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 Twenty-Two
The package sat on the porch when she pulled into the Center with Buddy, just as Edward had said it would.
The Center’s lights let out an irritated buzz when she flipped them on, which joined the crickets’ chirps and the rustle of the water outside. With the large windows, which let light spill in during the daytime, and the night tours and fishing that usually kept the workers outside in the nighttime hours, the lights weren’t used much.
She lifted the box, surprised by its weight, and brought it to the large table in the center of the cabin where they held staff meetings. She walked a few circles around the box, which caused Buddy to bark. She shushed him, and he lay back down. She had been expecting something like a large folder. This would take longer than she had anticipated. She grabbed a beer from the fridge, ordered food from her favorite Indian place, and then sat in front of the box to drink a few sips before standing to put music on the stereo. It was too quiet.
She couldn’t exactly call this night fun, but the prospect of sitting at the Center on a Friday night with only Buddy, knowing that her family was accounted for, made her feel something akin to pleasure. Caitlin would be in the final dress rehearsal for her play tomorrow, until the actors finally complained enough to be released. Robbie was excited about spending the night at Caleb’s. Walker was still in DC (with Brittani), but she didn’t want to think about that.
Alice cut open the box an inch at a time to ensure she didn’t damage any of the documents and placed the rubber-banded files in separate piles on the table. They were unordered, but she lined them up on the table chronologically, according to the labels on top, which were written, scratched out, and rewritten from overuse. At the bottom of the box was a large bag, labeled “personal effects” in Sharpie with a few books inside.
She stood over the mass of documents, briefly frozen with everything to process. The sheer amount overwhelmed her. To take the edge off, she sat down and sipped from her beer until it was empty.
The stereo changed, and Miranda Lambert sang out from the speakers about mothers and daughters and broken hearts. Alice felt a little chill. She took the shuffled playlist as a sign she was on the right path. She would finish the journey her mother had set off with the box of letters she left for Alice in the closet. With each one she delivered, Alice felt more and more like the house’s clutter was not just because of her mother’s mental failing. It was a challenge. A challenge she would finish for both of them.
She found a yellow legal pad and a marker and set them both on the table on top of the files. She uncapped another beer. She pressed Repeat on the song and turned it up several notches, allowing it to fill places in her chest that felt empty.
At the top of her legal pad, she wrote “ROB” in all caps.
As Alice stared at the blank paper with her marker posed, the image of the funeral pamphlet came to her mind. She pictured it so clearly, Rob on the front with his guitar. The line under the image came into focus. She wrote on the first line of her paper “Born: July 30, 1968,” then skipped to the last line: “Death: August 21, 2007.”
Alice looked at the space between the two lines. What else? Her mind flashed back to the morning car ride before that night at Amelia Island when Rob left. She sat in the back seat of her father’s Jeep, next to Rob. He looked out the window expressionless, as he had since he got into the car after a prolonged and teary (on her part) goodbye from his girlfriend. A goodbye their mother had watched, scoffing, “It’s that girl, putting ideas in his head,” without specifying what the offending ideas were.
Her father drove with his perfect ten-and-two hand position and sighed, loud and long, at something her mother was doing. And then Alice remembered what she was doing. Her mother was reading the text from The Little Prince out loud, pausing every few minutes to ask Alice questions. Her summer reading assignment for sixth grade. She counted back. Rob would be in tenth grade. He was only fifteen. How old he had seemed to her then. She wrote “Left home: 1984.”
Then, Dylan. She wrote a few lines down “Athens, Georgia.” Dylan thought everyone had left by the time he was arrested, and Rob probably lived there at least a year to be that established at the 40 Watt before Dylan and Michael showed up. She wrote “~1991–1995” next to “Athens.”
And Tyler. That had only been a few years after. The first folder, from his arrest, was in 1998. She wrote “Arrested (Tyler): 1998.” Then, the date from the X-ray: “Diagnosis: 2005.”
