Guide to Animal Behaviour (4 page)

WHY I DECIDE TO KILL MYSELF AND OTHER JOKES

T
he plan begins to fall apart the instant Professor Rainbolt, Hugo's graduate adviser, spots me slipping out of the lab at 11 p.m. on a Sunday. Right away he is suspicious. I am not a student; the lab is supposed to be locked. But, like a gentleman, he doesn't raise a stink. He just nods and watches me lug my bulging (incriminating) purse through the fire doors at the end of the corridor.

Problems. Problems. Professor Rainbolt knows I'm Hugo's girl. He's seen us around together. Now he's observed me sneaking out of the lab at 11 p.m. (on a Sunday). He's probably already checked to see if, by chance, Hugo has come in to do some late night catch-up work on his research project. Hugo will not be there, the lights will be out, and Hugo will be in shit for letting me have his lab key (I stole it).

Now, I didn't plan this to get Hugo into trouble. At least, not this kind of trouble. Other kinds of trouble, maybe. Guilt, for example. But now, when they find my corpse and detect the distinctive almond odour of cyanide, they will know exactly where the stuff came from, whose lab key I used and Hugo will lose his fellowship, not to mention his career, such as it is. Let me tell you, Hugo is not going to lay this trip on me after I am dead.

Also, the whole Rainbolt thing raises the question of timing. Let us say that a person wants, in general, to kill herself. She has a nice little supply of cyanide, obtained illegally from a university research lab (plants, not animals), which she intends to hoard for use when the occasion arises.

She might, for example, prefer to check out on a particularly nice day, after a walk with her dogs along the River Speed. Perhaps after sex with Hugo — and a bottle of Beaujolais. In bed, by herself. (Hugo exiting the picture; forget where he goes. Probably a bar somewhere, with his guitar, flicking his long hair — grow up, Hugo — to attract the attention of coeds.) Her Victorian lace nightie fanning out from her legs and a rose, symbol of solidarity with the plant world, in her hand.

But now she has to factor in Professor Rainbolt and the thought that her little escapade into the realm of break, enter and theft will soon be common knowledge on the faculty grapevine, the campus police alerted, the town police on the lookout
(slender blonde, five-ten, twenty-six years old, with blue eyes and no scars
—
outside — answers to the name Willa),
and that Hugo will be, well, livid and break something (once he broke his own finger, ha ha).

A girl decides to kill herself and life suddenly becomes a cesspit of complications. Isn't that the way it always is? I think. And suddenly I am reminded of my father who, coincidentally, was waylaid and disarmed on his way to the garden with the family twelve-gauge one afternoon, after kissing Mom with unusual and suspicious fervour because, he claimed, of her spectacular pot roast (why he kissed her, not why he was going out the door with the gun — target practice, he said).

He was already far gone with cancer, in his brain and other places. Trying to sneak into the garden was the last sane thing he did. Can you guess that it was me who wrestled that gun from his pathetically weakened hands? That I spent the next six months lifting him from room to room, feeding him mush, wiping his ass? That in my wallet I still carry, along with other photographic memorabilia, a Polaroid of Dad in his coffin?

Let me pause to point out certain similarities, parallels or spiritual ratios. Gardens play a role in both these stories. That lab is really an experimental garden full of flats choked with green shoots. Hugo breeds them, harvests them, pulverizes them, whirls them, refrigerates them, distils them, micro-inspects them — in short, he is a plant vivisectionist. It is a question of certain enzymes, I am told, their presence or absence being absolutely crucial to something … something — I forget. We have made love here amongst the plants, me bent over a centrifuge with my ass in the air and my pants around my ankles, which did not seem seriously
outre
at the time. (On one such occasion, I noticed the cyanide on the shelf above, clearly marked with a skull-and-crossbones insignia.)

Gardens and suicide run in the family. Failed suicides, I am now forced to conjecture. Clearly, one did not foresee the myriad difficulties, or that fate would place Professor Rainbolt at the door as I left the lab/garden, feeling sorry for the plants — I have heard that African violets scream — thinking, why, why can't they just leave well enough alone?

