CAUTION TO ALL READERS: The content in this chapter contains a graphic description of a self-inflicted injury at the end of the chapter. If you feel bothered or triggered by such content, please leave a review letting me know. I can write an alternative, less descriptive ending if there is a demand. Thank you.
Lunch had been fabulous. Watching Robin's face light up as she bounced from story to story about her life in Paris had fixed a happy smile on Anna's. Robin laughed as Anna recalled in great detail her wedding to David, as he grinned sheepishly and Aiden shook his head in a mixture of amusement and dismay. A feeling of family—of love and acceptance—created a pleasant atmosphere that felt natural.
Aiden had been especially intrigued when Robin made a reference to the relationship between England and France. Aiden had offered to take Robin out for ice-cream in the famous old shop downtown, and as the two cousins left the room, babbling like old friends. Anna was practically ecstatic. She and David had finished up lunch in the highest of spirits before David returned to work. Anna had taken a walk around the inn, floating on her relief and pleasure of how well Robin's visit was going. There was a smile on Anna's face that she didn't seem to notice; it softened the age of her face, and made the strangers she saw in the courtyard eye her with a sort of bemused envy. The smile had lingered with her contentment as she made her way back to the room.
It happened suddenly. Anna became aware of the smile on her face just in time to feel it fade. She could not explain the feeling she felt next, but she recognized its familiarity. She had been admiring an image like a beautiful sunset—her family—and so immersed in the beauty, she had not realized that she was standing on the edge of a cliff, and it was only now that she had taken one ill-fated step too far that she realized that the cliff had been there, but she was already falling. She could feel it in the spinning of her head, the plunging of her stomach—she closed her eyes tightly, wondering where the bottom would be this time.
What she finally hit was water, it swallowed her with a loud splash, wracking her whole body not with cold water, but with icy emotion. Later, she would try to identify those chill waters. What were they? A pool of self-hate, of regret, of depression? Of an inability to feel, honed by years of self-denial and belief in control? Whatever those antagonizing waters were, it was now that she was struggling against them. Why, she choked on her thoughts, why now?
It was in this way that she'd come to find herself unzipping her daughter's suitcase. In her best judgment, or perhaps in spite of it, she carefully lifted her daughter's neatly packed shower kit from the suitcase. She hesitated. In a fit of determination some days ago, Anna had rid the room of every threatening blade she could think of. She cursed herself for her foolishness, whether for the discard of her blades or for her repentance for it now. Her hands were lapping at the cold waters in futility, and now she was beginning to panic. She stared at the solution before her, and felt her body shaking, though with what, she did not know.
She wouldn't have to know, no one would ever have to know, if she could just release herself now, it was so simple. If I just do it quickly, no one will know. I can put Robin's razor back, she'll never know. Part of her did want to make it that simple, but it was the other part of her that caught her voice in her throat and let a strangled gasp into the empty room. My daughter, she thought with an inward sob. Am I really going to cut myself with my daughter's razor? She struggled to think about the situation she was in, but it was like trying to remember a dream. The harder she tried, the more furiously her thoughts fragmented and escaped her.
Maybe the solution wasn't simple, she had to concede to some degree, but it was obvious. I can't be like this. I just want to have a pleasant evening together before she leaves tomorrow for the AIDS conference. Here, Anna hit another realization. AIDS. My daughter has AIDS. She looked at the tool in her hand, her fingers going limp around it. She let it drop back into Robin's shower bag. A razor that could have been exposed to the AIDS virus. The words echoed in her mind. She tried to rationalize it. It was extremely unlikely that she would get infected, after all, Robin was a very careful person, and the AIDS virus can't live that long outside the body anyway.
Why is this what I've become? she asked herself, suddenly furious. That I have to weigh the pros and cons of cutting myself with a razor that might have been exposed to the AIDS virus? My daughter's razor? She quickly repacked Robin's things and then grabbed her coat. No sooner had she reached the door, though, when she threw the coat onto the floor. I don't want anyone to see me like this, she thought. She was trapped, in that room, in herself. She had lost any idea of escape, maybe even any ambition of doing so. Her wants, her needs, her loves, her fears, everything had congealed into one sudden goal, one answer.
Out of thirst, out of need, her brown eyes had begun to dart around the room in a desperate search for—for something, for anything, really, when a glint of light caught her eyes. On her bedside table was a small drinking glass. Anna brushed her hair off of her face, and rushed toward the glass. She picked it up, and understood what she was going to do next.
Nonetheless, the sound of the glass shattering against the wall surprised her. A few feet away the glass was no more than a collection of shards against the floor. The glass had contained water, apparently. It trickled down the wall, darkening the carpet where it landed. The glass shone with tiny droplets of water as well in a way that might have been pretty had it not been for the circumstances.
Quick, but heavy hands lifted one of the larger pieces of glass from the disorder beneath her feet. She retracted a sleeve, asking herself briefly how many days it had been in a calmness that had been transformed from her desperation on account of what she knew was about to happen. She had been on the verge of drowning, and against her arm she parted the waters; she parted her own flesh.
The relief was almost instant, she felt soothed; the torment was over. As she glanced down at her arm, however, her relaxation began to recede. Unlike the straight, predictable edge of her blade, the glass was jagged and angular. In the place of a neat incision was a shredded gash, and it was bleeding profusely. Anna swore under her breath, wondering how deep a cut had to be before it required stitches.
The thought worried her, but she retained a certain level-headedness. In the bathroom, she wrapped a towel around her arm, grateful that at least she was able to think again, at least she wasn't overwhelmed by things she could not conceptualize, much less understand. She felt discouraged by the display that had just occurred, even a little scared. It's over, she told herself. Just don't dwell on it right now. It's done. Anna took a shaky breath and peeled back the towel. She was on the verge of bleeding straight through it. It didn't look like it was going to let up anytime soon.