When I woke up, I noticed some of the stewardesses were wearing latex gloves, lightly powdered, and the powder traces could be seen dusted faintly across their shoulders and shirtsleeves. If someone studied the traces, if someone put the traces under a microscope, perhaps they would detect a pattern that would unlock the secrets of the universe. I stretched my legs out as far as possible, then began to shift my attention to the purpose of my trip. To find out what happened to him, I said to no one, in other words, to investigate his suicide, to investigate the loss of a will to live. Demystify the pattern, and demystify the death. His death, his death, a death that I abhor.3 I felt weeping in my eyes. I sniffled. The man sitting next to me asked if I needed a tissue.
I’m not crying, I said as I accepted it and dabbed my eyes gently.
It’s just allergies, I said. Don’t worry.
He had already turned his attention away to the in-flight magazine. As I sat there with my weeping, I thought it might be a mistake to expect to come away with an understanding of what happened. It might be a trap. I prepared myself to be satisfied with uncertainty even though I hated things that were uncertain or ambiguous. I disliked clouds, fog, certain types of philosophy, little children, and poetry. I preferred the concrete, the absolute, fiction and nonfiction. Because life is not poetry; life resembles fiction, life resembles the writing of the Greek tragedians, those foundational thinkers!
You’re not flexible enough, my adoptive father once told me. Life is going to be very difficult for you, Helen, unless you learn to adapt to changes. Be flexible. Be a better person. Be a better daughter.
The stewardess gestured at me. Ma’am, seats in upright position.
Everyone always called me ma’am for some reason.
I’m thirty-two, I said under my breath as I stuffed the soiled tissue into the seatback pocket.
Then I remembered that I packed my headphones, the noise-canceling type. I took them out; I liked to use them as earplugs, even at my shared studio apartment, I wore them on nights when my roommate Julie had her boyfriend over, so I wouldn’t be forced to listen to their disgusting, noisy genitals smacking against each other. Someone gave them to me as a gift, or perhaps someone loaned them to me and forgot to ask for them back.
I stared out at the gray and brown flat grids laid out simply and locked together like pieces of a child’s puzzle, then I looked down at the lake, glass-smooth like a French bistro tabletop. I pictured my adoptive parents’ house, and for a moment, I pictured the black sweater’s arrival in a cardboard box, addressed to Helen Moran. It was with great pleasure that I pictured myself trying on the sweater, a perfect fit. Then I remembered I was going to my childhood home for a horrific reason. My eyes continued to water until the plane landed, and I took a taxi home.
I have always preferred not to pay too much attention to interstitial spaces like the space between landing and arriving, bland, forgettable spaces without texture, oatmeal spaces. I knew the ride home would take twenty minutes. During that interstitial space, the sky became darker and darker as if someone were slowly placing a black blanket over my eyes. My stomach trembled, saliva welled up inside my mouth, I swallowed it, I tried to trick myself into thinking I had just sipped a refreshing glass of spring water. A teacher said to do that. Instead of letting us go get a drink of water, she told us to think of a Swiss mountain stream and to swallow our saliva. The taxi crawled forward like a beetle through the suburbs, stopping and starting, stopping and starting, and I saw in my head the nunnery where all the nuns died and the priests took over, the pharmacy that housed a child-pornography ring, the bird sanctuary where a governmental agency collects the geese to feed to wolves.
It had been years since I had been to my childhood home to see my adoptive parents. It was by some unspoken agreement that as my adoptive parents and I became older we would come into contact less and less, although I couldn’t say for certain why that was. I didn’t even tell them I left Milwaukee until months after the fact. At the time it satisfied me to do that to them; to disappear for a while felt like getting some kind of revenge, because throughout the eighteen years I lived with them, they each on various occasions asked me to leave, to move out and find a new place to live. In the end, I suffered for my revenge, because when I moved to New York, unspeakable things happened to me.
