Without water, the pot of oatmeal wouldn’t come clean. Jen got the big chunks off with a scraper—and, reasoning that no calories should go to waste, she ate them as she went—but the pasty goo had hardened into an unforgiving crust, and after working the sides of the pot in the dry sink basin until her wrists and fingers ached, she couldn’t see where she’d even made much of a dent in it.
When she paused to rest her hands and stared out the window, the trash heap that was the failed rain catcher stared back at her from the yard.
Had she been in a less self-pitying mood, she might’ve been able to resist the temptation to view these twin domestic failures as metaphors. But under the circumstances, it was impossible not to see her own life reflected in the pile of garbage out the window, or the fate of the world in the ineradicable scum clinging to the sides of the pot.
Things fall apart. And when they do, they don’t get fixed.
There’s no putting any of this back together.
Not this pot. Not my family. Not the world.
I should’ve gone shopping. I should’ve gone to the bank.
Now it’s too late.
You done fucked up, kid.
Her every thought was a negation. She’d never felt so hopeless. Not that she was ordinarily inclined to sunny optimism. But she’d never gone this far into the abyss.
Partly, that was because whenever she’d felt herself spiraling down in the past, she’d always been able to drown the feeling in alcohol. But there was no medicating it away this time. She had no urge to drink. She was past that. Booze wouldn’t help. It’d just put things off, while making them worse.
The only real solution was permanent.
Are there enough pills in the house to kill me?
Probably not.
The gas oven might work if I can figure out how to light the pilot.
But do I really want Dan or Max to find me like that?
Even by Jen’s standards, it was a selfish move. The least she could do was spare her family the unpleasantness of disposing of her corpse.
What building around here is tall enough to jump off?
She was cataloging her options when she heard the gunshot.