Chapter 6

Iring the doorbell at Shayna’s house and try not to think about how my brother used to live here. When no one answers, I find the spare key Ray had given me “in case of emergencies.” Since I’ve been home, my emergencies have been sleeping off late drunken nights on his couch instead of stumbling back into Mom and Dad’s house.

Opening the door, I find Lara and Lucy among a chaos of toys in the normally immaculate front room. They glance up at me, pausing their play with tiny dolls and even tinier clothes and shoes.

“Hey, girls. Where’s Mommy?”

“Kitchen,” Lucy says, pushing her thick, messy hair back from her face as she goes back to playing. Lara has a knotted ponytail like she slept in it overnight, hair sticking out everywhere, and both girls are still in their pajamas even though it’s after noon. All of this is unusual.

“She’s crying,” Lara says, stealing a miniature brush from Lucy.

I step around them and over a pile of crayons and coloring books splayed out on the floor.

“Mommy says Daddy’s gone and not coming back.”

Lara’s curious voice stops me, and I circle around to them, both staring up at me with their big brown eyes.

I lean down to their level. “No, he’s not coming back.”

“Mommy says he’s in heaven,” Lucy says. “Can I go see him?”

Lara nods in agreement. “Me too?”

I bite my lip, completely out of my element. I don’t have much interaction with children, including my own nieces, something my brother complained about. It’s not that I don’t like them—I love them—it’s just that I’m not great with kids. I think they can smell my fear, and I have no idea how to exit this conversation without making it worse. “No, you can’t go to heaven.”

Lara pouts. “I wanna see Daddy.”

“I know you do, but you can’t.” That was the wrong thing to say—both girls’ eyes round like they’re about to cry. I rub my forehead. “I’m sure your dad wants to see you too, but it wasn’t his choice to go to heaven, and it’s not somewhere you can come back from. Once you go to heaven, you stay there.”

“Why?” Lucy asks.

“Because…” I look around the room, hoping an answer will come to me. “Because heaven is really cool and…fun.”

“Fun? Like Disney World?” Lucy asks. “Is that why Daddy wants to stay?”

“Ooh, can we go back to Disney World?” Lara asks excitedly. “We can ride teacups with Daddy!”

Lucy claps and runs for her Moana doll.

“No, you won’t be able to ride the teacups with Daddy,” I say, floundering in this conversation. “I don’t… Maybe you’ll go to Disney again.” I’d pay for them to go if they would stop asking me questions.

Lara finds her Ariel doll and combs her hair. “Aunt Cassie, know what Ariel’s daddy’s name was?”

“No, what?”

“King Triton. He has a big stick.”

“Mm, interesting.” I nod solemnly.

“Aunt Cassie,” Lucy says, tugging on my hand, “wanna play with us?”

“I can’t right now. I have to talk to your mommy, but maybe later.”

“Okay, you can be Snow White ’cause you look like her,” Lucy says.

“No! I wanna be Snow White!” Lara snatches the doll, and they begin to argue over who is what princess, and I use it to make my escape. I thought filling out my tax returns was hard, but explaining death to a child may be the hardest thing to do. Besides, possibly, actually dying.

I search for Shayna in the large dining room, recently redone kitchen with granite countertops, and the living room with a huge flat-screen TV, but she’s nowhere to be found. Taking a peek out the window to the patio, I finally spot her wrapped up in blankets with a cup of something steaming on the table in front of her. Seeing her alone, looking awfully un-Shayna-like with no makeup and her hair a mess, I’m concerned for her. When I slide open the back door, she keeps her eyes on the brown-tinged grass and the swing set when I say, “Hey.”

She has that haunted look. The same one as my mother.

“I didn’t think you were home when no one answered the door, and I used my key. Sorry.”

She sips her drink but says nothing.

I pick at the grooves in the tiled table. “The girls seem to be doing okay. That’s good.”

She runs her fingers through her hair, her nails painted a delicate pink, and for once, I wish she’d show me some of her self-indulgent annoyances, some sign of life. It’d be better than this silence.

I can’t take it and resort to the question I’ve grown to hate over the past few days. “How are you?”

She gestures to the swing set. “We bought it for the girls’ birthday two years ago. RJ spent almost all night putting it up to surprise them first thing in the morning.” She wipes at her eyes. “He came in after midnight, soaked in sweat, cursing up a storm that the directions were wrong. But he finished it.”

I focus on the swing set. Its normally vibrant green color appears dull in the overcast gray light.

