THE WOODPECKER

 

 

She tells Charlie about Sylvie’s plans to kill herself. “It’s a calculation she’s already made, and there’s no stopping her.”

It’s seven in the evening at Charlie’s place. Neither of them has any interest in eating. Charlie’s already quaffed two large martinis and is sprawled on the Persian carpet looking at a third, which is sitting within reach on the tile table. Pina’s helped Charlie discover his natural affinity for drink, but a third jumbo martini would be hallucinogenic for him. He needs to build his endurance. She mixed the first two martinis, but refused to make a third. With martinis, she observes the maxim: Three is too many and a dozen’s not enough. The third one’s on Charlie, if he partakes. At this point he’s only flirting with it.

“You know, Pina,” he saws, drawing out the final vowel of her name forever, “People who decide, you know, to do themselves in, don’t generally blab about it.”
“It wasn’t blabbing. More like seasoned reporting. She called me a noisy drunk.”
Charlie smirks from the floor. “I don’t think that you’re that noisy, Pina.” Charlie sits up and has a sip of his martini.
“Be careful.”
“Is that why you’re drinking bubble water tonight.”
“It’s not just bubble water. It’s San Pellegrino. Tell me, Charlie, have you ever been suicidal?”
“Me? No, not really. I went through a macabre period as a young teen when I built suicide sets in shoeboxes. I was always building thing, but I hit upon this idea of coming up with suicide tableaus. I remember I had a guy in a prison cell hanging by his bed sheets, and another dude sitting lotus style at the rear of a Karmann Ghia with a tiny hose extended from the exhaust to his mouth. There was a woman in a bathtub who slit her wrists.”
“I can’t believe this, Charlie. You were a sick kid.”
“I don’t know. They were true scale models and I built every part of them, except for the Karmann Ghia, which came from a kit. It was painstaking work.”
“But why suicide?”
Charlie lifts his martini, studies it for a long moment, and takes a full swig. “I guess I was processing some baggage. My mother killed herself when I was seven.”
“Oh, shit, Charlie. You never told me that.”
“Yeah, some things I tend to keep to myself.”
Pina gets down on the rug beside Charlie and holds him close. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. Lot of water under the bridge.” He grabs his martini and pours down most of it. The poor man is putting some genuine hurt on himself.
“Anyway, I made five different models. They didn’t go over so well at the science fair. There was a lot of talk about self-determination in those days. So I called my project: Five Varieties of Self-Termination.”
“Oh, Charlie.”
“How about you, Pina? You ever been suicidal?”
“We don’t have to talk about this, Charlie.”
“No, I want to.” He gulps the rest of his martini and vaults himself up from a sitting position, staggering a few steps sideways.
“Where are you going, Charlie?”
“Make myself another.”
“I won’t let you.”

Charlie stands on his spot, bowlegged as a cowboy, before his knees buckle and he veers over to the sofa and collapses. In two minutes he’s asleep. Pina finds a light blanket and covers him.

 

She returns to Vince’s condo, disturbed by Charlie’s revelation and wondering what else he’s kept from her.

Tonight she’s going to keep some sort of strange vigil, her thoughts are with her downstairs neighbor. The curious thing is she hasn’t heard Sylvie cry for weeks. Maybe having made her decision eliminated her grief.

For Pina, suicide’s never been a viable option. She doesn’t like the idea of leaving a mess behind, and even if you did the deed in a neat way, say with pills, you’d leave a psychic mess in your wake, with everybody close to you forced to consider what they could have done to prevent your death. What was it like for Charlie at seven? She’d never be able to forgive the cruelty of the act.

Vince told her about a poet, whose name she can’t remember, who’s father killed himself while his wife was pregnant with the future poet. The poet lived to be 100 and was beloved, but he never stopped writing about the father that he never knew.

The Eichorn brothers gave her an odd introduction to suicide. Benny, the oldest, who spoke with a hushed authority, explained to her that suicide was a crime and that if you killed yourself they threw your body in jail. They had special jails for suicides way out in the country and the bodies stayed behind bars until they were fully rotted and nothing was left but skulls and bones. Then they came and made soap out of the suicide bones. “You never know, Pina,” he said, “you may be taking a shower with a suicide. That’s why I never use soap.” Benny went on to explain that one of the really good things about suicide prisons is that they didn’t have to spend a lot of money on prison guards.

Tonight Pina limits herself to one glass of wine, which amounts to a vow of sobriety. She’s not sure what’s she’s waiting for: A gunshot? The smell of gas? She opens all of her windows. The deed may already be done. It’s silent downstairs.

 

To say she slept fitfully would be an understatement. In the morning she calls Charlie to see how he’s doing.

“It’s like I blacked out.”
“You went past your limit.”
“I guess. The hangover is epic. What should I do?”
“Make yourself a short screwdriver, take three Advil, and lay low.

She wants to ask if he remembers telling her about his mother, but she doesn’t. She tells him she’ll come over in the late afternoon and make dinner for him.

Now as she poaches eggs, she hears the sliding door open downstairs. When she dashes out to the deck, she sees Sylvie watering her potted roses. So she’s willing to keep her roses alive if not herself.

