When You Were Older (7 page)

‘Nothing, Buddy. I just found something.’

‘Something bad?’

‘No. Good. Very good.’

It was good for so many reasons. I was still counting all the reasons as I spoke.

Good, because it meant I didn’t have to somehow find thousands of non-existent dollars for a traditional funeral. Even better because I didn’t have to stress that I was making the wrong choice, handling things in a way she wouldn’t have wanted. And another reason. I had my doubts about Ben and the traditional funeral. You know, with the open casket, and the dear departed dressed and made up to look remarkably lifelike. How would Ben react to a sight like that? He was still waiting for her to come back. Obviously. I’d been having a nightmare fantasy that he’d pick her up from the coffin and carry her home, and no one would be able to stop him.

And a final blessing: a memorial, with a nice photo, and an urn of ashes, was not nearly so time-sensitive. Which made it more Ben-sensitive. We could wait a month if we needed to. Two, even. Give him more time to adjust.

I looked up to see him standing in the TV room doorway, his head nearly pressing the top of the door frame.

‘What’d you find?’

‘Some plans Mom made.’

‘Why good?’

‘Because they let me know what she wanted me to do.’

‘Oh. What?’

Now, how was I going to answer that one? Sometimes the truth just doesn’t fit the moment.

‘Kind of a long story.’

‘Why don’t you just ask her when she comes back?’

‘Because … Buddy … she’s not coming back.’

Ben turned and disappeared back into the TV room.

I decided I’d be a better brother if I didn’t just let it go by.

I joined Ben in the TV room, where I picked up the remote and muted the sound on his cartoon.

‘Hey!’ he said. ‘I’m watching this!’

‘But I want to talk to you.’

‘Leave it on, though.’

‘I can’t think and talk to you with all that noise.’

‘Leave it on quiet.’

‘But then you’ll listen to Bugs Bunny and not me.’

‘No. I’ll listen.’

‘Promise?’

‘Yeah. Promise.’

I de-muted the sound and turned it down to barely audible. I watched Ben lean in a little closer to try to hear. But then the cartoon ended, and a commercial came on, and I muted the sound again, and he turned his head toward me. But still with his gaze off at an angle toward the rug.

‘I don’t think you know what it means when somebody dies,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘It means you don’t see them again.’

No answer from Ben.

‘Like Sandy. Remember Sandy?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Our dog. Our collie dog. Remember?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. Too bad. I thought you might remember Sandy.’

‘I don’t, though.’

‘Let me see if I can find a picture. Maybe that’ll help.’

I leapt to my feet and hurried into the living room, hoping the old photo album was right where it had always used to be. In the compartment under the end table next to the living room couch.

I opened the little compartment door with the brass handle, reached in, and there it was. I felt it immediately. It was huge, an ancient antique wooden
scrapbook
with leather hinges. It had lived in our family much longer than I had.

I heard the volume come up to blasting again on the TV. Sylvester and Tweety Bird.

I rummaged through photo after photo of my mom and dad, doing my best not to get distracted by emotion. I could always do that later. Right at that moment I had an important brotherly role to perform.

And then, there she was. Sandy. A perfect Lassie lookalike. A beautiful dog. It stretched my heart painfully to look at her photo. She’d been there when I was born. Sometimes I think she was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes. Sometimes I think I mistook myself for a puppy at first. I’d loved her abjectly, completely. I’d been devastated by her death. I’d been maybe six when she died. And I hadn’t understood. I’d wanted to see her again, and I couldn’t understand why no one would help.

In the photo, I was there with her. I was not even two. Leaning on her, holding her fur in a way that must have hurt her, while she smiled. Patient. Proud. I’d learned to walk by holding her that way.

I took the album back into the TV room.

I turned the TV volume down to almost nothing again.

‘Hey!’ Ben said. ‘I’m watching this!’

‘This was Sandy.’

I set the album on his lap.

His eyes came away from the TV for the first time I could remember.

He touched the photo.

‘Oh!’ he said. Hushed. Reverent. ‘She’s a good dog! She’s a nice dog!’

Bingo. Oh, snap. I’d done it.

‘See? You remember.’

