Seven Minutes to Noon

happened.”
    Judy sighed deeply. Alice could see her sitting at the far right desk, the one cluttered with knickknacks, beneath the framed needlepoint legends that might have read OFFICE SWEET HOME or TODAY IS A NEW DAY, reminders not to mourn what couldn’t be changed.
    “A neighbor found her in her car this morning, with the motor running. The man smelled gas coming from behind the garage door.”
    Alice could see the black-painted scrolling door of Pam’s garage, an urban rarity for which she had seemed remarkably lucky.
    “But that’s impossible,” Alice said. “Pam wouldn’t.”
    She saw Pam’s lips curling in humor, heard her shout of laughter, smelled the baby powder wafting off her skin. The woman had so many projects and plans. She never would have sent Alice to the house this morning, if she had known....
    Unless. Had Pam sent her to that house, knowing she wouldn’t be there, knowing Alice would love it and be on her way? Was it a parting gift?
    Alice had no experience with the parameters of suicide, neither the slope toward it nor the promise of its obliteration. All her assumptions aside, she had no real idea if one approached it logically or blanked out by despair. She recalled the illegible scrawls on today’s page from Pam’s date book; there was no way anyone but Pam could have discerned her intentions for the day. Alice reminded herself that she barely knew the woman; everything she believed about Pam was based on assumptions.
    “We’re all in shock,” Judy said softly. “Pam’s at Long Island College Hospital, if you want to send flowers or a card.”
    “I don’t understand,” Alice said. “Do you mean she’s alive?”
    “Barely. We’re hoping.”
    Alice jotted down the hospital information on her kitchen calendar, which reminded her that it was Thursday. A simple fact. Another Thursday.
    She felt suddenly sick, as if two opposing currents were at war in her body, one surging up from her stomach, the other pressing down from her mind. She quickly said good-bye to Judy and hung up the phone. Peter was playing on the rug with his little fire truck, guiding it through a maze he had built of boxes and wooden blocks. Grateful for his concentration, Alice rushed past him en route to the bathroom, where she flung up the toilet seat in the nick of time.
    She called the hospital three times that night and each time was told that Pam was in intensive care and could receive no visitors other than family. It would have to be enough to know she was alive.
    Alice decided she could appease her desire to help by doing the neighborly thing. She would bring a chicken stew over to the house for Pam’s husband, Ray; after all, the man still had to eat. She pulled a chicken out of the freezer and put it in the fridge to defrost overnight. Then she assembled ingredients on the counter and went into the garden for a sprig of fresh rosemary.
    She could hear that the kids were out of their bath downstairs and were busily getting themselves ready for bed. Alice had been on dishes duty tonight, Mike on bedtime. In a lull of activity, Mike came up the stairs into the kitchen.
    “Any news?” he asked.
    “Nope.”
    He stood back and watched Alice finish her preparations, finding the last can of crushed tomatoes at the back of the cupboard, pulling carrots and potatoes out of the fridge.
    “Are you cooking now ?”
    “I thought I’d get it started right after the kids go to school in the morning.” She took two onions out of the fridge drawer.
    He squatted in front of the corner cabinet, reached in for the big, heavy soup pot they had received as a wedding gift, and carried it over to the stove. Then he came over to hug her. “All of this,” he whispered. “It’s going to be all right. It has to be. Okay?”
    Was he reassuring her? Or asking her to reassure him?
    “Okay,” she whispered into his salty-smelling neck. “And if it doesn’t, we’ll just take the kids and go, okay? Anywhere. We’ll just leave.”
    He nodded. And so it was agreed. They wouldn’t fight this battle for long.
    “I’ll get the kids into bed,” Mike said.
    “I’ll join you,” she said, and turned off the lights.
    Pam’s brownstone looked just as imperial and peaceful as when Alice had first seen it, the basement-level garage door shut tight as a sleeping eye. The roses out front were a sea of fragrant yellow that made Alice’s heart weep. She still couldn’t believe Pam had tried to take her own life.