How to Bury Your Brother

by Lindsey Rogers Cook

  “He didn’t like to talk about his family,” Lila said. “It made him emotional. But when he did, it was always of you and of your mother and how much he loved you. I know he believed that he would see you two again eventually, in this life, then once he got sick, in heaven.”

  Alice erased her question from the funeral, when she had prayed that Rob had made it to the heaven he imagined. She believed in heaven, hearing that he did, more than she had hearing countless preachers on Sunday, and believed that he really was there.

  Jake offered, “Where did you meet?”

  “I hired him as a guitar player when I was on tour and my guitarist got sick with food poisoning. Rob was good. He hung around for a couple of months in the band. We had a torrid affair; I was married.” Lila smiled. “The timing wasn’t right. We reconnected a few years later though. He wrote me a letter from prison, and I went to visit him a few times. We wrote songs on the phone and in letters. And then, when he got out, he came to live here with me.”

  Alice smiled, thinking of her brother’s talent, that he did something he enjoyed. Knowing this gave her a type of peace. At times, they had both been better with objects than with people, Rob with his guitar and Alice with her plants.

  “Do you want to see a video? I think I have one somewhere.” Before Alice could say yes, Lila disappeared through a doorway. The two cats followed behind her like a stream of cans on a wedding car, hissing the entire way and glaring back at Alice and Jake.

  Alice looked around the room. There were more cats than she had realized. A black one curled on top of the television set. At the noise of Lila’s rumbling, he lifted his head and looked in her direction with bright green eyes that gave up his hiding place. As if noticing the visitors for the first time, he blinked at Alice, like Rob used to do. She laughed, remembering how silly he had looked, blinking at her like that. Jake jumped when a paw darted from under the couch and tickled his ankle.

  Lila returned and put a VHS tape in the player under the television. After she hit the television, which remarkably caused a line down the middle to disappear, she sat on the couch with them to watch.

  Someone held the camera, and it wobbled along with his steps as he walked to one side of the stage. The camera focused on each band member in turn. The place looked like a dive bar with a small stage, the background barely visible because of the lack of light. First, the camera centered on Lila who sang “testing, testing” into the microphone. She wore a loose black top and a jean skirt, tattered at the end. The close-shaved hair, like it had been in the pictures Alice found, gave her neck and chin a graceful, hard appearance that contrasted with the sweet lull of her voice.

  As she introduced herself, the camera panned to the right where a man stood with a microphone and an electric guitar. He flashed the camera a thumbs-up, and the man behind it said, “We’re getting started here!”

  On the television, the camera swerved to a woman sitting behind the drums. Her right foot bounced lightly, and through the speakers came the low rumbling of a bass drum in time with the music. Lila started to sing, and the camera went back to her for a few seconds. Her eyes closed, and one hand rested on the microphone on its stand. The camera found a fiddle player as the slow movement of the bow upon a string began.

  Then, the acoustic guitar rang out, and Alice’s breath caught. The camera panned, but went too fast and missed Rob, before focusing slowly on his face. He leaned against a stool with his legs outstretched. He had gathered his long hair in a ponytail behind his head, and his eyes closed as he swayed with the music. The song sped up, and his fingers became active on the strings, picking out the notes in an elaborate dance that looked so practiced it could have been a machine. His other movements looked too slow though, as if it took all his energy to move his fingers on the strings.

  “I think…” Lila said, and the tape leaped forward as Rob disappeared off the screen. Alice reacted with a grunt that didn’t quite form the word wait. Lila glanced at her. “I think this is the tape…”

  The band members walked back and forth along the stage in fast motion, playing speedily. Rob remained seated on his stool.

  Then, the stage cleared, and he pulled the stool to its center. Lila hit Play. “Thank you, thank you,” he mumbled into the mic.

  “ROB-IN-SON!” came the voice behind the camera, so loud that it jostled slightly, and her brother looked back. “He hates being called that,” the cameraman snickered.

