Sorry to Disrupt the Peace

by Patty Yumi Cottrell

  Better to have succeeded, I said to Elena, better to have died.

  Maybe she tried to kill herself because her English was bad, and it was hard to make friends. Who could say? Or what about that French philosopher who threw himself out the window? Perhaps he saw swarms and machinic assemblages everywhere. Who wants to see that? And then there are the people who we always have on suicide alert, the depressed friend or cousin, the ones we always think are about to kill themselves, every time we get a phone call in the middle of the night, we think Dan or Vera finally did it, but we never get that phone call, and those people we thought throughout our entire lives were about to commit suicide end up dying happily of lung disease.

  My point is, how is anyone supposed to live with anything? I said to Elena.

  33

  I went outside onto the patio, where it was cool in the shade and I could think, as I require a cool temperature in order to think, a cool temperature has always supported not hindered my thinking apparatus. I smoked a cigarette and threw away the box. I do not enjoy how slowly I think and take in information, I thought. How slowly I think and absorb information has always embarrassed me. After a minute or two, I looked up into the café through the glass doors. Elena was still seated at the table where I had sat, and it looked like she was crying.

  Talking to her was a distraction, the person I really needed to speak to was dead. I would never talk to him again! I took out my phone and saw there was an entire archive of a conversation with a now-dead person at my disposal. It only now occurred to me that there were clues and traces in the text archive. My adoptive brother was a cryptic person and there were certainly hidden meanings behind each little cloud of gray. UNPACK THE TEXT, I shouted to myself. I began to scroll through our text history and I could say that many of his texts were very basic and practical. KOBE BRYANT!!! said one of them. What was the context? I wondered. I think I thought that the text was meant for someone else, which naturally reminded me of the time he sent me an email from a different name, RICHARDWALSINGHAM@gmail.com. It was in reply to a conversation we were having about what he wanted as a Christmas gift and what to get our adoptive parents, as I usually helped pay for gifts for them, I contributed a very small amount, around ten dollars, even though I had voluntarily removed myself from their lives, I could at least pitch in ten dollars toward their Christmas gifts, which my adoptive brother purchased, most likely with my adoptive father’s checks cashed out to himself. And our adoptive family was always very practical about Christmas gifts, people made lists of things they wanted and people bought the things on the lists, and therefore there were no real surprises on Christmas, it was less about gift-giving and more about some kind of exchange, this for that, and although I no longer participated directly in this exchange, my adoptive brother let my adoptive parents know I had contributed toward their gifts, which must have compelled them each Christmas to send me a card informing me that they had donated a small amount of money to the Catholic church in my name, which I never thanked them for or acknowledged because I thought it was an utterly useless, tasteless gift, as I myself would never personally choose to donate any money to that kind of disgusting pro-child-rape institution. Everyone could have bought themselves the things they wanted and called it a day, I thought. It was strange to receive an email from a Richard Walsingham regarding the purchase of certain gifts for my adoptive parents and my adoptive brother, in fact, I almost deleted the email because I thought it was spam, I only opened it because I had no other new, unread emails in my inbox and I was of course curious about what this Richard Walsingham had to say. When I realized it was my adoptive brother writing from an alias, I immediately asked him who this Richard Walsingham was and why was he pretending to be this person. He never responded to my questions and that email chain was abandoned and we sorted out the Christmas gift situation through text.

  A month later, 1/19/13, there was a text of complaint. There was a food bank downtown where once a month our adoptive parents donated several homemade casseroles and hot dishes when it was obvious to anyone that all any homeless person wanted was a slice of pizza or a fucking cheeseburger or a pack of cigarettes, no one wanted their casseroles. He especially hated the smell of the casseroles, the smell of them baking stayed in the air for days, stinking up the entire house, causing him to suffocate in his room.

  Part of the purpose of my investigation was to shed some light in the holes and the crevices and the parts of his life that didn’t line up, the odd details, etc. It reminded me of shining the flashlight into the crevices of my once-bedbug-infested bed, except instead of bedbugs, I was searching for the odd and the surprising details of someone’s life, the strangeness. What was the primary driving force for his life? I wondered. A woman in a green apron came out and swept the patio. Her brisk sweeping movements had a peaceful effect on me and I continued to stare down at the old text conversation that had transformed into an archive of a suicide-ghost.

  34

  Friday Septmber 27th: I’m having a good day, Helen. This weekend I’m going to go on a trip with my mom. When I received the text, I was inside a bodega in Brooklyn in the early evening. I had just purchased a giant bag of red licorice while my group of troubled people waited outside. A strange feeling overcame me as I read it, because the diction was so odd. And what trip? Where was he traveling to? So much travel in one year, I remembered thinking. I wished I had someone to show the text to, because what he said was so confusing. That night I never followed up or responded, I didn’t know how to, and no ethical compulsion came to me, instead I felt strange and colorless, like a piece of wet paper.

  He sent it two days before he killed himself.

