Death Becomes You

After a month, I felt okay even though I should’ve been depressed beyond belief or maybe ecstatic about my upcoming sixteenth birthday. I didn’t feel sad or excited though; I just felt okay. It scared me that I didn’t feel anything, but I reminded myself that peace probably found me since I did get to say goodbye to my mother while Chandler and my father still held onto the hope of her survival.

My father seemed alright except for possibly coming down with the flu. He got really pale, sweaty, and was sick all the time. When I asked him about it Dad told me it was more than likely food poisoning from the tuna casseroles neighbors and friends kept bringing over, but his eye twitched. His gaze never met mine when he told me to watch out for my brother because he was going to return some dish to some neighbor and thank that neighbor for whatever the dish once held. He went back to work about a week after the funeral. I rarely saw him, but Chandler got progressively worse.

Food became a foreign object to him, and when he saw it he reacted as if he'd just seen a poisonous snake coiled to strike. His appearance got worse. Greasy hair and skin seemed like a must in his new lifestyle. Bloodshot eyes were another norm. I thought I saw him pop pills with the druggie crowd at school.

My brother used to like sports. He used to be popular. Even though he withdrew some after Annie died, and he got depressed, he seemed to get his life on track after he met Sara, about six months before Mom’s diagnosis. She became his girlfriend and she loved him even though he didn’t love himself. All of that changed in an instant, the instant Mom died. Chandler withdrew farther from his friends, his family. He quit his job at the gas station, stopped his education at the community college, and he stopped going to the batting cages he was so fond of. Sara dumped him after he hit her; two days after our mother died.

He lost a lot of weight in the span of just one month too. None of his clothes fit, and once when I saw him coming out of the bathroom at 2 a.m. I could see his ribs clearly, and his chest was sunken. That walking skeleton couldn’t have been my Chandler, could it?

My brother wouldn't look at me. Chandler and I were close once, but ever since I asked about him, the man in the trench coat, we couldn’t be farther apart. It was a joke to Chandler at first when Bugsy killed that woman and I talked about the man, but then it became a nuisance when Annie died; it soon became a holy terror when Mom passed away.

He hated me for being at peace with our mother's death, for saying Annie was saved by the same man that saved Bugsy’s victim. Sometimes, I think, he hated me most of all for saving him the night Annie died though I never talked about that. As far as I knew, he didn't know that I changed his fate, and I refused to bring it up in front of him.

I often wondered about the stranger in the street. Annie’s fading eyes couldn’t escape my mind. I dreamed of my mother and her pale blue lips. My imagination wanted to believe that they all made it to a better place, a place where pain couldn’t find them, but I couldn’t be sure. The questions still haunted my thoughts. What happened to them after he helped them? How did he help them? Was it really help or did I romanticize the man in the trench coat?