Being Dead

by Vivian Vande Velde

  "You don't know what you're talking about," Dad snapped.

  Mom cut in. Very sweetly she said, "Well, none of us has actually been to Vietnam to see and judge for ourselves."

  Dad gave her a look of surprised betrayal.

  Mom? Mom coming in with what sounded suspiciously like an opinion? I knew where everybody else stood on the Vietnam issue: Dad for military intervention, Kevin against, me for not talking about it anymore. But I realized for the first time that maybe Mom wasn't with me. Maybe, even though she never said anything, she had views of her own. Or maybe not Maybe she was just trying to make peace in the family.

  Still, the heat of the discussion went down several notches. To Kevin, Dad said, "Do you think I wasn't afraid to fight in a war, too?"

  "That isn't...," Kevin started in a huff. But then he sighed. "That isn't all of it."

  "I know," Dad said. He patted Kevin's hand, awkwardly, self-consciously. "I also know you'll do the right thing."

  The old I-know-you'll-do-the-right-thing ploy.

  And Dad was right. Despite his dinnertime complaints, Kevin didn't try for conscientious-objector status, nor did he burn his card or take off for Canada, which a couple of the boys in his class did. He reported for service, which Dad took as a victory for his persuasive ability, so Dad forgave Kevin his lack of enthusiasm.

  What he couldn't forgive was that Kevin got killed.

  The telegram came on a bright summer Saturday. My mother was in the side yard, hanging clothes out to dry. My father was trying to teach tricks to the brain-damaged puppy he had rescued from the animal shelter three weeks earlier and had named—for some reason clear only to my father—Spartacus. I was just sitting around being hot, wondering out loud why if the Fitzhughs next door could afford an air conditioner, we couldn't; and why if Mary Beth Hinkle's family took their vacation in a cottage at Myrtle Beach every year, we only ever went camping at Stony Brook Park.

  Then this car pulled up in front of our house. Out came these two army guys in spiffy new uniforms. I think that was when all three of us knew—then, as soon as we saw them, before the army guys said a word, before they started their slow, deliberate walk up the driveway.

  Mom came around front, still holding a clothespin in one hand and a pillowcase in the other. Dad pushed Spartacus away, and when Spartacus kept on trying to pull the stick from Dad's hand, Dad broke it in two and let the pieces drop. I stood up from the stoop, thinking, This is so like Mary Beth, to be off at the beach when I need her here.

  Kevin—the army men and the telegram explained—had been killed when his unit had been ambushed by the Vietcong. There weren't very many more details available, other than that five other men had been killed at the same time.

  "Men"? I thought, surprised to hear the term applied to Kevin. Kevin wasn't a man: He was my brother. Fathers are men. Uncles are men. Kids are ... well, they're kids. Had Kevin, at his eighteenth birthday, started to think of himself as a man?

  I wondered if the other five dead men were really five more dead kids. I wondered if these same two army men had to deliver the news to five other families. Then I wondered how old they were. Their practically shaved heads, and those stupid dress-uniform hats worn so low on their brows, and their I-am-a-rock expressions probably made them look older than they were. Were they eighteen, too? Were they brand-new army guys, just out of boot camp, and was that why they were still here in the United States? Would they be leaving for Vietnam soon themselves, and were they—all the while they were speaking so politely but emotionlessly with us—mentally repeating to themselves: Not me, not my family; please, God, don't let this happen to me?

  It's not fair, I thought. It's not fair that it happened to Kevin.

  The army guys' shaved heads made me think of those pictures we had snuck a peek at all those years ago—me and Dwight—Uncle Jack's pictures of the concentration-camp Jews. Americans were supposed to be the good guys. Americans were supposed to win.

  But I'd seen enough war movies to know that sometimes the new young guy got killed, especially if he was showing off pictures of the family or the sweetheart back home. Kevin hadn't been foolish enough to be showing pictures of us, had he—or of Millicent Oschmann, whom he'd taken to the senior ball?

  These are awfully stupid thoughts, I told myself, for someone who's just been told her brother is dead.

