“Slow Leak,” by Katherine Rooks (Fiction ’16)

Katherine Rooks, a 2016 fiction graduate, was recently featured in the Portland Review. Read an excerpt of “Slow Leak” below:

Slow Leak

For the past thirteen days I’ve been sleeping in the canoe hanging in our garage. The canoe is aluminum and wider than it is high, but still a canoe: a raised middle seam, two plank seats, and bars bracing the center. It’s suspended from the ceiling by pulleys, tied off so it dangles about a foot above the cracked cement floor. Our house is only seventeen years old, but it was constructed from shabby materials and so the floor’s cracked prematurely. I’ve confined myself out here to keep from contaminating my children with my sadness, indecision, existential crisis—whatnot.

It’s a harebrained idea, but literally, it’s all I’ve got. At least that’s the case I made to my family for why I’m out here in the garage when our perfectly good house is just steps away. My shrink said that if you can get a person through the first ninety days following a suicide attempt, it’s statistically remote that they’ll try again. 

Of course, our insurance only covered three days of inpatient care, which is why I’m out here on my own recognizance with seventy-four days still to go. 

Eating is one of the many logistical problems this arrangement causes. I don’t want to come inside and put myself back at the table and so my kids have been taking turns bringing me food. Earlier tonight, Zack, my oldest, came out with a glass of milk, gingersnaps he’d baked himself, and his headlamp from camp so I could see what I’m doing out here. Zack’s like that, quiet, so I think he’s zoned out but then he’ll do something unexpected and I’ll see that he’s been paying rapt attention. 

“Are you trying to get me fat?” I said, reaching for the cookies. “Dad help?”

“Made’m myself,” he beamed. He’s always been a good cook. When the boys were little I used to joke that we baked for sport. 

We used to do a lot of things for sport, David and I, before the kids, before the routine of being full-time working parents, mortgage holders, and weekend lawn mowers. Our neighbors, Dahlia and Steve, still come and go with exhausting regularity. Dahlia’s always exhorting us to get out there and keep exploring new things, but we just barely seem to make it to work, school, the grocery store, and home again. David says, “It’s enough.” 

It is enough: two kids, a home, friends, family—it’s everything I thought I wanted—but I didn’t think a life so full would feel so small, so pointless in the larger scheme of things. What’s worse is that David thinks everything is great—fine, at least. “But you’re the assistant manager now,” he said the last time I brought this up, roughly four weeks ago. 

If you’re looking for a cause—I am—his actions and words don’t seem like enough to have pushed me over the edge. 

My fear, and it appears justified, was that there was no one BIG thing. It’s not that I’m suppressing some major psychological issue that caused me to— 

Okay, let’s talk about that for a minute. I mean, yes, I slit my wrists, but—c’mon, I picked the least promising way possible to kill myself. I know the statistics on efficacy. “If I really wanted to kill myself I would have put a shotgun to my head,” I told my doctor. “That’s ninety-nine percent effective.” The way I chose only works roughly six percent of the time. 

Obviously, I didn’t mean it. 

I have always wondered what would push a person right over the edge. 

Read this piece in its entirety here: http://portlandreview.org/slow-leak/