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brother, she says. She says, He shot himself.
On the darker stretches of Highway 101 I feel motionless.
Like the truck is not moving. Like I am standing still, fixed in
time. Ahead only a small patch of road is illuminated by the
headlamps, and behind me, when I glance into the rearview
mirror, it s just darkness. Fog has settled over the highway, and
the glare, the bright whiteness reflected in the lights, is blind-
ing. I drive slowly and hope that the fog will lift soon. I listen
to the engine, the rhythm of the pistons rising and falling, and
do and do not think of my brother. He comes to me in flashes,
his image stirring as if from a pool of still water, breaking the
surface momentarily and then submerging again.
Beside me on the seat is a pint of vodka, and I sip from it
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as I drive, trying to make it last. I don t want to be inside my
head. I do not want to have to feel. I do not want to have to
think. These are some of the reasons why my brother drank,
and why, when the alcohol no longer worked, when it became
a problem greater than the problems he drank to escape, he
found another way. I would like to respect his decision. I would
like to forgive him. But these things are not possible for me and
I can t see how they ever will be. I take a drink and stare into
the fog. I light a cigarette and roll down my window. The air
that rushes in is cool and smells of salt and rotting seaweed,
and I know, because the ocean is near, that I don t have much
farther to go. I am returning to Los Angeles for my brother s
funeral. I am returning to Los Angeles to claim the things that
the dead leave for the living.
It has been less than a month since our father had his
stroke, and on his doctor s advice he is not making this trip
with me. But I believe that the real reason has less to do with
matters of health than those of shame for a son who has taken
his own life. The fog lifts when I pass Ventura Beach and turn
inland and soon the traffic thickens. The night air grows
warmer and instead of the salt and seaweed it smells vaguely of
exhaust now. I get off the freeway in Studio City and cross an
overpass that runs high above that concrete channel called the
L.A. River. From there it s just a few blocks to my sister s place,
and when I pull into the driveway I see that she s left the porch
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light on for me. It s late, maybe two in the morning, and I fig-
ure she and her husband are asleep. The house key is supposed
to be under the mat, that was the arrangement so I wouldn t
have to wake them, but I don t have to use it. Marilyn greets me
on the front porch, we hold each other tightly, and in the dim
light I can see that her eyelids are red and swollen. Oh God,
she says. Tell me this isn t happening. But I can tell her no
such thing. She is by nature timid and shy, she has always felt
too much too intensely, and I worry for her. I worry that this
is something from which she will never recover, and I worry for
myself, too, because we are very much the same.
He s dead, I want to say.
I want to say those words over and over to take the power
out of them, but I say nothing. I hold my sister for a while
longer and then we go inside. Her husband makes us drinks
and sets out a mirror, a razor and a straw on the coffee table.
We do not talk about Barry. Not a word. The funeral is to-
morrow morning and we ride out these last hours by numbing
ourselves with vodka, Valium and cocaine. The combination is
potent, and with the cocaine we are able to drink far past the
point where we might ordinarily pass out. We drink and drug
until the living room windows begin to fill with the morning
light, and my little niece wanders in on us, rubbing the sleep
from her eyes. She is wearing jumper pajamas. Her father hides
the mirror on a shelf above the stereo and my sister rises un-
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steadily to her feet. Munchikin, she says. My little
munchikin. C mere, give me a hug. But my little niece hesi-
tates, she looks away, and when she does step into her mother s
open arms it is with a certain awkwardness. She is only three
years old, and though she has no understanding of death or of
the drugs we are using, she senses that things are not right.
You better get her dressed, her father says. The sitter
will be here soon.
When they leave the room he pours us another drink, and
later, in the car, we all do another line. I am impressed that he
is able to drive so well. I am impressed that he is able to drive
at all, or that he doesn t get us lost. Our only mistake is that in
our fucked-up state of mind we don t think to leave the house
early enough, and by the time we arrive the services are already
under way. This is at Forest Lawn in Hollywood, and it is our
mother s choice, for a funeral befitting an actor, to hold the
services here where the stars are buried. She is sitting in the
front pew with her new husband, ironically a Mormon from
Utah, and my sister, her husband and I take seats in the back.
The chapel is small. There are maybe thirty, forty people
present, and on a stand up front, near the podium, rests our
brother s casket. The priest wears a solemn expression on his
face and talks of Barry as if they had been intimate friends
when in fact they had never known each other. As he drones on
our mother rocks back and forth in her seat, keening. Then a
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strange thing happens to me. Their voices seem to fade. They
grow fainter and fainter until I m only watching their mouths
work, and I suddenly feel very small. I watch the funeral play
out in front of me but it s as if I m viewing it all from a long
distance, like you might in a dream. None of it is really hap-
pening, and I am somewhere else now. I am somewhere very far
away.
It is an old house in a neighborhood of Echo Park that is not
safe to walk at night. The paint is chipping off the sides and
the shingles on the roof are cracked and brittle from the sun.
The lawn is dry and yellow. There are no hedges or trees, no
shade or cover, and if you stare long enough you can see waves
of heat rising off the asphalt in the driveway. His car is still
parked there, an old battered Volkswagen squatting on its axles,
the backseat packed with boxes of books and clothes that he
had planned to move, throw out or give away. The registration
tag is nearly two years old.
On the front porch is an upturned wicker chair with the
weaving broken out of the seat, and on the door is a warning
from the Los Angeles city coroner: Removal of this seal is a felony.
The day is hot, and I am sweating. The Fourth of July is near,
and as I reach for the doorknob, turn it and find it unlocked, I
hear the snap of firecrackers from somewhere down the block.
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