Sex and Death in the American Novel (7 page)

I moved out of bed afraid the room was going to come apart around me, and I knew I had to check on my brother. The house was silent as I padded down the hall, down the stairs. In the living room, the cards and cribbage board from the night before sat neatly in the middle of the table where I'd left them. Something was wrong but I didn't immediately see what it was.

Tristan's bed was rumpled but he wasn't in there. It was definitely not like him to be up before 10:00 a.m. The red digital clock by his bed said the time was 6:30 a.m. I checked in his office, and there on his desk was a stack of five manuscript boxes. My stomach dropped and began to churn, my arms grew heavy as I approached them. A piece of notebook paper was folded and taped to the box on top.

Slug
,

You are going to rock the world. Somewhere in all this shit is a ton of poetry that I wrote for you. It sucks but I hope it will help you know how much you mean to me and you won't ever forget it.

I am leaving you my trilogy, maybe it will help you understand me and everything that's happened in the last few years. As it is, I've almost been happy with you and Mom cheering for me, only I see that this is not going to get better. Ever.

The upside is that you get Uncle Curtis. You can do whatever you want now.

You are the light of the world—you shine—don't ever stop doing that.

I left Mom a note but don't you forget, or let her forget, that this was not your fault. Tell Mom I'm sorry.

I love you.

T.

There was a sloppy smiley face next to the last line.

I got very cold then, as if I'd turned into one of those statues from the perpetual winter in Narnia. I thought I knew what was wrong upstairs and I
hurried up to stand in the living room again. Everything was as before, only above the mantle the shotgun was gone.

I woke up my mother, and she rushed around checking the house and the basement as I had. We went outside, both of us holding our arms around our stomachs, sure at any second we would find something awful. We never did. After that we checked the garage. The space next to Mom's car was empty where Tristan's little red truck normally would have stood.

After Mom called the sheriff, we went down and looked at the office and the note again.

My mother held the note in her hand. “Uncle Curtis?”

I shrugged. “Everything…Mom, I'm really scared now.”

“Me too, sweetie.” She hadn't called me sweetie since I was ten. She wrapped her arms around me and after a while we went upstairs to wait.

By evening the Coupeville sheriff came by and asked to talk to my mother. Outside, the sheriff's car spouted grimy smoke into the cool air. I backed into the living room and watched them talk. Phrases like, “coroner's office, personal effects, and apparent suicide” drifted over to me. When she closed the door, her voice was hard. As I watched her face go from blank to squinty and strained, I didn't want to hear what she would say, and I couldn't wait to get it over with. Once she spoke the words this would all be real. I wanted to jump out of my skin.

She sat and lit a cigarette, then set it on the ashtray and watched the smoke drift toward the ceiling in a wispy blue stream.

“What?” I said in a voice too loud for the heavy silence of the house.

She looked up. “They found Tristan's car by Smuggler's Cove…he walked into the park. They found him—his…body—a half mile off a trail overlooking Admiralty Inlet.”

I laughed, a hard braying laugh. I was sick and scared and horrified at the same time. All these feelings I felt in equal measure, thinking of him out there by himself. Did he wear his red flannel, the one my father left here that he wore whenever he went outdoors? He really did look like a lumberjack when he wore that, especially when his long hair went up under his dirty cap.

I hugged myself with heavy arms. Every so often I would look at my mother who had lifted her cigarette several times but was unable to inhale. The quiet and silence were so heavy it filled my ears. All we'd had since he disappeared was silence, and whatever interrupted the silence, Mom on the phone with the police, calling her friends at different parts of the island to see if they had seen him, knowing they would answer in the negative. All that was over.

After an incredibly long time sitting at opposite ends of the dining table, staring at each other, at the shiny wooden surface, smoking one cigarette after another, I rose and hugged my mother and went into the living room. I pulled down two of the oldest photo albums I could find and began flipping through. After a while my mother came in and sat next to me and placed a hand on my knee. Her hand was tiny, light and papery thin.

