How to Bury Your Brother

by Lindsey Rogers Cook

  Alice lifted her hand to give him a hurry-up motion, but forced herself to listen, stay still, and remember every detail. Her stomach churned from the anxiety, the coffee, and the lack of breakfast.

  “Rob, he tells us that he’s going to go talk to the assholes you were with, and that no matter what happens, Michael is supposed to take you back to the car. Now, we thought he was being a bit of a drama king—he was always talking like that—so we went along. We all go up to the table, Rob in front, and he says ‘Alice?’ and you let out kind of a groan. One of the guys with you, he says something like ‘What are you doing, man?’ and Rob says, ‘Nothing, I just came to get my friend.’”

  Alice’s cheeks burned, and she reached her hand up to fan her face.

  She felt the darts of that cold shower and the shame of making Meredith cry. She remembered standing soaked with cold water on her clothes as Meredith yelled about how some random guys had brought Alice home passed out. The only time Alice had ever blacked out in her life, her lowest point after seeing Rob, after the breakup with Jake.

  This had to be that night.

  “Well, they kind of laughed at that and told him to fuck off. He turned around”—Dylan stood up from his stool and turned, miming the movements—“like he was going to leave, and for a second, I thought it was over, but then he winds back and punches this guy right in the face! Wham!” Dylan’s own fist hit his other hand. “I didn’t have time to think. Adrenaline kicked in! Oh…sorry, excuse me, didn’t mean to get so worked up.” He sat back down.

  He looked at Alice, and she nodded quickly that it was fine. She stared at her nails and the white lines usually clouded from the dirt at the Center to try to calm herself down.

  “It wasn’t much of a fight. We run out basically carrying you after a few punches and get you in the car and Rob’s driving. I don’t know where we’re going, but you fell asleep on Michael’s shoulder as soon as we get in the car and it’s weirdly quiet. Rob’s driving like a madman, fidgeting, turning the radio on and off. He finally parks the car and carries you to the door like a baby.”

  “We get to the door and knock, and another girl answers, and she starts freaking out, asking us all these questions that we didn’t know the answers to and yelling at us like we’re the ones that did something wrong. Rob’s all clammed up and doesn’t answer anything, just walks past her and lays you on the couch and walks back out. Michael, he was always quick on his feet, he starts explaining how he was in one of your classes and that’s how we all know each other and that he just saw you and helped you home.”

  Alice remembered Meredith yelling that Alice should be glad that she had someone in her class to take her home and warning that it may not end up as well next time. Alice had gone to class the next few weeks wondering who they were. Of course, she never found out.

  “When we got to the car, we asked Rob what the hell had happened, but he told us to never talk about it again, and…we didn’t.”

  Her toes clenched in her worn Converses. The only time she had talked to her brother since she was eleven and she couldn’t remember it because of her own stupidity. As soon as she plucked that thought from the sea of chaos in her mind, every muscle tightened with another line of thought: What the hell was Rob thinking? He had hung out less than a mile from her for years, didn’t say anything, and then decided to swoop in to play hero at her worst moment? He had actually run from her that day she saw him on the street. She had left Athens at the exact moment he might have contacted her, just as she’d told Jake she wouldn’t. She brought the mug to her lips with both hands, but realized the coffee had chilled and set it back on the counter.

  “Here!” Dylan said, leaping from his stool. “Let me heat that up for you.”

  She stared at each of his movements as he whisked the mug away and beeped in the numbers.

  When she was in elementary school, Alice had thought Rob could hear her thoughts, that she could summon him by only thinking his name, like a bat call into the dark night for a hero. He always seemed to be there when she needed him. She would think “Rob, I’m bored,” in class and there he’d be outside the school window making faces at her through the glass until she laughed, and the teacher screamed, “Robinson Tate! Go back to your classroom at once!”

  Her mother would be ready to pull the most lace-filled and constricting dress from her closet for church, and Alice would think, “Rob would hate that.” He’d barge into her room, singing “I’m ready!” grab her least-hated dress from the closet and throw it at her, and take their mother by the hand with a question about last week’s sermon, smirking at Alice out the door as he went. Whenever he materialized, she felt a wave of calm and reassurance. Rob is here. He’ll know what to do.

  Had she needed him that night in Athens, summoned him with the old childhood connection she never felt break? Or was he on the periphery waiting to jump in, waiting for the call he knew would come?

  Before the questions could become overwhelming, Dylan sat back down, staring at her as she looked off into the distance, thinking, wondering. She wanted to sprint from the house, go back to her car, and lie with Buddy for the rest of the day. You wanted to know what happened, she reminded herself. You wanted to know who Rob really was. She cleared her throat.

  “Was the letter about all the good times you had at the 40 Watt?”

  “Um, no.” For once, Dylan was short on words.

  “Do you mind if I ask what it was about? It’s just, there weren’t that many letters, only seven. I’m guessing the people he chose to write to must have been really close to him.”

  Closer than I was to him, her mind filled in.

  “I don’t know if I would say that.” Dylan looked down and ran his thumb over the letter’s seal. “We didn’t talk after I left Athens.”

