by Sasha Martin
I didn’t yet understand why she needed scissors, but my gut told me I’d better do exactly as she said. The kitchen was so far away compared to the one in Mom’s little apartment, where it had been just a half step from Michael’s bed to the stove. I banged open drawer after drawer, finding towels, knives, forks, and tinfoil—but no scissors. By this time, Heather had heard the commotion from her basement apartment and came running.
“Where are the scissors?” I asked.
Without a word, she pulled open the junk drawer that held the paper clips and pointed. I followed as she sprinted up the stairs.
When I gave Patricia the scissors, she was propping up Michael’s body. I thought I saw something threading between his neck and the bunk bed. Patricia took the scissors without turning around. “Call 911,” she said, her voice high and thin.
There was a phone on a little wooden table in the hall right outside Michael’s room. I dialed the number, but when the operator asked, “What’s your emergency?” I didn’t know what to say. When the question was repeated, I hung up.
As though in a trance, I hovered near Michael’s doorway just as Patricia pressed the scissors together and his body fell to the floor. His face and neck were ash-gray. A deep red line divided the grayness from the rest of his body. His skin was dull and waxy, like one of my dolls. Heather tried mouth-to-mouth. Patricia knelt on the floor and pounded Michael’s chest. It sounded hollow. I stood there staring at the cut edges of the thick, hay-colored rope on the floor. It looked like a dead snake.
That’s when I realized he’d hanged himself. I hadn’t been able to tell at first because he was too tall for the bunk bed. His back had been arched in a failed swan dive, face pressed against the bed, feet stretched behind him toward the wall, still touching the floor. His head had hidden the rope.
Patricia yelled again, “Where’s 911?”
Silently I pressed myself closer to the wall. Someone must have called them back, because a few minutes later, lights and sirens clamored up the steep drive. EMTs swarmed around Michael with plastic tubes and beeping devices. They were able to get him breathing again, but he’d clearly spent a significant time without oxygen.
The police wanted to know why there was a woman’s shoe next to Michael. As it happened, Patricia’s had come off as she cut him down. Eventually the misunderstanding was cleared up; Patricia was assured that the questions were just standard procedure. But for hours after the inquisition, her face was redder than her hair.
We stood in the dingy hospital waiting room while the doctor gave us the news: Michael was trapped in a coma. He was brain-dead.
Brain-dead. Brain-dead. Brain-dead: The words clattered around in my head.
“What does that mean?” I finally managed. There was a pause while the doctor looked from me to Patricia. In the silence, my heartbeat hammered in my ears. Patricia stared blankly at the doctor.
It turned out that Michael had been deprived of oxygen too long, which had starved his brain. The doctor said Michael wouldn’t be able to think or even walk again. When he compared him to a vegetable, I pictured a giant carrot in a hospital bed. It would have been funny if I weren’t so hopping mad.
When the doctor walked away, I asked Heather for her professional opinion as a first-year medical student.
“Do you think he’ll wake up?”
Heather opened her mouth to speak, but crinkled up like a paper bag, dropping her head onto my shoulder. Even as she squeezed me tight, her shoulders started to shake. I wondered if maybe I should cry, too; it seemed strange that I hadn’t since finding him. But I felt empty, all dried up. The only thing I could feel was a twisty sort of feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if I’d swallowed an octopus.
I ran to the bathroom and threw up.
Though Pierre cut his work trip short, it still took him another day to get a flight home from Paris. The first person Patricia contacted was Mom. Mom later told me that Patricia was crying so hard Mom could hardly understand her.
Over and over again Patricia apologized: “I’m so, so sorry. Michael had a terrible accident.”
The more she apologized, the more alarmed Mom grew. Before Patricia could tell her what happened, Mom hung up. She was about to leave for her new job at the Boston Trial Court, where she did data entry. She could tell that the news, whatever it was, was going to be bad—really bad. She says now that she couldn’t face hearing it because once she did, she could never unhear it.
Patricia didn’t call her back.
