receipt for the chemicals.
he had bought them only
two weeks earlier. perhaps
that was the event horizon, or
perhaps it was neither event
nor horizon. these clues that
were not clues were everywhere,
waterlogging everything, as if
the wave he’d spent his life
surfing had finally broken.
among the items my brother
had purchased after the means
of killing himself was an
expensive skateboard that
had not yet arrived, was still
en route. printed out on his
desk, time stamped a few
days earlier, were directions
to a memorial service for our
grandfather that was not until
july. this set of data staggered
me: the bifurcation of david’s
intentions, part of him planning
to live & mourn & skateboard,
the rest of him planning to die.
it was not a toggle switch, they
tell me, not an either/or but a
both at once. no more a paradox
than a train station with two
sets of tracks running in
opposite directions.
the note on his windshield
was not the note. the real note
came to us later, in a hazmat
envelope. i only read it once,
transcribed into an email
by my father. it began
As far back as I can remember, I
have always thought I should be dead.
who am i to line break
that sentence, chop it
where i feel the rhythm
lies? i’m sorry for that,
david. but also i am furious.
i don’t believe you. i
remember your childhood
too, your sun-warmed
body draped across mine
on the beach where we
returned each summer,
bigger & stronger, where
we bored careful holes in
flat wedges of sand with
our thumbs & first fingers
& named them clantobars,
played running bases & rolled
giggling down the sloping
dune into the ocean to
spring up & battle waves.
i remember you with dandelions
behind your ears in grandma’s
garden & another poking from
the waistband of your shorts,
before your round belly
knotted into muscle. your
body was the closest mystery,
so like my own that i
cartographed all our differences,
your nose a mansbach &
mine a kaplan, your back
broader & chest hairier,
your strength deeper set
than mine, honed fighting
water instead of iron.
i remember holding your head
still for the clippers, trying to
clean up the haircut you’d
inflicted on yourself, a prelude
to the night a few years later
when, left alone in the house,
you removed the braces from
your teeth & videotaped
the procedure. mom & dad
had made you get them,
did not take seriously your
objection that it was
forced cosmetic surgery.
they believed you’d thank
them later, but you reclaimed
sovereignty over your body,
for the first but not the final
time. even the orthodontist
had to admit you did a superb
job. you walked dogs to pay
back what they had spent &
your teeth stayed fucked up
for the rest of your life, like
our father’s. except now, at
seventy-five, he sports invisaligns,
is making what has long been
crooked straight; time passed
& he changed his mind, as
you cannot. there was glee
in your eyes that evening,
do not tell me otherwise,
you bobbed atop your mischief,
grinning with those wires
extruding wildly from your face
like broken walrus whiskers
& the sterilized nail clippers
waving in your hand. &
what about the year you
swallowed daily capsules of
resveratrol, the magic
grape skin compound you
said increased longevity in
rats? i don’t believe you,
your last words are lies,
i hereby accuse you, too,
of laying a false frame over
your life, putting braces on it.
but i don’t know for sure, i can
prove nothing, am testifying
only to my own blindness,
or your skill at hiding behind
a mask.
the note was short, very
short & very polite. it
seemed almost to elide
the point. there is that first
sentence, & then a part i don’t
remember, & then it ends
I would have succumbed to your love
and would be here still.
i suspect i cannot quote the
fragment that lies between
because it is so vague. it
does not name the thing
that is killing him. my father
the editor, the headline writer,
the master artisan of words,
pointed this out. the phrasing
suggests no awareness of how
this murder will affect those
left behind. this too is said
to be typical. those who take
themselves away are sure
that we will all be better off
without them. they cannot
see past their own mirrors,
have lost the ability to
imagine a world in flux,
capable of becoming any
worse than it already is,
or any better.
how do you mourn someone
who claims he never wanted
life? how can you memorialize
a person who chose oblivion?
such a death has nothing in
common with any other.
it is unnatural, may in fact
be the only thing in the world
that is truly & completely so.
the life force is meant to be
locked in combat with the
death force. we evolved to
survive, we fight for our
lives. my brother switched
sides, turned his back on
all of history. david fought
to die.
& meanwhile, as the house
bulged inchoate with grief &
vinnie packed the contents
of my philly crib & trucked
them up to boston, & v &
vivi
en went to wait at the
cottage on martha’s vineyard
that felicia & ben had passed
down to their four grandsons,
meanwhile the book was
hurtling toward existence.
in two more weeks it would
debut atop the list, this
fourteen stanza fake kids’
story with cusswords on
every page that all the giant
publishers had tried & failed
to buy out from beneath
the tiny one. there was a good
chance it would fizzle before
the summer ended & also a
possibility it would achieve
escape velocity & orbit the
planet in perpetuity. my family
was adamant that the best thing
i could do was everything
anybody asked me to, all the
press & all the travel, starting
with a today show interview
locked in for june fourteen,
pub day. better to occupy
yourself, they said, & didn’t
need to add that if i stayed
wallowed in the basement
we all lost again. besides
which, their advice was
always the same: work.
