Son of a Gun

Soon after we learned that our mother was dead, my brother and I went to a bar. We’d already worked the phones. Josh had called our grandparents, who’d been divorced for forty years but both still lived in Philadelphia. Grandpop said he’d book the first flight he could, but air travel was snarled from the attacks nine days earlier. Grandma was afraid of flying, so she stayed in her rented room in suburban Philly, wrecked and helpless. I called my dad’s house in New Hampshire, but he wasn’t home. Eventually he called back. I told him she was dead and a long pause ensued, one in a litany of silences between my father and me, stretching across the years since he’d left and the distance between us, thousands of miles, most of America. Finally he said she was a good person, that he’d always cared for her. He asked if I wanted him to fly to Arizona. I said he didn’t have to and hung up.

I emailed my professors and told them what had happened, that I wouldn’t be back in class for a while. I called the office of
the college newspaper where I worked and told my boss. Josh called in sick to his bartending job. Then we sat on the couch with our roommate, Joe, an old friend from Tombstone we’d known since grade school. It was a Thursday, and we had nothing to do. Somebody suggested the French Quarter, a Cajun joint nearby that had spicy gumbo and potent hurricanes. It seemed like a good idea: I’d heard stories of grief in which the stricken couldn’t eat, but I was hungry, and I needed a drink. So that’s where we spent our first night without her.

When we walked in, President Bush was on TV, about to give a speech. The jukebox was turned off, as it had been since the attacks, because now everybody wanted to hear the news. Joe went to the bar to talk to some of the regulars. Josh and I took a booth in the corner. Orion, the bartender and a friend of ours, came over and told us he was sorry, and to have whatever we wanted on the house. I wondered if Joe had just told him or if he’d already heard. I didn’t know yet how quickly or how far the news would travel, that within a few hours we wouldn’t need to tell anyone about our mother, because everyone would already know.

I flipped through the menu but couldn’t understand it. We’d both put our cell phones on the tabletop, and mine rang, chirping as it skittered across the glass. I ignored it.

“What now?” I asked.

Josh kept his eyes on the menu and shook his head. “There’s not much we can do.”

“Should we go out there?” I didn’t know what to call the place where she’d died; it wasn’t home, because we’d never lived there, and it didn’t have a name. It was just a piece of land in the desert outside of Tombstone.

“We can’t. The property is a crime scene.”

I asked him if we should talk to the cops and he said he already had, that we were meeting with them on Monday. I
asked about a funeral home and he said the coroner had to do an autopsy first, the cops said it was standard procedure. There was a long pause. My mother and her parents always said Josh was more like my father, difficult to read, and he looked like Dad, too, sharp nosed and handsome. I got more from my mother, they said, the dark and heavy brows, the temper, the heart on my sleeve. But if I was like my mother, why was I so numb?

Food arrived. Through the windows I watched the sky outside go purple and the traffic on Grant die down. A hot breeze blew through the open door. On television, President Bush identified the enemy, a vast network of terror that wanted to kill all of us, and finally he said the name of a murderer.

“Do you think Ray did it?” I asked. The police couldn’t find our stepfather or the pickup truck he and my mother owned. He was the only suspect, but I didn’t want to believe it.

Josh waited awhile to respond, chewing, letting his eyes wander the walls decorated with beads and Mardi Gras masks and a neon sign above the bar that said “Geaux Tigers.”

“We’ll know for sure when they find him.”

A pool cue cracked and a ball fell into a pocket with a hollow knock. My phone rang again. I didn’t answer. My voice mail was already full, and the calls kept coming, from distant family, my friends, her friends, acquaintances from Tombstone, people I hardly knew. At first I’d answered, but the conversations went exactly the same: they’d say they were sorry and I’d thank them for calling; they’d ask for news and I’d say there wasn’t any; they’d ask if there was anything they could do and I’d say no. It was easier to let them leave a message.