The Empire of the Dead (29 page)

Bootes, Aquila, the Little Dipper (like the tiller of a ship). Saturn and Mars. A star cluster, low in the west, too faint to have been etched on the planetarium's star ball.

Though the air is warm, I figure a fire would be nice. An aesthetic pleasure. One should never forego an aesthetic pleasure. I gather twigs and sticks and, using the car's cigarette lighter, start a little flame. Sparks flit here and there, mingling with lightning bugs. A
meteor spikes through Cassiopeia. Antares, in the heart of the scorpion, shines like a candle flame through a little patch of alabaster.

I must have slept, stretched across the hood of my car. The ground is moist with dew and the air is chilly. I've got a crick in my neck. I wander into a field and take a piss. Meteors
zizzle
. In the south, a few stars rarely visible in this hemisphere poke above the horizon, their light as faint as a far-off lament.

On my radio, a newsman says New York's World Trade Center will host an important economic summit tomorrow: “There'll be much excitement around the Twin Towers. Following the '93 bombing incident, security, naturally, will be tight.”

More jazz. The Bill Evans Trio, from the Village Vanguard sessions—recorded, says an announcer, just days before Scott Lafaro, the bass player, was killed in an automobile accident.

Castor and Pollux gleam above the road: a pair of quarreling brothers. The moon begins to rise. The sky is many colors: black, silver, yellow, deep blue. A faint eggplant tint, over in the east.

I turn off the radio and crawl into the back seat, wrapped in the Yucca curtain. At dawn I wake. Sunlight streaks across the remaining stars until even the most gorgeous are gone.

“The prodigal brother,” Marty says. “In the bosom of his family at last!”

“Don't start with the literary allusions,” I say.

“Deal—as long as you promise to keep the cosmos out of our conversations.”

I laugh. “Neither of us will be able to play by these rules.”

“Come in, come in. Let me look at you. You're thin. Don't you eat?”

“It's been stressful.”

“You always
were
a-quiver, as the poets say.”

“There you go again.”

“How ‘bout I whip us up some spaghetti? We'll unload your car later. Scotch, vodka, beer?”

“Red wine?”

“You got it.”

Since I saw him last, Marty's brown hair has thinned at the temples and he's gained six or seven pounds. Otherwise, he's the same: slightly bowlegged, long-faced and prematurely jowly, like Dad. He's wearing khaki pants, a white shirt, and black cowboy boots. His house is austere. A hound's-tooth couch, a couple of wooden rocking chairs. A plain deal table in the center of the dining room. On it,
The Riverside Shakespeare
, open to a page of
Hamlet
, and the rough drafts of a pair of Marty's articles.

As a sign of his hospitality he's displayed on an otherwise empty shelf a book I sent him one Christmas on the work of Joseph Cornell. I thought it might be a point of connection between us, science and art, though as I recall he never said a word about it. The book offers photographs of Cornell's shadowboxes:
Toward the “Blue Peninsula
,” a simple white container filled with wire mesh. Behind the wire, a tiny window opens onto startling blue sky—a glimpse of infinity in a claustrophobic space.
Cassiopeia #1
, only fourteen inches wide, its inner walls plastered with star charts: heaven folded into the equivalent of a cigar box.
Solar Set
, a box featuring sketches of the sun and of Earth's orbit around it, behind five fluted glasses, each holding clear yellow or shadowy blue marbles—phases of the moon. Staring at the book, I'm struck with a fierce and piercing homesickness for the planetarium.

Charmingly, a small brick fireplace occupies the northeast corner of Marty's living room. On the mantel sits a china doll in a glass bubble. I'd forgotten Marty took it when we sold our folks' house. It used to belong to our grandmother. “Grandma would be pleased,” I call to Marty. He's uncorking a smoky bottle in the kitchen.

“What's that?”

“Her doll. It would tickle her that you kept it.”

“Oh, nothing satisfied that old woman.”

“True.”

“It comforts me to have it there. You know. The familiarity.”

“You never struck me as sentimental,” I say. I join him in the kitchen.