When Pierre got home from his trip, he called Mom a second time and told her she had to come to Atlanta to see Michael. He was matter-of-fact. Still, he wanted to wait until she arrived to reveal the details of what had happened—until they could speak face-to-face. But when Mom insisted he tell her right away, he gave in. She made flight arrangements immediately.
Pierre was good at handling tough situations. But as the day unfolded, his presence failed to calm Patricia, who continued to walk through the house in a fog. Though she fulfilled her parental obligations, something wild settled into her green eyes.
Although the neighbors brought casseroles over, Patricia continued to cook, almost out of nervous habit. She turned the radio on louder, laughed harder, and made more food than ever before. Sometimes she piled dozens of boiled potatoes on the table. Other times she made a five-eggplant ratatouille so big that we had to hold our plates on our laps to make room for the casserole. No one had much of an appetite, so most of her creations were left untouched. Still, she cooked.
I split those first shattered days between home, school, and the hospital. Every time I passed Michael’s room, I held my breath, straining as if I might hear his footsteps again. School days started late: Patricia brought me in later after homeroom. She never explained why, but my friend Alyona confided that the principal was giving updates about Michael over the intercom during morning announcements.
Anger bubbled under my skin. If they were going to be talking about my brother, I wanted to be there. I wanted to know what they were saying. But I never protested the late arrivals; it was getting harder and harder to talk to anyone. Patricia and Pierre argued all the time. But if anyone was still crying, they were now doing so behind closed doors.
After school, Patricia would pick me up and drive me to the hospital. Michael’s home was now behind those stale, sanitized walls. Tubes and wires threaded into his limbs like slack puppet strings. Every day, he looked the same: Eyes shut. Thin gown. Thinner sheets. Thinning body.
After a quick therapy session (which usually involved playing a few hands of “Go Fish” while the therapist made one-sided small talk), I’d ride the steel box up to Michael’s room, where I’d pick through my cafeteria dinner in silent vigil, waiting for the slightest flicker of movement in his face or a twitch of his hand. I’d offer him my Jell-O, and when he didn’t take it, I’d tell him about my day.
After a while, I’d run out of things to say. Then I’d lay my head on his shoulder, take his oddly cool hand in mine, and play him a cassette tape of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” His girlfriend, also 14, had recorded herself playing it for him. The song gave me goose bumps (and still does) because it so perfectly captures the two sides of my brother.
He’s quick with a joke or to light up your smoke
But there’s someplace that he’d rather be
He says, “Bill, I believe this is killing me.”
As the smile ran away from his face
“Well I’m sure that I could be a movie star
If I could get out of this place.”
Michael never so much as fluttered an eyelid. Sometimes I wanted to pinch him or dig my nail under his skin, just to see if that would get a reaction, but I never did. I was irrationally afraid he’d pop up and get me back.
By the end of the first week, visitors trickled in from Boston: my cousins, aunt, and great aunt. Tim was stuck at work, and Grace had just had a baby. But Connor came two different times. Even with all the visitors, the
only time Michael stirred was when Mom flew in to visit.
Two years is such a long time to a young heart. I could hardly believe I was in the same space as her again. When she’d left us with the Dumonts, Mom had said it was “forever.” Oh, but I was happy when she walked into that bleached hospital room. She was skinnier than ever, her worn clothes gaping at the waist and neck. Her eyes looked a bit beaten down, but her hair was just as big as before.
After exchanging a knowing look with me, Mom walked up to Michael’s side and said, “Hello, cutie pie,” as she had when he was little.
I could hardly believe my eyes. For the first time since he’d been admitted, Michael moved. His entire body started trembling, and his breathing became shallow and quickened, as if he were having an asthma attack. It was her voice that did it. His eyes even opened for a bit. But he was somewhere else, looking past the ceiling, to something much farther away. He never woke up, not even when she cradled his hand in hers.
