by Anna Bruno
When Lionel played with blocks, I imagined he would become an architect. He’d endure the training and work in the field for a time. He’d look the part with a checkered shirt and a skinny tie. His office would be in New York City, or maybe Philadelphia, and he’d design big glass boxes, modern buildings, until that got a little bit stale, or the office politics began to wear on him, or some leadership guru at the company retreat preached, “Always be excellent.” Then he’d quit and start up his own company, designing and selling furniture, maybe.
“Oh, come on. Take a joke! I’m not planning to have an affair to be more like my father,” I said. “I can’t believe you don’t think I’m funny. Audiences find me hilarious.”
Most of my jokes were lost on Lucas. Some guys only find other guys funny. They laugh all day long at sophomoric jokes about farts and sweaty balls, and then a woman throws out a really snappy one-liner and they just don’t hear it.
Addie looked up at me. I wiped the booger from her left eye.
“I think you have a good sense of humor,” he said.
“You just like it when I laugh at your jokes,” I said.
“Hmm, yeah, that’s true.” He finally cracked a smile.
This was the last real conversation we ever had.
* * *
I RETURNED HOME WHEN Lucas called to tell me what happened. He met me as I walked out of the terminal. He didn’t say anything—there were no words—he just wrapped his arms around me. It was the first time I felt cold to his touch, reptilian. It’s not that I expected to feel passion, but I didn’t expect to feel the way I did. It wasn’t hatred and it wasn’t indifference; it wasn’t love but it wasn’t the absence of love either; it wasn’t life and it wasn’t death. It was cold. It was brutal. I can say that.
I felt Lucas looking at me, searching my face for something he needed, but I couldn’t look back. I’d lost everything already, but if I looked, I’d lose more.
12AM
MY MOTHER METICULOUSLY PLANNED the funeral, as she’d done for Uncle Nic. She hadn’t visited since Lionel was born, when she came up to help out as I recovered from labor.
Vaguely aware of her decisions, I was present when our families met with the priest. He was there to counsel us, grieve with us, and pray with us. But I was there only in body, not in mind or spirit, and there’s nothing a priest can do with an empty vessel.
We congregated around a small table in the parish office, the same table where Lucas and I sat with Sister Mary Agnes only a few months prior, discussing Lionel’s baptism, as he bounced on my lap.
The baptismal font is next to the casket. Eyelids lift where they fall. From dust to dust, as they say.
My mom had chosen two readings and a gospel for the funeral. As these details were discussed, I thought about Luke chapter 10, the parable of the Good Samaritan, which was the gospel I had chosen for my wedding, because though Lucas was not religious, he was a neighbor to everybody, and I believed he embodied the parable by the way he lived.
Now, I could think only of that parable’s cruel prescience. Lucas and I—we were the man robbed of everything, stripped naked, and left for dead. For us, there was no Good Samaritan. No one, in this world or the next, could bandage a wound so deep and so invisible.
If Father Ed was concerned that I paid no mind to the readings my mom had chosen, he didn’t let on. He was an old priest, familiar with grief.
Lion was eulogized by Father Ed in his homily and by my father-in-law, because after me, Lucas, and Joan, he’d spent the most time with him, and Lion had loved the old man’s funny faces. Almost all of his words were lost on me, except for the last thing he said before leaving the lectern: “Lionel was the best of his parents, like two cans of paint mixed to create the perfect spring yellow.” The best of us was gone.
After the funeral, my mother hosted a luncheon at our house. She always admired the Jewish custom of sitting shiva, mourners visiting the family home, and though she never said so, I believe she wanted to turn our house into something other than what it had become.
In spite of myself, I saw my mom in a way I hadn’t seen her for a long time. If my dad understood fatherhood as a safety net, the accumulation of wealth as a contingency, my mom understood motherhood as attention to detail. She channeled her grief, planning Lionel’s funeral as she’d planned my childhood birthday parties, year after year.
