Twenty-Three

Twenty-Three

Whenever Grant remembers it now, it always feels like flashbacks, like—and it sounds so dumb to him, out loud—like his memory turned into a montage.

He remembers the party he was at, a last-minute decision to attend Brianna Peltzer’s last-minute party, celebrating nothing but another Friday. He had vague plans to see Lauren DiSantos afterward—but the party wasn’t Lauren’s scene.

He remembers the bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon someone handed him at the start of the night, the sweat on the glass, the way having a beer in his hand always made him feel older and more world-weary, like he was already at college. He remembers looking up and seeing his ex-girlfriend Desiree, and the forbidden attraction of ex-girlfriend, as a concept. She’d picked up his hand in a knowing sort of way and pulled him onto the dance floor. They danced. They kissed.

He’d had only a sip of his beer, while everyone else at the party was still drinking.

It had seemed like the right thing to do.

They pulled up to Desiree’s driveway shortly after midnight. There was the familiar oak tree out front where they’d taken prom photos a week ago. Grant and Desiree had been together since sophomore year. It suddenly seemed strange and sad that they weren’t together anymore. Desiree looked over at him from the passenger seat, and he knew she was thinking the same thing.

Grant doesn’t remember exactly what he said. Instead, he remembers the fullness of Desiree’s lips and the way they curved up a little at his response. He remembers brushing back the hair on her shoulder, the soft light of the driveway breaking through the curtain of blond. He remembers laughing as they dodged the sprinklers on her parents’ lawn, and the way her finger looked pressed against her lips as they tiptoed upstairs to her bedroom. He remembers feeling a stab of guilt as he thought of Lauren DiSantos—he’d said he would be at her house by midnight. He could be a little late.

He remembers the sex being good, and sad, and maybe good because it was a little sad.

Grant wishes now he’d been less sure.

Grant doesn’t remember the song on the radio, or the color of the car in front of him, or the flavor of soda he had in the cupholder of his mom’s minivan.

He remembers the time—

2:03 a.m.

and the weather—

cloudy, with a chance of showers

and his destination—

Lauren DiSantos’s house,

but maybe his own house,

he didn’t have to decide until after the next stop on Route 22.

He remembers the speedometer—

60 MPH—

and looking up to see—

A PERSON, SHIT—

65 MPH

Grant doesn’t think he should tell you this part, but you want to hear it.

Grant remembers opening the door to the smell of smoke in the air and the crunch of glass beneath his feet. He remembers the car not showing much damage—he thinks, but that might not be true, his parents got rid of the car the following week. There were other people—their faces and clothes and genders all blurred by memory now—silhouetted by blinking hazard lights formed in an arc around him.

Grant wanted to ask, Are you talking about me?

But he had to check on the victim first.

He remembers his approach being stopped by the firm grip of a stranger, a man in his late forties who looked the way Grant imagined fathers were supposed to look. (This didn’t make any sense because Grant had a father, one who looked nothing like this man, but that was neither here nor there.)

The man shook his head. “We all saw what happened. It wasn’t your fault.”

Grant remembers a sudden, swooping dread filling his stomach.

Grant remembers wondering for one wild second if he should lie.

Helen thinks of all her memories of that night as locked in a single, flooded room in the back of her mind. Before she opens the door, she always tries to remember the good things first.

How as a toddler, Michelle had been a strangely sweet shadow following her everywhere, always willing to share her toys and candy. How she’d been obsessed with animals, and how they’d spearheaded a joint campaign to adopt a chocolate Labrador puppy, or an orange tabby kitten, or maybe just a pair of parakeets, it doesn’t matter what color, we swear (all unsuccessful). How much Michelle loved the strawberries growing in the backyard of that first cramped duplex apartment in Union, New Jersey, where they’d shared a bedroom—and how she’d cried the entire car ride as they left the plants behind to move to Dunollie, with its better school district and much-needed space.

In the brief sixteen years of their sisterhood, Helen estimates they were too young to remember the first two years, close as adolescent sisters could be for ten years, and at near-constant odds for the last four years. In the balance of things, it seems like a ratio she should be able to wield in her favor, to ward off the memory of one tragic night.

But it never seems to work out that way.

Helen remembers being left behind while her parents went to the morgue.

She doesn’t remember how she felt—sad, is what she told the school counselors who asked, a week later—she remembers only an overwhelming need to clean Michelle’s room now, now, NOW before Mom and Dad get back. It was a mental directive so imperative she could feel it itching in every skin cell still touching her comforter as she lay in bed waiting for the sound of the garage door to shut behind her parents’ car. A family friend was on their way to the house to watch over Helen; she didn’t have much time.

