Published September 20, 2005
The first time I ever wrote about my brother was in a freshman English class in college. I’d always been considered a jock, and though I had deep thoughts, I had never expressed them on paper. I held a general disdain for all things academic, and right or wrong, I felt that writing fell under that category. It was a thing teachers made you do and, therefore, surely not enjoyable.
The assignment was the standard “Tell us about yourself” introductory essay. I remember it was very late at night when I sat down to write it. The essay was due the next day and I had procrastinated, as usual. I was a little drunk from a party as I sat in front of the paper, my pen poised, just hovering there for the longest time. I did not know then that Ernest Hemingway had long ago advised writers to “Write drunk, edit sober,” or maybe I would’ve seen my inebriation as an asset.
Finally, I wrote, “My name is Thaddeus James Malcor and I’m from a small town outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, called Wynotte. My parents are named Tabitha and Daniel. My father is the vice president of sales for a chemical company (that shall remain nameless) and my mother is a homemaker. (She prefers that term to housewife. She says she is not married to the house.) I have one sister named Kristyn and I used to have a brother.”
I remember I froze, staring at what I’d written, the black letters spelling out what I’d never actually said aloud: I used to have a brother. I’d never written or spoken about Davy in past tense before. It looked so final, like my hand was able to admit something the rest of me couldn’t: that Davy was never coming back.
I used to have a brother, but I didn’t anymore.
I remember finishing the essay in a rush of words and feelings. I wrote about what happened that night, the whole story, tears and snot pouring down my face. When I was finished, I read what I’d written, then I tore the whole thing up and threw it away, burying the bits in the wastebasket under empty beer cans. I didn’t want anyone to see it. I felt something like shame, like I’d put into print what was never to be uttered or even thought. I felt I had betrayed the brother I used to have.
Sometime in the wee hours, as the sun was coming up, I wrote another essay. That one was very short, and it wasn’t about my family at all. It was about my knee injury and why I couldn’t play baseball anymore. It was about a minor tragedy, far less shocking, something that happens to people all the time. The teacher gave me a B.
October 12, 1985
10:35 p.m.
As the party has progressed, so have the partygoers, moving from indoors to out, gathering on the Myerses’ large deck, lit tiki torches blazing against the darkness. Tabby can feel fall in the air, finally. She thinks of Davy wearing the jacket she made him, of TJ’s anger at him for wearing it these past few weeks. And yet, she doesn’t have to worry about him being cold.
She looks at the slim Timex on her arm. It’s almost 11:00 p.m. The boys will be home by now, hopefully exhausted from their games, tucked safely into bed. She shivers a little.
“You cold?” Marie, beside her, asks.
Tabby shrugs. “Not too bad.”
“We’ll leave soon,” Marie says. She yanks a thumb in the direction of the menfolk, sitting in a ring of chairs and puffing on cigars. “As soon as those bozos are done.” Marie pinches her nose and makes a face as Tabby laughs and nods her agreement.
Danny will carry the cigar smell into their bed with him later; he will try to kiss her, and she will push him away, pretending he smells too bad. Then she will pull him back.
Inside the Myerses’ house, the phone rings. Tabby turns her head toward the noise, her eyes locating the phone on the wall just inside the doorway that leads from the deck to the kitchen. The phone is yellow, the color of the sun, of those smiley faces on T-shirts, of caution lights, the cord outrageously long so the Myerses’ teenage daughter can stretch it outside onto the deck and talk to her boyfriend in private.
June Myers had told them a story about this earlier in the night, about a time last winter when an icy rain was falling and the lovesick girl put on her ski jacket, knit cap, gloves, and a hood so she could still sit outside and talk. “Young love,” they’d scoffed to each other, as if they didn’t remember exactly what it felt like.
Tabby watches now as June Myers hurries over to answer the phone, a worried look on her face. It is too late for anyone to be calling for a conversation. Tabby scans the faces on the deck and wonders who the call is for. She hopes it isn’t anything bad, nothing more than a child who won’t go to sleep for the babysitter, an unexpected fever cropping up, a scary noise heard outside.
Clutching the phone to her chest, June comes to the doorway and surveys the crowd, her eyes landing on Tabby, then quickly scanning away. Tabby feels herself exhale a breath.
But then June’s gaze travels over to the men, and she calls out Danny’s name. She has to say it twice before he hears her, before he registers the phone in June’s hand and the look of alarm on her face. He holds his cigar aloft as he blinks at June, then seeks out Tabby.
Their eyes meet at the same time that June says, “It’s the police on the phone. They can’t find Davy.”