When I turned seven, she hosted a backward party. She put up a bunch of homemade signs that she painted backward. All the kids were told to come with their clothes on backward. We played games backward, and we ate cake before pizza, and all the kids walked around backward all afternoon. I don’t know where she got the idea but I’ll never forget that party. It was more fun than the fancy soirées paid for by the parents of my friends.
Over time, alcohol has stripped her of some of her pizzazz, but she kept it all together for the funeral. She had to. No one else could have done it.
* * *
I TAKE THE TOWEL from Jimmy and rinse it in warm water. He lets me lay it across his face. He puts his arms around my waist. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Lucas never told me about Lionel’s last words. I never knew he called him Dadda, never knew he said pen. The reason he never told me this is clear: he thought it would cause me more pain.
“Jimmy, Lionel did not have the capacity to warn you. He was a baby.”
“We shouldn’t have left the window open. How is it even possible that we left it open?” Jimmy slumps over on the boxes and puts his face in his hands. What happened that day turned up the voltage on his sister’s death, loss an unrelenting torturer. Her cancer was out of his control; Lion’s fall was not.
There’s something about grief that makes us dumb. Grief is the ability to reason and the absence of reason. Grief is faulty wiring. Lucas believes his thirteen-month-old son tried to warn him about the window. Jimmy believes this too. And because they ignored this warning, or didn’t understand it, they bear greater responsibility.
Lucas and Jimmy never considered this possibility: Lion had not warned them of anything. Our fate was a tyranny of small decisions: a couple’s decision to fix up the porch, a mother’s decision to get on a plane, a father’s decision to paint the trim in the company of friends, a dog’s decision to jump up on the bed, a father’s decision to put the baby down on the bed so he could be next to the dog, a trio of men’s decision to leave the window open, a baby’s decision to climb out onto the roof, and a million others not mentioned—where to live and how to live. Some were rational choices individually, good, even, but together: unfathomable.
Before now, I’ve never considered this possibility either. I blamed Lucas for his carelessness; I blamed myself for my absence.
I wipe mascara from my eyes. “I wish Lucas had told me Lionel called him Dadda,” I say, tears streaking down my cheeks. I take Jimmy’s hands from his face and gently lift his chin to look into his eyes for a beat, just long enough to send pain back and forth as if we share a single nervous system. I bring his head to my chest, and we remain still. His thinning hair smells of cigarettes, which reminds me of Lucas in the old days, before he gave them up.
* * *
I DIDN’T LEAVE LUCAS right away. There were months of uninhabitable fog. Lucas woke up every morning and went to work. He did the grocery shopping, and the housework, and paid the bills; he did all the things people do to get by. I was along for the ride. When I wasn’t working—on Skype with Grace, digging for stories, refining our models, stretching myself to make sense of the data—I mostly hung around the house with Addie. Sometimes I took her for walks.
Before I moved out, I went home to Connecticut for a few days, leaving Addie with Lucas. I had three successive nightmares, about her choking on a chicken carcass when she was left home alone, about a coyote snatching her from our yard (coyotes do not prowl in or near town but they do in my dreams), and about an enormous tumor emerging from her head and killing her as I held her in my lap. For the remain
der of the trip, I called Lucas every three hours just to make sure she was still alive. Each time, he said, “Addie’s fine. She misses you, though.” For those dreams, I felt guilty—for being haunted by the dog instead of my son. Grief is a wayward monster.
Addie always sulked in the evenings when only one of us came home. To her, the presence of one of her people meant the other wasn’t far behind, which was usually true. She’d pace around and then stop and sit by the door expectantly. She didn’t curl up and get comfortable until both of us were there and the order of her universe was restored. Lucas and I often swapped pictures of Addie waiting by the door when one or the other of us had to work late or was detained by some other commitment. The image of her waiting bestowed a profoundly satisfying sense of belonging—home was the place I was supposed to be, and because Lucas sent the pictures, I conflated Addie’s desire for my return with his, which was a doubling down on joy.