  I tried to concentrate on what the army guys were saying, but my mind drifted back to World War II again. I remembered the man my father had had to shoot—the wounded one. I wondered if two army guys had shown up on his doorstep, with a telegram for his family.

  "My son didn't want to go," Dad told these two army men, these strangers. "It was different in 1942. But I wouldn't listen."

  "People got killed, even in 1942," one of them said.

  "Yes," Mom whispered so fervently I was sure th'ere was a story there that I had never been told.

  Mom was the one who ended up calling Uncle Bud and Uncle Jack to tell them what had happened.

  Dad just wandered from room to room, or he'd arrange and rearrange meaningless things, like the pictures of us on the mantel—our formal school portraits, the snapshot he had taken of Kevin and Millicent Oschmann on their way to the senior ball. "Ifs just...," Dad would start, over and over, then he would shake his head, never finishing.

  Mom was the one who selected DiVincenzo's Funeral Parlor and made the arrangements for Kevin's body to be picked up from the airport, and for the funeral service, and for everyone to come back to our house for a meal afterward. She snapped at Aunt Ida and Aunt Lise every time they tried to do what Mom estimated was something she was supposed to handle. Dad stayed out of her way. Maybe she would have accepted help from me, but I didn't know what to do, and seeing her bite off Aunt Ida's head once was enough to warn me off.

  The only time Mom lost it was when Mr. DiVincenzo refused to open the casket. "You don't understand," she told him. "This is my son. He died in Vietnam. I haven't seen him since he left three months ago."

  "I do understand," Mr. DiVincenzo said in that professional voice of his that never seemed stressed or flustered. "But the casket has been sealed."

  "Unseal it," Mom told him, obviously on the edge of adding something along the lines of you big, dumb fool.

  But Mr. DiVincenzo was shaking his head, and he told her, "That can't be done."

  "Maggie," Dad said.

  Mom ignored him. "Is it soldered?" she asked in a voice that from me she would have called sarcastic.

  Mr. DiVincenzo didn't take offense at her tone. "Please," he said reasonably. He hesitated, but obviously he wasn't convincing her with gentle stubbornness. "The body is prepared differently if there's going to be an open casket That hasn't been done."

  I could see Mom forcing herself to be reasonable. "Well, have them do it now." She shrugged off the hand Aunt Lise tried to set on her shoulder.

  "It can't be done now," Mr. DiVincenzo said. "Please try to understand."

  "I don't understand. It doesn't make any difference. It's just for die family. You can close it again before the general viewing." She saw Mr. DiVincenzo's glance in my direction. "For me alone, then. I need to say good-bye."

  I looked at Dad to see why he didn't say anything. I could see why from his face. I hated my mother at that moment because I knew she was backing Mr. DiVincenzo into a comer from which he'd have to say what Dad and I guessed but didn't want to hear spoken: that Kevin's body wasn't fit to be seen.

  Aunt Lise put her arm around my mother's waist. "It's better this way, Maggie," she said. "Remember him the way he was."

  "That's easy for you to say," Mom snapped at her, jerking away. "Try to imagine how you'd feel if it were Dwight."

  I cringed from the savagery of her words, but Aunt Lise only answered, with a calm certainty which reminded me she had lived through a war in her own homeland, "I would still feel the same."

  Mom began to cry. "We don't even know for sure if it's him," she protested. "Mistakes can
be made. How can we know?"

  My father swore and walked out of the funeral parlor.

  Don't leave me, I thought.

  But he already had.

  Aunt Ida told me, "I need some air. Walk outside with me?"

  Aunt Ida was, of course, as sturdy and steady as always. But being a coward, I played along so that I could get out of there.

  We were just in time to see Dad's car tearing out of the parking lot, Uncle Jack in the passenger seat, clutching the dashboard for dear life.

  By the time we came back in, Mom had settled down. Of course, Aunt Ida timed our return to coincide with the arrival of other people besides the immediate family, so that might have had something to do with Mom's improved demeanor.

  Dad came back shortly afterward. I overheard Uncle Jack telling Uncle Bud that they had had a couple beers to "take the edge off." I saw Mom's disapproving expression, but I don't know if that was for the beers or for leaving her to cope with Mr. DiVincenzo on her own.