“He wasn’t a great husband, but he was the best dad,” she says, and there’s a hint of guilt in her voice. She turns to me then. “I’m not sure what I mourn more, his death or my marriage.”

“Yeah,” I mumble, thinking I should say something, but I’m out of my depth. “I have to find some—” I clear my throat of the words stuck there “—clothes for the burial. To pick out what he’s going to wear.” I assume she’s going to have an opinion. Fashion is her thing, but she doesn’t move.

“You know where the bedroom is.”

I stare at the side of her face, hoping I can shame her into helping me. When it doesn’t work, I roll my eyes, opening the door to go back inside.

“Cassandra.”

I hate she always uses my full name. Guess it’s the way Raymond felt when I used his name. I turn back to her. “Yeah?”

“Pick anything besides the Bruce Springsteen T-shirt or that horrid plaid suit.”

I huff out a laugh. That horrid plaid suit is a red monstrosity he bought for Christmas last year, bow tie included.

“Okay,” I tell her and head upstairs to their bedroom. It’s mostly clean and white, a pristine oasis that I know for a fact caused many a fight between the two of them because Ray was more of a slob than I am. They may have been married for a while, but she could never quite get over his untidiness, especially in the white bedroom.

I slip off my shoes before I cross the threshold, afraid my boots might have microscopic pieces of dirt on them that would drive Shayna batty. A few weeks ago, I might’ve purposely left tracks to get under her skin, but I don’t have it in me anymore. I help myself to the closet, pushing three-fourths of Shayna’s pink and cream wardrobe out of the way to get to Ray’s. His button-downs and ties are haphazardly hung up, along with a couple of pants and hoodies. A bunch of baseball hats are stacked up on a shelf with scores of sneakers lining the floor.

Carefully examining each article of clothing, I wonder what the purpose of this is. Why put him in the ground in a fancy suit—or any clothing, for that matter? It’s not like he needs them wherever he is now. Or wherever he is not. Our parents stopped taking us to church in middle school, none of us particularly religious, so considering what Ray would wear to the pearly gates is silly.

I close the closet and open drawers, looking for something cotton. Natural fibers would be better for the environment, right?

I plop down on the floor, his athletic shorts and baseball shirts surrounding me, remembering the time he convinced me to play hockey with him when we were kids. The game consisted of me standing in front of the garage without a helmet for protection as his goalie while he smacked a plastic puck at me. My legs were covered in bruises for weeks. That was when I took up reading books instead of following him around.

Coming across Ray’s old but treasured Bruce Springsteen T-shirt, the white one with Bruce in a dark silhouette with his guitar, I bring it to my face. It’s soft and worn and still smells like him. I stuff it in my bag, then settle on his coaching shirt and plain black pants to bury him in. I second-guess myself on shoes and boxers—because does he really need those?—but grab them both anyway, just in case his journey to the great beyond requires a clean pair of undies.

Back at home, I find a note in Aunt Joanie’s pretty cursive. She’s dragged Mom out of the house to get her hair and nails done, and Dad is who-knows-where, so it’s quiet for the first time in days.

It’s lonely yet not all that different since it happened. I play the White Album on the vintage record player I bought in Williamsburg, to spite the way Ray made fun of me for being so cool and different and unlike anyone else. The bastard.

Then I find the glue and get to work with family photos and pictures of Ray on a poster board. Vince said it would be nice to stick them around the room during the service. I agreed to do it, although they’re looking a lot more like a third-grade art project than a “memory board.” I place a classic school photo of him right at the top, next to one with the two of us as little kids running through a sprinkler, holding hands. There’s one of him dressed as G.I. Joe for Halloween next to self-portrait drawn in crayon from first grade. There’s a picture of him grinning in a crown as homecoming king with his arm around Vince, who wore a court sash, and I glue it next to one of him wearing a matching tutu with Lucy and Lara.

Ray was forever taking pictures, and I once asked him what he planned on doing with all of them. He said he’d put them in photo albums eventually, but that eventually will never come around now. Although these piles and piles of photos serve him well today.

I assumed it would be difficult to do this, but I zone out to the point of anesthetization. It’s like I’m looking at pictures of strangers. They’re happier, living in a different timeline. There is no way that is him or me or my family all grinning on a boat with big orange life vests around our necks. Or, at least, it’s not us anymore. These people are all strangers to me.

The house phone rings, and I consider not answering it but pick it up anyway. “Hello?”

“Hi, I’m calling for Donna, please.”

