7

TECHNICALLY, I WAS THE OLDER SIBLING. BEFORE MOM DIED, I was the babysitter on the few nights they went out without us. I was the one who taught Nate how to draw the perfect Snoopy, a U and P with a nose; the one who explained to him why most of Disney was crap. Though we could appreciate the doors the studio opened for the collective imagination, we could not get behind the saccharine endings, or the flat characters, or the dated standards of beauty and gender roles, especially in the earlier stuff. I was the one who made Nate realize that Batman was better than Superman—because he was known for his intellect, and he didn’t rely on supernatural powers to win. Because Batman was real, and dark, and the darker the better, especially when accompanied by touches of humor. The more complex, the more interesting, the more it was worth investing in. I was also the one who told Nate how to embrace camp—from the Justice League to the Legion of Doom, in pet monkeys and Wonder Twins, and in the marvel of the Super Friends. We could watch without talking then, communicate in glances that only we understood. He had things to tell me.

Did you see him escape that death trap? Nate would say with his eyes.

“Like magic,” I’d say out loud, and he would beam because he knew I understood him.

Sometimes he wanted me to pause so he could use the bathroom, or it was time for a special treat, or he was in the mood to read a book. I could almost always anticipate his needs based on the expression.

“Is this a good one?” he’d ask as he pointed to a comic book on the shelf or a movie on the rack.

“You’ve never seen this? You have to see how great it is!” I’d answer. Or, sometimes, “It’s one of the dumbest things ever. You have to see it to understand how dumb it is!”

Either way, he’d sit beside me on the floor, legs crossed, ready to listen. When I laughed, he laughed too, and when I stopped laughing (which was hard once I got going), I’d look at him, this flawless little boy, and think I only wanted to make him laugh again.

It was around the time Nate was elevenish and I was seventeenish, a few years after Mom died, that things began to change. Dad told us to order pizza one night because he had missed his train, and Nate decided he’d rather have mac and cheese, so he made it himself—enough for both of us. He knew how to use the stove and how to measure out the butter and milk; he even added tuna for a casserole effect, like Mom used to.

He started bagging his own lunches after that, and asking for certain brands of clothes, and different haircuts.

Then there was that morning when I fell down the last three steps and caught him looking at me. As he reached down to help me, I noticed something different in his eyes—concern, sure, but also distance. Like he knew he would never do something like that himself, like he also knew he’d probably have to help me again. Like he realized in that moment how different we were.

Nate didn’t have an awkward phase. He was unburdened by acne, inertia, chronic fatigue, loneliness, excuses, conditionals. He had a sparkling smile, was exceedingly responsible, and possessed a natural air of authority. By the time he eclipsed puberty, he started to appear older than me too. People always said that, that he seemed older than he was.

And what a handsome face, they’d say. Rugged good looks.

When Dad died, it didn’t matter that Nate was born six years after I was, or that he was only twenty-one. We both knew he was in charge. 

WAITING FOR HIM to arrive that night, I was afraid to move, worried that the slightest twitch would make the situation real. So I sat on the floor with Harry, clenching every limb, trying not to notice Dad wasn’t in the next room at his desk, or fixing a drink at the bar, that he wasn’t about to waltz in with surprise ice-cream sundaes, because, as he put it, ice cream in itself was cause for celebration.

When I heard Nate approach, the thoughts began to spin: What would he say? What should I say? How would this work? Was there a particular greeting we were supposed to exchange?

As I stumbled up from the floor, I watched him walk to the door. He was moving slowly, weighted down by a heavy backpack. Even with the heat and the sweat, his hair was short and neat, his T-shirt clean.

Sometimes I almost saw myself in him, in a funhouse-mirror kind of way. I was softer and rounder, my face, my body. His eyes were a little bigger, deeper brown, with a better shape to his brows, a defined jawline, perfect calves. He was taller, stronger, more toned. I had less hair, frizzy and scattered, and a redder complexion—marked by many more scars.

Yet I clung to a certain potential. A few years earlier I had wandered into a department store searching for a bathroom and ended up getting coaxed into a makeover from a Clinique counterwoman who had said “there was hope.” Brushes, powders, liners, and shiners—I charged it all to the emergency credit card, figuring if I could just do what she did every day
. . . but I couldn’t. Applying makeup was a routine that involved discipline, planning, and coordination. I didn’t have those qualities. I never seemed to have enough light to see what I was doing, either, couldn’t stand long enough before the mirror to use mascara, got overheated in the bathroom from the steam, was always running so late I was lucky if I managed a coat of lipstick. So I stowed the supplies under the sink in the free vinyl bag, just in case, until the bag collected mold amidst a pile of curlers I’d never found the occasion to use. But I always remembered the woman who had said there was something there, in my face. That something might have been genetic.

Nate was eight when Mom died. At the funeral, he was a miniature version of himself, a tailored suit and tie, matching shoes. The women fawned over him at the ceremony, the men shook his hand, and he stood bravely through it all, never asking for extra attention.

When Nate was eight, it was already clear who he was: attractive, poised, comfortable. Some people seemed to have success written on them from birth, in their smiles and DNA.

I wondered if we would have been more similar had my brain developed the way it was supposed to, had I never had the accident, or the side effects to treat the effects of the accident, if he represented a male version of who I could have been.

Once he put down his things, we found ourselves in prime hugging position. It seemed like the thing to do, though we weren’t natural huggers; neither of us knew how much pressure to apply.

He went in for a kiss on the cheek, but I wasn’t anticipating that, so we missed each other, and then he pulled away.

