My family is gathered in the living room, looking all Norman Rockwell. (I wasn’t planning on coming home. I left this house for a reason, didn’t I? Turns out, I just couldn’t stay away.)
Larry is nursing a scotch. Cynthia and Zoe are reading through the same stack of papers.
I never realized Connor was so interested in trees, Cynthia says.
Speak of the devil. I can’t say I’m surprised about being the topic of conversation. They loved talking behind my back when I was alive, too.
I’m pretty sure they’re talking about weed, Zoe says.
Where? I don’t see that, Cynthia says.
When they say trees?
Oh, Cynthia says. Oh.
I lean over my mother’s shoulder, see my name on the paper. I also see the name Evan Hansen.
You have to read these, Larry.
Larry nods, sips his Laphroaig. (A scotch habit doesn’t count, you see. It’s part of the job. Hell, the old man’s firm gifts him a new bottle every Christmas. I sampled my father’s collection. Not my thing. Alcohol was always my least favorite buzz.)
He seems, just, I don’t know, different, Cynthia says.
They’re reading emails. From me to Evan. From Evan back to me. What is this? “I loved that documentary you told me about. It was delightful.” Who talks like that? “I’m excited to go on long walks with you this summer.” It’s like a whole creepy story. “I’ve given serious thought to what you said. Family is definitely most important.”
I’ve been good and gone too many nights to count. I’ve been up late and baked, and I’d scribble out wacky shit. But never have I come up with anything this bonkers.
“Dear Evan Hansen, you’re the man.”
Amazing.
“Life is looking up. Way up.”
I take it back. This shit is brilliant.
“I’m ready to make a change. All thanks to you.”
Why is Evan doing this? First he plants a letter for me to find. Now he’s got my family involved, feeding them lies? Guess what, Mom. The reason I seem “different” is because this isn’t fucking me.
My mother takes off her reading glasses, the ones she never wanted to be photographed wearing. I never knew how much our trips to the apple orchard meant to him.
The apple orchard. Haven’t thought about that place in years. Thinking about it now, I have to say, nothing terrible comes to mind. No blowup fights or traumatic episodes. That’s usually what happens when I dig too deep into memories. The worst stuff pops up first. But those orchard trips were pretty uneventful. In a good way. We acted like a normal family. My mother would pack lunches. Zoe and I would roll down that bumpy hill. My father put work aside. Paid attention. Why couldn’t that happen more often? Why couldn’t we carry that feeling home with us?
He says here that when it closed, he felt like his childhood ended. It makes sense when you think about it. That’s around the time his behavior really started changing.
Um, no. If it’s answers you want, Mom, you’re digging in the wrong place. That’s one thing about my mother. You see, my father is convinced there’s only one right answer to every question. But my mother will keep searching forever. She’ll try anything and everything. Sounds noble—and maybe it is—but even that approach can start to feel like torture. Especially when you’re the lab rat.
I can’t do this, Zoe says. She drops the papers and rises from the couch. Thankfully, someone in my family seems to have a functioning bullshit detector.
But she can’t escape. Larry hits her with one of his stock questions: How’s school?
Amazing, Zoe says. All of a sudden, everyone wants to be my friend. I’m the dead kid’s sister.
The dead kid. Me.
I’m sure Mr. Contrell is happy to have you back at practice, my mother says.
You guys really don’t have to do this, Zoe says.
Do what?
Just because Connor isn’t here, trying to punch through my door, screaming at the top of his lungs that he’s going to kill me for no reason, that doesn’t mean that all of a sudden we’re the fucking Brady Bunch.
Not the most comfortable thing to hear your little sister say. But actually, I think there’s a compliment in there somewhere. Some vindication, at least. Because I’ve often said: maybe it’s not me contaminating the family pond, but the other way around.
She storms off. Not much of a storm, in truth. If it were me, I probably would’ve smashed something. (Then, afterward, I’d feel bad about it. But not bad enough to apologize. Or not do it again.)
She’ll be all right, my mother says. We are all grieving in our own way.
Larry knocks back his scotch.
My mother returns to the emails. I feel like I’m seeing a new side of him. He seems so much lighter here. I can’t remember the last time I heard him laugh.
I laugh plenty. I mean, I laughed plenty. I laughed at how absurdly fucked everything is. I laughed because there’s not much else you can do. You can laugh or you can cry. I’d do plenty of both. But see, any time my mother got a glimpse of the raw me, she couldn’t take it. There’d be so much fear in her eyes. There was love, too—I saw it. But the fear… that’s what stuck with me. You catch that look, and it’s not like you’re itching to open yourself up. No, you shut down pretty quick.
I’m going to bed, my father announces.
Come sit with me.
I’m exhausted.
You know, Larry, at some point, you’re going to have to start—
Not tonight. Please.
I suppose this is what I get for building my walls so high. My family never actually knew about my life. Occasionally I’d reference a friend (going out with a friend; got it from a friend). But I don’t think they believed me. Especially when I never forked over a name.
(Even now, I don’t like saying his name. I wonder: Has he even noticed I’m gone?)
I wander upstairs to Zoe’s room. I find her strumming her unplugged electric guitar. What she said about me is only partly true. I screamed at her a few times. Banged on her door. I never threatened to kill her, though. Does she really believe that? Of course I’d never actually hurt her. It’s like that quote: “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” That was me. (That was also Shakespeare. Just because I didn’t hand in my essay on Macbeth doesn’t mean I didn’t pay attention. Maybe I paid too much attention.)
She’s on the carpet now, her back against the bed. Her strumming stops. She props her pick in her mouth and scribbles in a notebook.
I can’t remember the last time I was in her bedroom. We were next-door neighbors who just stopped saying hello. I thought she was the clean one, but this is chaos in here. Clothes scattered. Blurry still-life photos from an instant camera. A pile of loose guitar strings. Old toast on a plate, next to a dirty knife.
(Lady Macbeth is another famous suicide. There’s a line of hers I underlined. Something about how you get no lasting satisfaction from causing destruction. In the end, the only real solution is to destroy yourself.)
A new sound. Zoe is talking. Not talking, actually. Softly singing:
I could curl up and hide in my room
Here in my bed still sobbing tomorrow
She mutes the chord. More scribbling in her notebook. She sings a cappella:
I could give in to all the gloom
But tell me, tell me what for?
She hums while she writes. It’s a developing melody. She retrieves her pick. Nestles the guitar to her chest like that raggedy bear she used to tote around.
Early on, we got along fine. Backseat passengers on the same ride. We’d share beds on vacations. (Before Larry had his name on the letterhead, we’d all pile into one hotel room.) We’d feed the cats under our deck. (This was back at our old house. Cynthia didn’t want us letting them inside. Diseases, she said.) We’d trade Halloween candy. (Zoe liked chocolate. I was all about the sours.) She’d want to do everything I was doing. Play with my cars and X-Men. Pretend she was a soldier in my army.
At some point, though, she stopped fighting for me. Where’s the loyalty? The other day at lunch, when Evan and I had that argument, she went to see if he was OK. What about me? Who was checking up on me?
Why should I have a heavy heart?
Why should I start to break in pieces?
Why should I go and fall apart for you?
I never knew she was singing in here. Now that I’m hearing her, there’s no way to unhear. She enunciates each syllable, commanding my attention. A private moment unknowingly shared. There’s so much hurt in her voice. Even more of it in her words.
Why should I play the grieving girl and lie?
Saying that I miss you and that my
World has gone dark without your light
I will sing no requiem tonight
I wouldn’t call it a lullaby.