  As I left the bodega, the colorless feeling went away. In front of me was a more immediate situation: I had to get my troubled young people on the A train and somehow conceal the licorice from them. Once on the train, the troubled young people decided to sing loudly and dance in a reckless way, grabbing onto the handlebars and swinging around, kicking their feet up to the ceiling. While most supervisors discouraged this type of disruptive behavior, I did not stop them, just this one time, because I thought it was a good opportunity for them to learn how to keep themselves entertained, and it allowed me to consume the entire bag of licorice unnoticed. By the time I got home, around eight at night, I forgot about the text entirely. I went to bed and slept peacefully and woke up without a care.

  Two nights later, the night he killed himself, September 29th, I came down with a case of food poisoning from a bodega bean- and-cheese burrito, I spent the night post-burrito either in the bathroom on the toilet or on the floor, or in bed with the little key in my fist, about to get up to go across the hall to the toilet. It was strange, because my roommate Julie always said I had a cast-iron stomach, I could eat all kinds of disgusting things without consequence, but that night I was sick to my stomach, and for hours everything inside me emptied out.

  What had I done? I thought. What had I not done? I brought my hands to my face. The woman in the green apron looked up from her sweeping.

  I didn’t realize anyone was out here, she said. We’re closing.

  I looked down at my phone; it was later than I thought. I gathered up my things and began to walk back to the house. I mimicked the woman’s sweeping movements to calm myself. It was dark out and the oncoming traffic shone a light on me and I felt singled out, spotlighted for a special purpose.

  Why was he so depressed about everything? I said to no one.

  At this point in my investigation, I attributed his suicide mostly to depression or perhaps a cry of unhappiness or maybe he simply lost control, even though he never lost control. I decided to take a different route, I crossed the traffic and went past our old Catholic school. I noticed the plastic vestibule had been installed in preparation for winter. This plastic vestibule had a very particular smell, I thought, the smell of the inside of a child’s shoes. For a few years I got along very well with the nuns, I saw a little of myself in them, whe
reas my adoptive brother despised the nuns, he said he would never be able to learn anything from such shriveled-up old prunes. For a moment, I thought about breaking into the school to inhale the aroma of the rubber-encased steps, to see if it was as fragrant as it was over twenty years ago. Then a tear almost came to my eye; I had gone to that school more than twenty years ago. Instead of breaking into the school overseen by the nuns and priests, I continued on my way and by the time I got home, I was covered in grass stains and dirt.

  I fell into a deep ditch because it was so dark out and I had cut through a forest, not the child molestation forest, a different forest that was unknown to me, and I couldn’t see where I was going, and there were trees everywhere and the path was uneven, excuses, excuses, it was so dark! It was some kind of miracle that I had made it home at all. There were holes in the knees of my pants and streaks of oil down the shins. When I fell into the ditch, my knees scraped against some metal scaffolding and construction debris. It dawned on me that someone was trying to build a condo village in the middle of the forest. As I tried to pull myself out of the ditch I must have grabbed onto a piece of twisted metal because there were cuts all over my hands. Some people are lucky, I thought, I have always narrowly escaped total annihilation. I approached the house with my bleeding hands and oil-streaked legs, I saw the house lit up, and from the front lawn, the windows framed the brightly lit wreaths, even my bedroom windows that looked out onto the driveway, the smallest windows of the house, radiated a picturesque cheerfulness, and it wasn’t until I took in all of the gladness and cheer that I noticed there were two new cars in the driveway, one with an out-of-state license plate.

  35

  A few minutes passed as I took a leisurely path around the yard and then entered the house through the garage, which was left wide open, expectantly, and from the garage I went into the laundry room, where I took off my shoes and pants and washed my knees and hands with a bar of white soap. I found some bandages and put them on my cuts. I crept into the hallway, pants-less.

  I lurked behind the kitchen door, then I peered around slowly. I saw a family of relatives, and even more shocking was the appearance of the Moon parents plus a young man who I believed was Zachary Moon. Scattered around the kitchen table were a few of my adoptive parents’ neighbors, one of them was grinding coffee beans with a whimsical-looking Japanese hand grinder. A woman put a glass pan in the oven and took one out. There were pans with foil on the counter, beverages and trays of cheese and nuts. I hadn’t seen any of them in years, relatives or neighbors. They spoke in low and respectful voices. The relatives were on my adoptive mother’s side and it gradually became clear to me that they were talking with the neighbors about college applications, the due dates, who was applying where, standardized tests, how expensive everything was, even the applications themselves. All of the neighbors in the kitchen were about to send children off to college, they were good, hearty Catholic breeders. They lived in large, sprawling mini-mansions, which they populated with mini-versions of themselves. Of course the Moons were a little different. Everyone at school thought they were part of a cult.

