CHAPTER ONE
One Definite
Destination
They closed the Pine
River Bridge for six hours after my brother drove off it. I heard
that the rush hour commute was a nightmare that day. I remember
thinking that Chase, who loved to make fun of the “drones” heading
to Hartford every morning in their Brooks Brothers suits, would
have found it satisfying to see so many of them backed up on River
Road, chafing at the maintenance crews who couldn’t possibly
appreciate how valuable their time was. Chase could find
entertainment in practically anything. He would have found even
this amusing.
By the time the
police reopened the bridge for traffic, my mother was on her third
Valium and my father hadn’t moved from the window in hours. I
wasn’t sure what he thought he would find by looking out there. It
wasn’t Chase. Richard Penders knew his son was gone
forever.
I sat in the living
room with them for hours, sharing their suffering and their
astonishment at the way life pivots. But other thoughts filled my
mind as well, thoughts of something I couldn’t ever talk about to
them. Chase and I had been together only a few hours before he
died. His personality changed when he was drunk, and he had a lot
to drink by the time I met up with him. The alcohol had made him
say things I didn’t want to hear, and when I’d had enough, we’d
argued and I’d left him to make his way home on his
own.
I should have known
not to let him drive. Before I got in my car and took off,
wondering what the hell was wrong with him, I should have reminded
myself that my annoyance with him was temporary. Then I should have
taken him with me to sleep off his foul mood. That I didn’t, that I
tossed it off with the easy confidence that I had the luxury of
being pissed at him and that I would always be there when Chase
really needed me, was something I knew I was going to have to live
with. But I knew I couldn’t share it with my parents. If I ever
admitted in any way that I had anything to do – even tangentially –
with their son’s death, I don’t know where that would have left me
in the family.
I couldn’t move
myself to try to console Chase’s girlfriend Iris until the wake.
They’d been together for nearly a year and I knew she needed
consolation at least as much as the rest of us. But as soon as I
thought of her, I convinced myself that I wasn’t the person she
needed to get this from, that in fact she might prefer no comfort
at all to any she would receive from me.
Though at eighteen
Chase was three years my junior, he’d gone on his first date before
me and always had more women around him. Iris was the first one –
after many had flitted in his space before her – who didn’t seem
like a groupie. She was centered and soft-spoken. And it was only
when he was around Iris that Chase showed any desire to let someone
take care of him. She was the only person I’d ever seen him
willingly defer to, though even then it didn’t happen
often.
I found it
fascinating to watch the two of them in action. At least until the
day that I realized that what really fascinated me was watching
Iris in action. Long after it began, I
became cognizant of how completely she had taken residence in my
thoughts. I thought about talking to her, sharing quick snippets of
conversation, a meaningful glance over my brother’s escapades. I
thought about what the two of them were like alone together,
laughing, kissing, making love. This was very new territory for me.
It wasn’t simply that I hadn’t thought this way about any of my
brother’s previous girlfriends. I hadn’t thought this way about any
woman at all. It was simultaneously disorienting and seductive. I
considered it all harmless fantasizing on my part.
Until the day that it
went beyond that.
On the first warm day
of the early spring, when Chase left me to await Iris’ arrival
while he attended to other business – something he was doing with
greater frequency – Iris and I kissed. Before it happened and even
more so afterward, I was conflicted and unsteady. But while we were
kissing, maybe thirty seconds that redefined the act for me, I knew
that this was precisely what I should be doing, what I needed to be
doing. And in the moment, Iris’ reactions seemed to echo mine. At
first, she seemed confused to be moving toward me, and afterward
she looked at me with embarrassment and regret. But while it was
happening, I remain certain that Iris was fully and willingly there
with me.
From then until the
day Chase died, I tried my best to avoid being with them. I came
home from college less often on the weekends and made certain never
to be alone in a room with Iris. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I
could control myself. I just couldn’t bear to see the warning in
her eyes.
