"He said the single worst thing I can do is turn Joel into some kind of hero or saint, or seal him up in an airless time capsule that will never get excavated. Let your mother do that, but not you." |
Not to Be Reproduced, René Magritte (1937)
When my older brother died I began seeing a child psychologist named Patrick Rose who practiced out of a basement space. He was tall and freakishly thin and wore a green and red African dashiki extravagantly beaded along the neckline. He chain-smoked Larks and had a small fan next to his chair which was supposed to direct the smoke upward towards the bunker’s only open window but seemed to have the opposite effect of blowing it straight at me. The first thing he told me was that he himself had lost a sibling when he was around my age – an older brother, just like me – and you could say that led him to this line of work. So he knew where I was coming from and more importantly, he knew what I was headed for. One of the things he did that I wasn’t especially keen on was his constant drawing on his own experience – in some sessions we ended up talking more about his brother than mine. My brother Phil this, my brother Phil that, on and on until my time was up.
A few weeks in he asked me to bring a photo of Joel. Any photo would do. I knew better than to ask my mother if I could borrow one from the shrine that Joel’s room had become, so I lifted a random one from a box of Polaroids labeled Do Not Touch that she stowed under her bed, one that showed Joel about when he was about the same age I was at the time, halfway between eleven and twelve, standing at the end of our driveway with his arms crossed and chest expanded, grinning stupidly like he’s king of the known world. Patrick took a Polaroid of the Polaroid, thumbtacked the copy to a cork bulletin board and led me about six feet away. He passed me a dart. My hand shook so badly he had to step in and steady it.
“Go on. Don’t overthink it. Throw it. You won’t hurt him. You know why? Because it’s not him. It’s a one-dimensional image on a piece of chemically treated photographic paper.”
My first throw was so tentative the dart barely reached the wall. My second toss, thrown harder, landed a foot below the photo. The third stuck him in the forehead and vibrated for an instant like a tuning fork. I gasped but Patrick just sat there gently incanting, “It’s not him, not him, not him.”
He said the single worst thing I can do is turn Joel into some kind of hero or saint, or seal him up in an airless time capsule that will never get excavated. Let your mother do that, but not you, he said. He spent the next ten minutes telling me how his mother sanctified his brother to the point where she hung Phil’s high school yearbook photo as part of a row next to pictures of President Kennedy and Pope John XXIII.
That led right into his next exercise. “I want you to put yourself in his shoes. I mean that literally. When you get home pick out a pair of his shoes. Boots, sneakers, flip flops, doesn’t matter. Put them on. Walk around in them.”
There was a pair of Joel’s sneakers in the shoe rack by the front door. That’s where he left them so that’s where they stayed. Every day I’d go out in the yard in his high-cut black Converses that were three sizes too big. I gave myself six steps in either direction. If I didn’t step on anything that meant I lived. But if something snapped or crunched underfoot – a brittle twig, a dried-out leaf – it was all over. Kaboom!
“Did I ever tell you I dream of Phil?” Patrick said unprompted near the end of one session, putting a new cigarette in his mouth but not lighting it until he finished his thought. “I never know when. It’s not something I can summon up like some kind of dog whistle and he comes running. He’s always happy whenever I see him. Like a bird released from his cage. I get just enough of a glimpse to know he’s okay.”
He asked me if I ever dreamed of Joel and I said no, not really. He said I shouldn’t feel bad or guilty; there was nothing wrong with that. “Someday you will. He’ll find you.”
Patrick had one final assignment: he wanted me to write in my own words what I wanted to believe was Joel’s last thought. Happy, sad, whatever, that was up to me. That night I stared at a blank sheet of paper which was still blank an hour later. The next night I lay on my bed and tried to reconstruct the accident but I couldn’t go through with it. Then right before the session, sitting in the dank corridor outside Patrick’s office and waiting for him to call me inside, I wrote down the only thing I could think of, whether I believed it or not.
Patrick read it once, took off his glasses and put them back on before reading it again.
He never saw the car coming but when his bike was in midair he laughed because he always wanted to fly.
“The part about him laughing. That’s the way to remember him. You hold on to that thought and you’ll be fine.”
