“No, you don’t,” she says, shaking her head.
“How would you even know? You assume that you know the innermost workings of my mind when—”
“If you wanted to be dead, you would be already. You want to sulk at the end of the world all by yourself. That’s really what you want. It’s pathetic!”
“I just lacked the motive that I’ve recently found. I will be dead soon, don’t you worry! With your help or without it!”
“I want to motivate you back into the classroom.”
“Never going to happen. Not in a million years. I’m done.”
She’s shaking her head defiantly and crying a little more forcefully, almost like she doesn’t even care that she’s crying anymore. “It will happen.”
“How can you be so sure?” I say, smiling, because she has lost before she’s even begun.
“Because I know you. And you’ve become unacquainted with yourself.”
I stand and cane my way out onto the deck, allowing the crisp cold air to bite my skin. Portia follows and stands next to me. “I can assure you, Ms. Kane. You do not know me. Trust me on this. Students never really know their teachers. It’s all a bit of a show, and you are familiar with the show I used to put on twenty-some years ago, for a paycheck, health insurance, and a meager pension. I no longer play that role. I am no longer a public servant. Haven’t been one for some time now. Threw out the required mask many years ago.”
“Your mother believed in you. She saw what I saw.”
“My mother was batshit insane. More than me, she loved a fictional father figure who lived somewhere at the end of the universe, who sat on a golden throne in a cloud land. She heard voices. Had visions. Probably should have been living in a mental institution for the past forty years or so.”
“Do you really want to be left all alone here in the woods so that you can drink yourself to death? Is that what you really want?” Her face is now the color of a ripe Jersey tomato. “If you can look me in the eyes and say you wish to be left alone so you can kill yourself, I’ll leave right now. But you have to have the balls to admit it openly and without looking away. I want to hear you say it without breaking eye contact.”
I look directly into her eyes, which are quite red now in addition to being watery. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Ms. Kane, but yes, I would like to die. I can no longer answer the first question, let alone inspire people like you. I’ve given all I can possibly give, and it didn’t leave me in very good shape. I’m done living, so I am without question done teaching. If you will not help kill me, I suggest you leave and go do something more productive with your time. Go throw paper airplanes out of windows if it makes you feel nostalgic for your youth, but it was all just so much bullshit. Truly. I’m sorry.”
Portia’s crying even harder now, scrunching up her nose like a rabbit, although she’s keeping her chin up—stiff upper lip.
“Okay.” She goes inside, packs up her luggage, and then marches out the front door.
I have to admit that I’m pretty shocked by her leaving without putting up more of a fight. I think she’s bluffing until I hear her rental car’s engine come to life.
I quickly cane my way to the edge of the deck to watch her pass my wrecked truck and exit my driveway.
She steps on the gas, descends, and her back tires fire snow and stones up in her wake as she disappears behind the tree line at the end of my property, leaving me free to kill myself at will.
And then I’m alone again with my thoughts and the oppressive, relentless quiet.
Albert Camus? my mind calls, but of course there is no answer.
CHAPTER 12
I resume my death-by-cigarettes-and-wine plan and consume an entire bottle of pinot noir and the better portion of a pack of Parliament Lights within an hour.
As much as I try to forget about Portia Kane, I can’t help but wonder what she would have done in her attempt to get me back into the classroom.
Would she take me to the top of the Empire State Building like we were some sort of platonic teacher-student version of Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember, and have me throw a paper airplane through the chain-link fence to somehow symbolically erase all of the many unfair trials and tribulations of our lives?
Do they even have a chain-link fence at the top of that building?
Why would I even think of that building when I am here in Vermont?
I wonder what Portia Kane planned, and if there actually is anything I would like to do before I die. I decide I’d really like to learn how to blow smoke rings, because I have never done that before, never even tried, and yet it always looks so cool when actors in old-time movies do it.
That’s my dying wish—to blow smoke rings.
Why not?
It’s just as logical as meeting some fifteen-minute pop star or going to Disney World, when you really analyze the arbitrary and—let’s just say it—silly nature of dying wishes.
As if getting to do one last thing can really make you feel less regretful about your existence coming to an end. It may make your loved ones feel better, but not you. And I no longer have loved ones.
Regardless, I take a large drag from the Parliament Light in my hand, make my lips into an O, open and close my jaw the way I’ve seen black-and-white movie stars do, push with the back of my tongue, and several perfect rings of smoke shoot out of my mouth.
At first, I’m amazed to have done it so easily.
Then I’m a little disappointed because it took so little effort that it hardly seems like an accomplishment at all.