When I returned home from Connecticut, I curled up on the couch with Addie and called my agent. “No more travel,” I said. He thought that was a bad idea, and I could tell by his tone that he’d assumed, now childless, I’d agree to more travel. I calmly explained that I could not leave my dog overnight. He tried to act like he didn’t think I was crazy but toward the end of the conversation he suggested I see a therapist.
“Just take the dog with you, then,” my agent said. But Addie hated planes and I wasn’t willing to drive more than five hours at a time, so he agreed to my break. I wanted to focus more on the fund anyway. Without Lionel, I could see nothing beyond simple profit motive. There was nothing else to live for.
Turns out, Lucas was right. He did marry my father.
* * *
IN EARLY DECEMBER, LUCAS insisted that I attend the annual Murphy’s Drywall Christmas party. I said I wasn’t in the mood. He pulled a dress out of my closet, threw it on the bed, and claimed it would only take an hour. His exact words were, “C’mon. Be my person for an hour. One hour. I can’t do this without you.” I could tell he was at his wits’ end so I put on the dress he’d pulled out, even though it wasn’t right for the occasion and it hung loose because I’d lost so much weight.
I told myself I could do it. Then Addie pushed her hard head into my chest and I almost stayed home. Lucas tucked my hair behind my ear and pulled me up by the hand. He knew the promise of a drink would get me through the door.
There were about thirty people at the party, employees and clients, and some close family friends. Angela was there, and I realized immediately that she’d wormed back into Lucas’s life.
He didn’t leave my side all night. When I went to the bathroom, he escorted me and stood outside the door. The toilet off the kitchen was occupied, so he walked me up a short set of stairs to the full bath located next to the rec room on the split-level. His parents’ house was a sprawling maze of extensions. Set on a large lot at the edge of town, walkable from our house, the original floor plan was an eleven hundred–square-foot, one-bathroom, stone craftsman-style house with a central wood-burning hearth. Over the years, as Murphy’s Drywall grew, so did the house. Three separate additions tripled its size. No matter how big the house got, we always hung around the central hearth and the kitchen.
When we returned from the bathroom, Angela’s eyes were glued to Lucas. She talked to Joan but she was really talking to him, flaunting his mother’s acceptance. She attempted to show me up because I wasn’t talking to anybody, least of all Lucas’s mother. She looked happy, tipsy off rum punch, her voice louder than usual, more exuberant. She’d lost weight; she wore a clingy black dress. Her makeup was heavy. It made her look pale and thin lipped, and like she was trying too hard.
Lucas ignored her. At first I thought this was normal. I’d killed their friendship a long time ago. Then I realized they were actively ignoring each other, acknowledgment evident in Lucas’s lack of general politeness. At one point, she stood inches away from us, ordering Bulleit from Lucas’s cousin, the bartender for the night. Her eyes met Lucas’s over the rim of her glass. He didn’t so much as say hello, or crack a half smile; he only looked at her for a fraction of a second.
What can a man communicate in a fraction of a second? Lucas, with his large, weepy eyes, horizontally wide—rather than vertically large, as people usually mean when they say wide-eyed—truly wide, thoughtful and emotive, could speak volumes in a code that I knew how to decipher. With a glance, he told her that I was fragile, that I was physically present at his behest but not emotionally present, because he had no right or ability to command my mental state. He told her that it would be wise not to speak to us, and tonight there was only us—there was no him—because he wasn’t about to leave my side. Later, tomorrow, maybe, there would be him.
In the morning, Lucas would wake up, feed Addie, and head to work at some jobsite. Then he’d stop by the old man’s shop, which doubled as a back office. Angela would be there tallying expenses, planning for tax season. She’d ask him if he wanted to grab lunch, and she’d act demure and accommodating, telling him if he was pressed for time, they could just grab something quick, but she really wanted a burger from Fitzpatrick’s, which was twenty minutes away and the service was slow. Lucas would agree.
