High Crime Area by Joyce Carol Oates Read Free Book Online Page A

to her, she would probably never see her niece again.
    Yet, I still love her .
    What was exhausting, when she wasn’t “high”—she had to plead for her husband’s life.
    Hours of each day. And through the night pleading No! Not ever.
    Not ever give up, I beg you.
    As soon as the diagnosis had been made, the doctors had given up on him. So it seemed to the stricken wife.
    Repeating their calm rote words Do you want extraordinary measures taken to sustain your life, in case complications arise during or after surgery and her husband who was the kindest of men, the most accommodating and least assertive of men, a gentle man, a thoughtful man, a reasonable man, one who would hide his own anxiety and terror in the hope of shielding his wife, had said quietly what the doctor had seemed to be urging him to say No of course not, doctor. Use your own judgment please. For this was the brave response. This was the noble response. This was the manly commonsense response. In mounting disbelief and horror Agnes had listened to this exchange and dared to interrupt No —we’re not going to give up. We do want “extraordinary measures”—I want “extraordinary measures” for my husband! Please! Anything you can do, doctor.
    She would beg. She would plead. Unlike her beloved husband she could not be stoic in the face of (his) death.
    Yet, in the end, fairly quickly there’d been not much the doctors could do. Her husband’s life from that hour onward had gone—had departed—swiftly like thread on a bobbin that goes ever more swiftly as it is depleted.
    I love you —so many times she told him. Clutching at him with cold frightened fingers.
    Love love love you please don’t leave me.
    She missed him, so much. She could not believe that he would not return to their house. It was that simple.
    In the marijuana haze, she’d half-believed—she’d been virtually certain—that her husband was still in the hospital, and wondering why she hadn’t come to visit. Or maybe it was in the dream—the dreams—that followed. High I was so high. The earth was a luminous globe below me and above me —there was nothing ...
    After he’d died, within hours when she returned to the suddenly cavernous house she’d gone immediately to a medicine cabinet and on the spotless white-marble rim above the sink she had set out pills, capsules—these were sleeping pills, painkillers, antibiotics—that had accumulated over a period of years; prescriptions in both her husband’s and her name, long forgotten. Self-medicating —yet how much more tempting, to self-erase ?
    There were dozens of pills here. Just a handful, swallowed down with wine or whiskey, and she’d never wake again—perhaps.
    â€œShould I? Should I join you?”—it was ridiculous for the widow to speak aloud in the empty house yet it seemed to her the most natural thing in the world; and what was unnatural was her husband’s failure to respond.
    She would reason It’s too soon. He doesn’t understand what has happened to him yet.
    Weeks now and she hadn’t put the pills away. They remained on the marble ledge. Involuntarily her eye counted them—five, eight, twelve, fifteen—twenty-five, thirty-five...
    She wondered how many sleeping pills, for instance, would be “fatal.” She wondered if taking too many pills would produce nausea and vomiting; taking too few, she might remain semi-conscious, or lapse into a vegetative state.
    Men were far more successful in suicide attempts than women. This was generally known. For men were not so reluctant to do violence to their bodies: gunshots, hanging, leaping from heights.
    I want to die but not to experience it. I want my death to be ambiguous so people will say —It was an accidental overdose!
    So people will say —She would not live without him, this is for the best.
    What a relief,