“We got some tragic news. My niece, Raquel, took her own life yesterday morning. She had not been suffering depression that anyone knew of. She did have a headache the past week and said she didn’t feel like herself and just didn’t feel good. My sister, had stayed overnight at their house Sunday night because she was babysitting Lucas Monday. She found Raquel who was a beautiful person inside and out.”

From an email sent Tue 8/1/2010

 

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She’s driven this far from Wisconsin across Minnesota almost to the Dakotas. There’s a smell that gathers here in the dampness of the furrows, the sweat of the Swede, the Flemish, the Norwegian, the broken soil. Dirt here chimes dry, not as rich as the black soil to the south in Iowa. The wind blows fiercer, fewer shade trees, more poplar and cottonwood, hackberry and shagbark hickory. She can drop the car off and walk into the bare trees and falling shadows. Freezing is painless. Peaceful. Seductive. Or she can drive home to Wisconsin, return to her husband and infant.

 

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I know only the bare outlines of the story so I must imagine the young blonde woman at an interstate rest stop. Named for a film star, she was my best friend’s niece. Raquel leaves Friendly’s family restaurant, lingering in the electronic doorway, as if gathering herself, letting the electronic doors almost close on her. Walking into the FOOD, GAS, LODGING parking lot, she can’t remember how long she’d sat in the leathery booth staring at the two packets of Splenda sweetener beside her water glass. The yellow wrapper and the words America’s Favorite Sweetener held a message for her. The blue print seemed to loosen, the letters floating freely and reordering themselves into new words and shapes. Toll-free became tree lol the “f” vanishing. Most of her meal still lies on the Formica table beside the menu. Ice tea sips its dreaming pale lemon. Sweet potato fries drink from a pool of ketchup. Her appetite like the “f” on the Splenda packet has vanished. She’s lost ten pounds since having the baby and Edwin says she needs to gain them back.

 

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Was it just before noon she’d left home in her Honda and headed west? Now almost dusk, she finds herself midway. Her car waits to take her farther west into the prairie, and although she stares at the keys (and Splenda wrapper) in her hand she’s unsure which is hers, the shellacked red or the bruised wormy apple vehicle. Tree-free. Her husband has left message after message on her voice mail. The baby’s missing her. I must not think of the baby as ‘my’ baby.

 

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Walking through the parking lot, her silky hair (the color of winter corn) looped in an unwashed ponytail swings through the back of her baseball cap. Petite, slender. Her fine skin, a sugar snow falling in the night, her oval face that of a high school homecoming queen. She will never mention the champagne-colored chiffon or the crown placed on her head by the captain of the football team. Neither will she speak of the St. Paul Farmers State Bank calendar that featured her as Miss April and Miss December. College dresses  her in a American Studies degree, and she shivers entering the working world wearing nothing. Her first job—party planner, her second, volunteer fireman. She meets Edwin, a farmer and roofer, and learns how to plant and harvest a garden.

 

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In toeless clogs, her feet seem not to mind the February weather. She stumbles, twisting her ankle.

 

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Edwin, Wisconsin-born and bred, thinks he’s been blessed by the Lutheran divinity. Himself a light-haired man of average looks, he’d married Raquel, a Norwegian beauty. How could he know it was the fierce Norse god, Odom, who sanctified their bond—thunderous God of blood and violent death? He and his six-month-old son, Lucas, are waiting supper on her—turkey meatloaf and beet salad from the Red Owl deli. Hadn’t she mentioned driving to her sister’s in Minnesota? “I’ve left the baby’s formula bottles in the refrigerator.” He tries her cell phone again although the ringer must be off.

 

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Outside, the day moves; inside the car, it stops. She turns the ignition, shifts into reverse, doors locking her inside. It’s better today, even if the sky is shapeless and thick. The last of the light drifts like snow birds weary of the same circle. Raquel pictures bathing her infant; setting him into the shallow warm water of the baby bath on a blue towel, his feet crinkly-pink and his toes trying to talk. The dusking sun watches her drive, east, homeward. Another voicemail: the baby crying in the foreground. Her fault, her fault. She’s turned off the interstate—Minneapolis-St. Paul, the twin cities where she grew up, falling behind her. Rustic Wisconsin welcomes her. Welcome to folks who know your face and to places where there are no strangers.