‘No.’

‘Then how do you know she’s a good dog?’

‘Well. Just look. Just look at her.’

Nice try, I thought. Next time I wouldn’t be so quick to congratulate myself.

‘Hey. Ben. Wait a minute. If you don’t remember her, how did you know she was a she?’

I hadn’t used any gender-specific pronouns.

Ben didn’t answer for a long time.

Then he said, ‘That’s a hard question.’

He closed the wooden scrapbook and dropped it on the rug, and his eyes returned to the TV.

I sighed.

‘Let’s try this a different way. Maybe instead of expecting to see Mom the old way, the way you’re used to, maybe you could be open to something new.’

I was pretty sure he wasn’t listening.

Until he said, ‘What?’

‘Like, maybe you won’t
see
her again. But maybe you can
feel
her here.’

‘Why wouldn’t I see her?’ He sounded agitated. Suddenly alarmed.

‘I just meant, maybe you’ll feel her looking over your shoulder. You know. Still with you.’

‘But why wouldn’t I
see
her?’

Ben struggled to his feet and began to pace in that special way that only Ben paced. I’d forgotten all about it.

The refresher course didn’t take long.

My brother Ben didn’t pace in a straight line. And he didn’t go around in a circle either, though the effect was similar. Ben paced endless squares. Out with the left foot, out with the right, sharp ninety-degree left turn, repeat. Around and around in a clumsy box of his own creation. All he had to do was miss a turn to escape the box. But he never did. Until he was damn good and ready.

‘Why wouldn’t I
see
her?’ he wailed.

‘Ben, I—’

‘You tell me why I wouldn’t
see
her, Buddy. Why wouldn’t I
see
her?’

And that was my second fast refresher. After the pacing box, the broken record. Once Ben got off on a tear like that, repeating the same impassioned question more than two or three times, his clutch seemed to stick. No more shifting gears for some time.

I was in for a long night.

Brilliant, Russell, I thought. You sure did a stellar job on that.

Unclear for the moment on how these situations used to be handled – I was remembering each phase of this
as
I went along – I jumped up and tried to stop him. I stood in front of him, so he’d have to stop his obsessive box-pacing to keep from bowling me down.

Then I was on the rug looking up at the ceiling, and wondering how badly I’d twisted the muscle I felt twanging in my back.

He hadn’t struck me. He hadn’t even pushed me out of the way. He just hadn’t stopped.

‘Buddy,’ I said, absorbing his panic. ‘Stop.’

‘But why wouldn’t I
see
her?’

I ducked out of the TV room, and into the living room, where I breathed long and deeply. I could still hear him, repeating the same question. Over and over. And over. And over.

What did we used to do, my mom and me?

Well. I knew the answer to that.
We
didn’t.
She
did.

Then I was hit with a strange thought. Here I was telling Ben to be open to feeling Mom with him. Was I willing to try the cure I was prescribing?

‘OK, Mom,’ I said. ‘What did you used to do?’

Chalk it up to the fact that I’d turned my mind a hundred per cent to the question. Because I don’t forget things. So if I hadn’t known before, it’s because I hadn’t yet tried to remember.

‘Cookies,’ I said out loud.

When Ben would get stuck, our mom would bake cookies. And Ben’s tantrum would last just about as long as it took her to bake them, and let them cool a bit.
And
then she’d bring them in to Ben and say, ‘Look, honey. Cookies.’ And by then he’d be tired and rundown, and enough of a distraction could break the cycle. And cookies were enough of a distraction.

There was only one problem. I didn’t know how to bake cookies.

‘Well, Mom?’ I asked.

And then I had another remembering. When we were little, she’d made them from scratch. But then later, when she had enough to do looking after Ben, she’d given that up. Gone instead to the type you buy at the market, as unbaked tubes of dough. Because the difference was lost on Ben anyway.

I ran to the kitchen. Even in the kitchen I could hear him.

‘You tell me, Buddy! You tell me why I wouldn’t see her!’

I rummaged through the freezer and found no cookie dough. Just my luck these days. But then I thought, maybe you don’t freeze them. Maybe you keep them in the refrigerator. I opened the fridge door, purposely not looking at the postcards.

