I sat on the couch and munched on my third bag of potato chips. Beth's absence in my life left a void wide enough to drive an eighteen-wheeler through. I knew the emptiness would be with me for a very long time.
Meanwhile, Peter had begged me to make a statement that I had come up with the pseudo ads on my own, that he knew nothing about them. I did, but that didn't stop the backlash. He lost several more clients but refused to fold the company. One thing about Peterâhe was a pro. Make it work, or die trying.
I documented the media circus as much as I could, taking photos of the reporters taking photos of me. Even that got old after a while. Between no job and no Beth, I had nothing to do but sit around in clothes I'd worn for days and channel surf. My brain simmered in my head like overcooked squash.
One “expert” on the
Today
showâa Swiss psychiatristâinterpreted the drawing of a preschooler. The picture didn't look familiar at all, yet the gentleman explained that Josh/Larry had painted it in 1987 at the Little Red Wagon Preschool. (Some enterprising teacher had scoured the preschool archives hoping for a quick buck, I guess.)
The psychiatrist explained that the birds and sun in the painting led him to believe that Josh/Larry had been a happy child, but the crooked window on the left side of the house pointed to an ominous future.
I threw down my chips, dialed New York City information, and got the studio's number. They didn't even bother to verify if I was the “real” Larryâratings, ratingsâthey just put me through. My voice bounced from the phone to the TV. “I never made those birds that look like
V
s,” I told the psychiatrist. “That's the lazy way to draw a bird.”
Inside the television, on the other side of the room, the doctor shook his head. “Denial,” he said. “I should have known denial would be an issue, from the missing bricks in the chimney.”
I slammed down the phone, disgusted.
Trapped.
Bored.
Misunderstood.
Overanalyzed.
Hated.
Worshipped.
Friendless.
And worst of allânoncontributing.
I had to get out of here.
When Gus, the mailman, dropped off the five bags of that day's mail, I pulled him inside. I tore off my T-shirt, wrote my name on a piece of paper, and handed it to him.
“You can get three hundred dollars for this on e-Bay,” I said. “Just let me borrow your uniform for an hour.”
No moral dilemma for Gus; he yanked off his jacket quicker than you could say “Parcel Post.”
With Gus's hat pulled down over my face, I strode out of the house and past the media stationed at the bottom of the street.
59
I pretended to deliver mail to the Larsons, then walked quickly to the main road.
At the 7-Eleven, I jumped on the bus to Chestnut Hill.
Twenty minutes later, I collapsed on the stool at the Bloomingdale's makeup counter. I had to hurry; even in the postal uniform, I'd be recognized soon.
“Mom, it's all screwed up,” I sobbed. “Nothing's changed at all. I thought I was
contributing.
” The new Chanel woman seemed afraid enough of my ranting to stay behind the counter.
“Mom, tell me what to do.”
And I did what I always did. I waited.
Two women, each weighed down with armloads of upscale shopping bags, walked toward me.
“Talk to me, Mom.”
And my mother answered me loud and clear through one of these meticulously made-up women.
“Sometimes I could just kill myself,” the woman told her friend.
I looked up toward the ceiling. “Mom?”
The shopaholic stood next to me and sprayed her wrist with perfume. “I'm completely serious. Sometimes it's the only way.”
Even my connection with Mom was gone.
I miss you, Mom, but not enough to join you. Sorry.
The universe, however, sent me several hints to let me know the option should at least be considered.
First off, I went through an old book Beth had lent meâback in ancient times months ago when we were still friends. Inside, marking a page, was the tarot card of the skeleton in the boat.
Secondly, the photographs I'd taken at the cemetery kept turning up. In my desk drawer, under my bed. I ran my finger over the prints, touching the glossy granite as if I were back at the gravesite itself. Was my name on the stone some kind of premonition? I gathered the photos together and shoved them in the bottom of my closet.
I waited till most of the press had left for lunch, then jumped on my bike. Destination
unknown, just pedaling furiously out of town in the rain.
I'm not supposed to kill myself! Things had gotten so out of hand that even my regular communication with Mom was off. The signals crossedâshe would never have given me that kind of advice.
I pedaled for several hours, toward the ocean, toward anywhere. To prove how insane the suicide idea actually was, I headed toward the Sagamore Bridge. Several people had jumped from its heights; I'd just look and see how impossible the whole idea really was.
Even with the rain and howling wind, I felt content for the first time in weeks. Alone at last, leaving everyone behind. For someone who coveted his privacy as much as I did, the whole Larry feeding frenzy was worse than a nightmare. The part of my life that grounded and nurtured meâmy solitudeâhad been stolen away, leaving me with no other options to access that safe, quiet place inside. Would the brouhaha ever die down? Would I ever get my life back? As each day went by, that option seemed less and less likely.
I'd crossed the Sagamore before but never on my bike. The wind ripped through the cables on the narrow pedestrian path. Rush hour had
already begun.
60
If I were going to kill myselfâwhich I wasn'tâI'd have to pick a better time than this.
I walked my bike toward the center of the bridge, leaned it against a piling, then looked down.
It was a cold and scary trajectory.
And there was NO way in the world, EVER in a million years, that I could jump off a bridge like this one.
Part of me was happy, of course. I mean, who wants to die? But the part of me that had furiously pedaled here in the rain, that part of me felt vaguely disappointed that another option had been crossed off the list. Now that suicide was out, how was I going to get out of this mess? As dusk took over the sky, I realized the rain had stopped long ago. What I kept wiping from my eyes were tears.
The clincher came the very next day while I sat on my bed working with Greek and Latin roots.
