewis insisted. His mind raced as he tried to come up with an excuse to get out of the situation.
“This is important,” Hannah insisted. She opened the door and stepped into the room as Lewis shoved everything into his desk drawer and stood between his mother and the evidence.
“You can’t just come in here!” Lewis objected. “It’s my room.”
He waited for his mother to accuse him. He reasoned that he would tell her that she didn’t have any proof and accuse her of not trusting him. Or maybe he would say that his life wasn’t any of her business. After all, it was his body, his life. She’d given up her right to interfere in his affairs a long time ago. Or maybe he should deny the allegations. If she didn’t have proof he could deny anything. And how could she have proof? He resolved to deny anything she might have discovered.
“So why don’t you have a seat,” Hannah prompted.
Anxiety overcame Lewis, and his resolved disappeared as he reverted to his gut reaction.
“I’ve got to go.” He tried to speak casually, but he knew that she saw straight through him.
“Lewis Manchell, sit down now,” Hannah sobbed.
Her shrill voice sparked something in Lewis, and an emotion similar to empathy came to life inside him. The fear of being discovered dissipated, and he obeyed his mother and took a seat on his bed.