 

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Her tongue feels long, too pink, and rough like a cat’s licking at the cracked corner of her lips. What would her mother say if she had kept driving, if America’s Sweetheart simply disappeared, and left her baby behind? What would Edwin think? She pictures the first night they made love. Edwin puts his arms around her and walks her to the edge of the bed. His nose presses her lavender tank top, and then he unpeels it, lifting her arms light as bird bones. She tells him he is the golden nectar, his sex better than white cake and marmalade. She parts his lips with her tongue, washing his body with her cat’s tongue.

 

“She loved life and was so happy. She leaves behind her wonderful husband, and her adorable 1 year-old son, Lucas. Raquel absolutely loved being a mom. She was loved by everyone who knew her.”

                From an email sent Tue 8/1/2010

 

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It’s the story of an extended religious family, a loyal loving Midwestern one that saw the darkness through doilies, baby showers, and church recipe books. A world where good triumphs over bad, where family means shelter, and God answers prayer. It’s a family that can’t imagine a new mother not trusting herself around her newborn, a mother afraid she might hurt her child. A mother not aglow in her infant love-bubble, but one immersed in blackness. Raquel’s returning home, perhaps having made up her mind. A world where if you keep a stiff upper lip or confess, everything will work out.

 

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The last time I saw Raquel she was standing beside her aunt’s (and my friend’s) hospital bed, not exactly beside, but a few steps back as if hesitant or shy about being fully present. Raquel’s mother Joanne was there, too. My friend, the jokester, teasingly asked personal prying questions. Are you dating someone this time that smells normal, not like lighter fluid? Is that why you dumped that other guy? Do you think you’ll have kids? Raquel answered her aunt in a soft voice, winsome, uncertain. Then, leaning over my friend, and after she’d cut a slice of pizza into many small pieces, she fed each one to her, stopping to lift the cold Coke and bendy straw to her lips. You’ll be a good mother, my friend said. Joanne agreed. I can’t wait to be a grandmother.

 

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Raquel had just met the man who would be her husband.

 

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Raquel bought a white chocolate blueberry cake, her sister Sofia’s favorite dessert, and French macrons, for Jerry, her brother-in-law. Once, she might have picked almond cake with orange-flower water syrup for herself but now it makes her think of white cockroaches, the whiskery albino one that Edwin mentioned stepping on–the one making love to a crumb. Yes, earlier she’d almost stopped at Sofia’s house in Stillwater to deliver the sweets and say goodbye. Her sister and husband would be flying to Florida for an island cruise. But she couldn’t stop. They kept the furnace turned up too high and the heat settling into the living room smelled of rotting minnows. Raquel usually wanted to unzip her skin. The last time she visited a few of Jerry’s buddies had dropped in and he made jokes about last Thanksgiving when the sisters had hosted the dinner feast. The eggnogs we toasted were the best part. You should have seen the Thanksgiving meal Sofia and Raquel cooked. We had to give most of it to the dogs. They forgot to take the gizzards out, but it didn’t matter because the turkey was still frozen when they brought it out to the table! Jerry slapped his knee, regaling his guffawing buddies. How about the time Raquel made the soufflé with a sponge inside it? Those little yellow crumbs she said were egg yolk. Sofia had laughed so hard she choked.

 

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Seeing the familiar signs, Raquel fears something irrevocable is about to happen when she reaches her destination, she’ll commit an act that will sing down through generations. She blocks Edwin’s face, an unpronounceable grief in his eyes. The red car stops at the light near the Eau Claire Holiday Inn where she first met her husband. His friends call him Ed (handsome Ed) but she likes the lost-in-time sound of Edwin. They’re slow dancing to “Red Roses for a Blue Lady.” An oldies tune. He bends to kiss her earlobe, his lips moving to the bottom of her neck. Your voice smells like fresh cut grass, he says. He stands a head taller than Raquel, his fingers are long and she asks if he plays the guitar. Laughingly, he tells her he’s a roofer, that he has his own shake shingle business, with each shingle having to be individually and gently placed, and then nailed twice. He loves fragrant woods—cypress and redwood and cedar—he loves the weight of nails in his pocket. He owns an acreage; he raises a few chickens, too. Like Raquel, his Scandinavian ancestry shows in his hair, even lighter than hers, and his eyes. His incisors protrude slightly, and give his mouth a rabbity look that she finds endearing. Unlike her he’s not Norwegian but Swedish.

