Ennui

I don’t want anyone to know that the real reason that I’m sitting alone at my cluttered desk at 3:47 on a Tuesday afternoon, contemplating suicide, is because I am bored. Boredom, although I’m sure it has killed lots of people, is simply not an acceptable motive for suicide. Unfortunately, pistol loaded and pen in hand, I cannot think of anything more exciting to write.

My wastebasket is littered with crumpled pieces of stationary that I borrowed from work on Monday. The letterhead is mocking me, and even in my most inspired moments of desolate prose, my suicide note reads like a pre-pubescent attempt at melodrama. My boredom leaks through my pen and onto the shallow lines.

If it can be judged from my utter failure to compose a suitable farewell to my family and friends, my life will be posthumously remembered as tedious. I have always been a diligent student, and a loyal employee, and a faithful husband, but after roughly 36 years of existence, I’ve come to the conclusion that diligence, loyalty, and faithfulness hardly amount to success.

My inexhaustible dedication to academia during my undergraduate studies merited me a grant for graduate work in New York City’s supposedly flourishing magazine industry. I had earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism at a respectable yet relatively unheard of college in rural Ohio, and my Director of Studies himself shook my hand and patted my back in a paternalistic way, congratulating me on my “superior placement.” Dr. Briggs will never know that the internship and later the full time position that I soon landed with Ornithology Monthly had nothing to do with my magazine publishing prowess nor my particular interest in birds. Taking note of my impeccable grades in university level Latin, my boss had simply hired me as a copy editor as a solution to certain loyal readers’ irate responses to the repeated misspellings of scientific names.

But even my unquestioning devotion to my bat-brained boss at the magazine could not grant me job security, nor could it save me from the inevitable embarrassment of having to list “Ornithology Monthly, copy editor, 1996-1999” under “Work Experience” on my resume. When the magazine went out of business three years after I started working there, I conceded to take a temporary position as a mail carrier in a nearby New Jersey suburb at the suggestion of my then fiancée, Amy. The former postmaster of said town had perished suddenly when the mail truck slid off the road on an icy day in a desperate attempt to faithfully deliver the daily mail to summit of the town’s single hill. The town council, comprised mostly of the city across the harbor’s failed politicians and seasoned veterans of local affairs, voted overwhelmingly to return to the quaint tradition of delivering mail on foot in order to preserve the lives of its mail carriers. The ordinance has not been overruled since I accepted the job eleven years ago, and each day, I walk with my mailbag to the top of the very same hill that killed my unfortunate predecessor.

It would be unjust to blame the hill itself for my current state of affairs, although as I again toss crumpled US Post Office stationary into the corner, I can’t think of anything better to write. I want to detail the absurd tedium of dragging a full mailbag to the summit of this goddamn city on a hill, only to see my efforts tumble to the valley below each evening, where the next day’s gossip and news and letters collect in piles, waiting for my delivery.

This morning I did not go to work for the first time in six years. The last time I missed unannounced was in 2004 when I had to rush Amy to emergency room, as she was suffering the miscarriage of our daughter that was never born. We have not tried to have children since. I cannot blame missing work on a son having the flu, or a daughter’s field trip to the Metropolitan art museum, or a niece’s theatrical production of Little Women. This morning, I just wanted to sit at home and eat buttery popcorn for breakfast (Amy hates when I do that—she swears I always leave oily fingerprints on the freshly cleaned counter) and watch Paul Newman dig holes and then refill them in Cool Hand Luke.

Before leaving early this morning for work, Amy, in her infinite kindness, cut out today’s Charlie Brown cartoon and left it by my orange juice, like she does every morning. She says that she sees a bit of my faithfulness and dedication in the personage of Charlie, and always reminds me “Hey, you got your little red-headed girl,” and then blushes, her cheeks matching her rosy hair. Today, Lucy again dupes Charlie Brown, and for the umpteenth time, he flings ungracefully into the air and lands heavily on his back with an exasperated sigh. It pains me to know that I must have left buttery fingerprints on the thin paper when I replaced yesterday’s strip in its privileged place on our refrigerator. I’m sure Amy will find them and lament my choice of a last meal.

I’m sorry for eating popcorn for breakfast, I begin to write, then pause, scratch my temple with the barrel of the pistol that I have been playing with in my left hand, and decide it might be best to finish this ordeal without leaving a note. I collect the crumpled stationary that missed the wastebasket, then take out the trash, and return to my desk chair.

The phone rings.

It must be Mr. Walton, at the Post Office, calling to reprimand me for my absence.

“Hello?”

Amy is on the other line, asking if I’m sick. Too timid to call my home phone and confront the possibility that I simply stayed home from work without an excuse, Mr. Walton had instead called my wife’s cell phone, figuring that something must be wrong. I assure her otherwise, and when she hangs up she tells me that she loves me.

I am now ready. My desk is tidy. But as I clasp the pistol, a horrific thought paralyses my trigger finger. In my mind is a pathetic image of Amy with her little stainless steel box of cleaning tools, scrubbing away at the office carpet with a toothbrush to get the congealed blood from the beige fibers. I decide to move to the bathroom, which Amy had specifically lined with easy-to-clean tile, hoping that one day a daughter would spill nail polish on the floor or drip hair dye in the sink.

I sit on the toilet with the lid down, but am uneasy with my reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall. I do not look like a man about to commit suicide. My cheeks are slightly flushed and my tawny hair has retained its characteristic sideways puff from being exposed to eleven years of windy walks. I notice for the first time that the skin under my eyes has become slightly leathery and brazen from staring endlessly into the sun as I ascend the hill day after day.

I remember the argument that Amy and I had when we first decided to move to New Jersey. It had been her idea. She hates subways and pigeons and taxis and the smell of steam emitting from manholes in the sidewalk, and for her, a move across the harbor was perfectly logical. What she loves most about New York City is its skyline in the sunset, blazing in golden hues as the sun dips beneath the horizon. From our small but Western facing front lawn, she can stand and watch nature perfecting the art of alchemy each evening.

At the time I disagreed. I was instead looking down at the harbor, and the roof of the post office in the valley, and the winding roads that snake up the side of the hill, knowing that I would have to walk up them, but never imagining that I would do so daily for eleven years of my relatively short life. It was a frigid New Jersey February evening when Amy and I climbed to the summit of the hill for the first time. She pointed with a slender finger to the distant skyline on the glowing horizon, but I was too busy looking at the freezing ice creeping across the harbor like stretch marks on a pale liquid belly. I suppose I haven’t looked up since.

From the living room the clock reminds me of the advancing hour. Amy will be returning soon and it is too late to do anything now. I will have to go out and buy a fresh newspaper, and erase the evidence of my morning’s misdemeanor. Tomorrow I will return to work, and I will drag my mailbag like a boulder that I have been condemned to push daily to the summit of my hill before it tumbles endlessly back to its base. I’m not sure what forever feels like, but at least in this tedious mortality I am daily the champion of my hopeless hill, and standing at its apex, New York City stretches out below my feet.