LUKE WARM WATER

“I’m leaving for the day,” Robert shouted into the depths of a big hollowed-out tree.

Robert and his wife, Vanessa, were doing very well for themselves. These were hard times for squirrels. Some squirrels were sharing a tree with two to three other families. But not Robert and Vanessa. No, it was just the two of them in a big redwood near a large park. That’s right; they were doing so well; they were living park side.

“Don’t forget to pick up an extra acorn! Donny and Faye are coming for dinner!” Vanessa shouted back. And with that, Robert was off to work.

Vanessa’s heart always sank a little after she heard her husband scurry down the giant redwood. She no longer had a job, and their babies were full-grown and long gone. The ones she kept and didn’t eat, that is. So, most afternoons, Vanessa would be left to entertain herself. She never got into any trouble. No, she mostly would learn new recipes or tidy up. She was famous in their small community for making the best banana nut bread this side of the pond. Her secret, well, were the fresh nuts she and Robert would bring home from their evening walks, of course. Those and a few chocolate chips.

The old tree, although large and spacious, was also quite drafty. Leaves and bugs would find their way inside, so Vanessa spent most afternoons chasing them both out onto the ground below. Neither of which gave her much trouble.

However, isolation was not Vanessa’s friend. No, lately, Vanessa had felt as if the hole she and Robert had scurried themselves into years ago had begun to close up. She had mentioned this to Robert, but he blamed it on the weather changing and went back to reading his Sunday morning newspaper.

Vanessa didn’t know what she was feeling exactly, but she knew it had to do with much more than just the seasons changing. She not only felt different, but she began behaving oddly as well.

Vanessa had begun a new habit of crawling back into bed after her husband left for work. Sure, she could be hiding a lot worse things from her husband than sleep, but for some reason, she didn’t feel like she could tell Robert. He worked so hard, and he did so much for their family. He would surely judge her. Maybe even leave her for a younger, more active squirrel.

But that wasn’t all that she was hiding.

Some mornings she would have ice cream for breakfast. Some mornings she wouldn’t eat at all. Some mornings she would get up early and go for a run but then crawl back into bed until dinner time. Some mornings she would fake like she was sick to get out of visiting with friends or family. She would blame things like the lack of sleep or the weather, as Robert suggested, but secretly, she felt fine and was well-rested. Hell, all she did was rest.

Robert was a good husband. He never questioned her. He would just kiss her on her forehead and tell her to feel better before trudging out to take on their social chores.

She didn’t want to lose that. She didn’t want to lose him. She knew she was selfish, but she had made peace with that.

One afternoon, she thought, “What would I do without Robert?” Then a more dangerous idea came about, “What would Robert do without me?”

She stood naked in front of the mirror a few days later, examining the areas she was unhappy with and ignoring the ones she liked. “Who would want this? Who would find this attractive?” She grumbled aloud to herself as she grabbed a handful of fat and fur.

“If I could just lose three ounces, then I’d be happy,” she convinced herself.

She started a diet that week, and in six weeks, she did it. She lost those three ounces. She was strutting around the old redwood home with her tail trimmed and her hair done like Robert liked. Vanessa had a slight curl in the front. Robert loved that curl. Rumor had it, Vanessa had a hint of skunk in her family, so sometimes the hair on her head would have a tiny curl to it when it got wet. When she was younger, it would drive all the male squirrels crazy. It kept Robert on his toes, that’s for sure. Truth be told, that tiny curl is probably a big part of why Robert asked her to marry him so early on in their lives.

On average, squirrels live to be around seven years old. There is some folklore about a squirrel in Michigan near the Great Lakes, who lived to be eleven, but nobody could ever confirm it. Most everyone believes that he had been stuffed, and some squirrels saw him on a shelf in a bar and had mistaken him as being alive.

Still, seven years was the average, and Robert and Vanessa have been married for almost four years. That’s over half their lives.

Vanessa paraded around the redwood for a couple of weeks in her new trim frame, but then the sadness creeped in again. She didn’t know if it was the isolation or what, but she found herself in front of the mirror once more. This time, the problem area was that tiny curl in her hair. She had begun to hate it. She felt like the very thing that made her stand out was the same thing that defined her, and she did not want to be defined by a tiny string of curly hair. No, she had a lot more to offer the world than that.

So one rainy afternoon in April, she cut it off.

“There,” she thought to herself, “that should change things. Now people will like me for me. Not that stupid curl.”