“She’s not here. Can I take a message?”

“Yes. My name is Janine, and I’m calling from the county coroner’s office.”

She pauses, allowing enough time for my brain to catch up. “Oh. Hi. I’m Cass, I’m Ray’s sister. You can talk to me since, uh, my mom’s not really…”

She hums in what sounds like empathy. “Sure. Cass, before I start, let me say how sorry I am to be calling you. Please extend my condolences to your family.”

“Sure. Thank you,” I mumble, nervous about what she’s going to tell me, even though it can’t be any worse than learning he’s dead.

“I performed the autopsy on your brother and found he suffered a massive heart attack, caused by hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.”

I rub my fingers over my forehead a few times, hoping all the information she’s giving me sinks in. She talks about gene mutations and genetics, muscle cells, and other science terms I should probably remember from Bio 101 but don’t. “This may run in your family, so I would advise everyone to make an appointment with the doctor. This often isn’t detected because some people who suffer from it are young and the symptoms of it don’t appear any different from the flu. I know?—”

“Did it hurt?” I blurt out, cutting her off.

“I’m sorry?”

“Did it hurt?” I repeat, the cement settling in my chest again. “When he died?”

“No, it didn’t,” she says gently. “It would have been instantaneous, like turning off a light.”

I nod, as if any of this makes sense. “Mm-hmm.”

“Try to find a little bit of solace in that,” she says, and I thank her before hanging up.

The heavy weight of this knowledge settles on me. On top of everything else, I have to explain to everyone how Ray died, although I can’t even remember what hyper-trophy-cardio-tappy—or whatever it’s called—is.

I Google it, spending hours reading about my brother’s condition, falling down a rabbit hole of learning about the human heart. I treat it like I’m cramming for an exam, trying to comprehend the inner workings of the ventricles, as if the more I know, the more I’ll be able to grasp why this happened. As if it isn’t totally random my brother inherited this particular brand of heart disease, which arbitrarily killed an otherwise healthy young man.

There were no symptoms, no reason for him to get his heart checked. Plenty of people have heart attacks and survive, some of whom are probably older and weaker. But this shouldn’t have happened to Raymond. His body betrayed him.

Confusion and fury rip through me, and I step on the memory boards, barely holding back from shredding them. I clench my fingers into fists to stop myself, yelling nonsense to expel the anger from my body. I stomp and jump and throw my arms, but it doesn’t help. I want to break something. I want to punch a hole in the wall.

I want to smash.

Smash everything to unrecognizable bits.

Maybe then my life wouldn’t feel so out of place.

Instead, I grab my phone and pull up Vince’s number. I never make phone calls, but my brain is too full, my fingers too numb to text him. When he answers, I offer him a quick “Hi” and then, “It was a heart attack.”

“What?”

“Ray died of a heart attack because of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.” I don’t give him a chance to ask any more questions because I word-vomit everything I’ve learned from the internet. I tell him every detail I can remember from the Mayo Clinic, WebMD, the Cleveland Clinic, and Wikipedia. And he stays silent until I finally say, “Did you know Ray owned the reissue of Alanis’s Jagged Little Pill?”

“The album? By Alanis Morissette?”

“Yeah.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

I flick off my record player. “He always sang her songs in the shower.”

“Huh.” He laughs.

I do too. Raymond was a great singer. Of course. “So, isn’t it ironic that the guy who coached baseball and worked out every day died of a lousy heart? Something he couldn’t even prevent. On Valentine’s Day, no less.”

After a few seconds, he agrees. “Like a fly in your Chardonnay.”

I feel the corner of my mouth quirk, and I stare down at the mess at my feet, the pictures of my now-deceased brother, his Springsteen T-shirt, and years’ worth of birthday cards I’d saved from him for some unknown reason. “I take it back,” I say, toeing one of the boards away so I can sit. “You’re good at this.”

“At what?” he asks, though it’s in a way I’m pretty sure he already knows.

“You’re good at your job.” He hums quietly in response, and I close my eyes at the sound, curling my arm around my bent legs to rest my forehead on my knees. “You make me feel better.”

It’s a while before he speaks. “Technically, I’m off the clock for my job, but never for you.”

This time, I’m the one who hums in response, and I can’t help the goose bumps that crawl up my skin when he says my name.

“Cass, I’m never on the clock for you. I hope you know that. I’m here whenever you need me.”

And I hold on to the light peeking up through the darkness in my chest, new grass rising through a crack in the cement.