It's Not the End

by Matt Moore

  —Mom in the kitchen cooking Thanksgiving dinner—

  —Ken and I quickly doing the dishes so we could go back outside to play before dark—

  —Ken bringing a plate of leftover pie down to the dock as we fished in the early morning—

  As Ken tries to hold these back, I remember more:

  Ken and I catching fireflies in the dusk of hot summer evenings . . .

  Watching shooting stars on cool autumn nights . . .

  Ken teaching me to fish—teasing but patient, laughing but kind . . .

  “But why are you leaving?” I ask.

  He promises himself he’ll return. They just need to shut the place down for while. When he can deal with the pain that I’ll never be there, he’ll be back.

  “But I am here!”

  Ken lifts another box, grunting to cover what could become a sob, as he realizes the future he thought he would have—where we would share this place and bring our kids here—is gone.

  My father looks up from rearranging a box of pots and pans, and asks “What?” with a threatening edge in his voice. Immediately, he regrets speaking. He wants to keep the silence of the last few trips. He’s been able to deflect Ken’s questions and doesn’t want to get him talking again, but his instinct is to see the sound as some kind of protest or exaggeration. Some kind of challenge. And his immediate reaction is, and always has been, to deal with anyone who challenges him.

  Words swell inside Ken . . . just like they have before. He wants to turn and demand to know what really happened. But he’s already done that and every time he’s asked for details, my father reacts with anger or dodges the question. “Dad, we’ve been through this,” he replies, headed for the pick-up.

  “I guess we have,” my dad responds, willing himself to be calm. Let Ken have his little rebellion.

  “Don’t let him shove you aside like that,” I say to Ken, tree branches overhanging the driveway, crisscrossing him in dark shadows, as he sets the box in the back of the truck. He goes cold and jagged, looking back inside the cottage. “What question haven’t you asked?” I demand.

  Random snatches of conversations with my friends shoot through Ken’s memory.

  My friends.

  I used to have a lot of friends.

  And I was on a team. A sports team.

  Memories of my friends’ tears and regrets and anger about missing the warning signs coalesce into a single idea. As Ken comes back inside, he asks, “How did you not see it coming?”

  Something—like a memory but not a memory—surfaces in my father. He stays focused on the box of pans as he gives it voice. “We all missed it, Ken.”

  It’s a rehearsed answer.

  Rage blooms within Ken, sharp and scalding. “I was at school, Dad! Don’t give me this ‘we all missed it’ crap when you were here.”

  He has another reply ready, fighting to control the fury at being challenged once again. “What could I have seen?” He stands. “That his grades were slipping? High school was almost over, so he backed off a little bit. You did the same thing at his age.”

  He’s lying. I didn’t back off. I just didn’t care. But my father did. This rage he can barely control is the same he unleashed when I starting bringing home “F’s.”

  “Slipping, maybe,” Ken says, “but he was failing, Dad! And skipping school. And he quit the track team. Did you know I talked to Coach Abernathy? Do you know what he said?”

  The track team. I ran track.

  Ken continues. “Coach said he quit because he thought he wasn’t good enough. Coach almost dropped dead when he heard that. Second best kid on the squad thinks he’s not good enough. Now where do you think he got that idea?”

  Fear of what else Ken might know coils deep and numbing-cold. He knew Ken had suspicions, and he kept a close eye on him to see if he went looking for some hidden note the one time he was here, but had no idea Ken was asking around about me. Where I was weak and a disappointment, Ken is strong—a worthy son. Is he so strong, my dad wonders, that he came here to accuse his own father of having a hand in his brother’s death? Could he even be considering avenging his brother?

  “Well?” Ken demands.

  My father’s rage and fear entangle each other. He takes a slow, measured breath, telling himself he is in control and Ken is grasping at straws. Still, my dad notices the handle of a heavy iron skillet within easy reach in the box at his feet. “If he wanted to quit track, that’s his business. He was always weaker than you, Kenny. He was the one who would quit.”

