by Adam Haslett
He is so committed to his guilt. He needs Michael’s death to be his fault. It’s what keeps his brother alive for him—that connection. As though, as long as he still has a confession to make, Michael will be forced one day to return in order to hear it. Without that prospect, there is only an ending.
This is the thing I have discovered: Michael’s being gone doesn’t mean we stop trying to save him. The strain is less but it doesn’t vanish. It becomes part of our bewilderment, a kind of activity without motive, which provides its own strange continuity.
Penny and I listen as the four of them chat away about who’s coming this afternoon, about the music for the ceremony and their plans to go out with the friends who will still be in town tomorrow night. My wedding was more formal, of course. My mother composing and sending out the invitations, most of them to my parents’ friends. The formal dinner a week in advance for John’s parents to meet mine. Fittings with the dressmaker, a meeting with the minister, the rehearsal at the church. John was patient with all of it, and bristled less than I did at the strictures of the costumes and the production. But none of that is necessary today, and it would make no sense for Celia.
When the vans arrive, they all help unload things into the little backyard that I share with the condominium on the other side of the building. Luckily, the couple who live there don’t have much interest in gardening and were happy to hear that I did. There’s been only one growing season so far, but I have cleared a few things out and planted a bit. I wish it were bigger, especially today. I did offer to pay for something larger, but Celia said no, this was fine, just family and a few close friends, not a year of planning and expense. She did at least let me buy her dress, a knee-length, powder-blue silk with a white collar and cuffs, and a pair of shoes to match.
And the flowers—I was permitted to organize the flowers, which Penny helps me arrange on a table by the back fence and down along the four short rows of folding chairs. There should be more for me to do besides this, but it seems they have thought of everything.
Around noon Caleigh appears with rented speakers and a stereo, which she sets up on the little screened-in porch off the kitchen. She’s helped by Ben and Christine, with whom it’s been such a comfort to me to remain in touch this year. Caleigh wouldn’t let me pay for her ticket from Chicago, where she lives now, though I suppose there is no reason I should have, besides how glad I was when I heard Celia had invited her and that she would be coming. She looks much as she always has, elegant and slender, and as shy as ever. She said she would stay on with me for a few days, so we can go to the storage unit and sort through some of Michael’s records (she knows more about them than any of us). I’ve put aside whatever papers he had with her name on them, and a stack of their reparations pamphlets as well, for her to keep. She smiles her way nervously through introductions to the other guests as they gather in the yard.
In their one feint to tradition, Paul is kept from my bedroom while Celia puts on her dress and arranges her hair. I do what I can to help, buttoning her up from the back, fixing the clasp of her necklace, things I haven’t done for her since she was a child.
She is thirty-six, my daughter. By her age, I had given birth to all three of them. They were already running across the yard in Samoset. It’s not that I want that for her, or even that I want grandchildren, necessarily, though all my friends do have them by now. I simply want her to be happy.
“Do the earrings go?” she asks.
They are little pendants of blue glass suspended in silver wire, and I tell her they are perfect with her dress.
She looks not at me but at herself in the mirror.
“If your father were here, he’d know what to say. I’m sure I should be saying something to you—on a day like this. I should have said all sorts of things, over the years.”
She glances at me, then back to the glass. “There are probably things you could have said,” she allows.
Though she never wears makeup, today she’s decided to apply a pale lipstick, which she does slowly and exactly, before dabbing her lips with a tissue.
“You know what I used to hate?” she says. “The stockings at Christmas. I didn’t hate them. But they aggravated me. And the Advent calendar. All those little rituals, no matter how old we got. It seemed like you were avoiding reality, just being naive.”
“I’m sure I was, I—”
“Mom—listen: I don’t think that anymore. I see these women and their partners or husbands, people with kids. They’re falling apart—money, or mental health, or whatever it is—and they don’t know what to do. They’re desperate. You were trying to keep our world together. To keep things the same. I get that now.”
“It’s incredible how you take care of all those people. I don’t know how you do it.”
“You took care of us,” she says. “You did your best.”
I hug her, so as not to cry. “Well, Paul’s very fortunate. I do know that.”
She lets herself be hugged. “I envy you sometimes,” she says over my shoulder, “with the weather and all those dates you remember, enjoying all of that, those little things. I thought that was naive, too. But you’re lucky. It’s good you can enjoy it.”
Before I can take in what she’s saying, the door opens and Alec saunters in, half displacing us from in front of the mirror in order to adjust his tie.
