Cheri by Jo Ann Beard

Author:Jo Ann Beard [Beard, Jo Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2023-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

She doesn’t think of it as killing herself; she thinks of it as killing the monster. That’s why a gun would be so satisfying. But impossible, of course, given her circumstances. With window-leaping, you have a crowd, and in Iowa City that could mean one or two acquaintances. Drowning isn’t possible; she tried it. In the bathtub, just as an experiment, to see if she’d have the nerve.

No one tells her not to do it. She isn’t the kind of person you say that sort of thing to. Instead, everyone grows silent and wary, both daughters vacating the house for long hours, coming home for meals, steamed vegetables and instant rice or carryout from a downtown restaurant. Burritos dumped on a platter, refried beans shoveled into a bowl. Katy serving it up, Sarah pushing it around her plate. Cheri sipping ice water, lost in the pros and cons of her afternoon’s research.

“Did you know a person of my weight would have to fall fifteen feet to break her neck?” she asks suddenly. That’s why people like to hang themselves in barns, where they can step off a rafter. Works better that way, otherwise you’ve got the problem of dangling there until suffocation occurs. No barns in the vicinity, unfortunately, but there is a garage. She’s still going back and forth on asphyxiation.

Katy and Sarah stare at her, unblinking, forks suspended.

“No, I didn’t,” Sarah says finally.

So much for dinner. The girls clear the table without a word and adjourn to the living room and the evening news. Cheri stays in her spot, chewing ice cubes and waiting for Linda, who has taken to stopping by each evening. Pills would probably be the best, but whenever you hear suicide attempt, it’s pills, and whenever you hear suicide, it’s something more decisive—a bullet, a rope, a long sparkling plunge from a bridge.

The cough begins its slow ascent, giving her time to brace for it. Rattling and chaotic, it sounds like a paint can filled with gravel and rolled across the floor. By the time it’s over—the gravel slowly diminishing to sand, shifting, allowing her to breathe again—Linda is beside her and the girls are in the doorway. Ursa moves from one to the next, offering a rawhide bone.

“You eat?” Linda asks, eyeing the dishes in the sink.

“I’m eating water,” Cheri tells her, holding up the glass of ice.

In the living room, Vanna White prowls the row of letters in a dress as gauzy and form-fitting as a shroud. The television is always on now, one show melding into another, nobody really watching and nobody able to turn it off. As the evening progresses, they stare into the muted flickering light, first Sarah and Katy, then Sarah and Cheri, then just Sarah. At eleven o’clock the phone rings, a man asking for Cheri Tremble.

“She’s in bed,” Sarah tells him, “but she might still be awake.”

“No, no,” he says. “Let her rest if she can.”

Cheri had written the letter outlining her situation, her intention, and asking for his help only a few days before.

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