ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife

Book One, Part Two, Chapter 30: Deadly Thoughts

It’s Good Friday on the religious calendar. I feel so low, so miserable, that I write a note to Joshua.

My hurt is so deep that I can’t go on. I don’t want to go on. I don’t know how to go on. So I’ll stop it all. Please, you go on. You won’t stop. I wish I had the courage to stay with you, but I don’t. Not now. Not after what I did to your daddy, not loving him enough or well enough. I so hate myself that I must destroy myself. It’s the only way out of my pain.

This evening, I visit Bella in her indigo blue living-room cocoon.

“I wrote a suicide note today,” I tell her. “That’s a first.”

“What’s the worst thing that can happen to Joshua?” she asks matter-of-factly.

“I know. He’s lost his daddy. He probably doesn’t need to lose his mama. He’d much rather have lost his mama than his daddy, though.”

“Joshua didn’t have a choice in the matter. He’s left with you.”

I talk more. I cry. I cry in front of Bella, but she’s bored with this talk. She’s heard it all before. Sainted, misunderstood, unrecognized, deprived little boy Ernie. Lost and stupid little girl Ernestina. The bad doctor. Sitting in her sofa in front of a pair of tall windows, she bends over to nuzzle Tweed, one of her two Maine Coons. A glint of light catches her eye. She looks up and out. “A full moon,” she says.

I look out, too. He’s up there, my Russian man in the moon. He’s watching me. Ernie’s watching me. He has his eye on me. Is he watching over me?