DIED 1984
ON MY SECOND DATE with the man who would become my second husband, which took place partly in a diner in downtown Philadelphia and partly in a hotel room around the corner, he told me about his brothers. Though he started out with just one brother, two years younger, he acquired a couple more when his mom remarried.
Since the older of the two was in jail (and their own mother was in the bin), only the younger one moved in with them at first. This was, he said, something like having Brad Pitt with fetal alcohol syndrome living in your house. This boy smoked every bowl, downed every drink, wrecked every car—like by driving them into the Washington Monument the first day he got them—fucked every girlfriend. He was a hopeless badass idiot, the crown prince of the hopeless badass idiots, and my husband couldn’t resist him, no one could. Even if he was ruining your life and screwing your girl and tormenting you through all your formative years, he was doing it with a big toothy movie-star smile, so you might as well move right into his apartment when your parents kicked you out.
His death was the fucking mess to end all fucking messes. It was the day their parents moved from the city to the farmhouse they’d built in the Blue Ridge. He’d been camping down there for months, working on the house with the builder, which was viewed as part of his turning his life around after all. On moving day he showed up in a pickup loaded with their father’s hand-built shelving, his records, his wine. He was with a friend from DC, and they were dusted out of their minds, arguing violently in the driveway, in fact they pulled back out without unloading the car.
Fifty yards down the road, the dope-crazed friend shot my husband’s stepbrother, pushed him out onto the asphalt, and drove off. Another mile away he slammed into a tree and died as well. This is where my husband found them, his brother motionless, caved in. The first murder in that county since anyone could remember. Typical, says my husband, the old sorrow and rage still knocking wearily around the back of his throat.
What about the stuff in the truck, I asked stupidly, the records and the wine? Oh, he said, we went over to look at it the next day. Everything was ruined.