  Dwight sat next to me and behaved himself as well as a thirteen-year-old boy can—until he told about the time he had gone camping with our family and how Kevin, using the bushes as a bathroom, had sat down in poison ivy.

  As soon as the people Dwight had been talking to had moved on, I hissed at him, "That's not the kind of thing to be telling at a funeral."

  "Why not?" Dwight asked. "It was funny. It defined the whole camping experience for me. Kevin thought it was funny, too, by the next year."

  The people he had told the story to were talking to another couple and laughing, though discreetly. I wasn't sure how I felt about people laughing at Kevin's funeral. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought Kevin would have approved.

  Which made me cry.

  But when I got over that, I decided that I needed to tell people funny stories about Kevin, too. Still, I left the poison-ivy bathroom incident for Dwight.

  There were two afternoons and two evenings at the funeral parlor—and Dad had a couple beers before each of them. He had a beer before the funeral, too, which was at ten o'clock in the morning. Mom grumbled at him that it was getting so you could smell the beer on his breath. Dad just shrugged.

  At the cemetery they didn't lower Kevin into the ground while we were watching. From TV I thought they'd do that, and we'd have to throw handfuls of dirt onto the coffin, and the headstone would already be there with his name and the date he had died. I'm not sure I could have handled that. But the headstone wouldn't be ready for a couple months, and after Father Boyle gave the blessing, we were told that we should all go home. Mom started to argue, and Dad told her to just get in the car. They bickered all the way home, but at least they stopped then, not wanting to snarl at each other in front of guests.

  I was feeling miserable, wishing everybody would leave, wondering what was the matter with them—expecting us to entertain them when Kevin was dead. And yet I was also dreading when we would be alone, just the three of us, our redefined family unit.

  But when everybody left, even the aunts and uncles, my parents didn't resume their quarreling. Instead Mom went to bed, though it was only one o'clock in the afternoon, and Dad sat on the couch and drank beer after beer. I took pity on Spartacus, whom Dad had ignored ever since we'd gotten the news about Kevin, so I took him for a walk around the block, even though he was a stupid, disgusting dog instead of a beautiful, elegant cat like the one Mary Beth Hinkle had. I think Dad had bought Spartacus for when Kevin came back home, because Kevin had always wanted a dog. Welcome home, Kevin. We know you did a good job and we're proud of you.

  Anyway, it was hard work walking Spartacus, because his brain was too small to grasp the concepts of heel or no or keep away from that lady's flower garden while she's sitting right there on her porch watching, you dimwit dog, you.

  When we finally got back home, Mom was in the living room, wearing only her nightie. It wasn't like her to be downstairs without a robe while the drapes were open so that anybody looking in the window would be able to see her. Not that I think the neighbors were necessarily lining up to try to catch a glimpse of my mother in her nightclothes, but that was one of her idiosyncrasies. Whatever had happened, she had come downstairs fast.

  I was concentrating on trying to unfasten Spartacus's leash from his collar. He was twisting and whining and being generally uncooperative. Same as always. Once I got him loose, he tore off into the kitchen as though someone had booted him. Inbred, brain-damaged animal. It was only when I noticed the total silence and looked up to see both my parents watching me that I realized that—up until the moment I'd walked in—their voices had been raised. "What?" I asked.

  "Nothing," Dad said.

  Mom snorted.

  "I fell asleep on the couch," Dad explained. "I had a stupid little nightmare, that's all."

  "You were in a drunken stupor," Mom spat out.

  "Maggie," Dad protested, with a sidelong glance at me.

  "Oh," Mom said, "not in front of Sarah, huh? It would have been nice if you'd shown me the same consideration."

  "What?" I repeated.

  "I...," Dad began, drawing the word out. Perhaps he sensed that if he didn't say it, Mom would, so he finished, "...thought I saw Kevin."

  I remembered Mom asking in the funeral parlor: How would we know if someone had made a mistake and it wasn't really Kevin that was dead? I almost glanced around the room. But they wouldn't have been standing around squabbling if somebody had discovered the error and sent Kevin back here to reassure us.