When I arrived with
my parents at the wake, Iris was sitting alone in Chase’s viewing
room in the funeral parlor. Chase had been dead fifteen hours at
that point and I’d spent most of that time standing guard over my
mother, watching her watching the distance. While I did, I replayed
my last conversation with my brother, thinking about how leaving
this home – something I’d planned to do once college was over
anyway – would have an entirely different meaning to me now. Chase
would forevermore occupy every chair and glance out from every
picture frame. These were the thoughts I’d been tape-looping since
the police officer had come to the door to tell us about the
accident. But still, when I saw Iris sitting by herself, the very
first thing that came to my mind was, do I
touch her?
I approached her
tentatively, hoping that someone would get there before me or that
she would make some movement that would give me an indication of
what to do. Instead, her eyes stayed focused on the casket at the
front of the room. When I was only a few feet away from her, she
turned in my direction. She stood and we embraced awkwardly, our
stomachs and heads touching briefly and then pulling away. Then she
sat down quickly. My parents were settling into seats in the row
reserved for immediate family and I knew that I should join them,
but I felt compelled to sit with Iris, at least for a short
while.
The first time I met
Iris, I thought she was beautiful. All of my brother’s girlfriends
were beautiful, so this didn’t surprise me in any way. What did
surprise me was that she seemed more beautiful to me as I got to
know her and as I got to see her from a wide variety of
perspectives. She was more stunning with disheveled hair after
wrestling with Chase, with a flushed face after a snowball fight,
with clothes spattered electric blue after helping my brother paint
his room. And she seemed nearly unearthly now, with her eyes
thickly encircled in red, her cheeks ruddy. Looking at her this
way, I somehow felt that her loss had been greater than
mine.
“Anything I say would
be inadequate,” I said to her. She glanced over at me, pressed her
lips together in a semblance of a smile, and reached out to give my
hand a momentary squeeze.
“I’m so sorry for
you,” she said. “I’m so sorry for Chase.” She turned from me and
leaned forward to touch my mother’s shoulder, and my mother held
her head against Iris’ for the longest time, both of them sobbing.
When Iris sat back again, she didn’t attempt to dab at her eyes.
And she didn’t try to look in my direction.
I wanted something
other than that kiss to be between us at that point. I wished she
and Chase had been together for years so my role for her could have
been more brotherly. I wished that the age difference between us
had been greater so I could have simply put her head on my shoulder
and cried with her. I wished I could have said to her, “Give this
time. We’ll work through it together.” But all I could do was sit
there confused, wondering how to fit this new collection of wishes
into the set of things I was already hoping had turned out
differently.
“I need to go with
them,” I said after a while.
She nodded without
turning.
When the funeral was
over, I didn’t see Iris again. As she left the gravesite, she
brushed her lips on my cheek and said good-bye. Her parents had
come with her and, as he walked past me, her father clapped his
hand on my arm and gestured upward with his chin. My eyes moved
from his to Iris’ back, only leaving there when another friend of
Chase’s approached me.
For the rest of that
summer, I attempted to set myself in motion. Motion of any type
might have sufficed, but I found myself rooted to my room, my
Discman burning dozens of batteries. I started skipping dinners
when I realized that I could find no sustenance in my mother’s
open-throated sorrow or my father’s empty resolve. I’ve heard that
grief sometimes pulls families together. But I had no experience
with that. I never felt more untethered in my life than I did in
those months after the accident. It wasn’t simply that I didn’t
know how to act or when any sense of pleasure or laughter or peace
would return. It was that I also didn’t know where I would be or
who I would be with when they did.
The summer was ending
and my senior year at Emerson College was ready to begin. But as I
packed during the third week of August, I knew it wasn’t for
Boston. When I got in the car, I still didn’t know where I would
end up driving. But as I crossed the Pine River Bridge, I had one
definite destination in mind.
Anywhere but
here.