The Fragile World

by Paula Treick DeBoard

  By noon, it seemed that everyone knew—our friends, our neighbors, even a reporter from The Sacramento Bee who wanted a “human element” to accompany her article. Daniel had been no stranger to the local news outlets, which had all printed pictures or run footage of him from one concert or another, receiving one award or another. Local hero...musical prodigy...

  When I stepped onto the front porch that afternoon to get the mail, I found half a dozen cards tucked up underneath our doormat. Mom and I opened them together, read them silently and started a stack on the sofa table. Later that evening, she went outside and returned with a basket of corn bread and honey butter. Our house was under the surveillance of a small army of sympathizers and well-wishers, people who loved us but couldn’t bear to actually encounter us. And I didn’t blame them one bit.

  That night Kendra, my best friend since fourth grade, called. I took the cordless extension into my bedroom and closed the door and sat cross-legged on the floor, feeling small and strange.

  “I heard about your brother,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks,” I said. We let the quiet between us stretch for minutes, and then I said, “I think I have to go.”

  “I’m sorry,” she blurted again.

  “I know.”

  “Are you still going to go to the dance?”

  It took me a long moment to figure out what she was talking about. And then I remembered: the Halloween dance, our matching costumes. Mom had made us our dresses, and Kendra’s mom had bought our matching wigs. We were going as the dead twins from The Shining.

  “Um, no,” I said.

  “Do you think that maybe I could borrow your costume for someone else? I was thinking maybe Jenna, from our homeroom? I mean if you’re sure you’re not going....”

  “Whatever,” I said, my throat tight, and hung up.

  It was the loneliest I’d ever felt in my life.

  In the hallway, I paused outside my parents’ bedroom, listening to their voices. They weren’t arguing, exactly. Dad was packing—he’d be in Oberlin for two nights and back again on Sunday. Meanwhile, Mom was in charge of the arrangements for Daniel’s memorial service, which would be on Monday.

  “I just can’t imagine that we won’t have a headstone for Daniel,” Mom was saying.

  “We can have a headstone. Of course we can. We can have whatever you want.”

  “But his body won’t be there!”

  “No, it won’t.”

  I braced myself with an arm against the door frame.

  “I just never pictured...” Mom said, her voice trailing off.

  “It’s the right thing to do, Kath. There’s an incredible expense associated with shipping a body—and besides, it’s not Daniel anymore. He’s gone.”

  “It just doesn’t feel right. And how will we know? How will we absolutely know?”

  “How will we know what?”

  “When we get the—Daniel’s—remains, how will we know those are his remains? I mean, you read those things about funeral homes....”

  “Kath,” Dad was trying to calm her.

  “I mean it!” Mom’s voice had risen to a hysterical pitch, which I probably would have heard without eavesdropping. “I’ve been thinking all day, maybe they mixed something up. Maybe it wasn’t Daniel who died, after all. Do you know, I kept calling his phone and leaving messages? I was thinking maybe he would pick up and say it was some kind of stupid mistake—”

  I remembered the times I’d seen Mom on the phone, dialing, listening and hanging up. I began to feel sick.

  “They found his wallet in his pocket,” Dad pointed out.

  “Right! And I could just imagine Daniel saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I lent my wallet to this guy from my dorm....’”

  “Kathleen,” Dad said, “you’re being—”

  “What? What am I being?”

  They were quiet for a long moment, and then Mom said, “I know. I know exactly what I’m being. I don’t think I know how else to be right now.” She flung open their door and stepped into the hallway.

  Startled, I stepped back, whispering, “I’m sorry.”

  What else was there to be but sorry?

  curtis

  The trip to Oberlin was endless—the drive to the airport, the hassles of TSA screening, the agony of being wedged into a middle seat with nothing to do but think. Even when I closed my eyes, I saw Daniel—at six, at ten, at sixteen, at nineteen...at twenty-five, an age he would never be.

  When I’d successfully forced Daniel from my thoughts for a few moments, I remembered again the name I’d written on my notepad: Robert Saenz. It was like swallowing a mouthful of dirt; thinking of him brought a lingering grit, a foul taste. He’d driven home while Daniel lay dying. “Careless, so careless,” Kathleen had bawled into my shoulder. But it seemed now that careless was the absolute wrong word. Careless was forgetting to throw the sheets in the dryer, or not picking up the promised gallon of milk on the way home from work. It wasn’t driving away with my son dying on the side of the road. I must have fallen asleep grinding my teeth, because I woke in Chicago with a sore jaw. My first thought was: Robert Saenz, you bastard.

