Personal Effects (12 page)

And letters. Cards. Three bags. The sheer number of letters is overwhelming. Dizzying.

I push the pictures to the end of the bed and reach into the box. The first bag’s about three-quarters full. I tug it open and grab a handful of letters. Shuffling them into a neat pile, I get all the return addresses aligned. Someone in North Carolina. T.J.’s friend Dan. Mitch, from work. Florida. Texas. Wisconsin. I grab some more, scan the names as they slide across my lap. There are so many. Some don’t even have envelopes. Some classes sent pictures and handmade cards, with little-kid signatures.

About two dozen in, I find the first one from me. No envelope. Before his birthday, probably in with the package we sent. Written fast and stupid. It’s even pretty sloppy. Lame. Idiot.

One with Dad’s business labels. Another from Dan. Mr. Anders. I stop and start to read that one, then feel weird, like if I read his letter, it’ll be hard to look at Mr. Anders next time I see him. I put it back.

A few more from strangers. A girl T.J. went to high school with. Some with return addresses of classes, schools. A card from Dad and a letter from Denver, from one of T.J.’s buddies I’ve actually met, from his first tour.

I work my way through the whole bag, reading a few at random.

Whenever I wrote T.J., I never knew what to say. Reading some of the letters other people sent him, they all sound a lot alike — how proud they are; how thankful — but at least they had something to say. Nice stuff, but nothing interesting, really.

I don’t know a lot of the people, but some of them had to be his friends. People who wanted T.J. to come home soon. Talking about what good times they’d have when he came home and news of other people I don’t know. He hadn’t really lived at our house in years, so I guess I always knew he had to have friends all over. Maybe some were guys who got out. Or maybe people he met near base: North Carolina, Georgia, and Wisconsin. A lot of the letters are from Wisconsin. Makes sense — that’s where T.J. had been posted before this deployment. But seeing the letters, from so many different strangers, drives it home, how little I really knew what he did when he wasn’t here.

Dad’s letters are short. To the point. How proud he is of T.J. How he hopes T.J.’s staying focused. Asking if T.J. needs anything. Mine are all lame.

Through the first bag, and all I feel is guilty, and kind of sad. It’s embarrassing how few letters I sent. We sent e-mails back and forth all the time, and T.J. sent me postcards sometimes, but we just didn’t write each other letters. I really only wrote a letter when we were sending a package. But I still feel like a total jerk. Even Dad wrote more than I thought he had. I guess I just never saw him do it. But Dad’s and mine together aren’t nearly as many as some of the others. Dan wrote more letters than I did.

I grab the next bag out of the box. Almost as full as the last one. The first three I grab are all from Madison, Wisconsin. The fourth and fifth, too.
C. CARSON,
on the first label, and second, and then
CELIA CARSON,
but the same address. Tingles start in my hands and ears and shiver through me. I feel like I’m floating off the bed.

Another handful: the same. I dump the bag and fan them out. All of them from C. or Celia Carson, 754 River Road, Madison, Wisconsin 53703. The whole bag, all of them are from her. Fuck. My mouth goes dry. Hands shaking, I open one at random.

Theo,

Theo? Who the hell is Theo? I scramble for the envelope: T.J.’s name and address. A shudder crawls down my back. Since when was T.J. “Theo”?

Dad, Theodore Sr., was “Ted.” Dad always called T.J. “Junior” or, when introducing him to people, “Ted Jr.” Mom called him “Teddy.” To everyone else, T.J. had always been “T.J.” He didn’t even like it when I said it like “Teej.” More than a few guys ended up in stitches for calling him “Theodore.” But . . . “Theo”?

Whoa.

Holy shit.

Holy fucking shit!

I grab the pictures. Dig through the bag. Knowing what I’m gonna find but still needing to see. The one of her in uniform. Has to be her. I squint at the uniform. Is her name there? Could be Carson, but I can’t see it clear enough to be sure. I dig for more of her. The one at the table, with T.J. and the guys, all of them toasting the camera. Another of her with some people near a swing set. Another of her, but her hair’s longer.

I look at the picture of her in uniform, then at the letter, and then back at the picture of her at the table, sunglasses on top of her head, back to her in uniform. Celia — in uniform and in regular clothes. The one of T.J. lifting her off the ground. Has to be her. One of a bunch of people near water, the sun glinting off the surface behind them: Celia and T.J. and their friends?

My heart pounds so hard it might crack a rib, and still I feel like no blood is reaching my brain.

T.J. had a girlfriend. I scan the letter again. T.J. had a girlfriend, and he never told me. And she called him Theo. And she sent him sexy letters, and packages, and . . . Fuck. I start reading as fast as I can.

M
Y HEAD
’
S BEEN SPINNING SINCE
S
ATURDAY NIGHT
. E
VERY
time I think I’ve wrapped my brain around what I found, it hits me all over again.

I read all night Saturday, slept for a few hours, and then started over again.

By Sunday night I’d read all of her letters twice, sifted through all of the pictures to find the ones of her.

I was already dreading Monday, but the lack of sleep and all the stuff whirling around my head made it a soul-sucking hell.

As if I’m not rattled enough, Tuesday starts with a nice long session with Mr. Lee in Guidance. And I have to play nice.