  Rob leaned into the microphone as his other hand reached to twist the knob on the stand: “Whenever he shuts up.” The cameraman flashed the bird in front of the camera. When the screen cleared, Rob sat back on the stool with the microphone.

  “He was a good singer, too, but had to be in a certain mood,” Lila said.

  On the stage, Rob picked out the beginnings of a song, familiar to Alice, but she couldn’t place it exactly. He leaned into the microphone and sang in a breathy, low voice. She watched him on the stool, so different than the upbeat croons of their childhood, when he favored the Beatles and Elvis.

  The crowd swayed slightly to the music, holding beers in their hands. At the end of the song, he stopped the guitar strumming and repeated the last sad words. The audience clapped and screamed, and the band amassed around Rob, but he stayed seated on the stool with his head leaned into the microphone as if frozen. When the drum for the next song started, he straightened and began to play.

  “Was that Nirvana?” Jake said.

  Lila nodded. “‘All Apologies.’” She turned to Alice. “Do you want the tape?” Lila ejected it, and Alice clutched it to her chest.

  More beers came, and they exchanged memories: Alice told Lila about the time her brother took over the school’s microphone during recess to sing her “Happy Birthday.” She told her of the days they spent playing chicken with the waves at Amelia Island. She told her about the plays Rob would write using the stage and sets Jamie bought for inspiration, where he would act out every part, and Alice would introduce him and operate a flashlight as a spotlight. She described games with impossible rules, nights huddled in the tree house, and Saturdays searching along the riverbanks for the green pitcher plants, just to marvel at the flies that would fall in their leaves.

  Lila told of a man who spoke through music, who could approach anyone with a song. He could take an instant liking to someone, a homeless man on the street or a record executive in a suit, and turn on his charm. She talked of late nights with whispered lullabies. She talked about nights on the tour bus, dozing to the sounds of cities along the coast, a trip to the west where he saw the mountains for the first time and wept.

  When they reached the story of his decline, Lila spared Alice the details, only that he had suffered. He had been clean when he left prison but picked up old habits because of the pain of his condition, his heart weak from years of illness. And an overdose, or “heart failure,” as her mother would say, ended his life before the cancer.

  “I went up the stairs to the loft one night to grab him for dinner and found him, sitting in his chair with a drink in his hand. When I went in, the turntable was still spinning, but the record was over, and I knew.”

  Jake put his arm around Alice’s and rubbed her shoulder.

  “I knew he would die, because of the cancer, and I thought I was prepared. I wasn’t though. He was supposed to have more time. He had some boxes he wanted sent different places, some garbage, some to Georgia, some to me. He told me about them, but I kept shushing him off, saying he could explain it later, it wasn’t time yet. And, after finding him like that, I didn’t want to go back up there anyway. I sent Ben to get them, and I think the piles got mixed up and things went the wrong way in the shuffle.”

  “So what about the box with the letters?” Alice asked.

  “Not sure, sweetie.” Lila glanced at her own letter still unopened on the counter. “Maybe he wanted them thrown out, maybe he meant to send the
m himself or wanted me to send them or wanted them to end up in your parents’ house. We can never know. He always had a plan. That he’d share it with you, and that you’d completely understand it, was less likely, but I guess you knew that.”

  She smiled at Alice, a sad, defeated smile. “I only knew about any letters because he used to sit at that desk, while I was at work.” She pointed to the desk in the corner. “I thought he was writing songs, but after he died, I saw that the cabinet was full of crumbled drafts of those letters, all crossed out or covered with ink.”

  “But the boxes were already gone,” Alice finished. Lila nodded.

  “I know it sounds stupid”—Alice looked toward Jake—“but part of me thought that these letters, the people, everything, part of me hoped that he would still be alive, somewhere. That he would be in one of these places and he’d come up to the door when I knocked and say, ‘Al, I missed you’ and hug me, explain everything. When I saw Ben the other day, I even thought he might be Rob, so stupid.”

