tell me. we are a family
conditioned to believe
depression is something
you live with, as ben did,
as philip did, as marion did,
as j & i & a do, &
not something that kills you,
but we were wrong. the
not telling me is gnarled,
leaves me both furious
& grateful, & ashamed
to be either. it closes one
set of parentheses & opens
another, tenders me an alibi
& lets a myth of thwarted
salvation take furtive root.
by now my father was telling
me that i should not be driving
in this condition & i was
promising not to as i merged
onto the highway, on my way
home, where i knew i would
have to wake up v & break
the news, the world.
that final moment is what i
dwell on most. he is sitting
in his subaru, overlooking
nothing, the ass end of
a parking lot, those fucking
chemicals lying in his lap,
knowing he is one breath
away, that he could end it
all right now, though any
of us could, really, it is
always right now, there are
always heights & cars, things
to fling yourself off or in
front of, there is always
a drawer full of knives.
i imagine he is crying, but
that is only because i would be.
perhaps he is laughing, or
luxuriating in the sudden
vivid crispness of the world,
the miraculous dispersal of
cumulonimbus formations
in a southwesterly wind, &
feeling free at last, or
just as likely he is stone
faced with determination, so
close, just one final push.
perhaps the act was a ritual,
a series of gestures rehearsed
& enacted with faithful,
reverent precision, the
implements delicate in his
large hands like eyedroppers,
carrot peelers. it is all
unfathomable. i cannot
place myself in him. i’m
throwing clichés at the wall.
they say a velvet calm descends
when people have decided,
gathered their supplies, chosen
a place, an hour. their moods
lighten & their loved ones think
they’ve turned a corner, which
they have. a different corner.
but in my head that’s where
he always is, sitting in his car
with me screaming don’t do it
from the back seat like some
spirit cursed to be unheard.
& my mother’s mother’s
father’s parents, the famous
rabbis’ kids, the minyan-makers
of burlington vermont, they
squat atop the glass floor
of the distant beyond, shaking
their great woolly heads &
asking why of all things
did it have to be gas.
the last face i made
a mirror of that night
was just a glimpse,
a woman in her stoplit car
as i jaywalked my own
busy street, heedless of
traffic. i knifed past &
she gave me the look you
give the deranged, the
drugged husks, when they
lope too close, an involuntary
response to a musk of misery
so abject & raw that it screams
danger, anything could happen.
i fumbled open the front
door of the crumbling
carriage house & began
climbing the stairs to the
second floor. i have no idea
what banshee sounds i was
making as i walked but
the noise was deliberate. i
dreaded waking v, dreaded
saying the words, & this
would at least serve as
a kind of warning, would
flush her from the bedroom
we shared with our daughter.
she woke & flew out onto
the landing in a panic, what,
what’s wrong, & i said it,
my brother killed himself,
& it became somehow
even more true.
we collapsed together
on a rug, first wailing &
then crying in many different
ways, i don’t know the names
for all of them or if they all
have names. in between,
we flailed at comprehension,
probed weakly at how
everything was different now.
at some point soon before
my body shut down & i slept,
a thought came that felt true,
or maybe it seemed precious
for being the only thought left,
a single green shoot growing
in a razed & barren field,
so i said it: we have to have
another baby. if anything
could save my parents, it
would be that. it turned out
to be sort of true, as true as
something like that can be,
but not for years & not with
her & not at all.
emery drove me to the airport
in the morning. v did not come
to boston, did not want little
vivien to see everyone she loved
hysterical with grief, did not
believe you should lean on
your children in that way,
told me it was not a three
year old’s job to comfort
anyone, or everyone. i
did not agree, did not think
i could get through this
without her, my daughter
i mean, but i had to go,
i had to go right now.
on the curb, emery asked
if he could pray for me &
i said yes & meant it. he
grabbed both my shoulders,
bowed his head. it began
heavenly father. i’d never heard
anyone make up a prayer
before; in judaism that is called
forgetting the words. the way
he asked the lord to give me
strength was so earnest &
so fierce, so pure, it felt like
the opposite of everything
i’d ever known, his faith
a suit cut from a single bolt
of sheer white linen &
my outfit a ragpicker’s
patchwork sewn by
cantankerous & ancient
men. laz picked me up
on the other side & i
rolled down the window
& keened into the highway
wind, maybe hoping to empty
/>
myself & greet my parents
before filling up again.
laz & i met when we were
vivien’s age, a pair of toddlers
named adam with baby brothers
named david, & from nursery
school through twelfth grade
we were adam l & adam m,
david l & david m. his family
kept the sabbath & turned
off the ringer at eight thirty
every night & said i love you
to each other all the fucking
time, & in these ways they were
not just our döppelgangers
but our superiors. laz had been
at my grandfather’s funeral nine
months earlier, had watched
beside me as the simple pine
box with the star of david
singed into the sides descended
by degrees into a dark pit
fresh cut from the loam &
the entire purpose of this
oldest & most universal
ritual revealed its purpose,
which was not providing
succor through the return
of the beloved to the earth
from whence, but jolting any
fool lingering outside the basest
& most desperate grief back
to his senses, exploding
the benedictions, setting
the eulogies aflame, burning
off the contemplation of
the ineffable by showing him,
showing me, that this was it,
this was death, the box
with the corpse inside
disappears & the ground
closes above it, &
no matter how long you
stand there nothing else is
going to happen. laz &
my brother & i tore off
our suits right afterward,
put on our other suits &
went bodysurfing as the storm
swept in, the rain dartlike &
the waves gray & wind-slanted,
disordered, crashing over
our heads & sweeping our
legs out from beneath us
with relentless truculence,
the way they had when we
were kids & a current of
real danger underlay each
mission into the shallows,
each of us trying to be the last
to walk out of the water &
david, as always, with the most
stamina, the warmest blood.
