Free Night Train by Martin Amis Page B

plummets. Jennifer didn't need gas. Like many another American, she owned a gun. These are my notes. What about 'their' notes, and what percentage leave them? Some studies say 70 percent, others say 30. Suicide notes, it is assumed, are often spirited away by the decedent's loved ones. Suicides, as we have seen, are often camouflaged—smudged, snowed. Axiom: Suicides generate false data. Jennifer, apparently, did not leave a suicide note. But I know she wrote one. I just feel this.
           It may run in families but it's not inherited. It is a pattern, or a configuration. It's not a predisposition. If your mother kills herself, it won't help, and it opens a door...
           Here are some other do's and don'ts. Or don'ts, anyway: Don't work around death. Don't work around pharmaceuticals.
           Don't be an immigrant. Don't be a German, just off the boat.
           Don't be Romanian. Don't be Japanese.
           Don't live where the sun doesn't shine.
           Don't be an adolescent homosexual: One in three will attempt.
           Don't be a nonagenarian Los Angelean.
           Don't be an alcoholic. It's suicide on the installment plan, anyway.
           Don't be a schizophrenic. Disobey those voices in your head.
           Don't be depressed. Lighten up.
           Don't be Jennifer Rockwell.
           And don't be a man. Don't be a man, whatever you do. Tony Silvera was, of course, talking through his ass when he said that suicide was 'a babe thing.' To the contrary, suicide is a dude thing. 'Attempting' is a woman thing: They're more than twice as likely to do that. 'Completing' is a man thing: They're more than twice as likely to do that. There's only one day in the year when it's safer to be male. Mother's Day.
           Mother's Day is the day for 'felo de se'. How come? I wonder. Is it the all-you-can-eat brunch at the Quality Inn? No. The suicides are the women who skipped the lunch. They're the women who skipped the kids.
           Don't be Jennifer Rockwell.
           The question is: But why not?
     
     
     
    STRESSORS AND PRECIPITANTS
     
    The first person I'm going to be wanting to talk to is Hi Tulkinghorn—Jennifer's physician. Over the years I've come across this old party a bunch of times at the Rockwells' (barbecues, cocktails on Christmas Eve). And, recall, Colonel Tom had him in to look me over, when I was drying out there: DTing for a week in one of the children's bedrooms on the first floor. Which I don't remember a whole lot about. Small, bald, clean-eyed, Tulkinghorn's the kind of elderly medic who, over time, seems to direct more and more of his doctoring know-how inward—to keep his own little show on the road. The 'other' kind of elderly medic is a drunk. Or 'he's' drying out. When I was drying out, Jennifer used to come into the room in the evenings. She'd sit in the corner and read to me. She'd feel my brow and fetch me water.
           Now. I had called Tulkinghorn's office on March eighth, almost two weeks ago. And how about this. The old prick was on a 'poker cruise' in the Caribbean. So I had his secretary page him and he came squawking in from 'The Straight Flush'. Told him the news and said I was following up on it. He said to make an appointment. I called his office again, and got talking. It turned out that it isn't Tulkinghorn who plays poker. It's his wife. He gets nice and tan on a lounger—while she's crouching at a table in the saloon, blowing the second home on her two pair.
           Hi Tulkinghorn works out of a gothic apartment block near Alton Park, over in the Thirty-Seven. I sat there in the narrow corridor, like a patient, with an ear-sufferer on one side of me and a throat-sufferer on the other. The parched secretary sat in her cubbyhole pushing paper around and answering the phone: 'Doctor's office?' Younger guys in smocks, like interns, sloped in and out with clipboards and vials. Walls of folders