by Polly Dugan
At the top of the marble staircase, before we descended the flight down to the social room, Violet Bradley, Garrett, the boys, and I stopped at the grand leaded windows, and Violet pointed east.
“When it’s clear, you can see all the mountains,” she said. I knew her attempt at conversation was benign and her carelessness was unintentional. “The Pittocks had exquisite views as far as the eye could see.”
Even with the sun, the visibility was still not clear enough to see the peak of Mount Hood. From how many wakes can you see the place where the person died? I knew the mountain was there, but I was glad it was shrouded that day.
“How nice for the Pittocks,” I said. And we continued down the stairs.
All I had to do was talk and hug and cry for, or let cry for me, everyone who came. For that whole time one of my parents or Leo’s sat or stood with me, and then Garrett, or Kevin or Alyssa Gallagher. As generous as the Bradleys and all the people who had come had been—generosity that I’d been forced to accept—I couldn’t wait to get out of the Pittock Mansion with its mocking view of the mountains and go home. When it was time to leave and I couldn’t find the boys, I asked Garrett to look for them, and after he brought them inside we all got back into the limo for the ride home.
Although we were the first to leave, I asked the driver to wait when we got to the bottom, before turning onto Burnside. I wanted to see everyone drive away until the very last car left, and the truck from Twenty-Five, followed by the engine, finally came down the hill. Then we drove away from the estate too, close to three o’clock, and I thought, Did you see how many people came to your party?
Erin got to the house ahead of me and waited for everyone, even though it was only us, and it was like a replay of the morning, only with different food and now with booze. She had brewed coffee again and opened bottles of wine and put mixers next to liquor on the sideboard in the dining room and filled the ice bucket. When I walked in she offered me two glasses—a glass of red and a tumbler of whiskey—and I took the wine and she kissed me on the cheek and went back to heating casseroles and slicing meat and cheese and opening boxes of crackers.
Erin and Garrett took care of everything, and close to seven—it was coming up on a twelve-hour day—after everyone left, my house and kitchen showed no evidence of what had happened. My parents, Leo’s parents, Maureen, Gabe, and Garrett’s father, Julian, went back to the hotel.
Garrett’s father left the next day, and Leo’s and my family the day after that. It wasn’t until they did that I could finally let go.
Dealing with Leo’s parents, I suspended my own loss. I loved Glenn and Libby, and Maureen and I were as close as sisters-in-law who live far apart and differently can be. While they were with me, their grief supplanted my own. Glenn and Libby had lost their older child and only son, and Maureen had never known the world without Leo.
My parents and Gabe had been their steadiest, best versions of themselves. They did everything that needed doing or tending, and took care of the boys, and the McGearys, until they’d done all they could. They had loved Leo, but they respected that the loss was the McGearys’, and mine. My father made many runs to the market, and Gabe handled the phone calls. My mother kept us fed, and although we talked, she mostly touched me—stroked my hair, rested her hand on the middle of my back, squeezed my forearm—any time she was close to me.
Garrett
I drove my father to the airport the day after the funeral. I parked and walked with him as far as I could. He knew I’d left my job, and Boston, for an indeterminate period of time. I see was all he’d said. Well, you know what you’re doing.
“How long are you planning to stay?” he asked. He knew how lean I lived, and he knew I had money; it was from him, from both my parents. After my mother died, he sold the house I grew up in and moved into a condo, and later the same year, after much deliberation, he sold our house in Surf City. He had always been very smart with his money, both my parents had, and he had given Kate and me each a generous share of his assets after planning what he needed for himself in the short and long terms in his new life as a widower. I want you to use it and be happy while I’m still alive, he’d said. No point in waiting till I’m dead to enjoy it. He had also, within six months of my mother’s death, begun a companionship with a widow named Judy, whom both my parents had known, with whom my father had reconnected, and who, I knew, despite his unnecessary discretion, made him very happy. They each lived alone but traveled together frequently, and there were several nice framed photos of them at his place, mixed among the ones of my parents, my mother, Kate and her family, and me. I had met Judy and had dinners with them more than once when I’d visited Radnor. I didn’t know why he was so bashful about the two of them; Kate and I were both happy they’d found each other.
We stood near the security lines forming for his concourse. It wasn’t the place I would have chosen for our conversation.
“I don’t know, Dad,” I said. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. I guess until the house is finished. Whenever that is.”
“I know how fond you are of Audrey,” he said. He looked at his shoes and then at the line of people he’d have to join. He didn’t have all the time in the world. “People need each other—we’re not built to be alone. I don’t know how you’ve done it.”
“Done what, Dad?” I said. “I haven’t been alone.” I laughed, but I couldn’t bullshit my own father.
“You know, Judy is a very good friend to me,” he said. He always called her that, and Kate and I let him. “Our spending time together, our friendship, it in no way dishonors your mother.” My sister and I called them the Js, even to my father—What are the Js up to? I’d ask him when I called, and he would chuckle quietly, Oh, we’re just fine, like the cat wasn’t entirely out of the bag. He never tired of defending his relationship with Judy, or thinking that he needed to.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Dad, I know,” I said. “Please tell her hello from me. You’ve got a plane to catch. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you came.”