  Jake’s hand brushed against her cheek, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s not stupid.”

  “Al?” Lila asked.

  “Oh, he used to call me that.” Alice looked back toward her.

  “I think I have something for you.”

  Alice pulled away from Jake and watched Lila disappear down the hallway toward the bedroom again. Jake and Alice exchanged glances as they heard rummaging and boxes being unpacked and pulled down from the closet. The black cat jumped on the back of the sofa and hissed at them.

  “You know, I always thought it was my fate to deliver this one day. Somehow, I knew that Al would find his—or, I guess, her—way to me.”

  When Alice saw Lila holding the folded-up paper, she knew immediately.

  Her letter.

  She handed Alice the gift. “I think it’s the last one he wrote. I found it in the desk. I would have sent it, but it’s not addressed.”

  Rob hadn’t forgotten her after all.

  For the first time since hearing her childhood home would soon be demolished, the confusion of Alice’s life, the stress of the search wore away briefly and she smiled, knowing that her brother didn’t forget her, that she wasn’t an afterthought, that he had written to her. Her hand covered her mouth as she let out a quick laugh, and her smile showed through. Jake leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, and she turned, pecking him instead on the lips. Lila smiled too.

  Alice reached for the letter and ran her hand over the front, with just two letters on it: “Al,” and its fancy seal.

  Rob and Lila, soul mates. Her brother had that kind of love and passion, and all of a sudden, she knew that somehow, he had led her here to rediscover it herself. With Jake, in this city of water. It was probably all in this letter, his master plan, to restore Alice to herself.

  Alice popped the seal, and the anticipation washed over her like a flood and tightened her throat. Then, a terrible thought occurred to her.

  “Maybe he didn’t want to send it. Maybe that’s why this one isn’t addressed.”

  “Or maybe he wanted to deliver it himself,” Jake said.

  She smiled, unfolded the page, and took a step away from Jake. She wanted to share this moment only with herself. The paper was different from the others, ripped on one side, but covered end to end with tiny script, so small, her eyes strained as she read the first line.

  Alice read the letter and her smile faded, and soon each muscle in her body tensed for flight. She willed them to stay still for the end of the letter. She would finish it. She would read what her brother wrote. She kept reading, and as she finished the last word, she couldn’t force her feet to stay put any longer.

  Holding the letter, she mumbled, “Sorry, I have to go,” mostly to the cat, avoiding Lila and Jake’s eyes, and ran out of the room, out of the house, into the salty New Orleans air. The rain had come while she talked to Lila and her feet pounded on the puddles, sending water up that wet the back of her jeans. To where, she didn’t know, but she ran.

  She heard Jake behind her: “Alice, Alice! Wait! What’s wrong? You forgot your shoes!”

  She had forgotten that Lila asked them to remove their shoes. Almost on cue, Alice felt the pebbles sting the bottoms of her feet.

  She slowed, and Jake caught up to her. Alice cried now; she couldn’t process her emotions. They thundered past like trains where you couldn’t make out the features of passengers, and she stood on the track, helpless.

  She reached in her backpack, fumbling for her phone. As she grasped it, the phone slid out of her sweaty, shaking hand and down onto the sidewalk. A sob racked her body and she bent down, looking for the phone.

  “I’ll get it.” Jake reached for the phone, wiped it off quickly on his shirt, and handed it back. “What happened?”

  “I… The letter,” Alice stuttered. She took a breath. “I have to call Walker. I have to find Jamie. I have to talk to Robbie. I have to, I have to.” She thrust the letter at Jake.

  She briefly saw a vision of herself, standing in the middle of the street with the phone and the letter and Jake. She imagined how she must look to the people passing by—a sobbing woman with no shoes, her hair probably a mess, her face all red from the tears, her voice loud and shaky, her clothes stained.