She picked up the 1998 file. It began with his intake form: Robinson Wesley Tate, a 165-pound male, picked up at 1333 Peachtree Road in Atlanta. The police report filled in gaps she could have guessed at: the police received calls from neighbors that the house contained a drug operation, and after three controlled buys by a confidential informant, they got a search warrant and planned to go bust it one night. They thought the force may have a leak, because when officers arrived, none of the reported people living there were home, but most of the drugs, scales, and other supplies were left behind. Police followed someone else who escaped on foot (Tyler), but they couldn’t find him and settled on arresting the only person still in the driveway. Rob didn’t resist but nodded when they read him his rights and sat in the back of the car silently, not answering any questions. He never asked for a lawyer.
She thought of Tyler, how he had so narrowly escaped, according to the report. First, Rob went into detox. She read through reports of the drugs in his system, which were extensive and diverse. His mug shot showed him standing in front of the camera, but his eyes were soft, as if looking at a loved one. Tattoos: three, a sparrow on his right shoulder blade and two filled in triangles, one on each calf. She wondered what they meant. He was sent to the county jail for holding, couldn’t meet bail, and then was charged with several drug charges with intent to distribute. Because of a prior marijuana charge and the quantity and variety of the drugs in the house, his possible sentence stacked to twenty-four years in prison. He accepted a lesser charge for ten years (less with good behavior and parole, they told him) and pleaded guilty.
The food came eventually, and she nibbled on it as she progressed through the files. There were accounts of his various jobs in the prisons, of a fight early on, of his transfers to different prisons and units. In yearly reports from the guards, they regarded him as intelligent and friendly, but unpredictable. He spent most of his time in the library and became de facto librarian. Once, when the library closed, he went on a rampage that sent him to solitary confinement for a week, after which he spent two weeks repeating lines from what they eventually realized was Moby Dick.
There were records for every visitor. Alice’s interest was piqued when she saw that Jamie requested visiting rights, but Rob denied them. If Rob knew Jamie had basically stolen money, she didn’t blame him for denying visitation. Edward Davis’s name showed up constantly, and as angry as she wanted to be at him for his presumption over her marriage and for keeping Rob a secret from her, she couldn’t help but feel some tenderness toward him for visiting so often and sending her brother what he needed. Lila King, from the letter addressed to New Orleans, showed up several times in 2003 and 2004, before his release, and Tyler’s name appeared a few times, once with his wife. The list didn’t include her mother’s name.
The prison transferred Rob to the hospital in 2005 after he started complaining of a weird pain in his chest. At first, no one would listen, just another prisoner trying to get out of his usual duties. Then, an abrupt change. Three letters came from state congressmen and one arrived from the mayor. Copies of the letters—as well as letters her mother sent (in triplicate) to the hospital’s manager dedicate
d to the prison patients—were included in the file with a note from the hospital’s president, calling for Rob’s examination and the hospitalization.
Alice’s heart swelled for her mother, jumping into action, despite the reaction she’d given Edward when he told her about Rob’s illness. But her mother apparently never saw Rob. And it seemed from the files and the letter to her that Rob didn’t know about their mother’s involvement with his treatment. She pictured her mother barging into the prison that Alice had tiptoed into. Maura would have gone straight to the warden’s office with her fur coat and demanded her son be given the treatment he needed, all the while making veiled threats using the names of her friends through her carefully lined red lips.
Finally, the hospital examined Rob. After, things went downhill fast. The court had already scheduled his release but moved it up once doctors determined he didn’t have long to live. The prison released him to Lila King in summer 2006, and he made plans to move to New Orleans. After an appeal to a judge, he got his parole transferred to Louisiana. His warden had written on behalf of his release. Rob checked in for his parole hearings until he was too sick, at which time local police would check in with him at home.