  Mike, my captain on the track team, jumps into Ken’s mind. “It wasn’t just his grades or track, Dad. Mike Fitzgibbons told me how he started pulling away from everybody, that he was tired all the time, he never talked anymore. You didn’t see any of that?”

  Mike. I lied to him so many times. Told him I was fine and could handle how hard my dad rode me.

  My dad thinks of the basement again, and guilt rises, but he pushes it away. It’s not his fault. But it is his fault, even though he believes he did nothing wrong. And now for Ken to question him. To doubt him. “He’s a teenager, Ken!” my father shouts, his rage starting to break lose. “He—”

  “He was a teenager, Dad,” Ken says. “Was.”

  “Do not correct me!” my father bellows, his voice echoing in the empty, darkening room. He looks down again at the skillet’s handle, anger blooming into violence, wanting to strike out, the desire to break and bloody, the need to show he is in control.

  He thinks of the basement, his fingers working a knot.

  I want to ask about that knot, but his wrath vibrates around me—through me—familiar and terrifying. But Ken is the focus of his rage this time.

  Ken holds his ground. His mind is empty—waiting, expecting a blow. Almost wanting one. Wanting the excuse to unleash years of pent-up anger for everything he—we—went through after our mom died and our dad twisted into the man he is now.

  As they stare at each other, a small bit of my father’s mind realizes that if he lashes out, he could be the one getting hurt. Ken is taller, leaner, younger, faster. Ken can beat him and there’s no way in hell my father would suffer that humiliation. Finding out just how weak I was—how I wouldn’t even fight back—had been disgraceful enough.

  I find my voice and ask, “What happened in the basement?”

  My dad turned from me and headed up the cellar stairs, disgusted, knowing I’m too much of a coward to—

  He has to get out of here.

  I need to keep pressing him. I won’t be weak. Not this time. “If you didn’t do anything wrong, then tell him. Did you kill me because I was weak?”

  His guilt and certainty collide. He pushed too hard, but he needed to push me.

  He breaks Ken’s stare, picks up the box, angles around him and heads to the truck.

  Ken just watches him pass. Again, he flashes on a future without me, but now I see more: plans to get a job at school, find an apartment, never come home. It’s more than resentment—Ken is scared what he thinks happened to me might happen to him.

  “Ken,” I say, “he’s scared of you. He almost remembered. Don’t stop.”

  My father returns, his mind whirling with something new. Something he’s been holding back but can use to distract Ken from asking about me. “Look, I don’t want to talk about this. Next week I sign the papers and this will be over.” He picks up two folding chairs, waiting for Ken’s response.

  Surprise and dread—glacier-like in their enormity and cold—seep from him. “What papers?” Ken asks, suspecting what I just learned: my father is selling the cottage.

  “Don’t let him distract you,” I say. “Find out what happened to me!”

  My father replies, “With the new owner.”

  “You sold this place?” Ken asks. Emotions spiral from him: anger, surprise, revulsion.

  “We both made the decision to sell.” A lie.

  “No, bullshit,” Ken replies. “That’s not what we talked about.” Ken’s
memory is a shattered mirror. Strained phone calls about if he could enjoy being here . . . coming here only once after I was dead and Dad never leaving him alone for a moment . . . the pain of my absence . . .

  “We gave it three months.”

  Three months?

  “And you said you didn’t want to come here anymore.”

  I’ve been here for three months?

  “Yeah, but I never said I wanted you to sell the place.”

  “What else am I supposed to think?”

  Ken is speechless.

  “Think about the basement, Dad,” I say.

  He came down the stairs after getting back from town and saw my feet—

  He shakes his head at Ken and heads back outside.

  “He’s lying,” I say to Ken, and Ken knows it. “Stay on him. He’ll crack. He’ll confess. And then you can keep this place and not leave me here alone again.”

  But Ken is disgusted. He feels like the world has fallen away and he is alone to face it.

  With nothing else he can do, Ken picks up the shelves and heads for the truck.