It was like we were doing two different things—I kept lobbing a ball, unreturned, and he was gathering leaves, which the wind kept scattering—even though we were standing in the airport looking at each other.
With my hand still on his shoulder, he let go of the handle of his suitcase and moved his coat from where he’d draped it over his arm and rested it on top of the suitcase. He reached out with both his hands and cradled my jaw, staring at me. It was a stance we hadn’t shared in decades.
“Garrett, I know your business is your own. But when people are lost, and they need each other, it’s not something to ignore. It’s a gift. I know how fond of Audrey you are,” he said again. “Down the road she may need you in ways you aren’t aware of right now.”
“Jesus Christ, Dad.” I took my hand off his shoulder, but he left his hands where they were on my face. “I’m happy for you and Judy—after three years already, you have my blessing. What the hell are you even talking about? We just put Leo in the ground.”
“I know, son,” he said. “I know we did.”
He pulled me against him and grasped me hard and held me before he stepped back and kissed me. He picked up the coat, put it back over his arm, and grasped the handle of his bag. “I love you, Garrett,” he said. “I’ll talk to you soon.” He walked away, straight and true, with his long easy strides, neither slow nor fast, to the end of the line. He stood behind the last person, and when he put his bag down again and turned and lifted his hand, I waved back.
Andrew
It was because of me that my mom asked us all to go to the Dougy Center, to talk with other kids who had a mom or dad who died too. At least once, please, she’d said. This has happened to other families and sharing can help. I have to know you’re all right. Even if they went just once, I was ready for Chris and Brian to complain about it, and I was ready to fight back and remind everyone that Chris had turned into a creep who always had the door o
f any room he was in closed, and that I couldn’t believe no one else noticed, and that Brian was freaking out in his sleep, but my brothers didn’t say anything. And neither of them was punching or biting people. But I had had it with things.
It really bugged me that Christopher took up all the hot water in the shower every morning, like the rest of us didn’t have to use it and he could shower forever. And that he was always shutting the bathroom door. None of us ever shut the bathroom door, even my parents, and if I had to go, I had to go. I didn’t care if a door was open or shut.
“I have to pee!” I announced when I walked in the bathroom.
“Get out, Andrew!” Christopher shouted.
“Hurry up!” I said. “Other people are waiting!”
“Go downstairs!” said Christopher.
“Why should I!” I said.
But what bugged me more was what an asshole Gannon Keegan had turned into after my dad died and how because of him I started getting in trouble at school. The basketball season had ended the first week in February and my dad had been our coach. He had coached since I started playing in third grade, and he was great at it, not like the other lame coaches who didn’t teach their guys any real skills, so our team had ended the season with a winning record. My dad had been a basketball player, a really good one, so he knew what he was doing. He had us run suicides, and he did them with us, slow at first so we’d pace our breathing, and then he’d step it up, but they weren’t bad—they didn’t make us drop dead or anything. We practiced layups with guys crowding the net, and passing and guarding separately and then together, and shot free throws with our eyes closed sometimes, so we were pretty scrappy. That’s what my dad had called us, scrappy.
Gannon and I had gone to school together since kindergarten, and we’d been on the same team for three years. We weren’t best friends or anything, and he was a good basketball player, but he wasn’t the only good one on our team—he wasn’t better than me. Gannon had always been a ball hog, like he was the only one who could take it down the court and score, which he’d try to do if he had the ball, rather than pass, and no one else did that. My dad never called him out, but when he emphasized teamwork and sportsmanship, I knew Gannon was the one he was talking to. I griped about Gannon to my dad, but he’d never bite. Like I said, he was a good coach, and he’d always say Gannon was competing with himself on the court as well as against the other team, and it was everyone’s job to rely on the skills of our other teammates. That we succeeded or fell together, not alone.
But Gannon had always bugged me a little. After my dad had come to our class in second grade to talk about being a firefighter, like a bunch of other parents did during Career Week, Gannon got all obsessed with firefighters. That year he had his birthday party, which I went to even though I didn’t really want to, at the Belmont Firehouse, and you would have thought he owned the place or that he lived there. The rest of the kids just wanted to play games after we’d had the tour, and Gannon kept wanting to drag people back into the museum to show them one thing or another again. Then after that, he never stopped asking me if I went to my dad’s firehouse, and could he go with me sometime. I told him I never went, I wasn’t allowed to, which was a lie, but I was embarrassed he wanted to go so bad, and because he wasn’t my best friend or anything, I never would have taken him. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. He had his own dad. I didn’t like him being so crazy about mine.
Gannon had always been bigger than me, which never meant anything before, but after he became an asshole, it did. When we played basketball at school during recess—right after the season ended and my dad died—even though we’d play the same side, he’d try to get the ball from me to make his own play, doing that thing again like he was the only guy on the team, and when I didn’t let him, when I hung on to the ball, he acted like I hurt him, clutching his stomach, like I’d fouled my own player, which made the teachers monitoring the playground come over and break up the game and send me inside to the principal’s office.