Robert came home that evening and held in tears of sadness as he told Vanessa how beautiful she looked. Then he went on and on about how he actually preferred her hair better that way. But on the inside, Robert was heartbroken. He was confused about why she had done it, but he kept his questions to himself like he thought a good husband should. All of the questions except for one, “So, is this a permanent thing?” Robert asked in a worrisome tone.

Robert slept on the sofa that night, but that was okay. He kind of liked sleeping on the sofa. Those troubled nights were the only chance he got to catch up on the television programs that Vanessa hated.

The next day, Robert left for work, but his words lingered in Vanessa’s mind.

“Is this a permanent thing?” She repeated to herself.

Vanessa sat in front of a large vanity mirror in their bedroom, asking herself that same question over and over again… “Is this a permanent thing?” She murmured aloud to no one.

Not the haircut necessarily, but the feeling of being inadequate.

Vanessa was a good mother and, when she was younger, a strong and valuable worker. She put herself through Squirrel School with just the tips she made from working in a small forest diner. It wasn’t the best job, but it was work. Hard work some nights. That’s actually where she met her sweet and sometimes misspoken husband, Robert.

He would come in for coffee in the morning before his shift would start. He was young, and it was his first job as well. He was driving for a well-known taxi service in town, “The Tortoise and the Fare”.

He ordered the same thing every time: hazelnut coffee, four sugars. Robert called it the “Working Squirrel’s Speedball”. Vanessa called it a “Wrecking Ball” one time, and it made him laugh. He liked her right away; she was funny. Plus, she had that tiny curl in the front of her hair.

Before their babies were born, they would go on weekend trips to exotic places where the food was prepared, but their passion wasn’t. Vanessa was quite a spitfire when she was in her youth, and Robert filled his cheeks with it. They were spontaneous, wild even.

Once, on holiday, a park ranger found the lustful young couple getting frisky inside an overgrown oak fern near the entrance sign to a hiking trail. They escaped, but the park ranger’s net scratched across Robert’s leg as they fled. During conversations at parties, they would tell other couples that the scar on Robert’s leg was from a boating trip. They would giggle to themselves and briefly reminisce about that afternoon of ecstasy.

But those days of passion were over, and their spontaneity had dwindled after raising their babies. Now, they’d be lucky if either one of them received a peck on the cheek before bed. Every day felt like the same day as if she was stuck inside the movie Groundhog Day, and Vanessa was no groundhog.

Vanessa went to see the Owl one morning, and they talked about her new habits. The old wise Owl gave her a handful of pills to take each day with breakfast. He assured her that a pill a day would keep those negative thoughts away.

Vanessa didn’t believe him. Plus, she kind of likes her negative thoughts. She couldn’t explain it. It almost felt like Stockholm Syndrome.

Depression is a tricky little virus. It’s subtle yet overwhelming. It is invisible to your eyes but so loud inside your mind. It’s somehow able to set off all of your alarm bells and still rob you.

Vanessa felt so numb that she ached to feel anything at all, which made the bad stuff feel good.

A week later, Vanessa found herself lying in the bathtub. She had decided to take a midday soak. She read in one of her self-help books that this sort of thing would help.

But this particular afternoon, it just wasn’t working.

No, instead, she laid in the hot bath, wondering what would happen if she just held her head under the water long enough to escape this never-ending math equation we all refer to as “Life”.

What would Robert do if he came home to find his sweet bride floating in the tub? The same bathtub where she gave birth to their two beautiful babies and the three ugly ones they ate. The same bathtub they made love in after their wedding. The same bathtub where they washed their clothes by hand when they first moved into that large redwood tree because they were too poor to own a washer and dryer.

Vanessa had thoughts like these before. Once when she was sweeping, she peered out their front door and wondered what it would be like to feel the wind press against her fur one last time as she fell to the hardened earth’s surface. She stopped herself that afternoon because she was a mother to a newborn baby, but not now.

This afternoon, nothing was stopping her. Nothing but the thought of Robert coming home to a bathtub full of cold water and an even colder body floating in it.

When did she become so morbid? Maybe this is who she was her entire life. Maybe she was born this way, or perhaps this darkness crept up inside her over time. Vanessa didn’t have those answers.

She laid in the lukewarm water a few more moments before dunking her head underneath.

“My babies will understand.” She thought as she began to hold her breath. They might not get it now, but when they get older and realize just how hard life is, surely they will understand it then.