  This can’t happen. If this is the last time they’ll be here, what will happen to me?

  I think of when Ken and I were kids and those memories fill Ken. He pauses, the shelves almost forgotten, unable to hold back tears. Random memories tumble from him, filling the space around me. I snatch one—Grandpa teaching Ken to fish when he was a little boy—and hold it, twining it with the memory of him teaching me to fish. “This was mom’s cottage,” I say. “Dad has no right to sell it.”

  Ken’s sadness solidifies, turning to sharp-edged anger. He slams the shelves down and says, “Ya know, maybe you could think—maybe hope—maybe fucking realize—that I would want to come back some day! Bring my kids here. Keep this place in the family.”

  My dad swallows his rage. “You never said you wanted to own this place.”

  “I didn’t think it needed to be said.”

  “It’s too late.” My father remembers relief at the buyer’s offer. And enthusiasm a few weeks earlier as he gave the buyer a tour of the cottage. During everything, my father never mentioned me, even as I followed him, peppering him with questions. But the memories those questions brought up only strengthened his determination to sell.

  “You didn’t think to ask me what I thought before you sell it to some stranger?” Ken asks.

  The buyer asked about spending a weekend here and my dad agreed. “I thought I knew.”

  Some time ago, there were sounds and movement here, but I ignored them. Was that him? Did someone spend a weekend here and I didn’t even notice?

  “Well, Dad, you didn’t.”

  “There is nothing I can do.”

  “Ken, don’t let it end here!” For the first time in my—for the first time ever, I shout at my father: “Tell him what you did if you’re so fucking certain it was the right thing to do!”

  As he came down the cellar stairs, he saw my shoes on the workbench and realized I was standing on it. Then he noticed a piece of notebook paper on the steps—

  Satisfied he’s won the argument, my dad grabs the shelves from Ken.

  “He almost remembered!” I shout at Ken. His mind is a deep-red cyclone of thoughtless anger. “Nothing is signed yet!”

  The cyclone evaporates. “Just tell the guy you changed your mind,” he says. “If nothing is signed, it’s not too late.”

  My father spins and fixes Ken with a stare, furious that Ken has found a new point to argue. He’s in charge, he makes the decisions. He’s not some coward who needs to be told what to do.

  My father thinks of that floor joist in the basement.

  I’m down there, looking up at the large hole in it.

  Upstairs, my dad says, “Your brother died here! I cannot stay here anymore!”

  There are small strands of something caught in the hole’s rough edges.

  “Then don’t sell. I thought you were going to rent it or let it sit empty. Do that. But don’t sell it!”

  They look like fibres from a rope.

  “It’s done, Ken. The paperwork is a formality, but it’s done.”

  I don’t remember my dad ever stringing a rope down here.

  “You know,” Ken says, “you talk about quitters, Dad, and it seems like you’re the one who’s quitting now.”

  In my father’s memory, was he tying a knot . . . or untying one?

  “Don’t ever talk to me like that.”

  But there’s a laundry line outside. Why—?

  “Or what?”

  Oh God.

  “What are you going to do, Dad?” Ken continues. “Ignore me like you ignored—”

  Oh God no.

  “I did not ignore your brother!” my father bellows. His unbound fury slashes dark crimson, but beneath it is the truth: he didn’t ignore me. He focused too much on me. “He was a selfish quitter! Don’t lay his bad decisions on me!”

  “He needed help! God, how could you have been so blind? Did everyone see it but you? Did you want it to happen?”

  “Kenneth—” my dad begins, but can’t say anymore. His will breaks and memories surge up. I’m pulled upstairs into the deepening darkness of the room.

  He was headed into town for groceries and figured he should get a new seal for the hot-water tank while there, but needed to measure it. He came in the side door and down the cellar stairs, finding me standing on the workbench, motionless, one end of a rope around my neck, the other through that hole in the joist.

  “He loved this place,” Ken continues, his voice breaking. “Loved it so much he chose to die here. And I love this place. But none of that matters because you’re going to give up on something that belongs to the family. Or what’s left of it.”

