Talking to her was a distraction, the person I really needed to speak to was dead. I would never talk to him again! I took out my phone and saw there was an entire archive of a conversation with a now-dead person at my disposal. It only now occurred to me that there were clues and traces in the text archive. My adoptive brother was a cryptic person and there were certainly hidden meanings behind each little cloud of gray. UNPACK THE TEXT, I shouted to myself. I began to scroll through our text history and I could say that many of his texts were very basic and practical. KOBE BRYANT!!! said one of them. What was the context? I wondered. I think I thought that the text was meant for someone else, which naturally reminded me of the time he sent me an email from a different name, [email protected]. It was in reply to a conversation we were having about what he wanted as a Christmas gift and what to get our adoptive parents, as I usually helped pay for gifts for them, I contributed a very small amount, around ten dollars, even though I had voluntarily removed myself from their lives, I could at least pitch in ten dollars toward their Christmas gifts, which my adoptive brother purchased, most likely with my adoptive father’s checks cashed out to himself. And our adoptive family was always very practical about Christmas gifts, people made lists of things they wanted and people bought the things on the lists, and therefore there were no real surprises on Christmas, it was less about gift-giving and more about some kind of exchange, this for that, and although I no longer participated directly in this exchange, my adoptive brother let my adoptive parents know I had contributed toward their gifts, which must have compelled them each Christmas to send me a card informing me that they had donated a small amount of money to the Catholic church in my name, which I never thanked them for or acknowledged because I thought it was an utterly useless, tasteless gift, as I myself would never personally choose to donate any money to that kind of disgusting pro-child-rape institution. Everyone could have bought themselves the things they wanted and called it a day, I thought. It was strange to receive an email from a Richard Walsingham regarding the purchase of certain gifts for my adoptive parents and my adoptive brother, in fact, I almost deleted the email because I thought it was spam, I only opened it because I had no other new, unread emails in my inbox and I was of course curious about what this Richard Walsingham had to say. When I realized it was my adoptive brother writing from an alias, I immediately asked him who this Richard Walsingham was and why was he pretending to be this person. He never responded to my questions and that email chain was abandoned and we sorted out the Christmas gift situation through text.
A month later, 1/19/13, there was a text of complaint. There was a food bank downtown where once a month our adoptive parents donated several homemade casseroles and hot dishes when it was obvious to anyone that all any homeless person wanted was a slice of pizza or a fucking cheeseburger or a pack of cigarettes, no one wanted their casseroles. He especially hated the smell of the casseroles, the smell of them baking stayed in the air for days, stinking up the entire house, causing him to suffocate in his room.
Part of the purpose of my investigation was to shed some light in the holes and the crevices and the parts of his life that didn’t line up, the odd details, etc. It reminded me of shining the flashlight into the crevices of my once-bedbug-infested bed, except instead of bedbugs, I was searching for the odd and the surprising details of someone’s life, the strangeness. What was the primary driving force for his life? I wondered. A woman in a green apron came out and swept the patio. Her brisk sweeping movements had a peaceful effect on me and I continued to stare down at the old text conversation that had transformed into an archive of a suicide-ghost.
34
Friday Septmber 27th: I’m having a good day, Helen. This weekend I’m going to go on a trip with my mom. When I received the text, I was inside a bodega in Brooklyn in the early evening. I had just purchased a giant bag of red licorice while my group of troubled people waited outside. A strange feeling overcame me as I read it, because the diction was so odd. And what trip? Where was he traveling to? So much travel in one year, I remembered thinking. I wished I had someone to show the text to, because what he said was so confusing. That night I never followed up or responded, I didn’t know how to, and no ethical compulsion came to me, instead I felt strange and colorless, like a piece of wet paper.
He sent it two days before he killed himself.
As I left the bodega, the colorless feeling went away. In front of me was a more immediate situation: I had to get my troubled young people on the A train and somehow conceal the licorice from them. Once on the train, the troubled young people decided to sing loudly and dance in a reckless way, grabbing onto the handlebars and swinging around, kicking their feet up to the ceiling. While most supervisors discouraged this type of disruptive behavior, I did not stop them, just this one time, because I thought it was a good opportunity for them to learn how to keep themselves entertained, and it allowed me to consume the entire bag of licorice unnoticed. By the time I got home, around eight at night, I forgot about the text entirely. I went to bed and slept peacefully and woke up without a care.
Two nights later, the night he killed himself, September 29th, I came down with a case of food poisoning from a bodega bean-and-cheese burrito, I spent the night post-burrito either in the bathroom on the toilet or on the floor, or in bed with the little key in my fist, about to get up to go across the hall to the toilet. It was strange, because my roommate Julie always said I had a cast-iron stomach, I could eat all kinds of disgusting things without consequence, but that night I was sick to my stomach, and for hours everything inside me emptied out.
What had I done? I thought. What had I not done? I brought my hands to my face. The woman in the green apron looked up from her sweeping.
I didn’t realize anyone was out here, she said. We’re closing.
I looked down at my phone; it was later than I thought. I gathered up my things and began to walk back to the house. I mimicked the woman’s sweeping movements to calm myself. It was dark out and the oncoming traffic shone a light on me and I felt singled out, spotlighted for a special purpose.
Why was he so depressed about everything? I said to no one.