Ezekiel 18:20
Monday 13th August: Mrs Mary Young, wife of Water Commissioner Mr Robert Young of 200 Longhill, Springfield, Massachusetts, looked back at her white boarded mansion. It was a grand home to have, like something from a Southern state, ripped out of place and time. Six white and proud two story columns supported a bow shaped porch worthy of a plantation, above which fluttered the ever present stars and stripes. She rounded her home and stepped out onto the sidewalk at 5:45 p.m. shortly before her husband was due back. She was wearing a white sundress, the kind of thing Marilyn Monroe wore when she sang to Kennedy; that plus a broad-brimmed white hat. She looked a picture. Like some latter day Scarlet O'Harra stepping out from Tara, she strolled almost wistfully down Longhill. She crossed the road and walked on past the exit to Forest Park, bequeathed to the burgers of Springfield by Barney, the inventor of the modern ice-skate, who has his mausoleum therein.
She hung her head but on she ambled, crossing back again to join the slip road where Longhill met Columbus Avenue. Here there was no sidewalk and the cars whipped past her, some honking angrily. No one stopped.
Had someone stopped, things could have been different. But they were heading home. A few wound their windows down to shout, "Hey Lady, get the hell out of here," or words to that effect. But no one stopped.
And, like some mad woman of Shallot, on she wandered, up the ramp to the South End Bridge. Here there was sidewalk again. Here she was less remarkable.
The traffic thrums its way over South End Bridge in an unending stream with a sound which, from a distance, is like the buzzing of many bees. Close up it's just a roar.
On the Agawam side the evergreens are rare, and the gentler pastels of the deciduous trees softened the vista so much that the brightest green was in the highway signs flagging routes five and fifty-seven to places too far distant to matter.
Close in by the river a clutter of little houses in pastel shades of white and yellow arrayed themselves untidily. Closer in still there was a clutter of scrap and boats and timber and the like that betrayed both activity and neglect.
The Connecticut is clean enough to swim in now, so they say. It used not to be but Springfield's mayor has signed up with the environmentalists because he's been told he should.
Mary had been saving sleeping pills, Tomazapam. She had fourteen of them set aside. Enough. And now they'd be wasted. But she didn't really trust sleeping pills. All her friends took them. She knew all the names. Lumesta, Rozaram, Sonata or Ambian, which last seemed to be the most popular. They took prescriptions of 14 or 30 or 60. Trouble is take too many and you might be sick, too few and you might wake up. And in any case she had responsibilities that would not be well served by a failed suicide attempt.
She thought of the children, but she'd seen the last through university. Jenny had graduated a month or more past. They didn't need her now.
Her china-blue eyes were moist. She looked down at the swirling waters of the Connecticut. It wasn't very deep. It occurred to her that Memorial Bridge would have been better. More dignified. But that was too long a walk.
She jerked her head up to look at the horizon. She had left no note. She so wanted to but couldn't. Not with the children. A note provided too much certainty. The children would need the ambiguity, or so she reasoned, of a death by misadventure. Not a confirmed suicide. No, that would not do. It was another reason she had not chosen the pills.
She thought that could she but never have been born she'd have been happier. The thought made her feel a traitor to life and saddened her a little. To rest though. That was inviting. So very beautiful to think on. She wasn't set on heaven. She was not even sure she believed in God. Oblivion would be enough for her. Just for it all to end. To be able to rest.
Despite the constant buzz of traffic, no one noticed Mary hitch her skirts and climb to the far side of the railing. She wasn't thinking clearly though. Here at South End there were big concrete peers for bridge foundations. They needed avoiding. Even so, she closed her eyes when she jumped, like she had done when Bob had taken her in the front car of the Superman Roller Coaster at Six Flags. That had not been kind. He'd known she was scarred of heights.
So her eyes were closed as she hit her head at the edge of the concrete peer before her lifeless body slid into the embracing waters of the Connecticut.
The Connecticut hadn't always been good at giving up its dead. It was reluctant this time. Mrs Mary Young's corpse was eventually found downstream two days later.
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