She wondered as Tyler did how things would have been different had Rob not been in prison. She rewound the whole scene in her head. First, she played it with him out of prison, perhaps at some house in Atlanta, their mother again swooping in to help, but this time Rob would receive the best medical care, improve, beat the illness, call Alice weekly to update her on his progress. Then she played it with their mother yelling at the prison warden, with the story’s end already decided.
When she finished the files, she let Buddy out and back in before she lay down on the couch. She understood why Rob didn’t come back, why he didn’t want to “show his scars without shame.” But she still didn’t know why he left. Maybe she never would. For the first time in decades, Alice forced herself to remember one of the worst nights of her life, the last night they were all together, the memory she had worked the hardest to forget.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Until the last trip, the Tate family’s annual pilgrimage to Amelia Island was Alice’s favorite time of year. It was better than Thanksgiving, because Mama didn’t yell at her about not ironing the tablecloths fast enough. It was better than Christmas, because they didn’t have to go see Daddy’s random family members who always remarked how pretty Alice looked in her dress, then said nothing else to her, all the while having animated conversations with her male cousins. It was better than the other weeks of the summer because she got to go to the beach. It was better than her two weeks at sleepaway camp, because Rob was there.
Despite all this excitement, when they pulled into the beach house’s garage after their stopover in Savannah, Alice was a mess of nervous chatter. Once everyone got back to her father’s Jeep, Alice had hoped Rob would work more on the drawing and let her see it, but instead, Rob had clammed up again. Sensing this, Alice peppered her family with questions, hoping to break through the car’s tension, until Mama told Alice to stop talking because she was giving her a migraine.
They always stayed in a cottage encased in shiplap, painted in a seafoam green that looked like the reflection of the ocean in the morning light. To Alice, the house had always looked like a doll house, one that had been trapped between two large hands and squeezed until it grew too tall for its width. Despite its tall, narrow look, it was the only house on the cul-de-sac.
The car pulled into the bottom garage that acted as the first floor of the house, and Jamie pulled up behind them in his own car. The ignition turned off, and for a moment, everything stayed deathly quiet; no one moved. Richard stared into the windshield as if he were still driving. Rob looked out the window as if scenery still passed in front of it.
“We’re here!” Mama finally said, breaking the spell. Daddy opened the door, and the family piled out.
They fell into a routine practiced through their many years at the house. Mama went to the grocery store to buy provisions. Richard and Jamie retreated to the porch with cigars. Alice busied herself with opening all the windows in the house as Rob opened and shut cabinets.
“Are you looking for the cards? I brought some. I can get them.” They always played games together when they were here. In the small confines of the beach house, they were forced to be a family. She could pick up the smell of Daddy’s cigar and his and Jamie’s laughter over the soft waves of the beach.
Rob didn’t answer but continued his determined search with the kitchen cabinets. He yanked the cabinets open with such force that the doors bounced on their hinges, then slammed them shut. Alice was close to telling him that she was getting a migraine, when he stopped and trotted to the window she was in the process of forcing open.
“It’s stuck.” She leaned into the window, caked with years of paint and sea salt.
He ignored her and pulled her to the old couch by the arm. They sank into the overstuffed cushions that enveloped Alice like a hug, nothing like the stiff antique furniture at her parents’ house. She looked up to admire her favorite thing about the room: the light above them, which Mama referred to as “tacky.” Pelicans danced around the brass encasing the light. At night, the holes projected little pelicans on the wall. Alice’s earliest memory was here as a toddler, sitting between Rob’s legs and looking at those pelicans on the wall.
“Listen, Al,” Rob began. Her attention snapped back to him. “I…” He started, then shook his head and thought better of it. She stared at his hands bouncing on his knees and how much they had grown in the last few years, how much larger they were than hers now. Calloused skin dotted the tips of his fingers from playing his acoustic guitar.
“Something might happen, while we’re here,” he said slowly. “I might…go away for a while.”
“What do you mean?”
“Leave the house.”
