Page 65 of After His Eulogy
The second week is harder. The second week is harder because Mendez has not called. Mendez said two weeks. Mendez has not called. Day eight, day nine, day ten. Nothing. Reed and I have agreed not to talk about Mendez until Mendez calls, which is a thing we have agreed about and which is also a thing that does not work, because not-talking-about-Mendez is the only thing we are doing. On Monday of the second week, I call my sister. I have not called her in three weeks. I usually call her every week. She has not been pushing. She has been letting me be the one who calls. She is the older one and she is the one who has decided, since we were kids, that I get to set the pace of contact. She has been doing it for thirty-two years. I almost do not call her. I almost do not call her because I have realized, sitting on my couch with the phone in my hand on a Monday afternoon, what calling her now means. I’ve been thinking about it since the morning. Since I woke up next to Reed and thoughtI should call Sara. Since I made coffee and thought it. Since I sat down at the desk and thought it. Since I picked up the phone and put it down twice. I’ve been thinking about it because I’ve understood, in away I hadn’t let myself understand last week, what it’s going to mean if I go.
If I go, Sara doesn’t know. She never knows. She goes on with her life, and at some point she gets a phone call about her brother — there’s been an accident, there’s been an illness, your brother. She grieves and she puts away photographs and she writes a eulogy in her head and she lives the rest of her life inside the version where I end. She doesn’t get told the truth. Doesn’t get a letter from me later. Doesn’t get to know I’m alive somewhere, building something with somebody, having a soup somebody’s mother used to make. Sara gets the death and Sara has to live with the death and Sara never knows. I sit with the phone for a long time. I had planned this call last week — to tell her that I was with someone, that something might be changing, some version of what was happening. I had been working on the words for a week.
I cannot tell her any of it. I cannot tell her any of it because if I tell her, then later, when I am gone, she has a thread. She has a man named Reed. She has a town she might call. She has a story she does not let go of, the way she does not let go of stories, because Sara is pulls on a thread until the thread comes out, and Reed is somebody whose life depends on no thread coming out. Sara cannot have a thread. The version of me who goes into this life cannot have left her with a single fact she could pull on. I almost put the phone down. I do not put the phone down. I do not put the phone down because Sara has not heard from me in three weeks and Sara has been sitting with that and Sara is waits, but Sara is also a person, and three weeks of silence is its own thread. I owe her a call. I press her name. She picks up on the second ring.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“You okay.”
“Yes.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“Griffin.”
“Yes, Sara.”
“You haven’t called in three weeks.”
“I know.”
“You called me twice a week for two years and now you have not called in three weeks. Is something happening.”
I sit with it. I sit with it because the easy version of this call would be to tell her something. Even something small. Even I am dating someone would be a thing to tell her. I am dating someone would be the thing that makes the three weeks make sense, would let her relax, would let her have an explanation. I am dating someone would be the kind sister-thing.
I cannot say I am dating someone.
I cannot give her that name in any form.
“I’m okay, Sara.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“I know.”
“Griffin.”
“I am working on a paper that has not been going well. I have been distracted. I have been bad about calling. I am sorry.”
“Are you sleeping.”
“Yes.”
“Are you eating.”
“Yes.”
“Are you…“
“Sara. I am okay. I am having a hard semester. The Hellman seminar is hard. The paper is hard. I have been keeping my head down. That is what has been happening.”
She is quiet. She is quiet for a second longer than she would normally be quiet, and the second is the second that tells me shehas heard the thing in my voice that does not match the thing I am saying. Sara is hears the thing in my voice. I have been her brother for thirty-one years and there is no version of I am okay I can deliver that she cannot read.
“Okay,” she says.
