by Cynthia Hand
I was thinking that they had forgotten to mention that Ty was funny. I was remembering two years ago, around Christmastime. I teased him; I said Santa was going to bring him a stocking full of coal. I told him I hadn’t decided yet if I was even going to get him a present.
I didn’t mean it, of course. He knew I didn’t mean it.
But then he said, and this I will never forget: “Well. I’m getting you a present.”
“You are?”
“Yep,” he said. “Just as soon as I can train the dog to poop into a box.”
He was funny. Mom was up there talking about how kindhearted he was, and I was in the front row staring at my shoes, trying not to laugh at a joke he’d told two years ago and trying not to cry at the fact that I would never hear him tell another joke.
Dad didn’t speak at Ty’s funeral. He sat two rows behind us with Megan. He stayed out of the way.
I didn’t speak, either. Mom asked me to, but I was afraid that if I got up in front of everybody I would tell them about the promise I had made to Ty, that I would be there for him when he needed me, when he called. The promise I had broken.
Then it would have been me on trial.
Maybe I deserved that, but I couldn’t face it.
At the end of Ty’s funeral they played Elvis’s version of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.” My mother’s favorite church song.
Ty would have freaked. Elvis at his funeral.
But it didn’t matter. Ty was dead. Mom was alive. In so many ways (the peach roses, the deep mahogany casket that matched our dining room table, the music, the scriptures, the food) she’d planned his funeral to be her own.
23.
AFTER PATRICK’S FUNERAL we drive to Wyuka Cemetery for the graveside part. It’s sleeting, a miserable combination of rain and slush, and we stand under black umbrellas around the grave. His father and sister cry brokenheartedly when the men lower the coffin into the ground.
Mom cries, too.
I don’t.
I didn’t then, either. I was all cried out by the time we got to the cemetery.
The priest says a few final words, and then we move like a herd of sheep into a room inside the funeral home for the wake. Mom brings along the green bean casserole to be heated and served.
It’s not as good as I remember.
They set up two poster-sized collages against the far wall. I slip away from Mom to look at them. It’s not like Ty’s collage, which was in a fancy frame. Patrick’s collages are two pieces of poster board, the kind you can buy at the supermarket, the pictures stuck on with tape.
Patrick had a lot of friends, like Ty.
He was on the swim team. He was an athlete, like Ty.
He was an Eagle Scout. Ty never made it that far. But still, a Boy Scout, like Ty.
He played video games.
He was a good kid.
Like Ty.
This is the worst kind of déjà vu.
In the second collage, I find a picture I recognize, a copy of the same photo Ty used in his collage: Patrick from middle school with Ty and Damian, the three amigos, arms around one another because they hadn’t learned yet it’s not cool for boys to hug. First Patrick, then Ty, then Damian. Damian looks the same, I think, wearing his gray hoodie and pale denim jeans, lanky and uncombed. He holds his left hand up with his two fingers making a peace sign. The three of them smile mischievously into the camera like they know something I don’t.
I swallow. I know something they don’t, too.
Then the sound system over my head starts playing “Stairway to Heaven.” I freeze. I look around and spot the funeral director—Jane, I remember—standing in a corner.
“Hey, Jane,” I say as I approach her. “Why are you playing this song?”
“Hello, Alexis.” She remembers me, too. “Patrick left a note requesting, among other things, a specific playlist to be played at the wake.”
I close my eyes as Robert Plant starts singing, “There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold, and she’s buying a stairway to heaven.”
“Alexis?” Jane murmurs. “Are you all right?”
I open my eyes. “What about the collages?”
“What about them?”
“Did someone make them, or did he?”
She gives me a somber smile. “He made them.”
He made them. Just like Ty. He planned all of this. Just like Ty.
Like he was using Ty’s death as a template for his own.
Ty helped this happen. By showing Patrick that it was some kind of acceptable, maybe even cool, thing to do. He led by example.
This is Ty’s fault.