A bigger person would have said hello to Angela, but I never said I was a big person. I can be quite small. I can be the bitch that Martin Yagla thinks I am. Actually, I almost did say hello when Angela was alone on the couch, digging through her purse. She pulled out objects, one by one, and placed them on the cushion next to her awkwardly slouched body: a small cosmetic case, one of those plastic, tubular tampon holders, a wallet, a handful of crumpled receipts, a pack of American Spirits. She located her phone and shoved everything back in quickly, sliding the objects into her cheap cloth messenger bag.
Watching Angela interact with the world was like listening to NPR talk about sports: painfully uncomfortable.
Angela didn’t smoke. I knew this, not because I’d never seen her smoke a single cigarette at any Murphy’s Drywall event, or anywhere around town, outside a bar or coffee shop, in her car, in the park—though I hadn’t—but because she wasn’t the type of person who smokes cigarettes. She was too much of a cat person, too into cooking and watching The Great British Baking Show on PBS. She wasn’t a bar person. She was a homebody. Homebodies drank tea. Homebodies made soup from scratch. Angela had a pack of cigarettes in her purse for the same reason she ordered Bulleit: Lucas liked those things.
She didn’t need to offer Lucas a cigarette to win him over, though. She’d already offered him something I couldn’t, not anymore: friendship. Anyone with two eyes could see how much he needed it.
After the party, Lucas and I walked home in silence. Lucas wanted to stop at the corner store to buy his own pack of cigarettes. He’d taken up the habit again. I’d given up on shaming him. I said fine but I would keep walking. He could catch up. He hesitated. I’m sure this made him uncomfortable. It was late and I’d been drinking in excess. But chivalry was less important to him in that moment than cigarettes. Anyway, I was wearing heels and he must have known I wouldn’t get far.
I often thought that Lucas wasn’t so different from my Harvard friends. More brilliant than most of them, he could carry a conversation. He was introverted but enjoyed socializing with all kinds of people after a couple of whiskeys. He had no interest in finance, in leveraged buyouts and liquidity events and P&Ls, but all that stuff is boring to most people anyway. I teased him for his socialist leanings but he held his own when we debated the issues. One thing that separated Lucas from my friends in cities, the thing that really revealed his working-class roots, was the way he smoked cigarettes. He didn’t smoke cigarettes like my artist boyfriend—the guy on Ninety-Ninth and Lex who slept on an air mattress. That guy rolled his own. Usually, he rolled spliffs. And he did it because he was an artist. There’s a big difference between people who smoke cigarettes because they want to be cool, artists and musicians, and people who smoke cigarettes because they grew up sneaking
them from their mama’s packs. Lucas fell squarely in the latter camp. And he didn’t roll his own. He bought Natural American Spirits, typically mellow yellow.
Lucas caught up with me a few blocks later. There was a time when we always walked home arm in arm, but I kept my hands in my coat pockets and my eyes on the sidewalk. When we got home, he tossed his phone and wallet down on the counter and went out to the backyard to smoke.
The amount of time that passed seemed longer than the burn rate of a single cigarette. When he came back in, I said, “You got a text from Angela.” In the old days, I would have teased him about it, had a little fun with him, maybe gotten angry, but now I didn’t have the energy.
I’d turned on the TV but hadn’t bothered to find a show to watch. A regional adaptation of Family Feud played on the local access channel. Years prior, I’d encouraged Lucas to get together a team from The Final Final and apply to be on a local game show. In addition to Family Feud, there was a quiz show where teams answered questions about current events, with one night a week set aside for sports trivia, and there was a charades show, where a person on the team acted out a book, movie, or song. Lucas read everything; Jimmy remembered everything; and Martin Yagla had both mathematics and medicine stored somewhere in that crazy mind—I figured any one of these three game shows was a slam dunk.