He's poured himself a whiskey. “Sentimental? No,” he says. “I like order. Continuity. That's all.”

On the pantry door, by the stove, he's taped a newspaper headline:
MCVEIGH DEAD
. “Like I say,” he says, catching my stare. “Order.”

“‘Move on.' Wasn't that your advice to me?” I ask.

“Absolutely. But we can't pretend it didn't happen.”

We take our drinks to the table. He shoves aside Shakespeare. “Once the theater's finished—
if
we can get the damn architects to agree—we're thinking
Hamlet
will be our first production,” he says.

“Been busy,” I say, nodding at his drafts.

“Doing okay. If nothing else, I've got good work habits. I've become a set-in-his-ways old man.”

“Hardly old.”

“Dad was like that. Remember?” Marty asks. “He loved us, but he was happiest, I think, on his own, puttering around his tools and that junk in the garage.”

“No. That's not how I picture him at all.” I sip my wine. “It seemed to me he was always making an effort to help other people—his ‘moral obligations.' Remember? Like those roughnecks, those Mexican guys.”

“Who?”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. When was this?”

“Oh, we were seven or eight. He had them to supper. You really don't remember?”

He shakes his head and laughs. “‘Moral obligations'? All I know is, he acted so aggrieved whenever I asked him for something. Extra allowance, the car keys.”

“Hm. You didn't keep his core samples, did you? His rock collection?”

“I think it got tossed when the house sold.”

“I always loved those pieces.”

“Yeah, well, that stuff … that was
your
thing with him. ‘Nother drink?” Marty asks.

“I'm fine. And you?”

He pours himself a second whiskey. “Me?”

“
Your
thing with Dad?”

He laughs. “In college, when I told him I was going to major in English, he didn't say a word. Later, I found out he'd phoned my professors, asking them, ‘What the hell can an English grad do?'”

“That's sweet.”

“Sweet? Meddling, is what it was.”

“He was concerned about you.”

“More about him than me. I was his obligation, but I don't think morality had anything to do with it.”

Down the block, a lawnmower whines. A clock ticks in the kitchen.

“I appreciate you letting me stay, Marty.”

He toasts me.

“Even if the board hadn't forced me out, I'm not sure I … I mean, I was struggling.”

“With what?”

“Women. Work. You know.” Susan's face floats like a pane of light in the air in front of me. “But mostly …” I glance toward the pantry door, at the killer's bold, familiar name.

“Still?”

“Don't tell me you don't feel it, too.”

He shakes his head.

“It's funny to hear myself say this.” It would take an 82-inch telescope, shoved down my throat, to locate everything I'm feeling now. “I've been trying to ignore it, but … maybe it took seeing you to pull it out of me.”

Inconsolable?

“Adam, we've talked about this.”

“You said it yourself. You can't pretend the past didn't happen.”

“Yes. But you put it behind you.”

“How?”

“File it away.”

“Fine. But
how
?”

“I don't know. You work. You fuck. You drink.” He stands. “You cook. I'm going to put the spaghetti on. And you should take a shower. What did you do, sleep in the car last night?”

“As a matter of fact.”

He looks at me and sighs.

“All right,” I say. “I won't be long.”

In the back bedroom, I slip out of my clothes. A bed, a night table, a chair, a set of dresser drawers. No curtains on the window, overlooking a small backyard. No pictures on the walls. I shower quickly, comb my hair in the dresser mirror, pull on a pair of jeans and a blue cotton shirt. Gingerly, I open a dresser drawer. Empty. Another one, the same. In a bottom drawer I find a handful of faded snapshots: Marty and me as kids. We're dressed in dark shorts and black and white Oxfords. Quintessential 1950s geeks. All that's missing are the Davy Crockett coonskin caps. The grin on Marty's face—wide, slightly crooked—I saw only minutes ago, in the kitchen.

The spaghetti is clumpy and thick. Marty apologizes. “Actually, I don't often cook,” he says. “On my own, you know, it doesn't seem worth the trouble.” My poor, fucked-up brother. Something
is
wrong with us. Dad knew it. Something has always been wrong. Maybe Marty's inconsolable too. Perhaps he just hides it better. “I usually grab a burger on my way home from school.”