All of a sudden, it becomes too much. I have to get out of here.
I search for Mom. It takes me awhile to locate her, and when I find her, I hold back, even though what I want to do is charge up to her and grab her by the hand and drag her out of here. But she’s sitting in a folding chair next to Patrick’s dad, looking into her lap as she talks. I can’t hear what she’s saying, but Patrick’s dad is nodding, nodding, tears slipping down his face.
She could be awhile.
The song is building in intensity, the way it does, and as it builds I feel less and less in control of myself. The hole is opening in my chest. The room is closing in.
I stumble back and knock a chair over. It clatters loudly to the floor.
I see Damian, not wearing his gray hoodie but a black button-down dress shirt. He combed his hair. His eyes are red. He steps forward like he wants to say something to me. Like he wants to hug me.
I take another step back. I see Ashley Davenport standing by the collage. She’s holding hands with Grayson, and they’re both staring at me.
Everybody’s staring.
I have to get out I have to get out I have to get out. I fight the urge to push people out of my way. I can’t breathe I can’t breathe.
A hand comes down on my shoulder.
Beaker. She meets my eyes and sees the panic, and her jaw sets determinedly. She whirls around.
“Hey, give us some room here,” she says in a loud voice. “Let us by, please. Excuse me.”
She weaves me through the crowd. Then we’re outside. I sit down on the curb near the hearse and try to catch my breath. Beaker stands over me like she’s keeping guard.
I’ve never been so glad to see Beaker. I could almost cry, I’m so glad.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“Not really.”
“Do you want something to drink? I think there’s lemonade in there. It’s the foul powdered stuff, but it’s cold and it’s liquid.”
“No, thanks.”
She drops down beside me and leans back, stretching her legs out in front of her. She’s wearing a gray wool skirt and stripy socks. Only Beaker would wear striped socks to a funeral.
“Well,” she says after a minute. “That was like the worst thing ever.”
I’ve missed Beaker.
“Where is El?” I ask.
“El doesn’t do funerals.”
“She was at Ty’s,” I point out.
Beaker looks at me gravely. “Yes. She went to Ty’s. I thought I was going to have to get her a paper bag to breathe into—she almost lost it like ten times. Something about how she threw up at her great-aunt’s funeral when she was seven.”
“Oh.” I feel dumb that I didn’t know any of that. I wasn’t paying attention to my friends at Ty’s funeral. Apparently I assumed the world revolved around me and my pain. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have asked her to—”
“She would have come anyway.” Beaker yanks a blade of old brown grass out of the lawn and twists it around her finger. “She’s your friend. She loves you. She wanted to be there for you. We both did.”
“Thanks.”
“We’re still your friends, you know, El and me. And Steven, even though he can’t really look at you without turning into a sad country love song.”
“I know.” I don’t know what else to say.
I know.
A shadow falls over us. It’s Mom. She looks pale.
“Hello, Jill,” she says faintly.
“Hello, Mama Riggs,” Jill responds—the name my friends always called my mother, like they were claiming her as their mother, too.
Normally Mom would make small talk in a situation like this, but I can tell she’s exhausted. “Are you ready to head home?” she asks me.
I jump up. “Yes.”
“I’ll see you in the funny papers,” Jill says as we walk away, her signature closing line.
Yeah, I think. Hopefully I’ll see you there.
At home, Mom goes straight into her bedroom and closes the door.
I watch TV in the downstairs den. It’s a risk, hanging out so close to Ty’s room. One never knows when something mind-bending might happen there. But I need something to occupy my brain.
There’s no sign of Ty, thankfully. No Brut. No reflections. No shadows.
For once, I feel completely alone.
I channel surf with the TV muted for a while, so I don’t disturb Mom. I watch TMZ, which is pretty self-explanatory without the sound, and an episode of Cops. Then I land on the six o’clock news. I can tell instantly by the background that the story is about Patrick Murphy. The reporter is standing in the train yard. She’s young and pretty, with that white-blond hair that almost looks silver in the sunshine, but her eyes are reluctant, like this isn’t the kind of story she wants to be reporting on.