He didn’t do it every time we played—he spaced them out—but after the second time I got busted because of him, not long after I was back in school again, I told him to cut it out.
“What are you talking about?” he said, like he had no idea.
We were sitting at the same table during lunch. “That”—I wanted to say crap—“stuff you say I do when we’re playing basketball. Don’t be so greedy for the ball; if you’re smart and you move, maybe I’ll pass it. That’s garbage that you say I hurt you just because I won’t let you steal the ball from me when we’re on the same side.”
“You’re not me,” Gannon said. “You can’t say whether I’m hurt or not. If you hurt me, you hurt me.”
“Oh, brother,” I said. “Whatever. I’m not hurting you, Gannon, and you know it. And you don’t do that to anybody else. So cut it out.”
So the third time he did it, when Gannon acted like a little girl after the teachers broke up the game, and pretended to cry even though as usual I hadn’t done anything to him and he wasn’t hurt at all, as I walked off the court past him, I whispered, “Asshole. You’re just an asshole.”
That made him yell for the teacher, “Swearing! Now Andrew’s cursing at me!”
Maybe Gannon had only liked me, or pretended to, because of my dad, and now that he was dead, Gannon didn’t have a reason to anymore. He didn’t have to like me—I didn’t care—but he didn’t have to be an asshole. I hated sitting on the bench outside the office and bringing home conduct referrals. The third one got me detention after school. But I hoped it made people a little afraid of me. I could be dangerous. If people pushed me, they’d find out what I would do.
My mom was really mad.
“Andrew, you’ve never been in trouble at school,” she said. We were standing in the kitchen after the third time, and I told her I had detention the next week. I knew she was saying the things she could think of that would be helpful. “We’re all going through this terrible time, I know. I’m angry a lot of days too. But you can’t fight like that, you just can’t—not during recess, at school, not anywhere. Can’t you come home and punch a pillow when you’re mad? Would that help?”
“Punching a pillow, really? Mom, are you serious?” I shouted. I started to cry. “Gannon Keegan is who I need to punch. I hate him. I want to kill him. I’m not doing anything and he’s getting me in trouble.”
She stared at me. She looked miserable. “I know,” she said. “I heard it. The pillow, that was dumb. Maybe it’s something you can talk about at Dougy?” She sat down in the middle of the kitchen with her legs crossed. “Come here,” she said, but I kept standing. “I know, Andrew, just come here.” I walked over and let her pull me into her lap and curl me up against her the best she could, even though I’m pretty tall, but not as tall as Gannon. “Oh, my baby,” she said. “Sweet boy, just sit with your mom for a minute. What are we going to do?” We sat like that for a long time on the kitchen floor even after I stopped crying, and I didn’t get up until she did.
Christopher
We didn’t go back to school until after the funeral, so that week Joe Assante texted and asked if he could come over. When he showed up I told my mom we were going for a walk, and we walked without talking until I started to cry, and without saying anything Joe put his hand on my shoulder and the weight of his hand helped me keep walking, and then I did both things. I kept walking and crying. Joe didn’t say anything and I didn’t know how long we walked that way, but it was long enough that I could go back to my house and be in it with everyone who was a mess.
Joe came over again twice and brought homework for me, and when he asked me if I wanted to know about what was going on at school, I said sure and he filled me in with some funny things that might not have even been true, or could have, it didn’t matter, but I could tell he was trying to get my mind on something else, even for a few minutes, and that meant a lot.
But I still woke up crying the morning of my dad’s
funeral like I did most other mornings that week—crying overcame me as soon as I wasn’t sleeping anymore. When I was awake, I couldn’t ignore the reality that my dad was dead, and even though I felt like I had to do whatever I could to help my mom and my brothers, as soon as I was awake, the fact that my dad was gone made me want to sleep for years.
And now, because he was dead, my mom had asked us to go to the Dougy Center, and we’d agreed to try it but I didn’t think I’d go more than once, or Brian either. I wasn’t much of a joiner, and Brian was so private, I knew it wasn’t his thing. They arranged the groups by age, and Brian and I were together but Andrew was in a different one. We went around the room and said our names and who had died and how. Some of the kids had been coming for a long time and talked about how much better they were than when they started. I wondered how long Brian would have to come before he’d stop screaming in his sleep.
The only thing I knew or thought about the Dougy Center before we went was that three years earlier, on Father’s Day, they’d had a bad fire that my dad had fought. Station Twenty-Five was the first one at the scene because my dad’s firehouse was literally one minute away. Since he had to work, we celebrated on Saturday instead, and served him breakfast in bed. I scrambled the eggs with my mom hovering while I cooked. We planted Andrew up in bed with him so my dad would stay put, and Andrew took credit for the success of the whole thing because my dad kept trying to pretend to get out of bed and come downstairs to see what we were doing, and Andrew had held him off—which my dad of course had let him do.