Still, Mom stayed by his side. Every day she read him the same creased letter, around 15 pages long. In it she asked him what caused his “accident,” each possible explanation taking up one or two lines. She asked him if he was trying to get attention or if someone bullied him at school. Perhaps he was sad? Or was he seeking out some misguided thrill, as some of his friends had done?
I sat in the corner while she read, guilty at feeling content that we were a threesome again. Michael lay there with his eyes open. One day he began chewing his tongue until it bled and the nurse had to put a block in his mouth to keep him from hurting himself.
After that nothing much changed.
Between letter readings, Mom asked how I was doing. I told her about school, about missing her, about nothing and everything. I asked if she wanted to go to dinner, but she thought it best to keep our meetings at the hospital. She didn’t want to upset the Dumonts; after all, they were my family now. I pleaded to come home with her, but each time she quietly reminded me that the Dumonts could give me so much more than she ever could.
There were lots of meetings about what to do with Michael. His hospital bill was $4,000 a day. And though the doctors said he might come out of the coma eventually, he’d never be self-aware. He’d never eat again except through an IV connected to his arm. They said any eye movement was pure reflex. I wondered about Michael’s breathing when Mom had walked into the room: Surely that meant he was still in there somewhere. But no one else agreed.
Patricia and Pierre offered to put Michael in a home for invalids. Pierre even offered to set up a hospital bed in one of their many living rooms. But Mom shut them down, saying what only the doctors could admit: My brother was already gone.
She said it was inhumane to drag out the inevitable. The doctors took Michael off life support and moved him out of intensive care into a narrow room. The waiting game began.
By now Mom had used up all her vacation time. She flew back to Boston, but promised to come back the next weekend to visit. Before she left, she gave me a bear hug and whispered, “Just keep saying, ‘All is well. All is well.’ ”
Michael’s heart gave out a few days later, before Mom could make that next trip out. He’d been in a coma for a month. Out of confusion or perhaps fear, no one told Mom for three days that Michael had died. Patricia must have been gun-shy from their conversation earlier in the month; but secretly I wondered if anger was the real culprit. Most everyone blamed Mom for giving us up. But they didn’t know what we’d lived through all those ugly, tattered years.
Mom may not have always made the right choices, but she did her very best. She fought like hell for us. I had witnessed her fierce love. Felt it. Lived it. Sending us with the Dumonts was just one small part of her war—our war. It was a white flag of surrender, reluctantly raised for hope’s sake, for a shot at the peace we all so desperately craved.
Now 27, my oldest half brother, Connor, finally stepped up and gave Mom the news. He’d been the last person to see Michael before he died. Finding out after everyone else, Mom responded with all the fury of a cornered mama bear who’s lost a cub. She was snarling and crazed and confused, and under it all, just so … sad.
Michael still had to be buried. Patricia and Pierre wanted Mom to make that decision, but she couldn’t think straight, couldn’t decide what to do with him. Finally, she resigned herself to letting the Dumonts bury him in Atlanta. But as my great aunt told Mom, that would never do. My brother needed to come home—all the way home. After she offered to cover the expense to fly him back to Boston, Mom signed the papers. Her lost little boy finally made the journey back to where he’d wanted to be all along.
I expected to be on that plane with Michael—or at least, not far behind. I couldn’t wait to see my family at the funeral, to sink into their arms while I cried. But Pierre said I’d missed enough school while Michael was in the hospital. In the end, none of us went: not Pierre, not Patricia, not Lauren, Heather, or Toni. They held a small memorial service in Atlanta instead.
Mom wrote me a four-page letter describing the funeral. It was at the Holy Name Church, a few neighborhoods over from our old apartment in Jamaica Plain, where she still lived. Mom hired a harpist who plucked notes as delicate as dewdrops. It was spring, and the lilacs would have been blooming, fragrant and unapologetic. Connor, Tim, Grace, aunts, uncles, cousins—they were all there. Grace’s young daughter, Daisy, toddled and made noises all through the mass (“Michael would have liked that”). His old principal was even there (“and says hello!”).