A string of photos of Tristan and my father, the infernal shotgun in between them, both smiling, my father's arm around my brother, Tristan's brown eyes open and easy, my father's grey ones distant, as always.

I flipped the pages.

My mother's voice was a croak. “I hated when he would do that.” In one photo Tristan wore a denim jacket and had no shirt on underneath. His tongue stuck out and he held his hand up with both his pinkie finger and index finger sticking up.

“He was so excited. He went camping and saw Metallica at The Gorge, remember?”

There was a string of even earlier photos where he held his middle finger up in every picture, affecting a bored or hostile pose. But in every one his eyes were bright, laughing at his own posturing. The first time the tears came was through my laughter at this younger version of my brother, still a teenager, still full of hope, no failures yet.

In the days that followed, I stayed on the island with my mother. We were busy planning the service, busy making each other crazy, busy rearranging his stuff, busy making phone calls, busy not sleeping. Busy was better than the alternative. We set the service for a week's time, had Tristan cremated, as was family tradition and his wish. The funeral home offered a service where you could get a little necklace with some of the ashes inside. Mother and I both ordered one of these, tiny infinity shapes in pewter.

One morning we sat at one end of Mom's dining table with her laptop open in front of us. I wrote up the obituary and she dragged me through an entire day rewriting it. If that wasn't bad enough, we had to alter each version to fit the individual newspapers we sent it to.

“It just has to be right Vivi, he was my boy…” She stared at me as if I could bring him back, as if I could take away the sense that everything we did on his behalf was not good enough, was not big enough, would not impress enough people.

At one point late in the afternoon, when the deadline for sending one of the obituaries to make the paper was only a half hour away, I said, “Mom. If we don't ever send these, nobody is going to come to the funeral.”

She balled her fists, spread her fingers out and balled them up again. I knew that feeling, the need to break every single thing in sight. Overwhelming frustration. Nothing was working. Nothing was right. What I was quickly coming to understand was that nothing would
ever
be right, so why bother? She wanted the obituaries posted in the
Seattle Times
and the
Whidbey Examiner
, plus the
Missoulian
, which she decided on at the last minute. “We want as many people to know as possible right? Doesn't…didn't he still have friends from college living there?”

“He had friends everywhere, Mom.” I regretted the tired tone, but it was starting to look like we should just send the announcement to every paper within a five-hundred-mile radius. I wanted to curl up and sleep for a month. Instead I nodded and looked up the appropriate email address while she stalked around the kitchen smoking.

“And don't forget the
Spokesman Review
…” she added.

“You're kidding.”

“What if someone is traveling…or…”

I almost tossed the laptop across the room but the desperate look on her face stopped me. “Okay, Mom. I'll send one there too.”

Mom located a church in Seattle, near where we used to live, where we could hold the service. I knew she was happy because the church was much more elaborate than anything she could have found on the island.

The service was heavily attended by everyone from old girlfriends to acquaintances of both of my parents, and some of Tristan's old students and band mates.

Leah, my brother's most serious girlfriend, showed up early as she promised she would. We met her at her car and we both hugged her. The last time I saw her she had long hair with purple streaks through it. Now she wore a short brown bob and a black dress over patterned black tights. Mom made small talk for a couple of minutes—which seemed completely inappropriate—until I thought I was going to jump out of my skin. I turned to Leah. “Did you bring it?”

“Sure did, sweetie.” She reached into the backseat of her car and brought out her guitar case and dug several pieces of sheet music from her purse.

“What's this?” my mother asked.

“She's going to play ‘Fade to Black’. Remember, Tristan wanted to play that at Dad's funeral.”

My mother looked from me to Leah. “I know you two mean well, but I am not sure that is the best idea.”

“Vivi already talked to me about how you'd want it played really soft,” Leah said.

My mother continued to bare her teeth in what was supposed to be a smile and we began moving forward.