 

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She loves Hemingway’s novels and she’s read of his death, how he pulled the trigger with his toe. Later Edwin hates how he had taught her how to use the shotgun. How to handle it, when she asked him to show her, needing, wanting to know in case he were ever not home and she had to defend herself and the baby. Pointing out the acreage’s being off the beaten track. Isolated. Later, he buries the shotgun. Wishing he had buried it in the river in the first place.

 

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She may have gone on the internet and asked the question: “How do you shoot yourself with a shotgun?” Thief River Falls. Black River Falls. They called this New Scandinavia, Minnesota and Wisconsin, they spoke their language for generations, and they churned sweet cream butter. I would think the soft palate roof of the mouth; bullet passes through easily into the brain. They honeymoon in the famous Texas hill country where rivers flow in an emerald current between white tablet rocks. As the road twists down, waterfalls feed secluded pools. Rock slabs float in the middle of the green. She loves how there’s no bridge, only a slab of rock covered with moss. The water is fast-moving but not deep. You can see tire tracks in the algae. Raquel loves Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Here is where Thumbelina could boat across on a tulip leaf and oar with two white horse hairs. They drive east into Louisiana’s swamp country. She writes to tell her older sister Sofia, who looks so unlike Raquel, that few believe they are siblings, that she fought a gar fish out of the water.

 

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They celebrate their anniversary at the same Holiday Inn— Raquel pregnant, the pool shimmering in the sun. She knows it has sprouted, the seedling in the soil of her belly, as she slips off her thong, taking hold of him, his arms, as if he’s the ladder that lowers her into the deep dazzling water. Her belly kicks, almost as if the thrust is meant to push him away. Her hands let go, the rung isn’t there, and she slides into the blue eye of the peacock’s plumage. Edwin lunges into the water. He swims her in. She floats, the water warm, slippery like jelly, melting too.  Edwin, listen, she tells him, breathlessly, after the baby’s born I’ll plant wild blue lupine flowers and milkweed next to the house. The Karner blue butterfly will come. She describes the luminous and silvery dark-blue of the males, and then the females, purple-blue with orange crescent edges. The arrival of the blue butterflies will celebrate their son’s birth. Did you know the author of Lolita wasn’t just a writer but also a butterfly collector, and was the one who first identified them? Nothing under heaven or earth would the Karner blue butterfly eat other than wild blue lupine flowers. He’s listening but drifting as she talks on (in her lulling, almost singsong voice) describing the seven-spotted beetle, the evil predator of larval blue butterfly eggs. Only the blue lupine feeds the larvae, not wild lily of the valley, not starflower or sweet fern. Is that boring? she asks.

 

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Edwin has shown no one the letter Raquel left him, a letter explaining her unworthiness, telling him how she wasn’t herself, how something murky and dim had gotten inside her. She told him when her water broke, something popped in her brain. She’d come uncorked. The amniotic fluid—her champagne had lost its bubble. For months after giving birth, each time she peed something kept dripping out of her, hitting the water softly. Her body kept making her give birth again and again. And now  the thing inside her was directing her.

 

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He would never fly with her toNorway where they’d taste seagull eggs and elk and reindeer roast. Elk they say is dry and wild. The smaller reindeer much sweeter. Cloudberries for dessert—arctic gold, silvery-yellow, apple-tart.