  “Well, what would you say?”

  “It’s an apology letter.”

  “Something to do with a girl?” Alice tried.

  He laughed at that. “No.”

  It was quiet. His head bobbed back and forth, considering.

  “I just don’t know if I would want my sister to know everything about me.”

  “Look, I know my brother wasn’t perfect. No one is.”

  “He didn’t need to apologize,” Dylan said, looking down at the grout in the floor tiles. “Michael, my cousin, we went to Athens together. We didn’t have much family. Anyway, he got caught up in some bad stuff. I guess Rob felt responsible for pressuring him, but truth was that if Rob hadn’t dealt to him, he would have found it another way, eventually. People like that always find a way.”

  He stopped talking and cleared his throat.

  “How is he now?” Alice said quietly, afraid of the answer.

  Dylan ran his hand over the front of his head where there was no longer hair before dropping it back to his side.

  “He pops up every once in a while.” He looked at Alice with a sympathetic smile, as if she should understand. “I regret it, too, for not watching out for him enough. He was so young, we all were, I guess. But regret, it will eat you up and create a hole you can’t fill, you know?”

  Alice looked at Dylan for a few seconds before he broke the stare. “I know what you mean.”

  They sat in silence, both looking at their hands until the creak of a door swinging on the hinge tore through the quiet, and the little girl puttered back into the kitchen.

  “Daddy, you promised when SpongeBob came on that we could play. That’s what you said.” She crossed her arms and pouted, ignoring the visitor.

  “Well, munchkin.” He scooped her up into his lap and enveloped her in his arms like in protection from a bomb. “I did say that.”

  He looked back at Alice. The girl, nestled comfortably in her father’s arms, stared at Alice as if noticing her for the first time.

  “I never got into that stuff,” Dylan continued. “Didn’t like the
feeling. But I got busted on a drunk-driving charge in ’96. Ran into a grocery store. Thank God no one was hurt. Rob and everyone else had pretty much scattered by then anyway. It was a wake-up call for me. I got my GED. Went to school after. Got my darling Katherine.” He kissed the top of the girl’s head and put her back down.

  “Go turn it on,” he said to her. “I’ll be right there. But then you’ve got to get ready for Granny’s and eat lunch.” The girl jogged into the living room and jumped up on the couch. She fished for the remote from between the cushions.

  Alice stood up. “Thanks for everything, Dylan. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.”

  “Don’t mention it.” He started into the living room, but then turned back to her and spoke more quietly. “I know what it’s like not to know what happened to someone close. If there’s anything else I can help with, let me know.” He pulled out a business card from his wallet. A wrench decorated the upper-right corner, above Dylan Barnett and his phone number.

  “Thanks,” she said. But the little girl dragged her father to the couch by his hand. He stooped to oblige.

  Alice let herself out the door and back onto the lawn. Rob had been in Athens. Rob had come back for her. The undelivered letters burned a hole in her backpack, radiating heat up her back. Like Rob must have felt when that first pill slipped down his throat, she had gotten a taste of something she liked, and the only thing she wanted now was to burn through the rest of her stash.

  As soon as she closed the car door, she pulled out her phone and typed in the name from the next letter in her stack—Tyler Wells. The first hit was for a news story.

  He was in prison for an armed robbery.

  Rob’s Lost Letters:

  Mr. Dylan Barnett

  Ms. Lila King

  Mr. Richard Tate

  Mrs. Maura Tate

  Mr. James Hudson

  Mr. Christopher Smith

  Mr. Tyler Wells

  Chapter Fourteen

  By the time she got back on the highway, Alice needed to speed to get to the high school and pick up Caitlin so they could make their appointment at the Fur Vault. She had spent the last few hours investigating the rest of the letters. Christopher, she couldn’t find anything about. When she called the PI’s number on the back of the business card, it was disconnected.

  But she knew so much more now than she had a few days ago.

  Rob had written to Dylan. To Lila, who Alice learned was a singer. And to Tyler. Who was a convicted armed robber. One loop in her mind overshadowed these discoveries though: Rob had been in Athens.

  All her new knowledge changed nothing—Rob was still dead. She still didn’t have her own letter. Her parents and Jamie had hid things from her. But, somehow, the fact that Rob was in Athens changed everything. Rob hadn’t abandoned her, even after their mother had said to stay away. He had helped her. She had really seen him that day on the street.

  As silly as it seemed, Rob had earned back her trust, even from the dead. And now she trusted his plan with the letters, trusted she was meant to deliver them. That they wouldn’t fail her. That he wouldn’t fail her. Not again.

  I trust you, she had said to herself an hour ago, when she’d stopped to FedEx a letter to Tyler in prison with the fastest possible shipping, asking to visit him to talk about Rob. I trust Rob, she reminded herself again now, even as the thought that Rob had hung around with…criminals…sent a chill down her spine.

  But then, what did that make Rob?

  When she parked at Macy’s Fur Vault in Atlanta, Caitlin hopped out of the car and waited at the door. Alice set her questions aside and fast-walked to keep up with her daughter.

