Sex and Death in the American Novel

by Martinez, Sarah

  “Sure did, sweetie.” She reached into the backseat of her car and brought out her guitar case and dug several pieces of sheet music from her purse.

  “What's this?” my mother asked.

  “She's going to play ‘Fade to Black’. Remember, Tristan wanted to play that at Dad's funeral.”

  My mother looked from me to Leah. “I know you two mean well, but I am not sure that is the best idea.”

  “Vivi already talked to me about how you'd want it played really soft,” Leah said.

  My mother continued to bare her teeth in what was supposed to be a smile and we began moving forward.

  Leah looked from me to my mother before turning toward the church. “Well, you two just let me know what you want and I will play that.”

  I could tell Mom wasn't happy, but hoped she would just let this one small thing go. When Leah went through the doorway, my mother stopped me.

  “Look, I know you have your brother's interests in mind here, and I do remember your father's funeral, but it wasn't appropriate then and it is not appropriate now.”

  “Why the fuck not? Tristan was my brother too. Why do you have to be in charge of everything? Why can't this be for everyone?”

  “It is, my girl. Everyone is welcome. Look, there is Eric…” She was trying that old ploy she used on me as a kid, redirection, as if that could possibly work now.

  “Mom. Mom. Stop. I am still talking here,” I said when she tried to walk away. “Music was important to him. This is his funeral. Not yours.”

  Eric stood before us with his lips pursed. Leah was talking to the priest and setting up near the side of the altar.

  My mother swept her eyes across the pews and the people settling in. “This just isn't appropriate, that is not music for a church service.”

  “Who says?”

  She crossed her arms. “I say.”

  I was not going to lose this one. It felt like the last battle to save my brother's honor, or his soul, or his memory, or my sanity.

  I didn't blink and she didn't blink until I said, “I am going to tell Leah to play it and if you try to stop her or me I will scream my goddam head off until everyone is watching us. Would you rather have that?”

  Her face turned red. I was glad to see the reaction. It felt good to hurt her. I left her there with Eric while I went to tell Leah to continue with our original plan. When I came back she was dabbing her eyes and squeezing Eric's hand.

  I hugged him and I didn't let go for several long minutes. He let me hang on him and held my mother's hand at the same time. Finally he spoke into my hair, “How you doing babe?”

  At the sound of his voice I started crying, big gulping sobs from deep in my stomach, making my eyes bug out and my face hurt. My mother smoothed the front of her suit and went to talk to the priest. Eric walked outside with me.

  We sat on a cold stone bench in front of a little fountain.

  “I shouldn't even have to do this, this is too much. A week ago my brother was angsting over quitting writing, but he seemed fine, almost relieved you know? I was relieved too, if you want to know the truth. I wanted him to quit being so unhappy. Now he's gone. How am I supposed to do this?”

  “You don't, love. You can't.”

  “Is it wrong to be mad at a dead person?”

  Eric pulled me to the warmth of his solid chest. “Never stopped you from being pissed at your dad.”

  At the mention of my father and the thought of how very different my feelings were for the two men in my family, I started crying again. Once I started up he just let me go, rubbing my shoulders and touching his head to mine. When I collected myself he said, “Glad to see you're letting it all out. You never cried like this for your father.”

  “He didn't deserve it. I don't think I could ever get all this out. I'm crying, and it feels like the thing to do, but it also seems like I'm pretending. I keep expecting Tristan to slap me on the arm and tell me to stop bawling over him. None of this feels real. How could he do this?”

  “He…I don't know, Viv.”

  I studied the ground, the separate pieces of lush green grass. “Never thought I would have to throw down over some fucking song. So many stupid random things feel like life or death anymore. I have to be able to remember how his books were lined up, like something really bad will happen if I don't. I couldn't even get rid of his glasses and this gross Corona t-shirt he cut the sleeves off of. You'd think this shit had a life of its own.”

  Eric's voice was gentle. “Why?”

  “I don't know. I really don't. All I know is that the alternative feels like death. I will keep this crazy need before I will give in to nothing. My mother…all I've done for the past week is jump through these ridiculous hoops to keep her together.” Instantly furious with his open face, I took a breath and let it out, and with that breath went some of the hostility I needed to direct somewhere. “Anyway, it's not even about what I would want…you know my brother. He wanted this song for my father. Shouldn't that be enough? She knows that. She just doesn't want to look weird in front of all her snooty friends.”

  Eric held up his hands.

  “What? Just say it.”

  After eyeing me for another moment, he said in a firm but understanding tone, “Funerals are for the people who are still alive. Get through this and you can listen to whatever you want.”

  “The funny thing is that the thought of listening to music just makes me feel empty, like I know it won't work anymore. Nothing is going to feel the same after this.”

  A car door slammed. Hushed voices drifted toward me. I wiped my eyes. The thought of my silent apartment, so far removed from all of this, gave me something to look forward to. He put his arm around me and stroked my arm.

  We sat and listened to the heels clicking and keys jangling as people made their way to the church, then we walked together back inside. Just like Tristan would have done, Eric sat between my mother and me, with one arm around me, and let my mother hold his hand.