  The scheduled two-hour layover in Chicago grew to four hours, thanks to a weather delay. I watched as a cargo train wobbled by in the gray slanting rain, and uniformed personnel hoisted luggage indiscriminately into the hold. I strained, trying to spot my bag, which was black and therefore indistinguishable from dozens of other black bags. I hadn’t been to Chicago in close to thirty years, but the airport version of the city wasn’t one I would have recognized, anyway— steel-beamed ceilings, black-and-white checked floor tiles, deep-dish pizza, a preponderance of Cubs and Bears paraphernalia. The Chicago of my childhood had been my father, the cramped house with the nicotine-stained walls, the accordion closet door that had been thin protection against his rages.

  Daniel’s death had brought my father back to me as a real person, rather than an abstract part of my past, buried alive in a time I rarely revisited. I hadn’t called him twenty years ago, when Kathleen was pregnant, and I hadn’t called nineteen years ago when Daniel was born, or seven years later when Olivia came along. Why ruin our happiness with his condescension? Later, when Daniel performed at Carnegie Hall, when Oberlin called with a full-ride scholarship offer, I’d wanted to rub his face in it: Look what my son has done. Look how well I’ve done, away from you all these years. But there had been the promise to Kathleen, and I’d never picked up the phone.

  I was tempted to call him now, to hurt him with Daniel’s loss. Impossible idea—my father couldn’t begin to feel the loss of the grandson he’d never known. It was yet another defeat for me—even my effort to deprive him of his grandchildren would spare my father pain, in the end. Escaping to the bathroom, I drove my fist once, hard, into the metal door.

  It was dark by the time I checked into the Oberlin Inn, the only hotel in town. It might have been late in Ohio, but it was only seven o’clock Sacramento time, too early for sleep. I flicked idly through the channels, then grabbed my coat. On the sidewalk in front of the hotel, students passed in hurried clusters, their heads covered. I crossed North Main Street and circled Tappan Square, ending up before Oberlin’s monument to the Underground Railroad, a set of railroad tracks rising to the sky.

  Daniel had first mentioned Oberlin at the beginning of his junior year, when college seemed impossibly distant. “It’s famous for its music conservatory,” he had gushed, producing one glossy brochure after another. That fall it had been Oberlin this, Oberlin that. In the spring he’d flown out for a college visit, and then there was the admissions process, the gathering of transcripts and letters of recommendation, the seventeen drafts of Daniel’s personal statement. I’d driven him to his audition in San Francisco and paced anxiously outside the conservatory. During the hour-and-a-half dr
ive to his audition he’d been quietly nervous; on the return drive, he was exuberant. “I nailed it,” he’d said over and over, reliving every second for me. Finally, there was the acceptance letter, a scholarship offer and dozens of phone calls about housing. Oberlin had seemed to me to be larger than life—it was all of life, as far as Daniel was concerned.

  It had been somewhat surprising to discover that the town of Oberlin was tiny. Kathleen and I, on our one visit, had rented a car and marked out the parameters of the town in just a few circles. The main streets bisected at the college, which loomed large and official—museum, concert halls, the conservatory with more than two hundred grand pianos, Daniel had informed us—next to the rest of the town, which had relatively few amenities. We had taken Daniel out for Chinese at a restaurant a block from campus. In our spin around town, he pointed out the bowling alley, an archaic-looking video rental store, the self-serve Laundromat and a used book store.

  Now, my hat pulled low over my ears, I headed in the direction of the gas station and pizza parlor on the outskirts of town. It was here that Daniel Kaufman was walking down the sidewalk, hunched against the cold for the hike back to campus. It was here that Robert Saenz had taken a corner too quickly, clipping the 35 mph sign.

