Wing Jones(16)

I’m starting to feel faint myself. I don’t know what time it is. I hope I remembered to turn off the oven.

I wish my daddy were here.

I wish Marcus were here.

The officer’s words play over and over in my head like a song you hear on the radio that you can’t stop humming. In my addled and exhausted brain the words run together, but I try to focus on the charges.

Possession of false identification: This I can believe. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Marcus’s fake ID. This one can’t be so bad. Everyone has got a fake ID.

Underage drinking: What’s the point of a fake ID if you aren’t going to use it to drink? These two seem like they should be the same charge.

Driving under the influence: This is the one that shocks me. It sends tentacles of doubt through me, uncurling like octopus arms. I can’t believe Marcus would be so stupid.

Vehicular manslaughter: Two people died. What I want to know is how come the police are blaming Marcus? What about this other driver?

It isn’t like anyone can ask her, though. Since she’s dead.





CHAPTER 9


The house feels strange without Marcus in it. Not a home but a house. A container, holding us in it, trying and failing to protect us from the outside world.

I don’t remember leaving that room, how we got home. Who drove. Who said what. If anyone said anything.

My mother goes straight upstairs and into her room and closes the door, the click of the lock ringing loud in our empty, empty house.

How can a place feel so empty with four people in it? I breathe in my grandmothers more than hear them. Tonight they have disappeared into the shadows; they will sink into their small twin beds, deeper and deeper, until all that is left is an imprint of them and the lingering scent of flour and spice. Without Marcus there is no one in the house.

As the door to their room closes behind them, they do not even turn to me. Doors are closing all around me, leaving me alone in our corridor. I look down the hall. It seems infinitely long, and the door to Marcus’s room at the end looms large, and the emptiness behind it is like a black hole that will expand and eat our whole house and suck everything into its emptiness. My brother’s room with his trophies lining the bookshelves, pictures of him and our daddy, cards from Monica, letters from colleges, newspaper clippings of games he won. It was sacrosanct before – Marcus needs his sleep, he needs to get his rest, he needs a place that is his alone, away from all the women in this house – and now, now I know it will be even more so, it will be a shrine. No one will sleep in there. I wonder if anyone will ever go in it. I find myself walking toward it, the emptiness calling to me, and I know I shouldn’t go in but I can’t stop.

I put my hand on the doorknob and suddenly it feels like opening this door will unlock all the others in the house and my mother and my grandmothers will stumble out and run at me like zombies, saying stop stop stop, don’t go in there. Don’t open the door to all that emptiness, don’t disrupt his room, he’ll come home soon, and he is the only one who can stop the emptiness…

But I turn the handle and they don’t come out. Their doors stay shut, the air stays heavy and still, and I push the door open. His room is exactly as he left it. I should leave now, leave it undisturbed for him so when he comes home—

When he comes home

When he comes home

When he comes home

—it will be exactly as he remembers it and we can all pick up where we left off. With Marcus being the perfect child, the perfect brother, as perfect as the little gold man on the trophies all over his room, as unchangeable, incorruptible.

He’s coming home, he’s going to come home and he’s going to be so mad that I was in his room.

He’s left his window open and the sky outside is a violent violet and the air smells like thunderstorms. I breathe deeply, smelling the storm, the boy smell of his room, the deodorant and the cologne and … incense?

On Marcus’s nightstand there’s a small incense holder. The ends are burnt; he’s lit these before.

I have a sharp, unkind thought: Did he smoke and drink in here? Secretly? Light incense to hide the smell?

Marcus isn’t who I thought he was, and I’m starting to wonder if I knew him at all.

Fear and anxiety and anger race through me, each one trying to make it to the finish line and dominate my feelings. It makes me spin. My breath catches and I realize I’m crying, not making a sound, but crying so hard that it’s taking all my energy. My legs give way as I sit on the edge of his bed and then curl up on my side, not trying to stop the tears, because I know I can’t stop them, letting them leak onto his pillow until it’s as soggy and waterlogged as my insides. But my tears keep coming.

These aren’t the kind of tears that give you a sense of relief or wash the pain away. These tears hurt. Each and every one has made the perilous journey from my heart to my eyes. I feel like with every tear I’m losing a little bit more of who I thought my brother was, but I can’t stop them. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop.

But then I do. They slow to a trickle, each one still as painful as the last, and I am left carved out and drained. I take a deep shuddering breath, letting the air whistle around my empty insides.

I am so tired. So very, very tired. I’ll close my eyes just for a second, give them a rest.

Just for a second.