The Suicide Index

by Hochman, Gail

Edition: Reprint

ISBN13: 9780156033800

ISBN10: 0156033801

Format: Paperback

Pub. Date: 2009-06-23

Publisher(s): Mariner Books

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Summary

One winter morning in 1991, Joan Wickersham's father shot himself in the head.The father she loved would never have killed himself, and yet he had.His death made a mystery of his entire life. Who was he? Why did he do it? And what was the impact of his death on the people who loved him? Using an indexthat most formal and orderly of structuresWickersham explores this chaotic and incomprehensible reality. Every bit of family history, every encounter with friends, doctors, and other survivors, exposes another facet of elusive truth. Dark, funny, sad, and gripping, at once a philosophical and a deeply personal exploration,The Suicide Indexis, finally, a daughter's anguished, loving elegy to her father.

Author Biography

JOAN WICKERSHAM is the author of the novel The Paper Anniversary. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories. An excerpt from The Suicide Index earned her the 2007 Ploughshares Cohen Award for Best Short Story. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Suicide:
act of
attempt to imagine,	p. 1
bare-bones account,	p. 5
immediate aftermath,	p. 7
anger about,	p. 35
attitude toward
his,	p. 36
mine,	p. 43
belief that change of scene might unlock emotion concerning,	p. 44
day after
brother's appearance,	p. 48
concern that he will be viewed differently now,	p. 54
"little room" discussion with his business partner,	p. 56
search warrant,	p. 59
speculation relating to bulge,	p. 61
deviation from chronological narrative of,	p. 67
factors that may have had direct or indirect bearing on expensive good time,	p. 72
Suicide:
factors that may have had direct or indirect bearing on (cont.)
pots of money,	p. 88
uneasy problem of blame,	p. 103
finding some humor in
ashes,	p. 105
Valentine's Day,	p. 106
glimpses of his character relevant to,	p. 107
information from his brother sparked by,	p. 116
intrafamilial relationships reexamined in light of
Munich,	p. 124
my grandmother,	p. 139
items found in my husband's closet and,	p. 152
life summarized in an attempt to illuminate,	p. 157
numbness and
Bullwinkle,	p. 196
chicken pox,	p. 199
duration,	p. 201
food,	p. 202
husband,	p. 204
psychiatric response,	p. 207
various reprieves,	p. 212
opposing versions of,	p. 214
other people's stories concerning,	p. 216
other shoe and,	p. 224
philosophical conundrums stemming from
first,	p. 229
second,	p. 230
possible ways to talk to a child about
family tree,	p. 231
full disclosure,	p. 234
not yet,	p. 236
rational approach,	p. 238
weapons god,	p. 243
psychiatry as an indirect means of addressing,	p. 247
psychological impact of,	p. 256
readings in the literature of,	p. 274
romances of mother in years following,	p. 278
"things" folder and,	p. 297
thoughts on method of,	p. 302
where I am now,	p. 305
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Suicide:

act of

attempt to imagine

in the airport, coming home from vacation, he stops at a kiosk and buys grapefruits, which he arranges to have sent to his daughters. They will stumble over the crates waiting on their porches, when they get home from his funeral.

It’s the last week of his life. Does he know that? At some point, yes. At the moment when his index finger closes on the trigger of the gun, he knows it with certainty. But before that? Even a moment before, when he sat down in the chair holding the gun—was he sure? Perhaps he’s done this much before, once or many times: held the gun, loaded the gun. But then stopped himself: no. When does he know that this time he will not stop?

What about the gun?

Has it been an itch, a temptation, the hidden chocolates in the bureau drawer? Did he think about it daily, did it draw him, did he have to resist it?

Perhaps the thought of it has been comforting: Well, remember, I can always dothat.

Or maybe he didn’t think about the gun and how it might be used. There was just that long deep misery. An occasional flicker (I want to stop everything), always instantly snuffed out (Too difficult, how would I do it, even the question exhausts me). And then one day the flicker caught fire, burned brightly for a moment, just long enough to see by (Oh, yes, the gun. The old gun on the closet shelf with the sweaters). He didn’t do it that day. He put away the thought. He didn’t even take the gun down, look at it, hold it in his hands. That would imply he was thinking of actually doing it, and he would never actually do such a thing.

