Read I Loved You Wednesday Online
Authors: David Marlow
I Loved You Wednesday
I LOVED YOU WEDNESDAY
A NOVEL BY
David Marlow
iUniverse.com, Inc.
San Jose New York Lincoln Shanghai
I Loved You Wednesday
All Rights Reserved © 1974, 2000 by David Marlow
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted inany form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
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Originally published by Putnam
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 0-595-12930-7
ISBN: 978-1-4502-4731-3 (ebook)
Contents
This is for you, Grace
And if I loved you Wednesday,
Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday—
So much is true.
—
EDNA
ST
.
VINCENT
MILLAY
“
THURSDAY
”
If you really want to get depressed, read on.
I suppose if anyone’s equipped to tell you about doldrums, it must be me. As it turns out, I’ve become practically an expert on the subject.
But no matter.
For the true hands-down champ of depression must be my friend Chris who sinks even lower than me. So much so that I, by comparison, seem euphoric. And since this is her story, you may as well know right from the beginning that Chris once got so depressed she tried committing suicide in my apartment while I was away.
It happened last January, almost a year ago.
I was home packing, getting ready to be picked up by a friend to drive to Stowe for a long anticipated week of skiing. I was going, right after that, into a Broadway comedy called
Mrs. Bartlett Is Engaged
, in which I’d gotten a small part. Since the show was to be in rehearsal six weeks before the tryout in Boston, this was my last chance to get away.
Chris, meanwhile, had been living with a self-centered fashion model named Hank for six months, and they’d just broken up. Which was kind of too bad, I remember thinking; they sure looked good together walking down the street.
In fact, between the two of them, they could just about stop traffic.
Chris is quite stunning. Soft auburn hair, extraordinarily huge dark-green eyes, the most inviting smile and one knockout of a body. It all unifies, not as cold “actress” beauty, but rather with the priceless added gift of radiated warmth and instantly obvious vulnerability as well.
When nature goes out of its way to be kind, everything works.
And it certainly worked wonders for Hank, what with his strong, brooding good looks, oceans of wavy hair and those charismatic cold steel baby blues, which made up in calculated charm and devastation what they lacked in compassion.
He was perfect bait for Chris to flip for and fall in love with.
And she was perfect bait for him to build up and destroy.
Which is exactly what he did.
Anyway, the phone rings, and it is Chris. Very upset.
She tells me she has taken an apartment but can’t move in till next Tuesday, the first of the month. And Hank, with whom she has just broken up and with whom tensions are riding high, says it’s okay if she stays with him in his apartment until then, “as long as you don’t get in the way.”
Since my apartment will be vacant for the week, I suggest Chris tell Hank to stick his greater-than-thou airs and move into my place until hers is available. All she has to do is water my plants and tend to my two English bulldogs, Harry and Ruth.
To which she agrees.
So.
I am soon on my way to Vermont with great visions of skiing my buns off in a foot of new powder. Chris moves all her luggage into my place, including her usual arsenal of pills.
She unpacks.
She changes into jeans.
She feeds the dogs.
She cooks herself a frozen Stouffer’s spinach soufflé and then decides not to eat it.
She does her tarot cards, which speak of new beginnings, and is immediately overwhelmed by fear, frustration andanxiety. Her first instinct, like a man watching himself drowning, is to call someone.
But whom?
I’m en route. Which eliminates me.
Her mother, in Seattle, where it is three hours earlier, is out shopping and doesn’t answer her call. Which is just as well. They’re rarely in touch anyway.
Which leaves Hank.
Who happens to be home when she calls.
Which is too bad.
Hank tells Chris he’s sorry if she’s low, but each of them has his own life to live now, so let’s not keep any scenes lingering on. “That would be in bad taste.” He apologizes for not being able to speak with her any longer, but the guys are over, playing poker, you know. Maybe he’ll run into her on a commercial call or something, huh?
They hang up, and Chris decides she no longer cares to go on with this thing called life. And in the total sweeping commitment of that particular moment, there is no alternative to be weighed.
She swallows a nearly full bottle of Valium, a bunch of ups, a couple downs, and then washes the whole goo down with half a fifth of my gin. The whole mixture is so volatile, in fact, it causes her to throw up almost before ingestion begins. And as weariness and exhaustion begin to settle in, the thought of giving back her cookies as she fades so disturbs her image of an idyllic death scene she throws herself into reverse and decides to be saved.
Dialing the emergency police number, 911, she waits a good thirteen rings before they answer.
By the time they finally do say hello, all she can summon is the strength to say she is dying, gives my address and then hangs up.
Since she has neglected to mention she is ODing and not being murdered, all the Emergency Squad knows is that someone is dying over at my place. So they send out an all-points notice until four screeching police cars, their sirens blaring asunder the quiet, cold night, arrive downstairs, breaking to sudden halts.
No time for ringing the bell. The emergency men break down my door, get to Chris, cart her out on a stretcher and bring her to the hospital, where her stomach is pumped and her life saved within something like ten minutes.
At about the same time, I’ve just ended a long six-hour trip to Vermont. I arrive, exchange hellos with my friends, Maggie and Douglas, and begin to unwind and settle down when the phone rings.
And it is Marie, my downstairs neighbor, calling to say that whoever was staying in my apartment was just carted off on a stretcher, unconscious, and what do I know about it?
What do I know about it?
Marie tells me the name of the hospital to which my houseguest was taken, and I thank her, hang up, call the hospital and speak to some conscientious nurse, who systematically fills me in as to how many centimeters they’ve pumped out of Chris so far. I inform Florence Nightingale I’ll be leaving for New York at once.
Both Douglas and Maggie drive me to the airport at Burlington, where I catch the last flight leaving at nine forty-five.
An hour later I grab a taxi from LaGuardia and go straight to St. Vincent’s Hospital, which is a good place to visit your best friend if you really feel like having a good cry.
Bureaucracy reigns supreme here, and it takes me half an hour just to find out where she is. Finally, I’m sent to the intensive care unit and Chris’ room.
A nurse leads me in to see her: “Only for a moment or so; she’s still asleep.” And there lies my baby, snoring like one of my bulldogs. Tubes everywhere: up her nose, in her arms, a catheter draining her wastes.
Not a pretty sight.
I’ve been running without stopping for nine hours and suddenly realize I shouldn’t be handling this horror alone. I ought to share the experience with Hank, who has obviously put her here in the first place. So I call, interrupting his poker game, and tell him what has happened.