Free A Cure for Suicide by Jesse Ball Page A

before. He felt when he saw the examiner that she would see right through him, and so when he had left Hilda, he had immediately made a plan. This was the first real action of his new life. Making a plan: he hadn’t done such a thing before. What did it mean to be able to do such a thing?
    When he had gotten home in the night, he brought with him some new plants that he had found on the road. He sat up late drawing them and tried harder than he ever had before, and he managed a good drawing—the first good drawing he had done.
    In the morning he showed this drawing to her.
    She will think I am happy because I have succeeded. She will attribute all my happiness to this.

AGAIN AND AGAIN, he found himself imagining Hilda. He pictured her lithe brown body with no clothing. He imagined her thinking of him, and he felt concern. Could it not be that she might discover that he was not worth knowing? Could she not feel she was better alone? He grew terrified. He was a failure. He had little to say—and had done nothing, knew nothing. The examiner was constantly pointing out his faults and his stupidity. And when the examiner praised him, it was only out of kindness. What was there about him that could equal up to Hilda?
    He looked back on the supper at her house, and he thought of the way she had been looking at him. Again and again, he replayed in his mind the episode in the kitchen. He could see her standing askance before him. How he wanted to see her again!
    The examiner had stopped speaking. She was sitting silently, looking over at him, and there was nothing in her eyes at all. She was just a husk, just patience itself. She would inhabit her body again when there was a reason to. In the meantime, she waited in some nearby place. That was almost how it was with her.

—EMMA, SAID THE CLAIMANT. I am ready to try again.
    —Are you ready, she said.
    —I am.
    —To a meeting? To meet more people? You have been very quiet lately.
    —I don’t think that I was very good, when we met that couple. Or when we saw them again. I need to try harder.
    —It isn’t about trying, said the examiner. It is about being present. You are far inside yourself, and need to be at your edges, ready to spring.
    —I will do it, he said. I will.
    The examiner looked at the newspaper and saw that there was a meeting of a botanical society that very night.
    —Who knew, she said. A botanical society.
    —Oh, you must have known, said the claimant sharply.
    The examiner raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

THE BOTANICAL SOCIETY meeting was held in a building called the library. The claimant had not been to the library before, but he knew the word. It was a place for books to be kept, and indeed, when they arrived, it was quite full of books. This botanical society did not have very many plants or flowers. In fact, they were a sort of bibliographical botanical society, because mostly they talked about flowers and showed each other pictures of flowers in books. This is why the meeting was at the library; it was the place where the books were. Also, there were books that the members owned, and they brought these books with them when they came.
    There were nineteen members of the botanical society. All of them were there. They were introduced to him one by one, all by name, and he shook hands with the men. With the women, he shook hands, but in a different way. He sort of held the ends of their fingers briefly. That was shaking hands with women. Then, they all sat down and began to talk. Someone had pots of coffee, and they drank from paper cups. The people of the botanical society were very concerned about him and Emma. Concerned, in that they felt he and Emma concerned them. That two botanists, or a botanist and an assistant, should be in the town was wonderful and quite reasonable. It was a fine town. Why shouldn’t it have a botanist? Indeed, it had a botanical society. There was an immediate motion for Emma to give a talk about botany, which Emma