“Well, I did grow up with him, D! He was my asshole brother, and I don’t know any more than you do! Is this what your parents think too? That Luke was some kind of psychopath? Is that why you had to sneak over here tonight in your pajamas?”
She drops her head, rubbing one wrist. “They’re just worried, Alys. And you know how close they are with Ben’s family.”
How close we all are.
Were.
I stop. “Worried about what? Luke’s gone, D. He’s gone.”
She looks up at me, and what I see there in her gaze is unmistakable. A kaleidoscope of fear and regret and sadness and the absolute truth as everyone else will see it, which is that I am someone now who can’t be trusted, who could fly off the rails at any given moment, who might, if she’s anything like her brother—
Hurt people.
My brain feels like it’s pulsing inside my skull, and I raise my hands up to my temples, pressing hard with my fingers.
“So they think I’m a monster too. Is that it?” I drop my hands and notice that her cheeks are reddening the way they always do when she’s embarrassed. It feels good to say it out loud, what I already sensed the minute Delilah showed up in her pajamas, the chilly night air clinging to her clothes. But in spite of this one moment of release, shame falls over me in a suffocating weight. I know that from now on, I will be tainted to all who meet me. Soiled. I may as well be wrapped in yellow tape, or wearing a giant sign that reads CAUTION.
She doesn’t answer me, just looks away, biting her bottom lip like she always does when she’s trying not to cry. I look at the floor beneath my desk, suddenly exhausted, the closed laptop before me a silent accusation.
“Maybe you should just go.”
The last time Delilah and I had a fight, we were thirteen, and she thought I liked Brian Ackroyd, this guy with stringy blond hair whom she had a monster crush on. We didn’t talk for two days, then made up in the cafeteria in the space of five minutes, wrapping our arms around each other and splitting a cookie precisely in half, chatting excitedly as if nothing, nothing at all had happened. Something tells me that this time things are going to be different. Maybe it’s the resigned look on her face or the tension moving through the room, infecting us like a virus. She walks to the door, closing it carefully behind her with a small, metallic sound. I close my eyes, willing the world to stand still, to stop turning so rapidly on its axis, making me sick.
When I open them again, Luke is sitting on my bed, turning the pages of a slick magazine: Guns & Ammo. He looks up, the wall behind his head clearly visible through his skull, his sandy hair.
“God,” he says with a smirk. “I thought she’d never leave.”
And, with those words, I feel myself pitching forward, sliding down as the room, Luke’s face, the night, fall away and I hit the floor.
SEVEN
In the car, on the way to the funeral the next morning, my head still throbs. I rub the sore spot on my forehead, the skin underneath tender and smarting. When I woke up, the room was empty, but for the same strange floral smell mixed with burning leaves, and a wisp of sulfur, the remnants of a struck match.
I’m wearing the shapeless black dress I got at the mall, my hair held away from my face by a long silver barrette. Dressing this morning, I stood in front of the mirror, unable to move, overcome with anxiety. Would people be outside the church? The cemetery? Because my hair was combed neatly, my clothes pressed and wrinkle-free, would they think, Oh. She’s not really grieving. Look how carefully she’s combed her hair, how neatly she’s dressed. Or would it be worse if I turned up disheveled, a run climbing up the leg of my stocking like a ladder going nowhere? I can’t believe she’s dressed so sloppily at her brother’s funeral. They must not have been very close . . . I held on to my dresser and tried to breathe, my eyes burning and gritty.
“It’s a closed service,” my mother says from the front seat, reaching over and pulling the visor down to smooth her hair, touch up the lipstick at the corner of her mouth. Seeing her wearing lipstick looks strange, like eye shadow on a small child. Usually when she’s working at the gallery, she’s barefaced, her artfulness reserved for her hair, pulled back in a French twist. A closed service. The words spin in my brain. We’re not religious, but my mother usually makes us go to church for the holidays—Christmas, Easter, all the big ones. Personally, I don’t see the point. “Just immediate family.”