 

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There are gifts everywhere in the living room where family and friends gather. Raquel’s mother and aunt host the shower. Deep powder-blue carpet comforts her feet fat from pregnancy. Sinking into a Queen Anne chair she watches the sheer lavender curtains lifting and billowing in the breeze. A three-tiered white cake with layers of strawberries and real cream invites everyone for a finger swipe. It’s a Boy. Raquel wears a paper hat with all the gift bows and ribbons taped to its brim. Blue stationery Thank You’s for the sail boat, the flannel sleepers, the footsie pajamas, the crystal picture frames, the crib, the stroller, the swing-set, the Three Bears bathtub. Nine months of pregnancy and how happy she’s been. A boy, inside her belly, the motion of his kicking, his swimming, comforts her. She’s safe with him there like the blue butterfly finding the wild blue lupine flower.

 

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A blacktop two-lane takes her to the acreage; the new ranch house with the cedar-shingled roof stands out, and she’s always preferred the two-lane life to the six-lane. Edwin meets her in the driveway with their son in his arms. The baby’s blue eyes appear so bright they could have been painted in. A perfect boy with blond curls. We missed you, honey, he says, not asking where she was. My sister called, Red Owl has a sale on chicken cutlets. Do you want her to pick you up some?

 

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Raspberry mouth on her nipple, the baby’s lips take hold; his tiny hands toss as though rabbit paws. Bending close, she is counting her baby’s eyelashes. Raquel has freshly bathed herself and her baby. The lamp light is shining on five-month-old Lucas, his lungs had been preparing to breathe the world, sensing the touch of her palm, his heart already beating. Now the heartbeat has its own life and no longer needs her. How easy it would be to save him.  Kneeling on the deep-soft comfort blanket to change the baby’s Pamper, (a dessert of a blanket, chocolate mousse and whipped cream) she silently calls (beseeches) God to make her a better mother. The picture window lets in more sun, and then a ladybug drops onto the blanket. She’s always loved these insects, their freckled red shell and feelers. The soft blanket must be a sea of quicksand for the ladybug, now frantic, peddling with all of her legs, and getting nowhere. The ladybug is drowning until she rescues it. The baby’s blue eyes widen, they sparkle. How easy it would be to lift the cuddly blanket and fold it over his face.

 

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She reads Being Ernest: John Walsh unravels the mystery behind Hemingway’s suicide. “I am eating blue food to try to get rid of the blackness,” she tells Ernest. “Blueberries, blue cheese, blue plums. Do you think it will do any good?” Do they really know nothing of the estrogen and progesterone faucet that pregnancy turns on, then off? In the blackness of post-partum depression she’s haunted by gar fish in the warm green water. In fragments of sleep she breathes on her wrist and the gold bracelet with three engraved hearts (Edwin, Raquel, Lucas) breaks.

 

“Edwin finally told Lucas that his mom was in Heaven. Lucas started making up stories because no one was allowed to tell him that his mom died (or that he even had a mom). I don’t know what he knows other than that. Yes, Lucas looks like his mom and fortunately has her personality!”

From an email

 

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On the last night of her life Raquel’s face has the look of calm as she lifts the sheet and slides into the bed, after all the months of sleeplessness, the night with its hinges and bearings, its wrenches tapping on the radiator of her brain. The night before she had not yet made up her mind, and ploughed her scalp with her fingers, pulling out her own hair. This night, the night she’s made up her mind, she thinks of breeze and a picnic table with a checkered red and white tablecloth. Mama, who made the sky? Who made the blue? When it rains, is God weeping? Then she’s running barefoot on a summer night through the dew-drenched long grasses, her skin drinking in the cool, her eyes chasing the moths clouding the yard light. She and Sofia roasting marshmallows playing statue and the fireflies have come out, winking into the dark, brave little bringers of light, preyed upon by mosquitoes. Tomorrow her mother comes to baby-sit, she’s told her that she is helping her friend Bev empty the clutter from her closets, her friend who lives in Madison. The baby will be better off after tomorrow. Not ready, not able, has no words, not yet. He would be miserable, hate her, and if he knew her unworthiness, he would have to bite down on the word mother.

