After Dark(39)

“Getting better every day?” he said. “More communicative?”

I resumed stirring the batter.

“In my opinion, he is.”

“You’re lying to Pam. You’re lying to yourself. I can’t stay out here forever, as much as I want to, and Ella and Rick will break down the door soon. When they do—”

“Stop.”

“When they do, and when they find Matt stalking around with a loaded gun—”

“He has never talked about suicide.” My hand trembled.

“They will have him committed. You can’t stop them. And at this point, I’m not even sure it would be the wrong thing to do.”

I bit my lip until it hurt. Then I breathed out.

“I realize you can’t stay forever. I’m not letting anyone take him away.”

“Do you think I don’t love him and want him to get better?” Nate came around to look at me. “But what we’re doing here? It’s not working. He hasn’t breathed a word about Seth. I’m not even sure if he knows Seth is gone. That person upstairs isn’t my brother, and he isn’t your fiancé. Where is he even spending the night?”

“He needs more time. It’s only been a few weeks. Mike is coming tomorrow—”

“Perfect.” Nate threw up a hand. “You invited that psychobabbling idiot back here?”

Nate and Mike did not see eye-to-eye. Mike wanted to shoot Matt full of benzos. He talked about “depression and features of catatonic excitement.” Nate quoted from medical journals, raised his voice.

“Look, I think he can help. He’s helped Matt through…” I looked down. “A lot.”

“I think you’re grasping at straws, but suit yourself. All I’m saying is that time is running out. Ella as good as told me they’re coming out next month if they don’t hear from him.”

My heart fluttered strangely. Stay in there, I thought, because sometimes it seemed to want to burst out of my chest. I was holding myself together by sheer willpower.

I began to line the muffin tin with papers.

Nate loomed, wanting something that I would never give: Matt.

If Matt went into the psych ward, I went into the psych ward.

I glanced up, expecting angry eyes. Instead, they were soft and sympathetic.

“I’m going to drag him out for a walk,” Nate said. He patted my shoulder and left.

I spooned batter into the muffin tin and listened to Nate striding around the house. It was an old house and no one could move through it undetected. A creak here, a pop there, signaled even the lightest footfalls.

And I loved the house, in spite of everything. Twice, Matt and Nate and I had gone shopping for home décor. Those trips consisted of Matt glaring out the car window, sitting in back with Nate, and me driving and dashing in and out of stores.

I would return to the car with a basket or lamp and show it to the boys.

Nate and I would enthuse.

This will be great for one of the libraries. Maybe we could put this at the end of the hall. What do you say, Matt?

We thought the work of fixing up our home might bring Matt out of himself.

We were wrong.

He showed no interest in anything but getting away from us. He went out with the tent or his gun. He left his cell phone in the study. He drove sometimes to God-knows-where and returned with scratches and sleepless eyes.

He was changing … moving away from me. And how could I blame him? I knew what he saw when he looked at me or Nate or anyone.

He saw Seth.

The front door opened and closed. I slid the muffins into the oven, put on my glasses, and climbed the stairs to watch Nate and Matt from a bedroom window. I loved to watch their walks, just like I loved to watch Matt eat. Seeing him in any semblance of normalcy gave me hope.

Matt, clearly irate, stormed across the meadow. Nate hurried to keep up. I could tell that Nate was talking, gesturing and laughing in his amiable way.

I cupped my hands to my mouth.

For eighteen days Nate had been here helping me. When he returned to his family and his medical practice, I would be alone.

What then?

I rubbed my eyes and readjusted my glasses.

Nate and Matt grew smaller, two figures near a stand of aspen. The dark-haired brother and the light-. All the aspen on our property had changed, green to gold overnight. Those yellow leaves looked beautiful against the sky, but their beauty meant something terrible to me. Goldengrove unleaving.

Matt clung to Nate abruptly. Nate held his brother and stroked his hair. Then Matt crumpled to the ground at Nate’s feet.

Nate stood there for a moment, speaking down at Matt and gesturing. What the hell?

The silence, the smallness of the spectacle, framed by a panel of window, entranced me.