  It wasn’t hard for me to find the exact spot. Less than two days after Daniel’s death, the area was still roped off with yellow police tape. I circled the perimeter, hands balled into fists in the pockets of my jeans. Two students walked past me, darting into the street to avoid the police tape, then stepping back onto the sidewalk. I waited for them to say something, to acknowledge that a person had died right here, a person they had possibly even taken a class or shared a pitcher with, but the only scrap of conversation I caught had to do with a party that weekend. I crossed over the police tape, half expecting someone from the pizza parlor to stop me. Snow had covered the sidewalk, but still I could see where the concrete had been disturbed, where a speed limit sign had been uprooted. I stood there until I had no feeling in my ears or cheeks, watching cars slip by on their way in and out of town. I wanted to yell at each driver to slow down, to acknowledge what they were passing: This is where my son died! Daniel Owen Kaufman died right here! He was my son, and he deserves your respect, you dirty sons of bitches. I was furious with them and disappointed in myself. This patch of cement didn’t feel like hallowed ground. Instead of a connection with Daniel, I felt only anger, slow and determined.

  The next morning at the Oberlin P.D., I was shown into a room with green walls and a concrete floor, a table flanked by two chairs. An interrogation room? Had Robert Saenz sat in this very chair, still groggy from sleep? Sergeant Springer had a face to match his gravelly voice—deeply lined, ruddy in a way that suggested permanent sunburn—and a no-nonsense handshake. “I’ve done some digging,” he said, passing me a manila folder.

  Inside was Robert Saenz—face-forward first, then in profile. In the way that a hard life can pack on years, he looked much older than forty-one, older even than me. I was reminded of my father, prematurely aged with the help of Jim Beam and Johnnie Walker, with Wild Turkey and bottles of blue wine that looked like antifreeze. Robert Saenz had dark curly hair that hit his collar, and bloodshot, slightly bulging eyes that looked out with a vacant stare. In profile he had a double chin, a layer of stubble. His eyes held nothing—not regret or anger or surprise. Nothing.

  “Keep reading,” the sergeant said.

  I set the picture aside and continued slowly, fanning out the pages as I went. In 2003, Robert Saenz had caused a fatal accident in North Carolina, when his truck had jackknifed on a freeway, and an oncoming car, unable to avoid him in time, had crashed. The driver—a thirty-two-year-old Mary Kay saleswoman—had been killed instantly. Her infant son, in the backseat, had both legs crushed on impact. Robert Saenz had been above the legal limit. I was gripping the edges of the folder so hard, my hands were beginning to cramp.

  “Pled down to a misdemeanor,” Sergeant Springer said. “Did a couple of years, paid a fine, had his license revoked. But that was five years ago, you understand. In North Carolina. Looks like he’s been in Oberlin for a year or so, driving for a company owned by his brother.”

  “He did a couple of years,” I echoed numbly. He’d killed a woman, and he’d been set free to kill Daniel. I sat very still, thoughts swimming. Sergeant Springer continued, but I only half heard him: waiting on the results of the blood draw...charges will be brought...a bail hearing...

  This was probably meant to be reassuring—there was a legal process, and it was in capable hands. But I heard something else: Robert Saenz, that low-life piece of shit, could go free again.

  Sergeant Springer led me to the pathology lab, where Daniel’s body was waiting to be identified. Kathleen had been insistent on this point. We have to know for sure. How can we not know? The deputy coroner, Dr. Kline, showed me to a sterile room where a body lay on a gurney, covered by a heavy piece of plastic. The scene was sickly surreal, like walking into a script of one of the thousands of crime dramas I’d watched over the years.

  Dr. Kline looked at me, asking a wordless question. There was no way to be ready, not now or in a hundred years, but I nodded. He pulled back the tarp.

  It wasn’t Daniel—it was an awful, horror movie caricature of who Daniel had been. It was a face I wouldn’t have known in a million years, his skull a concave thing, a grotesque mask. If it hadn’t been suggested to me that this was Daniel, I might not have come to the conclusion on my own. This was no more my son than it was a bad prop in a haunted house.

  Kathleen should be here, I thought. She would have known Daniel’s shoulders and chest, despite the gaping Y of the autopsy incision, the thick stitches of the sort that had made Frankenstein’s monster so grotesque. Kathleen had marveled over our children’s bodies as they grew, thrilling that Olivia had the cutest buns in that bathing suit, that the moles on Daniel’s shoulder resembled a specific constellation, where I saw only a scattershot of stars.

  It wasn’t until I saw the scar on the abdomen that I truly recognized Daniel’s body—a small sickle, pale pink beneath his navel. Daniel’s appendix had burst when he was nine years old, late on a Saturday night after a recital. He must have been in pain the entire day, the E.R. doctor told us, but it wasn’t until we were in the car afterward that he mentioned it, cautiously, as if testing the waters. I think something is wrong with my stomach. He’d gone into surgery just in time, ending up with an overnight stay in the hospital and a week’s worth of antibiotics rather than anything more serious.

  “It’s him,” I choked, biting back the memory.

  When I turned away, Dr. Kline replaced the plastic tarp and peeled off a pair of gloves, dropping them into a wastebasket. He disappeared for a moment and returned with a transparent garbage bag, the red handles tied together at the top. The bag was labeled with a simple tag: PERSONAL PROPERTY—DANIEL KAUFFMAN. I homed in on that extra F in our last name, feeling it like a slap in the face. Get the spelling right! I screamed inside my head. It matters.

  As we walked to the door, the plastic bag knocking between us, Dr. Kline laid a hand on my shoulder. It was hard to pull away from this offer of human comfort.

  I went to a café for lunch but left without ordering. Food had lost its appeal.

  That afternoon I met the dean of students at Daniel’s dorm. Daniel’s roommate had separated the belongings for me, folding everything on top of the bare mattress—clothes, sheets, the tartan plaid comforter Kathleen had picked out for him. I held a flannel shirt to my nose, inhaled the faintest whiff of pot. It was surprising to see how meager the pile was—textbooks, coffee mugs, his laptop, toiletries, the black bow tie he’d worn for performances. Kathleen would have had a plan for everything. She would have talked about packing and shipping and receipts and reimbursements, so that somehow everything that had been Daniel’s could live forever. I didn’t have the stomach for it. In the
end, I took what I could carry, and the dean promised to donate the rest to Goodwill.

  On the way back to the hotel, a boy ran past me in a red cape, his underwear outside his jeans, and a girl followed in a pointy witch hat and thigh-high boots. Little orange buckets dangled from their wrists. Of course: Halloween. I looked around, noticing the small clusters of ghosts and goblins and cartoon characters on the sidewalks, the fake cobwebs spanning bushes, the jack-o-lanterns on front porches. This was what normal life was like, but there was no more normal life for the Kaufmans.

  Back at the Oberlin Inn, I sat on the closed toilet seat and opened the bag from the coroner gingerly, setting its contents one by one on the tiled bathroom floor. Daniel’s black Converse—the exact style he’d worn and replaced and worn and replaced since junior high. I had a pair, too. Somewhere there was photographic evidence of Daniel and me in black T-shirts, blue jeans and matching shoes. I fished Daniel’s key ring out of the bag. Four keys—one to our house, marked by a drop of red nail polish, Kathleen’s doing. The other keys must have been to his dorm, his practice rooms, the places where he had lived his life without me.

  I opened his wallet to the photo on his California driver’s license, taken when Daniel was sixteen. He looked so young, his shoulders impossibly narrow, hair closely cropped on the sides and spiky in the front. Then, Daniel’s Oberlin ID: a goofy half smile, hair grown almost to his shoulders. He hardly looked like the same kid, but I knew both versions of him, and many more. I pulled out the other cards, then returned each carefully to its spot. An electronic passkey. His Sacramento Public Library card, well worn. A punch card to a local sandwich shop with three holes.

  In the pocket, I counted four wrinkled one-dollar bills and peeled apart a few stuck-together pictures. Daniel’s senior prom photo, his arm around a girl whose name was lost to me now. A years-old family snapshot we’d taken in Yosemite when Daniel was in junior high and Olivia was in elementary school, in her braided ponytail years. Kathleen was in the middle, an arm around each of them, her normally pale legs and shoulders pink from the sun. I had taken the picture—we were on the trail to Vernal Falls, far from another human who could have snapped the photo for us. Kathleen had sent out copies with our Christmas cards that year, along with a joke about me being camera-shy. I turned the photo over, suddenly aching to see Kathleen’s writing on the back, but it was Daniel’s scrawl I found: The Fam, 2004.