The Suicide Gene Read online

  Her fingers danced over the keys, and she opened several windows: Melanie, Mathew, twins Minnie and Mary. Playing a game was difficult when you didn’t know who you played against.

  “Is the game Suicide?” She swallowed, glanced out her window into the black night. “Or Murder?”

  Her voice echoed, rippled through the still, dark room. “Just how smart are you McKinneys?”

  She reached for their records with all intention of searching for clues. But the little pink Post-it adhered firmly to the front caught her eye. The paper flaunted their numbers, laughing an answer up at her:

  MAM 149

  MJM 153

  MMM 140

  MCM 138

  Her office land phone—her private extension—rang. Restricted. It was the third time that day.

  She picked up the receiver, screamed, “Fuck you,” and slammed it down.

  It would be the last hang-up call she received.

  Chapter 24

  Friday April 17, 2015

  Twenty-seven days.

  “How does everyone know their IQ?” She glanced across the sticky oak table, found Giff’s green eyes. Or were they blue tonight? Their hue often matched his shirt or tie. But this evening the dim lights in the noisy bar obscured their color.

  “You’re a psychiatrist.” He said, then hesitated, his green–or blue–eyes on her.

  She swirled her tumbler, created little waves on her glass like a roller coaster, up and down, and waited through his hesitation.

  Finally, he took a drink and smiled. “Don’t you administer IQ tests?”

  “Yes, but I’ve never given anyone their score.”

  She tightened her lips into a pout and concentrated on her wine. Watched the legs slip up and down, half thinking about IQs and half wondering how anyone could tell anything from swirls or smells. “I like a glass of sweet wine, but I can’t, for the life of me, tell if I’m tasting a good wine or the bottom of the barrel. What’s the name of this?”

  “Gewurztraminer.”

  It was Friday evening, and they were meeting their running friends at Sullivan’s Bar and Grill on French Street for happy hour and dinner. She and Josh ate there, quite a few times, when they lived in the little French Street apartment. She felt a pang of apprehension stretch across her chest when Carol begged her to come. Making a return trip was about as welcome as a trip to the dentist, and as necessary.

  She and Giff had left work early, each for the first time in weeks, and arrived before the others. Coming back proved not as bad as Emma expected. As soon as her hand left that gold-knobbed corner door, and she stepped inside onto the pub’s slightly-lacking, wide-planked floorboards, it seemed different, friendlier, simpler.

  They chose a table for four in the bar area, next to the long table with the little reserved card on it, where her running friends would slip in and out of creaky wooden seats during the five-to-seven happy hour. Emma had promised to meet them there and asked Ally if she and Rhett wanted to join them.

  “Emma,” Giff said, taking the glass from her hand and moving it to her lips, “close your eyes and taste.”

  She did without hesitation.

  “How is it?” He set the glass down in front of her and waited.

  She licked her lips. Finally, she nodded and said, “Very good. Sweet.” She opened her eyes. “I like it.”

  “Then that’s all that matters.” He took her hand and winked at her. “Sometimes fancy names, exquisite ratings, and wine concierges’ opinions don’t matter. Sometimes it’s just about the wine. If you like it. How it feels.”

  “Like the kind you have at your apartment? The sweet one from the hearty grape that can survive bad weather,” she said. “The one we drink when we stay home?”

  “Yes, like the one we drink at—” He paused and smiled. “Home.”

  “I like that wine,” she said.

  “I like that wine, too.”

  He kissed her hand, and she knew he wasn’t talking about the wine.

  “I promise you, this wine you have now is better the second time you taste it,” he said, raising her glass to her lips and waiting for her to drink again. “How’s this second sip?”

  The second taste. She smiled. He always knew how she felt without her explaining. This was a “second” first time for her at Sullivan’s. She had a first time coming with Josh, and now a first time coming with Giff—a “second” first.

  She hoped there’d be a lot more firsts and “second” firsts with him. Maybe a first country music concert and a “second” first opera. A first chicken-wing eating contest and a “second” first New Year’s Eve together. A first “I’m divorced” and a “second” first “I think I’m in love.”