Immediate family. Which I guess means us. My grandparents are too old and sick to make the trip from Iowa on such short notice. My grandfather had a stroke last year, and now he pretty much lives in la-la land. Must be nice.
In front of Saint Anne’s, reporters are parked at the curb, and they rush at our car the minute we exit, clutching their microphones, their notepads. The sun is shining brightly, but the day is cold and bitter, as it usually is in mid-March, the wind cutting through my dress and long wool coat. We push through the crowd, each individual voice blending together like the incessant chirping of birds. I try to pretend I’m at the zoo, that we’re passing through an aviary, rustling feathers in shades of turquoise and coral, somewhere lush and beautiful, but I can’t. I just can’t. My father stops at the stone steps. He’s wearing a black suit and his shoes are scuffed, in sharp contrast to their usual mirrored shine. He brings one hand to his chest as if he’s in pain, his wedding ring glinting in the sunlight in a flash of gold.
“Paul?” My mother’s voice sounds frightened. “Paul? What is it?” She grabs his arm, pulls off her dark glasses. Beneath them her face is white, her eyes puffy.
“I don’t think I can,” my father whispers. “I don’t think I can go in there.”
He bends at the waist, still clutching his chest. The reporters swarm around us, hungry, wanting to be fed, and my mother turns to look at them, her face full of rage.
“We are burying our son today. Please let us have some privacy,” she shouts, her voice echoing in the cold air. The reporters take a step back, though reluctantly. My shoulders shake violently, and all I want is to go inside, to be warm again. Even if it means seeing Luke for the last time. My mother takes my father by the hand and pulls him close to her. “You can do this,” I hear her whisper. “We have to do it together.” She looks over at me, tears streaking her cheeks, and puts the glasses back on as we begin to move forward, me trailing behind like a lost puppy, my heels clicking on stone.
One female reporter stares at me as I pass. She’s young, maybe around twenty-five, tops, nervously twirling a pearl stud in one ear. As we pass, the look of sadness on her face almost stops me in my tracks, makes me want to sit right down on the stone steps of the church and never get up. At the same time, I’m furious at Luke for putting us in this situation, turning us into people who need to be pitied in the first place.
The service is mostly a blur. I stare up at the long stained-glass windows or down at my hands folded neatly in my lap, looking anywhere but at the polished wooden box at the front of the altar, the crate holding what is left of my brother. His remains. Which is a strange expression because when you die, nothing really remains. Isn’t that the point? You lose it all. The altar is covered in white flowers, the blossoms cool and damp, and I wonder if my parents have paid for them. It’s hard to imagine that anyone else would’ve sent them, considering what Luke’s done. The minister drones on about love and forgiveness, and my ears close entirely. His mouth moves, but I hear nothing. The altar and pulpit are a glittering gold in the sun streaming through the windows, but I don’t feel the presence of God. I don’t feel anything at all. A numbness has set in, weighing down my limbs. I want to cry, to tear at my hair, my clothes, but I am strangely spent. Detached, almost. As if I’m watching these events unfold from somewhere far away. The choir box is empty this morning, and I long for some kind of melody, the crash of the organ, the flight of angelic voices. My fingers twitch against the fabric of my dress and I close my eyes, remembering
the Debussy, the Brahms lullaby I played each night before bed, my face pressed to the pad beneath my chin, arms cutting the air around me. The fact that Luke doesn’t deserve music, the blissful lilt and salvation of it, makes me, for some reason, saddest of all.
Outside, in the cemetery across from the parking lot, the reporters stand at a distance, their cameras snapping, my heels sticking into the soil. There is a terrible grinding sound as the coffin is lowered, and my mother turns away, a white handkerchief pressed to her nose, half of her face obscured. My father picks up a shovel and digs it into the hard ground, filling it with loamy earth as the day grows colder, the temperature dropping. He tosses dirt atop the coffin, and my nose runs wetly. I don’t want him in the ground. “We should’ve cremated him,” I mumble, my lips barely moving, but my parents just stare at the hole, their bodies tense. The sound of dirt hitting wood is louder than rain, rhythmic and unrelenting, and I close my eyes, unable to watch as the earth pelts the mahogany box, dulling its shine and covering him forever.