  My dad, pulled back from the memory, says: “We. Are. Done.” He heads for the truck.

  “Ken!” I scream. “He could have stopped me.”

  I thought he had gone into town and I was alone. As I stood there, I wasn’t sure if I was going to do it. I couldn’t stand him anymore, couldn’t stand being such a disappointment, but was this the only way? I wondered if Ken could help me. Maybe get an apartment together.

  Then I heard the side door open. I froze, terrified, unable to move even as he came down the cellar stairs.

  He just stared at me.

  “You quitter,” he finally said. “Are you really that weak? I’ve see you moping around and this is your solution?” He picked up the note. The note where I explained how angry I was, how he made me feel like a failure. He read it and said, “Well, if you’re going to do this, then do it. For the first time in your life, do something right. But no one’s going to see this.” He crumbled my note—a note I spent weeks writing—and stuck it in his pocket.

  “And then he turned around and went upstairs!” I scream.

  My father appears in the doorway, his face a kaleidoscope of shadows in the gloom. His mind is all right-angles with the certainty of his victory. He will sell this place. Ken knows nothing.

  “Ken, don’t let him go!” I scream. But Ken is done, his mind on someplace past here. “Don’t give up.”

  My father says, “You coming?”

  “You let me do it!” I scream at him. I stood for hours before stepping off the workbench, my heart empty, my mind filled with my father’s words. “Tell Ken what you did, you coward!”

  When he returned from town, he’d expected me to be sobbing in the living room. Not finding me there, he put away the groceries and went into the cellar, new rubber seal in hand, certain I would be down there, crying. He first saw my feet again, but this time they were swinging freely in the air.

  Seeing this through his eyes, I remember. I circled him, asking him questions, wanting to know what had happened. But all I did was build his anger—anger that I gave up, that I didn’t stand up to him.

  He cut my body down, untied the knot, and checked for a pulse. Not finding one, he put the rubber seal on his workbench, then called 911.

&
nbsp; “Yeah,” Ken replies.

  “Don’t leave!” I scream as Ken walks out into the fading light. “Don’t leave me here alone!” I think of us as kids again, but it makes Ken feel ill. “Don’t let him sell the cottage!” The door swings shut, leaving me in darkness. “Don’t be weak and give up!” A key slides into the lock, the tumblers turn, the bolt clicks home. “Or just kill him!” I move to a window and see the pick-up head along the narrow, tree-lined driveway. It reaches the end, turns, and disappears up a forest road.

  They have to come back. They’ve got to. Then I’ll get my father to admit what he did. I was so close. They must have forgotten something. Or forgotten to do something. At the end of the summer, we used to have a ton of things to do to close this place, like turning off the water pump or . . . something. We had a list of chores, but I can’t remember them. I guess that’s why we had the list.

  But they were moving things, so they need to come back for more, right? Sure. Even though the living room is empty, there are other rooms in this place. They must have stuff in them.

  They’ll be back, whoever they were, and that’ll be good because things seemed better when they were here. I could remember things, like where I am. But right now, I’m okay. Funny, I’m not lonely, even though I think I’ve been here for three or four days by myself.

  I go down into the basement and look at that joist again. The one with the hole in it. I think it’s important.

  Am I dead? I must be.

  While Gabriel Slept

  Pray: Deliver Your strength to my loved ones. . . .

  —soul spirals away like wisps of smoke shredded to nothing. reclaimed by darkness. like i belong to it. strength, love, feeling. gone. this place takes all i am. only certainty remains: must do something—

  Was in kitchen, now in nursery. Don’t remember getting here.

  Been like that a lot lately.

  Pain a white hot needle twisting under my left temple. My wife—

  —can’t think of her in any other term—

  —just a description—

  —the liar doesn’t deserve a name—

  —looks up, gives a look like Why am I doing all the work? then makes gootchy gootchy goo noises, tickling the baby’s feet. The baby—