Suicide Supper Club Read online

  The Suicide Supper Club

  a novel by

  Rhett DeVane

  The Suicide Supper Club

  Copyright © 2014 Rhett DeVane

  All rights reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or person—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing.

  Cover photograph by Rhett DeVane

  Cover design by Elizabeth Babski, Babski Creative Studios

  First Edition print version: February 2014, Writers4Higher, Tallahassee, Florida, U.S.A.

  Dedication

  To the Wild Women Writers critique group, and to all of my writing buddies that spend endless hours helping me sound better on paper.

  Couldn’t live without you.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Acknowledgements

  A note from the author

  About the Author

  Recipes from the SSC Ladies

  Abby’s Easy as Apple Pie

  Choo-choo’s Grape Salad

  Loiscell’s Tomato Pie

  Sheila’s Banana Nut Muffins

  Rhett’s Writer’s Day Easy Pasta Salad

  Book Club Discussion Points

  The Suicide Supper Club

  Chapter One

  Nine weeks before suicide

  Monday

  Sheila Bruner scattered scouring powder liberally around the kitchen faucet and attacked it with a used toothbrush. Mold—the enemy. Given an ounce of opportunity, it grew in every crevice. Like fear.

  “Not in my kitchen. Not in this house.” She bore down so hard, the skin around her knuckles blanched. The ranch-style brick house wasn’t large, less than thirteen hundred square feet. But every inch had to sparkle. Had to. Had to!

  The white powder turned to sea green paste. What would happen if someone swallowed it? Just a little. In a tumbler of Jack Daniels. Mixed in the cheese grits. Would the taste scream murder? Or would plunging a butcher knife deep into his heart, twisting it to make sure . . . “Stop it! Stop it!” She pinched the skin on one wrist to break the thought, just like she had read in a self-help book.

  Sheila ran through the cleaning schedule, spoken aloud. “Monday. Kitchen. Wipe down the refrigerator, bleach the countertops, organize the drawers, put out fresh towels, sanitize the garbage can, mop the floor, and clean the oven. Vacuum. Make dips and appetizers for Glenn’s poker night.”

  She sprayed diluted bleach on a rag and attacked the countertops.

  “Tuesday, Bathrooms. Wednesday, Laundry.” The recitation evoked its magic. A sense of calm bathed her.

  Bleach vapor stung her nose and eyes. Once, she had ended up at the clinic with a raspy cough and seared throat from the fumes. Glenn had given her a ration of grief, clamped down on her forearm until her fingers tingled and went numb. “Run off to the doctor every g-d time you break a nail, Sheila. Waste my good money.”

  She overreached to wipe the top of the refrigerator and white-hot pain stabbed her. Grab the door handle to keep from crumbling to the floor. Breathe, Shelia, breathe. Panting came easier; deep inhalations made the throbbing in her side worse. Two short steps and she made it to the kitchen table and lowered herself inch by inch to a chair. Cold sweat chilled her skin and her stomach threatened to eject the dry toast she’d had for breakfast.

  Mashed potatoes. Such an easy dish, yet she couldn’t quite get them right. Too many lumps and Glenn complained about her carelessness. Too smooth and he accused her of using instant potato flakes. Like his mother’s recipe, the blend had to contain a few pea-sized pieces of cooked potato, yet remain creamy. The balance defied her.

  “You tried to trick me into eating this fake shit, didn’t you darlin’,” Glenn had said in a low voice. His words oozed out with a creepy smile.

  “I’m sorry. I tried to get them like you wanted.” She turned to retrieve the bowl and mashing utensil to prove her innocence. Glenn shoved her—one of his “playful pushes”—and she teetered on one foot. Most of the time, she could regain her balance. This time, her heel had caught on the edge of the rug and she bashed her midsection on the corner of the buffet cabinet on the way down. Clumsy dumb cow.