I turn up the sound.
“. . . the second death in this small town this year, and the seventeenth teen suicide in the state of Nebraska in the last twelve months. As the community of Raymond gathers together today to mourn the loss of one of its brightest young stars, they are left with some haunting questions: What happened to this fun-loving, straight-A student and swim-team state champion to make him throw away the bright future that was ahead of him? What led him to this empty train yard? And how could this senseless tragedy have been prevented?”
I hear Mom stirring upstairs and mute the television again. As the reporter wraps up the story, they run a stock photo of Wyuka Cemetery, zooming in on a stone angel gazing stoically at the ground. I see an internet address, www.youthsuicideprevention.nebraska.edu, scroll across the bottom of the screen. Then Patrick’s face.
Then the weather.
My heart is beating fast. My fists are clenched, my jaw tight. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the story. I shouldn’t get so worked up about it. But the weight of the day is crushing me.
Seventeen teen suicides. Seventeen.
I’ve flipped through Mom’s books. I know that seventeen is not so many, when you consider that more than thirty thousand people die from suicide in the U.S. every year, the tenth leading cause of death, the third leading cause among teens. I could spout statistics, warning signs we should have heeded, factors that put Ty at risk. He lived in a house where there were guns present, which made him 5.4 times more likely to die by suicide. He came from what would be classified as a “broken home,” which made him three times more likely. He was male, which made him five times more likely, since females attempt suicide more often, but males actually succeed at it with more consistency. Ty had recently suffered a breakup or a broken heart, or whatever did happen with Ashley. His grades had been sliding. He’d been up and down. He’d been depressed. He’d tried it once before.
I could tell you all the factors that made him a prime candidate for the six o’clock news.
But I couldn’t tell you why he did it.
I turn the TV off and head back upstairs. I’m standing at the kitchen window drinking a glass of water when I notice that the playhouse light is on. Outside, at the edge of the back lawn, its windows are glowing brightly.
It’s been ages since I’ve been in the playhouse. Years, probably.
I tromp through the snowy yard and try the door. It’s unlocked. It swings open soundlessly.
“Hello?” I say, a bit nervous. I do not want to find a burglar or a squatter. Not that there’s anything valuable to steal or that squatters hang around kids’ abandoned playhouses in Raymond, Nebraska, in weather that’s well below freezing. But you never know.
“Is anybody in here?” I call.
No answer.
It smells old inside. Like dead flies and dust. The curtains, which were once bright and cheery, are so faded I almost can’t tell what color they used to be. There’s a grungy layer of dirt all over everything, scuffing under my feet. I spot an old mousetrap in the corner, unsprung with a dried-up hunk of cheese on it.
I right a chair that is lying sideways on the floor.
The floor above my head creaks. Like there’s someone in the loft.
My heart starts doing calisthenics. I grab an old toy-sized broom from next to the play kitchen. It’s not my weapon of choice, but if somebody is going to jump out at me, I could inflict some real injury with this thing. Or something.
Maybe it’s a raccoon, I reason. Or a possum.
I shudder. I hate possums.
Slowly, oh so slowly, I climb the ladder to the loft. Then I flip on the light. Zap.
I expect something to come flying out at me, but nothing does.
I remember to breathe out. I remember to breathe in. Out. In. Whew.
I’m getting sick of the there’s-no-one-there game.
I look around. It’s like a shrine to my childhood up here. Dusty dolls and their various accessories line the walls: a tiny crib, a doll-sized stroller, a miniature changing table. In another corner there’s a stack of old Barbies and their clothes, and a virtual army of My Little Ponies, which were my favorite back in the day. What little girl doesn’t love My Little Pony, I ask you? Horses + hair you can braid + pink = happy camper.
There’s nothing else.
