The Suicide Gene Read online

  “Well, then you’re late.”

  “I’m always late. My office wouldn’t know what to do if I showed up on time.”

  “True. I suppose, like me, they’re used to you by now.” Emma sighed. “I’ve wasted life’s best moments waiting for you—as far back as grade school. Even then you couldn’t get to school before the bell rang. I stopped walking with you.”

  “You stopped walking with me because you insisted on going to morning mass, not because I was late.” Ally raised an eyebrow and frowned. “Had to pray for popularity, for the eradication of our misfit status.”

  “Yeah, well that prayer went unanswered.”

  They were too brainy to be popular back then, too uncoordinated to be jocks. Even God couldn’t fix that, Emma thought. High school—a bully-laden blur—wasn’t much better. In college they traded their prudish-plaid Catholic uniforms for pre-med lab coats and shrunk into library rats. Their short, lank haircuts and pale, clean faces set them apart from other girls. They weren’t bad looking, just ordinary, and ordinary girls didn’t get noticed—even the smart ones.

  The lines on the window-less house she sketched darkened from pressure. “Pack it up. My first client comes in five minutes.”

  “Relax. I’ll leave after he comes out for his paper. You’re cranky. Must be Wednesday morning.” Ally grinned.

  Emma squinted at Ally’s moot but tender point and then siphoned the cold college memory from her frontal cortex. Grades were posted on Wednesdays. Their ritual was always the same. Ally slept. Emma sat in front of her computer, coffee in hand. Ally’s student number consistently landed on top. Hers, second. It wasn’t until later at class, when flippant remarks swirled about the top two students’ grades, that Emma’s competitive swell calmed.

  “Who are they?” She had heard Josh ask once. Someone leaked their names in year two: 915133-Allison Weaver, 915149-Emma Kerr.

  Suddenly classmates began talking to them. It was simple at first. A question. A smile. An invitation to a study group. By the time they graduated from med school, nerdy friends helped them celebrate with Champagne, and Emma and Josh had jumped joyously into the casual-dating world. They completed psychiatric residencies, turning down job offers across the country to accept positions in their little hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania. Best friends forever.

  “So is the car out there?” Emma forced her thoughts away from the past—and Josh. There were problems even a best friend did not know.

  “You mean the blue car I saw the last two days?” Ally peeked out the window again. “Nope. Nada.”

  “Well, good. Then you’re safe to take off.”

  “I never said the car was following me. Could be you. Could be Josh is having you tailed.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “You never know. He was the jealous type when you first started dating.”

  “That was a long time ago, Ally.”

  “Not so long ago. Josh followed you to Erie, Emma. Took a residency in family medicine and asked you to marry him the day you moved into that little French Street apartment.”

  Emma’s gaze fell to her desk and the wedding picture—taken at Niagara Falls after a whirlwind weekend ceremony. The photo rested slightly behind the faded, happy picture of the Kerr family sitting arm in arm on a warmer day, her mom on one side, her dad on the other, and Emma smiling brilliantly in between in her yellow, frilly dance costume. Even Norman Rockwell could not have captured a cheerier family pose, she thought.

  Emma dropped head to arm on her desk. It was only eight o’clock in the morning, and she had never been so tired in her life—med school included. She studied Ally, so comfortable on the floor, and then silently thanked God for her friendship. Ally reminded her daily that life didn’t have to be so serious.

  “Why are you spying on him?” Emma threw her pen down. She’d become good at masking her depression for Ally’s sake. Hiding her despair was, in essence, why peers referred suicide patients to her. She recognized buried desolation. “And an attorney, yet. I thought your mother taught you better.”

  “She did,” Ally said. “I won’t marry him—just sleep with him.”

  “Casual-sex worthy, not husband-worthy?”

  “Exactly.” Ally snuck a peek out the window from the floor.

  “You need to get a grip on life. What did they say at the alumnae banquet last week?” Emma’s expression changed. Her voice lowered. “‘The progress this single individual has accomplished is staggering. She has become one of the most revered female psychiatrists in the state.’ Wow, Ally, if they could see you now.”

  Ally sat back and leaned against the wall, folding her legs Indian-style underneath her skirt. “Do you believe they said female? Did my gender need clarifying? I was wearing a dress. And what was that single crack?”

  Emma finally laughed. She stood, crossed the room, and surrendered, taking the same puerile seat on the floor beside her. Ally was the only person who could lead her workhorse genes to a pool of take-fives. Or at least a puddle.

  “They weren’t referring to your love life, and you know it. Stop thinking about men. Look at yourself. You’re sitting on my floor while your clients are in your waiting room swearing at you.”

  “My clients aren’t swearing at me. They’re painting. That’s the beauty of my practice. It’s paint and wait.” Ally had won awards for conjuring a remedy for her tardiness. She opened an art room for patients to pass time before their appointments. The ploy proved particularly effective for children.

  “Well, it’s a good concept as long as they don’t have to wait too long,” Emma said. “I thought you were going out with what’s his name from your office anyway.”

  “Everett?”

  “Yeah, Everett. You call him Rhett for short—like Rhett Butler. I thought you two were dating.”

  “Rhett Butler, I wish. I need a man with money. I have student loans up the ying-yang.”

  “Yin-yang. And give him time. He’s a doctor. You can marry him, payoff your loans, and move to South Shore Drive. Live richly ever after.”

  “South Shore Drive? Where they host suit-and-tie, lawn parties and raise bratty kids who drive golf balls through windows? No thanks. I’m a blue-collar shrink,” she said. “And you should talk. Josh would kill to live there. Rhett Butler wouldn’t. He still has his communion money.”

  “He’s cheap?”

  “Yes, he’s cheap.”

  “I don’t think so. You suggested hiking the Grand Canyon, and he flew you there for three days. Hiked down and back up, and he’s afraid of heights.”

  “True.” Ally snorted and laughed. “I considered calling 911 when we got to the top. He turned green.”

  “See there. He hiked that trail for you.” Emma nudged her with a shoulder. “Husband-worthy.”

  Ally frowned at her, languidly stood, and peeked outside again. “Yeah, he’s okay but think about it. You couldn’t remember his name.”

  “No, but I like him.”

  “Well, I like him, too, but oh my.” She put her hands on the sill and leaned her forehead against the window. “He’s nothing like Attorney Boy Gale.”

  “Gifford.” Emma stretched her legs and hoisted herself to her feet. She leaned on Ally, elbow to shoulder. “His name is Gifford.”

  “I like calling him Gale. I was team Gale all the way through the third book.”

  Emma peered over Ally, out the window. “Those were pitifully childish books.”

  “The Hunger Games? Deliciously childish.” Ally shrugged Emma’s elbow off, straightened, and lifted the curtains, sifting them through her fingers. “Made me feel like I was sixteen again and makes for great doctor-teenage client dialogue.”

  “Yes, I suppose there’s that. I still feel the story was satirical.”

  “You would,” Ally replied, flattening her palm and letting the airy fabric slip away. “What about the ending? Why do you think Collins did that?”

  “Did what?”

  “Put Katniss with Pee
ta—over Gale?”

  “No idea,” Emma answered. She didn’t care. “Maybe she fell in love with Peeta over time and felt it more believable.”

  “Well, if she wanted everyone to like Peeta, casting one of the best looking guys in Hollywood as Gale? Big mistake.” Ally’s snorting began again. “Admit it. Attorney Boy looks like Gale. Height, weight, hair, dreamy eyes. His paralegal told Sharon he isn’t dating anyone.”

  “Then go ask him out.” Emma waved toward the window, annoyed.

  They leaned into street view from behind the curtains in time to see the attorney open his front door, bend down, and scowl as he picked a soggy newspaper out of a cement planter. When he rose, he glanced across the street to Emma’s window and did a double take. They both lunged back out of sight.

  “Busted,” Emma whispered.

  “Yeah, well, it’s your office. Not mine,” Ally said, smirking, snorting. “He’ll think you’re the deranged peeper. I’m just the peeper’s friend.”

  Emma rolled her back against the wall and banged her head against it. Ally curtsied, grabbed her coat, and left the room. She said goodbye to Emma’s secretary, Sharon, peeked out Emma’s front door, and darted down the street once Attorney Boy had backed into his office and closed the door.

  “ADHD,” Sharon hollered to Emma once the dust settled.

  “Yes, she is.” Emma laughed.

  “You better hope no one saw you two peering at Attorney Boy. Josh would have a fit.”

  Emma closed her eyes and thumped her head again, harder. “I know.”

  “Are you getting along any better?”

  “No.”

  “Still the baby issue?”

  “Somewhat. I think it’s finally sinking in. He’s let up a little.”

  “Well, thank God he’s letting up.”

  Before they married, Emma told Josh she didn’t want children, ever. But now his friends’ wives were popping out babies as if they shared group rates at a fertility clinic. Josh felt outperformed. He hit her with the “most only children want to have kids” comment six months ago and the baby-begging episodes began.

  Her troubles weren’t limited to him. Forces tugged from all directions. If the pull from her marriage lay dormant, then work or her parents dragged at her.

  She ambled to her desk and plunked herself in her seat. Her mother was battling early onset Alzheimer’s, and Emma’s father wasn’t dealing with it well. To make matters worse, Emma’s partner had quit a month ago. He landed a dream job at the recently named UPMC Hamot Hospital—a merger between the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the smaller Erie Hamot Hospital. This, all happening at the same time she had accepted the McKinneys as clients. Her pastor had asked her to fit them in. They were from her parish, four adult siblings experiencing the residual effects of a mother committing suicide. Emma knew the strange McKinney family but not enough to warrant a conflict of interest.

  “Emma.” Sharon peeked her head into her office. “Your eight o’clock cancelled.”

  “Thank God.” She collapsed against her chair, leather screeching.

  “Do you want Charles Brown’s telephone number? He’s next on the reschedule list and only lives a few miles away. Could be here in five minutes,” she said as she scurried away.

  “No.” Emma tipped her head and massaged the back of her neck. “Agoraphobic, right?”

  “Right.” She hollered.

  “No time to coax him in. I have to review the McKinney files and check out prices of in-home caregivers.”

  “Is your mom worse?”

  Sharon stepped into Emma’s view, her stature bent over the front-office copier machine across from Emma’s doorway. The copier blinked light and spit copies. In the last week, they’d transitioned to printing transcripts for easier access after their system began shutting down and, consequently, locking them out of files at will.

  “She has good days and bad days.” Emma stopped rubbing. She straightened a stack of files on her desk, so their edges aligned perfectly “I’m looking into in-home care.”

  “She’s too much for your dad?”

  “Yes, twenty-four hours a day kills him. He’s drinking a lot, and I have to do something. He leaves glasses of vodka around. She drinks them, hallucinates, and calls 911. I can now recite the names of every dispatcher in the City of Erie Police Department verbatim—all three shifts.”

  “She calls the cops? Not good.”

  “Drinking makes her crazy. She thinks people are stealing from her—my dad included.” She moved the eight o’clock appointment file to her “to-do” stack with the others. She opened a desk drawer and reached for the McKinney folder.

  “I didn’t realize she was that bad.” Sharon approached her carrying a thick file.

  “Her can’t-find-my-keys days have drifted into a where-am-I nightmare.”

  “You poor thing.” Sharon placed the file on the edge of her desk. “I’m sorry to add more stress to your life but when you get a chance, rate the résumés in that folder. I’ll contact the top five. They’re all employed and need Saturday interviews. You don’t have one night free this week.”

  “Fine.”

  “Ralph Cameron is going to be hard to replace,” Sharon called over her shoulder as she left the room.

  “Yes, he is.” She situated the file with the resumes next to the stacked files and sighed.

  She opened the McKinney file instead, trying to remember where she stopped reading the night before. She looked at her watch. Fifty minutes stretched between now and her next client, not near enough time to sink her teeth into the complex family.

  A tremor reached from the desk to her arm, a vibration on her left side. Her iPhone lit up and her glance darted toward the name on the phone. Her head fell backward and she gaped, eyes raised to the ceiling. “Perfect timing, Dad.”

  She knew. She guessed. This was the third time in two weeks. Her mother had locked her father out of the house. Emma needed to bring him her keys.

  So annoyed, so pressed for time, when she hurried out of the building and jumped in her car, she only half noticed the parked blue car with the person slouched inside. But when she turned the corner and glanced in the rearview mirror, the glimpse of a blue car slowing in the intersection behind her jogged her memory. Was that the same car? Could someone be trailing her like Ally insinuated?

  She stepped on her brakes and stared into the mirror, watching. Slowly, the car turned and drove away in the opposite direction.

  “Nothing,” she said and sped away, eyes jockeying cautiously from the road to her cell phone.

  Chapter 4

  Monday, November 17, 2014

  One hundred seventy-eight days.

  Finally at twelve-thirty in the morning, she finished skimming what she wanted to review in the book, The Epigenetics Revolution, and opened the McKinney file.

  She set her coffee down and sat cross-legged on the side of the sofa nearest the light stand. She lay the big file on her legs and turned to the page marked with a Post-it. She had begun reviewing the file last Thursday morning when her computer died. Again. Now she floundered in a whiteout of paper transcripts while shivering in her drafty living room, cursing its oak-sashed windows for being too beautiful to cover. She reminded herself to pay the colossal gas bill the charming, hundred-year old home had amassed.

  Mother Nature had dumped more than twelve inches of lake-effect snow on Erie, Pennsylvania. The town was on the national news again with its old early-snowfall records obliterated. All her Thursday and Friday clients cancelled, allowing her dig-out time. She hadn’t signed plowing contracts for winter. With forecasters warning of Erie’s worst winter ahead, her old contractor had moved south for warmer days, and she was forced to shovel her home, office, and parents’ driveways by hand. She never found a snow blower she could manage, and Josh had been no help. He’d spent Thursday and Friday at the hospital, covering for doctors who lived a good distance away and couldn’t make it to work because of road condi
tions. By Friday evening she fell into bed exhausted, her back crying from pain.

  She spent Saturday interviewing replacements for her partner—found none—and Sunday wandering aimlessly through assisted living facilities for her mother. She took her to Mass in the morning, dinner in the evening, and did the wandering the entire time in between. After dinner she delved into her parents’ finances and surmised it was too soon for them to tap investments for assisted living or in-home care. So, for the time being, she was her mother’s keeper.

  Now, because of the late hour, she decided to review excerpts only, parts she had marked important—spots tagged with Post-its. She began with Melanie’s.

  Patient: Melanie McKinney

  Doctor: Dr. Emma Kerr

  Date: October 29, 2014 4 p.m.

  Notes: Melanie McKinney, age 27, is the first of four siblings to receive counseling. She is also the youngest. Her mother committed suicide when she was ten years old. Her father passed away of natural causes three years ago. Melanie made the appointments for her siblings. She is married and has three children. She works as a part-time nurse at a family practice.

  ****

  Dr. Kerr: You never say the word suicide?

  Melanie: Seldom, and never in front of the twins.

  Dr. Kerr: Why not?

  Melanie: After Mom took her life, so many people talked about it the twins started throwing fits. If someone mentioned that word, they screamed uncontrollably. So we stopped saying—suicide—which is still hard for me to say as you can see.

  Dr. Kerr: Even when the twins aren’t around?

  Melanie: Yes.

  Dr. Kerr: Why?

  Melanie: I’m afraid I’ll jinx them. Superstitious, I guess.

  Dr. Kerr: As in they may commit suicide?

  Melanie: Yes. I’m always afraid they’ll hear me and go off the deep end.

  Dr. Kerr: So your hesitance in saying suicide strictly involves your sisters.

  Melanie: Correct. I agonize about them. They are the reason I sought counseling.

  Dr. Kerr: You aren’t here for yourself at all?

  Melanie: No, not really.