CHAPTER 2
AFTER
THE SERVICE, I WAS TRAPPED IN THE HORROR of something called the condolence
line. Another funeral-home euphemism. The reality of the experience called to
mind the way they used to press witches to death by adding rock after rock to
a board on their chests. There I stood, with everyone else’s heartbreak piled
on top of me, rock after rock, when I could hardly bear the weight of my own.
My head buzzed with unshed tears, and I fought to keep my breathing steady.
My
mother stood beside me, poised and perfect, every inch the gracious Virginia
lady. People always said we looked alike—except for the poise and perfection,
I guess. She worked in fundraising for Ford’s Theatre in DC, planning swanky
events for even swankier people. I knew she must be on autopilot today,
hosting this event she never dreamed she’d have to plan. She greeted every
guest with shatterproof politeness. She shook the hands of my classmates’
parents, a power parade of congress members and judges, lobbyists and think
tankers. She remembered their names without a single hesitation. How could
she be so utterly composed, when I felt two inches from total collapse? I
tried to read her expression, but I couldn’t tell whether Dad had told her
yet, whether he’d repeated all those things Detective Johnson had said about
Tyler.
Stuck
in the line, not willing to look anyone in the eye, I stared at an endless
stream of cleavage and neckties and tried to distract myself with a game I
called Three Things. For years, I’d been an obsessive gatherer of little
objects. My father called me his magpie, always bringing home shiny bits of
paper and string. And ever since I could hold a pair of scissors, I’d been
cutting up things that appealed to me and arranging them in tiny, intricate
collages. The thing about things
is: each one has a voice. Every little object has its own special
something to say. And when you put them together, the right things in the
right way, they tell a story.
But
there are places where scissors and glue are inappropriate. Like the dentist’s
chair. English class. Your brother’s funeral. So I came up with Three Things.
I look around, wherever I am, and pick out the three objects that best tell
the story of that moment, like a living collage. No scissors necessary.
Three
Things from the condolence line at Tyler’s funeral: a girl in a somber black
dress and a jeweled Hello Kitty necklace. A photograph, pressed into my
mother’s hand by his kindergarten teacher, of Tyler at five years old. My own
face, reflected in the gleaming wood and brass of my brother’s coffin.
Finally
the last miserable person came through that long and miserable line. I turned
to my mother, desperate to ask her about Tyler, but she was already in
motion, grabbing her purse and pulling out a list. “Megan, you and your father
are riding home with Mrs. Koss.”
I
struggled for calm. “I really need to talk to you. Right now.”
She
didn’t meet my eye but instead continued to scan the paper in her hand. “At
home, I promise. I’m having the flowers donated, and I need to follow up with
the staff here. I don’t want you to wait.” She squeezed my father’s shoulder
and walked out of the chapel.
I
turned to my father. “Did you tell her? About the detective?”
Dad
held up a hand. “Please don’t talk about that here.” He followed my mother
out the door.
I
snapped the head off a white carnation and shredded the petals into my
pocket. Raw materials,
I thought. For later.
Mrs.
Koss cried the whole way home. She apologized for crying, then cried again,
then apologized again, then apologized for apologizing. When she pulled her
Volvo wagon into our driveway, Dad’s door was open before the car even
stopped moving. “Thank you, Judy, I really . . . ,” he managed, and he made
his escape into the house.
As
I climbed out of the backseat, Mrs. Koss rolled down the driver’s window. Her
faded blue eyes were rimmed with red, and wisps of dyed blond hair stuck to
her cheeks. After her own kids had gone off to college, she had babysat Tyler
and me for years, until we were old enough to be home by ourselves after school.
She reached out a hand through the open car window, shaky and uncertain, and
I hesitated to take it, not wanting to be anchored to her grief. But I did it
anyway.
“If
I can help, I’m right across the street. Come find me anytime.”
I
nodded. She held my hand in both of hers now, turning it over and studying
it.
“Are
you going to be okay?” I asked.
“Sweet
girl, worrying about me.” She pressed my hand to her cheek before letting it
go. “I’m praying for you, all right? You don’t have to tell your folks that;
I know they don’t go in for that kind of thing. But I wanted you to know.”
“Thanks.”
“Now
go in there and tell your father I’m sorry. Again.”
