Chapter 17 Lee
Lee
The so-called “psychotically depressed” person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote “hopelessness” or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square.
And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing.
The person in whom invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise.
Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows.
Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e.
the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors.
It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames.
And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling “Don’t!
” and “Hang on!,” can understand the jump.
Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
“A terror way beyond falling”—while mania was thrilling and powerful, David Foster Wallace’s words described Lee’s emotions after mania precisely. And her depressive thoughts never fully went away, not even when Lee did everything she was told.
Lee had plenty of her antidepressant, but when she shook the amber bottle of her mood stabilizer, her heart sank—only three pills left. She made a mental note to find a pharmacy as soon as possible. At least Charlotte had given her a week’s worth of sleeping pills.
Regan said she would return by lunchtime. Lee heated canned soup and dumped it into bowls for the girls. She called them to the table and as they spooned the salty repast into their mouths, Lee asked insipid questions about their studies.
Regan did not come home.
Her phone was still disabled and not responding.
Isabelle confided that her mom had not let them watch Breaking Bad. Could they watch the violent show now, with their aunt? Jet-lagged Lee shrugged: She loved Breaking Bad. The three women huddled on the couch, watching Breaking Bad and watching the front door, which did not open.
At four p.m., Isabelle got dressed and went out, saying she was “meeting friends.” When Lee asked when she would return, Isabelle said, “Who knows?”
Lee knew from all her teeny roles on police procedurals that it was important to get professionals involved ASAP in a missing persons case.
She looked up the number for the Hellenic Police.
Leaving Flora to watch a completely inappropriate meth-fueled sex scene, Lee stepped outside the apartment and dialed.
“Ελληνικ? Αστυνομ?α, π?? μπορ? να σα? βοηθ?σω?”
“Excuse me?” said Lee. She could not have been more confounded—the Greek language was so foreign she had no idea how many words had just been uttered, much less their possible meaning. “Do you speak English? My sister is missing.”
“Moment, English,” said the female voice.
“What?” said Lee.
“Tourist Police, call 1571,” said the woman, sounding utterly bored, as if this may have been her hundredth missing persons call of the day.
“She is not a tourist!” said Lee. “She lives here! My sister lives in Athens with her teenaged daughters. She left for an artist retreat but she was supposed to come back today and she’s not back.”
“Do you believe your sister is in imminent danger?”
“She isn’t answering her phone or responding to texts,” said Lee. She did, in fact, think her sister could be in danger, but she also knew that her beliefs sometimes didn’t align with reality.
“Have you checked the hospitals, jails, and mental health facilities in your surrounding area?”
“No…” said Lee.
“Have you located her phone and/or other devices? Laptop, iPad, tablet, desktop computer?”
“She took them with her, and she disabled Find My, the tracking app.”
“Call us back if she’s still missing in the morning. In the meantime, look into hospitals, jails, and mental health facilities. I hope your sister is returned,” said the woman, followed by something that sounded like “yess-us” and also, at the same time, sounded like a cough.
“Thank you,” said Lee. She sighed, remembering Regan, and how she used to curl up next to Lee as a kid and suck her thumb.
Regan would scooch as close as possible to her big sister, facing away from her, lining her back up with Lee’s shoulder and left side.
Regan had been very warm. Cord, their brother, would sit on the other side of Regan and let her put her little feet in his lap.
Lee sent Val in Orange County a request to call the jails, mental health facilities, and hospitals in Athens. She said she’d pay whatever Val wanted and that Val might want a Greek-speaker on board to translate. Val was a genius at getting shit done, no matter how complicated.
Tell me anything you find, Lee wrote.
Val gave the message a thumbs-up.
Lee called her brother, Cord, to fill him in. He didn’t answer, and Lee didn’t leave a voicemail.
Lee had to stop being heartbroken every time Cord showed himself to be who he now was.
Sure, he had once been the bright light of Lee’s life—kind, earnest, devoted to his mom and sisters.
It wasn’t that Lee couldn’t live without him—it was that it had never occurred to her she would have to.
He’d been the glue who had held the Perkins family members together, and now he was not. They were on their own.
Still, she might try to call her little brother again tomorrow.
She missed his voice. She just did.