  A huge smile lit up Caitlin’s features as she threw open the door with dramatic flair and stomped her combat boots on the carpeted floor.

  The counter and its surrounding decorations were grand, but not modern. Alice wondered if a lack of renovation or a purposeful decision to stop the aging of the outside world had motivated the decor choices. An expensive-looking maroon carpet, with a black design that looked like the patterns on a turtle’s shell, covered all but a foot of the hardwood floors. Uncomfortable-looking cream couches spread throughout the waiting room with a few old women on them and one restless young man. In the corner, an attendant dressed in black manned a rack of furs for purchase and a full-length mirror. A woman modeled one, not bothering to look at the price tags. Alice imagined her mother sitting on the couch with a cup of black tea in a bone china teacup. “Two lemon slices, two tea bags, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  Alice looked at her daughter, standing in the middle of the room, seemingly scanning each object, cataloging it in her brain. Caitlin and Rob were so much two sides of the same coin. Both were slightly detached, in their own universe, and perceptive to a fault. But while Rob had studied the world, taking note of everything that didn’t meet his expectations, Caitlin studied it as if she were an alien, fascinated by every inefficiency favored by humans. If Rob had been in Athens, could he have been in other areas of her life? Could he have seen Caitlin? How she wished it were true.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs…?” the woman behind the counter said, extending her hand for Alice to shake. She wore all black with a severe-looking turtleneck, bright-pink lipstick, and the largest glasses Alice had ever seen. She might be one of the most glamorous women in Georgia, Alice thought. Knowing her mother and her friends, Alice knew a lot of contenders—a type of glamour that had ended with that generation. Alice grew self-conscious of what she was wearing—jeans she purchased at Target and a T-shirt from a “Clean the River” event the Center hosted several years ago.

  Alice took the hand but gestured with her other. “Oh, no, I’m…I’m here to pick up my mother’s coat.”

  “That’s not a problem. Fill out this form, and we’ll get it for you.”

  Alice looked at the form. Did she know what kind of fur it was or where it was made? How many coats did her mother have here? When was the last time it had been glazed? Alice didn’t even know what that word meant, outside the context of doughnuts or paint. They wanted her mother’s social security number?

  “My mother’s very sick. I’m not sure about some of this.” The woman shrugged and waved Alice to the couch.

  Caitlin materialized next to Alice. “I’d love to ask you some questions,” she said, pen posed on a notebook she produced from her bag.

  The woman looked back at Alice with wide eyes, as if she had never seen anyone so young in the Fur Vault and feared she might be an animal-rights protester.

  “How old are you, dear?” The woman behind the counter smiled at Caitlin as if she were six.

  Caitlin mimicked the woman’s sweetness and said, “How old are you?”

  “You can go ahead, ma’am,” Alice said to the woman in line behind them, and tugged Caitlin to the couches.

  They sat down. Alice filled out the paperwork, while Caitlin sat, pen poised over her notebook but writing nothing. When Alice placed the half-complete paperwork on the counter, the woman didn’t move toward it. Alice sat back down and sighed.

  They both watched the clipboard, until Caitlin moved to cap her pen and fold back the top of her notebook. “If I get in, I want to go,” she said. “I know how Dad is, that he takes time to get used to things. But if I get in, I’m going.” She paused and her voice shrank in confidence. “Do you think he’ll come around?”

  Alice patted her daughter’s hand, then put her arm around her and kissed the top of her head like she used to do when the kids were toddlers. “We are so proud of you. Your dad is too. And if NYU is where you want to go, we will find a way to make it work. I promise.”

  Caitlin’s body slumped a little, the question hanging over her now answered. She pulled away and thanked her mother and said, “Love you.” Caitlin retrieved her phone from her purse and began typing furiously. No doubt telling the go
od news to Chelsea, who had already applied early action to Columbia.

  “Mrs. Maura Tate?” the attendant called, holding the paperwork and the coat in a black garment bag. She unzipped it for their inspection, and Alice ran her fingers over the soft fur as she had as a child. The coat was beautiful.

  Alice folded the papers she apparently needed to send to the insurance company, retrieved a check from her bag to pay the annual storage fee, and started signing the many forms reclaiming responsibility for the coat. With the manager’s full attention, Caitlin retrieved the notebook from her bag.

  “How many coats do you have stored here?”

  “About nine thousand.”

  “What happens if someone dies and never picks up their coat?”

  “We keep it.”

  “Really! For how long?”

  “Forever.”

  “Really!” Caitlin said without looking up, as she scribbled furiously in her notebook. “But what if someone stops paying?”

  “We still keep it. Then, if they ever want to pick it up, they pay the storage fees.”

  “What’s the longest you’ve had a coat here?”

  “Twenty years.”

  “Whoa! Do you think it will ever be picked up?”

  “Eventually. It’s much easier for us to contact relatives now, with Facebook. We used to have to run newspaper ads.”

  Caitlin flipped a page over in her notebook and muttered something unintelligible under her breath.

  Alice pushed the finished paperwork toward the woman, who took it and walked away from the counter without glancing back at Caitlin. They turned to leave with Alice carrying the coat. It was much heavier than she remembered.