i had spoken at the service
& david had listened. i had
assumed i spoke for him, that
it was my role to write & speak
on behalf of our generation
when the aged died, but now
it was impossible to know
what he’d been thinking.
had he waited for ben to go,
the way michael waits until
after their mother’s funeral
to kill fredo? it seemed to
make sense, felt obscurely
impossible that david could
die while ben still lived,
but then so was all of this.
surely i was not caterwauling
in the shotgun seat of my
oldest friend’s dad’s car
while my broad-shouldered
younger brother, who’d
scored a perfect sixteen
hundred on his s.a.t. &
graduated his ph.d.
program with honors, who
had a wife & a new job &
could stand indefinitely on
his hands & wore shorts to
all but the most somber
occasions & spent high
school listening to his
weather radio, stormchasing
nor’easters up & down
the coast of new england,
paddling out to meet the curl
in a piss-warmed wetsuit,
shoveling down rice & beans
in his car after with the radiator
blasting & any intrepid fellow
traveler he might have convinced
to join him half-dead of muscle
fatigue & hypothermia, lay
waiting to be identified, eyes
passed over his body one
last time, a task that would
fall to our father, who reported
afterward, in a voice soft &
without bass, only that
he looked like dave.
my brother would have
turned forty tomorrow.
i think about his kids
sometimes, who they
would have been, whether
having them might have
kept him alive. i think
about ayahuasca, the miracle
entheogenic brain rewiring
depression cure the shamans mix
& serve, how instead
of flying to peru to try it
he did nothing of the sort,
just kept on working, sat
at his desk the day before
he sat in that parking lot,
made no changes, marched
straight toward the camp when
about-facing or stopping cold
or jagging left would have cost
my brother what? nothing costs
anything if you don’t intend
to live long enough to pay
your debts. why not go back
to guatemala & surf? but
this is not how a depressed
person thinks. i am imposing
dei ex machina, dumping
out my sack of narrative on
the floor, examining this from
the perspective of someone
who wants to be alive.
imagine a house full of people
& nobody leaves. for days,
at any given time at least
half are in hysterics &
sometimes all of them at
once. the sobs & wails
& nose blowings are
interspersed with wan
or ravenous grazing
of the table covered
in food, whatever has
been brought or sent for,
& conversations that all circle
the drain. my mother slept
on the couch in the den
& when she bedded down
the mourners left. she asked
me if i was depressed, had
ever been depressed.
i said no & she burst into
fresh tears, asked but
what if you’re lying? &
why not? what if everyone
is harboring a secret wish
to die? who will betray us
next? it was like the way i
could not look up at new
york city skyscrapers after
the attacks without expecting
to see planes fly into them.
we were sitting shiva but
did not know how. instead
of covering the mirrors we
became them.
the only time no one cried
was at t
he funeral, we set up
chairs in the living room
& david’s wife’s priest spoke.
no one else. that fucking
weirdo was no emery.
at a time when every artifact
& sentence was drenched
with meaning, when everything
& everyone seemed like
a secret & the effort of
parsing it all made my eyes
burn with fatigue, his words
alone meant nothing, fell
from his mouth like brittle
leaves, & turned to powder
when they hit the floor.
i wore a suit & no shoes,
& wondered if my brother’s
wife, widow, believed he was
in hell, where her church holds
that the soul spends eternity if
you rob god of his right to
kill you. the rest of us
sat there hoping this was
doing her some good, waiting
for it to end, my father so
scornful of religion he can
hardly bear to enter his own
people’s house of worship
for a wedding or bar mitzvah,
& somehow a catholic
priest is telling him about
his son in his own living
room. but he was docile.
what was this to object to?
i slept in the basement
that night, tried to force
myself to watch a movie,
turned on a lighthearted
time travel comedy that
just so happens to open
with a wacky suicide.
my cousin matthew & i
drove to david’s apartment
the next morning to retrieve &
dispose of things. we wandered
the rooms, read refrigerator
notes, stared at the wedding
photos on the mantel, the
vacation snapshots in their
glass & wooden boxes
by the bed until david’s
expression curdled right
in front of us, his eyes
no longer looking at the
camera but some point
beyond, the passage
of time visible in the
deepening hollows of
his cheeks. everything
we’d missed was right
in front of us. david was
thinking about dying inside
every frame, & his wife’s
assiduous documentation
of their history was a plea,
a reminder, an attempt to
make the life they lived
together real. get him to
see it. we logged on to
his computer, found the email