DEATH NOTICE

 I brushed the drywall dust off my work pants as I walked down the long hallway. My boots left dirt stains on the light blue carpet.  I was already tired from the morning’s work, and last night’s lack of sleep. Monet’s adorned the walls and bright green plants stood tall next to the broad office doors. I neared the end of the hall and read the plaque next to the last door: Maple, Jenkins & Associates. As I entered the quiet waiting room the secretary instantly looked up at me, unlike most times when I have to stand there and wait for her to acknowledge my presence. The pleasure of the immediate attention was quickly soured. Her eyes held panic, she grit her teeth, and fumbled with the papers on her desk. 

“Um…I’m here to see Rob…”

She took a deep breath and replied with a mumbled jumble that sounded like: “um yeah uh but.”

“He’s supposed to have Dan today, I was gonna visit… have lunch with them…?”

“Rob had to step out,” she stuttered, “there’s someone here to see you.”

She got up from behind her desk and approached the double doors to my father-in-law's office.

“She said he stepped out,” I thought, “ why’s she bringing me in his office? And what...’someone to see me’?” The doors slowly swung open into the office revealing two large men seated in the chairs in fRobt of Rob’s desk. They were burly, mustached, and dressed in suits, but not the expensive tailored suits worn by the lawyers that normally frequent these offices. No, these were cheap, gray, suits that bunched up over their guts and sat tight around their thick necks. No. These were cop suits. 

“Mr. Mello?”

Immediately my mind floods with thoughts. Of course the worst possibilities always come to mind first. Did she say I hit her? The doors close behind me. 

“Mr. Mello”

Did she come up with some story that I beat her, so I’d get arrested, and she’d get her revenge for me leaving her yesterday?  She wouldn’t… but then again, she’s acted pretty desperately before, when things had gotten bad, during the deepest of lows of our marriage.

“Mr. Mello,” the man on the left said, this time with more force in his voice, “please take a seat in that chair”

I had no idea what was going on but everything in me wanted to run for the door. My feet moved me towards the chair and lowered me into it. I now sat face to face with the two men. Early fifties, cop haircuts, cop mustaches, but with well-fed bodies that obviously hadn’t been walking any beats lately.

“Mr. Mello, I’m Detective Shrewster. This is Detective Cook.”

I sat in silence. Considering they already said my name four times I saw no reason to introduce myself. They looked at me like they were waiting for me to speak though, and I started to get a little mad, seeing as how they had called me in here to talk to them.

After staring at me for what seemed like an hour, the fatter of the two, Shrewster took a short breath, paused and asked, “Where were you last night between ten p.m. and 6:15 this morning?”

“what? Wha… I… I was in Ellicott City.”

“Ellicott City?”

“Yea, yea I spent the night at a friend’s house. Why?”

“You didn’t return home last night?” the one on the right asked.

“No. I just said I went to Elli-“

“Why didn’t you go home?” Shrewster interrupted.

“…I… I, I left, I left my wife yesterday, we… it wasn’t working. She said she didn’t want to be with me anymore. I came here after work yesterday, told Rob that it seemed like it was over; he said he’d communicate it to her, mediate, you know, he does this kind of shit for a livin-wait, what’s this got to do with anything?” 

“Mr. Mello…”

If they say Mr. Mello one more fucking time I’m gonna pop. I swear to God, cop or not, I’ve had about enough of this shit… my stomach churns, haven’t eaten since…not sure when.

“Mr. Mello…this morning at 6:23 a.m…”

Somehow I already know. The rest of the sentence flashes through my mind before he even says it. 

“…at 6:23 a.m. your wife was found dead in the basement of your home.”

Fire. Blazing fire. Heat immediately shoots from deep inside me out through every inch of my body. My lungs collapse and try to gasp, heat of a thousand suns sears my bones, my flesh like gasoline soaked and lit by a match. The room spins faster and faster.

“…….”

I didn’t hear it. He didn’t say it. I’m choking, what am I choking on? I’m not here, this isn’t real, that’s not real, that’s what people say in movies. My muscles are tense squeezed by an industrial vise. 

“Mr. Mello.”

A voice echoes in the room. This isn’t real. My eyes burn, bones break, muscles ache, stomach churns. I gag and gag. The one on the right reaches and grasps for the trash can and flings it in fRobt of me. I fall to my knees, bend over the can and the loudest dry hurl shoots from my mouth, a rough tearing of my throat. When’s the fuckin last time I ate??

“We’re gonna need you to remain calm.”

I almost throw the trash can in his face, stop myself,  grab a huge, deep gasp of air, and with it flutters through my mind the simplest of thoughts, “I love you.” I push myself up from the floor and with wobbly legs back up towards the chair. Calm? You want calm? I try to stare hatred into his eyes but only feel emptiness pour from out me. Lifeless . The room spins more, and more, and faster. 

Click. The double doors slowly swing open. Sarah. Rob holds her as they walk in the room to keep her from falling to the floor. I can’t look at her. Shrewster and Cook quickly get up and help Rob move her to a chair. As they place her body in the chair, she droops as if she too is dead. Immediately the guilt flows up from inside. I know that she knows that I left Ivy yesterday. I know that she sees me responsible for this. I know she sees that, because I see that. I drop to the floor and kneel at her feet. Prostrating before her, sobbing, the sloppy words fall at her feet: “I’m sssorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorrrry.” This probably isn’t the best thing to be saying in front of those two fat pigs but the words keep falling from my mouth. 

She reaches down. A hand lightly rests on my head. I rise slowly, lean my forehead to her knees, and whisper, “I’m sorry.” 

