Attention. Deficit. Disorder.

6

I went to the funeral alone and sat in a back pew, terrified that someone I knew was going to see me. It was miserable being there. I wanted to disappear.

There was no coffin, just a table full of framed pictures of Amanda and some potted plants and some baskets of flowers. The church was packed. A capacity crowd. A fat man was playing a piano. A skinny woman was singing “Ave Maria.” Amanda’s parents were up ahead in the front row, leaning against each other, defeated.

“Ave Maria” ended, and the priest stepped up to the microphone. His face was red, and his hair was shockingly white. He talked about God, life, death, grief, friendship, love, and heaven. He spoke eloquently, with convincing sympathy and erudition, but I failed to find any real comfort in what he was saying.

From there, the priest called M.J. and Nancy up to the altar. M.J. and Nancy were Amanda’s best friends from college. They looked like twins. Blond, petite, and attractive. I hadn’t seen either of them in a long time. They seemed to have changed a little bit. Neither of them looked as bohemian as they used to. Both were dressed in formal attire, and each was holding one side of a prepared speech on a piece of wrinkled notebook paper. Their hands were shaking, the piece of paper was shaking. They were trying to keep it together, but keeping it together was pretty much impossible. M.J. started reading and lost it immediately. And when she lost it, everyone lost it. The whole church went with her. Everyone started sniffling and sobbing.

The woman seated next to me was kind enough to hand me a tissue. I glanced at her as I blew my nose. She was holding Tibetan prayer beads in one hand, and her hair was openly gray. She was an aging hippie, a real one, a Marin County authentic.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she whispered.

I made a snorting sound.

I glanced up at M.J. Her jaw was trembling. She was trying to read into the microphone, but it was a lost cause. She couldn’t get the words out. Nancy stepped in to help her, and together they were able to stammer through the rest of the page before stepping down. The text of the speech was hard to decipher. I was having a hard time concentrating. Didn’t have a clue what it was about. The only part of it that I caught was the part about how lucky they felt to have known Amanda. The rest of it was lost on me.

Then the priest stepped up to the microphone again, said a few final words in closing, and the ceremony ended. Sting’s “Fields of Gold” came on the church P.A. system, the recessional hymn. One of Amanda’s favorites.

As soon as that happened, I was up and out the door in a flash, one of the very first to leave. I wanted some fresh air. I wanted a cigarette. I walked out of the church and down the concrete steps and moved away, over to the left, over toward the road. I pulled a cigarette from my jacket pocket and lit up. It was overcast outside, a Bay Area winter day, cool and crisp and pleasant. The cloud cover was thinning out, and the sun was trying to break through. Cars were going by, and a light wind was blowing through the trees. There was nothing too unusual about it.

7

Fortunately, there was no burial, just a reception back at Amanda’s parents’ house. Amanda’s remains had already been cremated. No corpse with makeup, no lowering of the coffin into the muddy brown hole. I was thankful for that. The worst of it was over.

At some point along the way, I’d decided not to go to the reception. I’d convinced myself that there was no need to go to the reception. I knew it would be polite to stop in and offer my condolences to Amanda’s family, but I didn’t think I could deal with seeing her parents, didn’t think I could deal with offering my sympathies at a reception. I was sure her parents knew all about me, sure they knew about the breakup, my behavior, the fact that I’d broken Amanda’s heart. I figured I’d write them a letter later and skip the reception altogether. I didn’t have what it took to attend. Too much intensity, too much sadness, too many people, too much conversation. Everyone standing around, drinking wine, eating finger food, talking in hushed tones about how great Amanda was, how she would want her funeral to be a celebration rather than a dismal affair, how much life she had inside her, how much joy, how much light. Instead of navigating that madness, I was planning to simply drive back over to Horvak’s place. I’d assume my position on the couch and watch television, and maybe later, if I actually got hungry, I’d order some food for delivery. And maybe I’d have a beer or two. And eventually, with luck, I’d drift off to sleep.

In the morning, I would rise and drive back to SFO, where I’d return my rental car and catch my flight to New Orleans. I’d rendezvous with my family in the Deep South to celebrate the holidays, and my life, unlike Amanda’s, would continue on.

8

I was standing around smoking in the church parking lot when I noticed Alan Wells walking toward me. Wells was another friend from college, born and raised in Berkeley. He was a big, bearish guy with lamb-chop sideburns and a head full of curly blond hair. He wore silver hoop earrings in both ears and had known Amanda for years. I’d first met him in Boulder, three years earlier, shortly after I started dating her. I always got the feeling that he didn’t like me very much.