The time factor is crucial. I do not relish being rushed. But when will I have another chance? Also, quite suddenly, I realize I have forgotten to find out if cyanide poisoning is painful. I have a brief, blinding vision of blue me writhing in the Victorian nightie, frothing vomit and beshitting myself. Someone would have to wipe my butt, and I, like my father, never wanted that. Never, never, never.

I see I have reached my car, our car, Hugo's and mine, a wine-coloured Pinto with an exploding gas tank. We both like to live cheaply and dangerously. Bismarck, the Dober
man, and Jake, the mutt, greet me with preens, wriggles and barks of delight. It is nice to be among friends.

The dogs sniff at my purse where I often carry treats — rawhide bones or doggy biscuits or rubber balls. This time we have cyanide, which I ponder while the car warms up. The winter outside corresponds to the winter of my spirit, which is a dry, cold wind, or the snow crystals on the windshield remind me of the poison crystals in the jar.

I will be the first to admit that I have made mistakes. Once I was crossing Bloor Street at Varsity Stadium, being a cool, sexy lady without any underpants, when the wind lifted my skirt and showed my pussy to eighty-five strange men. And once I confessed to Hugo's mother about my affair with a lead guitarist named Chuck Madalone.

Hugo called this fling with Chuck an affair on a technicality. In my opinion, Hugo and I were not: a) officially going together, b) in love. I was in love; Hugo was in doubt, which is an entirely different thing. In my opinion, my date, tryst, rendezvous or whatever with Chuck (the innocent in all this) was pre-Hugo. Hugo said we (he and I) had had sex. These are his words. Hugo, like many men, appears to believe that ejaculation is a form of territorial marking, like dogs peeing on hydrants. I say, it washes off.

How was I to know, as Hugo claims, that he was in love, though in a kind of doubtful, non-verbal way, or that he would follow us home that night and spy through the window in a hideous state of guilt, rage and titillation? Hugo says “affair.” I say, meanings migrate like lemmings and words kill.

Here we have, I think to myself, a jar of cyanide, which, as we who live with guitar-playing scientists know, is a simple compound of cyanogen with a metal or organic radical, as in potassium cyanide (KCN). Cyanogen is a dark-blue mineral named for its entering into the composition of Prussian blue, which I think is rather nice, giving my death an aesthetic dimension. The cyanide (in this case KCN) will also turn me blue, as in cyanosis, a lividness of the skin owing to the circulation of imperfectly oxygenated blood. Something like drowning — inward shudder.

The time factor, as I say, is crucial. I do not wish to die in this Pinto with my dogs looking on. Life will be sad enough for them afterward. With dogs, as with women, Hugo displays a certain winning enthusiasm, which is charming at the outset, though it soon wears off as he develops new interests.

I must use guile and cunning; I must be Penelope weaving and unravelling. The trick will be to secrete enough of this snowy, crystalline substance, which turns people blue, in, say, yes, a plastic cassette box, which when filed in Hugo's cassette tray will resemble in external particulars every other non-lethal cassette box. Then I can surrender the jar to Hugo for return to Professor Rainbolt with beaucoup d'apologies. I will look like an ass, but this is not new.

I carefully pour out what I consider to be the minimum fatal dose, then double it. (Oops, we spill a little — I flick it off the seatcovers with a glove.)

I dread facing Hugo, but without actually using the cyanide, in unseemly and undignified haste, there seems no way out. We are going to have a scene, no doubt about it. Hugo loves production numbers. He invariably assumes an air of righteous indignation, believing himself to be a morally superior being. This has something to do with his being a vegetarian (though a smoker — consistency is the hobgoblin of other minds) and my “affair.” Which reminds me about his mother, that particular production.

How we arrived there for my first visit in the midst of a vicious quarrel over Chuck, with Hugo threatening to leave me after each fresh accusation. Now he was in love with me though doubtful if I were worth keeping. I was in tears, or in and out of them. We separated on gender lines. I went upstairs to his bedroom with his mother trailing me, all feminine concern and sisterliness; Hugo stayed with his father in the living room. His mother soothed and comforted me. She said she understood Hugo was a difficult boy (he is twenty-nine), but that we have to keep smiling, put a bright face on things.

