Simon Says (19 page)

I put the trembling pieces of paper down on my desk beside the remains of the envelope. It's Saturday, March 14, two days since this letter was written. It can't be later
than ten-thirty, because I got up a little after ten, pulled on an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt, went downstairs to get my mail, and came back to my room with the two envelopes. It couldn't have taken more than fifteen minutes to do all that I started to open the letter I didn't recognize in the elevator and then read it after I got inside nay room. I couldn't have spent more than five minutes, maybe ten, reading, so it can't be any later than ten-thirty. How can I fill the rest of the hopeless minutes stretching into the empty future?

I force myself to go back to Adrian's newspaper and read the account of Graeme Brandt's fetal heart attack, picking my way through the newsprint as though it were a foreign language. They found his body on Friday the thirteenth (
Is that what you hoped for?
). He'd actually died on the twelfth. Then I see the photograph smiling at me, that engaging, irresistible image. I drop the paper as if it burns my hands the way it burns my eyes.

Graeme Brandt was killed by a heart attack in his studio (
a studio I sat in one stormy night last September, a studio I fled from
) on March 12.
Graeme Brandt was killed by a lethal injection, which he gave himself after seeing my sketch (after seeing my paintings).
Graeme Brandt is dead....

My hands clench. I waited for you all the way through winter to the spring. I painted photo-quality still lifes for Mr. Wallace and pastoral cows for Ms. Katz, and ended up with the best computer program in the class, thanks to Alona. I worked and I painted and I even sketched for Rachel I tried to find a way to deal with
her, to make peace with Adrian, to survive the Christmas break with my parents, and to explain the curfew violations to Mr. Pullton. I made myself go on, because you were writing—you were working, and I could hope that showing my paintings to you had made a difference, that when you finished writing (
and had forgiven me for the sketch—for the truth
) we might actually be friends, and you'd help me begin to open myself at last.

Oh—seeing my paintings made a difference to you, all right!

I stumble across the room to sit on my bed, burying my face in my hands, images lurching into my mind. I can almost see Graeme killing himself. He'd have been satisfied, even eager, that thrill of joy infusing his face, the way I remember seeing him in my studio, the way I tried to draw him in that failed sketch. I shake my head from side to side to obliterate the image, harder and faster. I can't think I can't let myself think Graeme could escape, but I can't and I can't even dare to think about it or I'll have to give in to grief and fury. I can't let myself cry.

My head slows down until I can sit motionless, my hands over my eyes. Then I force my hands down to rest on my knees. I study the hands as though they belong to someone else. They're steady enough, but they're clenched so tightly that the blood has drained away. I force them to unclench until they lie open.
Simon says ... sit still; look like everything's okay, and it will be.

I'm not shaking anymore.

I look steadily at the room around me, mechanically noting the familiar setting. Adrian's closet door open, a pile of dirty laundry on the floor, hangers crooked;
my closet closed, everything in place behind my door. A tangle of white sheet and gold woven blanket on Adrian's bed, a puffy blue comforter wadded up at the foot, a CD case open on the wrinkled sheet with the liner notes spread out—Stravinsky, I think—headphones lying next to it, the wire dangling from his CD player on his desk. A newspaper spread out on the desk, with a picture of a dead boy—

Oh, God! I can't stop seeing Graeme's body on the floor of his studio!

I hear slow footsteps in the hall and my fists clench again. How am I supposed to go out of this room and face other kids? Teachers? How am I supposed to face Adrian when he comes back? I have to talk to people—
and they won't know what happened!
They'll think Graeme died of a heart attack—
they won't know that I—

No—I can't think now. I won't let myself think. Maybe later, when I can see things more clearly, but it's too soon and my mind runs away with itself.

Graeme...

There are things to do today, things like writing the foreign policy paper for Government I should finish that today, before I go to sleep tonight before I wake up tomorrow. I should finish reading
Candide
before French class next Friday. I could do that today—should do that today. Plenty of things to do to fill the empty hours—but thinking isn't one of them.