  The wall phone taunted her from its mount only a few feet away. She’d rest, then call for help. Right. Like she could call 911, or even her doctor. Those medical people would take one look at the black bruises coloring her waist and the older purpling abrasion above her eye, and they’d ask prying questions. She could call Loiscell. No. Not her either. Loiscell already looked at her as if she suspected.

  Nothing seemed to be broken when she had first assessed the injuries in the bathroom, late last night after Glenn passed out. Had to be a cracked rib, the way it hurt to inhale. No use seeing the doctor. What could a physician do for her that she couldn’t do for herself? If only she had been able to go to nursing school, she’d know exactly what to do now.

  When the ache subsided to a dull pulse, Sheila rose and shuffled to the bathroom. None of the Ace bandages she found in the cabinet were long or wide enough. Wait . . . sheets! Didn’t they once use them to make bandages for soldiers? She cut long strips of an old pastel sheet and wrapped them around her middle, over and over, then popped four aspirins. Time would heal. Always did.

  Images perked in her head. A neck artery spurting blood. Foaming poison bubbles between pale lips. Sheila hugged herself and hummed “Jesus Loves Me” to plug the flow. Murder, even imagined murder, was wrong. God wouldn’t love her. She would burn in Hell for eternity.

  Abrasive cleaner floured the air over the kitchen sink. Muscles flexed in her forearm as she bore down with a stiff brush, reviewing the list for Thursday and Friday.

  She clamped her teeth together until one of the molars complained. No! Relax your jaw. What good will a broken filling do? More of Glenn’s money down the drain.

  Sheila caught her distorted reflection in the microwave’s glass door. The bruise around her right eye had faded a little. A spritz of vinegar and ammonia bled her image into long pungent ripples.

  “Saturday. Volunteer meetings, Woman’s Club, visits to shut-ins. Baking. Sunday. Church. Cook dinner. Bible study.”

  Sometimes—like today—Sheila visited her one friend Loiscell Pickering. At sixty-two, Loiscell was twenty-three years Sheila’s senior. The women had met when Sheila brought chicken soup to Loiscell following her second breast cancer surgery. Sheila arrived, ready in her role of Christian Ladies’ outreach to the infirm, only to be rewarded by the older woman’s uplifting attitude. For the next three months as Loiscell struggled through rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, Sheila spent as much time as her schedule and Glenn would allow. But then, Glenn approved of her church work, of his wife’s compassion toward the community. He might be chosen as a deacon soon!


  After she stowed the cleaning supplies, Sheila removed her mummy casing and showered, shaving long careful strips on her legs and armpits, then her forearms. Her side ached with every movement. Did those fine golden hairs really need to go? Like baby fuzz, really. But Glenn hated hairy women.

  Wrapped in a fluffy pink chenille robe, she surveyed her side of the master bedroom closet. No bright colors. Only pastels. Women should wear feminine, flowery prints, and always dresses. One black skirt suit for funerals. A few sensible pumps and low-heeled sandals. A pair of sneakers, bright white and barely used.

  Sheila pulled out white mule sandals and a pale yellow sleeveless dress. Since she’d lost weight, the dress hung on her frame—perfect, to accommodate the extra padding of the sheet strips. The buttery hue suited her hair when the blonde highlights were fresh. Otherwise, it at least added a little life to her white skin and dirty dishwater locks. What she truly longed for was a yellow print that screamed hello. Or hot pink or pistachio green.

  Before leaving the house, she stepped onto the back porch with a clean pottery bowl in hand. “Buttercup! Come on, sugar!”

  A small golden tiger-striped cat slipped from beneath the hedge where Sheila had hidden a plastic bin she’d fashioned into a covered bed. It mewed and twirled circles at her feet. Careful to lower herself to a crouch without bending her back, Sheila scooped it up with one hand and cradled the tiny face to hers. Glenn hated animals, except the ones he could kill and eat. No animal would set foot inside his house.

