THE ULTIMATE DISCLOSURE
“Dear Ella,
“I’m so sorry I missed seeing you and Dale in Healdsburg. I hope you’ll pardon my not getting back to you. That week was the end of a brief—traumatic—affair with a man named Bob. It was also a big, traumatic week for therapy—I wound up leaving Dr. G soon after. I guess I should tell you the whole story—about Bob, I mean.
“He’s a young doctor, just out of med school, who had worked with my mother at Herrick Hospital a couple of years ago, saw my photograph on her desk, and wanted to take me out. Mom had mentioned this to me back then, but I wasn’t interested. He’d left Berkeley for a time and then showed up at Herrick one day with an emergency case of appendicitis—one of his patients, that is.
“He told Mom he now worked at a Chicano clinic in Oakland and that if I was looking for volunteer work, I might help out at the clinic. Then he called me up for a date. That’s how I met him—actually, it’s the only way I could have met him. I was too depressed to go out looking for a man.
“He was short, stocky, bearded—virile-looking, with a twinkly kind of smile. As I got to know him, I discovered he had a wacky sense of humor that delighted me, that he was very bright and knowledgeable (he graduated from Stanford) and versatile too. He loved music, played the piano a bit, enjoyed literature and poetry, dabbled in photography, sailed, skied, and water skied, etc. He’d even been president of Berkeley High, where I went to school!
“What’s more, he was friendly, gregarious, sensitive, and psychologically astute—and we had such fun together! We hiked, swam, sailed at Lake Tahoe, and had barbecues with his friends. In Mendocino we rented a little motel cabin on the 4th of July weekend, roamed the woods and the beaches, perused the little art galleries, and finished off the evenings with cocktails and dinner at fancy restaurants. In a few short weeks, he told me he felt closer to me than any woman he’d ever been with. For the first time in my life I thought, I could marry this man!
“Then one day we talked about attitudes towards marriage, and he announced that he wasn’t particularly committed to the idea of marital fidelity, nor was he willing to be monogamous with me—a deal-breaker…” Of course, he told me this after we became lovers.
The letter goes on, but not with the whole story. What I failed to mention is that the night Bob told me this—at his apartment—once again I felt sucked down into a dark vortex of pain. When I went to my car to drive home, I thought of the relief a scream had brought me before and wondered if I could muster the determination to do it again. And though I worried that I would alarm the neighbors, who might think I was being assaulted, I did scream. But this time I felt no relief whatsoever. Still, I didn’t break up with Bob immediately, telling myself that maybe, if I just hung in there, he might have a change of heart. So when he invited me back up to his family’s cabin at Lake Tahoe, I accepted.
We drove up with a couple of his close friends—and just as I had with Steve years before, I felt shut out of the conversation. On arrival, we hiked over to another friend’s cabin, where more of his friends, including a couple of pretty girls, were gathered. Soon it was decided that we’d all go sailing. After we got back and everyone was lounging around, I asked Bob if he would go for a walk with me, but he refused. Hurt, I set off by myself, intending to make my way back to his cabin—but somehow I got lost. Eventually he came looking for me because I’d been gone so long. But at that point, even before he found me, I knew it was over.
That night he slept on the cabin sofa and allowed me to sleep in the bed. But I couldn’t sleep. Instead I spent the night grappling with the impulse to commit suicide. Again, I was in such pain, I felt the only way I could communicate it was by taking, or attempting to take, my own life. Since I’d been silenced by my family, never allowed to tell the truth about my despair, it seemed to me that killing myself would be the most honest, the most courageous and eloquent thing I could do—a last act to reclaim my own integrity, the consummate act of self-expression. Beyond this, I felt a sort of mortal exhaustion that I couldn’t go on trying anymore. I was ready to relinquish control and place myself in the hands of “fate.” It would be dishonest to make an unserious attempt, I thought, so, throughout the night, I wrestled with indecision. Then towards dawn I found my resolve—I would slit my wrists, I decided, but make no sound or cry for help. Whether I would be discovered in time to save my life or not I would leave to chance.
I went into the bathroom—but couldn’t get the blade out of Bob’s disposable razor. Afraid that unless I did, I wouldn’t be able to cut deep enough, I struggled with it for a time—until I realized it was hopeless and gave up.
Years later I talked to a neighbor friend of Arlen’s, Lois, who had attempted suicide and survived—and felt a powerful envy, wishing it had been me. But a few more years passed, and I heard from Arlen that Lois had tried again. This time she’d succeeded.
Some time later, my mother mentioned she’d run into Bob. He’d told her he was in therapy and that I was the angriest person he’d ever met, adding but maybe it was his own anger that he’d been afraid of.
For my part, I never saw Bob again—and he would never know how close he’d come to finding corpse in his bedroom the next morning.
ROOM OF GRAY RAIN (song lyrics)
There’s an empty room that needs a chair
A photo with no frame
A fireplace that’s cold and bare
A mailbox with no name
No one comes to visit there
To her it’s all the same
She sits and wiles away the hours
In a room full of gray rain
If someone asks, just say she’s fine
Just say she says hello
It’s no one’s fault these days and nights
She finds she’s going so slow
Of course she thinks of him sometimes
And wonders if he’s changed
But it’s so hard to think at all
In a room full of gray rain
A strange thing happened yesterday
It cleared before the dawn
And in the mirror she paused to see
Her own reflection gone