Memoir · Chapter 1
An excerpt by Annette Roy Davis
Includes bereavement and suicide.
My cell phone rings at 3:30 p.m. on an ordinary afternoon in the middle of a plain week, October 14, 2014 to be exact. Mom. Her name glowing in my screen is always a welcome surprise. “Hey. How are you?”
“Are you sitting down? Please sit down.” Okay, now I’m a little worried. She has a funny waiver to her voice. It’s like a weak vibrato. She must be sitting because her voice sounds like, if it would stand, it couldn’t support itself.
“What’s happening, Mom? Are you okay?”
She doesn’t want me standing. This means her news could knock me over. Because I’m a dutiful daughter, even though she can’t see me and I’m 2 hours and three freeways away, I comply and sit.
“Jack’s dead.” I’m on my feet again, heart racing.
The words linger between her lips and my ears for a moment. At 3:29 p.m. I had a brother, and now at 3:30 p.m., I don’t. My gasp of shock reverberates down the hallway. It is forceful enough and stunning to compel my daughter to address it, asking if I’m okay.
“When did it happen,” I ask my mother. The afternoon sunlight through the slats of the blinds is glaringly disturbing now. The air in the room is stale and motionless. I’m pacing in a three-foot line – back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I don’t know whether I’m breathing or not in between my frantic words. I want details and quickly.