I
choked out a laugh. “I think he knows.”
Mrs.
Koss gave a damp wave as she pulled out of the driveway, and I went through
the back door into the kitchen. Dad was already sitting on the deck outside,
swirling a glass of Scotch in one hand and staring off into the distance. I
changed out of my hateful funeral suit and headed for the front porch to wait
for Mom.
I
stopped short in the doorway. On the front mat, someone had left a plastic
takeout bag. I untied the knot and cracked open the Styrofoam clamshell,
releasing the familiar smell of lamb kebab, rice, and grilled tomato. There
was even a side of cucumber sauce.
Nathan.
It could only be from Nathan. The food in my hands seemed to warm my entire
body. My chest unclenched, and some of the tension in my neck melted away. I
curled up with the container on our front porch swing and sent a message to
Elena.
This
day blows, I wrote.
God so sorry, came the reply.
Need to talk? Not just text?
Because the phone has a feature that allows us to do
that.
I
hate talking. Just distract me?
Are you meeting with the counselor?
I
rolled my eyes. Terrible distraction. You suck at this.
Talk to the counselor. It helps, trust me.
Saw
her once. She wore two different colors of black at the same time.
Snob.
Stop trying to do this alone.
Go back to see her.
Sure
thing, I wrote. I will absolutely do that.
We are men of action. Lies do not become us.
I
sent her the poop emoji.
I watched the video you sent. So sweet!!! Where did you
get it?
New
Boy.
WHAT?
I
went off on him and he brought me food.
I don’t know what that means, but I like it. Keep him.
Thinking
about it.
Yes, I know: think first.
That will be your slogan when you run for office.
Megan Brown: She Thinks First.
It’s
solid life advice.
An inspiring philosophy, Elena replied.
Exactly what you want on your tombstone.
And
with that, the reality of the day came crashing in again. My stomach
clenched, and my heart turned to ice.
Oh my god, she wrote.
So so so sorry.
Elena Rodriguez: She Does Not Think First.
You still there?
I really do suck at this.
I
set down the takeout container, no longer hungry. It had felt so good to
forget, even for a moment, but forgetting made remembering that much worse.
I
paused, wondering whether or not I should tell her.
They’re
saying Tyler died of an overdose, I typed.
WHAT? WHO?
The
police.
OMG.
Not Tyler
How is that possible?
I
don’t know, I sent back, as my mother’s car pulled up in front of the house.
But I want to find out. I slipped the phone into my pocket.
Mom
emerged from the car with two reusable shopping bags. She held them up to
show me. “Good news. More casseroles.”
I
followed her inside as she brought the bags to the kitchen. “Mom,” I began,
“about Tyler—”
“I
saw you on your phone. Was that Elena?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,
good.” But the disapproval crept into her body language immediately. Her lips
pursed, like they always did when Elena’s name was mentioned.
“Don’t
worry,” I said. “She’s still a thousand miles away.”
Mom
sighed. “You know I don’t have a problem with Elena.”
I
managed to hold my tongue. Despite Elena’s wild clothes, her lack of indoor
voice, and the fact that she could spout off a passionate rant about
absolutely anything,
Mom had always liked her. Mom’s real problem was with me, or at least it had
been, for that tiny window of time when I’d acted more like Elena and less
like the quiet daughter she preferred.
She
opened the freezer, revealing a nearly solid wall of food. “Huh. We should
eat these, I guess.”
But
she didn’t move. She stood there with the freezer door open, staring blankly
as the cold mist curled around her. In the unforgiving kitchen light, the
lines around her eyes cut deep beneath her makeup, and her cheeks looked
sunken and hollow. Her brown hair, as stick straight as mine, hung limp
around her face, and I could even see a hint of silver creeping in at the
roots.
I
started pulling plastic containers and jars out of the bags. “Listen, I don’t
know if Dad has talked to you yet, about the detective—” As I turned toward
her, a jar slipped from my fingers, hit the floor on its side, and cracked,
releasing a slow creep of tomato sauce onto the tile.
Mom
didn’t even flinch; her mind was someplace else. She closed the freezer door
and lowered herself onto a barstool. “When you were a baby . . . ,” she
began.
Worst opening line of a story ever, I thought, reaching
for a dish towel.