After the burial, we head back toward the car, fighting our way through the reporters, our bodies moving on autopilot. I keep my head down, trying not to make eye contact, trying to ignore the clicking cameras, the words hurled through the air at our back. Usually after a funeral, there’s some kind of gathering. I haven’t been to any funerals before, but I’ve heard about them, seen them on TV, in the movies. People come dressed in black, bearing huge trays of food and soft words of comfort. But not for Luke. His actions don’t warrant this. Instead we will go home with our grief, alone. Maybe we will eat something late at night, scrounging around in the refrigerator like thieves, bellies aching and sore. But maybe not.
There is a figure waiting by our car, slightly stooped with age, her oxfords sensible and brown against the pavement, her legs thin beneath her navy woolen coat, arms crossed at her chest, her wrinkled face tilted toward the sun. Grace. At the sight of her, the silvery-gray hair cut in a blunt bob at her chin, the way she, always cold, is rubbing her upper arms to stay warm, I want to hurl myself into her arms, the scent of L’air du Temps, wood shavings, Jergens hand cream, and rosin blocking out the outside world. Grace was a concert violinist when she was young, a soloist, touring the world by the time she was eighteen, playing the opera houses of Vienna, Prague, Paris, Berlin—where she grew up—but gave it all up for love, getting pregnant at twenty-one and marrying an American soldier. They eventually moved from Berlin, where they’d sit on her days off, flirting with one another over the porcelain rims of their cups, to Madison, Wisconsin, far from the gilded chambers she once played in, crystal chandeliers dripping from frescoed ceilings. Her husband is long dead now, but photographs of them at the height of their youth and beauty sit on top of her piano, dusted and shined each day so that when the light pours in through the bay windows, the snapshots come alive, winking at me in black and white, the paper silvered with age.
“Alys.” She steps forward and opens her arms, and I fall into them, closing my eyes, feeling her small bones, but despite how delicately she is made, no one would ever call Grace breakable. She speaks into my hair, nonsensical words, sounds, really, and the lilt of her voice, the hint of an accent, even after all the years she’s spent in America, helps me let go of all the unshed tears in the church, of all the sorrow camping out in every corner of my body. I know that I am soaking the shoulder of her coat, the wool wet beneath my cheek, but I don’t care. After a few minutes she releases me, and I pull away and try to get it together, rubbing my dampened face with my gloves.
Grace glances over at my parents, who are hanging back, not wanting to intrude right away, my father jangling his car keys against his leg, a nervous tic, and in his jerky movements I see my brother’s face, his impatience as he waited for me to get ready for school each morning, turning the car keys over in his hands restlessly. My father’s eyes sweep the perimeter of the lot, searching for advancing reporters, his body tensed, ready for battle. Grace steps forward, her eyes locked on my mother and father, her expression solemn. “Dani,” she says. “Paul. I’m so very sorry.”
My mother nods, still spent, her face drained of emotion. My father looks down at the pavement, then thanks her in a voice as empty and perfunctory as the expression on my mother’s face. His face is white as new snow, and when he glances up again, it is through a veil of tiredness so profound that it almost hurts to look at him.
“I wanted to come to the service”—she points at the church—“but those men wouldn’t let me in.” The ushers, the people my parents paid to keep strangers away from us. Grace pulls her black patent leather purse more firmly over her shoulder, a gesture that lets me know that she is nervous, that she wonders if she should have come at all, made that hour drive on the highway, dodging traffic, moving swiftly toward us through the thin, reedy air.
“We thought it best to keep it a closed service,” my mother says. “Considering what things have been like since . . .” Her words evaporate, and my father walks over to the driver’s side, unlocking the doors with a loud click.
Grace takes a step closer, tentatively reaching out and putting one gloved hand on my mother’s arm. “I cannot imagine how hard it has been—for all of you,” she says, and my mother’s face tightens, her body going rigid. My father opens the car door and climbs inside, the engine roaring to life, startling me.