 

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Online, she clicks Girls with Shotguns; clicks 10 Rules for Women Getting the Right Fit and Mount. Doesn’t need to know about finding her dominant eye or stock height, or whether a 12-bore holds more pellets than a 20-bore, or how the gun’s kick will affect her.No one found the letter, her letter, which (or is it that) I imagine just as I picture the letter that Edwin writes on the ceiling of his bedroom, since he’s moved into the spare room where he keeps his tools, the room that smells of cypress shingles. He can’t sleep in the bed that she shared with him, the writing was worse there, over and over the words unspoken to the living, spoken now to the ceiling, his finger scripting the words. Our son is now my son. I erase your name that bleeds across his birth certificate by the word. Mother. I’m making myself forget the meadow of your skin and lips, your gentleness. I forget my hand and how it would sink into your softness, (a hand does not sink). Raquel, you weren’t ligament and muscle but the dough of almonds, the nectarine, and the blushing violets. The pure black of your death makes it hell to think of you. His finger stops. I put those words into his mind. What he writes over and over and over. I loved you. Now you are dead to me.

 

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He’s on the roof of the house nailing shingles when the call comes. Do they tell him on the phone? Raquel’s youngish mother, a pretty woman divorced from Raquel’s father, breathes, almost panting with the news there’s been a terrible accident. Now she’s wheezing, and suddenly stops gulping air. “What’s wrong? Is it the baby?” The mother shaking can hardly hold the flip-phone to her ear. The butterfly spots, silvery dark blue spots, scattered black spots circle in blood. Her head. Her beautiful head. Someone has shot Raquel, the shotgun, next to her, against her. Why? Why? Raquel had been planning on planting wild lupine and milkweed next to the house. The paper wasp and ant strike terrible blows.

 

“My sister, Raquel’s mom, is doing well. She goes to visit her grandson about every 3 weeks. It’s only an hour’s drive for her. She picks him up and takes him to a movie or to parks to play and then out to eat. He’s now in kindergarten. He is the happiest, adorable 5-year old. He always has a big smile. His dad isn’t very nice to my sister. He just wishes she’d go away. I think it’s a reminder of Raquel. He never lets her take him to her house for a weekend.”

                From an email

 

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He finds the letter (the one I’ve pictured) before they do, in the medicine cabinet taped to his shaving cream.

Edwin: I love you and I love our son. It’s me I can’t stomach. Mom just got here and everything is black or turning filthy gray. If I could I’d vomit the bad colors, fling the puke into the toilet, and wash my hands. Minutes ago this happened to the toast and strawberry jam and green banana she insisted I eat. I gag again and throw up until my vomit runs clear. I rest my head on the rim of the toilet. Mom knocks. “Hey, kid, don’t you feel well?” Oh, Edwin, my thoughts have begun to talk in voices. A hard thing I have to do, but I have to for us, for our family.

 

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The family wants everyone to know that Raquel was a loving mother. That she adored her son. That the newborn did not terrify her and being a mother hadn’t crushed her with its weight. Some elemental hormone had been added or subtracted from her body, causing the blackness she didn’t understand, the emptiness she was ashamed of.

 

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Edwin dreams of Raquel pregnant and the Holiday Inn pool shimmering. She rolls onto her back, her hair streaming hyacinth. “A pregnant mermaid,” he says, her eyes that can spot perch in calm green water, beckoning his. They see every quiver. Raquel so beautiful, but now she frightens him. He’s afraid to breathe the air’s heaviness—frangipani, myrrh, the death of lotus blossoms that drift on the water. Come lie in the thorns with me, come with me to eat thistle. He still wakes in the night panting, sweating even as a cobweb of ice crawls over his skin, the cold cobweb creeping into his mouth so his insides shiver. Even a photograph of Raquel smiling causes the gray cobweb to start crawling. His mother hears him call out and softly knocks. In her arms she rocks his son. I make myself not think of you, pictures I’ve taken down and given to your mother, all your clothes, your books, I’ve disposed of. You would not know a wife or a woman ever lived here.

 

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 What about Raquel wearing a velvet stovepipe hat and smiling with her mouth and her aquamarine eyes, the girl clutching and kissing her dog, a lack and white mongrel named Soulman? Who will think  of that girl? Her elegant signature. Who will remember to remember her?

 

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It’s better to leave the story suspended for now, the tragedy of self-slaughter an unfinished work.

 

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