When I came in this morning, they made me sign some paper that said if I don’t cooperate in the guidance sessions and be a good boy, I’m gone for the rest of the year, I’ll miss finals, and I’ll have to do summer school to be a senior next year. And they’re putting a hold on my grades until I pay for the display case. Not sure how I’ll even know if I have to do summer school if they won’t release my grades, but I decide I don’t care enough to ask.

I’m supposed to be reading some article about the stages of grief or something, but my head is pounding and my mind keeps wandering.

After some Googling around yesterday, I have a little more than a name and address. The online phone book showed a bunch of addresses for C. Carson and Celia Carson, but it looks like she’s still at the River Road address. I also found a listing in a staff directory at the university. And from there, I found a picture. A group shot at some kind of event, small and hard to see, and I think from a few years ago, but clear enough to see that one of the women in that picture sure looks a lot like the woman in T.J.’s pictures.

“Matt.” Mr. Lee sighs. “Are you here? I mean, really here?” He rubs his eyes.

It’s only 8:42 a.m. and already this day sucks. I sit up in the chair. Focus.

“Yeah,” I say, so he knows I’m paying attention. “Sorry.”

I’m not sure I can take much more. Mr. Lee shuffles through the file in front of him, then picks up his clipboard again.

“Your brother’s death isn’t the first loss you’ve suffered, Matt. How did your family cope when your mother died?”

It takes everything in me not to walk out the door.

“Take a few minutes. Think about it. You have to have done something,” Lee says, reaching for his coffee.

I’ve been dreaming about her a lot. Just fractured images mostly, but sometimes in full-out Technicolor replays. Sometimes I can even smell her, or more how our house smelled when she lived there. I don’t dream much about the good stuff. Mostly of Mom right before she left, her wild, fast talk, eyes all shiny and weird. Crazy or silent, somewhere else in her head. Lost before she even left.

That last fight, T.J. threw me in the closet and then tried to get between them. Dad yelling:
It isn’t worth it. None of it’s worth it. After everything I do for you . . .
Her screeching and tearing the house apart. Wild.

T.J. was only thirteen, and no match for Dad, but Mom was the one throwing things, and he could usually get her under control if Dad let him. T.J. ended up with a split lip. She took off three days later.

It’s worse when I dream about the nicer times. Her hands, soft and gentle, even when she could barely hold herself up. She used to make me butterscotch pudding with chocolate-chip faces on top.

How do you grieve for someone who kissed you good-bye one morning when you were five years old and then left while you were at preschool, so that you came home to an empty house and never saw her again?
Do
you even grieve when you spend the next year and a half confused and scared and sometimes worried that she might come back?

I can see Mom’s face behind my eyes: twisted like in every fucked-up memory. The smell of her: sour-sweet breath and sweat, or, when she was doing OK, that perfume she loved. T.J. trying to get her out of the car. Dad yelling while counting pills and trying to clean up the mess. Breaking glass. Like I’m still cowering in the corner, listening through hands fisted over my ears. Choking on the sudden sour burn in my throat.

“Matt.”

Shudder. Head rush. My throat burns. Lee’s half out of his seat. I’ve never seen his face like that.

“Are you OK?” he asks.

“Yeah.” I rub my sweaty palms over my knees to dry them. “Fine.” I pull the paper closer to me.
Stages of Grief.

Mr. Lee pushes the paper aside right out from under my fingers. “OK, let’s try a different tack.” He settles back into his chair. “Yesterday was Memorial Day. What did you do to honor your brother’s memory?”

Worse than Mom.

Dad got up, got dressed, and left, like it was any other Monday. No idea if he actually went to the office or what, but he left around the usual time and he came home around the usual time, and then he spent the rest of the night in his recliner, as if there were nothing at all unusual about the day.

I tried not to lose my fucking mind. I had no idea when Dad might come home, and in what kind of mood. I sat in my room, wishing time would move faster, doing some research and looking at the letters, but with my shoes on and backpack at the ready, just in case he came home and decided to look at T.J.’s stuff. If he’d even paused outside the door to T.J.’s room, I’d have been out of there.

“Come on. You and your dad, you have to have done something to honor him.” He motions with his glasses. “Or be planning on doing something?”

Mr. Lee taps his pen against his clipboard. When I look up, he glances down at my lap. My hands are clenched. I force them to relax, wipe them on my jeans. He clears his throat, raises an eyebrow, the message clear: I’m gonna have to say something.

I just sit there, picking at the inner seam of my jeans. The rhythmic flick of my nail over the edge is nicely distracting. Mr. Lee’s clipboard clatters onto the desk. Other papers shoved aside.

“Come on, Matt. One thing. Cooperate. Talk to me. So I can tell Mr. Pendergrast you’re complying.”

I shift, rub my temple, try to make a show of thinking about it. Dad’s honoring T.J. by pretending he isn’t dead and ignoring every bit of evidence that proves him wrong. But me? What am I doing? Well, aside from kicking the crap out of losers who call his death a waste? And breaking into his personal effects? And wondering why he never told me about Celia?

But there is something I can do. And I already know what. But doing it, actually doing it, will be hard. A little crazy.

“This is it, Matt,” Lee says. “Last chance time. Talk to me. Convince me that you’re ready.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. Because I’m not ready. For school, yeah, fine. I’ll lie low. Whatever. But for what I really need to do? I’m nowhere near ready. And I’m running out of time. Finals next week. Then my regular work crew starting the week after. Can’t miss work. Can’t let Mr. Anders down, or make him think he can’t trust me.