Pina has just started a garden. Her first. It’s humble, a galvanized tub that takes a cubic foot and a half of soil. The two pepper plants, padrone and serrano, delight her with their efficiency, already flowering and birthing miniscule suggestions of the peppers to come. Past the ripe green of the copious sweet basil, sits a small thatch of Thai basil that she loves to squeeze. The redolence spills off her hands and it smells like sex to her. A corner of the galvanized planter sprouts a fat, curly leaved lettuce, a bit bitter, that holds up to a robust vinaigrette. Beside the tin, in a good-sized turquoise pot, her Japanese eggplant is already sporting a splash of aubergine in its flowers.

She peeks over the railing; Sylvie is still down there fussing with her roses. She’s got to know that the noisy drunk is knocking around up here. Pina’s been conspicuous, thumping the tin a few times with a trowel and then whistling some damn jazz tune stuck in her head.

She leans over the railing. What does she have to lose? The worst thing that can happen is the woman kills herself. “Sylvie,” she calls, “are you ready to apologize?”
“Apologize to you? Ha.” Sylvie does her best to broadcast some arch contempt but, really, it’s a weak performance.
“You called me a noisy drunk, and I’ll admit that I can be noisy, but all I had to drink last night was a glass of rosé. So, how are your roses, Sylvie?”

No answer, but she can feel Sylvie stiffen in the garden, just out of her sight. Sylvie wants to be outraged that Pina would deign to engage with her, but she isn’t able to disengage. She doesn’t know how to stay ill-mannered, even during what could be her final day.

Pina hears a woodpecker begin drilling in one of the Osage trees across the street. Is Sylvie listening to the woodpecker as well?

“Myself,” Pina says, pitching her voice so that it falls softly on Sylvie, “I’m growing Japanese eggplant, the first of my life. It’s a revelation. The leaves themselves are an amazement. They’re so large and many-chambered. I wish I were a photographer, I really do. And this morning, the first blush of purple sur les petites fleurs. I’m humbled.” Pina’s enjoying herself. Is she playing with house money or Sylvie’s life? “I’m also enamored of the Thai basil that I have growing.”

“Pina,” she hears, in an arch croak from below, “You are a chatterbox.”

“Yes, I’ve been accused of that before. I think it may have something to do with my work. Did I mention that I’m a speech pathologist and I spend a lot of time helping people talk naturally? The worst thing somebody in my position can do is to fill the silence. They should take away my license.”
“They should.”
“You haven’t told me about your roses, Sylvie.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
She’s grasping at straws here. ”Have you found your next book to read?”
“I’m not going to read another book, Pina. Now goodbye.”
“Wait,” she says, though she has no idea what she’s asking Sylvie to wait for.
“What?” Sylvie says, trying to project impatience.
“I have something for you.”
“No thank you.”
“You can’t decline before you see what it is.”
“I can do as I wish.”
“I’ll be right down with it.” She listens again to the woodpecker. Such persistence. It’s a good model for her.

She wraps her knuckles on Sylvie’s door three times before she answers.

“I wanted you to have this,” she says, and thrusts Blyth’s Summer Haiku volume into Sylvie’s hand. I thought it might be perfect as a follow-up to Proust. Here you have three-line masterpieces. And the book’s beautifully arranged.” Pina flips open to the index. She can’t believe that Sylvie’s still standing in her doorway, listening to this spiel. “Look: The Season, Sky and Elements, Fields and Mountains, Gods and Buddhas, Human Affairs—I think that one is my favorite—Trees and Flowers, Birds and Beasts.” The longer she talks the better chance she has to keep Sylvie alive. It’s as simple as that. Or is that madness? As it is, she’s petrified Sylvie. The woman can’t move; she can’t speak.

“May I read you a poem? I think my favorite poet is Issa. In three lines you see his humanity. To call the poem a snapshot is to belittle it, but I’m not particularly good with words except, perhaps, with speaking them.”
“Yes,” says Sylvie in a far-off voice.”

Pina flips to Human Affairs. “Alright, I’m going to cheat, and read two poems, six lines total. Same theme.

The change of clothes
                Be careful of your head
                        With the door.

I think the poet’s talking o himself. And here’s the second one:

The change of clothes;
               And sitting down,
                          But I am alone.

“That’s the one that gets me. We are all alone.” She’s said too much, probably hit the wrong note, but she can’t stop now. “I think part of my love of haiku comes from my ADD. Like, seriously, I’ve been reading the same novel, McTeague for more than a month and I’m just halfway through. It’s really a spectacular book. Do you know it? Well, it’s set in San Francisco in the 1890’s, a folk opera, if you will, on Polk Street. Dr. McTeague, the outsized, unlicensed dentist, who learned his trade in the mining camps, realizes his primal desire—to have a giant gilded molar mounted beside the sign for his dental parlors on the corner of Polk and California Streets. But I can tell the book’s going to turn dark. Also, the book was made into a legendary film in the twenties that nobody’s seen, called Greed,”

“Pina,” Sylvie says, “it doesn’t sound like there’s any chance of my reading that book, so can you stop talking about it?”
“I’d be happy to give you the book.”
“I don’t want your book.” Sylvie’s face turns stern and then she offers a total surprise: “Would you like a cup of tea, Pina?”
“I’d be delighted.”
“We shouldn’t have our relationship end on a bad note. Go around through the garden gate. I don’t want you coming through my house.”

As Pina waits in the garden for Sylvie to come out with her tea tray, she listens to the insistence of the woodpecker as he peck peck peck peck pecks away at the Osage tree.