Everything bad went around in a circle. Gray pocked streets and black skies filled my head like heavy stone tablets, causing me to feel a throbbing pulse near my left temple. In the pitch-black darkness, I felt the taxi coast down the hill of my childhood memories causing tears to come to my eyes, a physical descent that must have been buried deeply in my subconscious, and so we arrived at my adoptive parents’ house, the house of Morans.
I don’t want to be here any longer than you, and therefore I’m hoping my stay will be very brief, I said to the driver as I gave him two wrinkled twenties, twenties I grabbed from my roommate Julie’s desk.
I asked for change; when traveling it’s always useful to have a little cash. The taxi left and I stood for a while outside the house. I put away my headphones. It began to rain. In silence I walked around the backyard, through the oak trees and bushes as a few motion-detector lights switched on and swept across my lone figure at a delay. By the time I made my way to the front door, my coat and shoes and canvas suitcase were soaking wet.
I rang the bell and the door opened. I was greeted by two little astonished ghost-figures clinging to each other for dear life. Helen, my adoptive parents said, we weren’t expecting you! They were taken aback. No, it wasn’t entirely clear to anyone, not even to the two who had raised me, how I had ended up at the front doorstep of my childhood home in soaking wet clothes. They appeared to be shocked by my canvas suitcase. Instead of greeting me pleasantly, they were whispering to each other.
5
How was it that no one was certain Sister Reliability would return home after her very own adoptive brother passed away? I might have been a monster, but not that kind of monster. It hurt me a little, that my adoptive parents were not expecting me, that they were so astonished by my arrival, that they seemed scandalized by my suitcase, by the mere suggestion that I would be staying a few nights with them in my childhood home. I supposed if they themselves had called me, I would have been able to tell them my travel arrangements. Instead a stranger called me, a relative I hadn’t spoken with in years, a relative I saw last at a great-aunt’s funeral I was forced to attend when I was in fifth grade. Uncle Geoff who once refused to own a phone! I don’t think he was even my real uncle! He was probably a second cousin twice removed!! How avoidant they are! I thought. They couldn’t bring themselves to tell their own adoptive daughter her adoptive brother was dead, the person she grew up with, the one she was forced to take baths with, tepid baths before he was toilet-trained, the one who pissed in the bath while she, the adoptive sister, sat calmly in a tub filled with a combination of tepid water and his urine, they didn’t have the mental and emotional strength to tell her that he was gone, and not only was he gone, he did it to himself.
At first I wasn’t upset that I had heard the news from Uncle Geoff, but now that my adoptive parents were standing right before me, I wanted to scream at them for subjecting me to such a senseless phone call from a stranger, the type of phone call that causes the brain to work so hard, the brain comes apart like pieces of dried-up clay and the next minute all one can see is a screen of flat, broken-down boxes, no more thought-secretions oozing out like toxic slime. My adoptive parents continued whispering to each other. Or maybe I heard the sound of the wind moving the tops of the trees around and the raindrops pelting the leaves and branches.
After all these years, she’s just going to show up. Has Helen gone mad? I swore I heard them say.
No, it’s the rain, I said gently, calmly. Haven’t you two noticed we’re in the midst of a terrible rainstorm?
Your mother and I can see that, said my adoptive father as they stood in the door frame.
They cont
inued to stand in the door frame as the wind blew the rain through the open door. I made a note to myself that they had not greeted me with a plate of cookies and milk, not even tea and stale muffins, as I had pictured. Then I forced my way into the house because I was certain my adoptive parents were too astonished by my sudden appearance to invite me in.
Where do you keep the mop? I said.
My adoptive parents’ mouths opened even wider and I saw the ugly fillings in their teeth, mostly silver and a few gold caps and some white sealants.
The mop, I demanded. And a bucket. Can’t you see the floor is soaking wet? You have almost an inch of standing water here.
My adoptive mother pointed with a trembling finger in the direction of the utility closet down the hall next to the laundry room, and I went about making myself useful, mopping up the rain with broad, sweeping gestures and then wringing out the rain with all of my brute strength.