But—What did he mean by calling me a coward? He couldn't dream of how much courage it took to hold on to hope, day after day, knowing the wolf pack has
almost caught up, knowing how completely I've disappointed everyone's (
Mother's, Father's, Rachel's, Adrian's, Graeme's
) expectations—

Or am I too much of a coward to face the truth? Was he right about my blaming other people, letting them cripple me? Have I been playing Simon Says all along, and lying to myself that I was protecting my art?

I stand abruptly, willing my body not to shake, focusing on the room, depending on the verticals of the walls to hold me upright. I'll get out of here. I'll go to my studio. I shut my eyes, then snap them open again. Etched across my eyelids I can see the half-finished painting on its easel, the shadow on the edge of the parapet, waiting for my brush to set it free in angel flight or to send it crashing into hell. I know how to finish it now.

I can see my cityscape as it stands, propped up against the wall in my studio. I can see Graeme's face, transformed.

Graeme!

I've got to get out, with other kids, where I can force myself to bury my thoughts (
kill my hopes for good
). I grab the letter, wanting to crush it to pulp (
wanting to smooth the crumpled pages
) and cram it in my backpack beside the failed sketch I once hoped would be a peace offering. Maybe Graeme was right. Maybe we all play Simon Says, one way or another. Maybe it's time for me to give in to it and play along.
Simon says ... behave yourself in public.
It sounds like good advice for once. I give myself orders.
Simon says ... don't think. Simon
says ... don't shake. Simon says ... don't admit the truth about Graeme Brandt's death
(even to yourself).

Graeme Brandt was killed by a heart attack after finishing his last book. But then the kaleidoscope possibilities swirl around his death—Graeme Brandt was killed ... by a heart attack ... by an injection ... no, by a heart attack ... by himself ... no! by a heart attack ... by Charles Weston...

No! Simon says: by a heart attack.

I shouldn't be here. At first it was just going to be a memorial service at the interdenominational chapel on campus. Then they announced they were going to have the funeral service at a nearby church—only two blocks off campus. I see the spire every day, and it won't be meaningless architecture anymore—it's going to tower over me in perpetual accusation. The Brandt family wants to have him buried there—something about an inspiration to future Whitman students. So I thought I had to go. But I was wrong.

It's Houston-hot inside the church, already humid and sticky in March, and only fens turning, spinning kaleidoscope dust motes over the murky crowd. An organ plays the most dismal music I've heard outside of an old Boris Karloff movie. "
It's always better in the movies," Graeme had said.

The family is ushered into the front row. More people file in, and then a woman faints (Graeme's mother?). It must be the heat and the people and the tension—or maybe an overdeveloped sense of the dra
matic. A man (his father?) just stands there, patting helplessly at her face and looking around, and then a younger stranger (did Graeme have a brother? a cousin?) brings her a glass of water and she sits up, sipping it and shuddering, and I envy her for being able to show how much she hurts—and for having people to comfort her.

Now the minister's voice rings in my ears, reading out the particulars—heart attack, plucked in the flower of his youth, unusually gifted boy, such great potential They're the same words he'd use for a promising high school football player, probably almost the same thing he'd say for the local dogcatcher.

Then he looks directly at the crowd of students and family and strangers, his voice low and sincere so we have to lean in close to catch it Graeme's mother holds a handkerchief to her mouth.

"I can't tell you that there's an earthly guarantee that he'll go to Heaven, but I believe that Jesus exists, and I know that Graeme will be with Him."

What's that supposed to mean? And now he reads something from the Bible—Revelations, I think. What does any of this have to do with Graeme? None of these people has any idea what revelation he had. None of them knows Graeme, my Graeme.

Now we're all standing, slapping pages softly in our hymnals to find Hymn 224. My voice won't hold steady; it quavers like it hasn't done since I was a little kid and felt shy of the high notes I could hit. My tenor betrays me now, splitting notes as though it's never sung out loud before.