This was our last session. He walked me to the door and shook my hand. That’s when he noticed I’d written Joel’s name on my palm. I told him I did that sometimes; I wasn’t even sure why.
“Can I show you something?”
He pulled up his shirt and there, running across his scrawny hairless chest, in a swirling blue font, were repeating lines of the letters P-H-I-L. He turned around and they continued all over his back, his shoulders, down his biceps and forearms. The letters were everywhere, in every direction, claiming every last inch of his skin.
A few weeks in he asked me to bring a photo of Joel. Any photo would do. I knew better than to ask my mother if I could borrow one from the shrine that Joel’s room had become, so I lifted a random one from a box of Polaroids labeled Do Not Touch that she stowed under her bed, one that showed Joel about when he was about the same age I was at the time, halfway between eleven and twelve, standing at the end of our driveway with his arms crossed and chest expanded, grinning stupidly like he’s king of the known world. Patrick took a Polaroid of the Polaroid, thumbtacked the copy to a cork bulletin board and led me about six feet away. He passed me a dart. My hand shook so badly he had to step in and steady it.
“Go on. Don’t overthink it. Throw it. You won’t hurt him. You know why? Because it’s not him. It’s a one-dimensional image on a piece of chemically treated photographic paper.”
My first throw was so tentative the dart barely reached the wall. My second toss, thrown harder, landed a foot below the photo. The third stuck him in the forehead and vibrated for an instant like a tuning fork. I gasped but Patrick just sat there gently incanting, “It’s not him, not him, not him.”
He said the single worst thing I can do is turn Joel into some kind of hero or saint, or seal him up in an airless time capsule that will never get excavated. Let your mother do that, but not you, he said. He spent the next ten minutes telling me how his mother sanctified his brother to the point where she hung Phil’s high school yearbook photo as part of a row next to pictures of President Kennedy and Pope John XXIII.
That led right into his next exercise. “I want you to put yourself in his shoes. I mean that literally. When you get home pick out a pair of his shoes. Boots, sneakers, flip flops, doesn’t matter. Put them on. Walk around in them.”
There was a pair of Joel’s sneakers in the shoe rack by the front door. That’s where he left them so that’s where they stayed. Every day I’d go out in the yard in his high-cut black Converses that were three sizes too big. I gave myself six steps in either direction. If I didn’t step on anything that meant I lived. But if something snapped or crunched underfoot – a brittle twig, a dried-out leaf – it was all over. Kaboom!
“Did I ever tell you I dream of Phil?” Patrick said unprompted near the end of one session, putting a new cigarette in his mouth but not lighting it until he finished his thought. “I never know when. It’s not something I can summon up like some kind of dog whistle and he comes running. He’s always happy whenever I see him. Like a bird released from his cage. I get just enough of a glimpse to know he’s okay.”
He asked me if I ever dreamed of Joel and I said no, not really. He said I shouldn’t feel bad or guilty; there was nothing wrong with that. “Someday you will. He’ll find you.”
Patrick had one final assignment: he wanted me to write in my own words what I wanted to believe was Joel’s last thought. Happy, sad, whatever, that was up to me. That night I stared at a blank sheet of paper which was still blank an hour later. The next night I lay on my bed and tried to reconstruct the accident but I couldn’t go through with it. Then right before the session, sitting in the dank corridor outside Patrick’s office and waiting for him to call me inside, I wrote down the only thing I could think of, whether I believed it or not.
Patrick read it once, took off his glasses and put them back on before reading it again.
He never saw the car coming but when his bike was in midair he laughed because he always wanted to fly.
“The part about him laughing. That’s the way to remember him. You hold on to that thought and you’ll be fine.”
This was our last session. He walked me to the door and shook my hand. That’s when he noticed I’d written Joel’s name on my palm. I told him I did that sometimes; I wasn’t even sure why.
“Can I show you something?”
He pulled up his shirt and there, running across his scrawny hairless chest, in a swirling blue font, were repeating lines of the letters P-H-I-L. He turned around and they continued all over his back, his shoulders, down his biceps and forearms. The letters were everywhere, in every direction, claiming every last inch of his skin.
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Peter Gordon is a writer living in Massachusetts. His recent and forthcoming work appears in Post Road, The Dublin Review, Litro and elsewhere. His work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize among other recognitions.
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