(c) Randy Attwood 2014
(Jeremy)
I had two phone calls from Don before he killed himself. Each call should have tipped me off. Maybe not the first one, but certainly the second. I couldn’t have gone to him anyway; he lived in another state far away. Still, I could have done something, called somebody. I wonder if Don knew at the time of the first call–the first contact I had had with him in three years–that he was going to commit suicide. When do suicides know for sure: just before they pull the trigger?
He had called that first time to say hello, but instead of wanting to hear an update on my life, he had launched into a rambling account of his own. Then he told me:
“You know, the other day I suddenly remembered I left a notebook in the attic of that house where I had my college apartment.”
“What’s in it?” I had asked him. The mention of his college apartment had brought back memories of heaps of books, his cluttered desk, stacks of papers. A mess, but ordered, it seemed, to make an impression of disorderliness.
“I can’t remember. Poems, story ideas, philosophical arguments. Maybe nothing,” he had replied. “I can’t imagine why I hid it. I was in one of my states, I suppose.”
Then two months later he put a bullet in his brain.
But not before he had called one more time. He had to confess, he said. Confess to something horrible. I didn’t believe him. I simply didn’t believe what he was telling me. It was too outlandish. That occupied my thoughts when I should have been wondering about his mental state. The incredible confession had been the sign of a tormented and deranged mind crying out for help. A cry I hadn’t heeded. I should have gone to him, but I hadn’t. Now he was gone from me, gone from the world.
That was five years ago. I really hadn’t even thought about him until I happened to return to our old university when I was asked to deliver a paper on the patrons of Victorian art. Driving up and down the old streets, I passed by the house where Don had had his second-floor apartment. It made me remember the notebook and wonder if it were still where he had said he had hidden it in the attic.
The brick streets, the towering elms, the early fall. It all brought back nostalgia for my college life, and it made me remember how envious of Don I had been. He was what I wanted to be, a Balzac sort of character, up at all hours, writing stories, dashing them off through the night in his cluttered cave of an apartment, and then stumbling out in the morning light, his hair as frazzled-looking as his brain must have been, feeling he had accomplished something. I feared all I’d ever accomplish was a neat desk.
He’d miss classes, but I’d keep notes for him. He’d entertain me with the wide range of his thoughts, his ideas, his passions. I was the neat, orderly, scholarly sort, now expert on arcane matters Victorian. He was consumed with the idea of creating things fresh and new. All I could do was study what had been created in the past and make puny comment upon it that really amounted to nothing more than neat categorizations.
The house was in better repair than I remembered it being when Don lived there. I opened the screen door of the small, clean-swept porch and rang the doorbell. Just how was I going to frame this odd request?
(Sarah)
I was sitting with my cheeks in my palms when the doorbell rang, and I wondered why it always rang at the wrong time. Then I laughed and wondered aloud, “When would be the right time?” It rang a second time. I rubbed the heel of my palms into both eyes and across my cheeks to wipe away the wetness and stood up.
He didn’t look like a salesman.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he was saying.
“Yes?” I blinked my eyes but knew he could tell I had been crying.
“I know this is an odd request...”
I wondered what he wanted. I tried to connect my life with what he was telling me. He was handsome, but in an unsure sort of way. He wore dark-green, corduroy slacks and a matching coat with a soft-colored, plaid shirt and a knit tie. He had a boyish look about him, his still-thick, black hair with streaks of gray was parted on one side and cut neatly the way his mother had no doubt had it cut when she first took him to the barber chair. He looked vaguely familiar. About my own age. His eyes were a startlingly deep blue. It made me look at them a second time, and then a third.
“Do you own the house now?” he was asking.
“Yes,” I said, and thought the way he said “the house” sounded odd.
“In your attic...”
The attic? Why am I having more and more trouble connecting my life to what people tell me? Why would he want to see the attic? For a notebook?s Why would a notebook still be in my attic?
“I really doubt it would still be there,” I told him. I don’t like the attic. Too many memories. Why don’t I just close the door on him if he can’t take no for an answer? Why is he still standing there, still talking?
Important? How could a ten-year-old notebook left up in an attic be important?