Mom added that Michael’s baseball hat and karate belt were tucked in his casket with him. She laid a long-stemmed red rose, a small white rose, and a sprig of baby’s breath across his chest.
Mom ended the letter, “Patricia and Pierre gave Michael the best two years of his life. He got to do and try everything he ever wanted to do and try. They were very good to Michael. We all tried to help that boy—he had so much potential to be great. Don’t look back too much—just enough to figure it out. Look ahead. You have a future. Remember, you can write to me. There is nothing I want more than for you to have a real family and home and good life and be happy because—you may not believe this—I LOVE YOU. And that’s the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—so help me God!”
Then she cut her letter short: “But I don’t want to dwell on that now. Someday, maybe in 100 years, we can talk about it again.”
No one ever explained why we didn’t go to the funeral, but I later learned that Pierre had opted not to attend his own brother’s funeral years earlier. I suppose some people don’t need or want that sort of closure.
But missing Michael’s funeral made me feel that part of me was being amputated without my consent. He was gone, and there was nothing for me to do but stand in his sun-drenched room, watch the dust fairies swirl around me, and wonder at the impossible emptiness. The smell of life—his life—stuck to the room like a thumbtack; the little boy in wet slacks, mud-caked shoes tracked in carelessly, grass stains on every elbow and knee.
That’s when the tears finally came. I cried out of anger and out of deep, churning loneliness. I cried when his clothes were stripped off their hangers and heaped into bloated, black trash bags for a local boys’ home. I cried when his sneakers were thrown in the trash because they were too grimy to donate. I cried because I needed my mom. I cried because I didn’t know how to stop crying. And the more I cried, the more hollow I felt.
PART TWO
Another Menu
“Life is bitter when there is no sugar at the bottom.”
—Boris Vian
CHAPTER 8
Innocent Abroad
ABOUT A WEEK AFTER MICHAEL’S DEATH, Toni, Patricia, Pierre, and I sat around the breakfast table for the first time in weeks. It was 1992. President Bush had vomited on the prime minister of Japan, Mike Tyson pleaded guilty to rape, and at age 16, Tiger Woods had just become the youngest PGA golfer in 35 years. The spring air felt thick with Michael’s absence, yet the sun slid up to the windowpanes a
nd spilled down onto the table, sparkling with the promise of a normal day.
Oh, I still sneaked into the girl’s bathroom at school to unload my tears, but this was to be a day without hospital visits or the staggering weight of impossible hope. My brother was gone; nothing could change that.
No longer a rock against the current, I tumbled back into the rhythm of normal life. I returned to school in time for homeroom and fell back into my studies. But now, the “pity stares” cast in my direction by the popular kids ended. For weeks their eyes had followed me through the halls, my very presence silencing their chatter. If they would just start teasing me again, I knew I’d be OK, that I could get through this. And then maybe I could start breathing again.
But first I had to get through breakfast. Fresh-squeezed orange juice, rolls, peach jam, and thick blocks of Irish butter dotted our large white plates. I slumped into the routine of the meal with relief, letting it prop me up and carry me through another day without Michael. But as I placed a soft, shiny roll onto my plate, everything changed.
“Pierre has a new job opportunity in Paris,” Patricia said. “We’ll be moving in August.” The words were exhaled, more confession than revelation. She looked at Toni and me weakly, the corners of her mouth briefly drawn up into a half smile, as though she wanted to comfort us, but didn’t have the emotional strength to pull it off. She shook her head, too—almost as if she were saying sorry.
Her words rattled me. We’d barely been in Atlanta two years. I felt a crumpling, a balling up; I held my breath, willing my eyes to stay dry. Like Patricia and Pierre, I was learning to wait until I was alone in my room to unfasten the harnesses of polite composure.
Pierre looked from Patricia to me, then added, “I—I got the offer a month ago, right when …” he trailed off, looking at his untouched roll. “I was going to tell you when I came home, but the timing wasn’t ri—”