We shuffle to the Common Room with our heads hung low. I toss my backpack onto the sofa and sit. My first move is to drop my head into my hands so that I can continue releasing the tears in private. I can only see Vance’s feet as he walks toward the huge brown chair across from me. He leans his backpack against the side and sits as well.
For a while, the only sounds coming from us are sniffling, sobbing, coughing. I am oddly soothed by it. We’re in our own grief bubble. Untouchable. Vance’s pain is my pain—it glides through me with each moan. Light yet dense.
That stranger’s moan suddenly comes to mind, and I’m dumbfounded at how similar we all sound. Maybe Death spends seconds in all of us, making a single harmony of sadness.
“H-how come you never showed D-dad your drawings?” Vance chokes out.
I lift my head. Vance is staring at me. My drawings? Why does he care about my drawings all of a sudden? “Why?”
He grabs a handful of tissues and cleans off his face before answering me. “Because he probably would’ve liked them.”
My cheeks burn and my palms are warm. Hadn’t he just been freaking out on me for sketching Dad? “How do you know if he would’ve liked them? He never seemed too interested in me or my life.” I close my eyes and drop my chin. My father just died, and I’m already finding the negative. I am disgusting.
“Because I know.”
My gaze lifts. “Because you know how?”
Vance’s breathing quickens. He’s clearly nervous, which can mean only one thing: he defied me and looked in my sketchbook.
“The night of my birthday party, when Dad and I got home and you were asleep on the sofa with your earbuds in, you left your sketchbook out on the coffee table.”
I remember waking up in a panic the next morning, seeing it just sitting there, out in the open. Leaving it out was something I’d never done before. My drawings were part of my soul. And my soul was private. Instead of confronting my brother or Dad at breakfast that day, I chose to bundle up against the cold January morning and walk. I had my sketchbook tucked underneath my arm and pencils in my back pocket. I walked to the park a few blocks away, sat on one of the swings, and drew Mom’s furry snow boots from memory. If my lips hadn’t frozen, I probably would’ve stayed there till dark and continued drawing her things.
“You had no right to open it, Vance,” I say with zero verve. Even though I feel violated, the fight is gone in me. I am like a half-dead September bee.
He nods. “I know. But I’m not sorry I did it. That sketch you did of Mom on the phone is…” He pauses. “It’s so real.”
My eyes fill and I look away. That is the first time my brother has complimented me.
“Will you show me the one you just did of Dad? Please?” he asks.
I remain still for a while. I’m trying to make sense of where I am, what I’m doing, what I want to do. My father is gone. My brother is all I have left in this world. I look to him, and he’s staring at me.
It’s my turn to wipe away the tears. I clear my throat. “Do you know that you’re the only human being on earth who I can say, ‘Do you remember when Dad…?’ The only one.”
“Same for me with you.”
We let that depressing revelation sit and fill the room for a while. In short, we are all the other has left.
Vance stretches out his legs and asks again to see the new sketch of Dad.
His venom seems at bay and his desire genuine. And he has already seen eighty percent of the book, albeit under dishonest circumstances. One cannot unsee something. I take in a huge breath and reach for my backpack. With trembling hands, I place the book on the coffee table and slide it toward him. “I’d rather not be in the room when you open it. It would be too much for me to handle.”
I stand and walk down the other hall, the hall away from my father’s room.