Nobody lives forever, right?

Plus, this way, Vanessa got to choose when to die. Not everybody gets that choice. Hardly anyone does. In those brief underwater moments, she thought of herself not as suicidal but more as a pioneer of death. She thought of herself as, “The Decider”. She wasn’t going to let life dictate her story. No, she was going to re-write her ending.

A wave of relief washed over her along with the bathwater, and Vanessa had peace of mind for once in her life. Everything was silent under the water. No one could tell her how fat she was because she was weightless. No one would ask how she felt because she felt nothing. The best part of it all, no one would be able to ask her what happened to her beautiful curl and why she cut it off because she would be dead.

A painless solution to life’s biggest question: Why are we here?

Are we here for the amusement of others? Are we here to be servants to the workforce? Are we here to follow some word of a god that none of us have ever seen?

Well, none of that mattered now. Those questions were not for Vanessa to answer. Not anymore. She felt free of that pesky never-ending quest. She had reached her destination, and she was finally happy.

“Wait, this isn’t fair,” she thought. But fair to who? Or whom? She was an educated squirrel, after all.

She felt selfish, leaving Robert behind, but it didn’t make sense for her to stick around because of some male squirrel she met at a diner years ago, or, even worse, because of some partnership she agreed upon when the two of them were much younger and happier?

“Animals get divorced all the time,” she thought to herself.

Robert was lucky they weren’t spiders. If they were, she would bite her husband’s head clean off and move on. Or worse, they could be ducks. They are even more barbaric than the spiders.

But this wasn’t divorce. She never even had a conversation with Robert.

As Vanessa was debating her decision, her body naturally started to rise out of the water. She had nothing holding her down after all. Nothing, that is, but the guilt of leaving Robert behind.

She began to panic a little. She had already committed to the idea of dying; she couldn’t back out now. But Vanessa couldn’t fight gravity any longer, and her head shot up out of the lukewarm water as she instinctively began to gasp for air and life.

She felt like a failure.

A coward.

A fraud.

Vanessa scanned the room for something heavy to hold onto so she could stay underwater longer. She was not ready to give up on giving up quite yet.

She locked eyes on a thick book that was laying on the nightstand in their bedroom. Vanessa quickly jumped out of the bath and jolted across the room, dripping water onto the old floors in the big redwood home.

She snatched the heavy book from the top of the nightstand and started to scurry back to the bathtub when she looked down at the book.

“Oh, the irony,” Vanessa thought to herself. The book she grabbed was the Bible. The one book that was supposed to hold all the instructions on how to live a meaningful and well-managed life is the same one Vanessa was going to use to drown herself in her mismanaged emotions and self-hatred. She laughed a little at the thought of someone finding her floating corpse that would be clutching that sacred book.

What would they think? Maybe she had a mid-day read and fell asleep? That was fine with her. Vanessa didn’t care much for whatever happens after leaving this life just as long as she wouldn’t have to be there to answer any more questions.

Besides, she wasn’t much of a religious person anyway, and anyone who knew her knew that. Her close friends would probably have a good laugh at the situation, much like Vanessa was having now.

The truth of the matter was this: It was the most substantial book in their old redwood home. Well, besides the dictionary, but that was in Robert’s upstairs office, and she wasn’t about to fetch that now.

Vanessa let out a frustrated huff as she sat the Holy Book back down on the nightstand. Then she reluctantly picked up the dense mahogany framed photo sitting next to it. The frame felt like it weighed as much as she did. Plus, it was a gift from Robert’s parents. They had gone on a holiday a few years ago to the southern Amazonia in Brazil, and it was all they talked about for three Christmases.

Inside the frame was one of Vanessa’s favorite photographs. It was taken by a cousin who had died in a terrible lawnmower accident a few years ago. The photo was on their wedding day. It was raining the day they got married, so in the photograph, Vanessa and Robert each had one hand bracing a piece of large maple leaf over their heads as they locked eyes and lips in front of a small gathering of their closest friends and family.

“How perfect,” Vanessa thought. The weight of marriage and the pressure of being a perfect wife to the only baby that Robert’s parents didn’t eat would be the thing that would hold her down until she died.

Vanessa laid back down in the lukewarm water once more. She placed the thick mahogany frame firmly on her chest, crossed her arms over the top, and dipped her head down into the water. As air bubbles started to leak slowly out of the corners of Vanessa’s mouth, there was just one question left to ask…

“What will Robert do without me?”