“You look older,” I said. I hadn’t seen him since his winter break. “You look taller too.”

“Still six feet,” he said, making his way toward the living room. “Even.”

He sank into Dad’s recliner, which was dented from years of watching Jeopardy!, baseball games, History Channel documentaries, local news, and terrible late-night movies. Nate seemed too slight to occupy the space.

“It would have been nice if he’d warned us in some way,” I said. “Like in a dream? As a cow or stalk of wheat. Maybe he did, and we don’t remember. Or we ignored the signs. Do you believe in that? Or that he’s here now, watching us?”

I wanted to believe that. To know he was guarding our spirits and our minds, our sleep.

Nate closed his eyes. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t you think we should talk about this?” I said.

He got up and began searching the bar.

“It’s kind of a big deal, isn’t it? With Mom, you were so small, but this—it hits us both, doesn’t it? I know it hasn’t had time to hit yet, really, for me anyway, but you think things will work out?”

He poured himself a scotch.

“You drink that?”

“Today I do.” He winced as he took his first sip. “How about you?”

I thought about it, to honor Dad, but it only reminded me of his absence, how much he would’ve liked to pour that drink himself. And besides, I wasn’t really supposed to drink on my meds, or kill any more brain cells. I needed the strength of the cells I had. But I couldn’t miss my chance.

I took Nate’s glass and swallowed what remained all at once.

“Take it easy,” Nate said. “It’s not meant to be pounded.”

“Oh well,” I said, wiping the bitter spots from the corners of my mouth and my collar.

“Dad did a lot of stuff for me, so I just kind of don’t want to end up on the street, if that’s okay,” I continued. “Because I think I would be if he didn’t make sure I wasn’t, and I know it’s not your job to assure me that won’t happen, but—”

“Luce, this just happened.” He took a giant breath and poured himself another swig. “I literally walked in two minutes ago. Can we wait on this conversation?”

“Okay,” I said, but my thoughts didn’t work that way, in planned chunks. If it wasn’t a pinball machine, it was like a solar system in my head, a swirling darkness filled with little constellations of ideas, loosely connected by random strings. I heard Dad explain it that way to a family friend once, as if he had been inside my brain with me. 

“What did he look like?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“You saw him, right? To identify the body?”

He looked at me and took another sip.

“You know what?” he said. “I’m glad you asked about that.”

“Was it awful?”

“No, it wasn’t. His face was all washed out, but it was almost like—the way his mouth was curved, it was like he was almost happy. Like he was okay with the whole thing. Like maybe he was going somewhere he was okay with.”

“You believe that?” I said.

“I don’t know, but I think he did.” He raised his glass and took another sip. “I hope he did.”

I TRIED TO stay out of Nate’s way in the days that followed. When it came time to plan the funeral, he led all of the arrangements, got in touch with whomever we were supposed to contact, knew what he was supposed to say and how to say it, drove Dad’s car wherever we were supposed to go. We had to pick a box for him, and a plot. We had to call people and identify pallbearers. We had to meet with the rabbi.

We said “we,” but it was all him. I was suspended in some kind of fugue—sleep, dreams, nightmares—all the same shadowy haze. If I slept enough, I wouldn’t have to think.

I probably would have slept through the funeral if Nate hadn’t woken me.

He gave me only forty-five minutes to get ready. If Dad were there, he would have given me a couple of hours, so he could have assigned me a special role, maybe a prayer he liked or a poem he found, and so he could help me remove the lint from the nice outfit he would’ve taken me shopping for the day before.

But as it was, that morning I had to sift through the pile of potential interview clothes on the floor to find something that could work; at least I knew the blue shirt was out. I couldn’t remember if I had combed my hair. I didn’t have the energy to scrub the toothpaste or Harry’s fur off my top, couldn’t find hose, couldn’t make my legs any less bruised or gleaming white or bristly, couldn’t force my shoes to fit my feet any better.

In the end, I settled on the wrinkled skirt and a dark sweater riddled with moth holes. No one else seemed to notice.

THE FUNERAL HAPPENED so quickly that I barely registered it had happened at all.

After the rabbi spoke, said some nice things about Dad’s generosity of spirit and mind, his broad smile and kindness, his soul and fullness of life, I noticed a lot of people were teary and red-faced. Who were those people? I didn’t recognize most of them. And yet there they were, touching my shoulders and covering my hands in theirs, kissing me on the cheek and whispering softly about mourners in Zion and Jerusalem, like their whispers could reach inside me and soothe the pain. Their pain was real. I could see that. Even Nate, who decided he didn’t want to say a few words in the end, seemed shaken.

I recognized that I should have been that way too, but I wasn’t then. It was as if my emotions were guarded by a special coating, protected from reality.

It was probably because I kept waiting for Dad to come back, for him to bring around the car himself after the funeral so we wouldn’t have to walk in our nice shoes, to unlock the doors for us manually, because he never got used to the gadgets, and then lower the radio so that he could suggest a stop at the local diner for homemade cinnamon doughnuts.

If Dad were there, he would have praised the two of us: for our poise and maturity, for planning such a terrific commemoration, for our unparalleled teamwork—we could go on the road with such well-oiled coordination, doing what who knew, but something. The Dynamic Duo, he would say. At it again!

If he were there, he would have wanted to celebrate our eloquence and dignity, to reward us for our efforts. He was always so proud.

No, we would have told him. This day is yours, not ours.

Nonsense, he would have said. This affects all of us.