  "How do you think it felt," Mom asked, "to be wakened from a sound sleep with you yelling, 'Kevin! Kevin!'?"

  "I wasn't planning on waking you and bothering you," Dad said. "It was a nightmare. Nightmares don't make sense."

  "Seeing Kevin was a nightmare?" I asked.

  Dad hesitated before explaining, "He was dead. He was dead and he came back."

  "Don't drink so much," Mom yelled at him, and she stomped out of the room. A moment later she came back to the doorway to add, "And don't bother coming to our room until you've sobered up!"

  "Yeah, yeah," Dad muttered.

  And Mary Beth Hinkle wasn't due back for another week.

  When it got to be later, I snacked on some of the food people had brought over for us, more for something to do than because I was hungry. Dad ate, too, standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open, eating directly from the Tupperware containers, something he wouldn't have dared if Mom had been there to see. Mom didn't come down at all.

  Dad didn't drink any more that afternoon, at least not while I was watching. But he didn't show any sign of going up to join my mother in their bedroom. He seemed to be camped out on the davenport on the porch, as though fascinated by what was going on on our street-even though what was going on was nothing.

  I fell asleep on the couch in the living room, in front of the TV, which under normal circumstances my parents wouldn't have allowed. I half woke up when the "Star Spangled Banner" played at the end of the broadcast day—about 2 A.M.—but I didn't have the energy to get up and turn it off, much less climb the stairs to my room. I was just drifting off to the white static from the TV screen when I became aware of a sound that at first I thought was Spartacus whining to get out. But then I heard a sound that definitely was Spartacus whimpering, and that was coming from the kitchen, which, after all, was where we kept him at night. This other sound came from the porch.

  "Daddy?" I called softly.

  My father mumbled something in his sleep. But it didn't sound as though it was in answer to me, because his voice was garbled and agitated.

  "Daddy?" I repeated a little louder. But I didn't want to disturb my mother. Especially if my father was having another nightmare. She'd been so sympathetic that afternoon.

  "No!" Dad said sharply. But he was still asleep, because whatever he said next was mumbled. Then, more clearly, he shouted, "Keep away!"

  Much more of that, and the neighbors would be in on this. Mom would never forgive tha
t. I got up and went to the doorway. "Daddy?" I called into the porch. The moon was down, and since our house was right at the farthest spot between two street lamps, the porch was pretty dark. I could make out the davenport, and the shape of Dad lying on it, tossing as though trying to wake himself up.

  I could have gone in and shaken him, but I couldn't bring myself to step into the darkness. I stayed in the doorway and called sharply, "Daddy!"

  My father sat up, but then he kind of shrank into one corner of the cushions, cringing, and he said, "Kevin."

  From the kitchen, Spartacus started barking.

  "Kevin isn't here, Daddy," I said, annoyed with him, annoyed with Spartacus, annoyed with Kevin, for that matter.

  "Can't you see him?" my father whispered.

  He sure sounded totally awake now. Goose bumps ran up my arms, like icy spiders.

  I followed the angle of my father's head. He seemed to be looking into the comer of the porch that was opposite the outside door. There was a shadow from the maple tree, which made it the darkest corner of the porch. It was too dark to really see anything, but I said, "No."

  "Get the light," Dad told me.

  Now, while I didn't believe Kevin was on the porch, I didn't feel like stepping out into the porch, which I would have had to do to get to the light switch. Surely Dad was talking enough to prove that he was awake. So if he was awake, why was he still seeing Kevin?

  Was something in that corner?

  "Kevin wouldn't hurt you," Dad assured me.

  Then why was he afraid?

  My father was never afraid. He had fought in the war. He would go after bees that had gotten into the house. He had been the one to calm my mother when the doctor had said that the spot on his lung—which had turned out to be an X-ray technician's error—might be cancer.

  I saw an upstairs light go on at the Canettis', across the street, probably in reaction to Spartacus's barking, which had gotten louder and more insistent. I used that as an excuse. I stepped back into the living room. "SpartacusI Hush!" I hissed at the closed kitchen door. Spartacus paused for a moment, then resumed barking. I turned on the living room light, which overflowed into the porch.