And there it was. Granted, I had to lift two casserole dishes to see it. But I found it. Two-thirds of a tube of chocolate-chip cookie dough in a plastic ziplock sandwich bag.

My luck seemed to be changing.

I set about following the directions on the tube. But it was hard, because the first couple of words
of
each sentence had been cut off for previous batches.

But I got the oven temperature. Three hundred and fifty degrees. And I figured out that you cut the dough into one-inch rounds and cut the rounds into quarters. And then baked them for … that part was cut off. I could only see a two. So, two minutes? Twelve? Twenty-two?

I reminded myself not to panic, or hurry. After all, Ben wasn’t going to hurry his tantrum. The whole idea was in the timing. In the way we would meet up at the end.

‘Cool on a wire rack.’

I plowed through what seemed like every cupboard, and found no wire rack. They’d just have to cool on something else.

I cut eight, and then sat at the kitchen table with my head in my hands while they baked. I purposely didn’t go back into the TV room with Ben. I couldn’t. I couldn’t unhook from his tantrum. Watching him, listening to him, made me feel like I was falling apart, just as surely as he was.

After a while I put my hands over my ears. Hard.

About fifteen minutes after that, I was using a spatula to lift eight cookies on to a yellow plastic plate, noting that Ben’s voice had gotten hoarse and quiet. In fact, I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

But I still knew.

I stood at the open door of the TV room, cookies in hand. I think he smelled them. I saw him miss a step.

‘Look, Buddy. I made you cookies.’

He stopped.

Oh my God. He stopped.

It’s hard to describe the relief.

He’d been crying. His eyes were red, his face streaked with tears. And his nose was running. I mean
running
. Not a little. Buckets.

I got him a box of tissues from my mom’s bedroom, and, when I got back, he was sitting in one of the stuffed chairs, eating a cookie.

I handed him five or six tissues, but he just held them in one hand and kept eating. So I took them back, and wiped his nose.

It was a low moment in our relationship.

I threw away the tissues and then just sat watching him.

‘Can I have a cookie, too?’ I asked.

‘Yeah.’

And then, after a long pause, he held the plate out in my direction. But all I could think about was the running faucet of his nose.

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘They’re all for you.’

‘Mom’s are better.’

And that’s what I get for being a nice guy. That is, if I am.

‘They’re both made from exactly the same dough.’

‘But hers are baked right. This is burned. Right here.’

He showed me the bottom of the cookie. He was right. It was blackened all around one edge.

‘Sorry. I did my best. But I’m not much of a baker.’

Oddly, as I said it, I thought about that girl who was. Even though I’d only met her the one time.

‘It’s OK. I’ll just give the burny part to …’

I waited for him to finish the sentence. But he never did. But he tipped his hand on where he’d been headed with that thought. He reached the burned edge of cookie out and down toward the floor. To about dog level.

So, he remembered. Even though maybe he didn’t remember that he remembered. Or maybe I’d just gotten him thinking about dogs by showing him the picture.

But … no. You can think about dogs all you want, but if you’ve never had one, as best you can recall, you don’t automatically give them your only-slightly-less-than-edible leftovers. That’s not instinct. That’s habit.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Who what?’ As if he’d forgotten the entire proposition.

He set the burned edge of cookie on the very outermost edge of his plate.

‘Who were you going to give that to?’

Ben thought that over for a time.

‘That’s a hard question,’ he said.

He looked up to the TV screen. The cartoon show was over. I glanced at my watch. Seven minutes after eight. So much for Patty Jespers’s declaration of ‘Not a minute sooner. Not a minute later.’

I watched his eyes go wide.

‘Time is it?’ he asked nervously.

‘Seven minutes after eight.’

He dropped the plate on to the floor. Cookies rolled in every possible direction.

‘Past my bedtime.’

‘It’s just a few minutes.’

‘But I go to bed at eight.’

‘It’s just—’

‘I have to brush my teeth. I have to go to work tomorrow. I can’t be tired. Mr McCaskill wouldn’t like it if I was tired.’

He hurried off – as best Ben knew how to hurry – while I searched for cookies under the furniture.