It’s dark outside your window. You’re sitting on your bed, reading, the book propped up on your knees. Your iPhone rings. Loud. It startles you. The iPhone’s on your bedside table, ringing. You pick it up, touch the green button, “hello?” Your big brother Greg is on the line. His voice sounds wrong. He’s trying too hard to sound calm. “Timothy’s dead,” he says. Tim is your baby brother. “He killed himself.”
Or maybe it’s still light outside. And maybe it’s not a book you’re reading. It’s a student screenplay you’re marking up with a blue gel ink Uni-ball pen, your favorite kind of pen. You buy boxes of them, twelve to a box, so you never run out, and is that your iPhone ringing or the landline?
You’re confused. You can’t make sense of things.
You think you tell Greg you’re kidding me, or I don’t believe you, or both, because Greg says, his voice turning sad, so sad, “I’m not kidding. This is real. Timothy died.” You throw something. Your pen? You jump off the bed. You pace on your blue patterned rug.
You tell Greg he’s got the wrong name. He means Russell, your middle brother. Russell is the one you always worry about. Russell, who often has such a hard time living that he scares you.
“No, it’s Timothy,” Greg says.
But Tim would never kill himself.
Oh, now you get it. It was a car accident. That’s all. Tim had a car accident. “It was a car accident?” you say.
Greg talks for a while. His words don’t make sense. Until this: “He hung himself with his bathrobe belt. Russell found him this morning.”
Russell found Tim?
They played together when they were kids. They shared a room right next to your room, and for hours you heard them joking and joshing and hooting while balls hit walls and blocks crashed to the floor. Their exuberance was a light cutting into that dark home. One night at the dinner table, Mom raging again, ugly, little Tim made a goofy face at Russell, then crossed one eye. Just one! Russell giggled, then he crossed one eye, too. He could do it, too. Mom’s face smoothed. She cracked a smile. Then the older kids, Greg and you and Amy, did it, too. What a talent! Was it genetic? All five kids crossing one eye, laughing and laughing.
Russell found him?
But now you’re on the phone, you’re talking with Greg about the memorial service, when it might be, flights there, will your son come with you, of course he will. You hang up. You stand on your blue patterned rug, your body not wanting to move, the words Tim killed himself sinking into your brain, hurting your brain. After a while your legs move. They carry you out to the living room where your son is watching a TV show, Nathan For You. You often watch that show together. So weird and funny. That “Dumb Starbucks” episode? Nathan isn’t plagiarizing, he’s a parody artist? But tonight you turn the TV off. You sit on the couch, take a breath, getting ready to tell your son.
Uncle Tim has—
Your son has grown so tall lately, his shoulders wide, his chin prominent, his body promising the man he’ll soon become. But when he sees the look on your face, he’s suddenly young, a scared little boy, a wounded cherub. You take another breath, getting ready to tell him.
Uncle Tim has—
“Can you cross one eye?” you say instead. Your son looks at you, puzzled. “My brothers and sister and I can all cross one eye. We think it’s genetic. Like this.”
You show him.
He tries it. He crosses one eye. Your son can do it, too.
Later you’ll tell him about Uncle Tim. When you’re not so confused. When your arms can hug your son. Maybe comfort him a little. And your ears can listen to him. And hear. But for now, you both sit on the couch, making silly faces, crossing one eye, laughing.
Wendy Hammond plays have received grants and awards, and have been produced off-Broadway, regionally in the United States and internationally. A film she wrote premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. She has taught dramatic writing on faculty at New York, Michigan, and Singapore universities.
Image Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/Cecil L