“You
were a holy terror. I mean, you were colicky, you didn’t sleep, you didn’t
like tags touching your skin. Sometimes I would think you were crying just to
mess with me.” A half smile crossed her face. “Tyler, though, he was easy. Even in elementary
school. I used to say to him, ‘Kid, you know it’s not actually your job to
make my life easier. You’re allowed to screw up every now and then.’” She
shook her head. “But he wouldn’t listen.”
She
knew.
I
moved to the barstool next to her, tomato sauce still dripping from the towel
in my hand. “Mom, did you have any idea? Did you notice anything weird going
on with him?”
Her
face hardened. “Nothing weird was
going on with him.”
“Um,
did Dad not tell you? The detective said—”
“Your
father told me what the detective said.” Mom clasped her hands in front of
her. Despite her bland expression, I could see her fingers clench, her
knuckles whiten. “But it’s obviously some kind of mistake.”
I
leaned back, taking a moment to consider what to say next. “Mom, they did
tests. They got results. I think it’s pretty unlikely they made a mistake.”
She
stood and tugged her clothes firmly into place. “Those are preliminary results. I’m
sure the final report will show that no drugs were involved, because what
happened—” Her voice caught in her throat, and she took a slow breath to
steady herself. “What happened to Tyler was a tragic accident.”
“Mom,
can’t we at least talk about this?”
She
shook her head. I could see her careful facade splintering now, like cracks
spiderwebbed in broken glass. She was holding the pieces together by force of
will, but I thought the smallest tap might shatter her. “I don’t need to talk
about it,” she said. “Tyler was a good boy. There’s no way this was anything
but an accident.”
I
wished I could agree with her, if only to make her feel better. But what
would happen when the police stormed in here in four weeks with their final
reports and their scientific certainties and broke my mother into a thousand
pieces? “We can’t pretend this isn’t happening,” I said. “Don’t you want to
know the truth?”
For
an instant, she cracked. Tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks. “The
truth is . . . he’s gone, Megan,” she said. “Nothing will ever change that.
And nothing will ever bring him back.”
I
wanted to go to her, to close my eyes and curl into her lap like I did when I
was small, to cry myself safe in the citrusy smell of her perfume. But when I
took a step toward her, her hands flew up defensively, and she stepped away
from me.
Like
a blow to the chest, it knocked the wind right out of me. I’m not gone, Mom, I
thought. I’m right here.
What about me?
I
bent down and scooped up the jar of pasta sauce, throwing the whole mess,
dish towel and all, in the trash. “You should eat something,” I said, and I
walked out of the kitchen.
I
went to Tyler’s room, because that’s where I always went when I needed help.
My feet took me straight to his door, and I had to force myself not to knock.
Instead, I rested my hand against the wood. I could so clearly picture him
whipping the door open and leaning on the doorframe.
“You’ve
got sad face,” he’d say. “Go away. I’m not your therapist.”
“But
Elena’s halfway across the country.”
“So
make new friends.”
“I
don’t need new friends,” I’d say. “I have you.”
He’d
groan. He’d roll his eyes. And he’d let me in. Every time.
Except
this one.
I
took a deep breath and opened the door, but I froze before I could take a
single step. Gone were the piles of dirty clothes and the chaos of cables and
headphones. The carpet was visible, and it even had vacuum cleaner tracks in
it. Mom must have done this, somewhere in the obsessive cleaning and
organizing stage of grief. I stepped into the room, feeling like a trespasser
in a place I didn’t belong. What was Mom thinking? Was she going to turn
Tyler’s room into a shrine, keep everything exactly as he’d left it? Minus
the mess, of course.
It
was a terrible thought. I did a quick calculation of how much longer I had to
live in this house: two more years before college, and then all those summers
and Christmases. I was not going to live in the Tyler Brown Memorial
Museum.
And
which Tyler Brown was she memorializing, anyway? Some guy who didn’t just
play varsity baseball and get named Best All Around Senior, but was also neat
and clean and always took out the trash? It was like whitewashing an
already-white picket fence. This spotless room did not belong to the brother
I remembered. And it sure as hell didn’t belong to that other Tyler, the one
Detective Johnson had described, the kid who OD’d in an abandoned building
forty-five minutes from home.