He tops off my glass.

“I used to eat at the airport,” I tell him. “I liked the bland atmosphere.”

“You're a weird duck, bro, you know that?”

“I could relax there. No demands.”

We laugh awkwardly.

“So,” I say. “We're going to be okay?”

“You and me? Sure. Why not?”

“Do you remember how angry you'd get at me for messing with your toys? How Mom had to run to our room and make peace?” I ask. “Tell me you remember that.”

“I remember.”

“I'm relieved.”

“I don't have toys any more. We'll be fine.” He chuckles. “Though I'll tell you … as a kid, I remember thinking life was great till you showed up, bawling, pissing, and shitting.” The truth at last! “For a while there, I thought you were going to take away everything I had.”

“Great. And here I am again,” I say.

“At
my
invitation.” The whiskey has loosened him up. “The thing with you was, you had such a
rage
to know everything. To put your hands on it, like a blind person.” He reaches for the bottle. “Honestly, Adam, it wasn't the
stuff
, the toys and such … I worried you saw things—the truth of them—in ways I never could. I was in awe of you, bro.”

“Bullshit.”

“It's true. And of course I hated the hell out of you for it.”

“I couldn't see
anything
, Marty. I was too busy anticipating your next meltdown.”

He gives me an oh-so-innocent look.

“Honestly. Every move I made, I knew it upset you. Cards on the table? I remember our childhood as a series of little explosions.”

“Well. Two little geniuses together, what do you expect?” Marty grins.

“But you
did
make the sun rise,” I say.

“Come again?”

“When you pulled back the bedroom shade, real dramatic. Told me to sit up, get ready. Remember?”

He drains his whiskey. “You were a pain in the ass, little bro.”

“So were you,” I say.

We stand and clap each other's backs.

As we unload the car, he doesn't say a word about the theater curtains or my pointer. Once we've arranged my stuff in the guest room, he yawns loudly, a bit theatrically. “I'm bushed,” he says.

“Me too.”

“Got everything you need?”

“I'm fine,” I say. “Thanks.”

In the dark, I see the first edge of moonlight slide across the floor from the bedroom window. I set my things around the room; fill the dresser drawers with my underclothes and socks. Yesterday, the sky expanded above me. Tonight I'm safe and snug.

I won't sleep.

I sit on the edge of the bed, thinking of Susan.

Through the walls I think I hear—yes, exactly, as in the old days—Marty's light snores.

In the morning, Marty goes to teach his classes. He lives on the east side of Marfa and commutes a few miles to his college in a little town called Alpine. I tell him I'll poke around Marfa for a while, and we agree to meet at lunchtime. He'll take me to the desert to see the theater.

Before I leave the house I phone Susan. She's not doing well today. “Nausea and headaches,” she says. “It happens.”

“Can Anna help you?”

“She tries. She's doing more of the grocery shopping for me. Daniel's very kind, but he wasn't prepared for this, of course. We were pretty distant already and under these circumstances … well, everything's a little forced. Hard to find our balance together. Especially knowing what's coming.”

“I'm so sorry, Susan.”

“And you? You made it to your brother's?”

“We're fine. It's very comfortable here. He couldn't be more accommodating. Susan, I apologize for my call the other night. The last thing I want to do is add to your pressures.”

“It's okay. Let's not talk about it.”

Move on
, I think.
Everyone's always moving on.
Except they aren't. Not really. “Yes. All right. But if I decide to come back to Dallas after spending a little time here, can we, I mean, do you think—”

“I don't know. For me, right now, it's one minute to the next.”

“Yes, but promise me—”

“I can't promise
anything
, Adam! I have to be here for Anna.”

“The feeling you get in your belly.”

“What?”

“It's how my mom described a ‘moral obligation.'”

“That's beautiful. Adam?”

“Yes?”

“I think I need to lie down now.”

“Is someone there with you?”