  She glanced at Giff’s twinkling eyes and upturned lips. His expression reassured her that he would be right there beside her for any future firsts or “second” firsts.

  How did that second sip taste? Wonderful.

  “You’re right.” She smiled back. “I think too much.”

  He dropped her hand and sat back. “Well, people with high IQs think a lot. That’s why—” He put his hand on his chest and pumped it twice. “—yours truly is such a deep thinker.”

  “You? A deep thinker? Right.” She laughed and took a big gulp of the Gewurztraminer. “I’d bet my dinner my IQ is higher than yours.”

  “Oh, now you’re just playing with me. I think you’re afraid,” he said.

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Finding out your IQ.” He laughed and then moaned. “You know I’m smarter.”

  “I highly doubt that, and I’m not afraid to find out my IQ. I’m just surprised so many people know theirs.”

  “Why don’t you take the test you administer to clients? Or apply for membership in Mensa. They’ll test you.”

  “Are you in Mensa?” Emma felt her forehead wrinkle.

  Giff set his beer down, pushed his chair back, and put his hands out. “Need you ask?”

  The debate began. By the time Ally and Rhett arrived, they were in full combat over whose IQ was higher. Ally sat down, saying no question hers was, and the ante was upped. They ordered dinner, a second round of drinks, and told the waitress not to come back for thirty minutes. Each pulled out their cell, signed into the online Mensa workout quiz, and pushed the start button at the same time.

  Throughout, they never said a word, except Emma, once. Their running friends arrived, and Emma hollered they were playing a game and couldn’t talk. Runners understood competition. They conversed amongst themselves while Emma, Giff, Rhett, and Ally sat hunched over, tapping answers into iPhones. Giff, Rhett, and Ally scribbled math on napkins. Emma added numbers in her head.

  All four stood up and squealed when the quiz ended, their phone alarms sounding in unison.

  “I didn’t finish the last question.” Ally sneered, tapping her cell repeatedly, trying to force one last answer in.

  “Me neither.” Rhett sighed. “I only made it to twenty-five. Giff?”

  “I made it through,” Giff said, “but I’m not showing my score until I hear yours. And—”

  Giff looked at each of them individually then added, “Loser buys.”

  “No way. We already told you we didn’t finish,” Rhett hollered.

  “I’ll take that challenge,” Emma said.

  “Me, too.” Ally inched toward the end of her seat. “What did you get?”

  “Just the three of us then?” Giff eyed Rhett, who confirmed with a nod he was out. Giff looked toward Ally. “You first.”

  “No, Emma first.” Ally turned her chair toward Emma, and they waited in silence.

  “Ninety-seven percent.” Emma laid her cell down, and the other three stood to hover over it at the center of the table. “Twenty-nine out of thirty.”

  The runners hollered and reached over to give Emma high fives. She sipped wine in between slaps, her head already beginning to spin.

  “Dang.” Ally bounced down into her seat with a tantrum-like jerk. Her cha
ir’s legs scraped the floor with the effect of nails on a chalkboard. “Eighty-three percent.”

  “Well, eighty-three is above the average,” Emma consoled, drank again.

  Ally looked sheepishly toward Giff’s poker face.

  Everyone turned toward him, and he laid his cell phone in the middle of the table like he was laying out a royal flush at the World Series of Poker, “Eighty-seven percent, baby.”

  Laughter drowned out Ally’s “Damn it,” and Giff showed no mercy. He beckoned for the waitress to order an expensive appetizer and another round of drinks.

  “Okay, Warren Buffet,” Ally said to Rhett. “What did you get?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I might be cheap, but I’m not stupid. Not dumb enough to bet with Emma in the pool,” he teased.

  “Well, you may not be as dumb as me, but if you fail to pull out that little, gold, rectangular piece of plastic with the hologram on it when the waitress comes, you won’t be seeing stupid me ever again,” Ally said with a snort. “Now what was your score?”

  “Sixty-three percent,” he conceded. Then he threw out a credit card, slouched, and said, “I need new friends.”

