Personal Effects (5 page)

T
HE UNIFORMS ASKED FOR
D
AD AND THEN DIDN
’
T SAY
another word. I had trouble getting anything out loud enough to carry upstairs, and I couldn’t move.

All I could think was
T.J. is dead.

When I got my voice to work, it took three yells before Dad cursed and stomped down from upstairs. He was ready to rip me a new one for making him come to me, but then he saw me, and then them, and he missed the last step, landing with a lurch. I wanted him to say something, but he just looked at them.

After that moment of flinching, almost stumbling, shock, Dad was stoic: nodding gravely, shaking hands, dead. They said their spiel. I couldn’t hear it over the noise in my head.

The woman, who did all the talking, was OK. Older. Calm. Somehow like she was as much a part of this as we were, but not like in our faces or anything. She shook my hand and didn’t once look at the juice all over my shirt.

The guy hovered near the door until she gave some kind of signal, and then they left, like they’d never been there.

A different uniform showed up later — our CAO, casualty assistance officer, Cooper. He was younger than the others, and friendly, but all business, with papers and questions, a binder full of stuff to be done. While CAO Cooper was making a call, Dad downed two quick drinks standing at the sink, staring out the back window. Then he brushed his teeth and gargled. When he came back into the living room, Dad acted like everything was fine, like we were just having some kind of visit. I could smell the mint from all the way across the room. I’m sure Cooper could, too, and that he knew exactly why. Before going into the living room, Dad snagged my arm and shot daggers at my shirt, shoving me toward the stairs, like Cooper cared what I was wearing or what I smelled like.

Eventually some neighbors came by, crying, carrying stuff, smiling sad fucking smiles. Dad stared
them
out the door. Then the reporters and the cameras. Cooper got some other uniform to handle them. One short interview and then Dad ran them off, too.

All through the planning, Dad stayed mellow, quiet, slightly buzzed. Just dull enough to handle it, I guess, but it made him slow sometimes. Too slow. Cooper would sometimes look at me when Dad would zone out for a minute, like I could do anything, or even acknowledge that there was anything that needed doing or why. But he’d just wait, like no time had passed, until Dad could handle it again.

I just wanted it all to go away. The people. The plans. The uniforms. Everything. I’d have given anything to have gone to sleep and woken up when it was over. The constant, awful anticipation was choking me.

Everyone had all these questions, but no one could answer the only one I cared about. No one would tell me what happened.

Eight days later, a different uniform, the “escort,” arrived with what was left of T.J. He said the least. I don’t remember his name, but I remember his face clearly. He was about T.J.’s age and height, but his hair and eyes were dark. There was a scar on his cheek, a rippling, pinkish line from his sideburn to his jaw. He had that hard-body stance like the guys in T.J.’s unit, like a steel rod had been grafted onto his spine. When he shook my hand, he nearly crushed my fingers. But he looked me in the eyes.

The morning of the funeral, he sat Dad and me down in a small office at the back of the funeral home and pulled out a bag with what was left of T.J.’s stuff. One by one, he passed the things to Dad.

T.J.’s dog tags, gleaming on their chain, like they had been scrubbed and polished.

His beat-up sport watch, band fraying a little near the buckle, a patch of some kind of tape on the other side.

The multi-tool I’d bought him for Christmas a few years ago. Scratched but clean, and shiny.

A braided leather bracelet.

A small compass on a chain, the size of a quarter, the arms bright green on the black face.

Some kind of medallion on a cord.

The escort left the room — to give us some privacy, I guess. Or maybe because he could see that Dad wanted him gone.

Dad let me touch everything, but then took each thing back and put it in the bag, bending one of my fingers to the side to get the dog tags out of my hand. He shook his head, sneering at the medallion and tossing it into the bag hard. He pulled the cord tight, sealing the bag. I reached for it, but he slid it into the pocket of his jacket. His hand patted it secure.

Whatever had happened to T.J., it was bad. Bad enough that the casket was gonna stay closed. But before the escort left, he and Dad went down front and the funeral director showed them the inside of the casket. I just got a glimpse before Dad turned away, blocking my view. Enough to see a crisp and perfect uniform draped over something lumpy where legs should have been. The crease in the pants was so sharp, like brand-new. Seemed stupid. No one was gonna see. But Dad liked it — not that he actually said anything.

During the funeral, I kept having this daydream that maybe they got it wrong. Maybe T.J. was still alive, in a hospital even, but didn’t remember who he was, and this was some other guy blown so much apart that they couldn’t tell who he was, and he’d somehow ended up with T.J.’s dog tags, or he’d been near T.J. and they got confused. Anything to make this make sense.

Some of the guys who had served with T.J. were there, in the back, and I thought about asking them, asking if it was possible. But none of them seemed to question for even a second that it was T.J. in the box, and I figured they would know.

But then, after, Dad pulled out the bag of stuff again. Maybe he was thinking the same thing, rubbing the medallion, and the compass, one in each hand. Because T.J. never wore necklaces or went to church. And I’d never seen that stuff before.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Some saint,” Dad said, staring at the medallion.

“Why would —?”

“Hell if I know why your brother does anything.”

The conversation was over. Everything was shoved back into the bag, and it disappeared back into Dad’s pocket. Later, when Uncle Mac and Aunt Janelle came over, Dad stuck it in the top drawer of the hutch.