I sigh and climb back down the ladder. I stand for a minute, looking around. I have hundreds of memories of this place, and they are all pretty silly. Like one time when Sadie and I locked Ty out of the playhouse and he ran around yelling through the windows, “But I’m the mailman! You have to let in the mailman!”
So we told him we’d let him in if he brought us a letter or something. Therefore he went into the house and borrowed an envelope from Dad’s office and on one side he addressed it, in crayon, to:
Sis.
Playhowse
R Backyd
And on the other side he wrote: I the male Man. Let me in.
We cracked up. And we let him in. I mean, how could you say no to the male Man?
I stifle a laugh. Mom thought it was so funny that she fashioned a little “mailbox” out of one of Dad’s shoeboxes, with a slot on the top for Ty to slide the envelopes in. I locate the box on the little craft table in the corner. I sit down carefully in the undersized chair, and take a deep breath, in case this hurts, and then I remove the lid.
Inside the box there aren’t any letters from kid Ty. Instead I find Mom’s gleaming silver sewing shears, and under them, like a long-lost treasure trove, the missing photographs. I rifle through the stack: Dad and Ty playing chess. Dad and Ty standing by the grill together one Fourth of July. Dad and Ty at Carhenge one summer (which is a perfect replica of Stonehenge except it’s made of spray-painted old cars), pretending to hold one of the cars up. Dad wearing Rollerblades at the parking lot. Dad giving two-year-old Ty his first haircut. Dad’s college graduation photo. Dad and Ty watching TV. Dad with an electric knife showing Ty how to carve a Thanksgiving turkey. Mom and Dad at an H&R Block company picnic. Dad pointing to a sticker on his shirt that says I VOTED. Dad teaching six-year-old Ty how to ride a bike. Dad wiggling one of Ty’s front teeth. Dad and Ty going hunting.
I let out the breath I was holding. Here’s the mystery right here before me, but not quite solved. All these pictures, Ty collected them, but why?
I return to the top picture on the stack. Dad and Ty playing chess. It’s different from the other pictures. It’s smaller, for one thing. It’s obviously been cut down from a six-by-fou
r photo to a three-by-three square. It’s a bit crooked, like he couldn’t cut in a straight line. It has a jagged edge on one side.
Then I know the answer.
I get up. I go back to the house, down to the basement. To Ty’s room.
I get Ty’s collage from behind his door and lay it on the bed. I set the chess picture on the white space of the part that’s empty.
It’s a perfect fit. Three by three square.
Mom was right. This is where Dad’s photo should have gone. Ty thought about it. He gathered up all these pictures as candidates. He decided on this one, cut it to size, but in the end, he didn’t put it in the frame.
He wouldn’t forgive Dad.
I become aware of the scent of my brother’s cologne. It’s all around me. I close my eyes.
“No,” I say, because I’ve accepted this by this point, talking to nobody in case there’s somebody actually there. “I won’t do it.”
Because I know what Ty would want now.
He’d want me to return the picture to this frame.
He’d want me to tell Dad.
To make it right.
I put the photo in my pocket and return the collage to its place behind the door. I turn the light off.
“No,” I whisper to the empty room.
Upstairs, I go to my closet and get out my suitcase. And I start packing.
13 March
My dad left our family on a Tuesday morning in July. I was 15 that summer, and Ty was 13. It was 9 months before Ty would go on his little escapade with the 63 Advil and ask Dad to come home, 3 years ago now, although it feels like longer.
I was brushing my teeth when it happened.
Dad appeared in the mirror behind me, and he said, “Hi, Lexie. You and I need to have a talk.”
My first thought was that he was going to lecture me about how little brain-work I’d been doing that summer. That’s what he called it—not homework but “brain-work,” stuff to keep my brain in shape during the months I was out of school. So I wouldn’t lose anything, he always said. So I would stay sharp.
But it wasn’t about brain-work.
It was about him moving out.
