Chapter 24 Griffin
TWENTY-FOUR
GRIFFIN
The second week is harder. The second week is harder because Mendez has not called.
Mendez said two weeks. Mendez has not called.
Day eight, day nine, day ten. Nothing. Reed and I have agreed not to talk about Mendez until Mendez calls, which is a thing we have agreed about and which is also a thing that does not work, because not-talking-about-Mendez is the only thing we are doing.
On Monday of the second week, I call my sister.
I have not called her in three weeks. I usually call her every week.
She has not been pushing. She has been letting me be the one who calls.
She is the older one and she is the one who has decided, since we were kids, that I get to set the pace of contact.
She has been doing it for thirty-two years.
I almost do not call her. I almost do not call her because I have realized, sitting on my couch with the phone in my hand on a Monday afternoon, what calling her now means.
I’ve been thinking about it since the morning.
Since I woke up next to Reed and thought I should call Sara.
Since I made coffee and thought it. Since I sat down at the desk and thought it.
Since I picked up the phone and put it down twice.
I’ve been thinking about it because I’ve understood, in a way I hadn’t let myself understand last week, what it’s going to mean if I go.
If I go, Sara doesn’t know. She never knows.
She goes on with her life, and at some point she gets a phone call about her brother — there’s been an accident, there’s been an illness, your brother.
She grieves and she puts away photographs and she writes a eulogy in her head and she lives the rest of her life inside the version where I end.
She doesn’t get told the truth. Doesn’t get a letter from me later.
Doesn’t get to know I’m alive somewhere, building something with somebody, having a soup somebody’s mother used to make.
Sara gets the death and Sara has to live with the death and Sara never knows.
I sit with the phone for a long time. I had planned this call last week — to tell her that I was with someone, that something might be changing, some version of what was happening.
I had been working on the words for a week.
I cannot tell her any of it. I cannot tell her any of it because if I tell her, then later, when I am gone, she has a thread.
She has a man named Reed. She has a town she might call.
She has a story she does not let go of, the way she does not let go of stories, because Sara is pulls on a thread until the thread comes out, and Reed is somebody whose life depends on no thread coming out.
Sara cannot have a thread. The version of me who goes into this life cannot have left her with a single fact she could pull on.
I almost put the phone down. I do not put the phone down.
I do not put the phone down because Sara has not heard from me in three weeks and Sara has been sitting with that and Sara is waits, but Sara is also a person, and three weeks of silence is its own thread.
I owe her a call. I press her name. She picks up on the second ring.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“You okay.”
“Yes.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“Griffin.”
“Yes, Sara.”
“You haven’t called in three weeks.”
“I know.”
“You called me twice a week for two years and now you have not called in three weeks. Is something happening.”
I sit with it. I sit with it because the easy version of this call would be to tell her something.
Even something small. Even I am dating someone would be a thing to tell her.
I am dating someone would be the thing that makes the three weeks make sense, would let her relax, would let her have an explanation.
I am dating someone would be the kind sister-thing.
I cannot say I am dating someone.
I cannot give her that name in any form.
“I’m okay, Sara.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“I know.”
“Griffin.”
“I am working on a paper that has not been going well. I have been distracted. I have been bad about calling. I am sorry.”
“Are you sleeping.”
“Yes.”
“Are you eating.”
“Yes.”
“Are you…“
“Sara. I am okay. I am having a hard semester. The Hellman seminar is hard. The paper is hard. I have been keeping my head down. That is what has been happening.”
She is quiet. She is quiet for a second longer than she would normally be quiet, and the second is the second that tells me she has heard the thing in my voice that does not match the thing I am saying.
Sara is hears the thing in my voice. I have been her brother for thirty-one years and there is no version of I am okay I can deliver that she cannot read.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay?”
“Okay. Griffin. I will let you tell me what you want to tell me, when you want to tell me. I am not going to push. I just want you to know that I am here. If you want to tell me anything. About the seminar or about anything. I am here.”
“I know.”
“Okay.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.”
I almost laugh. I almost laugh because she has said the thing I have been saying. She has said the thing Reed has been saying. The people I love all say don’t thank me. I close my eyes.
“How are you,” I say.
“I’m fine. The kids are fine. Marcus has a thing with his shoulder, physical therapy. Lila started a chess club at school, did I tell you that?”
“You did not.”
“She is the only girl. She does not care.”
“Of course she doesn’t.”
“She told her teacher that if more girls wanted to play chess they would be here, and the fact that they aren’t here is not my problem. Eight years old.”
“Jesus.”
“I know.”
“Sara, that is…“
“I know. Yeah.”
We talk about Lila for ten minutes. About Marcus’s shoulder.
About Sara’s job. She has gotten a new client, a regional bank, the work is boring but the money is good.
About whether she’s going to take their mother to the place in Door County in July like they did three summers ago.
About whether their mother has gotten worse.
A little, Sara says, not a lot. She still knows me.
She doesn’t always know what day it is. We don’t talk about me.
I let her talk. I let her tell me about her life in the level of detail she would tell me if nothing were happening, which is to say in a lot of detail, because Sara is a detailed person.
I let her talk for forty minutes. When she is done she says, “Okay. I have a meeting at three. I should go.”
“Okay.”
“Griffin.”
“Yeah.”
“Call me next week.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it. Next week. I am not going to wait three. Next week.”
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, Sara.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
She hangs up. I sit on the couch with the phone.
I cry. I cry hard, the way you cry when something has gone past the place where the body can hold it.
I cry alone in my apartment on a Monday afternoon because I have just had what might be one of the last normal phone calls I will ever have with my sister, and she does not know it.
She does not know it and she will never know it.
If I go, the next call I have with her, or the one after that, or the one after that, will be the last one.
And she will not know. And after the last one I will go, and she will get a phone call from somebody, from a stranger, or from a parent, or from an officer, or from whoever Mendez assigns to make the call, and she will be told that something has happened to me.
She will hang up the phone and she will sit at her kitchen table in Chicago and she will start grieving.
She will grieve a person who is alive in a town she has never heard of, doing dishes with the man he loves.
She will grieve me the way I grieved Reed.
I hadn’t understood that going meant doing this to her.
I had thought going meant me losing my life.
I had thought going meant me losing her.
I had not thought going meant her losing me.
I had not thought going meant her grieving me.
I had not let myself think it through from her side.
I had been thinking it through from mine for a week.
Hers I had not. She will be the version of me from two years ago.
She will be the version of me came home one Tuesday and got a phone call and sat down on the kitchen floor and could not get up.
She will be the version of me buried her brother.
She will be the version of me wrote a eulogy and said it in a small room and tried to put it away and couldn’t, because there was nowhere to put it.
Sara will be me. Sara will be the person Reed left behind and I will be the person Reed used to be.
I sit on the couch. I cry until I cannot cry anymore.
When I am done I sit there for a long time.
I do not get up to wash my face. I do not move.
I sit on the couch and I look at the ceiling.
I think about my sister in her kitchen in Chicago.
I think about my mother in the home in Lake Forest who knows her a little less every month.
I think about the chess club. I think about the regional bank.
I think about Door County. I think about all of it, every detail.
I let myself know that I am thinking about it because I am preparing.