The Crescendo

I suppose I should be shocked that he killed himself. Usually there are signs, well, so they say. I should have seen it coming. He should have been dropping little clues and I sit here trying to recall if he did. I conclude that perhaps I was too self absorbed to notice, too busy, too involved with life to know that death was just around the corner. How is it possible to be married to someone for over twenty years and have absolutely no indication that he was planning to die? Yet there I was, standing in front of my dead husband who was alive just five minutes before. Blood, crimson, no, maroon, glistened almost beautifully as it pooled under his head. I slipped on it; a barefooted heel mark slashed across the cement like the start of a Jackson Pollock portrait. Five small dots of five small toes, my toes, dipped in his blood, pressed into the mortar, my signature squishing out the words, ‘I stood here’.

I think shock kept me from throwing up. I wretched afterward. I nearly gagged out my very soul afterward. But that day I was strangely calm, and very curious as to why Victor blew his head off. Well, it wasn’t off, I suppose that’s just an expression that naturally drops from the lips when someone puts a gun to their temple and, well…

We were nineteen years apart, and Victor’s hair was completely white by the time Emily was born. We had started late, surprised that we had started at all. Our lives were filled with other things considered sophisticated, highly refined, and cultured. I was a symphony violinist and Victor, by the time we had met, was a retired conductor. It wasn’t unusual to have fallen in love with each other as we fell in love with music. When Emily came, we were both surprised but not unhappy. We taught her everything we knew and the day my toes were painting the garage floor with Victor’s blood we were leaving for Switzerland, Victor’s native country and Emily’s new home for the next four years of university.

 Suitcases were packed. Emily’s pink one was filled with important things, her laptop and pens and clean underwear. A plaid backpack several tones of purple with less important things; two bags of pretzels, a pink refillable water bottle, a copy of Steinbeck’s East of Eden, a package of peppermint flavored chewing gum. Victor’s bag, the smallest, was left of Emily’s pink one, and mine, larger than Victors was on the far right. Lined up like the tidy little family we were in on the cement floor in the garage next to Victor’s bleeding body.

 Last night we’d shared a bottle of Boërl & Kroff Brut Rose, ‘only the best’ Victor said, and we toasted to Emily’s future, and he laid a proud arm, an arm tucked into the soft cashmere sleeve of his favorite cardigan across her shoulders, he beamed with the delight of her. Later giddy from the bottle and the added bottle of Chardonnay, we sang. Victor’s deep baritone vibrated holding the bass line as Emily and I joined in, her soprano rose, sweet and full of hope, like her future. Tears squeezed out of my eyes in the moment. A mixture of joy tinged with sorrow at the change to come. The bottles uncorked and empty were still on the counter. Victor’s lip prints were still pressed into his flute that sat on the bottom of the kitchen sink waiting to be washed.

For months Victor had been planning our trip. A trip he’d been talking about for the twenty-one years we were married but could never take, circumstances have a way of delaying life. Now with Emily starting her new life in Switzerland, the two of us were free to travel. Victor was so excited to show me his world before we met. We were to visit the properties he owned in Europe, the halls he had played in the symphonies he conducted, the museums where he teethed on history, the Inns his family had owned for generations. His light blue eyes would light up as he would recall stories of his youth. They stared straight up at me now, clouded with death. I wanted to close his eyelids, but I didn’t dare touch his body.

Emily was crying, sobbing uncontrollably actually. She was in the den, crumpled into the neighbours’ arms. It’s startling how quickly the sound of a gunshot inside of a garage can draw neighbours. There were four of them beside the driveway, on the patchy bit of grass beside the hydrangea, the purple one with white centers, it had been in bloom for two weeks, the petals were still soft. The neighbors had their fingers on their chins, rested there in shock, or to hold up their jaws, or because they just didn’t know what to do with their fingers at a time like this. Behind them, curtains flutter from windows, those who want to see but don’t want to be seen, seeing. This one, the one holding Emily, was on the beige sofa we’d purchase a month ago. We had just finished renovating the den, freshening up the dated room with new paint, new curtains, some muted green throw pillows on that sofa. I had agonized for weeks over the perfect shade of white to cover the Greige of 2010’s. Victor breathed a sigh of relief when I settled on Simply White, Benjimin Moore’s best seller. I had no clue I was preparing the backdrop for tragedy. Had I known I would have leaned toward blacks, onyx, maybe earthy deep greens, these colors seemed more appropriate for death, blood red could get lost in it. Instead, it screamed against it.

 Emily was bent into a tiny ball with her head buried into her knees, only the back of her white nighty was visible, a wave of black hair trailing down the back of it long and straight and course as Asian hair often is. Victor often commented that he was entirely happy her hair took after mine and not his, I never knew why. The white softness of his felt like ribbons of silk as I pulled my fingers through it the night before last. Was it only two nights ago we had made love? Emily was out with friends. It was hard to find time, my work, Emily events, classes and recitals and school plays. Even retired, Victor was always on the go, teaching, speaking and driving Emily to and fro. As much as we loved our daughter we were looking forward to our season of freedom. I remember the twinkle, the way he tilted his head of full white when Emily announced at dinner that her friends had planned a going away party and she would be out, late. His right eyebrow lifted, thick and full and neatly trimmed, all of it raised into the sexiest little question. Tonight?

If I knew it was the last time, I would have let my fingers linger, maybe I wouldn’t even have let go. But as the days of my new future unfold there would be moments of disgust that will have me swallowing bile at the thought of touching him willingly, at the thought of his fingers on me. But these were things I didn’t know yet, at this moment I was looking at my husband’s hair thinking that I didn’t know drying blood could look black, but there lay my husband with hair the color of his youth, on the one side anyway.

