There’s a cover band that plays each Tuesday night at the bar across the street from my apartment. I sit in my living room with the window open and listen, hoping that they’ll play this Harry Chapin song my brother Lance used to listen to all the time. It was that one about the cab driver and his ex-girlfriend and ... oh, it doesn’t matter. They never play it anyway. No one ever does, I guess. Harry Chapin songs aren’t that popular with the kids who go to bars on Tuesday nights.
My brother was an original. Not a fake bone in his body. God, he liked those artists who sang story songs: Gordon Lightfoot, Jim Croce, James Taylor--he even listened to Jimmy Buffett’s boat songs. He said guys who sang songs about life were real and that bands like Styx and Journey were just “filler." He liked that word, filler.
“Don’t buy that Camaro," he said to me once. I was sixteen and had worked all summer so that I could afford a beat up Camaro that had mismatched rims and had been painted with primer and then never finished. “Its just filler. Save another two, three months and get something decent, dependable, like a Honda. Something that will last."
I drove that Camaro for three months before the transmission blew and the radiator cracked. I’ve got a Honda now, a real fancy Accord with a six CD changer and seventeen inch tires, but I don’t have my brother. He’s been gone now for a year and while I don’t mourn him everyday, I do think about him, and sometimes I talk to him about things that are bothering me. I’m not crazy, you know. I’m not conjuring his spirit and having talks with him and Houdini over the Ouija board. Like right now, with the band across the way playing this U2 song, I’m saying to Lance, “When are they going to learn some classics?" and he’s saying, or I’m imagining he’s saying, “You’re right, Daryl. Why don’t we go down there and request ‘Please Come to Boston’. What do you say? I’ll buy the first round."
I get up from my chair by the window and go to the fridge for two Rolling Rocks. One year he’s been gone, I think, and I’m still drinking for two. Maybe I am crazy.
Mom and Dad show up at 9 in the morning and buzz me from the street.
“We’re double parked," Dad says, “just come on down and we’ll take one car."
“I’m not ready yet," I say. “I just got out of the shower."
“Show some respect," Dad says. “Other people are waiting, too."
“I’ll be down," I say. “Just give me a minute."
I look outside and see Mom sitting in the front seat of Dad’s old Lincoln Continental. She’s wearing a hat today, the same wide-brimmed number she wore to Lance’s funeral. I wonder if she even realizes it. Dad’s pacing the sidewalk with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his suit coat, so that his arms look like bows.
You can’t choose your parents and even if you could, what difference would it make? Would they be any nicer? Would they love you any more or less? I was raised well and though I never felt that I was as important to them as Lance, I realized that my parents loved me as much as they could. And that was fine. Lance was their first born, but he was also the dreamier one, prone to bouts of depression and anger, and while we rarely fought, he often would end up brawling with both Mom and Dad over the simplest things. The end result was that Lance had no ambition to go into business, had no desire to live his life in a suit and tie like our father, and that all he knew he was good at was drawing. Much of Mom and Dad’s time was taken up worrying about Lance, wondering what he would make of his life, until he finally enlisted in the Marines. That was in 1990.
Lance found out then that, in addition to drawing, he also liked guns, and some recreational drugs. He served in Desert Storm and got used to having the chance to kill people. His friend Owen told me Lance probably killed fifty Iraqis, but Lance never really said anything about that. He did show me a charcoal drawing he made of the burning oilrigs in Kuwait. “See how I made the shadows and the smoke overlap? You see that?"
“Yeah," I said. “That makes it look real scary."
“No, no," Lance said. “That’s the most peaceful thing. That’s how it actually was. I could watch that smoke all day."
“What’s this say in the corner?" I asked. There was a signature there, but it wasn’t Lance’s.
“That’s my artist name," he said. “Honeymoon Lewis. What do you think?"
“Sounds a little goofy," I said.
Lance smiled real big and slapped at my face gently. “That’s right! You got it," he said. “Like somebody in a story, right? Like somebody in a Harry Chapin song. Right?"
