Page 6 of Mistletoe & Mayhem
I take the window seat and press my cheek to the brittle plastic. We ascend through the clouds, and the world shrinks to mist and the howl of jet engines. I loved my brother, but I can’t find the slot in me where the sorrow goes. I try to conjure a memory of his laugh, the way he’d drag out a joke like it was a hostage negotiation. Instead, I remember the phone call five years ago when Dominic Stasio’s men told me to get out or watch Adam lose his skin in ribbons. I remember Adam’s voice, wrecked with terror: “Please, bro.” I left so quickly, I don’t even remember packing.
I order another whiskey. For most of the flight, I sleep in chemical intervals, cold and sweating, and wake each time with the conviction that I’ve missed something important.
The plane lands in New York at 1:24, local time. I shuffle out into the blast of JFK’s arrivals hall, which smells of wet newsprint and frayed humanity. There’s a sign with my name on it, held by the family’s lawyer, who is seven years younger than me and dresses like an obituary. She hugs me stiffly.
“I’m so sorry, Pierce,” she says, and hands me an envelope thick with instructions. “I’ll take you uptown.”
Her name is Vicky. In the car, she tells me about arrangements, the exact time of the closed-casket wake, and the names of every family member who’s expected to show. I listen for several blocks, and then tune her out. Outside the window, the city is nothing but gray, noise, and vertigo. Every other block is barbed with some artifact of our childhood: the deli where Adam first got arrested for shoplifting, the corner where our mother gathered with the other socialites to judge whomever they’d banished from their circle.
“The body’s at St. Luke’s,” Vicky says.
“It’s fine,” I say. “That’s fine.”
Her eyes flick to me and away. “You don’t have to go alone if you don’t want to.”
I open my mouth to answer, but no sound emerges.
When we park in Lenox Hill, the doorman recognizes me instantly but looks embarrassed to admit it. The building’s lobby smells like expensive soap and the boiling discomfort of people who have never encountered ugliness until the elevator ride up. Vicky steers me through, her hand at my back, gentle as a warning shot.
Our grandparents’ apartment hasn’t changed since Adam moved in last year. The wallpaper is a nauseous green, the couch too large for human scale, the air still thick with the ghosts of discreet, WASPy violence. I unlace my shoes and drop them by the door. The first thing I notice is Adam’s phone on the coffee table, screen blown open to a text thread with a girl named Simone. Her last message: u coming tonight?
I unlock the phone with his birthday and scroll, but there’s nothing I didn’t already know. Adam’s final text is to me. I never answered it. Are you alive over there?
Vicky says, “Funeral’s Friday. Wake’s tomorrow night.” I nod.
“If you want to see him, I can call ahead.” She stands, smooths her skirt, and does not look at me.
“Did you know him well?” I ask.
Her face detonates with nervousness. “I drafted Adam’s will. We spoke. I liked him.”
“I’m glad someone did.” I pour a glass of water, and nearly spill it. My hand is still trembling, worse than this morning.
Vicky sees and steps forward. “Can I?—?”
I’m not sure what she means, but the answer is no. “Thank you, but no.” I gesture at the door. “Get some rest. I’ll handle it from here.” She hesitates, then leaves.
For an hour, I walk in tight circles, touching Adam’s books, his bottles of pills, his pile of dry-cleaning that he never wore because he never had a job. I find a shoebox in his closet filled with birthday cards, old watches, and a lambswool scarf our mother knitted before she went off the Tappan Zee. The scarf is still bright, clownish in the sepulcher of his closet. There is a photo of the two of us on the Amalfi Coast, the last time we saw our father upright and unsedated. I shove it in my pocket.
Instead of crying, I drink Adam’s vodka and watch the sky bruise through the window. Sometime after midnight, I open the laptop and type Laura’s name into the search bar. There are only two results—her private Instagram and a New York Post article with a photograph of her father leaving the King County Courthouse after beating another conviction. Laura is positioned by his side, looking more sad than proud.
The picture shows Laura in a gray suit, her hair pulled back, her mouth set in a line capable of injury. She looks older than I remember, but also less alive. I stare at the photo until the screen blurs, then shut the laptop violently. The urge to call her is so strong I have to sit on my hands to stop myself.
In the morning, I wake in Adam’s bed, fully clothed, my teeth furry and my mouth tasting of funeral flowers. The phone is ringing again. This time it’s a cousin, or a family friend, or a reporter desperate for comment. I unplug it and go to the window, which faces the river. I imagine Adam’s body floating in slow increments, whole and unmarred, just drifting, and wonder if that isn’t the most peaceful he’s ever been.
The wake is a parade of strangers in suits who all say the same thing: “He was a great kid.” Most want to talk about his potential, as if that’s the only thing that matters. I let them. I shake hands with our father’s former associates, who smell like mothballs and scotch.
After the last guest leaves, I sit in the empty living room and stare at Adam’s urn. The compulsion to confess—to someone, to anyone—is overwhelming. I toy with the lock screen on my own phone, then open a new message and type Laura’s number from memory.
I delete it. I try again and delete that too.
It is easier to believe that she never searched for me, that her life went on uninterrupted. That she’s not reading the news right now and remembering anything at all. I picture her in the old limestone townhouse with her feet up on the windowsill, hair loose, drinking something bitter with the lights off. I picture her, and then I don’t.
In the dark, in Adam’s old bed, I listen to the noise of the city moving and moaning around me. I trace the outline of the scar on my left wrist, the one Adam gave me when we were children, sword fighting with broken rulers. I allow myself one memory, then another, and then the night is full of them, a thousand little deaths in the spaces where people used to be.
People who are no longer here.
Chapter 6
