Adam Haslett - Imagine Me Gone

“We should have gone to the movies,” I said. “Why didn’t we go to the movies?”

Alec picked at his nose, the tag of his new sweater dangling from his wrist like a cheap ornament. I had trained him from late adolescence in basic psychological literacy and so was able to talk with him about more or less anything, including, over the years, the ups and downs of my relationships. All in all, we were about as close as siblings could be. Which meant we monitored each other’s responsibility for the family, watchful for any sign of defection, as though we were on a desert island together, each surreptitiously building an escape raft that the other occasionally burned. My cardinal sin was having boyfriends to begin with, because God forbid another family unit arose to threaten the hegemony of the dying colony. His was being younger, and so having required my taking care of him when there was no one else to do it, putting him in the hole, in terms of time served. Now, belatedly, he’d set himself up as the family actuary. It was his attempt to engage at the lowest emotional cost.

Realizing he would get no traction from me on Mom’s retirement, he tacked back to Michael, letting me know that Ben had informed him that our brother hadn’t paid his rent this month. Michael had been living with Ben, and then Ben and Christine together, for years by now, in an arrangement that had morphed from a stopgap measure in the wake of his breakup with Caleigh into the most constant aspect of his adult life, all, needless to say, without any planning or discussion. Jobs, doctors, romantic crises had come and gone, but throughout he’d remained in that little front bedroom facing Shawmut Avenue on the edge of the South End. I’d long been glad for it because, while it might have overstated the case to call Michael their ward, Ben and Christine had kept him on as a member of their domestic establishment, giving him the daily contact and occasional home-cooked meal he’d otherwise be without. That Alec remained close to them both provided a kind of collective, monitoring intelligence, for better or worse.

“But surprise, surprise,” Alec said, “Ben gets a check in the mail from…Mom. So it’s not just his student loans now, it’s his rent. And there’s no way she can afford to keep doing that. But whatever! I guess everyone’s happy just drifting along.”

I zoned out for a bit to the embers of the logs, and he quit his yapping. But only for so long.

“Did I tell you about my trip up here, about the guy who cruised me?”

I shook my head.

“This guy next to me totally cruised me. Seriously. He gave me a blow job in the parking lot at 128. We exchanged, like, three words.”

“That’s gross.”

“Oh my God,” he said. “You are so homophobic.”

“Oh, please. He could have murdered you.”

“And that makes it gross? ”

“It’s just a little extreme,” I said. “Like maybe you’re acting out.”

“I thought you worked with Bay Area homeless kids. How is this extreme?”

“You don’t prostitute yourself to pay your rent.”

“That may change,” he said.

“Whatever. My point is, is this really what you want to be engaging in? Wouldn’t you rather have a boyfriend?”

He gaped at me, incredulous. In my exhaustion I had walked right into it — the blithe demonstration of my heterosexual privilege in suggesting such a thing was so readily had, when I knew well enough that it wasn’t. But here he was, attractive and articulate and employed, and I didn’t get why he couldn’t find someone else like that in all of New York City. It was half the reason he’d moved there. So why was he exposing himself to these random encounters?

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I take it, then, you’re not seeing anyone at the moment?”

“No,” he said, fiddling with his cuticles.

“Could you stop that picking?” I said.

“Okay — something is clearly up with you. What is it? Paul?”

“No. I’m pregnant.”

He glanced from his hands straight into my eyes, testing my sincerity. When he realized it was true, his mouth fell open. “You’re shitting me,” he said. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Are you saying you might have a child? ”

“Well, I’m not going to have a deer . You say child like it’s a disease. You sound like Michael.”

“Okay, let’s just say, that would be a game changer. Procreation?”

Seeing his reaction, I felt almost giddy, as if all of a sudden my escape vessel was complete, and I’d made it out onto the open water, free at last. What better veto of filial duty than an infant?

Officially, Alec and I were no longer competitive. To be explicit about it would seem petty. But it still squirreled its way into moments like this, when the battle became primal again, and we struggled, pulling each other together because that’s what we’d always done to get through, and pushing each other away to convince ourselves over and over that we were more than just functions of a loss.

“I haven’t decided,” I said, generously, not wanting to scare him any further. “But who knows? Maybe it would be good for all of us. You’re the one saying we don’t think enough about the future.”

This took him a moment to digest.

On the table beside him, next to the fluted lamp with the hexagonal shade of waterfowl, the picture of a younger Dad stared from behind the glass of a studio portrait. He must have had it done for some business venture. Mom had found it in his papers and had it framed. We didn’t do family photographs on the mantelpiece or the walls. This was the only one. It occurred to me in a way it hadn’t before that my father would have liked Paul. They would have gotten along. Paul would have been able to reassure him that he was a reliable person, trustworthy, an observer of the social contract. Nothing awkward would have arisen. If Dad had been well enough to focus on the fact long enough, he would have been politely happy at news of a grandchild.

“Well, that is a stunner,” Alec said.

He had ceased his fidgeting, oblivious to the dull horn of his mask that still poked from his forehead. The house had gone quiet around us.

“I love you,” he said. “For whatever it’s worth.”

AFTER-ACTION REPORT

Operation Family Therapy

Mission:Enhanced communication / familial well-being

Outcome:Pending

1. After taking cannon fire from a beached dreadnought on Mass. Ave. two klicks east of Central Square (allegiance and origin unknown), Mom continued to operate our down-armored Honda at below regulation speed and ordered the commencement of a routine park-and-destroy mission. The entire unit was placed on alert. Multiple initial space sightings proved false. We tacked south into Cambridgeport, keeping to side streets. Weather was hibernal. Birds were occasional. Eighteen minutes out from rendezvous a viable space was ID’d in front of a deli. Mom was skeptical but maneuvered the vehicle into position. As she shifted into reverse, a VW sedan driven by an irregular nosed into the designated space behind us. Mom immediately launched a DEFCON 1 verbal barrage, which backfired against the closed windows, causing multiple casualties. Celia was swiftly medevaced to Ramstein Air Base for a laparoscopic frontal-lobe transplant and returned to active duty four minutes later. Others ran for psychic cover only to find the terrain on fire. Fog of war. Following the skirmish, tensions in the little platoon rose. Trying to regroup, Alec commenced a psyop designed to convince Mom that an open stretch of curb downwind of a laundromat ended more than twelve feet from the adjacent hydrant. The operation failed. Mom ordered a higher alert. Celia observed that we had been on one for a decade. Eleven minutes out, Alec suggested we consider PAYING for a garage space. At this point, command and control began to break down. Mom hissed aloud, Who are all these people? I suggested they might be people who lived in the neighborhood. Seven minutes to rendezvous, after Mom had threatened to drop us off and go on alone, an enemy sport-utility vehicle bearing a Dole/Kemp sticker vacated a meter in front of Crate and Barrel. Alec leapt from the vehicle to secure the perimeter and Mom backed our transport into the slot.