He walked right up to me, half smiling, and extended a hand. I shook it and we man-hugged, slapping each other on the back. We talked for a while, trying to sum up Amanda’s death. It was a strained conversation. Nothing much was said. Suicide seems to leave you strained, with nothing much to say.

“She was the greatest,” he said.

“She was,” I said.

“I’m still in shock,” he said.

“I feel remarkably dumb,” I said.

Wells then asked me how I was getting to the reception. In a moment of reflex, I told him I was driving. I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I didn’t want to go. He asked me if I was alone. I told him I was. He offered to ride along with me, and I told him that would be great. I had no idea how to get to Amanda’s house. For some reason, I couldn’t remember the way.

Wells then excused himself momentarily and walked over to his father and stepmother, who were standing near the doors of the church, to let them know he was going to catch a ride with me. His stepmother, as it turned out, was the woman who had handed me the Kleenex during M.J. and Nancy’s speech. Wells hadn’t been sitting with them during the service. He’d been up in the front, with Amanda’s closest friends. His stepmother looked over at me, gave me a pained smile, and waved. I waved slightly in response, shifted in my shoes, and averted my gaze. I took two small steps backward, dropped my cigarette butt to the ground, and stepped on it. Then I pulled a fresh one from my pocket and lit up. Then I looked up at the sky. And then I bent my arm as if to look at my watch.

I wasn’t even wearing a watch.

9

The house was nice, even nicer than I remembered it. Expensive furniture, expensive architecture, expensive art. It felt like a museum and it smelled like cinnamon. None of that really mattered, though. When push came to shove, all I could think about was the garage. I couldn’t stop thinking about Amanda tiptoeing down the stairs in the middle of the night, in her nightgown, with her note, grabbing the car keys, heading out there.

I thought about Mr. Anaciello waking early for breakfast, walking into the kitchen in his robe, reaching for the coffee, stopping, cocking his head to one side, listening. Hearing the engine running. Making a face. Wondering. Walking over to the door. Opening it. Coughing in the cloud of exhaust. Eyes burning from the fumes. Panicking. Reaching for the button, opening the garage door. Running over to his car, one hand covering his mouth and nose. Finding Amanda. Dead. Blue. Stiff as a mannequin. Heavy. Lukewarm. Gone. Screaming for his wife. Screaming for help. Screaming for someone to call an ambulance. Shaking Amanda. Trying to shake the life back into her. Screaming her name. Weeping. Pale. Carrying her back inside. Attempting CPR. Pounding on her chest. Saying something along the lines of, “Breathe, goddamnit! Breathe!”

It was pointless to think about those things. But I couldn’t stop.

There was a receiving line in the living room. Wells and I were standing in it, advancing slowly on Amanda’s parents, Jack and Nora. Nobody in line was talking. Everyone was preparing themselves, dealing with their fears, their discomforts, trying to figure out what to say. An impossible task. No words would do. There was nothing to say in a situation like that, nothing that would make them feel any better. The best you could do was say how great Amanda was and how terribly sorry you were that she was gone. In many ways, saying these two things in conjunction would only serve to heighten the sadness.

Jack Anaciello was doing the greeting. His eyes were glistening with tears. He was shaking well-wishers’ hands, whispering to them warmly, thanking them for their presence. He seemed to be holding it together somehow. He was wrinkled and tired. His eyes were bloodshot from tears.

Nora Anaciello was down for the count, laid out on the couch. She wasn’t greeting anyone at all. She was dazed, looking off in the distance at nothing in particular, holding a glass of white wine. She was barefoot and appeared to be medicated. Her high-heeled shoes were sitting side by side on the floor.

Strangely enough, when I stepped up to greet him, Jack Anaciello didn’t even recognize me. He had no idea who I was. Or else he couldn’t remember. Or else he didn’t care to. Or else he was so out of it, he couldn’t put two and two together. When I told him my name, it didn’t seem to register. But he pretended that it did.

“Ah, yes,” he said to me. “Of course. How are you, Wayne?”

And then I started talking about myself. Started rambling. Told him about Boulder. Told him about my degree. Told him about my plans for the future. I felt as though I shouldn’t be talking about the future, that it was somehow very rude to be talking about the future, but for some reason, I couldn’t stop. And somehow Jack Anaciello seemed genuinely interested. His eyes were locked on mine. He was nodding attentively. But he wasn’t all there.

