The Fragile World. Paula DeBoard Treick
body, leaving it behind. Was this what madness felt like? I wanted to be there, right at that moment, with Daniel’s body. I wanted it to be last week, or last summer when we were all together, or two years from now when this hurt wasn’t new. I wanted it to be the moment before the truck took the corner too fast, hitting the speed limit sign. I wanted to grab Daniel’s arm and yank him back to safety.
Kathleen knocked once and opened the door, and we stared at each other.
“We have to figure out what to do...” I began, but she stopped me by stepping forward, falling into my arms before I was aware that I had reached out to hold her. I tried again. “About the arrangements...”
“Shh, shh. Just hold me. We can talk about that in a moment.”
I kissed the top of her head, my lips cool and dry, as if they’d been sculpted out of marble. From nowhere came the line from a poem in a humanities class I’d taken with Kathleen, so many years ago. Lips that would kiss form prayers to broken stone. Why had it stayed with me, dormant all these years, only to come back now?
After a few minutes, I let my arms go slack, slithered out of her embrace. “When you’re ready to think about it, I’ve got some information about plane tickets.”
She stared at me. “Plane tickets?”
“It makes more sense to take a mid-morning flight, since we’ll have to connect somewhere along the way, probably in Chicago.”
“Tickets?” she repeated.
“To get Daniel,” I said. “To bring home his...” I hated Kathleen for a sharp moment, for not filling in the blank, for making me say it. “His remains.”
“You were thinking we would all go?”
“Of course.”
Kathleen shook her head. “I don’t think... I mean, Olivia can’t possibly go.” She said this with such certainty, as if it were the sort of common sense thing every parent should know.
“I suppose she could stay with one of her friends. With Kendra, maybe,” I suggested.
Kathleen’s stare had turned incredulous. “Leave her alone, you mean? When her brother has just died?”
I rubbed my face, letting this sink in. Maybe because of grief and general sleeplessness, my skin had started to feel like a rubber mask, stiff hairs sprouting haphazardly in anticipation of a morning shave. Someone had to go to Oberlin, to attend to the dozens of things that seemed impossible, at that moment, to attend to. It was the worst possible trip in the world, and one I couldn’t imagine taking alone. But that, I realized, was exactly what was going to happen. “You won’t come with me, then?”
“Curtis, I can’t.”
It was just a small conversation, just a few words, but a fault line had opened up between us. I was on the side with Daniel, charged with protecting him, with bringing him home. I went back to my laptop to book a single flight, and Kathleen left the room, shutting the door behind her.
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?