© 2005 Jeff Percifield
ETUDE FOR SUICIDE WITH AUDIO
… going to kill myself, my wife announced.
"What??" I said.
"Are you multitasking again?" my girlfriend said, voice popping! through cell-phone static.
Why do you want to kill yourself? oozed the morning radio shrink. I turned up the volume.
"…but we’re stuck on the Bay Bridge," said my park-and-ride companion into her phone. "We haven’t moved for ten minutes." She was a well put-together woman with ecru stockings, a gray skirt, pink frame eyeglasses, and two frizzy flaps of gray hair that made her look like an Afghan.
I’m going to jump off the bridge, but I’m stuck in traffic, my wife said.
"Oh my god,” I gasped, looking frantically around for her car. In the back seat, my other park-and-ride companion, a goofy kid in a cyclist outfit, grinned at me, bopping to a Walkman.
"Jack, we need to talk," my girlfriend menaced.
"I gotta go," I hissed. I hung up and dialed my wife’s number.
What’s that, are you getting another call? asked the radio shrink, whose thousand teeth and gratuitous red hair loomed over us from the side of a Muni bus that slunk past: DR. EILEEN GOODLOVE GIVES GOOD EAR!
"I emailed him the subpoena with a Notify Receipt attachment," said the Afghan, talking on a cell while keying a laptop.
It doesn’t matter, my wife said quietly on the radio.
Hi, this is Alison, said her voicemail in my ear.
"…the Man Who Sold the World," crooned the bike kid in the back seat.
We all feel like that sometimes, said the radio shrink. If you’ve read my book, Emotional Colonics…
"Oh no, I’m getting an Instant Message from my son’s principal," the Afghan said.
My wife began to cry.
"They evacuated the school just because of a—"
"Excuse me," I shook the Afghan, "but could you look around for a green Saab?"
"What??" the Afghan said. "Can you please turn that down?"
I remember my first abortion, the radio shrink soothed.
"My wife is on the radio," I told the Afghan, "she says she wants to jump off the bridge but she’s stuck in traffic, she drives a green Saab, could you please help me look?"
She looked at me as if I was mad. "I have to go," she rang off.
I just wanted to talk to someone before I jumped, my wife said.
"Good lord," the Afghan said. "Well, she’s probably on the Golden Gate, nobody jumps off the Bay Bridge."
"You don’t understand," I said, rolling down my window, "she takes the Bay Bridge every day."
I have nothing to live for.
The Afghan looked at the radio. "She sounds like a little girl," she said.
"Yeah, well it took years of practice," I grumbled.
My phone rang. "Jack??" my girlfriend demanded.
"Why would she want to kill herself?" the Afghan said.
"Look, I can’t talk, darling—"
I think my husband is having an affair, Alison said, and the Afghan gave me a deadly look.
"I love you, sweetheart, I’ll call you back," I whispered and hung up. "It’s not what you think," I told the Afghan, "help me put the top down." We struggled to fold back the top while the Afghan explained the situation to the bike kid. He stood up in the back seat, scanning the idling ranks of cars for a green Saab with a basketcase in it.
"Josephine? It’s Margo," the Afghan said into her cell phone. "You’re not going to believe this."
Where are you, dear?
"You’re listening?" the Afghan said. "Right. That’s me. I’m in the husband’s car!"
In the middle of the bridge, Alison said.
"Oh my god, we’re in the middle," I said, and the bike kid whistled.
"No, I don’t know the girlfriend," Margo sniffed. "Listen, where are you on the bridge? Do you see a green Honda?"
"Saab," I
said, "if you please."
"Saab, I’m sorry. You do?" She put her hand over the mouthpiece.
"She does!"
"What does the driver look like?"
Margo listened. "An Asian man, about sixty, with a neck brace?"
"Oh good grief."
"I see a green car back there, I’m going to check it out," the bike kid said. He leapt over the back of the car and trotted off through ranks of stalled traffic.
"I have an idea," Margo said, punching in numbers. She took off her gold earring so she could hear better.
I haven’t had a night’s sleep in weeks, my wife sighed.
That’s so typical of depression, Eileen Goodlove said, let me send you my three-color brochure, Power Sleeping…
"Hello?" Margo said into the phone. "Is this the Eileen Goodlove show? No, I don’t need any advice, except perhaps about my delinquent son who’s probably going to be expelled which will leave me a widow when his father has a complete—"
"Hello??" I said.
"—in a car with the husband. Yeah, that one. You will? Great!" We switched phones. "They’re going to put you through."
"What?" I gasped. I put Margo’s phone to my ear.
…’cause the world’s so EMPTY without me! blared Eminem’s syncopated sulk on hold.
"False alarm," the bike kid said, bounding into the back seat, "but this girl gave me her number."
…matters any more, Alison whispered.
"What does she look like?" Margo said, standing up in her seat.