When I finished, he took my right hand and clasped it between both of his, like a politician, and thanked me for coming. I told him how sorry I was once again, how wonderful Amanda was. I told him that all of the beautiful things about her were true. He thanked me. His eyes were watering. So were mine. I walked away.

I walked into the kitchen, picked up a plastic cup, and poured myself a glass of wine. Then I headed out back for another cigarette. There were at least twenty people out there already, puffing away. The deck was packed. People were standing in twos and threes, inhaling and exhaling, mumbling to one another.

I saw M.J. and Nancy standing on the lawn. Both were blowing smoke, ashing into a stagnant birdbath. M.J. looked terrible, pink and puffed up and wrung out, like she’d been weeping for weeks. She saw me and waved, left Nancy, and walked over. I raised a hand and said hello and stepped off of the deck onto the lawn. M.J. gave me a long hug and told me how happy she was to see me. I found this surprising. I didn’t really know what to say.

She asked me if I needed a place to stay, mentioning that a bunch of people were splitting rooms at the TraveLodge over on the Redwood Highway. I told her I was okay, that I was staying at Horvak’s place. She said the name rang a bell. I told her that he went to C.U. She nodded. There was a silence. I looked out across the lawn. There was a red-winged blackbird perched on the rim of the birdbath. Nancy wasn’t standing there anymore.

“This all feels unreal to me,” I said.

“I can’t believe she did it,” M.J. said.

“I don’t think anybody can.”

“I knew she had her problems, but everyone has problems. I didn’t see this. How could I not see this?”

“Nobody did.”

I took a drag of my cigarette, blew a cloud of smoke at the sky, and watched it disappear.

10

Later that afternoon, all of Amanda’s friends went over to Kathy McCormack’s house. Kathy was a friend of Amanda’s from childhood. Her family lived in a beautiful house on a wooded lot on Morning Sun Avenue in Mill Valley. Wells and I walked in together. The whole place was decked out in white Christmas lights. Everyone was drinking. Bottles and cans everywhere. Kathy greeted us, introduced herself, offered us beers. I took one, thanked her, opened it, and walked outside for another cigarette. I hadn’t stopped smoking since I left the church.

The people on the back porch appeared to be intoxicated. There was a joint going around. Laughter and coughing. It almost seemed like a party.

“Mandy would want it to be a celebration,” I heard someone say. “She wouldn’t want everyone to stand around moping. She wouldn’t want it to be sad.”

It was nearly 5:00 p.m., and already the sun was down. It was December 23. The days are short that time of year. Amanda had killed herself the day before the winter solstice. Somehow that made sense. I finished my beer, smoked two more cigarettes, and made some sporadic small talk on the deck with a guy I didn’t know, some neo-hippie from Petaluma with a mangy beard. He was wearing a fur-lined hat with earflaps.

“It’s a strange day,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Strange energy,” he said.

“Really strange,” I agreed.

“At least we got decent weather,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Amanda brought us good weather,” he said.

A few seconds later, I stuffed my cigarette butt inside an empty beer can and walked back inside.

People were starting to get outwardly drunk in the living room. The talking was getting louder and less coherent. The room was filling up with false confidence. I stood around in silence for a minute or two, feeling terribly awkward, and then I decided to leave. I had determined that it was safe to leave. I’d been biding my time, and now it was safe to leave. I could claim a long day and an early flight in the morning. I could walk out without having to lie. I’d done my duty. I’d done the right things, said the right things, gone to the right places. All things considered, everything had turned out fine.

I caught Wells in the kitchen and told him I was on my way out. I asked him if he needed a ride back to the East Bay. He told me no thanks, he was going to stick around and catch a ride later. We shook hands by the stove and shared another man-hug. He programmed my contact information into his cell phone and told me he’d call me. I wished him well and went off looking for M.J. and Nancy.

I found them upstairs in Kathy’s room. I knocked twice, lightly, and stuck my head in the door. The two of them were sitting on the bed, locked in heavy conversation. There was a bottle of red wine on the nightstand. Their eyes were red from crying, and their teeth were blue from the wine.

“Hey,” I said. “I just wanted to say good-bye.”

“Fencer,” Nancy said, slurring a little and patting the mattress. “Come sit down.”

11

I walked over and sat down on the end of the bed, and Nancy told me the story: how Amanda had missed her period in June, the summer that we were apart, the summer before I broke up with her. How she had debated about what to do. How she had decided to have the abortion. How she had decided not to tell me. How she’d freaked out, afraid it would scare me away. How she’d had the operation in the city, at a clinic near the Embarcadero. How Nancy had driven her there, was with her the entire time. How there were protesters lining the sidewalks as they went inside, picketers screaming at them, telling them that they were baby killers, murderers, how they would rot in hell for eternity on account of their sins. How it wasn’t something I should feel responsible for. How I couldn’t have known. How Amanda didn’t want me to have to deal with it, how she just wanted it to be over and done with, how she swore Nancy to absolute secrecy.

