Blue Genes (21 page)

THE ELEVATOR RISES
much too slowly to the tenth floor. I don’t recognize the man running it. Perhaps he’s just a night-shift replacement. When we told him what floor we wanted, he mumbled something that sounded like commiseration. I thanked him, but he looked surprised. Perhaps I misunderstood. Maybe he just wanted to say hello.

The first thing that occurs when a person gets fatal news is emotional shock, blocking out the catastrophic events and feelings. Unlike physical injury, when the body goes into potentially lethal conditions, emotional shock can cause a peculiarly clear and uncluttered state of affairs. Numbness and a
lack
of elevated feelings can result. The mind may not be able to operate cleverly and quickly, but often the tears and grief and physical trembling that we think of as hallmarks of bad news wait their turn. So it is with me. As the elevator rises, I go back and forth between past and present. Even at this moment, today, as I write this, time fluctuates. Sometimes I am there, sometimes in the here and now.

Susan, standing close beside me, touching my flank, seems calm, but I wonder what turmoil is going on inside her head. Is she also in shock or, as often happens when crises come, simply thinking long and hard before reacting? Is she wondering how to approach Linda? How long it will be before I start crying or shouting? What to do if I go berserk? On the way in from the country, she asked me several times if I was okay, but how do you answer such a question under such circumstances? Still, I knew how I was
going
to feel: anger, physical pain, guilt, frustration; needing both retaliation and succor. And, possibly, the desire to kill myself, too.

I had taken this elevator ride many times over the past twelve years. Sometimes alone, often with Susan. It is my brother’s building. It is 10A, my brother’s apartment, that we were seeking. Normally, when we arrived, he would open the door quickly, combing his fingers through his black tousled hair—for which I envy him, mine having gone gray and missing years ago. His lopsided smile, paired with oversize lips, would greet us.

Normally, too, Steunenberg would bark. Tony named the little terrier after the governor who was the subject of
Big Trouble
. I can now hear Steunenberg’s little feet join Linda’s on the other side of the door, but like his master, he is quiet tonight. I am dreading this. (Linda was dreading it, too. Over the phone, she said to Susan, “Are you sure Kit wants to come? Can he do this?”)

Inside, there are four people, friends of Tony’s and Linda’s, people I may have met before, though tonight I cannot accurately place anyone. I notice a fifth person: a young policeman stands nervously by the bedroom door, which is shut. He turns quickly away when I look at him. Everything is in pieces. Is my brother still here? Is he in that bedroom, lying on the bed? Has the medical examiner been here? Will there be questions for us? For me?

This apartment has never appealed to me, tonight less than ever, though I can see they have done attractive things with the living room since we were last here. There are long bookshelves down each side, painted a bright red, and the couches have new covers. The large coffee table has a bottle of vodka on it, almost empty. There are glasses, too. Susan and I decline.

Linda and I go off to a corner of the room, away from the others. We sit on a small sofa.

“What happened?” I ask. Of course, I
know
what happened, but not the details. And I do need to know everything. Linda seems eager to tell me.

“He went off to Idaho with that woman from the
Boston Globe
. They were doing a story—Simon & Schuster wanted it for publicity for
Big Trouble
. When he got there, he became depressed and didn’t want to do any interviews. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. So they came back.”

I had last seen my brother three weeks earlier, when we all went to the theater. Before that, when the book was just about to go to press, his editor had asked for a few additional cuts. The final draft had been very long, but Tony didn’t want to make the changes. His whole life, he had never wanted to make
other
people’s cuts, no matter what he was writing: a book, an article, a magazine piece. No matter how long the piece was, it was
his
, and he wanted to keep decisions about it to himself. In this case, Linda said, he’d made some cuts to make everyone happy.

“And . . .” I prompted.

“He was terribly depressed,” Linda said. “I thought he’d get over it like he always had. But this time history failed me. When he came back from the psychiatrist yesterday, it was worse.”

For some years, Tony had been taking antidepressants, originally at my suggestion. His depression never disappeared, but it was markedly lessened. He was pleased with the psychopharmacologist. We had all been relieved by that.

Linda was still talking. What was she saying?

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” I said.

“I said she was surprised. At his depression. She wondered if
she
had done anything wrong.”

“Who?” I asked.

Linda looked at me strangely.

“The
Boston Globe
writer,” she said.

“But what about the medicine?”

“He was supposed to increase it. But he didn’t. Or if he did, it didn’t work fast enough. I called him from work several times today. We were going to meet at a party. I went, but he didn’t show up. I got worried. Came home. About seven o’clock. And when I came in . . .” She stopped, gesturing to the other room.

We went back to the uncomfortable group around the coffee table, where Susan was trying to stay in the conversation. It was, at best, desultory. The phone rang, reminding me that we had to call our daughters. We had to let them know. One of the others came out of the kitchen. “It’s the
New York Times
,” he said. “They want to talk to you.” He meant Linda.

When Linda went into the kitchen to take the phone, I learned that she had already called the
Times
to tell them that Tony was dead. I had a question I had to ask, but I didn’t want to do it just yet, so we talked about how the others had learned about the event . . . biding time. The people began to look more and more familiar. Yes, of course, I had met them all before. One was a protégé of Tony’s.