Matt cowered; Nate shook his head and gestured sharply. Then he crouched, wrapping his arms around Matt. My trance broke. I dashed down the stairs and out of the house, sprinting across the meadow. “What are you doing?” I shouted.

Nate glared at me with red-rimmed eyes.

Matt was balled up, shaking.

“Telling him the truth,” Nate said.

“And what exactly is that?” I slid to my knees and pulled at Matt. “It’s okay, love…”

“That Seth’s funeral is today. That our brother is dead. That we should be there.”

“Stop it!” I gathered Matt into my arms. He wasn’t crying, but his breath came hard and fast and he covered his face. Crying without tears, maybe. I held him until the shaking stopped.

* * *

That evening, Nate and I built a fire in the library across from Matt’s study. Though Matt showed no interest in the house, I had filled the study with his favorite things—his desk and books, Laurence, his computer, notebooks, framed prints, and many little things meant to cheer him up (cut flowers, pictures of us, and some of the plush animals he’d given me).

For once, Matt was in the study, not out in the cold night.

I sat in an armchair from which I could see his door.

“I’ll check on him, if you want,” Nate said.

“No, that’s okay. I will soon. Anyway”—I sighed and lowered my face into my hands—“he’s fine, I’m sure. He’s the same.”

Despair opened up inside me.

Nate had done his worst today … and nothing happened. After collapsing in the meadow and shaking for a while, Matt had returned to his seething silence. He’d walked back to the house and locked himself in the study.

“I’m not sorry,” Nate said, staring into the flames. “I would try anything.”

“I wouldn’t forgive you even if you were sorry.”

He chuckled and I smiled bleakly.

“We can’t be impatient with him,” I said. “We can’t inflict our desperation on him.”

“What if he’s sinking deeper? What if this is a small window of opportunity, a chance to pull him back, and we’re wasting it?”

“Hey. Was it really … today?” I softened my voice and leaned forward. I couldn’t answer Nate’s questions; I shared his fears.

He walked to the mantel, braced an arm against it, and lowered his head like a man in prayer. So, it was today. A late-summer funeral in Oak Grove Presbyterian Cemetery. A small group of mourners, I imagined. Both living brothers … absent.

I pictured the cemetery and I remembered Seth saying he had a plot there. I remembered him alive. Could it be that he was in the ground?

I went to Nate and we seized one another.

“Oh, God,” he said, clutching my back so hard it hurt. “I couldn’t go. You saw it coming. I didn’t. God help me. Now it’s done. Hannah…” Nate cried in a terrible, suppressive way, with breathless, gasping gulps. I told him no one saw it coming. I told him no one could have done anything. Gradually, he let himself weep unrestrained. His tears dampened my hair.

We swayed together and his sadness and my hollow reassurances faded to silence.

Motion caught my eye.

I jolted away from Nate.

Matt stood in the library doorway, staring at us.

“M-Matt,” I said. His eyes were calm and clear. I flapped my hands. “Hi. We—we were just being sad together.”

“Matt.” Nate wiped his face hurriedly.

“Let me get this,” I whispered. I scurried over to Matt and kissed him. “You want to sit with us? We made a fire.” He shook his head, and after a moment he turned toward his room. “Okay, we can go back. I’ll go with you.”

I trailed Matt back to his room and he sank into the armchair.

His MacBook stood open on the table.

“Were you online?” I sat on his lap and pulled the notebook onto my thighs. He gazed off at nothing while I studied the screen. I hoped to find he’d been writing, but no such luck. A Wikipedia page on Virginia Woolf was open. He’d scrolled down to …

“Matt, baby … why are you looking at this?”

I tried to make him look at me. He wouldn’t, or couldn’t.

He’d highlighted section four of the Woolf entry, DEATH. It summarized her suicide by drowning and contained a transcript of her last note to her husband.

Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again … I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier …

“No, listen to me…” I closed the tab and cleared the browsing history. I shut off his laptop and glanced toward the library. Nate was deliberately not paying attention, his back to us but his head inclined. “Darling,” I whispered. “You can’t look at things like that. They’ll take you away from me. Please, don’t you understand? I need you here with me.” I stroked his face and pressed soft kisses all over it. “Come to bed with me.”