The news hit me strangely. My reaction was decidedly minimal. I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. There was a barely detectable feeling in my belly—a weakness, a twinge. But not much more.

“But with everything that’s happened,” said Nancy, “I feel like it’s important to come clean.”

“It helps things make a little more sense,” said M.J., “but it doesn’t solve anything. Not by any means.”

“Absolutely,” said Nancy. “I’m not trying to say that this is the reason she killed herself. Not at all.”

“Oh, no,” I said. The words fell out of my mouth weakly.

Nancy crawled across the bed and gave me a hug. I didn’t hug her back.

“Do her parents know?” I said.

“No,” said M.J. “I don’t think so.”

“We were just talking about whether we should tell them,” Nancy said. “I don’t know if it would be worth it. They’ve already been through so much.”

“But if it helps them find some kind of closure,” said M.J., “maybe it would be a good thing.”

“I think I’d wait on that,” I said, running a hand through my hair.

“I would obviously tell them that you had no idea,” Nancy said.

“I think we should wait on that.”

“It’s not anything we would do anytime soon,” said M.J.

Nancy sniffled, reached for her glass, took a sip of her wine.

I rose to my feet and told M.J. and Nancy that I’d really appreciate it if they didn’t say anything. I told them I needed time to think, that I’d like to be the one to make the decision about whether or not to say something, that it was my responsibility. I asked them to keep this information in confidence. They told me they would.

I took a step backward toward the door, not knowing what else to say. There was nothing else to say, really. I didn’t want to say anything more, didn’t want to debate. I didn’t want to coerce, and I didn’t want to empathize or discuss.

I just wanted to get the fuck out of there.

Moments later, I walked out of the house, climbed into my rental car, and drove south out of Marin and across the Golden Gate Bridge, back toward Horvak’s place, completely numb. Night had settled in, and the lights of the city were shining in the distance. I rolled my window down and lit up another cigarette, turned on talk radio, and looked out across the bay. The city was alive, glowing like fire beneath the clouds.

The fog was rolling in again.

12

The Golden Gate Bridge first opened to vehicular traffic at high noon on May 28, 1937. It is approximately 1.7 miles long, and its two towers are 746 feet tall. Channel clearance is approximately 220 feet, and the cables that support the suspended roadway are 36.5 inches in diameter. More people have jumped off of the Golden Gate Bridge to their deaths than any other bridge in the world. It is a magnet for the desperate, arguably the number-one suicide destination on the planet. Depressed people with dramatic flair like to go there on their last legs, ready to cross over into the next dimension.

In 1975, at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Francisco, a psychiatrist named David Rosen conducted a study of people who jumped off of the Golden Gate Bridge and accidentally survived. Here is what he discovered:

All these survivors, during and after their jumps, experienced mystical states of consciousness characterized by losing the sense of time and space and by feelings of spiritual rebirth and unity with other human beings, the entire universe, and God. As a result of their intimate encounter with death, some of them had a profound religious conversion; others described a reconfirmation of their previous religious beliefs. One of the survivors denied any suicide intent altogether. He saw the Golden Gate Bridge as “golden doors” through which he will pass from the material world into a new spiritual realm.

In olden times, suicides were viewed as contagious. People who killed themselves were often buried at crossroads in the dark of night under large piles of stones. In addition, stakes were sometimes driven through their dead hearts in an effort to prevent the sickness of their spirits from infecting the living.

Once every twenty minutes or so, somebody commits suicide in the United States of America.

Approximately once every two weeks, somebody jumps off of the Golden Gate Bridge.

The free fall takes about four seconds.

Those who jump off of the Golden Gate Bridge hit the water below at a speed of roughly seventy-five miles per hour, with a force of fifteen thousand pounds per square inch.

In 1993, a guy named Steve Page threw his three-year-old daughter, Kellie, over the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge. A few seconds later, he followed her.

In a 1993 poll conducted by the San Francisco Examiner, 54 percent of respondents said that they did not want a suicide barrier constructed on the bridge to prevent people from doing things like that. They felt it would mar the bridge. They felt it would obstruct their view. They felt it would impinge upon people’s freedoms.

gephyrophobia n.

Fear of bridges or of crossing them.