  Leah did play “Fade to Black,” and my mother kept her lips tightly closed through the entire beautiful performance. Leah was also the first person to speak and the only one I listened to. “I was so impressed by how much he knew, how much he never said that he did know.” She took a look around. “He never bragged about the things he'd done, or where he came from.” She let her eyes rest on my mother then moved them to me before facing the audience again. “I don't think any of us could have imagined this for him.” She stopped and took a breath and looked around the room, smiling and giving a short wave to a guy in leather who sat three rows back from my mother and me. “When I first met Tristan Post, I knew there would never be anyone as smart, talented and dedicated as he was. He was first a poet, then a musician. You could talk to Tristan and he would listen. He was the first person in my life who really listened to me.”

  Leah stepped down from the podium, her body language summing up what I'd been feeling since this nightmare began.

  My mother made a strangled sound and put one hand to her mouth and reached across Eric to grip one of mine with the other. Her hand felt cool, papery and dry. Pews creaked and people adjusted their clothing. There was a cough.

  Neither my mother nor I could say anything on Tristan's behalf. Every time I tried to read to myself what I'd written, my throat would close up and my voice would crack—or worse, I would be gripped with an insane urge to laugh. Instead we printed the elegies up on pretty green paper and put them out at the reception along with an assortment of pictures.

  It was amazing to see how many people turned out for someone who had spent so much of the last years of his life almost entirely alone.

  The day after the service, Mom and I drove out to Montana where we scattered the almost weightless baggie of ashes from the top of Holland Lake Falls. We hiked up to the top, once in a while pointing out the ever-expanding view of the blue lake between the whispering Douglas fir and proud Ponderosa, until we reached the top. When it was final, his ashes blew t
oward all points on the horizon and over the falls. Disturbingly, some drifted into piles at our feet until I scooped it up, along with some dirt, and tossed it over the embankment. As he wanted, as he had said not long ago, he was now a part of the mountain.

  I sat alone in his room when we got back, unable to do anything else. I thought I was ready to clear the rest of it out but found myself unable to move further. I felt so silly, like I was being overdramatic, wondering if someone was watching me. Then, out the window, I caught sight of my mother's feet and branches hitting the ground every so often around her.

  I wrapped myself in the smelly sheets and let the images come; the walk up the trail, in the early hours of the morning, the mist still clinging to the trees, the view of the mountaintops beyond the lake. He would pull the shotgun out of the case that came with it, open it up, cracking it almost in half until the empty barrels gaped, waiting for the shells he would have ready, red and gold, clinking in place, then closing it all up with a click: solid. How long would he sit there, knowing what he was going to do? Would the birds be chirping, was the sun shining when he finally lifted the cold barrel to the delicate, vulnerable place at the hollow under his chin?

  I sat on Tristan's bed for a long time, imagining him as he would have looked beneath the sun, then a memory, him sitting near me, hunched down like he did sometimes, one knee higher than the other, hair hanging over his shoulders and down his back. I squeezed my eyes shut when I remembered how Mom had phoned the sheriff hours after he left, insisted on seeing my brother's body. From my spot at the end of the table, I could hear the sheriff's voice: “Ms. Post, please…you do not want to remember your son this way.”

  She slammed the phone down and glared at me, as if it was my fault, and said, “How dare he dictate to me. I know what I can handle and what I cannot…” and then she directed her eyes to a place near the front door, as if the man himself were still there, or maybe she was thinking of something else. Her eyes got red and her nostrils flared. She wouldn't let me come near her, only waved me away when I tried.

  When the light outside began to fade, I crawled under the blankets and fell asleep.

  I woke sometime in the night with my mother sitting beside me, tracing the lines of my face, gently pulling on my hair, combing it though her fingers.

  “This isn't healthy, Vivianna,” she said.

  “I don't care.” I hated the way she closed her eyes when I said this, like she was preparing herself to watch another one of her children crash and burn. Did I look that bad? “I'm not going to fall apart, Ma.”

  She smiled at the way I called her Ma. We only used that term when we were being silly, prodding her. She got in with me, wrinkling her nose at the smell, and laughing as she did this. I had never felt so close to my mother as I did then.

  I remade the bed the next morning, leaving the dirty sheets. I wasn't planning on sleeping there again but wasn't able to change anything either. I wanted the next time that I came down here to look as it would if he were still alive. Before I left, I messed up the bed again.

  I spent a month on the island with my mother. I quit my job at the coffee shop. Once I went home, I would be able to finally write full-time—Tristan left his trust fund, including the income from half of my father's royalties, to me. I felt a smug satisfaction at that. My father thought Tristan was the strong one, the competent one. Just because he was a boy.

  My mother and I grew close again, like when I was a girl. We drove around the island, attending farmer's markets, festivals, and having lunch in familiar restaurants. I spent hours with her working in the yard. Sometimes we stayed up too late drinking, and then slept late the next day. It was different to know my mother in this way. We leaned on each other. I slept in her bed with her as I'd done right after Dad left. She needed me then; this time I knew how much I needed her.