I could kill a dog with a brick! I shouted to no one when I was done.
After I finished mopping up the rain that had pooled in the foyer of my childhood home, after I went upstairs and threw open all of my bedroom windows to air out the stench of death, after I looked around my simple childhood bedroom, the most elegant room in the house because of its simplicity and lack of decorative knickknacks, after I emptied the contents of my canvas suitcase onto the carpeted floor, and changed out of my soaking-wet clothes into a gray, worn-at-the-elbows terrycloth bathrobe without a belt, I made my way downstairs where I knew my adoptive parents were waiting for me.
6
I felt a sense of vertigo as I went down the staircase, like I was traveling into an abyss.
Once I reached the living room, my equilibrium was only slightly restored. The room was brightly lit, overcompensating for the dark-wood-beamed ceiling and the dark orange wallpaper. No one liked the dark orange wallpaper, but they were too cheap to fix it. It was like looking at a movie screen with a flickering hair. After a moment, my eyes adjusted.
My adoptive parents motioned for me to sit down on a three-person-length wicker-basket couch in the living room, ostensibly to discuss the odd circumstances surrounding the death of my adoptive brother. My adoptive father sat on the couch with me, and my adoptive mother sat in a wicker-basket chair opposite the couch.
Where did all of this wicker furniture come from? I said to them as I looked around.
It was on sale, said my adoptive mother. It’s easier to keep clean than the leather.
But besides that, not much has changed, said my adoptive father. You see Helen, all we did was replace the leather with the wicker.
The furniture was exactly the same, just of a different material and texture. The same family photographs and knickknacks graced the fireplace mantel, the stereo and speakers were set back in a black cabinet with a clear plastic door that, when pressed, swung open, and in the corner of the room was a smug and self-satisfied beanbag chair that the long-dead family dog used to sleep upon. I was shocked my adoptive parents had kept that beanbag chair all those years.
Who sits on that? I said to my adoptive parents.
That was Bailey’s bed, said my adoptive mother, and she had a faraway, dreamy look in her eyes.
As soon as we clarified the matter of the new furniture, my adoptive mother, in her to-the-floor flannel nightgown, got up. Does anyone want some herbal tea? she said. I’m going to make some herbal tea.
She went into the kitchen and busied herself for a while and I heard her opening and closing the wood cabinets absentmindedly.
It’s the three of us now, said my adoptive father.
He perched himself on the edge of a couch.
So how long do you think you’ll be staying with us, Helen?
Once a rather handsome man, he had taken on a shrunken appearance since the last time I saw him, and his brown hair had gone gray on top and white on the sides. The color of his hair changed because of the grieving and the loss, I speculated. What a toll it has already taken upon him and his physical appearance! It saddened me to see such a drastic physical transformation, and so soon after the death.
To answer your question, I said, I purchased a one-way plane ticket. I’m here to look into the abyss and to offer my support in whatever form it takes.
He nodded. His eyes were small and sad and brave like those of an endangered bird flying through a forest at dusk. It has something to do with the death, I thought as my gaze shifted from my adoptive father to the beanbag chair to my adoptive father’s hair, from his hair to the photographs on the mantel and from the photographs back to my adoptive father.
What a difficult time, I whispered as I scrutinized his appearance for a few more minutes, what a toll all this has taken, then I began to look at my adoptive father with the charity of a nun as I felt something foreign swell in my heart for him and his shrunken, birdlike figure. I moved closer to him on the couch, close enough to see the long white hairs growing behind his ears. Someone should trim those, I said.
What’s that?
I wanted to offer him as much support as possible.
Your hair looks different, I said.
We haven’t seen each other in five years, he said. People get older, Helen, people change. Besides, that’s not what we’re here to talk about. Do you have a job you have to return to? How long exactly will you be here? We will be hosting some visitors…
What visitors?