“It’s not easy for anyone,” my mother answers, pulling away from Grace’s arms and opening the passenger door.
Grace nods, her eyes settling on me. She hovers near the car, her watery blue eyes darting back and forth between my mother and me. We’ve driven the long highway once a week to see Grace for five years now, had her over for dinner countless times. I’ve even stayed at her house the night before an audition or a competition, slept in her guestroom, my feet dangling off the end of the narrow twin bed, eaten toast and bacon she’s cooked me in the mornings, her pretty china plates glowing like mother-of-pearl. But now it’s as if she’s a stranger, like we’ve already gotten into the car and stepped on the gas. It feels like I’m not only leaving her but music itself in the past, a place that no longer has any meaning. My chest hurts at the thought, and I concentrate on breathing deeply, moving air in and out of my lungs.
“Alys won’t be coming this week for her lesson.” My mother climbs into the car, pulling her long coat in after her, smoothing it over her knees. She stares straight ahead and through the windshield, her features sharpened in profile.
“Of course not.” Grace says, matter-of-factly. “But do not forget—there is the audition coming up for the summer program, Alys.”
(—I’d like to forget. I’d like to forget everything. But I can’t. It’s all there every time I close my eyes—)
“I can’t.” I’m mumbling now, on the verge of disintegration. “I can’t think about that right now.”
Even as I say them, I wonder if the words are really true. They float dubiously between us. My hands are empty and purposeless without the weight of the violin in my arms, my ears stuffed with cotton. But I can’t imagine surrendering myself to that beauty again, the hope that music keeps in its own secret heart, how it speaks for me, uttering the words I can’t say out loud.
Grace nods. I can tell she wants to reach out to me, drawing me into her embrace once more, but that she’s holding back.
“I am here when you’re ready,” she says, her eyes speaking more than the words themselves.
I nod, afraid to say anything more, that I will start crying again if I do. Instead, I watch as she dips her head, breaking eye contact, and with that release, I get in the car, close the door and busy myself with the seat belt, pulling my dress down over cold knees. As we drive away, she’s still standing there, watching our car as it pulls out of the lot, her purse clutched tightly to the side of her body, her figure fading to a silhouette, then a dark pinpoint as we move out of range.
EIGHT
Once we get back
to the house, I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep, fully clothed, shoes on, on top of the covers. When I wake, the sun has dropped from the sky, and night is pressing down upon us. I feel closed in, my head still foggy from sleeping too hard, too long. I pull off the dress, kicking it into a corner of my room, and change into a pair of jeans and a long black sweater, rubbing my cheek against the soft knit before pulling it over my head. In the corner, there is a rustling, Miranda’s face glowing out of the shadows, her pale blond waves shining in the moonlight. Blood runs blackly down her cheek, and I can see that on the top of her head there is a round hole the size of a bird’s egg, distorting the bland prettiness of her features. “I’m still under the table,” she says in a gravelly whisper. “You’re supposed to be here too.”
A sound escapes my throat, part moan, part jagged cry. If I don’t get out of this house, I will go insane. “Play ‘Death and the Maiden,’” she whispers, in a voice that rakes cold fingers down the knobs of my spine. “Play it for me, Alys.”
I run past her to the door, one, two, three leaps, and out into the hall, slamming my bedroom door behind me. I see a sliver of light, a lurid glow, Luke’s door pushed open a crack, and my blood thuds at my temples. I don’t want to look inside, but I have to. Have to.
My mother sits at Luke’s desk, piles of papers spread out in front of her, immersed in a round circle of light. She’s wearing her reading glasses, small rectangular frames that always seem to slip down her nose whenever she bends her head too far forward. She’s still wearing the black sheath she wore to the funeral, a pearl choker looped around her neck. In profile, she looks regal, elegant, miles away from the woman I’m more familiar with, the one with dirt under her nails and tangles in her blond hair, a dollop of icy blue glaze dotting one cheek as she bends over her potter’s wheel, carefully sculpting the delicate neck of a bottle with her long fingers.
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