She remembers racing into Michelle’s room and feeling silly once she got inside. The room smelled like confirmation that Michelle was still very much alive, like she’d burst in at any moment pissed that Helen had gone through her things.

Helen knows the word suicide hadn’t occurred to her yet—that would come later. Even as she fumbled with the empty battery compartment of Michelle’s Hello Kitty clock to retrieve those little knotted plastic bags full of powder, Helen thought it was still possible everyone was wrong, that the body they’d found on Route 22 in that terrible accident wasn’t Michelle’s. If they’d known, why would her parents have to ID the body? Or maybe it was Michelle, but she wasn’t dead-dead—didn’t people come back to life in ambulances all the time, in TV shows?

Either way, Helen remembers feeling like the world’s best sister as she combed through all of Michelle’s favorite hiding spots and flushed all evidence of anything that might suggest substance abuse problems down the toilet.

That was when she remembered the last words they’d said to each other.

It was after dinner, less than six hours ago. Helen had been sitting up in bed, Facebook stalking her fellow classmates in the incoming Dartmouth Class of 2012, as if knowing enough about them would allow her to astral project herself three months into the future, when this suffocating house and everyone in it would be nothing but a distant memory. Michelle had come in to curl her hair, because Helen’s mirror was better than hers. She had plans to sneak out to a party—Helen didn’t approve, but Helen never approved. Michelle wanted to borrow a necklace, and Helen said no.

Michelle was silent for a beat. Then, cruelly: “Sometimes I wish you weren’t my sister.”

Helen looked up from her laptop at last.

Freeze it right here, Helen always wants to tell whoever’s playing the film reel of her life. But the scene continues relentlessly:

Michelle stared at her mutinously, jaw working on some response that never came. Helen remembers feeling a stab of regret, but—hadn’t Michelle started it?

Then Michelle yanked the hot curling iron from the wall and hurled it across the room at Helen.

Michelle ran out and slammed the door shut behind her.

Helen remembers opening Michelle’s laptop and the screen being a little blurry—she must have been crying, though she doesn’t remember crying—as she deleted a secret folder full of Michelle’s favorite erotic Lord of the Rings fan fiction. Michelle didn’t write any fan fiction, as far as Helen knew, but she liked annoying Helen by reading the saucy sections out loud whenever she wanted Helen to leave her alone. Michelle was annoying like that. Michelle was too annoying to be dead.

She opened Michelle’s internet browser history, with the intention to clear it of any porn or incriminating drug-related searches. And she remembers what she found.

It felt more like finding a noose than a note.

Helen remembers thinking viciously, I’ll never forgive you, if this is all you left behind.

She didn’t delete it just in case it was. She scanned the room for anything obviously intended to be read in this situation.

Nothing.

The silence in the room became eerie.

Helen remembers convincing herself then that searching for a physical note was silly. Of course Michelle wouldn’t have done that, of course it would have been too old-fashioned for her, of course if she’d written any kind of suicide letter, she would have done so on her laptop and left it somewhere to be unearthed digitally—in her email drafts or in a password-protected file buried deep enough on the hard drive that only Helen would know how to access it.

Of course Michelle wouldn’t have left this earth without getting the last word, even if it was just one final fuck you to the only sister she’d ever had.

Helen remembers being impressed by her own sense of regained calm as she copied the entirety of Michelle’s digital legacy onto a hard drive to be searched thoroughly, exhaustively, at a later date.

Once she was sure Michelle was really dead.

Grant wants you to know what happened after he left the funeral.

He remembers stepping outside into the humid, gray summer afternoon, with Helen’s voice still ringing in his ears. She wants you to leave, now. He remembers a choked, horrible lump in his throat, and a burning in his lungs, and thinking he absolutely must not cry while he was still visible to anyone inside the church. He didn’t want to be seen lingering about the premises, as if he didn’t understand perfectly what she’d been saying. Leave. Now.

So Grant left and drove to the old pizza shop up the mountain, because he didn’t want to go home and tell Dad he’d been right about the funeral. He remembers wondering what became of the man (not Dad) who had stood with him reassuringly while the police questioned him at the scene. That man disappeared at some point, and Grant never saw him again.

He remembers the smell of warm olive oil and dough in the air as he ordered a slice of pepperoni pizza with a can of Coke. He remembers the pretty redhead behind the counter smiling at him, and then hearing his name—“Grant?”—and turning to see Kevin Palermo, sitting with other graduating seniors from the football team.

Grant hadn’t seen any of them since the party at Brianna Peltzer’s house, the stupid party he shouldn’t have gone to.

Grant remembers discovering he had a terrible new power that day in the pizza shop.

That he could get away with killing someone and everyone would still treat him the same as always, as if he hadn’t done it at all.