  They must think she was crazy. She felt crazy. She took deep breaths and tried to calm down. Robbie’s at school, she told herself. He’s safe at school. She chanted it to herself like a mantra: Robbie’s safe at school.

  “I have to go home.”

  Rob’s Lost Letters:

  Al

  Mr. Dylan Barnett

  Ms. Lila King

  Mr. Richard Tate

  Mrs. Maura Tate

  Mr. James Hudson

  Mr. Christopher Smith

  Mr. Tyler Wells

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Dear Al:

  I tell you this story not to upset you, although it likely will, but because putting this story down on paper, the story I was never brave enough to tell, is the only gift I have left to give you. I have a lot of regrets, but that I let myself become a shadow over your life—that’s my biggest one.

  When we were kids, I knew I had to go. You were too young to explain the reason to you. I always meant to talk to you again, but wanted to wait until I became something, until I could show you that the pain I caused had been worth something.

  You made me a better person. I wanted to be good for you, to stay in the lines, so that I could stay at that house for you, at least until you were old enough to go to college. I promised myself I would, told myself to stick it out, even as it became more and more impossible. Even now, so many years later, I find myself asking “What would Alice do?” like others ask of Jesus.

  Do you remember the story I used to tell you about the siblings in the forest? I desperately wanted to be that, that boy who was always good to his core, whose mind was full of happy dreams and good wishes. “What are you thinking, Al?” I’d ask then, hoping that some of that would rub off on me, sink into my own thought process.

  But, that’s not the story I need to tell you. As Virginia Woolf wrote, “My head is a hive of words that won’t settle,” a hive of memories of us as I write this letter, something I can’t make sense of, especially lately.

  But, where were we?

  Our story starts when I was nine or ten. I’m sure you remember Jamie babysitting us all the time. You probably wished he was our father. Sometimes I did too. He loved me, bought us gifts, bought me the guitar I still have now, the one I’m sending back for you and your kids, hoping one of them will play it and love it as I have.

  I wanted it—that’s something you need to understand. Part of the reason I’ve never been able to say these words out loud. When Jamie touched me that first time, I liked it. Liked how it set my skin alive and made me feel like the adult, like the
man, I so wanted to be.

  Every night when he stayed over babysitting us, he would send you out to play or you would fall asleep, and we would stay up, fooling around or having sex. When I got older, he told me he was my secret boyfriend, and I loved that, a secret only I knew about, someone for whom I was the most important person in the world, someone who could hold me and make me feel safe and wanted and loved.

  We would play house together, drink beers at first, then vodka sodas, then vodka from the bottle, sitting in Mama’s parlor like she used to do when she drank her afternoon cocktail. I loved that feeling, that silence. I began to crave it, ask for more, beg for more, until I couldn’t think about anything but my next night with Jamie.

  He told me how talented I was, that if I practiced, he would enroll me in the best arts schools, pay my way, tell Richard to screw off, and I would learn from the greats and play onstage, all I ever wanted to do. I waited, for years, eating up those promises.

  Mama, no doubt, thought I was some angsty teen dying to get out on his own with his guitar and his girlfriend. I can’t even remember that girl’s name now. But, that’s not far from the truth. The girl changed things because Jamie hated her. He was jealous and wanted me to break up with her, but I said I wouldn’t, and by the trip to Amelia Island, we were at a standstill.

  I told Richard I didn’t want Jamie to come. He asked me why and I screamed at him, without explaining, because what could I have said? I mostly wanted him to trust I had a good reason, even though I knew he would never choose me over Jamie.

  I told him if Jamie came, I wouldn’t. Richard had found me passed out a few weeks earlier with an empty bottle of rum and a cigarette that burned a small hole in Mama’s favorite carpet. I think Jamie left me there, after a fight, but it’s hard to remember now. Richard told me I was coming, if he had to drag me there, and that I needed to shape up and start acting like part of this family. I went.