They were always concerned about whether or not I had friends, even for a funeral.
You should bring a friend or two, I heard my adoptive mother say.
Bring them for what? I said.
Then I forced myself to eat the pizza and in my mind I calculated that if I ate three hearty slices, I would be able to skip breakfast and lunch the next day.
As a support, she said, and a comfort.
I don’t have any friends I want to call, I said, and I’m very comfortable with that.
Did you know the police were here a couple days ago? said my adoptive mother. They rang our doorbell at three in the morning. I opened the door and they were there. At three in the morning.
Her hands shook as she brought the pizza up to her mouth. It was kind of like watching a very old senile woman eat, and it made me feel terrible; I changed the subject.
Did you see all the flowers and cards from the other people? I asked them. I put them into the buckets to keep them fresh.
Goddammit, Helen, said my adoptive father. He put his pizza slice cheese side down onto his plate.
Yes, of course you did, said my adoptive mother.
She seemed exceptionally calm.
I had to take them out of the buckets, she said. You see, Helen, there was almost a liter of bleach in those buckets. I’m surprised you couldn’t smell it. There was more bleach than water, so you actually killed all of the flowers in the buckets in the shortest amount of time imaginable. All of those beautiful flowers in the baskets and paper cones are dead. Luckily, we still have the wreaths, which are lovely. We can use those for the funeral.
She always looked at the bright side of things, I thought.
It’s really a shame, hissed my adoptive father, that we had to throw away all of those once-beautiful flowers. In fact, from now on, Helen, you shouldn’t do anything in the house without asking us first. You will ruin everything, and the worst part is, you won’t even know it. You’ve already ruined so much. We’ve been taking care of it all. We don’t want you to do anything!
Of course, Chad Lambo has been helping, too, said my adoptive mother, give him some credit, Paul.
I must have frowned because she looked at me and said, What are you thinking about, Helen?
No one had asked me a question like that since I had been home; I took a deep breath, then I told her that I was concerned about the nature of the funeral. When pressed for more details, I went on to say that I didn’t think my adoptive brother would want a Catholic funeral.
Of course he does, said my adoptive mother with emotion, I mean, he did. He went to church with us every week. He even liked the priest, Father Luke, a lot. This is what he would want. I’m sure of it.
I wasn’t persuaded. How can you be so certain?
I searched their faces, which were pale underneath the light suspended above the table. No one responded. It was silent except for the sounds of their chewing. Sometimes silence can be implemented as a rhetorical strategy. I decided to start asking the difficult questions.
How can you know what a dead person wants or needs? I said. Did he tell you? Did he leave instructions behind? How can you be so certain? Did he leave a suicide letter?
What do you mean by all of that, Helen? said my adoptive father. We knew him very well.
That’s not what I meant, I said. I didn’t mean you didn’t know him really well.
He spent more time with us than anyone else on the planet, said my adoptive father. He spent more time with us than you and now you’re suggesting that we didn’t know him at all.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the European man helping himself to a slice of pizza at the counter. He made eye contact with me and shook his head.
I’m sorry, I said, I think there’s been a misunderstanding. Don’t you understand what I’m saying? Don’t you understand?
In between asking them if they understood what I was saying, I took bites of my pizza. The tomato sauce and cheese scalded my tongue and ripped off pieces of skin from the roof of my mouth.
It’s okay, said my adoptive mother, it’s okay, Helen.
It’s just us, she said. It’s just us.
It looked like she was about to start weeping, so I excused myself and went up to my childhood bedroom where I shut all the windows I had thrown open earlier but not before I looked out at the grim trees. To calm myself, I went into the closet and brought out The Odyssey. I read the story of the Cyclops ten times before I closed my eyes in peace. Suddenly the Cyclops occupied part of my brain, and I felt a deep kinship with him. He was misunderstood as a villain, I thought, when in reality, Odysseus and his crew should be positioned as the evil colonizers, and the Cyclops as the dehumanized victim of their atrocious conquest. I’ve always identified with the victims, I identified with the underdogs, the colonized, the beggars and peasants, the bacteria in the sponge, the mosquitoes and the ants. I would get my revenge one day. Revenge on whom? someone might ask.
I’ll show you, I said to no one.
The ones who overlooked me my entire life, all the people who underestimated the power of my will, my life-force.
26
I lingered at the bottom of the stairs, then shook myself out of a morning paralysis and entered the kitchen. My adoptive mother was at the kitchen table, as if she had never left. She had a pencil behind her ear, and her head was bent down as if she was concentrating deeply on something.
Helen, what’s a four-letter word for butter?
There are two sides to everything, I said.
His death on one side, I thought, the morning ritual of the crossword puzzle on the other. When I asked her what she wanted to do that day, she said pray, she wanted to be left alone to pray.