Devonne Brown

Lucinda called the suicide hotline.. The counselor’s parting words were to cook something delicious just for herself. The counselor began with, “too hard to be alone, too hard to have a job you hate, too hard to be a senior citizen so far into debt the only way your life insurance would pay off would be if you died of natural causes or a terrible accident, and too hard to be as healthy as a horse with no end in sight. Do I have that right?” What encouraging words from a trained suicide counselor those were…jeeeze. 

“Yeah, that;s a good summary of what I told you basically. Did you write it or are you reading closed captions? That’s a lot of words.” Lucinda made a mistake calling. She rolled her tear filled eyes.

Lucinda told her son one night to let the the most special person in her life know if anything ever happened to her; he agreed. She thought he may have gotten the drift.

The counselor, on the other end of the line, promised she wouldn’t call an ambulance because of her call. Lucinda didn’t need a several thousand dollar hospital bill on top of the misery she felt at the moment. Insurance didn’t cover ambulance rides anyway, not even if they had the lights and sirens on.

Lucinda reassured her she didn’t have a gun, like the fully loaded revolver beside her. But she did admit that she had only enough medication to fuck her mind up really well if she took all the pills she had, and that would be really stupid. Lucinda needed what mind she had left. The counselor said she’d only do that if she thought she was in danger of harming herself or somebody else. The counselor, Josephine, was glad Lucinda had cats. Josephine said she had some cats too, they were a great comfort to her. 

Josephine told her she was a writer as well as a recovering alcoholic, like it would help, in addition to a being a suicide counselor, and  of course she wrote poetry. Lucinda didn’t think much of poets, and had no idea how to relate to recovering alcoholics but heard they were a big deal, with the twelve steps they had to take and all. She lied and told Josephine how much she respected her. She could have cared less.

Lucinda told the story of her college friend whose mom wrote poetry that was published years ago when it was hard for women to be recognized as writers at all. In addition to her real name, she also published under a mysterious pen name that was published and no one in her family ever discovered nor the works she published. Lucinda was always impressed, and thought it was probably pornography under a man’s name, but never told her friend what she thought.She told her so with a smile in her voice. 

Lucinda said that none of her friends nor family knew she was the least bit suicidal, cranky if course, what old lady wasn’t, but not suicidal, except for her kids. They’d discussed the Mac truck plan that would probably knock her into a concrete barrier as if it were nothing more than cancer for insurance purposes. Mental illness is like that. It eats away at your brain until there’s nothing left. Sometimes it’s a terminal illness, like a cancer. Her shrink wouldn’t dare rat her out.

Some of her co-workers knew she had a gun for “protection.” They thought she’d sent her dog to live with her kids as a therapy dog. Her dog was so friendly she would have welcomed a stranger into the house and brought them straight to her while she slept. So she sent the dog to live with the boys and bought a .38.

The cats she could open the windows and turn loose. Everybody knew about the cats, especially Henry, he wouldn’t go far. Alice, the fraidy cat, would stick close to him. Somebody would find them when they missed Lucinda, after a week or so. A friend from work knew where the spare key to the house was hidden, but besides, the house would have been unlocked anyway. The cats could come and go as they pleased. 

Lucinda hadn’t decided when it would happen. She should probably do some cleaning first, maybe some laundry, run the dishwasher, and get rid of the weed. The cat boxes should definitely be changed. She wouldn’t do it in the house anyway, too messy. The backyard by the fence was a better spot.

Somebody asked when she was going to retire the other day.

 She laughed and said, “I can’t afford to retire, I hope I’ll just drop dead in the middle of my shift one day.”