He drove out to the woods to kill himself. He had considered doing it at home, but knew Julie would come looking for him after one-too-many unreturned messages and he couldn’t do that to her, even now. He may be suicidal but he was still considerate. In the woods, a forest ranger, or maybe a hunter, would find him. At any rate, someone not linked to him by blood or shared stories.
He decided to drive up to the clearing where he and Julie went snowshoeing one weekend last December. Snowshoeing. How he had stayed with a woman who doesn’t ski for longer than one winter is still a mystery to him. That cold Sunday morning she was up and out of the house before he was out of bed. He was drinking coffee and ready to flip on the 49ers game when she returned holding up two pairs of snowshoes. He knew his plans were shot when he saw her standing in their kitchen smiling like she’d just caught four lobsters and was posing for a triumphant picture.
“The problem is in your head.” That’s what Julie used to tell him and he agreed, but not the way she meant it. She argued that he always imagined the worst. He didn’t know how to explain that his imagination wasn’t the issue.
His head felt like a crowded tenement — all the inhabitants made to live together in a cramped cell, fighting incessantly with each other, noisily, none of them willing to back down. Sometimes the voices would pile on top of one another until they became one sound — no longer separate or remotely discernible — one deafening roar gaining momentum like a train speeding off the tracks. Attempting to apply the brakes would make it even worse. All he could do was control the noise on the outside, so he told Julie he didn’t love her, and now his house was quiet.
The winding mountain road forced him to slow down around the curves. The irony of cautious driving in order to arrive safely at your own suicide was not lost on him. There was a long straightaway up ahead and he was relieved to reach it. Speeding had a way of helping him cut through some of the noise; some of the voices would be knocked out of the way, like hail bouncing off a windshield, and others would struggle to hold on, eventually losing their grasp.
“Babe, be careful.” Julie’s words always remained a steady undercurrent, rising to the surface unbeckoned.
In the rear-view, he inadvertently caught a glimpse of the bleeding sunset, so vivid and blinding that he blinked to try to refocus on the road ahead just as a deer darted out from the safety of the woods. He slammed on the brakes and felt the seat belt grip his chest with the jolt of the crash.
He was shaking as he knelt down next to the animal and laid a hand on her heaving belly. He saw in her eyes that she was alive but stunned and possibly crippled. They watched each other as if each were asking the other for help, but neither knew the answer. As he gazed around searching for a passing car, his eyes fell on a tiny fawn along the side of the road — statue-still, watching.
The ache in his chest dove deeper, down to a place he hadn’t had the nerve to touch in years, if ever. He felt like he could burst from the pain, like he might shatter under its weight, but at the same time he wanted to hold it, to keep it, to gather all the scattered pieces of it together and wrap it into a tight ball he could protect like a treasure.
Suddenly the doe began to shift and she shakily gathered her legs underneath her, collected her baby and together they disappeared into the shade of the woods. Just like that he was alone again.
Once in their early days together, Julie had asked him coyly, “How did you survive without me?” At the time, he rolled his eyes and kissed her.
As he made a slow U-turn and headed back to town now, he heard her ask the question again, “How did you survive without me?”
This time he knew the answer, and decided to tell her.