“The crowds have gathered,” he says. “They await you with bated breath.”
I don’t know what is funny about this, except it’s the sort of thing Michael would say, parodying the moment. And that, perhaps more than anything, is what makes me laugh, which causes the two of them to smile, and then start laughing themselves, about nothing at all, it seems.
Soon I have to wipe my eyes, I’m laughing so hard, and I tell them, “Oh, come on now, we have to hold ourselves together.”
“Why?” Alec says.
The service itself is brief. I walk Celia down the narrow aisle. Two of their friends read short poems. Kyle leads them through their vows. At the end, everyone claps and the newlyweds point their guests to a long table, where champagne glasses have been set out. The white tablecloth is bright in the full sun. The light dazzles the wine as it’s poured. Ben and Laura and Caleigh make sure everyone has a drink in hand. After a while, Alec taps his glass, the conversation quiets, and he gives his sister a toast their father would have been proud of.
It is quite warm and people begin to sweat, their foreheads glistening as they chatter and laugh, enjoying themselves on a beautiful afternoon. And though I know I shouldn’t be looking backwards, that I should be here in this moment, I can’t help it that all of this—the garden with the drinks, and the sun, and the people in a buoyant mood—carries me back to the day I went to the house on Slaidburn Street, off the King’s Road, taken along to a party by a friend, through a low-ceilinged hallway and onto the little square of lawn at the back, where I saw John for the first time, standing in his pin-striped pants and shirtsleeves behind the dining room table they had carried out onto the grass and covered with what looked like a folded bedsheet. He was mixing gin and tonics, and after he had made me one, he stepped around that table to drink his own with me. To begin our first conversation. With such politeness and such care.
It’s a day I recall not in sadness, but in wonder at all that followed.
Acknowledgments
For their support during the writing and editing of this book, the author wishes to thank Ben George, Amanda Urban, Simon Prosser, Nicole Dewey, Amity Gaige, Minna Proctor, Jon Franzen, Nancy Haslett, Julia Haslett, Robert Millner, David Menschel, Jenna Chandler-Ward, Andrew Janjigian, Melissa Rivard, Mark Breitenberg, and most especially Daniel Thomas Davis. Additional thanks to the American Academy in Berlin, the MacDowell Colony, the Aspen Writers’ Foundation, Adrienne Brodeur, Jennifer Coor, and Susan and Ben Baxt.
About the Author
Adam Haslett is the author of the short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here, which was a Pulitzer Prize
and National Book Award finalist, and the novel Union Atlantic, winner of the Lambda Literary Award and finalist the Commonwealth Prize. His books have been translated into eighteen languages, and he is the recipient of the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy in Berlin, the PEN/Malamud Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations. He lives in New York City.
Also by Adam Haslett
You Are Not a Stranger Here
Union Atlantic
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Alec
Michael
I Margaret
Celia
Margaret
Celia
Michael
Alec
John
II Michael
Celia
Alec
Margaret
Celia
Michael
III Alec
Michael
Margaret
Celia
Michael
Alec
Celia
Alec
Margaret
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Adam Haslett
Newsletters
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
The description of the historical episode recounted here is drawn from Greg Grandin’s The Empire of Necessity.
Copyright © 2016 by Adam Haslett
Cover design by Keith Hayes
Author photograph by Beowulf Sheehan
Cover copyright © 2016 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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Excerpt from “America Eats Its Young” from Funkadelic, America Eats Its Young (Westbound Records, 1972). Written by Harold Beane, George Clinton, and Bernie Worrell. Published by Bridgeport Music, Inc. Used with permission.
Excerpt from “Unbelievable (Alone),” words and music by Toby Gad and Ris Lauren. Copyright © 2005 BMG Ruby Songs, Gad Songs LLC, Liedela Music, and Ris Lauren Music. All Rights for BMG Ruby Songs, Gad Songs LLC, and Liedela Music Administered by BMG Rights. Management (US) LLC. All Rights Reserved Used by Permission. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation and Reach Music Publishing, Inc.
ISBN 978-0-316-26136-4
E3-20160328-DA-NF
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Alec
Michael
I
Margaret
Celia
Margaret
Celia
Michael
Alec
John
II
Michael
Celia
Alec
Margaret
Celia
Michael
III
Alec
Michael
Margaret
Celia
Michael
Alec
Celia
Alec
Margaret
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Adam Haslett
Newsletters
Table of Contents
Copyright
