“I can’t, Dennis,” she said. “I don’t know what to do for you. You need to grow up and stop being so damn selfish.”
“I know,” I said. “I promise I’ll call today. I’m sorry.” But a few days passed and then a few more, and Val quickly became a ghost, moving through our shared hallways as if we were strangers. She’d nod, make small talk about work. She no longer asked about my family. Drinking out on the fire escape suddenly felt more pathetic. Outside of my tiny life I could feel the world reaching for the light—after an unexpected wave of thunderstorms, the air was marginally comfortable to breathe again, washed from the veil of wildfire smoke. People were starting to go out, filling restaurants and bars. I thought about finally calling Bryan, asking to talk to Mom. Maybe if I promised, heard her voice, I wouldn’t be able to back out afterward. Maybe if I told her I really wanted to help this time. I imagined the conversation for so long it almost felt like it had happened.
I was removing a body from one of the rooms when he called. Several times in a row. Bryan was the brother I didn’t deserve, the kind of person I’d never know how to be. How had he turned out so different? Was there something in his upbringing? Soccer? The fact that my parents had spent so much time trying to help me not fail out of school? All the attention they wasted on me, leaving him alone? I remember him crying on several occasions, saying how I always got everything, that it wasn’t fair. My thumb hovered over the decline button, but this time I picked up. The entire summer had passed since I’d held my mother’s hands.
“I don’t know why you deserve this call,” he said. Everything after that sounded like it came from the bottom of a well. When he stopped talking, I thought about hanging up, wallowing in the purgatorial red lights of some strip club or bar. I stared at the body on the gurney in front of me—a man named Bobby whose three grandchildren had visited him the other night. I’d heard them singing, laughing, celebrating a life, when I came to his room to deliver their chicken tenders. The children had been reading bedtime stories, nestled in beside their grandfather. I hovered the phone several inches from my ear, half listening as Bryan switched back and forth between explaining how our mom had died and yelling at me. Finally, there was a lull. He asked if I had anything to say for myself.
“I don’t need you talking to me like you’re in charge,” I said. “I’m a fuckup, okay? But please let me take care of things for Mom. Just give me this.” I saw my mother standing at the door of my teenage bedroom, me telling her I was sorry. I waited for my brother to hang up, still holding the phone away from my ear, sure he was about to really dig in. But he didn’t hang up and he didn’t yell because he had always been better than me.
By the following afternoon, my mother had been moved from the hospital morgue to our presidential suite. It would cost me my stipend for the next two years even after factoring in my employee discount. When I walked into the room, my brother was already there. He had been busy, decorating the walls with family photos, replacing the bedspread with a quilt our grandmother had made. On every conceivable surface, he had placed a vase of flowers. I sat next to him on a love seat near the edge of the bed. He was watching some travel show about Rome and crying into a glass of pinot noir.
“I never really did anything for her either, Den,” he said. “She never went anywhere. It’s not like I didn’t have the money. This is probably the nicest place she’s ever stayed.”
“Remember those KOA campsites on our family road trips?” I said. “Helping Dad pitch the tents, waiting for Mom to come back from the grocery store because we always forgot something.”
“Mom hated those trips,” Bryan said. “She slept in the car because Dad never thought it was necessary to buy sleeping pads.”
“It wasn’t all bad,” I said, thinking about my brother and me creeping through the forest with flashlights, waiting for our father to jump out at us in his ghillie suit.
Bryan shook his head and poured me a glass of wine.
My mother looked like she was taking a nap. The mortician had done a nice job. I could picture her getting up, asking us what was on the agenda for the day. Shall we go to Alcatraz? I’ve never been. Can we get some hot chocolate and ride the Powell Street cable car? Or more likely: You’re still on my shit list, Dennis, but I want to have fun for once in my damn life. Whatever you want, I’d say. I’m so sorry, I’d say. In this fantasy, I hold my mother’s hands as we stroll Ocean Beach collecting shells, roasting marshmallows over a bonfire. I ask her about her trip around the world that was cut short when she stumbled upon my father backpacking in Greece, her friends who’ve mostly passed, the old camcorder tapes I found as a kid that showed her kissing a man who looked a lot like David Hasselhoff. I never really tried to know her at all. In two days, I will cart my mother to the basement and watch her be reduced to ash. I will present our top-of-the-line urn to my brother. By the following evening, we will be joined by relatives and family friends. I’ll retreat to the shadows after the awkward handshakes and niceties and feel unworthy of being there. For now, though, I walk over to the bed, surrounded by candles and flowers and photos of the small but remarkable life that I never really knew. I thank her for everything she and my father gave me and that I never appreciated—the karate lessons and birthday cakes, the many second chances. I drape myself over her body, an ear where her heartbeat should be. I tell her I’m sorry. I tell her I love her. I wait for her embrace.