At this point in my investigation, I attributed his suicide mostly to depression or perhaps a cry of unhappiness or maybe he simply lost control, even though he never lost control. I decided to take a different route, I crossed the traffic and went past our old Catholic school. I noticed the plastic vestibule had been installed in preparation for winter. This plastic vestibule had a very particular smell, I thought, the smell of the inside of a child’s shoes. For a few years I got along very well with the nuns, I saw a little of myself in them, whereas my adoptive brother despised the nuns, he said he would never be able to learn anything from such shriveled-up old prunes. For a moment, I thought about breaking into the school to inhale the aroma of the rubber-encased steps, to see if it was as fragrant as it was over twenty years ago. Then a tear almost came to my eye; I had gone to that school more than twenty years ago. Instead of breaking into the school overseen by the nuns and priests, I continued on my way and by the time I got home, I was covered in grass stains and dirt.
I fell into a deep ditch because it was so dark out and I had cut through a forest, not the child molestation forest, a different forest that was unknown to me, and I couldn’t see where I was going, and there were trees everywhere and the path was uneven, excuses, excuses, it was so dark! It was some kind of miracle that I had made it home at all. There were holes in the knees of my pants and streaks of oil down the shins. When I fell into the ditch, my knees scraped against some metal scaffolding and construction debris. It dawned on me that someone was trying to build a condo village in the middle of the forest. As I tried to pull myself out of the ditch I must have grabbed onto a piece of twisted metal because there were cuts all over my hands. Some people are lucky, I thought, I have always narrowly escaped total annihilation. I approached the house with my bleeding hands and oil-streaked legs, I saw the house lit up, and from the front lawn, the windows framed the brightly lit wreaths, even my bedroom windows that looked out onto the driveway, the smallest windows of the house, radiated a picturesque cheerfulness, and it wasn’t until I took in all of the gladness and cheer that I noticed there were two new cars in the driveway, one with an out-of-state license plate.
35
A few minutes passed as I took a leisurely path around the yard and then entered the house through the garage, which was left wide open, expectantly, and from the garage I went into the laundry room, where I took off my shoes and pants and washed my knees and hands with a bar of white soap. I found some bandages and put them on my cuts. I crept into the hallway, pants-less.
I lurked behind the kitchen door, then I peered around slowly. I saw a family of relatives, and even more shocking was the appearance of the Moon parents plus a young man who I believed was Zachary Moon. Scattered around the kitchen table were a few of my adoptive parents’ neighbors, one of them was grinding coffee beans with a whimsical-looking Japanese hand grinder. A woman put a glass pan in the oven and took one out. There were pans with foil on the counter, beverages and trays of cheese and nuts. I hadn’t seen any of them in years, relatives or neighbors. They spoke in low and respectful voices. The relatives were on my adoptive mother’s side and it gradually became clear to me that they were talking with the neighbors about college applications, the due dates, who was applying where, standardized tests, how expensive everything was, even the applications themselves. All of the neighbors in the kitchen were about to send children off to college, they were good, hearty Catholic breeders. They lived in large, sprawling mini-mansions, which they populated with mini-versions of themselves. Of course the Moons were a little different. Everyone at school thought they were part of a cult.
Zachary was talking to someone, and when he turned around, he caught me watching the scene unfold. He waved and started to approach the door, then I turned away and flew up the stairs, only to run into my adoptive mother. She was coming down the steps with a basket of laundry. I handed her the white envelope from the police. She opened it quickly and seemed upset.
What is it?
A gift certificate to Three Sons, the Greek restaurant.
Why is that upsetting?
What happened to your hands? And where are your pants?
I told her that I fell down into a ditch.
Oh, she said as if it were the most perfectly natural thing in the world for me to tell her that I had fallen into a ditch.
She didn’t even ask what kind.
As she passed me she said, the relatives are staying overnight with us. I thought we might put them in your room.
She didn’t even give me a chance to say no, no, that is a terrible idea. She was already standing in the foyer talking to a neighbor who occupied her with a very sympathetic look; from the stairs I saw the neighbor’s large, wide tearful eyes and nodding head. Whatever the neighbor said moved my adoptive mother to tears, and then the neighbor started crying and it went back and forth and back and forth.
My own eyes did not tear up; I enjoyed my position as the neutral and passive observer. I went into my bedroom, where I noticed the relatives’ suitcases and jackets and backpacks had been laid out on my childhood bed. Beneath all of their things was a bedspread I had never seen before. I opened one of the relatives’ suitcases. There was a funeral suit neatly folded, a black V-neck sweater, and freshly polished funeral shoes, which made me think of my turtleneck sweater. Where was my turtleneck sweater? On top of the funeral clothing was a giant bottle of Advil.