Some days the gun sings to him. Other days, more often, he doesn’t hear it. Maybe, on those stronger days, he has considered getting rid of it. Take it to a gun shop, turn it in to the police. But then someone else would know he has a gun, and it’s no one else’s business. He hasn’t wanted to deal with their questions: Where did you get it? How long have you had it? Besides, how longhashe had it? Twenty years? Twenty-five? And never fired it in all that time? So where’s the danger? What’s the harm in keeping it around, letting it sleep there among the sweaters? He doesn’t even know where the bullets are, for God’s sake. (But immediately, involuntarily, he does know: he knows exactly which corner of which drawer.)

We have to watch him from the outside. He leaves no clues, his whole life is a clue. What is he thinking when he gets up that last morning, showers, and dresses for work? He puts on a blue-and-white striped cotton shirt, a pair of brown corduroys, heavy brown shoes. A tan cashmere sweater. He has joked to his older daughter that all the clothes he buys these days are the color of sawdust. Might as well be, he said, they end up covered in the stuff anyhow, in the machinery business. So he has shaved, patted on aftershave, and climbed into his dun-colored clothes. He’s gone to his dresser and loaded his pockets: change, wallet, keys, handkerchief. Maybe he thinks he’s going to work. Or maybe he knows, hopes, that in forty-five minutes he’ll be dead. It’s Friday morning. He’s just doing what he does every morning, getting ready.

He may be thinking about it on the walk down the long driveway to get the newspaper. The cold dry air gripping the sides of his head, the ice cracking under his feet as he tramps along this driveway he can no longer quite afford. It is a dirt road, unpaved; in this town, as his wife is always pointing out, dirt roads have more cachet than fancy landscaped driveways. A dirt road means you are private and acting to protect your privacy. Your house cannot be seen from the road. Your real friends, that delightful, sparkling, select bunch, will know you’re in there, hidden in the woods, and they will know your dirt road’s ruts and bumps by heart.

Is there something in the newspaper? The front page is the only one in question, since he leaves the paper on the kitchen table folded and unread. More bombings. All this week he’s been sitting in front of the television in the evenings, staring at the news. Silent films of Baghdad buildings, fine white-lined crosses zigzagging dizzily over their facades, zooming in and centering. Then a long moment, just that white cross holding steady; and then the building falls down, no sound, no smoke or flash of light, just caves in. And that’s it. The screen goes blank; the camera doesn’t wait around to gloat. Then another building, another filmed implosion: we’re getting all these places, relentlessly. We’re hunting them down and getting them.

What has he been thinking about this week, watching these films over and over? The silent buildings that simply implode.

The front page of the paper is full of the war. But nothing else that’s major. No market crash. Nothing that would lead, directly or indirectly, to his losing more than he has already lost, which is virtually everything.

Maybe that’s it, maybe that’s what he is thinking, not just on this last morning but all the time: you’ve lost everything, not at a single blow but gradually, over years, a small hole in a sandbag. You see the hole clearly but you have no way to fix it. No one but you has been aware of that thin, sawdust-colored stream of sand escaping, but now enough sand has leaked that the shape of the bag is changing, it’s collapsing. It will be noticed. You will be caught. And then, and then—you don’t know what. You want not to be here when that happens.

He makes the pot of regular coffee for his wife, fills a cup, carries it upstairs to her bedside table. The fact that he doesn’t make his own usual pot of decaf might mean that he’s already decided—or it might mean that he generally makes that second pot when he comes downstairs again. And this morning, he doesn’t go downstairs again. He stands at his wife’s side of the bed and looks at her, sleeping. He looks at her for a long time.

Or maybe he doesn’t look. Maybe he puts down the saucer and goes for the gun and is out of the room before the coffee stops quivering in the cup.

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Excerpted from The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order by Joan Wickersham, Gail Hochman
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

The Suicide Index

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Summary

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Table of Contents

Excerpts