I’m thirty-one and have finished my first book. I have a literary agent, and I clean my brother’s yoga school for money; I’m dating a few different people, but no one seriously. After a long period of things not being all right, a phone call with Kara has shocked me into making some choices.
I call her, crying and depressed.
“Are you taking your medicine?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“You know, something occurred to me the other day.”
“What?” I’m standing, staring at the chair I’m too depressed to lower myself into.
“Maybe you should go away somewhere. To a farm in the country. Help with the animals. Life would be so much more manageable for you. You could go for a few months, or longer if you wanted,” she says.
“A farm?”
“Yeah.”
I can smell the country and picture the surroundings, the calm slowness of being in nature, and while I do feel that pace would work for me, I can’t shake what she’s really saying to me—that the real world is too much for me.
“I’ll think about it,” I tell her.
When I hang up I sit on my desk and look around my messy apartment. My bedroom floor has been turned into my closet; half-finished art projects are scattered about. I had a bowl of popcorn for dinner last night, and the bowl is in the closet where I fell asleep crying. This is not the apartment of an adult. Can I really not survive the world like everyone else? Kara has presented me with an out. Life would be so much easier on a farm taking care of animals, but is that the right choice for my life? There is so much I want to do, but life does seem harder for me than for others. Do I want to leave real life for a simpler, easier state of existence? The idea makes me feel embarrassed for myself, but it also makes me angry. I know I’m more capable than it seems, but in my family I’ve been the emotionally unstable one for so long, I’m not sure anyone expects much of me, and that’s the standard I’ve been living down to.
I haven’t heard from Paul, or any of the acting kids, in years, and I am surprised when he calls. He’s married now, to a woman named Claudia, and he’s still acting. We catch each other up on life, and since I know better than to ask after Jonathan at this point, I ask about his parents instead.
“They’re doing really well,” Paul says. “Considering.”
“Considering what?” I ask.
Then, silence.
“Oh my God. You don’t know,” he said.
I want to vomit.
“We didn’t really call anyone or anything; we just let the word spread, but I guess it never reached you,” he says.
“When did it happen?”
“Two years ago,” he says.
“What was the date?”
“February 21, 1999.”
“Was there a funeral?” I ask.
“Yeah. I’m sorry, Amanda. We didn’t do a good job of telling people. It was overwhelming, but I have some small things of his that I’ve given people over the years. You should come uptown sometime and pick something out,” he says.
“Okay.” I’m quiet for a moment. “Can you tell me why he stopped talking to me?”
Paul takes a big breath. “He didn’t know he’d live for ten more years. He thought it would be fast, and he didn’t want to put you through any of it. He didn’t want you to see him get ugly, with sores. He moved to New Mexico, away from everyone. It wasn’t just you he cut off, but you were the first. It was unimaginable for him to leave you with memories of him at his worst.”
“Wow,” I say. “That’s just…That makes me really angry.”
“I know. That’s why I never told you. I knew if you knew why, you’d force your way back into his life, and he just couldn’t handle you seeing him sick. He just…he couldn’t. He could barely handle his own family seeing him that way.”
“I wish you had called to tell me. I wish I had known. All this time, two entire years, he’s been dead and I haven’t known.”
“I’m sorry. We did the best we could. We let a lot of people down.”
“Send your parents my love, and you, too, okay?” I say.
“Yeah, I will.”
“And Paul? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you lost your brother.”
“Thanks, Amanda. I’m so sorry you lost him, too.”
When we hang up, something happens to me I can’t describe. I feel enraged and reckless; I want to obliterate myself. I’m so ashamed I spent the last two years not knowing Jonathan was dead. How can I account for that time when everyone was mourning and I was drinking and fucking and laughing and going to parties, in between having panic attacks over things that meant nothing—nothing compared to this? I’m a terrible person. I didn’t know, I didn’t know. Why didn’t I know? I never even assumed he was dead; it never crossed my mind.
I still can’t believe that for someone so attuned to death, I missed the ones I should have been there for. I’ve had two best friends die, and I didn’t get to say good-bye to either of them because their deaths were withheld from me. People have been keeping the difficulties of life from me since I was small, protecting me from my own truth. I can run away to the country and live on a farm and keep protecting myself from the world as if I really am helpless, or I can fight back against the world and face off against everything I fear, one fear at a time.