WE HAVE A SMALL SERVICE for Charlie. We don’t call it a service—just the family geting together to try to start the healing process. But we all know it’s a service.
Afterward, all of the aunts and uncles and parents are in our living room, while the younger kids play video games in the basement. I find Jordan in the rec room, looking small next to the pile of coats.
I find him because I hear him crying. Like he’s still crying, and hasn’t stopped since Christmas dinner. He’s leaning over into his arms, crying big, ugly, hard tears, and as soon as he looks up and sees that it’s me who found him, he buries his face back into his sleeves.
“He was my brother,” he says, just like the time before, except this time there’s no fight in him and his mouth sounds full. He’s drowning and falling apart at the same time, like he can’t help dissolving.
Jordan, who once snorted so many Pixy Stix that he started puking up blue.
Jordan, who kept a pet frog in a shoebox when he was thirteen and we were twelve.
Jordan, who doesn’t know I can smell the booze on him.
When he sways, and retches, I think:
Why haven’t I fallen apart like this?
What kind of broken excuse for a person doesn’t disintegrate?
This is what they whisper about me; they know I’m not like them.
They know I’m a bullshitter.
Some superhero.