I called five different taxi companies, and each time I gave them the address, the dispatcher hung up. Everything happened because of one bad turn. Everything bad went in a circle. It took hours for someone to come and tow the car, and once the car was towed, I started walking. I walked two miles in the heat through a bad part of town, wearing a black turtleneck and carrying the posters and cake and a few of the flowers, when a complete stranger picked me up and dropped me off at a gas station in a better part of town. By the time a real taxi picked me up and brought me to the church, the church was empty, the parking lot empty, nothing left but a great dry emptiness in front of me.
The day I was unable to attend my adoptive brother’s funeral, I told the taxi to take me back to my childhood home. When I checked my phone, I noticed there was a message from my supervisor; I listened to it multiple times to make sure I understood correctly. My workplace investigation had been closed, and it was concluded that the results were inconclusive; the person who made the complaint changed her story too many times, she was unreliable, they couldn’t trust her, and, besides, it wasn’t right to investigate someone when they were going through such a difficult time, we’re humans after all, he might have said, therefore, the investigation into my behavior and professionalism was dismissed. He told me how sorry he was for my loss, how he couldn’t imagine what I was going through. He asked for the address of my adoptive parents’ house and told me to keep my eyes out for a bouquet of flowers from an award-winning florist, he emphasized, and a card signed by everyone in the entire organization, even some of my favorite troubled young people. I had been validated, the world was inconclusive; and for no reason, I pictured my adoptive brother saluting me from his grave.
When I got home from the church, I encountered my adoptive mother sitting quietly with my aunt in the living room. My adoptive mother had a dreamy look on her face, as if she were outside of space and time. I asked her how the funeral went. She smiled and when I repeated the question the smile went away. What a stupid question, I thought. My adoptive brother was laughing from his omniscient perch. He’s laughing at the entire situation.
I didn’t go not because I didn’t want to, I said to the two of them sitting on the wicker-basket couch, on the contrary, some terrible circumstances prevented me from being able to go. I’m sorry.
My adoptive mother and my aunt must have both been drinking all day, because my aunt looked at me blankly and said, That’s a nice thing to say to your mother, Helen.
A few minutes later, the front door opened and I heard voices. A huge group of relatives and neighbors came in. They were talking about how the relatives who stayed in the upstairs bedrooms were poisoned, and had to be taken to the hospital. I wondered if they were talking about my childhood bedroom and the insecticide.
Is that what you’re talking about? I said.
People looked at me, no one answered.
You would not believe how many people showed up, I heard them say, hundreds of people. The church was packed!
And to think another young man died in this neighborhood, said a relative. And so soon after this death.
Did you know he knew that many people? a neighbor said. Did anyone have any idea?
Someone hauled in case after case of boxed wine. I asked my cousin Fran about the location of the grave and he gave me a cemetery map and a funeral bulletin. My cousin Fran was closer to me in age than most of the relatives; he told me the cemetery closed at dusk, like most cemeteries, but I could probably sneak in somehow if I wanted to. I noticed the mass included “Amazing Grace” and not one fugue by Bach or anyone. The neighbors and relatives were gathering together to share a toast to my adoptive brother, which I thought was strange, since my adoptive brother never drank, and probably hated toasts, then they all decided to go to a movie, GRAVITY starring Sandra Bullock. They asked me if I wanted to come, but I couldn’t answer, words left me. My adoptive parents went to bed at five in the evening. Everyone else went to the movie.
Inside my childhood closet I found a red canvas backpack from third grade, a time when one was excited about a new backpack because it was a backpack for high school or college students, it was especially sturdy and rugged and mature. Now the bottom of it was thin and worn down, the fabric see-through. I packed a flashlight, a Fiona Apple CD, the Bitches Brew record, and a box of cigarettes, stale old cigarettes that I stashed away inside a dusty bath mat when I was in high school. Guess what? The bath mat was still there.
I left the house and boarded the local bus. The bus ride took forever and I began to feel an everlasting peace. I must have been smiling, because a homeless man approached me.
Hey pretty girl, he said, what do you have for me?
It was nice to be called pretty for once, I thought, and I gave him a dollar. The bus dropped me off and I walked two miles to the auto mechanic, where I picked up my adoptive brother’s car. I drove out to the cemetery in the dark listening to a Fiona Apple CD, and smoking a disgusting cigarette, a shitty tube of death vapors. At the cemetery I squeezed through a gate to get inside. There were security lights up in the trees, and they made crazy shadows over everything; still, I could discern the shapes of trees and gravestones and flowers, and the mausoleums like little houses as I went toward the abyss.
I took out my flashlight. When I saw the small, self-effacing patch of dirt without a marker or stone or plaque or name or date or anything, I knew. I saw it so clearly, it was like looking into a shallow and ancient lake on a bright endless day. We had days like that in childhood, bright days that on the surface seemed endless, and each one ended, ended, ended, ended, and we were so bored throughout that time of bright endless days ending, we would have killed ourselves back then, if we had known it was a possibility to obliterate the self. But we were children and we were dumb. We didn’t know anything. It was an adult solution, I thought, his adult solution. I saluted him back, my fucking dead adoptive brother! I didn’t feel anything as I looked at the dirt, because I knew then exactly what he had done. When he killed himself, it was the first thing in his life he had ever done for himself, I thought, and the most generous thing he could do.