  Zachary was talking to someone, and when he turned around, he caught me watching the scene unfold. He waved and started to approach the door, then I turned away and flew up the stairs, only to run into my adoptive mother. She was coming down the steps with a basket of laundry. I handed her the white envelope from the police. She opened it quickly and seemed upset.

  What is it?

  A gift certificate to Three Sons, the Greek restaurant.

  Why is that upsetting?

  What happened to your hands? And where are your pants?

  I told her that I fell down into a ditch.

  Oh, she said as if it were the most perfectly natural thing in the world for me to tell her that I had fallen into a ditch.

  She didn’t even ask what kind.

  As she passed me she said, the relatives are staying overnight with us. I thought we might put them in your room.

  She didn’t even give me a chance to say no, no, that is a terrible idea. She was already standing in the foyer talking to a neighbor who occupied her with a very sympathetic look; from the stairs I saw the neighbor’s large, wide tearful eyes and nodding head. Whatever the neighbor said moved my adoptive mother to tears, and then the neighbor started crying and it went back and forth and back and forth.

  My own eyes did not tear up; I enjoyed my position as the neutral and passive observer. I went into my bedroom, where I noticed the relatives’ suitcases and jackets and backpacks had been laid out on my childhood bed. Beneath all of their things was a bedspread I had never seen before. I opened one of the relatives’ suitcases. There was a funeral suit neatly folded, a black V-neck sweater, and freshly polished funeral shoes, which made me think of my turtleneck sweater. Where was my turtleneck sweater? On top of the funeral clothing was a giant bottle of Advil.

  My own bathrobe and traveler’s kit were nowhere to be found. My own canvas suitcase was missing. I opened the closet and found a pair of men’s trousers that still had the tags on, possibly a gift for my adoptive brother, but never worn. I put them on, they were a few sizes too large so I found a braided leather belt. There was a pocket in the front, where I deposited my phone. I sat down on my bed for a few moments to collect my thoughts. I noticed that the flowerpots were still covered in white foam, the foam hadn’t dissipated and the entire room smelled like an old man’s acrid sweat. I had no idea how anyone would be able to fall asleep in my room with that kind of stench, I would sleep happily in the hallway.

  I heard the voices of the neighbors and relatives, their voices wafted up from below like a baking smell, and I enjoyed the texture of feeling it gave me. It reminded me of the one and only time my adoptive family hosted a large number of relatives at the house for Christmas when I was in first grade, a happy time, and it was strange to me that the Christmas hosting happened only once since the house was so large and would accommodate comfortably at least ten people at a time. My room seemed to be situated so one could hear everything going on below in the house, and even though the house was so expansive and empty, from the cozy perch of my childhood bedroom, all alone, the house itself felt very small and cheerful. Listening to the voices from below brought me back to that time and how beautiful it was to be alone in first grade, to sit on my bed alone with a book like The Secret of the Wooden Lady, and to hear human voices and to know and truly feel that there were people below, and at the same time, to not feel compelled to join them, it was a luxurious feeling to cherish, because the exact texture of that feeling happened so few times in my life. Perhaps it had something to do with being a child and being free but now as an adult I had certain responsibilities to face, like finding out what happened to my adoptive brother, why he killed himself, etc.

  With strangers and relatives colonizing the rooms like bacterial pathogens, it would be difficult to continue my investigation, I reflected. Because of their presence, I was forced to be social, I was compelled to be interactive. I went back down the stairs and into the laundry room where my adoptive mother was stuffing my childhood bedsheets and comforter and pillowcases into the washing machine.

  This house is huge, I said, why don’t we put the relatives in one of the guest bedrooms?

  Before I was able to warn her about the flowerpot insecticide, she was already saying something.

  Those rooms aren’t ready, she said sharply. Those rooms haven’t been aired out in months. They are not in a suitable condition for guests who have driven all the way from Colorado. It’s very simple, Helen. Your father and I know what we’re doing. You’ve never had to host a funeral before. The best thing you can do for us is to calm down, and stay out of the way.

  I mopped the foyer and the hallway in the back, I said.

  Thank you for that. You’re doing your part.

  So where did you put my things?

  In your brother’s room.

  The laundry room became small, the
ceiling dropped, the walls pressed in. I was sweating. I brought my bandaged hands up to my face in an intense way, designed to get her attention, but she had her back to me. With my bandaged hands, I covered my mouth the way my adoptive brother covered his mouth before he killed himself. I was too stunned to say anything.

  Is that okay with you? she said after a minute of silence.

  Instead of paying attention to me and my hand-covered mouth, she took a pile out of the dryer, and began to fold someone’s underpants neatly and stack them. I felt a blast of heat emanating from the underpants, probably my adoptive father’s.

  My adoptive brother just died, was on the tip of my tongue, but before I said anything, I heard her say, Helen, you should go say hi to the neighbors and relatives. The relatives are here and they are being very supportive.

  And the Moons appeared, I said. Did you invite them?

  But she wasn’t listening to me; she was carefully measuring out a half-cup of detergent for a new load of laundry.