After the funeral — after the hellish drive back, with half the town still waving flags on the side of the road — Dad had no need for any of the uniforms or the stuff they offered. Me neither. A few weeks after the funeral, when Dad was out of the room, CAO Cooper gave me a bunch of stuff, pamphlets and sheets, a card with a bunch of numbers on it. I said thanks but threw them away. I didn’t want to see another uniform for the rest of my life.

But as much as the uniforms and the neighbors sucked, the strangers were the worst. They would send stuff or call; a couple even showed up at the door, with plants and ribbons. They never came twice.

We ignored Thanksgiving. And Christmas. Somehow New Year’s sucked the hardest, knowing T.J. wouldn’t see 2007.

The condolence letters slowed after a while but kept coming. And every one Dad dumped unopened in a box in the hall closet. Every single one. Who knows how many.

The first few months were surreal. Some days dragged on like they were eight days long. Others flashed by like blinking in bright light. There were days where Shauna picked me up for school and dropped me off after, and an hour later I couldn’t remember a single thing that had happened in between. More than once, a teacher had to say my name to get me to leave a class, because I hadn’t noticed the bell. The worst days, though, were the ones where everything was too bright and too loud and I couldn’t catch my breath for one fucking minute: those were like a nightmare.

Since T.J. had never really done more than visit since he left for Basic, it was easy at first to imagine that it hadn’t happened at all — that I’d dreamed the whole scene with the uniforms and Dad, and the ribbons and neighbors and strangers at the door. But then I would go into the kitchen and see the casseroles. Or later, the box in the hall closet. A condolence letter showed up in the mail, and I was right back there, waiting to breathe.

I didn’t go into the living room much, and never past Dad’s recliner. But the hutch in the corner seemed to glow, waiting for me. And sometimes when I’d walk through to get to the front door, something would make me look, and then I’d stop walking and stare. More than once, Dad ran into me because I just stopped midstride on my way to the door.

In February I got up the nerve to look at T.J.’s stuff again. I crept through the living room, past Dad’s recliner, around the table full of Dad’s magazines, and over to the hutch in the corner. But when I opened the top drawer, the bag wasn’t there. I waited for a night when I knew Dad would be out, and then I went through every drawer and rifled through the stuff on the shelves.

Over spring break, I searched the whole house — nothing.

No bag, and none of the stuff that was inside. No sign of the flag from T.J.’s coffin, either.

A few weeks ago, the pictures of T.J. that had been scattered around the house disappeared. I came home and they were gone. All of them. Like he’d never even existed. Like after Mom died. And I instantly knew I’d left some clue, something out of place or the dust disturbed. Something to tell Dad that I’d gone looking for the bag. And his removing everything else was a clear message.

For about a week, I stewed and avoided Dad. Then I started searching the whole house, drawer by drawer. I started outside: the storage shed, the garage. Then I worked my way from the kitchen out, searching every drawer and cupboard and box in the downstairs.

Last Friday I decided to check the upstairs again. But before I’d even opened a door, I heard Dad’s car. He caught me in the living room near the stairs. He didn’t come right out and say he knew I’d been up there, but his look made it pretty clear. And pretty clear that if he ever caught me up there again, I was screwed.

So many times I tried to figure out how to bring it up, how to ask about the bag. Every time, I chickened out. Friday, when he caught me, I actually got half a question out. But he got in my space so fast, warned me off without saying a word. Stared me down. And I wussed out. Like always.

All weekend he’d rocket up to high alert out of nowhere. He’d jolt up out of his chair or stalk into the kitchen, ready, for whatever he thought he’d see. If I was in there, he’d stare for a minute before standing down, fading back into the living room. If I was down in my room, I’d hear him hovering near the door at the top of the stairs or on the landing near the laundry room, listening. I started keeping some music or a movie on, just so he’d have something to hear.

It felt like every time I breathed, he was on me, and I wasn’t doing
anything.
Every time he shifted his jaw or came anywhere near me, I thought he might preemptively toss me into a wall. This morning I jetted out the side door early, knowing that if I stayed one more minute, I wouldn’t get away.

All the way to school, it all churned and curdled in my stomach.

And then there was Pinscher — one day, one shirt, one asshole move too many.

I pull the scrap from my pocket.

Army Sgt. Theodore James Foster Jr.
Black on white, and now with rusting blood around the edges, where my hand didn’t cover it.

T.J. would have ripped that shirt off Pinscher and fed it to him.

That’s what I should have done: I should have made him swallow it, name by name.

T
HE SHOWER GOES A LONG WAY TO WASHING AWAY THE LAST
of the fight. But everything feels heavy and tired after, like the wet cement has spread from my hand through the rest of me.

The recliner creaks in the living room above. When T.J. left for Basic, we were both still in our old rooms upstairs, across the hall from each other, down the hall from Dad. And for a while, even after it was clear T.J. wasn’t moving home anytime soon, I stayed in my old room. But at the start of sophomore year, I moved down here to the basement apartment. Should have done it sooner: with its own bathroom, the kitchen at the top of the stairs, and the side entrance through the laundry room in between, I can go for days without actually seeing Dad.

I flick on my desk lamp. The circle of light spotlights the map hanging on the wall next to my desk — stretching from just above my head to my knees, the entire length of the Appalachian Trail, with different colors for states and parks, rivers and roads.