  They shuffled tables after dinner to be with the runners, and Emma felt like she belonged. For two years she had mingled with people who flaunted degrees and awards like stamps on passports. Now she enjoyed being with people who competed against themselves, not each other. Her running friends worked as electricians, CFOs, real estate agents, waitresses, college professors, and lots of them she had no clue what they did for a living. Simply, it didn’t matter. They ran. Each of them placed one foot in front of the other until the race ended. Along the way, they passed time with each other.

  They laughed and drank and talked about how many miles they intended on running the next morning at the peninsula. But none of them would show up after what would from then on be referred to as “Honky-tonk Friday.” They shared Ubers and cabs home, because they drank too much and danced too long and laughed too hard. A jukebox at the front of the bar, along with a piano, recently purchased by the music-loving owner, detained them. They moved tables into corners when happy hour ended and they danced. Giff catapulted the evening into a frenzy when he picked Emma up, sat her on the top of the piano, opened it up, and began playing a honky-tonk country song.

  He sang to Emma, his fingers moving over the keys and his head swaying back and forth as he lifted his arms and banged his hands down. People darted toward the dance floor, beer-holding hands raised, and Emma sat on the piano staring at him. Wondering how he could be gifted in so many ways.

  Turned out he wasn’t. In the middle of the song, he stood and stepped back from the piano. The song continued as the keys moved up and down in ghostly fashion on the player piano.

  Their running friends laughed, jumped, and screamed. He lifted Emma off the table and twirled her around on the makeshift dance floor alongside them. The group danced on past midnight, coaxing people from the dining area into the bar, their laughter and fun too enticing to ignore. Some newcomers joined the dancing, some stood by the entry observing, clapping, and hooting.

  Halfway through the evening, Giff put his hand on the small of Emma’s back and dipped her backward. Her hair swept the sticky floor, but she could not have cared less. Her heart fluttered as he looked into her eyes. She swore he said, “Emma Kerr, I love you,” before his lips fell down hard on hers. But he lifted her up and twirled around so fast she later questioned whether he said anything at all.

  They danced all night, with Rhett, who turned out to be skilled at jitterbug, and with Ally, who, after witnessing Emma kiss Giff recklessly on the very public dance floor, admitted that in the twenty-nine years she had known her, she had never seen her so happy.

  They shoved more tables aside and the dancers multiplied. Emma and Ally stepped up onto chairs for a Gretchen Wilson song, commandeering a “Hell yes” from the women in the room on cue. Later the owner came out, tipped the play button down, and banged out music with his own fingers. It was a great night. So much fun that Emma and Giff didn’t think about clients and medications and cases and depositions. They couldn’t wrap their minds around anything except what was right in front of them: each other, the dance floor, their friends. On that Friday night, the court system and the McKinneys did not exist.

  They were so engrossed in the music they didn’t notice the small group walk in after midnight and linger awkwardly by the front door. Emma and Giff couldn’t feel their stares. Never glanced in their direction. The two merely danced on in their obliviously wonderful little world. Uninhibited. Twisting, singing, and kissing each other like no one else was around, as if they had always been together, as though Emma wasn’t still married.

  By the front door, Josh Riesling eventually closed his gaping mouth, clenched his jaw, turned away from Anna and his other coworkers, and exited the premises.

  Chapter 25

  Saturday, April 18, 2015

  Twenty-six days.

  They slept in. Neither Emma nor Giff felt well enough to run the three miles to Sullivan’s, downtown, and pick up their cars in the morning. Both fought hangover pangs with coffee and crackers. They took the day slow, lounging in overstuffed chairs, catching up on work, their laptops perched on shaky tray tables in Giff’s cozy third-floor loft apartment.

  Emma sat across the room from him scrutinizing his broad shoulders, tousled hair, and thin face, dusted by faint whiskers. A few rays of sun filtered through the magnificently-large window installed in the pitched roof and brightened the walls around him. Small particles of dust swirled sluggishly above his head in the room’s high, slanted beams. The scene that framed him revealed his long and lean physique, how good he looked—lazy and sexy—in ragged sweat pants and a worn t-shirt rolling over his skin. Her stomach fluttered. She adored so much about him.