I shook my head. "She’s … pretty, blonde, about a hundred and five pounds…"
"A hundred and five and she wants to kill herself??"
Alison, Eileen Goodlove said, Alison, I’ve just been informed your husband is on another line.
I don’t want to talk to him, Alison said. He’s abusive.
Margo shot daggers at me.
"That is not true," I said.
Physically abusive?? Eileen Goodlove gushed. Did he break your arm?
N-not physically, no, Alison admitted. Psychologically.
Margo screwed up her mouth, like I smelled.
"Oh fine," I said to her, "women always take the woman’s side."
"In my experience," Margo said, "it’s the exact opposite."
"Anyway, that’s just nonsense she learned from all these—"
– crackpot therapists, my voice boomed over the radio.
Hello? said Eileen Goodlove, a bit frostily.
I don’t want to talk to you, Jack.
"Sweetheart," I said, "where are you, what are you doing?"
Ladies and gentlemen, this is REAL RADIO, we have the husband on the line!
"Alison, we’re looking for your car, where are you?"
I don’t want to talk to him.
"Oh for god’s sake, she’s in a green Saab, will everyone listening please look for a green Saab?"
The Saab is in the shop.
"What?" I said.
"What the hell happened to it??"
"Excuse me?" Margo said.
"I only meant because it’s practically new," I said, putting my hand over the phone.
Infidelity, Eileen Goodlove said, is the symptom, not the problem. I have a videotape I can send you called Intimacy for Idiots.
What? Alison said.
Well of course I didn’t mean you were an idiot, Eileen Goodlove said.
"This is not about infidelity," I said, "we don’t even live together."
Very often, Eileen Goodlove said, when one partner acts out, it’s a cry to be heard and listened to—
"Oh, for Christ’s sake!"
You see how he is.
In the rear view mirror, I could see police lights trying to shoulder their way through the crush. A news helicopter banked overhead.
Alison? Alison, we have to break away for a traffic report, but I want you to—
"You’re cutting to a traffic report with a suicide on the phone??" I said.
Sir, I can—
"I can give you your traffic report," I said, standing up in the car, "it’s not moving. There!"
You have a lot of anger, sir—
"And you’re a crackpot," I said. "Everyone listening honk your horn if you think the shrink’s a crackpot!"
HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK!
My phone rang in Margo’s lap. "Hello?" said the Afghan. "Who?" She made a face. "Listen, sugar, don’t you think you’ve caused enough damage—"
"Give me that—" I lunged.
"—never leave their wives and children, honey, so wake up and smell the—"
I wrenched the phone away from her. "Hello, Wendy??" I said, holding two phones.
"Jack?" my girlfriend said. "I’m in my car, listening to this, what the hell is going on?"
We do still have good sex, Alison admitted.
"What??" said Wendy and Margo.
"It was only one or two times," I hissed into the phone. Click!
"Dude," the biker kid shook his head.
"You are a pig," Margo said.
"Get out!" I said.
"What??"
"Get out of my car!" I said, shoving her briefcase at her.
"Fine!" she said. She snatched up her laptop and her good shoes and her sippy cup and slammed! the door. "Go back to your bimbo babe!"
"For your information," I said, "my wife’s the bimbo, my girlfriend’s older than me."
Margo looked at me. "You’re bizarre," she said.
The bike kid patted my shoulder. "Do you want to talk, guy?" he said. "I’m studying to be a therapist." He looked about fifteen.
"Get out," I said. He looked at me sheepishly, then climbed over the back. I wrenched it in gear and rolled forward about six inches. In the mirror, I saw Margo and the bike kid wandering through traffic.
I can’t take this anymore, Alison said, her voice breaking.
Alison? Eileen Goodlove said. Alison? I think we lost her.
"What??"
I mean I think we got disconnected.
I scrambled out of the car, still holding Margo’s phone. "Alison?" I screamed, and began running towards the top of the span. "Is she on the line?"
What’s that? Eileen Goodlove said. Another suicidal person – a man? – running on the Bay Bridge?
"Alison!" I yelled, darting in and out of traffic. "Alison!"
But nobody jumps off the Bay Bridge.
A portly man stumbled out of a truck and collared me. "Don’t do it, guy!" he said.
"Fuck off!" I said, shoving him away. "Alison!" I climbed onto the barrier, the slate gray bay pitching five stories below me, and lurched dizzily. A news helicopter reared up before me, filling the world with thunder.
"Alison!" I shouted into the phone, "Alison, if you’re still listening I love you!"
HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK!
…
Buy tabacco glass pipe & many more from our store.The Highway Patrol held me for observation until my lawyer finished his golf game. Alison, it turned out, was at home all along. She could have been prosecuted for false reporting, but instead she checked into an expensive clinic with lots of understanding therapists. Eileen Goodlove was credited with saving a life. Wendy sent me a curt, businesslike card; the Saab needed a new alternator; I mailed Margo her phone. I don’t know what happened to the bike therapist.