The
Tyler my mother saw, the one I saw, the one the police saw . . . they were
like puzzle pieces that didn’t fit together. Like a bad collage. Or an
exquisite corpse. The surrealists invented those, a hundred years ago. They’d
fold up a piece of paper, and each artist would draw part of a body—one the
head, one the torso, and one the legs—without showing the others what they’d
done. But because they were surrealists, they might draw a hand for a head,
or a machine for a chest, or fish fins for legs. And when they opened the
paper, they’d find this bizarre Frankenstein creature, assembled from parts
that didn’t belong.
That’s
what was happening to Tyler. Everyone thought they had a piece of him, but
when you tried to put the pieces together, you didn’t get a whole person
anymore.
I
retreated slowly, leaving Tyler’s room. I knew I couldn’t bring him back, but
I wished I could make him whole again. I wished I could make all those
different pieces tell the same story. I went down the hall to my own room and
threw myself onto the bed, shoving aside the bag of clothes I’d brought back
from the funeral home. It hit the floor with a loud thunk.
I
leaned over to see what had made the noise—and then I remembered. The book
Nathan had given me. The one Tyler had been carrying around with him for
months.
I
snatched up the bag and dug through until I found it. The cover, which had
been worn when Nathan gave it to me, was now ripped nearly in half. I held
the two pieces together and read the title. Disasters in the Sun: The True History of John Wilkes
Booth in Seven Objects.
A
little jolt of shock ran through me. “Seven Objects?” Sure, I preferred my
own game of Three Things, but the similarity felt too strong to ignore.
On
the cover, a brooding, surly-faced man showed off his curly hair and Civil
War mustache. I flipped the book over and read.
In
this revelatory new survey, acclaimed historian Dr. David Brightman journeys
through the life of the most reviled man in American history. Using seven
objects that once belonged to Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth—including a
letter written in code, a sumptuous theatrical costume, and the infamous
derringer pistol Booth used to kill the president— Brightman delves deep into
the heart and mind of a killer. His groundbreaking approach promises to
forever transform our understanding of a pivotal figure in nineteenth-century
history.
Standard-issue
academic gobbledygook. My dad wrote books like this—about a different time
period, but the same general idea. I flipped it open. The pages were flagged
with brightly colored Post-it notes, highlighted in neon pink and yellow, and
marked with scrawled handwriting that I recognized immediately as Tyler’s.
“Lincoln as both hero and villain,” one note said. “JWB rocking the ladies,”
read another.
It
looked like the work of a history grad student. Or a deeply obsessive weirdo.
Neither
of those descriptions fit the Tyler I knew. I closed the book and studied the
photograph of Booth on the cover.
I
thought I knew all of Tyler’s secrets. He wasn’t shy about sharing gross
locker-room stories or embarrassing facts about his ex-girlfriends. And in
return, he’d listened to all my complaints about teachers and my thoughts
about art. I’d even, in a moment of weakness, confessed my ill-fated crush on
his best friend, Bobby Drake.
But
apparently Nathan—a guy I’d never even met—knew things about Tyler that I did
not. And Nathan had brought me food, which meant he knew where we lived. Why
had Tyler never mentioned him?
I
closed the book again and studied it. The True History of John Wilkes
Booth in Seven Objects. If this Brightman person could uncover the
history of a long-dead killer by going through the stuff he left behind, then
surely I could use Tyler’s things to figure out what had been happening with
him over the last few months, and how he had ended up in that abandoned
building.
After
all, I was really good with objects.
Armed
with the book, I returned to Tyler’s room. I stood in the doorway and
assessed it for a moment. Where to begin? His laptop seemed the obvious
choice. When it booted up, I tried to get into his email, but I couldn’t
figure out the password. The more times I guessed wrong, the tighter the knot
in my stomach became. I tried names of sports teams and ex-girlfriends. I
even tried hacker bait like “password” and “12345” before giving up
completely and going to his browser history.
It
was full of John Wilkes Booth. Pages and pages about Booth’s childhood and
his famous family and the conspiracy to kill Abraham Lincoln.
And
then there were guns. So many pages about guns, especially ones from the
Civil War and the late 1800s. He’d read stories about replica guns and gun
auctions, watched videos about loading them and firing them.