Linda came back.

“Do they know it’s a suicide?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“I think that’s a mistake,” I said.

This is a big thing for me. Given my family’s history with suicide, I always want suicide out in the open.

Linda was angry. “Tony was an accomplished artist, a writer. I don’t want people to remember him for
this
!”

“But they’ll find out,” I said. “Then they’ll think it’s been held back from them. They’ll think . . .” I left it unfinished, because this was not the time for this argument. She was right, but I was also right.

I decided it was time to face my brother. “Will you go with me?” I asked Susan.

“I don’t know if I can,” she said.

“Let’s do it,” I pleaded. “Then we’ll call the girls.”

We approached the policeman. It was an unusual sight in this living room. Here, we were more accustomed to family gatherings or literary discussions. In fact, I had never had a uniformed cop in my home before, or in that of any relative. Police were for domestic violence or robberies. We’d been burgled twice when we first moved to New York, but they sent detectives—in plain clothes—and there was nothing sinister about them. They stayed but a few moments. We never got our stuff back.

This cop had apparently been told to stand guard here until the medical examiner came to probe into this suspicious death, suspicious only because all apparent suicides are questionable until verified. I wondered what his orders were. Could I even enter the room? Could I touch my brother?

As we came up to him, I saw how truly young and fresh this boy-man was. I’m used to the bulky cop on the beat, covered with badges and ribbons, laden down with truncheon, handcuffs, Mace, a Taser, an automatic. This youngster didn’t have any of these, as far as I could see. Perhaps he left them in his pack somewhere, or a patrol car. Perhaps he was far less accustomed to violent ends than I. Maybe this was his first deathwatch. What was he to do with the body of a stranger that was only a few hours away from life, whose last moments had been a desperate pull of a bathrobe cord around his neck as he lay on his bed?

The cop moved slightly toward us, and I thought for a minute he was going to bar the way.

“It’s his brother,” Susan said, and we slid past into the bedroom.

In the dim light from the bedside lamp, I turned, cautiously, to look at my brother’s body. Tony was lying on the bed fully dressed, only one leg slightly drooped off the side. The room was dark; but Tony’s rooms were always dark and messy.

Time slowed down, and I felt, curiously, stereotypically, in a dreamlike state.

Someone has removed the cord from around my brother’s neck; without it, he could easily be asleep, his large form carelessly slung across the bed. I am surprised how serene he looks, his umber brow no longer creased, his fat, turned-up lips relaxed across his teeth, features less troubled than I have ever seen them. Only the slight bluish tinge to his dark complexion gives the clue that he is not breathing. I want to touch him, to know that it is my lifeless brother, my companion for sixty-two years—though separated often by physical and emotional distances. Still—my brother. Without touching him, I can’t be
sure
he is dead. But the cop is watching, Susan is at my elbow, and, like most of us, I fear what a dead body might feel like.

Reticent and embarrassed by the situation, I cannot bring myself to reach out my hand, to verify my brother’s death. As a result, were it not for the fact that I have been sitting in the other room, talking to those people about this event, I would be tempted to shout at him, “Get up and stop kidding around.” I wish he would—and put an end to the nightmare that is just beginning.

How strange, I think: no sign of a struggle; no sign of agony. For once, he looks at peace. Even while I register the fact that this is a cliché, I see that it’s true; he looks okay. And still I can’t bring myself to touch him. I go as close to the bed as I can, then stop and try to remember this image. For the future.

On the bedside table is a clock, its electric second hand moving peacefully around the dial. Time hasn’t stood still, I think. Isn’t that peculiar!

Well past midnight. I turn to Susan. “Come on, let’s go call the kids.”

In Linda’s kitchen—what used to be
their
kitchen—I was able to reach Megan (our eldest, at twenty-nine) on the phone. Her first, intuitive reaction was not for her own pain but for mine.

“Oh, Dad,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” We arranged to meet her downstairs at her apartment.

As we said good-bye, I realized that no one in the living room was crying. I felt that was strange, but then I realized that I hadn’t cried yet, either. Maybe I never would.

At two in the morning, when our pounding on her apartment door brought our youngest, Gabriela, twenty-seven, groggy and bewildered, to open it, her reaction, too, was generous and instinctive. Tears welled from her luminous eyes, but her words and hugs were for my sorrow. “Oh, Dad,” she sobbed. “Not again. You don’t deserve this.”

THE MORNING AFTER TONY’S DEATH
, we were awakened by a phone call at seven-thirty. A friend had read the
Times
, where Tony’s obituary was prominent on the front page, and was calling to ask what had happened. Having had only a couple of hours of sleep, I was not terribly gracious. Also, I thought the newspaper had pretty well summed things up. Nevertheless, we chatted for a while, and then I thought the way to handle the calls from close friends was to invite them to dinner that evening.

“Are you sure you’re up to that?” Susan asked.

“No,” I said, “but there’s only one way to find out.”

I had long since become the cook in the family, not only because Susan’s office hours often stretched late into the evening, but because I enjoyed being the giver of sustenance to our family. I loved eating, and I loved cooking. I relished the sit-down, the conversation, the satisfied sighs. I like mothering people.