Now the laborer's task is oe'r;
Now the battle day is past;
Now upon the farther shore
Lands the voyager at last.
Father, in thy gracious keeping
Leave we now thy servant sleeping.

It was some battle for you, Graeme. But what was it for? What did you win? What was your task in the end? My hands shake as I hold the hymnal, and I'm grateful to be hiding in the back of the church where I don't have to share it with anyone.
Simon says ... control yourself.
I force my hands to be still and command my voice to hold steady.

There the tears of earth are dried;
There its hidden things are clear;
There the work of life is tried
By a juster judge than here.

How can they ever try his work, those angels and gods of faith or heart? And what makes these people who barely knew him think that God can know Graeme any better than they did? Dregs of long ago Sunday school lessons wash across my mind. If man was created in God's image, what was Graeme Brandt? Adam had the will to do other than what was blindly expected of him, Judas repented, and Peter denied. Even Jesus doubted and questioned and prayed for God to take away the cup of death. Man wasn't made in God's image
to blindly copy anything or anyone around him! So how can God understand Graeme?

I slam the hymnal shut, ignoring the looks from strangers around me, and drop the book into its slot before I lose it totally. I'm not thinking straight.

People parade past the casket From the back of the church I watch them, some reaching out to touch the folded hands with an intimacy none of them has earned. A couple of older ladies even have the nerve to kiss him on the forehead. These people have no right to use him this way. They never even knew him—how can they pretend his death means so much to them?

Mr. Adler stands over Graeme a minute or so longer than the others. Did he understand Graeme better? I remember Graeme's respectful kindness to him that night (
the night I drew the sketch that killed him
). Graeme recognized his mentor's claim on him—maybe Mr. Adler did understand his student, or at least did care for the person more than the celebrity. He looks into the dead face as though he's sanctifying a vow of some sort and he stands straight in that crowd of hunched-over mourners.

The line limps forward until it's my turn. Graeme lies there, dressed in this stiff suit (
not an open-necked shirt that let me see the hollow of his throat as he looked at me in his studio that night, not tight jeans, not a shirt with the sleeves rolled up so you could see the long line of his arm, not even his hand turned so you could see the cut where he
—). I guess his parents saw him in a suit like that Their famous author son.

The undertakers have put this fake smile on his face, nothing like the smile I remember. They blurred the details of death with makeup, and even darkened his hair from the soft black I knew. In front of all those ignorant strangers, I have to look at that dead waxy face and see, instead, the clear blue eyes of last fall, Graeme's eyes, in the sanctuary of my studio, measuring me in terms of my paintings, eyes that respected me (
too much
).

I want to reach down and shake him.
You're just playing another role! Stop it and get up
—But he can't get up, ever again, because he thought he could find himself in death.

I cut my thoughts off and twist my face away. I can't think about how wrong he was. Graeme Brandt is dead, and nothing can touch him now, nothing (
not even me
). I follow the procession out to the graveyard that encircles the church, and we wait on a fake plastic grass carpet that has been rolled out over the soft spring grass beside a deep hole ripped in the turf. The family sits on folding chairs up front, Graeme's mother sniffing into her handkerchief, his father staring uncertainly at the hole. There are still more flowers, their petals ruffling in the breeze (
as the breeze ruffled Graeme's hair on the roof that morning
).

Then the pallbearers carry out Graeme's coffin and rest it on glaring chrome rails set up over the grave. The minister smiles compassionately at all of us, and I look away, studying the drifting wisps of clouds in the pale blue sky above. It's as though some artist has taken a canvas of pure, flowing light and dragged his brush carelessly across it with feather strokes of shifting milky whiteness.

Someone from the row of family chairs weeps loud tears suddenly—an aunt? Did Graeme love her? Did he tell her secrets when he was little? She huddles, massive in a tweedy suit, a ridiculously small feathered hat pinned to her coiled black hair (
Graeme's hair
), rocking herself back and forth, choking her ragged sobs into her hands as if embarrassed to be caught sobbing out loud. I wish I could show my grief like that.