I
closed the laptop and rubbed at my arms, trying to chase away the chill
spreading through my body. What the hell was all this? I’d never thought of
Tyler as a gun lover. But then, I’d never thought of him as a heroin user,
either.
Restless,
I walked over to Tyler’s dresser and flipped through his shoe box full of
ticket stubs and band stickers. Most of the bands I’d never heard of, but I
found a ticket from last fall’s Mountain Goats show at the Black Cat on
Fourteenth Street. As I held the ticket in my hand, I could almost see Tyler
leaning on the kitchen table, begging Mom and Dad to let him go, blathering
on and on about the genius of John Darnielle, until they finally looked at
each other with a smile that said, “We were always going to say yes, but we
liked watching you fight for it.” Tyler’s face had broken open with the
biggest grin I’d ever seen. He’d let out a whoop, kissed my mother on top of
her head, and physically lifted my father off the ground.
The
memory warmed me. But then I thought: Did
he buy drugs after the show? Did he skip it altogether to go shoot up with
his friends? Or did all that come later?
I
shoved the ticket stub into my pocket, where my hand brushed against my
scissors. They were my constant companion: a pair of little gold embroidery
shears shaped like a stork. The blades were his beak, the handles his
feathers and feet. The scissors even had a leather sheath that prevented
embarrassing injuries. As I looked at all the things Tyler had left behind, I
pulled out the shears and turned them over in my hand. Why the hell not? I
thought. Tyler was gone. Mom had said it herself. Whatever had made these
things special was gone with him. And like Mom said, nothing would bring him
back.
I
started with his clothes, dragging T-shirts and pants out of his dresser
drawers and cutting out pieces that spoke to me—the collisions of color, the
interesting textures. Everything I didn’t want, I threw on the floor. I liked
the contrast of my mess against Mom’s orderly vacuum tracks, so I knocked
down the ticket stubs too. In the closet, I dug around for Tyler’s favorite
coat, slicing off a big black button and tucking it safely into my pocket. I
found a braided lanyard hanging on the back of the closet door, a gift I’d
made for him during my one miserable summer at Girl Scout camp. When I
touched it, I could almost smell bug repellent and cherry lip gloss, could
almost hear the camp songs echoing in my ears. I cut the lanyard in half.
He’d
left a glass bowl on one of the shelves, filled with coins and safety pins
and other odds and ends. I plucked a metal ball from the bowl. It was about
the size of a marble and pitted like a tiny moon. What was it? I couldn’t cut
it, but I rolled it around in my hand and decided to keep it, too.
When
I was through with the closet, I turned to Tyler’s bed. He still used the
quilt my grandmother had made him, piecing together clothes he’d loved as a
kid. I was starting to feel a little dizzy, and I rested one hand on the
quilt. I had a sudden mental image of Tyler and me jumping on this very bed,
eight and six years old, shrieking at the tops of our lungs. I sank down onto
the carpet, breathing heavily. No way was I cutting up the quilt.
This
was all too much. My chest heaved; my head spun. Tyler, Tyler, Tyler. His name sang through my
mind. He was gone, but he was here, hiding inside every object he’d left
behind, reflected in a hundred secret mirrors where no one but me would think
to look for him.
What about under the bed? I thought. Did Mom clean under the bed? I
leaned over to look. Plenty of stuff still there. Game cases, hangers, a
dirty plate—I tossed them over my shoulder and out into the room. Then my
hand closed around Tyler’s keys. He’d spent a frantic half hour searching for
them on the night that he disappeared. He hadn’t found them; he’d been forced
to take the spare set. I sat up, thinking, Oh,
good. He’ll need these.
And
then I remembered: no. He wouldn’t.
And
then I started to cry.
My
head was pounding, like I’d spent too long upside down. Yellow lights blinked
at the edges of my vision, and a bitter smell burned my nose—something harsh,
like melting plastic. Just as I realized that something might really be wrong
with me, I saw a flash of what looked like Tyler standing in the doorway of
his room. But as I slumped to the floor, it was my father’s arms that closed
around me.
Copyright © 2017 by Danielle Mages Amato
|
martedì 4 aprile 2017
The Hidden Memory of Objects by Danielle Mages Amato
Iscriviti a:
Commenti sul post (Atom)
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento