like mom
Harris: like in terms of what
what taste do u have?
i mean ignore the furniture
Me: contemporary gay
Harris: i love contemporary gay!
i love that first house
just wish it had more space
Me: the first house is right up my alley
i dont love the brown marble and marble in general on the 2nd one
but again, that’s a taste issue
Harris: i dont either
Me: like, that kitchen omg
Harris: that kitchen is like the kitchen we grew up in
Me: i know exactly!
i was thinking that
mom would love it
The one you eventually settled on sat at the foot of Griffith Park in Los Feliz. It resembled the brick, 1950s ranch-style home we grew up in, one block away from our neighborhood middle school. Three bedrooms, two and a half baths, one story—a modest abode, relatively speaking. Orangish-reddish brick. White trim. Traditional. It could have blended into any residential neighborhood in Houston. You were specifically looking for a house like this, something familiar and cozy in a place that didn’t always feel like those things.
The backyard was of paramount importance to you. It was your favorite spot. I can see you sitting out there on the patio at the round, metal table with the overflowing ashtrays, one knee folded up in the chair, smoking cigarette after cigarette, sending swarms of texts, recording beloved Vines.
We had a table like that in our backyard growing up. In high school, my friends and I would sit out there after Mom and Dad went to bed and chain-smoke our teenage lives away. Ironically, you weren’t much of a smoker back then, which is why your excessive smoking as an adult has always baffled me.
I recently found this picture you drew of us back in high school, depicting our morning car rides. We overlapped one year: you were a freshman; I was senior. In the drawing, Ani DiFranco (my permanent high-school music choice) is blaring through the speakers. The Tae Bo people are these old people who did Tai Chi on the lawn of this Hasidic synagogue that we drove by every morning. I’m smoking. You hated it when I smoked in the car and made the biggest fucking deal about how it was killing you and aggravating your allergies.
In February, when we were in LA packing up your house, Mom and I were surprised to find canvases, art supplies, an easel, and several finished paintings in your guest room. One of them sits in my closet now. I look at it daily. The background is a deep, dark blue with splotches of black. Several stars made of tin foil speckle the sky. A veiny pink and red heart with yellow-gold wings flies up to the heavens. White dots border the top and the sides of the flying heart, while red dots drip off the bottom. The lower portion of the painting depicts the ground, the earth. Black, barren trees sit on a black landscape. There is a large, hollow skull perched in the bottom left corner, also lined with dots. The earth is bleak; the sky is where the heart takes flight.
I had no idea you were painting.
Selling your house depletes me. Just one more piece of evidence that this is really happening.
In addition to selling your house, we’ve also listed ours in Houston. I can’t get out of here fast enough. It’s too small, there’s bad juju, and I’m still scarred from the mold fiasco that left us displaced last year for six weeks and cost $8,000 in repairs, none of which was covered by insurance nor recouped from the previous owners.
Mom’s voice echoes inside my head: “Life isn’t fair, Stephanie.”
Originally, Mike tried to sell the house for $150 and a two-hundred-word essay. The idea was that we’d get enough money from entry fees to cover the cost of the home, someone would get a charming house in a cool neighborhood for $150, and he’d get some decent publicity as a real estate agent. This was necessary because—head’s up—when your wife is consumed with crippling grief and either weeping, sleeping, or generally catatonic, you wind up with lots of extra shit on your plate. He had basically put his career on the back burner since February, and it was time to initiate some sort of resurrection.
Man, if I thought our story was sad…holy fuck. Want to feel better about your life? List your house for $150 and have people submit essays about why they need it. I had to stop reading them after a while. Also, the media attention was overwhelming and made my anxiety flare up. People were driving by at all hours of the day and night to check out the house, which isn’t exactly comforting with a baby inside. A couple of people even knocked on the front door and asked to take a look around. The story ran in every local publication, moved on to national headlines in the New York Times, NPR, and Businessweek, and eventually made its way over to Britain and parts of Europe. Another runaway train of a situation.
Even though we received nearly three thousand essays, only half of the applicants paid, so there wasn’t enough to cover the cost of the house, and we could’ve extended the deadline, but I got paranoid that we were breaking some law by running what could be considered an illegal raffle and didn’t want my husband to go to jail on top of all the other shit that was going on. So, at the end of June, we called it quits, and Mike listed the house the traditional way. Fortunately, it only took a day for someone to make an offer.
During the inspection, which takes place the day after we sell your house, the potential buyer is walking around the attic, and his foot falls through the ceiling. Literally. And the rotting drywall, on the way down, scratches that print that used to hang in your dining room of all the pop icons—one of the things that most reminds me of you. I spent so much time in your house over the years staring at it, trying to figure out the identity of each character. And now it’s permanently banged up by a piece of old, rotten drywall that fell from the ceiling in this cursed, piece of shit house. Just heap it on top of the giant pile that my soul is buried under.
Sometimes I think about you being buried in the ground. I think about what color your skin is, the texture. I see a sort of shade of gray. I wonder how your arms are positioned and what your face is doing. You had such a great face.
13
Five Months
Every morning when I open my eyes, I think of Iris and then I think of you. You two are so fused together in my mind. The year she was born, I worried so much about both of you. This comes with the territory of motherhood. I am her mother now, but I mothered you first. After I stopped stealing your toys and hating you for stealing Mom, I cared for you. You were my little brother. Were or are? Past or present? It still says you’re my brother on Facebook. But you’re no longer here to be my brother. So, am I still a sister? Is sister a verb or a noun? Is it something you have to actively do to be one, or do you keep the title once the other half is gone?
When I was your sister, actively, I protected you. I paid for you. I felt responsible for you. I kept all your darkest secrets. I loved you ferociously. When we went to clean out your house, I went on a shredding spree, convinced random people would rummage through the trash. Looking back, I don’t even remember what I shredded. Entries in your journal from rehab. Some stuff in a shoebox in the closet of your guest room. Love letters, maybe? I didn’t even read them. I just felt such an instinct to protect you even after you were gone.
I wonder if I will ever open my eyes and not think of you within those first few moments. I don’t see how it’s possible. I wonder if you are the first thing on Mom’s mind when she opens her eyes. Surely. We mothers think of our children first—always.
When we look at photos together now, Iris says everyone’s name but yours, a constant reminder that she will never know you. She says Momo, Bapa, Mommy, Daddy, Iris…then she gets to your face and goes silent. In one black-and-white family photo from 2010 that I carry in my wallet, she thinks you look like Mike and calls you “Daddy” (gross). Whenever I show her baby pictures of you, she shouts “Iris!” She thinks it’s her. It could be. There’s a strong likeness.
God, I wish you could be here to watch her grow. She’s so cool. And smart. And funny. She often prances around the house in a pink leotard with butterfly wings sewed onto the back and forces Mike and I to partake in endless rounds of “Ring Around the Rosie,” drowning in laughter every time we all fall down. She knows all her animal sounds and shapes and colors. She laser-focuses on any movie from start to finish—crying at the sad parts, laughing at the funny parts. Her sense of empathy is astounding. She makes an angry face and a happy face and a surprised face and a worried face on command. She’s wildly sensitive—a tiny tornado of feelings. She’s a force. And loving. So loving.
I worry about how all of this will affect her—babies absorb it all—but every day provides further proof that neither her hearing loss nor the overwhelming grief that has swallowed her mother whole has had any impact on her development. She’s a happy and well-adjusted child who blows kisses with every hello and goodbye; a wave will not suffice. Every speech evaluation thus far has put her well ahead of the curve. She goes to a regular preschool with hearing kids and needs no special accommodations. Because we were so aggressive with early intervention, narrating every moment of her life that first year, attending speech therapy every two weeks, which turned into monthly, which turned into quarterly, which turned into bi-annually, she has morphed into a baby talk machine. Nothing is slowing her down.
This morning, she pulls out a stuffed frog that I took from your house—one of many stuffed animals lying around. You really were like Tom Hanks’s character in Big. (You loved that movie, justifiably so.) The tag still attached reads Fiesta. It’s the only plush toy in the bin with the tag still attached, but I want to preserve its authenticity. I have such a reflexive urge to text you and ask you where you got this shitty little frog with the Fiesta tag. Instead, I look into the frog’s beady little eyes and futilely ask him for an answer.
Then, Iris brings over this little yellow book called Hand Hand Fingers Thumb about millions of drumming monkeys. (You were a drummer.) At that moment, there’s a huge crash of thunder, and the power goes out for a split second. I walk into the bedroom to check in with Mike, and the digital clock reads 4:20. Your birthday.
1. The frog.
2. The drumming monkeys.
3. The thunder.
4. The blackout.
5. Your birthday.
All in a matter of moments.
Is it you? Or is this what the grieving do?
Do we need to find meaning in the mundane?
Do we need to make connections where coincidences used to occur?
Is this what we have to do to keep going?
• • •
Iris has her six-month follow-up hearing test in the morning. Needless to say, I feel like I might die of an anxiety attack. It’s in these moments that I would text you and freak out and you would reassure me that it would be fine, and you would say it in such a way that made me feel ridiculous for even stressing about it in the first place. Only you could do that.
So, I do what any grief-stricken, crazy person would do and talk to you out loud like you’re a spirit or a ghost or something. I ask you to watch over Iris tomorrow and protect her. I’ve literally never talked out loud to something or someone who isn’t there. (I mean, I did it at the cemetery, but you were kind of there, beneath me.) Mid-conversation, I ask: “Are you listening to me, Harris?” And I look out the window at the sky, and in my mind, I think, If you are listening to me, make a bird fly across the sky right now, and right then, three birds fly across the sky. My heart sinks in a good way. I smile. My eyes water.
I tell Mike about my “conversation” with you later that night before we go to bed.
“That’s a lot of pressure to put on a dead person,” he says.
Now, every morning, I open the blinds over the kitchen sink and say hi and wait for a bird to fly by. This is probably what crazy people do. And then there are these tiny, white feathers all over my front and back yard. My neighbors on either side have none. Maybe my yard has always been littered with tiny white feathers and I just never noticed, but now they’re all I see. Mom told me a white feather is a sign from your loved one up in heaven. I felt sorry for her at the time that she had to cling to such a delusional notion for comfort. But now I see white feathers everywhere. The other day, one floated right in front of my face in the car. Like, while I was driving. And it’s a sign that you’re still here. You’re in everything, but your everythingness no longer makes me hit the ground. Rather, it brings an unfamiliar sense of peace and comfort.
I mean, is this what God feels like? I certainly don’t want to compare my dead brother to God, but the feeling that some sort of invisible energy or spirit is out there and accessible is wholly unfamiliar. People always say things like: “Oh, I don’t believe in God, but I’m spiritual.” I’m not even “spiritual.” Neither were you. This is why you always got hung up on the Twelve Steps. The higher power was always too elusive.
I’ve always turned to my loved ones, my therapist, my pattern of feeling my feelings deeply, making ahas, and moving on in a positive direction having learned something deeper about myself and the world. I haven’t ever turned to something invisible. I’ve never felt like something up above had my back. But now I sort of feel like someone in the universe is looking out for me. For the first time in my life, I have faith in something larger than myself: I have faith in the spirit of Harris.
This sounds like something a defense attorney could use in a court of law as proof that a person has come undone. But I know that, for now, in order to get out of bed every morning, in order to put one foot in front of the other, I need to believe it’s true.
By the way, the hearing test went fine. There’s been no change, and her hearing loss is still stable. For now.
Thank you, Harris.
14
Before
July 2014
A few months after Harris got out of the fancy rehab in Malibu, my parents, the baby, Mike, and I met him in Park City, Utah, for our annual summer vacation. I was hoping for an escape from The Land of Hearing-Loss Hysteria, and much of the trip served its purpose. By day, we took the baby on her first train ride; by night, we played rounds and rounds of Mexican Train as a family at the dining room table in the hotel suite we all shared. One afternoon, Mike’s mom and her boyfriend traveled in from Scottsdale, and we met them for high tea at this fancy hotel in downtown Salt Lake City. Another day, we went to a big, outdoor farmers’ market where we got Iris these superfly, handmade, yellow moccasins that she wore on her feet until they all but unraveled. Uncle Harris made sure she tasted her first Dippin’ Dots.
I was eager to bond with my brother on this trip—my real brother, not my junkie brother. My real brother was the coolest, funniest, kindest guy in the whole wide world.
Unfortunately, it was clear very quickly that this was not the Harris who showed up. This one had lost the pep in his sober step. He was mostly in a bad mood, sleeping late, smoking excessively. The bags under his eyes and the oil in his hair were highlighted by the iPhone screen that he held in front of his face for most of the trip. One day, in the parking garage of our hotel, he went off on an angry rant about how his boss at Parks wouldn’t promote him after he’d been there for six seasons. This was the same boss who had been extremely supportive of Harris taking as much time as he needed to go to rehab in the first place. Mike and I were caught off-guard. It was crystal clear to us why his boss has made this decision, but Harris wasn’t exactly working from a place of self-awareness.
Another day, driving into town on the bus, he was scrolling through the AA Meetings Finder app and made a comment about how stupid it was that he couldn’t just drink one beer. “I never had a problem with alcohol in the first place—I don’t even like alcohol. Why can’t I just have a fucking beer like a normal person?” He opened the app several times but didn’t go to a single mee
ting the whole week. When I questioned him, he swore he was sober. I was certain he wasn’t. I didn’t know what to do, so I chose to feign ignorance.
After the vacation, we went back to our lives. Weeks passed. School resumed. It was hard to be present for several reasons. Every day, I found new cracks in the walls of our house. My brother was likely back on drugs. I missed my infant child every minute of every day now that I was back at work. I had to take an impractical break every few hours to pump milk from my engorged breasts in a glorified closet. I tried to do it all. It was hard, but I tried. I cried every day.
And then everything got much, much worse.
It was 4:15 p.m. on a weekday. I remember how the sun was shining through the blinds, painting stripes of light on the kitchen table. I remember picking up the phone from the kitchen table and reading this text from my brother:
Hey I’m gonna call mom and dad later but heads up I’m checking back into rehab tomorrow in Oregon. I started shooting heroin.
My sponsor is with me now babysitting. My boss knows.
I’m fine and alive.
My heart stopped.
He was shooting heroin?
My mom happened to be at my house that afternoon. When she saw my face fall, she read the text over my shoulder and immediately erupted into wild, guttural sobs. She hit the floor and screamed, “No, no, no, no, NO!” In hysterics, she called my dad and screamed the news into the phone: “He’s gonna die, Ellison! He’s going to kill himself!” My dad, likely in shock, paused for an inordinately long time. Being a person who functions in a black-and-white world, it’s like he short-circuited and wasn’t able to process, handle, or accept this news. Harris had already gone to rehab. He had already gotten sober. The problem was solved six months ago. Why were we back at the problem? Why had the problem gotten worse? From his vantage point, Harris sabotaged his sobriety. This was Harris’s fault. He told my mom he no longer wanted a relationship with Harris. He was done. Having a son who was a heroin addict just wasn’t something he was willing to accept.
Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful Page 8