LITMIR.BIZ

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have a standing arrangement with a group home in Baton Rouge. We’re leaving on a bus tomorrow morning. I’m just letting all the families know where we’ll be and how to reach us.”

      I took the information, then asked to speak to Clark. “Hello, my baby brother,” I said when he came on the phone. “How are you?”

      “Fine,” he said, and giggled. As a kid I’d been embarrassed by that overgrown baby giggle. But I’d learned to love it, just like I loved him.

      Emotions clogged my throat, but I forced them down. “So. You’re going on a bus ride, aren’t you?”

      “Bus ride,” he answered, giggling with increased glee. “Bus ride.”

      “Okay, then. Have fun. And remember that your Janie loves you. I love you, Clark.”

      And that was it. He handed the phone to Verna and she wished me good luck. I guess that’s when I finally knew what I had to do. Clark was in good hands, and a three-hundred-thousand-dollar life-insurance policy would cement the cracks in his care a lot better than I did with my weekly visits.

      I filled my glass with that courage-giving amber liquid, and stared at my life-insurance bill. The problem was, it couldn’t look like suicide because they wouldn’t pay off, and Clark wouldn’t have that extra layer of protection I wanted him to have.

      Then suddenly, like a light at the end of a tunnel, it came to me. If I died during the hurricane they’d have to pay. I could feel the adrenaline surge through my body. If I committed suicide by storm, they’d never know. I’d just be an unfortunate casualty of the horrific wind and waters. Too bad; so sad.

      But what if the storm turned away from New Orleans? What if it veered east as they so often did, sparing the city?

      Then I would drive to where it was going. My car wasn’t in the greatest shape, and my car insurance was overdue. But so what? If I stalled out somewhere in the road, the storm would just get me there.

      I aimed the remote control at the television and upped the volume. Walter Maestri, emergency management director for neighboring Jefferson Parish was on, urging everyone to leave. This could be the big one, he predicted. With the storm surge this hurricane was pushing, we could have twenty-five feet of water in the streets.

      The easier to drown in, I decided, switching channels.

      I watched television all night, fell asleep around six, woke up at noon, and called in sick.

      “The hell you say,” the day manager barked at me. “You’re not sick. The whole damn city’s going crazy. Tourists leaving early, and half the staff is cutting out for Texas. Don’t bullshit me, Jane. You’re evacuating like everyone else. But look. Come in today. You can work a double. I know you need the money. Then you can leave on Sunday if you really have to.”

      “I’m sick, Robbie. Really.”

      “Come on, Janie,” he said in this wheedling tone.

      I smiled to hear the asshole beg. “Sorry. No can do.”

      “Come in or I’m firing your ass!” he shouted in an abrupt change of tone.

      “Whatever,” I said and hung up on him.

      It felt good to do that, and it felt even better to hear him pleading on my answering machine ten minutes later. I guess he’d called around and gotten no takers, so he was back to begging me.

      I just poured myself another nice glass of Southern Comfort for breakfast and took it into the bathroom with me.

      It’s strange. Unless you’ve been there, I don’t think anyone can adequately explain how it feels to have decided once and for all to end your life. It was perversely liberating. And relaxing. And sad. I had a lot of regrets piled up in my forty-seven years. At the top of the list was Clark, of course. Not that he would miss me all that much. But still. I was his big sister, his only living relative.

      Correction. His only living relative who gave a damn, since we had no reason to believe our dad was dead, and I knew he didn’t give a damn.

      Next regret? That I’d never had kids. I didn’t dwell on that disappointment too much, but it was always there.

      And then there was Mom, who I guess had done the best she could with no husband, a difficult daughter and a special-needs son.

      After that came the mass regrets, the people I’d let down either because of my stubbornness or my stupidity. Friends, bosses, lovers. One husband. Patients.

      The only clear concept I remember from the time I’d been in rehab was that you had to take responsibility for your own actions. That you could never get sober if you didn’t acknowledge your own shortcomings.

      Not that I’m an alcoholic, mind you. I’ve had my moments of overindulgence—like now—but I’d never lost a job because of alcohol.

      No, my spectacular fall from grace seven years ago hadn’t been due to drinking, but to drugs. I’d had a brief but intense and incredibly self-indulgent go-round with prescription drugs. Unfortunately what I lost then was more than merely the nursing job that I loved. It was my profession. My calling. Nurses who are incompetent or dishonest due to substance abuse have a hard time getting a second chance in the field.

      So there was that regret, too. I’d lost a great career, and though I usually blame my ex’s conviction for insurance fraud, the truth was that I had decided to drink during his trial, and I had decided to drink even more when we lost the house. Then when he went off to prison, I had decided to try out some of the pain-killing, brain-deadening drugs I so often administered to my patients on the job.

      I’m not a junkie, though, and I’m not an alcoholic, either. If I was, I’d still be using drugs and I sure wouldn’t be the oh-so-desirable employee that Robbie was desperate to have back on the job. No, I’d be in the gutter somewhere, or back in rehab. Or dead.

      But my choices of the past were neither here nor there. Alcoholic or not, I would be dead by Monday, so it was a moot point.

      One last regret was that I couldn’t leave a note. Not that there was anyone to leave it to. Clark wouldn’t notice that I was even gone. My boss had fired me, and I really didn’t have anything to say to Hank.

      Sad, wasn’t it? And it only deepened my depression—and my resolve. No one would miss me. No one would care that I was gone—except maybe my landlord. I had no one at all to leave a goodbye note to.

      By late Saturday afternoon I was bored stiff. I sat outside on the front stoop of my four-plex and watched as my neighbors came and went.

      “You not staying?” my downstairs neighbor Carlotta exclaimed.

      “I’ll be fine.”

      “Girl, are you crazy? They saying this one could come over the levees.”

      “Then I guess it’s a good thing I have a second-floor apartment.”

      She rolled her eyes. “I’m going to my auntie’s in Baton Rouge. After the storm, though, I’m gonna call you, okay? Just to see how the old place held up. You need any supplies? I’m going to Robert’s on St. Claude.”

      “Thanks, but I have everything I need.”

      She shook her head. “Okay then. You know where I hide my key, so take anything you need from the kitchen. And one more thing. At least move your car to higher ground, up by the river.”

      “Good idea,” I said. Exactly what I didn’t want: higher ground. But later that evening as she drove off, along with several other neighbors trying to avoid the crush of traffic leaving town by driving at night, I thought about the whole water issue. The river levees aren’t the weakest spot for New Orleans during a hurricane. It’s the Lake Pontchartrain levees. That’s where the wind and tides drive the waves to top the levees. So that’s where I should go to drown.

      Or maybe somewhere in St. Bernard or Plaquemines Parish. The levees aren’t

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