“I kept asking the doctors to give me more morphine to take to him; I begged them for it. But they said no, he’d get addicted. Can you believe that? He’s lying on his fucking deathbed, in agony, and they’re holding back on the painkillers ’cause he might become an addict. I almost punched that one doctor, the young one. I did take him by the collar. But I stopped myself, before . . .”
Tommy is rambling now. I step back, trying to comprehend what I’m hearing. “Are you saying you—”
“I couldn’t take it anymore. He kept moaning and crying. I begged him to let me call the ambulance, take him to the hospital, but he told me no way, no way. He wanted to go in the house. He told me he could see Mom, sometimes, by the bed, waiting for him. Oh, Christ . . .”
The tears are streaming down the sides of Tommy’s face now, mixing with the rain. My own eyes are filling now, too. “Did he ask you? To do it?”
Tommy shakes his head. “He never would’ve put something like that on me. Never. But I had to do it. I had to. It was the only way.” Tommy keeps talking, and by the time I hear the word pillow, my mind is completely dazed. I try to free myself from what Tommy is saying. I look down at my father’s name carved in the marble, then at my mother’s. I look at the flowers, purple and pink. I gaze up at the sky, try to find a bird to fly away with. But the gravity of my brother’s pain keeps pulling me back to him, to his shaking hands, his stinging eyes, his twisted face. Tommy is literally drowning in front of me. I want to reach out, grab him. Save him, somehow. But I am frozen in place.
My brother and I stand there, facing each other in silence as the seconds drag on. Tommy is looking to me—for something. But I have nothing to give.
Finally, I lower my head. “My God,” I say.
And that’s the end of it. Tommy looks at me another minute, his eyes filled with sorrow, disappointment, anger. Then he turns away. I watch him walk down the path to the parking lot and disappear through the arbor. I hear the engine of his motorcycle, loud as he starts the bike and revs it, then fading as he rides away.
20
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7, CONTINUED; MONDAY, OCTOBER 8
I am soaking wet. I have no idea how long I’ve been in the car or how long I stood at the grave site after Tommy left. I can’t see out the windshield, it’s raining so hard now. The car isn’t running, and I realize suddenly that I’m cold and have been for some time. I turn the key, start the engine, adjust the heat. The radio is on, a female pop singer. Against the backdrop of what’s just happened, it feels obscene to listen to the upbeat music. I turn it off, close my eyes, relive the scene at the grave site. Tommy, state wrestling champ, the unbreakable slab of marble, tattooed survivor of the prison system, leather-clad Harley rider, crying like a two-year-old. Spilling his guts to his older brother, reaching out for . . . what? Something I failed to give him. So he had to ride away, alone.
I back up, make a three-point turn, and pull out of the parking lot. I’m almost at the turnpike, twenty-some miles from the cemetery, when I realize the radio is on again. I must’ve turned it on, but I don’t remember doing so. It’s four o’clock when I pass through the tolls for Highway 76. Next thing I know, it’s thirty minutes later, and I’m close to home. But I don’t want to go home, so after I exit the turnpike, I make my way to the Stadium 16 movieplex at King of Prussia, across from the mall. In a daze, I buy a ticket and make my way through the crowded lobby, past the ticket taker, down the hall to the theater, where I take a seat in the back row. The lights go down, the noise level rockets, and I sit numb and motionless through ninety minutes of explosions, computer-generated images, and adolescent dialogue.
I remain utterly disengaged from the movie until, toward the end, one of the characters, the lead, I think, if there is a lead in this jumble of science-fiction action scenes, asks something that strikes me.
“Why now?”
Why have the big robots chosen this precise moment in human history to attack the earth, wipe out humanity? The world is already on the brink of war, the superpowers poised to annihilate one another with nuclear bombs. All the robot invasion seems to have accomplished is to forge mankind into a band of brothers fighting together against a common enemy.
Why now?
And I ask myself the same question about my brother. Why has Tommy chosen this precise point in time to tell me he killed our father? Tommy’s had twenty years to unburden himself of his secret. Why didn’t he tell me sooner? Why not wait a little longer?
After the movie, I drive to Minella’s Diner on Lancaster Avenue, take a seat at the counter. I order meat loaf with mashed, and when the waitress asks what other sides I want, I tell her to surprise me. My iPhone, on the counter, buzzes. I must’ve turned it to silent mode at the movie theater. I lift the phone and see that Piper is calling. I click the power button to turn off the phone, send Piper to voice mail. Then I turn the phone back on and see that she has called me three times already. After a while, I notice the waitress has delivered my food. It gets cold as I pick at it and order refills on my coffee.
Sometime around eight o’clock, I make it home. I know Piper will be pissed at me for not answering the phone, and I expect a scene as soon as I walk in the kitchen. She’s waiting for me, but it’s concern, not anger, that etches her face. Dense as I am, I figure out why. Tommy must’ve told her ahead of time what he had in store. Which can only mean one thing.
“You knew?” I say. “You knew!”
Piper keeps her cool, keeps her voice steady, quiet. “You wanted Tommy to open up to me, Mick,” she says. “You said he was closed off. That he needed someone he could talk to. And you were right. He carried it all inside, for years. The grief. The pain. And the guilt. Monstrous guilt. It’s why Tommy threw his life into the trash heap. Why, when he faced hard time, he didn’t even fight the charges. Tommy is as good as they get, at his core. In his heart. And he knew that, however good his intentions, he had to be punished for what he’d done to your father.”
I am dumbstruck. I stare at Piper. “He told you all that?”
“He didn’t have to. It was obvious to me, once he told me about the euthanasia.”