I turn in my fresh, Egyptian cotton sheets and try to clear my mind. The past is gone, my family is gone, and right now, I need to think of the future.
* * *
The next morning after Edward leaves for work, I slide my suitcase out from underneath the bed and spin its combination lock until the numbers align and retrieve the mini cassette player.
It’s finally time to listen to Robert’s story. I want to hear it – him, his voice, his words.
I make sure the front door is locked as I pass and set myself up in the sitting room, the chunky Olympus player nestled in my lap. I slip the red foam headphones over my ears, carefully adjust the volume, and press play.
18 The Tape
Part 1
Things I remember from that morning. The warmth of sun on skin, dust hanging in light, her hair in the street breeze.
There would be a tent, eventually, to cover him. His college sweatshirt, with all but the a of Columbia obscured. I often recall her face looking up at me as she explained what happened, her expression serious, her words lost in the traffic and the wind. It did not need explaining, what happened. Although it would be explained. Thoroughly.
His head hit the sidewalk at thirty miles an hour. He did not brace himself; he did not break his fall from six floors up, which initially mystified at autopsy. My boy, my good, kind boy lying broken on the sidewalk like leaking left-out garbage.
Her face again as she spoke words I could not hear, her eyes filling with tears as the wind played with that soft blonde hair. The weather vane glinting high above us.
I would hear the story again. Many times. And then later the police would, in turn, ask me. Lawyers. I would search for you in each detail she told me. Knowing the truth was hiding somewhere in there. Knowing she knew why you did it but was unable to articulate it, and I could not hook it out of her.
Things had gone wrong between me and you, my son, that much everyone knew. He was good, a good boy, better than me, and there is a particular pain in knowing that the one you want the world for does not want your world. That your way is the wrong way. You wanted change, and though I feared it, deep down, I wanted you to prove me wrong. To show me this great change. To prove me wrong about the way the world works, and show me that good triumphs and kindness wins the day. But you did not show me that, unfortunately. You showed me this. And the world kept turning.
The blood was so dark it looked black on the sidewalk.
He jumped, so the story goes, but why?
After lunch, he went back to his room to study, she would tell me. He was tired. He had bitten off more than his still adolescent mind could chew, more responsibility than he could shoulder unaided. And the poison inside him. But she did not know this then. It would be weeks until we knew what he had taken. The medication, a slow daily drip of meds on top of meds, the results unnoticed at first. And what could be more like him than choosing a drug that pushed him to be more, to do more. So clever, so undetectable to everyone who knew him, it’s no wonder it passed for so long.
If I think on it long enough the blame always lands on me.
I pushed you too far.
What you did. What I did after.
A hasty word to you, a lack of malleability in myself, my poor show of example. But it was done, and it cannot be undone: my work, your work. The solution to it all writ large.
After the funeral she would not come back to the house. I started to suspect she knew. I am not a bad man. But my family is sacred to me.
What you did that day, the mess you made, what you forced me to do to protect those you left behind did not end then. That was the beginning of something. A loosening of something. The boundaries loosened.
I found her.
Her elegant neck, its pale skin delicate, leading down to an alabaster carved clavicle. Beautiful, and all that soft-spun hair, the velvety scent of peony. She made noises as she struggled. She fought. But it did not help. As close as lovers in those last moments. Her breath warm against skin. Her eyes inexplicably calm, as if she knew something the rest of the world did not. Perhaps how little fighting might help in the long run.