  “Did you ever think about letting Dad take Tristan?”

  She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Why would he do that? Your father had no time for him or anyone else. Can you imagine what Tristan would have been like if he'd gone with your father?”

  I could imagine it well. I remembered one Christmas he came back early from a visit. He never told me what happened.

  “There would have been no way I would have let him take Tristan. Ever since he arrived in my life, at six years old, so full of curiosity and life, I knew I would always be there for him.”

  “I don't think I could take care of someone else's child like that.”

  “Tristan was my son when your father left as much as he was your father's.” She paused and watched me. “I can't lose you too, baby,” she said stroking my head.

  “You won't,” I said, reassuring her. “Remember when Tristan tried to build that tree house in the back of the yard and that homeless guy kept camping out there?”

  She laughed softly. “I was terrified. I thought he was going to get violent.”

  “You didn't know Tristan was bringing him food from the house.”

  We both laughed. “He had no idea what he was getting into,” Mother said.

  “Remember when he was only reading German, and announced he was going to go to Germany, until he met that French girl,” I said, then Mom interrupted.

  “Renee, wasn't it?” she said. The sour smell of the wine on her breath also reminded me of the time after my father left. My head swam, my body felt heavy, and I only wanted to think about the good things.

  “He met her down at the beach, and then came home and announced he was going to read everything by Proust.”

  We discussed his brief athletic periods, swimming, basketball. Mom told me about having to talk to the principal about the articles he was publishing in the school paper. “Condom dispensers in every restroom! Cigarette machines for those who'd turned eighteen. Legalize drugs. My word,” she said.

  “Always took things to such extremes,” I said, then regretted it.

  “He did.”

  Chapter 4

  When I finally went home to my apartment, the rooms were too bright and cold compared to the warmth and emotion that hung over everything at the house on the island. Coming back to my apartment was like stepping into another person's life. In my bedroom stood the neatly made bed, red comforter, and shimmery gold pillowcases that matched the drapes. Then there was the fuzzy white rug on the floor. Tristan got that one for me, he said it went with the décor, and I kept it so I wouldn't hurt his feelings.

  There was the dining room where I'd cooked for him when he helped me move in. I squeezed my eyes shut until they hurt, forcing the images out of my mind, though the heaviness was already settling in. Fatigue hung on me like I hadn't slept in weeks, even though that was all I had been doing lately. I wondered if it was alright to be this tired after only a ride over on the ferry and a short drive back into the city. Maybe I had cancer, not that it mattered.

  I went to bed, and for the next week I slept, watched TV, and wandered the rooms too tired to imagine doing anything else.

  One morning I woke early, and after several minutes of irritable staring at the ceiling, I got up. I stared at the TV but was tired of the numbing effects of hour after hour of Criminal Minds reruns. I padded into my study and felt the impact of why I'd been avoiding this room. I hadn't known that was what I was doing until then.

  My books—new and old, read, and unread—were arranged so beautifully there on my bookcases by hands that were no longer in existence. There were all the classics I'd collected but mostly not read, sent to me over the years by my father, given to me by my mother or Tristan. Then there were those arranged by subject, whatever had taken my interest over the years, and my “smut books” as both Tristan and I had called them. He had looked through each one enough to tell what type of work it was—lesbian erotica, gay romance, S&M—and had arranged these books by subject. I fixed my eyes on the spines of each book, my throat tightened into a hard core and I stood in the middle of the room letting the tears roll out, stinging my cheeks, pooling at
the corners of my mouth.

  I sat in front of the books, placing my hands against the spines, hoping to soak up some of his essence, and I caught sight of a yellow sticky note poking out of 2009 Best Gay Erotica. I flipped the page open and there was a section circled, and the note said, “You write like this.” I couldn't get any air in my lungs, no matter how far I opened my mouth. I left the note where it was, closed the book and scanned the shelves for more.

  They were everywhere. After he helped me move in I found a few of these, but somehow through the rush of deadlines, work schedules, and my nightlife, I had missed most of them.

  Inside one he put, “I hope you aren't planning on trying this,” and in another, “Is this even possible?” Some of the notes were playful, some serious, as in the encouraging ones he left inside the classics Mom made us read when we were younger: “You could be like this,” he wrote on a note stuck inside Jane Eyre, and “Your characters could be this vivid,” inside Great Expectations.

  I decided not to look for any more notes. In a panic, I worried that I'd used up the last of them, then when I looked to the back of one shelf, I saw a yellow tab poking out. I would leave that one.

  Wiping my eyes, I went back to the living room, needing to be somewhere else, only I didn't know what to do in there. I went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door and stared inside. Everything looked wrong, too old, and eating or drinking was pointless. Back in the living room I sat staring out over the wet lawn. I thought of all the stupid errands I could have been doing. My stomach dropped at the thought of how pointless everything was, as if I'd just become aware of this information and needed to act quickly. I felt a painful sense of urgency and dread at once, a solid block in my chest.