  Glenn rarely ventured outside. The lawn care was hired. Each day after work, her husband came in, ate, belched, farted, and settled down with the remote. By the time the six o’clock news finished, her husband was on his third or fourth beer. On the bad days, Jack Daniels Black.

  But what if Glenn broke that pattern? Sheila held Buttercup close to her heart. What if he stepped outside and the innocent kitty thought it was her? She pictured Glenn’s calloused hands around its furry neck. Squeeze and twist. Wouldn’t take much.

  Buttercup was her secret.

  She fed the little cat. It purred and ate at the same time.

  If only happiness was as simple for people.

  Abby McKenzie scowled at her fogged reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror. “Just do freaking something, for once!” She could stand on her head to blow-dry her hair or use a curling iron until the ends scorched or slather on hair fixative products. No matter, her mouse-brown hair would sponge up humidity and straighten like a bird dog’s tail.

  If her hair didn’t do right, how could the day do right? Or heck, how could her life do right?

  “Talking to myself does not make me crazy. And if it does, what better place to be than where I live, a town with a state mental institution right on the main drag.”

  She looked deep into her own eyes—pale green with flecks of gold. What if she didn’t wake up, some Monday morning? End of bad hair, end of mind-numbing routines. Just delightful nothingness. Abby stopped herself. Hell awaited people who dismissed life so easily, right?

  Maybe her life was hell. Maybe that was the ultimate cosmic joke. The big bamboozle secret. You arrived one morning, somewhere in your forties, and nobody rolled out a black welcome carpet. No horns blasted. Abby McKenzie, welcome to your private Hades condo. Grab a pitchfork, dahlin’. Get to work.

  She shook her head. Stuck out her tongue. So did her mirror image, the rude thing. Nope. Couldn’t be true hell. Not her life. If this was hell, she’d at least have some company.

  Abby added a third spritz of guaranteed-to-hold gel spray, grabbed her purse, and dashed to the kitchen to add her coffee mug to the unwashed breakfast dishes. She wove her way to the back door through a narrow path, past teetering stacks of twine-bound National Geographic and cardboard boxes, mounds of newspapers from God knows how many years back, and baskets of yarn. She made the same promise she’d made every day since her father, then her mother died. Going to clean this crap out. Yep, you just dream on Abby.

  A wall of searing air hit her face as soon as she stepped outside. Cussin’ heat, her daddy had called it. He swore even the hardiest hat-clad church ladies spent hours of prayerful knee-time because of profane words spilled in haste.

  Late August. Abby didn’t want to think about how much longer she’d have to put up with this summer. The pavement-buckling heat made folks in the small town of Chattahoochee, Florida—folks who normally took life in stride—into snippy, horn-blasting ingrates bent on sharing their dark moods. Sensible people went all stupid: a down payment on disaster.

  “And I know about disaster.” She scowled at her wilted hairdo in the vanity mirror of the faded-blue Honda Accord. Good thing she had those interesting eyes. Otherwise, she couldn’t have been any more plain Jane if she had majored in it in college. Five foot four, a smidge overweight with a small bust and a nice set of birthing hips, thanks to her mother’s side of the family. Turned-up nose with a scattering of freckles across the bridge. Good, even teeth. Smooth-faced enough to pass for younger than forty-seven, she assured herself.

  Abby turned onto Morgan Avenue and headed into town. Azaleas and dogwood trees lined the sidewalks, their foliage drought-ravaged and drooping from days of unrelenting heat. She parked in her usual space behind a main street building and bustled into the dental office, flipping on lights, turning on the cantankerous computer, autoclave sterilizer, and coffeemaker. While the coffee brewed, she returned to her domain—the front desk—to print the daily schedule, pull charts, and retrieve the voicemail messages from patients begging for attention.

  Same shit, felt like same day, same week, same year, same endless summer. Abby the hamster on her exercise wheel.

  She sipped the cup of strong black coffee before ferreting out spots to cram patients into the busy schedule. Some days, it came easy, like snapping together Lego blocks. Others, like corralling quicksilver.

