The Fragile World. Paula Treick DeBoard

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       curtis

      The only way I could handle Daniel’s death was to work my way through the facts, to build a massive to-do list and check off the items one by one. And so, I became the detail man.

      By the time it was five o’clock in Sacramento and eight o’clock in Ohio, I was on the phone to the Oberlin switchboard, then passed upward in the chain until I was talking to a director of housing, a dean of student enrollment. I talked to a funeral home in Ohio, a funeral home in Sacramento. I called my school secretary at home, before she’d left for work. I called Olivia’s school, reporting her absence. I looked online for flights from Sacramento to Cleveland. I filled pages on the yellow legal pad with my notes. Money—there was an astounding amount involved—dates, times, names, phone numbers, confirmation numbers.

      I was vaguely aware of Kathleen on her cell phone making the personal calls—to her brother and sister-in-law in Omaha, to our mutual friends, to the parents of Daniel’s friends and bandmates from one group or another. I was glad to have the impersonal tasks; I couldn’t bear to be the one to give this news.

      At one point, I heard Kathleen running a bath. Beneath the sound of the water rushing in the old claw-foot tub, there was another sound—low, keening—that I realized was Olivia, crying.

      I paced back and forth, four steps each way, the length of my office, a glorified closet beneath the stairs that I’d claimed as my own when we bought the house. I wished I could pace right out of my body, leaving it behind. Was this what madness felt like? I wanted to be there, right at that moment, with Daniel’s body. I wanted it to be last week, or last summer when we were all together, or two years from now when this hurt wasn’t new. I wanted it to be the moment before the truck took the corner too fast, hitting the speed limit sign. I wanted to grab Daniel’s arm and yank him back to safety.

      Kathleen knocked once and opened the door, and we stared at each other.

      “We have to figure out what to do...” I began, but she stopped me by stepping forward, falling into my arms before I was aware that I had reached out to hold her. I tried again. “About the arrangements...”

      “Shh, shh. Just hold me. We can talk about that in a moment.”

      I kissed the top of her head, my lips cool and dry, as if they’d been sculpted out of marble. From nowhere came the line from a poem in a humanities class I’d taken with Kathleen, so many years ago. Lips that would kiss form prayers to broken stone. Why had it stayed with me, dormant all these years, only to come back now?

      After a few minutes, I let my arms go slack, slithered out of her embrace. “When you’re ready to think about it, I’ve got some information about plane tickets.”

      She stared at me. “Plane tickets?”

      “It makes more sense to take a mid-morning flight, since we’ll have to connect somewhere along the way, probably in Chicago.”

      “Tickets?” she repeated.

      “To get Daniel,” I said. “To bring home his...” I hated Kathleen for a sharp moment, for not filling in the blank, for making me say it. “His remains.”

      “You were thinking we would all go?”

      “Of course.”

      Kathleen shook her head. “I don’t think... I mean, Olivia can’t possibly go.” She said this with such certainty, as if it were the sort of common sense thing every parent should know.

      “I suppose she could stay with one of her friends. With Kendra, maybe,” I suggested.

      Kathleen’s stare had turned incredulous. “Leave her alone, you mean? When her brother has just died?”

      I rubbed my face, letting this sink in. Maybe because of grief and general sleeplessness, my skin had started to feel like a rubber mask, stiff hairs sprouting haphazardly in anticipation of a morning shave. Someone had to go to Oberlin, to attend to the dozens of things that seemed impossible, at that moment, to attend to. It was the worst possible trip in the world, and one I couldn’t imagine taking alone. But that, I realized, was exactly what was going to happen. “You won’t come with me, then?”

      “Curtis, I can’t.”

      It was just a small conversation, just a few words, but a fault line had opened up between us. I was on the side with Daniel, charged with protecting him, with bringing him home. I went back to my laptop to book a single flight, and Kathleen left the room, shutting the door behind her.