Her chest constricted like it did right before the plunge down the wooden roller coasters at the pier where the whack of the cart on the track synchronized to her heartbeat.
“Why?”
“I can’t explain it right now.”
Alice’s favorite two weeks of the year threatened to slip away from her. If he left, they would all leave. Then she would be trapped at home, listening to Rob and Daddy yell in the house like she had for the last six months, followed by her parents yelling at each other and shushing one another every few minutes when it got too loud.
They didn’t realize she could hear everything from the crack underneath their bedroom room, which was two inches too large, could hear every argument about how Rob needed to learn to respect his elders, needed to stop skipping school, needed to get his act together and “get serious” now that he was in high school, needed to learn so many things about how to be a “gentleman,” and maybe the boarding school where Daddy had gone was the place to do it. Plus, the kids could use some space—it wasn’t “normal” for siblings to be so attached, and wasn’t he a bad influence on Alice?
“You can’t leave! You’ll ruin everything!” She started to cry, and Rob hugged her. She refused to hug him back and her arms protected her chest, acting as a barrier between them.
“One day, it’ll all make sense. I promise. I’ll explain everything when you’re older.”
“I’ll be in sixth grade this year! I am older!” She stomped her foot on the scratched hardwood.
“You’re my favorite person, Al.” He stood up and headed back to his room, leaving half the cabinet doors open. “Don’t forget that.”
She screamed behind him, “Rob? Just stay for a few days, please! There’s nothing fun at home! Rob! Rob!” She heard the door shut, but she didn’t go after him. She buried her head in the pillow, crying with frustration and confusion, breathing in the familiar mildew-and-salt smell of the couch. Eventually, she heard a car pull into the garage.
Mama came up
the stairs, carrying a load of groceries as Alice sat up from the damp cushion. She stroked the impression of the cushion’s seam on her cheek with her hand, feeling the indentation as a sign that this was real.
Mama set the groceries down on the counter and glanced at her from the kitchen. “Were you crying?”
Alice looked at her through wet eyes as a type of confirmation.
“Why are you crying?”
Alice was sure Mama’s next statement would be “Don’t be difficult.”
“I can’t explain right now,” Alice said, trying Rob’s phrase on for size.
“I asked. If you aren’t going to tell me, that’s fine, and you can just quit your woe-is-me act and help me with the groceries. I’m going to ask you one more time: Why are you crying?”
Despite Mama’s insistence that she was going to ask only one more time, Alice didn’t sense the issue would be dropped. And she wanted it dropped.
“It’s hot,” Alice said lamely. She was never a skilled liar. That was Rob’s job—to invent the excuses and make sure she and he were on the same page before their parents came home.
Mama raised an eyebrow but went back downstairs for another load of groceries. After four more trips, she unbagged them and set everything on the counter, as if each item was on display. Alice watched with one of the cushions hugged into her body.
After a few minutes, Mama approached her and handed her an apron and a vegetable peeler. Without words, Alice rose from the couch and wiped her face on the apron. The fabric touched the floor as she tied it around her. She piled the potatoes in her arms and carried them to the sink. As she began to peel, Mama tsked three times with her tongue before she resumed her own chopping.
That night, after Mama came in to tell her to turn the lights out for the second time, Alice lay in bed in the dark and tried to stay awake. She thought about tiptoeing to Rob’s room and tapping at the door. She wanted to say sorry for yelling earlier, but she was still mad that he might ruin the trip. So selfish of him, she thought, as she crossed her arms under the covers and tried to memorize the cracks on the ceiling. Plus, if she wanted to creep down to his room, she would have to wait for the adults to go to bed since Rob always slept in the basement. She could still see the porch lights on from her open bedroom window and hear her parents and Jamie talking. They were discussing the latest fight with his then-new wife, the one Mama wouldn’t let Alice meet because “there’s no sense in getting attached.” The conversation bored her.
How to Bury Your Brother Page 20
