The Weight of Him(42)

“I know, son, I know.” They continued walking, Billy’s arm around the boy’s soft shoulders.

*

Days later, Billy asked John to carry the ladder upstairs. He trailed his son, breathing heavy. It felt good to have John’s help, almost as if they were getting along, but it was also humiliating to not be fit enough to carry the ladder himself. He was getting there, though. Time was he couldn’t get up these stairs without dragging himself along by the banister; now he was clearing the steps unaided. Someday, he would run up and down them, get Anna and Ivor to keep time and to count aloud the number of laps he completed.

John deposited the ladder on the landing, beneath the attic opening. Billy reached him, trying not to breathe so loud.

“What are you going up there for?” John asked.

Billy knew he didn’t have to tell John it was to get to Michael’s belongings. Tricia had cleared away all of Michael’s things the day after his Month’s Mind mass, except for some of the boy’s clothes, his guitar, and a few well-chosen photographs. The rest she packed into boxes and stored deep in the attic. A longing had seized Billy to listen to some of the old vinyls Michael had collected.

“Can you climb up and lift off the panel?” he asked.

John glared at the square in the ceiling. “Are you even going to fit through there?”

Billy eyed the opening, fighting the feeling of defeat. “Just do it.”

John scampered up the ladder, as if showing off.

“Easy, there,” Billy said.

In moments, John had pushed up the panel and cleared the attic opening. He descended the ladder in record time, too, and moved toward the stairs. “Try not to kill yourself.” He spun around, red-faced. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that, it came out wrong.”

Billy nodded, collecting himself. “That’s all right.”

As John moved downstairs, Billy braved the first rung. Then John reappeared, to hold the ladder steady.

“Thanks,” Billy said, moved. He continued his slow, careful ascent.

He reached the top of the ladder, his head and shoulders inside the attic, lit upon by the swarm of dust. There was also a strong smell of stale, and a trapped, pulsating heat. His hands jumped from the ladder and onto the attic floor. He hauled himself up and forward, his chest landing on the pale raw wood, his legs dangling from the gap in the ceiling.

“Do you want a push?” John asked, sarcastic.

“What am I, Winnie-the-Pooh?” Billy said, making John laugh. He heaved and wriggled, forcing his way through the opening. Its hard rim scraped his flanks, breaking skin.

“All right,” John called up. “I’ll be in my room. Shout whenever you’re ready to come down, I’ll hold the ladder again.”

“Okay, thanks.” Billy considered ordering John to join him, and to show some gentler emotion for his brother at last, but he let the boy go.

Under the yellow light of the lone naked bulb, Billy found the vinyls and record player in the far corner. Slowly, gently, he sorted through the stacks of LPs, finding U2, the Beatles, Blondie, the Eurythmics, Queen, Michael Jackson, the Beach Boys, Culture Club, the Pogues, and even one of Billy’s old favorites, Thin Lizzy.

He eased the Jailbreak album from its sleeve, struck in a horrible way by its title, and then by something much worse. There, on what should have been blank, ivory record paper, was Michael’s handwriting, his cursive covering every inch of the album’s inner sleeve. Billy read, his eyes filling and the bridge of his nose fizzing. Michael had penned what appeared to be his own lyrics in circles around the album sleeve, his handwriting staying within invisible lines that matched the spirals of the grooves on the record.

Billy grabbed at the other albums, pulling off their covers. He found a total of ten inner sleeves similarly filled with lyrics.

Won’t somebody help me? Stars like fish in the sky. You are my beautiful forever, my perfect escape. How to get to another me? No one ever tells us we can drown in air, fall down so far inside ourselves. When you have it all, but feel so small. A head full of flames in the dark. Ribbons of love that tie us up, that can’t be cut.

“Tricia,” he shouted, shaking. “Tricia!”

Below him, John’s footfalls rushed across the landing. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Get your mother up here quick,” Billy said.

Tricia’s voice sounded on the stairs. She reached the landing. “What’s going on?”

“Come up here,” Billy said, trying to slow the thump of his heart.

Like John, Tricia climbed the ladder in record time. Billy took her hand, helping her inside. He led her to the vinyls, now scattered atop the cardboard boxes. “They’re all songs he wrote.”

Tricia, the last of the color in her face bleeding out, sifted through the inner sleeves, reading one, two, three of Michael’s songs, each one faster than the last. Just as Billy thought she would break down and weep, she returned the vinyls to their covers, working fast and rough.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’ve seen enough,” she said.

“You don’t want to read them all?” he asked, incredulous, angry.

“This is not how I want to remember him, not how I think he’d want any of us to remember him.”

The hot attic air was cloying, choking. Billy had never felt further from Tricia, more opposite.