Chapter One
At the age of seventeen, working as a delivery boy at Afremow’s
drugstore in Chicago was the perfect job, because it made it
possible for me to steal enough sleeping pills to commit suicide. I
was not certain exactly how many pills I would need, so I
arbitrarily decided on twenty, and I was careful to pocket only a
few at a time so as not to arouse the suspicion of our pharmacist. I
had read that whiskey and sleeping pills were a deadly combination,
and I intended to mix them, to make sure I would die.
It was Saturday-the Saturday I had been waiting for. My parents
would be away for the weekend and my brother, Richard, was staying
at a friend’s. Our apartment would be deserted, so there would be no
one there to interfere with my plan.
At six o’clock, the pharmacist called out, “Closing time.”
He had no idea how right he was. It was time to close out all the
things that were wrong with my life. I knew it wasn’t just me. It
was the whole country.
The year was 1934, and America was going through a devastating
crisis. The stock market had crashed five years before and thousands
of banks had failed. Businesses were folding everywhere. More than
thirteen million people had lost their jobs and were desperate.
Wages had plunged to as low as a nickel an hour. A million
vagabonds, including two hundred thousand children, were roaming the
country. We were in the grip of a disastrous depression. Former
millionaires were committing suicide, and executives were selling
apples in the streets.
The most popular song was “Gloomy Sunday.” I had memorized some of
the lyrics:
Gloomy is Sunday
With shadows I spend it all
My heart and I
Have decided to end it all
The world was bleak, and it fit my mood perfectly. I had reached the
depths of despair. I could see no rhyme or reason for my existence.
I felt dislocated and lost. I was miserable and desperately longing
for something that I couldn’t define or name.
We lived near Lake Michigan, only a few blocks from the shore, and
one night I walked down there to try to calm myself. It was a windy
night, and the sky was filled with clouds.
I looked up and said, “If there is a God, show yourself to me.”
And as I stood there staring at the sky, the clouds merged together,
forming a huge face. There was a sudden flash of lightning that gave
the face blazing eyes. I ran all the way home in a panic.
I lived with my family in a small, third-floor apartment in Rogers
Park. The great showman Mike Todd said that he was often broke but
he never felt poor. I, however, felt poor all the time because we
were living in the demeaning kind of grinding poverty where, in a
freezing winter, you had to keep the radiator off to save money and
you learned to turn the lights out when not in use. You squeezed the
last drops out of the ketchup bottle and the last dab of toothpaste
out of the tube. But I was about to escape all that.
When I arrived at our dreary apartment, it was deserted. My parents
had already left for the weekend and my brother had gone. There was
no one to stop me from what I intended to do.
I walked into the little bedroom that Richard and I shared and I
carefully removed the bag of sleeping pills I had hidden under the
dresser. Next, I went into the kitchen, took a bottle of bourbon
from the shelf where my father kept it, and carried it back to the
bedroom. I looked at the pills and the bourbon and I wondered how
long it would take for them to work. I poured some whiskey into a
glass and raised it to my lips. I would not let myself think about
what I was doing. I took a swallow of the whiskey, and the acrid
taste of it made me choke. I picked up a handful of sleeping pills
and started to raise them to my mouth, when a voice said, “What are
you doing?”
I spun around, spilling some of the whiskey and dropping some of the
pills.
My father was standing in the bedroom doorway. He moved closer. “I
didn’t know you drank.”
I looked at him, stunned. “I-I thought you were gone.”
“I forgot something. I’ll ask you again: What are you doing?” He
took the glass of whiskey from my hand.
My mind was racing. “Nothing-nothing.”
He was frowning. “This isn’t like you, Sidney. What’s wrong?” He saw
the pile of sleeping pills. “My God! What’s going on here? What are
these?”
No plausible lie came to my mind. I said defiantly, “They’re
sleeping pills.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to-to commit suicide.”
There was a silence. Then my father said, “I had no idea you were so
unhappy.”
“You can’t stop me, because if you stop me now I’ll do it tomorrow.”
He stood there, studying me. “It’s your life. You can do anything
you want with it.” He hesitated. “If you’re not in too big a hurry,
why don’t we go for a little walk?”
I knew exactly what he was thinking. My father was a salesman. He
was going to try to talk me out of my plan, but he didn’t have a
chance. I knew what I was going to do. I said, “All right.”
“Put on a coat. You don’t want to catch cold.”
The irony of that made me smile.
Five minutes later, my father and I were headed down windswept
streets that were empty of pedestrians because of the freezing
temperature.
After a long silence, my father said, “Tell me about it, son. Why do
you want to commit suicide?”
Where could I begin? How could I explain to him how lonely and
trapped I felt? I desperately wanted a better life-but there was no
better life for me. I wanted a wonderful future and there was no
wonderful future. I had glowing daydreams, but at the end of the
day, I was a delivery boy working in a drugstore.
My fantasy was to go to college, but there was no money for that. My
dream had been to become a writer. I had written dozens of short
stories and sent them to Story magazine, Collier’s, and The Saturday
Evening Post, and I had gotten back printed rejections. I had
finally decided I couldn’t spend the rest of my life in this
suffocating misery.
My father was talking to me. “… and there are so many beautiful
places in the world you haven’t seen …”
I tuned him out. If he leaves tonight, I can go on with my plan.
“… you’d love Rome …”
If he tries to stop me now, I’ll do it when he leaves. I was busy
with my thoughts, barely listening to what he was saying.
“Sidney, you told me that you wanted to be a writer more than
anything in the world.”
He suddenly had my attention. “That was yesterday.”
“What about tomorrow?”
I looked at him, puzzled. “What?”
“You don’t know what can happen tomorrow. Life is like a novel,
isn’t it? It’s filled with suspense. You have no idea what’s going
to happen until you turn the page.”
“I know what’s going to happen. Nothing.”
“You don’t really know that, do you? Every day is a different page,
Sidney, and they can be full of surprises. You’ll never know what’s
next until you turn the page.”
I thought about that. He did have a point. Every tomorrow was like
the next page of a novel.
We turned the corner and walked down a deserted street. “If you
really want to commit suicide, Sidney, I understand. But I’d hate to
see you close the book too soon and miss all the excitement that
could happen to you on the next page-the page you’re going to
write.”
Don’t close the book too soon … Was I closing it too soon?
Something wonderful could happen tomorrow.
Either my father was a superb salesman or I wasn’t fully committed
to ending my life, because by the end of the next block, I had
decided to postpone my plan.
But I intended to keep my options open.
(Continues…)
Warner Books
Copyright © 2005
Sidney Sheldon Family Limited Partnership
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-446-53267-3
Excerpted from The Other Side of Me
by Sidney Sheldon
Copyright © 2005 by Sidney Sheldon Family Limited Partnership.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