61
Ped
for “foot,”
homo
for “man,” to “nym” just a few. I sat with the dictionary in front of me, coming up with as many words as I could to pass the time.
Pedestrian, homicide, pseudonym
⦠I had more than seventy-two of them. Then, by accidentâso I thoughtâI connected two halves that didn't seem like a word until I looked it up online.
Pseudo-,
“false,” and -
cide,
“killing.”
Pseudocide.
To pretend to kill yourself.
I stared at the word for a good long time.
Homicide, suicide, genocide:
these were words you could find in the newspaper every day. But
pseudocide
⦠I'd been through these roots a
thousand times and never made this particular combination until now. (My pseudo ads were part of what had gotten me into this whole mess to begin with.)
My mind wandered back to yesterday's excursion to the Sagamore Bridge. Suppose I didn't kill myself but
pretended
to? Would the media onslaught finally die down? Would I be able to emerge six months later when the planet had moved on to the next flavor of the month? It was something to think about, a spin on Mom's idea that just might work. There was a world of difference between killing yourself and pretending to kill yourself, and the difference would be my life. Getting my life back by giving it upâit made about as much sense as anything else had lately.
Pseudocide. A way to start again as someone else, to burn the old self and try on a new one. It's not like I was doing the world any good being Josh OR Larry these days.
I erased the word from my notebook; it was a word I wanted to savor, to keep to myself for a while.
When I was little, I adored
Tom Sawyer.
I read and reread the part about Tom and Huck attending their own funeralâlistening in while everyone sang their praises, the looks of surprise
on Becky's and Aunt Polly's faces when the minister spotted Tom and Huck upstairs.
Dying yet not dying.
It was something to think about.
The plan would have to be multilayered, of course; I mean, if someone were
really
going to pretend to kill himself, he'd need a new identity and city to live in, money, of course ⦠I pulled out my laptop and began to make notes. Purely hypothetical.
By two-thirty the next morning, I had eleven pages of ideas and three pages of research that needed to be done. I called it Project Tom Sawyer just for laughs.
As I got ready for bed, I wondered if this was just another Josh Swensen can-this-plan-possibly-be-implemented exercise or if I was actually thinking about doing it. I didn't need to look too far for an answer. Just like finding
pseudocide
in the online dictionary, the sign I was searching for came from the words themselves.
The first pages of ideas began with
he
and
someone.
The last few pages all began with
I.
“For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.”
Â
St. John 20:9
The next day I jumped out of bed with my old energyâfinally a new project to throw myself into. I probably wouldn't go through with it, but I had to admit, having such a huge list of obstacles to overcome was a giant turn-on.
I thought about the list of past lives Beth and I had made in homeroom. Forget a past life; I was ready to create a future one.
What would be the best way to dieâhypothetically, of course? Drug overdose? Street fight? No, it couldn't be anything where a body was needed; then I wouldn't be able to return after the whole ordeal blew over. Lost or missing wouldn't work; the media would never give up looking for me. Everyone would need to think I was really dead. My mind continually returned to drowning. Maybe the ocean, not some lake or pond they could easily
dredge.
62
My recurring dream, the life jacket, the skeleton in the boat all pointed to drowning. I looked at it as a baptism of sorts.
In the end I decided to go with my instincts. Why complicate things? And as scary as the Sagamore had been, it met all the necessary requirements. With the strong currents and winds of the Cape Cod Canal, a body would soon disappear into the arms of the Atlantic. I grinned like a newborn, and in a way I was.
I spent days on the Internet. I looked through phone books and travel magazines. I searched newspaper archives.
63
It was nice to keep busy for a change.
I made another to-do list: register my bicycle with the police department; begin taking early-morning marathon bike rides to establish the habit; get a new post office box; purchase hair dye, scissors, and glasses; send away for vacation brochures from the towns on my list; contact several town halls for birth certificates; quietly sell a few stocks in my portfolio. All these steps had to be accomplished
without alerting the press, a tall order indeed.
The way my blood surged through me reminded me of the buzz I got when I first began the Larry siteâthe anticipation, the enthusiasm. I would need the skill of a high-wire acrobat to pull the whole thing off, but that was part of the appeal.
My death became the act I'd been rehearsing for my whole life.
There'd be lots of news coverageâand I use the word
news
lightlyâthen eventually the story would die down. My plan would decimate Peter, of course, but I was almost beginning to think he'd be better off without me. Maybe in his grief, his clients would finally forgive him, and he could build his business back up. The other night he sat me down at the kitchen table with a stack of eight-by-ten glossies and a felt-tip pen. He'd been drinking. He said the guys at the latest conference had been bugging him for autographs. Not for them, of course; Larry was the enemy, but what about their kids? The photos were reprints of me mowing the lawn last summer. He shoved the pen into my hand. “At least I'll be able to pay the mortgage this month,” he said. “A for-profit prophet.” He laughed at his own joke, spilling his Scotch.
I signed the photos.
Although Beth had made a full-time job out of ignoring me lately, she'd probably take my “death” hard too.
64
But my good thoughts outweighed the bad. I'd get to spend several months either hiding out in the woods or traveling cross-country. With glasses, different color hair, and a low profile, I should be able to move around the nation undisturbed, my precious solitude returned. Being able to be just Josh again would be worth it. Technically, I couldn't be Josh, of course, but being anyone these days was better than being Josh OR Larry.
I still wasn't going to go through with it. It was a task to focus on, to keep me busy during the empty, lonely summer. Just for fun, I chose a day Peter would be out of town. I marked D day on my mental calendar.
D
for Destiny.
D
for Death.