“I know.” Her soft voice cracks as she speaks. “Come on, here…”

I look up expecting her to be offering a hug, but instead Rob is reaching out between me and Sarah. His big hands grab under my arms, and lift me from the floor. Looking eye to eye with him now, he stares at me with a face as blank as the universe before the big bang, and says only, “Frank.” I step back, one foot, and step back again, feel for the chair, and set myself within it. 

She stares at me from a picture on his desk. She’s standing with her younger sister, Katie. Katie is in cap and gown. The camera caught the light in such a way that a chorus of thin strings of light streak across her side of the picture, as if she already inhabited heaven at the time of the photograph. Beside her picture is one of Dan…poor Dan. What will we tell him? How the hell do you tell a three year old that his mother is dead? He smiles with that same big, guy smiley smile as in all his pictures. 

There’s talk in the room, between Rob and Sarah and Shrewster and Cook, but it’s all muffled and distant, like it's coming from another room. He’s so happy-go-lucky, always happy, always smiling. How can something so horrific happen to a child so precious. What will I tell him? Tell him? Tell him… A million questions instantly fly into my mind: what will we tell him, how will it affect him, why were the detectives asking me where I was last night? They think I murdered her? How could they think I murdered her? Does Sarah think I did? Does Rob? What the fuck is going to happen to my life? My body convulses and drops to the floor. White. Voices fade. And out of the fading nothingness:

“Frank.”

It echoes. “Frank.” It’s familiar, not a cop, not an in-law. More clearly now: “Frankie boy, hey, deep breathe Frank. You’re alright.” How’d she get here? What the fuck? Who called my mom? We aren’t exactly on speaking terms. She puts a cool cloth on my head. As the coolness seeps into me the room comes back. 

“Here, sit up Frankie boy.” 

I lean against the wall, and tears begin to seep from my eyes. My hands are numb. She holds my hand but I can’t feel it. Again I think, “It’s not real. This is too fucking horrific. This is a dream, a fucking nightmare.” I squeeze my eyes close tight and reopen them. I’m still here. The cops are still hovering over, whispering to themselves. Rob is still holding Sarah up in her chair. The secretary rushes in with a glass of water and spills half of it on Sarah as she passes it to Rob. These images are blurred by the increasing tears pouring from my eyes. They just come more and more; I can’t stop them.

“He needs to go to the hospital.”

Fucking Shrewster.

“Excuse me?” my mom responds.

“He needs to go to the hospital. He’s not stable, he’s not safe.”

“Excuse me, I’m a nurse, not a cop, don’t tell me what he is or isn’t” She’s known to be pretty ballsy when it comes to defending her children. “Yes, he’s not stable, but he’s not a danger to himself or anyone else.”

“Deborah,” Rob interjects.

“Nobody knows your son better than you. But this is a unique situation… and we just want to make sure everybody’s gonna be ok. We don’t need any more… just get the doc’s “good to go” and take him home.” Spoken like a true lawyer. “Better safe than sorry, right Deb?”

I’m sitting on the steps of the office building. I don’t know how I got here. My mom sits next to me, as I fumble for a cigarette. The cops hover. By the time I get a cigarette out and find my lighter, and get the damn thing lit, the ambulance pulls up. You get shot in the head; they take an hour to show up. You try to smoke a cigarette before the ride to the psych eval. and they show up in two minutes. The ride’s bumpy, the paramedics are ambivalent to my presence, and I can see my mom following closely behind in her car. By the time they get me out of the ambulance and in the E.R., she’s already waiting for me. 

They walk me right past the dozens of people that have been waiting for hours, and lead me down a hallway. The room they put me in isn’t like most E.R. check up rooms. It’s empty. Except for a bed and by bed I mean metal slab attached to the wall with a two inch mattress lying on top of it. A small plastic chair sits alone in the corner and an “emergency call” button stares at me from the opposite wall. 

“Emergency? Yea I got a fucking emergency for ya. My fucking wife’s dead. You got a button for that?

The mattress is so thin I wonder why they even have it on the metal slab. A few years later I’ll find out just how uncomfortable it is to have to sit on a slab like that for more than just a few minutes. A child in a white coat walks in and introduces himself as Dr. Greg. Does he have a first name for a last name? Or is he just trying to be friendly? Doctor Greg begins asking me a series of questions relating to my mental stability, while I wonder when GBMC decided to start letting kids play doctor in their hospital. I tell him, “I want to go home.”

“Yeaa, right so we’re gonna need you to put this gown on, I’m gonna check on some things and I’ll be back in a jiff. K?”

Before I can answer, he’s twirled around and vanished from the room.

“Come on Frank,” my mom encourages, “the sooner we do what they need us to do the sooner we can go home.”

I change into the gown quickly, trying not to let her see how much weight I’ve lost. It's pointless because even with the gown on the thin cloth drapes over my protruding bones. I know she notices, but she says nothing. She knows I’m at a breaking point. After four months, Dougie Howser returns and immediately begins rambling about the tests they're gonna do, and the blood they need to draw. I begin to snap. 

“Hey!”

Silent room.

“Mr. Mel-“

“Fuckin call me Mr. Mello, I dare you. The problem aint in my blood. It aint in my bones, my balls, or anywhere else in my body. The problem is in the morgue. And there aint shit you can do to get her out of there.”

“Frank,” my mom says softly.

“I’m going home. Give me my clothes. I’m going home.”

“Sir yes the problem isn’t physical health, it’s mental health, obviously, considering your little performance here.”

“What?!”

“Yea you’re not going anywhere.”

“My fucking problem right now is you.”

“You definitely portray the picture of mental health right now.”

My whole body trembles and shakes. Every inch of me wants to reach out and crunch his skull between my hands. I pause.

“…”

“I hope that someday when you get married, I  hope and pray that your wife dies. And your children die too. Get me my fucking clothes or I’ll walk outta here like this.”

To be continued ...