Terminal

Still considering my options, I put the lid back on the box and carried it over to my toolshed. I popped the combination lock and stepped inside, shutting the wooden door behind me. I flicked on the overhead light and a terrified mouse scampered in one of the dark corners. One of my mom’s boyfriends had once given me an Old Milwaukee barroom mirror, and I still had it, hanging on the wall next to my tool bench. I opened the box, pulled out one of the .357s, and lifted it up, staring at my reflection in the mirror.

I placed the cold barrel to my temple. The gun looked big— bigger than on TV. Then I opened my mouth and put it inside, pressing it against the back of my throat, tasting the metallic tang of oil. I gagged. No. There was no way I could do that. No way I could ever pull the trigger and do myself.

Still watching my reflection, I pulled the gun back out and pointed it at the mirror.

“This is a stickup, motherfucker! Put the money in the goddamned bag and nobody gets hurt!”

I smiled. That was a lot easier and a lot better.

I repeated the words again. And again. They became a mantra and I practiced till they were perfect.

Still smiling, I locked up the shed and put the guns back under the seat in the truck. There were a few more things I had to do— just to make sure this was the road I wanted to take. But the words in the mirror stayed in my head. I slipped into the trailer, and lay down next to Michelle. I had no trouble sleeping after that.

NINE

The next morning was Sunday. On Sunday, God may have rested, but I was still dying, and trust me, that was a very fucked-up thing to remember upon waking. I lay there in the bed, disoriented, aware of nothing but the sound of my cells turning bad and ganging up on me. I imagined that I could hear them, scurrying like ants through my body. At least I wasn’t puking—

yet. I fumbled on the nightstand for my cigarettes, lit one up, and tried to force the thought from my mind.

I thought about anything else I could, anything that didn’t involve dying. The time Michelle and I played hooky from school and went down to the Baltimore-Washington airport to watch the planes from the observatory. How beautiful she looked on our wedding day. When we moved into the trailer and Michelle and Sherm got into an argument because Sherm scratched the dining room table while he was unloading it, and how John and I laughed when she shut him down with just a look. The day she came home from the doctor and told me that he’d confirmed the home test, and she was indeed pregnant. T. J. being born, and when I first saw him, I thought there was something horribly wrong because his head was cone-shaped. The relief I felt when the doctor explained that it was normal. The first Christmas that T. J. actually opened his own presents, and got excited over them. When John and Sherm and I took him fishing off the dam at Three Mile Island, and how we hadn’t caught any fish but T. J. came home with a stringer full of new curse words. T. J.’s first day at day care, and how he clung and cried and screamed not to go— and how happy and smiling he was when the day was over and he told us how much fun he had. The first time he said, “I love you, Daddy.” That one, that memory, kept the thoughts of dying out of my head the longest. But it also brought them crashing back in the hardest. I rolled over onto Michelle’s pillow and breathed in the aroma that she’d left behind. I could still smell her, but not as strongly as I would have been able to a few months before. That realization brought it all back again and soon, her pillow was wet, as was my face. Eventually, the sounds of cartoons drifted in from the living room, and I heard the hiss of bacon sizzling in the frying pan. I couldn’t smell it no matter how hard I tried. I blew my nose, clearing out the bloody snot, and tried again, but I still couldn’t smell it. I stayed in bed, smoking the cigarette down to the filter and feeling depressed.