SHORTLY AFTER their father Seymour’s hair had grown so white and downy that Paulie took to calling him Sir Dandelion, he’d suffered a coronary during an early-morning walk, binoculars around his neck and a grocery list in his pocket. Claudia had selected an oak-stained casket for the viewing and baked gingerbread cookies for the reception; she had picked up her three-quarter-length black dress from the dry cleaner and twisted her hair into an unmoving knot at the back of her neck; she had thanked people for coming and accepted their condolences; she had repainted the stairwells and appointed a real estate broker; she had met with Seymour’s lawyer and accountant and wept in each of their antiseptic bathrooms; and, imagining that the death of her father would install in her some compassionate wisdom if only she waited a few weeks, she had left the question of Paulie for very last.
Though she and Seymour had discussed a number of assisted living communities in which well-trained aides and social workers would see that Paulie lived his fullest life—and Paulie had even visited some of these places with his father and enjoyed chatting with the staff and residents, as well as testing the bounce of the mattresses and the texture of the food—when it came down to signing the last of the forms, Claudia could not put pen to paper. Having witnessed both of her parents reduced to dismayingly small boxes of ashes, remembering Paulie’s insistence upon singing at both services and how tightly he’d gripped her hand, Claudia had decided to take her younger brother’s life into hers as closely as she could.
Made anxious by suburban Connecticut dusk the day after the wake, she had prepared an excess of stew, something with the potential to feed many more people than their family of two. When he had stopped slurping, she raised the question.
“Paul? Where is it you think you’d most like to live now?”
“Dad and I visited some places—”
“Could you imagine yourself living there, though?”
“They were real clean, with chefs. I could imagine so much, Claude. I could imagine it is an okay place to be. I could also imagine walking for a long time until you found exactly the place you wanted. There are so many homes, I think, and you could spend the wrong kind of life following them.”
Various aging aunts who phoned had clucked their tongues and expressed concern, emphasizing repeatedly that no one could judge her for placing Paulie under the care he needed. But she had helped her brother pack his things—the long-beloved crescent moon lamp, with a cherubic face and a half-smile; the quilt their mother had embroidered over the course of a year, with a panel for the forest, the ocean, the desert, and the town—and she urged him to imagine the fun they might have in New York.
“We’ll have picnics on Sundays when the weather’s nice, and clap at the men who play mariachi on the subway, and go to museums of sound and art and transportation and history and police and science. You’ll have your very own apartment, right near mine, and we’ll paint it whatever colors you like.” Her breathing had become uneven, as though her safety was the one being discussed offhandedly in a nearly vacant house.
“Okay, Claude,” Paulie had said. “Okay, Claude!” He had pulled her to where he sat on the bare mattress and taken her hand, formed a brief O of suction on each of her fingertips as he kissed them. Claudia had brought his head to her shoulder as though he weren’t thirty years old and three inches taller, and closed her eyes so as not to look out the window at the yard, now empty of the peeling red picnic table that had stood there for thirty years, Seymour’s much beloved barbecue, the hammock where their mother had read her mystery novels and spread coconut-scented tanning oil on her thick calves. The tree Claudia had climbed to peer down at her family remained, but appeared to understand its obsolescence, and drooped.