work no matter what
& above all. a boston jew
is nothing without his
puritan work ethic. but
i didn’t need convincing.
i was desperate to get
out of there & desperately
ambitious, as i had always
been. i wanted to succeed,
wanted to breathe life into
a mythic version of myself
i had sketched out down
there in that wood-paneled
subterranean room where i’d
once gone to play my music
loud. i wanted to be able
to say the year my brother
killed himself, i made
a million dollars. it sounded
like a jay-z lyric in my head:
when tragedy hits we hustle
harder, ball out for the dead
& gone, put down our heads
& earn. we smoke these
cigars not for ourselves
now but for them, our
joy forever tempered but
regardless we must glow,
are duty bound to shine
no matter what it takes.
later in the summer i did
say it, to my friend josh,
both of us floating some
hundred yards off the shore
of a flat ocean, & it sounded
so meaningless i never
uttered it again.
david’s mask had rendered
his suffering invisible & now
i needed one of my own.
i kept worrying that some
interviewer would learn about
my brother & ambush me,
which was ridiculous. making
the luckiest asshole in the world
break down on camera is not
in anybody’s interest, but
being forced to account for
all the parts of myself at once
terrified me nonetheless.
perhaps i also had some notion,
a superstition almost, that
if tragedy was ever allowed
to step into the winner’s circle
triumph would be incinerated.
but the realer fear, the one that
stared back from the mirror
lens of every television camera,
was how i would look to
those who knew, which was
all my people by now.
i had asked sarah & daniel
& torrance to make calls,
to spread the word so that
i would never again be
forced to say it myself.
what would my friends think,
i wondered, watching me
grin & quip with kathie lee
gifford like some sociopath?
what would i think of myself
if the mask did not at least slip?
i watch those interviews now &
try to catch something, see
beneath it. i cannot. you’d
never know that anything
was wrong, & perhaps for
those few minutes nothing
was. i too became a train
station.
for the next year, i was always
on the road or on the phone,
or lying on my couch awash
in television, gathering
the strength to leave again.
i answered every question
like no one had ever asked
before. we do not turn into
what we pretend to be, but
what we pretend can still
unmake us. worship the false
idol & tell yourself you are
only playing the game
of survival: how long before
that graven image comes to
mean something, or everything?
how long before we confuse
happiness with distance from
disaster, closure with being
unable to remember?
i do remember a gig in dc
that fall. a public relations
firm brought me out for
a happy hour at a georgetown
restaurant, with passed hors
d’oeuvres & cocktails named
after the book. the company
was owned by a woman who
had gone to my high school.
her name was not familiar,
but she knew me & knew
my brother, was between
my age & his; this connection
had been a part of her pitch.
she was going to ask after
david at some point &
the whole night, as i
told funny stories &
signed books & posed
for photos with my arms
around the bare shoulders
of strangers, i could think
of nothing else. this was
one of the scenarios that
haunted me: blindsiding
someone who was only
making polite conversation,
having to watch eyes
register the news again.
they seated us together
at dinner, & i tried to
steer her away from
the only game we had
to play, the game of who
is where & doing what,
do you remember tasha,
her older brother was
your year, didn’t you
date my friend susie
for a minute, do you
still keep in touch with
bujalski, gessen, cho.
i took a stab at falling
into a long, absorbing
discussion with the woman
on my other side, but
i could feel it coming, the
heat prickling my skin,
a churning at the bottom
of the g
ut, & sure enough,
as the servers cleared away
the remains of a meal i
had not even noticed
eating, my hostess fisted
her hand beneath her chin
& asked so how is dave,
i haven’t seen him in
forever. & i said yeah,
he’s doing great, he lives
in brookline with his wife.
a century ago, being born
with bilateral clubfoot meant
you would never walk.
now ten seconds of surgery
can fix it. the achilles tendons
are severed & regrown,
the tiny soft young bones
retrained over the course
of months & then reminded
every night for years.
you learn that your child
has this genetic defect when
a sudden silence fills
the ultrasound room.
the technician stops chit
chatting, adjusts her glasses,
rolls her chair across the
tile, darts out the door. you
sense that certain protocols
are being put into effect &
it cannot be good. the goo
stiffens across the taut
exposed belly of your partner
& you lean forward awkwardly
so that your hands can clasp,
& then a doctor you have
never seen before appears.
later a genetic counselor
ushers you into an office
off the main hallway &
says there is a six percent
chance more is wrong.
the number is icy steep,
no matter that a six percent
likelihood of rain would not
make you reconsider your
picnic. & then there are
decisions to make, fraught
& immediate. do you chance
finding out more, when more
might only confuse you, reveal
snarls in the dna that no one
can explain, that science
has yet to map, that might
mean nothing, or everything?
do you risk peace of mind
via the needle, leech a draw
of amniotic broth when there is
a point-five percent possibility
that the thin metal, entering
the body, kills? no one
cancels a picnic over
half a percent, but this is not
a picnic. & for that matter,
how well do you know
this person, with whom you
are having a baby but have
never before been truly
scared? what could you