Gullible Willa fell for this and confessed all, thinking his mother would understand and perhaps explain to Hugo that a tryst, before we were together officially, should not be regarded as high treason. You could tell that the mention of sex before Hugo upset her. Right away I sensed I had made the biggest mistake of my life (next to taking the gun from Dad's shaking fingers — that look of helpless appeal). She continued to stroke and console, but we did not pursue the conversation.

Presently Hugo, having had an argument with his father, came bounding up the stairs. “Are you two talking about me?” he shouted (hysterical). “Are you two talking about me?” His mother was frightened, or (this is my opinion) pretended to be frightened, and hurried downstairs. Thus goaded, Hugo fell to raving about his parents, treating me as a friend, a co-conspirator against the older generation. He did his usual fist-smashing and book-throwing routine. (At the peak of his performance, he will even try to destroy himself, beating his chest or thighs or temples with clenched fists. It is amazing to see and clear evidence of simian genes in that family.)

Downstairs his mother was busy telling his father everything I had revealed to her in confidence, woman to woman, about my sordid and nymphomaniacal sex life. (Chuck and I did it once, though I suppose it seemed worse because Hugo actually watched us. I did not tell his mother this.) Next morning, when we appeared for breakfast, his father said one word, in a low but distinct voice, then left the table. “Slut.”

Clearly, Hugo had ruined any chance of my being accepted in to this family as his wife. Or I had ruined it. Living with Hugo, one begins to suspect one's own motives, actions and inactions in a vertiginous and infinite regress of second guesses.

Perhaps I had engineered the whole thing. I confessed, and I confess I was too trusting. Or is trust just another moment of aggression? Very early in our relationship, Hugo said, “I don't want to feel responsible.” His theory of psychology goes like this: behind the mind, there is another mind which is “out to get you.” Sometimes it is clear to me that I wanted Dad to live those extra six painful, humiliating, semi-conscious months. My soul is shot with evil.

The dogs cavort and make pee-pee as I climb the icy steps to our apartment, lugging my suicidal burden, now ever so slightly lightened. I compose my face into an expression of shock and remorse. “What have I done? What have I done?” I keep asking myself. Though I don't particularly feel any of this, Hugo will expect it.

I walk into the kitchen where he studies (the table strewn with graphs, print-outs and used tea bags) and place my jar of KCN before him like an offering.

“Hugo,” I say, “I wanted to kill myself. I stole this from the lab. I would have gone through with it, but Professor Rainbolt saw me. I didn't want to get you in trouble.”

His handsome face wears an expression of irritation. I have disturbed his concentration; I have created a situation with which he will have to deal; a situation to be dealt with is a crisis; his world implodes, crumples, disintegrates.

He says, “It's my fault, isn't it? It's all my fault.”

I am ready for this. When we were first together, I found it endearing the way Hugo thought everything was his fault — his willingness to take blame, to confess his failings. Now, after some years of experience, I realize that this is a ploy to diffuse, not defuse, the issue. By taking the blame for everything, Hugo takes the blame for nothing. Also he expects you to console him for being such a fuckup. And sometimes you do, if he catches you on the wrong foot.

This time he doesn't catch me on the wrong foot, mainly because I have a secret agenda and cannot be bothered.

I say, “Okay, well, as I said, Professor Rainbolt saw me, so you'd better take it back. If you take it back, then he won't find anything missing. You can just say you sent me to pick up a book.”

“I can't lie about a thing like this,” he says.

Of course, he can't. If he tells the truth, it puts me further in the wrong. I've stolen his key, broken into the university lab and burgled chemicals with which I intend to kill myself. Not since he watched me “having sex” with Chuck has Hugo possessed such damning evidence of my inadequacy as a human being (and this time without the embarrassing question of what he was doing outside my bedroom window).