The Family Game by Catherine Steadman (25)
“Bobby was twenty, a junior, at Columbia,” he continues, trying to keep his voice in check. “He got into Yale too,” he says with an unexpected chuckle, “but Columbia was closer to the New York apartment, and he wanted to stay close for Marcia’s dinners. That’s the kind of guy he was. He used to drive back to see us too, at The Hydes on weekends. Always family first.” He breaks off.
“You were eighteen when it happened?” I ask.
“Yeah. Matilda was sixteen, Ollie fourteen, and Stuart must have been, what, twelve? It messed with him the most, I think. Bobby loved Stu. He was a cute kid.” He looks at me, his eyes full of regret. “We don’t talk about it to each other, so it surprises me that Billy knew, that Lila was talking about it. After Bobby died, our parents sent us to see separate therapists. A therapist for each of us. I think they were scared we’d cross-contaminate, or something, if we all went together. Or maybe that’s how therapy works for kids, I don’t know. We just stopped speaking about him with one another after that. We had designated people to talk to and talking about it at home only made Mom cry so—it was easier to box it up and time just passed. The years passed and it became the way we did things.”
“How did he die?” I ask as delicately as I can, still reeling from the knowledge that Edward could keep such a formative part of his life from me for so long. I push from my mind the thought that I am guilty of doing just the same, because that is, of course, different. “Did he get sick?”
“He was healthy, thriving, playing varsity, grades impeccable; they always were,” he answers, eyes cast out at the city rolling by. “But little things started to change. He switched from economics to law. In retrospect there were signs. He became a little snappy, short-tempered—that wasn’t like him. Things between him and Dad became difficult; the pressure Bobby had on him to be the best, to toe the line. An A student, popular, the guy who does it all and makes it look easy. Always cheerful, always thinking of others. We didn’t know until it was too late. The autopsy found traces of meds—we knew about the pain medication, an old football injury; that wasn’t the problem, but it had mixed with something else. He’d been cramming his work between football practices, on weekends, whenever he could fit in the time. It was just Adderall or something similar but the drugs interacted. That’s what they call it when two drugs mix and poison you without you even realizing. Interaction. All those tiny shifts in personality, his sudden fear that it would all slip through his fingers, the anxiety, insomnia, and finally…a seizure. No one saw it coming. He wouldn’t have realized himself, why he suddenly felt the way he did. Why everything was becoming so hard for him. He must have thought he’d just reached his limit. I can’t imagine how scared he must have been in the days before it happened.”
Edward’s words sink in, Bobby’s death infuriatingly preventable. Mixed meds. A simple mistake that could have so easily been avoided, and for the Holbecks to know that, how arbitrary and preventable the loss of their son and brother was. It’s realizations like that that can change a person.
I should know; what happened to me at eleven changed who I am.
“Edward, I love you, but at any point over the last year could you not have told me this? We’ve discussed my family, their deaths, multiple times. Did you not even think to share this with me then?” I can’t help but be unsettled by this fact.
“I’m sorry,” he says, fully aware of the inadequacy of the apology. “I know. I should have. I’m an idiot and I took the coward’s way out. I don’t know what I thought would happen, that it would just disappear? I mean, it’s not as if no one was ever going to mention Bobby.”
Guilt seeps in through the tiny breach opened in our relationship and fills me. I have not told him everything about my childhood. In the same way he kept this from me, I still keep my biggest secret from him. But that is for the best.
“Your father didn’t mention Bobby,” I say, a question implicit in the statement. I can’t help wondering if the family doesn’t talk about Bobby because they feel culpable—for applying too much pressure, for not noticing until it was too late.
“We really don’t talk about it, I promise you. It isn’t just you. I should have told you. Please don’t think that I price my own loss higher than yours. I just, I guess when he left, the burden passed on to me. I try not to think about the bad places things can go.”
Edward studies me for a moment. “Did you like him? My father?” Edward asks.
“I did,” I answer honestly. After a moment I add, “I think I passed whatever test that was.”
Edward laughs, and his eyes catch mine in the pooling light of streetlamps as we weave on through the streets. “Of course you did,” he says, his tone changing as he observes me.
They say sex and grief are inextricably linked; I feel the shift between us.
He takes my cheek in his hand, almost appraisingly, then softly brushes a thumb over my lip. “How could you not. You’re a very unique individual,” he whispers with an oddly familiar tone and suddenly I’m back in Robert’s study, the air thick with cigar smoke and dangerous ambiguity. I try to block Edward’s father from my thoughts but in my mind father and son have become mixed; they morph seamlessly.
I feel Edward’s lips on mine, but Robert is there too. I let them happen, the thoughts, even though I know I shouldn’t. I know the warm ache rising inside me is for both of them, and it is tinged with danger and a bitter twist of guilt. It feels wrong, but by God do I want it.