  Ten ’til eight. Four lines rang at once. People, people, people. Each thinking his problem trumped the others’. She took a breath, slugged coffee and pulled on her happy voice. Give it a half-hour, and the dental lab delivery people would shove case pans on her desk past patients waiting to check in and check out. Lord.

  Doggone computer refused to send the schedule file to the printer. Do not start my day this way, Sophie. Abby had named the high-tech piece of equipment after a girl she had known from junior college, an over-the-top brilliant scholar who would often clam up for no reason.

  The back door creaked and slammed. Sabrina, the effervescent hygienist, swept into the front office. In the twenty-one years Abby had worked for Dr. Payne, she had never shared the office with a more pleasant woman. The patients adored her.

  “Morning, Abby.” Sabrina grabbed a stack of charts and flipped through them. “Do you have schedules printed? If not, I can do.”

  Abby cradled the phone between her shoulder and ear. The familiar cramp throbbed near her neck. “Not yet.” She jabbed a finger at the monitor. “Sophie!”

  “Let me go set up my room and then I’ll see if I can help.” Sabrina only had one gear: wide-screaming open. But she wasn’t a princess. Thank God.

  “Yes?” Abby returned her attention to the man on the phone: cracked front tooth, probable crown prep, two-hour procedure. “Mr. Johns, come and we’ll work you in. Bring a book. You might have a bit of a wait.”

  Abby offered a wry smile to the next employee who walked past. Christine, Dr. Payne’s assistant. Not a morning person. Nice enough unless you cornered her before a ration of coffee.

  The whoosh of the front glass door alerted Abby to the arrival of the first patient, Caroline “Choo-choo” Ivey. Sore spot under upper denture: ten-minute appointment, tops. Except that Choo-choo adored Dr. Payne, and it would no doubt turn into thirty, or fifty. Abby slid the plate glass reception window open. “Morning, Miz Choo-choo.”

  For a woman in her eighties, Choo-choo Ivey was well preserved. Silver hair—curly and perfectly coiffed—fair skin with few wrinkles and kind gray eyes
that smiled even when her mouth didn’t.

  “Morning, Abby. Is the good doctor in yet?”

  “No Ma’am. Should be here shortly. You’re a wee bit early.”

  Choo-choo pointed to the linen-lined wicker basket hanging from the crook of one arm. “I brought y’all some fresh banana nut muffins to have with your coffee. They were always my Charlie’s favorite. I’ll pass them over, but make sure you save one for the doctor.”

  “Wow. Thanks.”

  “I’ll catch up on People magazine while I wait.” Choo-choo handed the basket through the open reception window.

  Choo-choo often brought fresh baked goods. Stopped by some days for no apparent reason other than to say hello. Maybe the sweet elderly woman purposely placed sesame seeds underneath her denture to rub a raw spot. Attention in any form was welcomed when you were lonely. Abby understood that.

  A few minutes later, she heard the distinctive snick of the back door once again. Dr. Payne walked up and stood behind her. “Morning. Got a schedule printed, Abby?”

  She shook her head and snarled at the computer, one ear still cradled to the phone. Two lines blinked with patients on hold. One less than before. Must’ve given up or died waiting. The current caller rambled on and on. The doctor grabbed a stack of charts, plucked a muffin from the basket, and disappeared down the hall to his private office.

  The next line, a mother canceling three-in-a-row appointments for her children’s dental cleanings. Abby endured the gory details of the family’s stomach flu, something about flying chunks and green runny bile. Good Lord. Shoot me now. She glanced over the call list. As soon as the phones settled to a dull rumble, she’d fill the blanks in Sabrina’s schedule. Bonuses depended on steady production.

  Ten after eight. Less than thirty minutes and she was already exhausted. And Sophie still refused to communicate with the printer. Four hours until Ben would drop by with the mail. One thing to look forward to.