 I was still processing the event from the doorway where the kitchen met the garage, away from the flurry of people in uniforms, some blue, others in light blue. Two young men in white, who came along with the white van sent over by, what I supposed was the death department, if that was such a thing, were loading up my husband. My eyes scanned both rooms almost simultaneously, as if they needed to preserve the moment. A mental photograph. The exact point in time where my life stopped being what it was and started being something else. Behind me, Emily had moved from the den to the kitchen to pour what I guessed was a glass of water. She was now staring into the sink, wordlessly. In front of me, in the garage, there was Victor’s body, of course, still laying on the cement but now draped in black plastic to remove his face from sight. The two men in white were struggling to lower the gurney beside him. Our suitcases still in that neat line by the trunk of the Landrover, boxes in the corner on the other side of the garage neatly marked in Victor’s perfect penmanship in black marker. One said, ‘Christmas ornaments’ another, ‘Christmas lights,’ another ‘Christmas exterior,’ a wall mounted unit gripped shovels, flat and pointed, one a bit rusted beside a green plastic grass rake were all lined up surveying the scene like soldiers. A bench was beside them, at some point Victor must have thought it important to know the time when he was in here because there was a digital clock staring at me, red eyes blinked 11:00 am. I could feel my breath intake, quick and cold. This was the exact time when we should have been loading the car with luggage. Instead, two men had just finished loading Victor’s body onto the gurney.

There was no note. Not a paper one anyway. None was needed. I didn’t know that on this day or the next but by the third day I would be looking at my life through reels of different color, and I would be stunned in cold horror then, and in all the days following. Oh God! New feelings would churn. I wouldn’t know which way was up. Humiliation, disgust, panic, and alarm would chatter across my mind at various moments and in various degrees, at points I would be left longing to step my bloodied toes into Victor’s footsteps and put his gun to my own head and pull my own trigger to escape it.

It emerged quickly. Little bits of crooked puzzle parts found me when all I wanted was to be lost in a haze of grief. I wanted time to adjust to the momentum of moving forward suddenly standing still, the jerk from one to the other was shocking and painful. But here I was two days after watching Victor being driven away in a windowless white van in disbelief.

I had called the airline, to rebook flights to Switzerland for after the funeral. The lady with the southern accent on the other end of the line had put me on hold to search for our flights. The twill of her voice was soothing as I explained the situation and I was so very thankful that she assured me that she would help me sort out our mess. I gave her the little bit of information I had available; our names, our passport numbers, the name of the Airline were booked on. Victor had the rest of the information; I didn’t know where he had kept it. She put me on hold as she went to work.

I was sitting at Victor’s desk looking out the window at the hydrangeas, their purple petals as soft and full as they were three days ago, for them nothing had changed, not yet anyway, this thought was playing across my mind, how they stood in the garden unchanged yet in my world everything had when her sweet drawl returned on the other end of the phone I was holding.

“I’m sorry Mrs. Fischer, there is nothing booked with those passport numbers you have given me, are you sure you have the right airline?”

Well, no, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t have paperwork in front of me, I didn’t have the password for Victor’s email to check, He didn’t have notifications sent to his cell phone, but this was the name of the airline he had told me we would be flying. Swiss Air.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Fischer, you are not booked on Swiss Air.”

I thanked her and hung up, not exactly sure of my next step. My mind was foggy and decisions, the large decisions, that Victor normally made for our family were in front of me. I realized how much he took care of, and how little I knew. My phone rang and startled me out of my thoughts. The morgue, asking if I had selected a funeral home. I had, but I had forgot to notify them. My head started pounding so I laid it down on the desk. Just for a minute, I thought, I just need a minute to rest my eyes, my mind, my thoughts. I was in this position when I remembered with a jolt that I’d yet to inform the University that Emily’s arrival would be delayed. I sat upright. Where would I find their contact information? My eyes scanned the den, a file cabinet against the mahogany wall felt insurmountable to tackle, do I start digging through Victor’s phone? My eyes moved over the laptop. I typed Lausanne University of Music into the Google search bar and then I clicked into their website and scrolled to find the contact number. I picked up my cell and dialed. The Swiss accent put me on hold as they searched for the proper records to properly record things, when the Swiss accent returned to the phone, I was informed there was no record of Emily enrolled in their school.

“Do you have the correct University Mrs. Fischer?”

And Victor’s suicide note unfolded. As hours slid into days and days into weeks more of my life splintered around me. I stopped digging when I found the photo of my husband in a yellowing news article tucked into the very back corner of that file cabinet that stood against the mahogany wall.

Do I tell you slowly? Do I describe in detail each moment of each day as each thing was discovered, and in turn pull you into the center of my being as my soul was severed again, and again? Or do I tell it quickly, rip it off rapidly and let the sharp sting settle into your own thought and allow your imagination form what it was like for me instead?

I was never married to Victor Fischer. The symphony conductor from Switzerland never existed. The flights we had packed for and had celebrated with champagne were never booked. Emily was never enrolled at Lausanne University of Music or any school in Switzerland because there were no Swiss connections, no properties, no historical family inns. Victor Fischer was the invention of Harold Newman. Harold Newman from a small town in northern Washington jumped the border into Canada after he was questioned about the rape of a university student named Mei Suen.

Mei Suen, a Canadian, was majoring in music studies at Western Washington University, after she was raped, she returned to Canada and died from complications of childbirth. Her parents Li Qiang and Chung raised their granddaughter.

My name is Jennifer Suen Fischer, Li Qiang is my grandfather, and Chung is my grandmother.