She would beg. She would plead. Unlike her beloved husband she could not be stoic in the face of (his) death.

Yet, in the end, fairly quickly there’d been not much the doctors could do. Her husband’s life from that hour onward had gone—had departed—swiftly like thread on a bobbin that goes ever more swiftly as it is depleted.

I love you—so many times she told him. Clutching at him with cold frightened fingers.

Love love love you, please don’t leave me.

She missed him so much. She could not believe that he would not return to their house. It was that simple.

In the marijuana haze, she’d half-believed—she’d been virtually certain—that her husband was still in the hospital, and wondering why she hadn’t come to visit. Or maybe it was in the dream—the dreams—that followed. High, I was so high. The earth was a luminous globe below me and above me—there was nothing …

After he’d died, within hours when she returned to the suddenly cavernous house she’d gone immediately to a medicine cabinet and on the spotless white-marble rim above the sink she had set out pills, capsules—these were sleeping pills, painkillers, antibiotics—that had accumulated over a period of years; prescriptions in both her husband’s and her name, long forgotten. Self-medicating—yet how much more tempting, to self-erase?

There were dozens of pills here. Just a handful, swallowed down with wine or whiskey, and she’d never wake again—perhaps.

“Should I? Should I join you?”—it was ridiculous for the widow to speak aloud in the empty house, yet it seemed to her the most natural thing in the world; and what was unnatural was her husband’s failure to respond.

She would reason, It’s too soon. He doesn’t understand what has happened to him yet.

Weeks now and she hadn’t put the pills away. They remained on the marble ledge. Involuntarily her eye counted them—five, eight, twelve, fifteen—twenty-five, thirty-five …

She wondered how many sleeping pills, for instance, would be “fatal.” She wondered if taking too many pills would produce nausea and vomiting; taking too few, she might remain semiconscious, or lapse into a vegetative state.

Men were far more successful in suicide attempts than women. This was generally known. For men were not so reluctant to do violence to their bodies: gunshots, hanging, leaping from heights.

I want to die but not to experience it. I want my death to be ambiguous so people will say—It was an accidental overdose!

So people will say—She would not live without him, this is for the best.

What a relief, that Kelsey and her friends hadn’t come upstairs to steal from her! They’d respected her privacy, she wanted to think.

How stricken with embarrassment she’d have been if Kelsey had looked into the bathroom and seen the pills so openly displayed. Immediately her niece would have known what this meant, and would have called her mother.

Mom! Aunt Agnes is depressed and suicidal—I thought you should know.

At least, Agnes thought that Kelsey might have made this call.

“Zeke! Thank you.”

And, “Zeke—how much do I owe you?”

From a young musician friend, a former student, now years since he’d been an undergraduate student, she’d acquired what she believed to be a higher, purer quality of “pot”—she’d been embarrassed to call him, to make the transaction, pure terror at the possibility (of course, it was not a likely possibility) that Zeke was an undercover agent for the local police; she’d encountered him by chance in an organic foods store near the university, he’d been kind to her, asking after her, of course he’d heard that Professor Krauss had died, so very sorry to hear such sad and unexpected news … Later she’d called him, set up a meeting at the local mall, in the vast parking lot, she’d been awkward and ashamed and yet determined, laughing so that her face reddened. To Zeke she was Professor Krauss also. To all her admiring students.

A Ziploc bag Zeke sold her. Frankly, he’d seemed surprised—then concerned. He’d been polite as she remembered him, from years ago. She told the ponytailed young man she was having friends over for the evening, friends from graduate-student days, Ann Arbor. He’d seemed to believe her. No normal person would much want to get high by herself, after all.

As soon as she was safely home she lit a joint and drew in her breath as Kelsey had taught her—cautiously, but deeply. The heat was distracting. She didn’t remember such heat. And the dryness, the acridity. Again she began to cough—tears spilled from her eyes. Her husband had said, What are you doing, Agnes? Why are you doing such things? Just come to me, that’s all. You know that.

Mattia.

Running her forefinger down the Mattia listings. There were a surprising number—at least a dozen. Most young people had cell phones now. The Mercer County, New Jersey phone directory had visibly shrunken. Yet there was a little column of Mattias headed by Mattia, Angelo.

His first name hadn’t been Angelo—she didn’t think so.

Maybe—had it been Eduardo?

(There was a listing for Eduardo, in Trenton.)

Also listed were Giovanne, Christopher, Anthony, Thomas, E.L. Mattia …

None of these names seemed quite right to her. Yet she had to suppose that her former student, an inmate-student at East Jersey State Prison (formerly Rahway State Prison), was related to one or more of these individuals.

Impulsively she called the listing for Mattia, Eduardo.

If there is no answer, then it isn’t meant to happen.

The phone rang at the other end. But no one picked up. A recording clicked on—a man’s heavily accented voice—quickly Agnes hung up.

Later, she returned to discover the phone directory which she’d left on a kitchen counter, open to the Mattia listings. She stared at the column of names. She thought—Was the name Joseph?

It had been a traditional name, with religious associations. A formal name. When Agnes had addressed the young man it was formally, respectfully—Mr. Mattia.

Other instructors in the prison literacy program called students by their first names. But not Agnes, who’d taken seriously the program organizer’s warning not to suggest or establish any sort of “inappropriate intimacy” with the inmate-students.

Never touch an inmate. Not even a light tap on the arm.

Never reveal your last name to them. Or where you live, or if you are married.

Agnes remembered the eagerness with which she’d read Mattia’s prose pieces in her remedial English composition class at the prison several years before. The teaching experience, for her, in the maximum-security state prison, had been exhausting, but thrilling.

A civic-minded colleague at the university had recruited Agnes, who’d been doubtful at first. And Agnes’s husband, who thought that prison education was a very good thing, was yet doubtful that Agnes should volunteer. Her training was in Renaissance literature—she’d never taught disadvantaged students of any kind.

She’d told her husband that she would quit the program if she felt uncomfortable. If it seemed in any way risky, dangerous. But she was determined not to be discouraged and not to drop out. In her vanity, she did not wish to think of herself as weak, coddled.

Her university students were almost uniformly excellent, and motivated. For she and her historian-husband taught at a prestigious private university. She’d never taught difficult students, public school students, remedial students, or students in any way disabled or “challenged.” At this time she was fifty-three years old and looking much younger, slender, with wavy mahogany-dark hair to her shoulders, and a quick friendly smile to put strangers at ease. She’d done volunteer work mostly for Planned Parenthood and for political campaigns, to help liberal Democrats get elected. She had never visited a prison, even a women’s detention facility. She’d learned belatedly that her prison teaching was limited to male inmates.