  When he looked up and saw her, she became uncomfortably aware of her staring. He smiled, she blushed and returned to her files, realizing never in two years of marriage had she gazed at Josh the way she just gazed at Giff.

  It was hard to concentrate then. She chose the easiest person, Melanie, to review.

  Patient: Melanie McKinney

  Psychiatrist: Dr. Emma Kerr

  Date: April 15, 2015 6 p.m.

  ****

  Melanie: No, I make the appointments. Matt forwards their schedules to me, but I call your secretary. Is there a problem?

  Dr. Kerr: No, not at all. I’m interested in your relationship with Matt. Wondering who does most of the planning.

  Melanie: I do. He relies on me to organize him. Says he’d be lost without me.

  Dr. Kerr: You’re close to him.

  Melanie: Yes. He’s sweet to me—not so much to the twins—but he’s always been there for me.

  Dr. Kerr: Why is that, do you suppose?

  Melanie: I’m not sure. It has something to do with our childhood, but I could never put a finger on it.

  Dr. Kerr: Did something happen between Matt and the twins?

  Melanie: Sometimes I think so. Matt said he couldn’t tell them apart when he was little. I always wondered if one of them treated him badly, and maybe he wasn’t sure which one.

  Dr. Kerr: You’re familiar with post-traumatic stress syndrome?

  Melanie: Yes.

  Dr. Kerr: Could it be possible the four of you are suppressing an event? Something that caused the nightmares and damaged the relationship your older siblings had with each other but not with you?

  Melanie: (Pause.) Well, I don’t recall anything. I believe their problems were shaped long before I came along.

  Dr. Kerr: Before you were born?

  Melanie: Yes, and I think it had to do with the baby—Melissa. I overheard Matt and Minnie arguing about it once. I always felt they blamed themselves.

  Dr. Kerr: For Melissa’s death?

  Melanie: Yes, they were sleeping in the room with her the night she died, Mary too. I’ve gotten the impression they feel, if they checked on her, they c
ould have saved her. Especially Matt. That may be why he’s so protective of me—because he couldn’t help Melissa. Which is ludicrous, he was only two or three years old.

  Dr. Kerr: What did he say to give that impression?

  Melanie: He only talked about it one time, and we were young. I never forgot it, though. It was before our parents divorced. They had a huge argument with my grandparents, and we kids woke up from their yelling. After the fight ended, we couldn’t sleep. We started talking about the possibility of Mom and Dad getting a divorce. They had been fighting a lot. Matt asked the twins if they were awake the night the baby died. Minnie said yes. Mary said no. Matt called Mary a liar, and then he and Minnie began arguing. The conversation turned into a yelling match about my grandmother and ended with us girls crying, and Matt getting up, taking a pillow and blanket, and going downstairs to sleep. We were at our grandparents’ farm, in the third-floor dormer.

  Dr. Kerr: Do you remember the argument between your parents and grandparents?

  Melanie: No, I don’t, but something they said instigated Matt and Minnie’s fight.

  Dr. Kerr: Did you discuss it with them later?

  Melanie: No, never. Matt and Minnie were so angry at each other. I didn’t dare bring it up again.

  Dr. Kerr: What about Mary?

  Melanie: Well, the night of the fight, Mary held me because I started crying. Matt and Minnie frightened me.

  Dr. Kerr: What were they arguing about?

  Melanie: I don’t recall. I do remember Matt saying Grandma Sara was to blame for Melissa’s death.

  Dr. Kerr: Melissa as in your grandmother’s sister?

  Melanie: No! Oh gosh, no, not her sister…Melissa as in the baby. Wait…now I’m confused. Do you think…did they say something that implied they’d been talking about her? I thought they meant the baby.

  Dr. Kerr: Baby Melissa?

  Melanie: Yes, she died of SIDS—at my grandmother’s house. In the room we were in that night. In an old crib while she slept. My grandmother was babysitting the three of them.

  Dr. Kerr: It seems odd your grandmother babysat when Melissa was only days old.