Devonne Brown

Alice felt like a deer swimming against the tide in the ocean, a riptide, not realizing imminent death, or did she? Was it a conscious or subconscious attempt at suicide? She made the mistake in anger of asking a friend, “Just how much Prozac would kill me?” The shrink was at her house in half an hour. She wasn’t serious, then, but the shrink stayed for an hour anyway to evaluate the situation. Alice wasn’t charged for the house call.

A new shrink brought up the suicide issue twenty-five years later after the kids were grown and the grandchildren were babies. Alice confessed and spoke of swerving into a semi on the interstate, a plan, a gnat’s ass of the psych ward. Another mistake.

 The new shrink told her she would devastate the whole family and offered shock treatments as a cure. That’s all it took to change her mind because it would change her mind, she needed what was left of it.

The economy tanked later that year as well, she lost her job, her insurance, and her house. The riptide looked inviting. Would she become a silke, a siren, or a mermaid? That riptide…