I was very curious, then I looked again at the beanbag chair slumped over in the corner of the living room and I let out a laugh. My adoptive mother came out from the kitchen to see what was wrong.
What a toll it has taken, this death and grieving and loss! I said under my breath, under my laughter.
My adoptive father said something to my adoptive mother.
Helen, said my adoptive mother, and she touched my shoulder. Is now not a good time to talk about what happened? Is being here at home with the two of us upsetting you?
My laughter, now hardly weltering, died away.4 I shook my head no.
It’s fine, I said.
What was the concept of time anyway, especially to these two ghost-figures and their grieving? A few moments passed in silence and I wondered how many phantoms were in the living room with us that night. It was an appropriate question because as I was sitting on the three-person wicker couch, I started to formulate a hypothesis that their grieving was the fourth, yet-unspoken presence in the living room and no one had acknowledged it.
Perhaps I was the only one, the chosen one, who could see it clearly in a material way. If it had to take on a bodily form, and if I had to describe that form to someone, I would say I imagined it looked like a European man in his forties, average build and height, balding, with a red nose, sitting on a chair, observing us from a dark corner of the room, opposite the beanbag chair. I shook my adoptive mother’s hand off my shoulder, got up from the wicker-basket couch, and reached out my own hand to touch their grieving and it recoiled as if I were some sort of vagrant beggar.
I am not a vagrant beggar! I shouted at it.
The European man who seemed to embody their grieving got up from his chair and left haughtily.
Perhaps this isn’t a good time to discuss things, said my adoptive mother. You see, your father and I have been thinking… We can’t be much of a support to you in a time like this, you see… do you understand what I’m saying… we can’t support you right now, as it is, we’re both trying to adjust to the situation…
Her voice trailed off and she floated back into the kitchen.
My adoptive father looked uncomfortable; I thought it might be a kind gesture to change the subject.
Will you vote yes in the stadium referendum? I said. My adoptive father covered his face with his hands.
It’s worse than a car accident, I heard him say into his hands, it’s worse than a house on fire.
My adoptive mother came out from the kitchen and set down a tray of chamomile tea and biscotti.
Helen, try to be nice to you
r father. Let’s be kind to one another, after all, this is a difficult time for all of us, she said.
What a difficult time! I acknowledged again and again. What a toll it has taken! It had been less than 48 hours after his suicide. What would the weeks, the months, the years do to them, these ghost-figure survivors? I estimated they would live for another twenty to thirty years, meaning two to three more decades of post-traumatic living. Meanwhile, my adoptive mother and adoptive father sat on the wicker furniture and ate their crackers nervously. I attempted to explain that I was partially employed as a supervisor of troubled young people at an after-school facility designed to keep them off drugs, out of gangs, etc.
So you look after people? said my adoptive mother. You take care of them?
She looked at me incredulously.
Of course, I said, they are troubled.
Then I went into explicit detail about what my troubled young people encountered and endured. I told them in the quietest voice possible about the drug-addicted family members, the daily abuse meted out by once-trusted relatives, teachers, and coaches, the rapes and tortures. My adoptive parents shuddered.
I stared in disbelief at the beanbag chair. Dirty beanbag chair, shabby polyurethane-filled piece of shit! Their entire lives, they each had trouble hearing difficult and upsetting things; it astonished me that they were even able to accept the fact that their adoptive son committed suicide. I continued to stare at the disgusting beanbag chair. Over a decade ago, when the family cat died, they refused to remove the dead body. Everyone loved the cat, because it acted like the dog. They left the dead cat in the foyer, where anyone who entered the house encountered it. After two weeks of the dead cat on the floor, I became so disgusted with the sight and smell, I had no choice but to call pest-control services, the same service that scraped the dead animal out of my adoptive brother’s closet. After they removed the rotten cat-body, everyone, including my adoptive brother, became very angry with me, and refused to talk to me for two months.
Sorry to Disrupt the Peace Page 3