Chapter Thirty-Seven
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
One of Joan’s guiltiest pleasures over the years (though she really didn’t feel too bad about it) had been not only her acquisition of items but how much she liked them.
Even when she didn’t have money, she had enjoyed shopping; she liked walking the aisles and touching with her hands and eyes.
She adored the spangle of beads and the feel of good material and the heaviness of fine jewelry.
In her final weeks, Joan spent hours in her closet. She sat on the floor and gazed upon the prints and the solids. The brights and the neutrals. Among them she felt at peace, clearheaded and ready.
At first Joan had contemplated carbon monoxide.
She was amused to recall that so many years earlier it was exactly this Bill had been fearful of as she sat in the garage.
She ruminated on the idea but then forgot about it altogether, which only enraged her when she did recall it weeks later.
She’d previously resisted writing on the topic in her notebook, worried her children might snoop, but now began a list:
Methods :
Carbon monoxide (bad for real estate value? can I ask Nelson?)
Hanging (same real estate problem?)
Charcoal fire (popular in Japan)
She debated options on her morning walks. Time was limited, as Joan knew that one day, likely sooner than she thought, her car would be taken and thus much of her freedom. She returned to High Rock Park with Lee and they went to the cliff. And there the idea came.
Initially Joan thought falling would be simplest. After all, you needed only two objects: your body and the cliff.
She recalled a book Lee had purchased years earlier, a guide on how to manage all sorts of dangerous physical situations.
Joan located the slim yellow volume, which indeed contained a chapter on cliff jumps into water, albeit surviving them: you had to clench your anus, it instructed, to keep water from flooding into your body.
If possible, you should try to hold your nose closed.
As she read, Joan worried about internal sabotage.
Her brain, having accumulated this knowledge, might conspire with her body and attempt to survive—and her body was already conspiring against her, or rather, it was whispering, giving strong hints as to the future.
Joan and her brain and body in a room. Being fed.
Being bathed. Dependent on her children, who would never again release her from their grasp. No more control.
No.
In the end, it was Bill who furnished the solution. The pills in her bag, turning her face from the sun as she lay above the cliff. The sounds of the ocean were so strong as to be almost physical. She could feel the blue with her eyes closed.
Wasn’t it funny how the people who crowded your mind in such moments could be so unexpected? Here she was, pills in hand, about to say goodbye. You might assume she’d be thinking of Lee and Jamie, but she wasn’t. Nor was Joan thinking about Bill or even her mother or father.
After Bill died, Joan had gone through a period when she liked long drives.
She would open one of her maps and pick a city two or three hours away and set off after dropping the children at school.
Joan passed through extended stretches of dusty roads, little towns, and lone farmhouses, and she would find herself overcome by all these worlds she’d never know.
She’d had the urge many times to pull over and knock on a door.
Who are you inside? she wanted to ask. We’d never meet otherwise, isn’t that a shame?
And so it was Dustin who floated in her thoughts as she sat by the cliff; by building the café, she had knocked on the door of the universe.
And Dustin—still her most loyal customer—was one who’d answered.
The two of them had long graduated from the book of Greek myths and moved on to other tales.
Their last meeting, Dustin had brought a Nordic volume, another one meant for children, the cover a dark red.
They had sat at Joan’s favorite table, the one with a turquoise top, and perused the book.
She read quietly and slowly until Dustin looked at her with his pale eyes.
Joan stopped. “Are you okay?”
She knew more about Dustin by now: how he had an older sister who’d been his parents’ favorite growing up; how, in the evenings, they’d often locked him in the basement while the rest of the family ate dinner upstairs.
Some folks just get a rawer deal. But the admiration Joan had for Dustin’s attempts to get better, to feel better, was so immense as to be close to love.
Yes yes, Dustin said. He was okay. “Please read on.”
So Joan did. Baldr, she said —pronouncing it as bald —was a Nordic god.
“You say it like Balder ,” Dustin interjected. He knew Joan liked to learn. “He was the son of Odin.”
“Baldr,” she repeated. Dustin nodded.
Joan continued. When Baldr died, she read aloud, he was loaded onto a boat.
A giantess came to his funeral, named Hyrrokkin, who was famous for riding a wolf.
The boat was supposed to be launched in the water, but even Baldr’s brother Thor did not possess the strength, and so the boat sat there, not moving, with Baldr’s now mortal body on it.
Until eventually Hyrrokin came to the water, her wolf waiting behind her, and pushed Baldr out to sea.