Leah looked from me to my mother before turning toward the church. “Well, you two just let me know what you want and I will play that.”

I could tell Mom wasn't happy, but hoped she would just let this one small thing go. When Leah went through the doorway, my mother stopped me.

“Look, I know you have your brother's interests in mind here, and I do remember your father's funeral, but it wasn't appropriate then and it is not appropriate now.”

“Why the fuck not?
Tristan
was my brother
too
. Why do you have to be in charge of everything? Why can't this be for everyone?”

“It is, my girl. Everyone is welcome. Look, there is Eric…” She was trying that old ploy she used on me as a kid, redirection, as if that could possibly work now.

“Mom. Mom. Stop. I am still talking here,” I said when she tried to walk away. “Music was important to him. This is his funeral. Not yours.”

Eric stood before us with his lips pursed. Leah was talking to the priest and setting up near the side of the altar.

My mother swept her eyes across the pews and the people settling in. “This just isn't appropriate, that is not music for a church service.”

“Who says?”

She crossed her arms. “I say.”

I was not going to lose this one. It felt like the last battle to save my brother's honor, or his soul, or his memory, or my sanity.

I didn't blink and she didn't blink until I said, “I am going to tell Leah to play it and if you try to stop her or me I will scream my goddam head off until everyone is watching us. Would you rather have that?”

Her face turned red. I was glad to see the reaction. It felt good to hurt her. I left her there with Eric while I went to tell Leah to continue with our original plan. When I came back she was dabbing her eyes and squeezing Eric's hand.

I hugged him and I didn't let go for several long minutes. He let me hang on him and held my mother's hand at the same time. Finally he spoke into my hair, “How you doing babe?”

At the sound of his voice I started crying, big gulping sobs from deep in my stomach, making my eyes bug out and my face hurt. My mother smoothed the front of her suit and went to talk to the priest. Eric walked outside with me.

We sat on a cold stone bench in front of a little fountain.

“I shouldn't even have to do this, this is too much. A week ago my brother was angsting over quitting writing, but he seemed fine, almost
relieved you know? I was relieved too, if you want to know the truth. I wanted him to quit being so unhappy. Now he's gone. How am I supposed to do this?”

“You don't, love. You can't.”

“Is it wrong to be mad at a dead person?”

Eric pulled me to the warmth of his solid chest. “Never stopped you from being pissed at your dad.”

At the mention of my father and the thought of how very different my feelings were for the two men in my family, I started crying again. Once I started up he just let me go, rubbing my shoulders and touching his head to mine. When I collected myself he said, “Glad to see you're letting it all out. You never cried like this for your father.”

“He didn't deserve it. I don't think I could ever get all this out. I'm crying, and it feels like the thing to do, but it also seems like I'm pretending. I keep expecting Tristan to slap me on the arm and tell me to stop bawling over him. None of this feels real. How could he do this?”

“He…I don't know, Viv.”

I studied the ground, the separate pieces of lush green grass. “Never thought I would have to throw down over some fucking
song
. So many stupid random things feel like life or death anymore. I have to be able to remember how his books were lined up, like something really bad will happen if I don't. I couldn't even get rid of his glasses and this gross Corona t-shirt he cut the sleeves off of. You'd think this shit had a life of its own.”

Eric's voice was gentle. “Why?”

“I don't know. I really don't. All I know is that the alternative feels like death. I will keep this crazy need before I will give in to nothing. My mother…all I've done for the past week is jump through these ridiculous hoops to keep her together.” Instantly furious with his open face, I took a breath and let it out, and with that breath went some of the hostility I needed to direct somewhere. “Anyway, it's not even about what I would want…you know my brother. He wanted this song for my father. Shouldn't that be enough? She knows that. She just doesn't want to look weird in front of all her snooty friends.”

Eric held up his hands.

“What? Just say it.”

After eyeing me for another moment, he said in a firm but understanding tone, “Funerals are for the people who are still alive. Get through this and you can listen to whatever you want.”