Cold Black Water

The icy black water stared up at her from the lake’s rocky shoreline. With a trembling hand she raised the cigarette to her lacquered lips. She sucked the smoke down her throat, enjoying the sting as it burnt its way into her lungs. She held the smoke in, determined to stop time; if she didn’t exhale then the world would stop spinning. By not letting the smoke curl from her nostrils she could freeze this moment forever.

She coughed and the smoke billowed from her mouth. She looked at the grey smoke trailing its way up away from her and sighed. The cold snuck into her clothes and filled her. She sat on the hood of her car, shaking with cold and something much more chilling. She watched the icy wind ripple the water below her. The water pressed against the boundaries of the shoreline and seemed to want to come up to her.

The sounds of Belle and Sebastian’s Expectations startled her back to reality. She flipped open the phone and barked her usual greeting into it.

“Yes?”

“Caroline, honey, are you headed back home yet?” the voice of her husband inquired.

She looked up at the house, where Andrew was calling from. It seemed that every light was on. It was lit up better than most airfields. The warm glow of home shone from the house and she thought about simply going in and pretending every thing was all right.

“Um…no, I’m tied up with this fundraiser that Ruby is organizing,” she lied to him.

“Well, baby, when you head home could you grab some dinner? I didn’t have time for lunch today so I’m starving.”

“Sure thing.”

She closed the phone without any further pleasantries. Once again, she resumed her quiet meditation of the lake below. The wind had stopped blowing and the surface was still. The water appeared to be a glossy stone or a slick parking lot. Its calm waters were deceptive; they would lure you in with their shiny beauty and quickly drown you in their frozen water.

She wondered how she had come to be here, making this decision.

“Is it really that bad?” she whispered to herself. Before the question had passed her lips she knew the answer. Yes, it was. Yes, she lived every minute listlessly, waiting for something. Praying that something would happen, something would break her trance.

Caroline stopped her contemplation and turned her head back up to the house. The warm, well lit house that held her unmotivated husband and over two hundred thousand dollars worth of debt.

Caroline remembered finding the house. She was so excited to get a great deal on a monstrous place right by the lake.

She had driven straight to Andrew's work after meeting with the realtor. He worked at a custom shop, restoring and creating hot rods.

"Andrew, I found it, it's perfect. I have to have it," She ran in the garage shouting.

"What?" he asked with a blank look on his face.

"Our new house!" she squealed.

"Where and how much?" he asked skeptically.

"It overlooks the lake, four bedrooms, two and a half baths, huge open kitchen, dining
and living space," she practically bounced as she told him.

"How much?" he insisted.

"Only two seventy-five, it's a foreclosure!" she shouted victoriously. "And the realtor said with an interest-only loan our payment won't be much over what we pay for the apartment."

"Well, let's go look at it," he smiled. He called to his boss that he was leaving and went to wash his hands.

As soon as they got to the house, she had him sold on it. The lake view was nearly enough but when he saw the detached garage in back, she knew she would be living here.

Caroline smiled with the memory of that day, before that she had come to realize what a burden the house was. They were struggling to meet the payments and she regretted the impulse to buy the old house. Andrew's job had slowed down and he showed no inclination to find another.

She reached down to put out her cigarette and the wind caught her hair. It blew her long black hair straight out in front of her, as if pulling her towards the water. She looked at its black surface for a few more minutes. Her thoughts slowly wandered to the time when she had first really thought about suicide.

Her office had been so warm that day that sleep had almost overtaken her. The sunlight pouring in the picture window lulled her into a quiet thoughtfulness.

"I know. Can you imagine it? But he didn't show up and Jacob had to be at the meeting.
So, what were we supposed to do? We took the subway!"

Caroline's boss Ruby startled Caroline from her reverie. She was chatting on the phone about her recent trip to Japan. Ruby and her husband Jacob had been stranded at their hotel because the driver had never shown up. Caroline had been called, at home at three am, in order to find a local car for Ruby. Unfortunately the only Japanese words Caroline knew were "arigatou" and "sumimasen" which meant thanks and excuse me. Caroline was unable to get a vehicle lined up within Ruby's timeframe, so Ruby had decided to try out Tokyo's subway system.

"We are standing on the platform, right? Just waiting for the next train. Jacob is chewing me out because he thinks I'm going to get us lost. Finally, the train starts to pull in. All of a sudden this woman screams. I look over and this young man in a business suit has dived in front of the train. It was awful. He just jumped in front of the train."

"I know, it was just awful," Ruby went on. "I was so distressed I made Jacob take me back to the hotel and go to the meeting himself."

Caroline laughed to herself that Ruby, who adored action films and soap operas, was so bothered by real violence.

"Well, I was talking to Yumiko, she lives in Tokyo, and she said it happens all the time. Those young businessmen become so stressed they just break. Her little boy rides the train to school and he has seen three suicides this year. Can you imagine?"

Ruby went on and on about the horrors "those poor Japanese children" suffered until Caroline tuned her out. Caroline began thinking about the man and why he had resorted to such drastic measures. Was he emotionally disturbed? Was it a product of the high stress of the Japanese business culture? What caused him to make that choice?

Caroline googled suicide rates in Japan to find out a little more. She found that over 30,000 a year committed suicide. Her head spun with the number. The article further stated that most were losing jobs or businesses.

"Honorable, my ass," Caroline thought. "It seems like they just can't deal with the repercussions. But then again, in a situation with no way out, what choice do you have?"

The idea of suicide followed her all day. She imagined a life for the young man and saw how his plight was intolerable. Eventually she saw that he had to jump in front of that train.

Caroline's lighter flashed in the dark cold, night. The flame pushed back the darkness and brought her back to the present. She leaned her mouth over the flame and lit another cigarette. Her nicotine-stained fingers shook as she sucked the smoke down.
She imagined what would happen when she put the car in neutral.

The car would start to slowly roll, then gather speed as it stole down the steep drive. She would squeeze her eyes closed to avoid the horror of that black water rushing at her. The car would fly across the rural road below and splash into the icy water. It was deep there, so her car would slowly fill as it sunk to the bottom. The water would freeze her feet and legs. Sharp daggers of icy pain would stab at them. Then it would cover the door. She would probably panic then. She smiled imagining struggling with the door. It wouldn't open. The water would cover her chest. The bitter liquid stealing her breath, making her feel as if her chest were collapsing. Then it would cover her head, stinging her eyes and making the contacts feel like glass. She would try to breathe, all her air gone in the cold, but would only suck in frozen water. She would choke and sputter in the water, but with no oxygen left would eventually stop fighting.

She had once heard that with hypothermia, before you die, you feel warm. She hoped this was true but held little hope that her end would be snuggly.

Her attention was again called back to the here and now. Up at the house, she heard Andrew pick at the guitar and start to play a familiar melody. She sang along with the lyrics she had loved when she first heard them.

"In my eyes, indisposed/ In disguise as no one knows/ hides the face/ lies the snake…" her voice trailed off. She closed her eyes and listened to Andrew play. She had made her decision. She walked back to the driver's door and climbed inside. The car started, and she put it in gear. She shut her eyes around the tears that spilled down her face as she backed the car around.

The small car pulled up the driveway and into the garage beside the lake house.