Mom looks up and sees me in the window. I smile and wave but she doesn’t move. So much of her life has been ruled by sorrow. What I perceive to be the truth of her life is that she wanted something more, something lucrative and deep that would have made her famous, would have put her in a spotlight where she could have been absolutely unique. Maybe she would have danced with Nureyev or gone up in the space shuttle. There was always something she wanted to do.
We’d go to the library when I was a kid and she’d check out books about science, and horticulture, and sometimes she’d get these thick tomes about metaphysics and past-life regression. More often than not, Mom would read these books in a day or two and then she’d sit in the living room making lists and charts and diagrams. I’d try and catch a peak at her work and she’d snatch the paper up and tear it to pieces. In my mind, she was planning to change the world, was getting close to a fabulous universal truth, and then I’d come up behind her and she’d just crumple it up.
Though I suppose the profundity of this truth could be wrong: she is just a woman who gave birth to two sons, one of whom decided to kill a cop a year ago today.
Dad drives with his window down so that the smoke from his cigar doesn’t bother Mom and me. It’s pointless, though: the one person who should be bothered, the one who had his cancerous left lung carved out of his chest two years ago, is the one smoking the toxic thing.
“You should really quit smoking," I say. “It’s harmful to all of us."
“All bets are off." Dad smiles at me in the rearview mirror. “These are my bonus years. I should already be gone. I’m allowed to celebrate."
“That’s so illogical," Mom says. “Do you even hear yourself?"
“Loud and clear," he says.
When we were kids, Dad used to give Lance and me his old cigar boxes. We’d fill them with matchbox cars, or army men, or sometimes we’d just leave them empty so that we could smell the sweet tobacco when Dad was at work. Dad also thought one day they might be worth something, like the baseball cards he’d thrown away as a kid.
“Do you still have any old cigar boxes?" I ask.
“No," Dad says. “Threw them all out. They’re not worth a damn cent, you know. Saw something on PBS about it. Not a damn cent."
“Still," I say, “it would be neat to have a few of them."
“It would, Daryl," Dad says and then I see him pat Mom lightly on the thigh. “Maybe we’ll hit some garage sales one of these days, see what we find. How does that sound?"
A convertible Mustang filled with teenage girls speeds past us and I think that if Lance were here right now he’d tell me that Dad was trying and that I should respond to him, that Dad needs to be commended when he does something right. “Yes," I say. “That would be fun."
After Desert Storm, Lance came home with a bitterness I’d never seen before. He said he’d done things he didn’t like to hold himself accountable for and that no matter what else happened to him for the rest of his life, he’d understand that he was just a vessel. He actually said that. We we’re sitting at TGI Fridays eating potato skins and drinking mudslides and he said, “You ever feel like a vessel?"
“I don’t think I know what you mean," I said.
“Yes you do," he said. “Like you’re not in control. Like someone else is pulling all the strings and you’re just performing a task."
“No," I said.
“My wiring is all screwed up," he said. “I’ve got a whole jumble of things acting inside me and I’m just, you know, doing time in my body."
“Lance," I said, “you okay?"
He picked up a potato skin and took a deep bite into it. “I’ve been craving one of these for over a year," he said. “You’d be amazed the things you think about in the middle of a desert."
After we drank another three mudslides, Lance got up and said he was going to step outside for some fresh air and would be right back. For two hours I waited for him. I checked the bathroom, the bar, the parking lot, asked if anyone had noticed him walking around. Nothing. It was like he just vanished into the ether. Though we were both pretty drunk, it wasn’t like Lance to walk out of a place without saying anything. He just wasn’t like that. I didn’t see him again for two years.
Mom flips on the radio and Al Green’s voice fills the car. He’s singing “Let’s Stay Together," and for a while no one says anything. Lance loved Al Green. Said he was the last man on earth who knew what true love was. Lance said things like that.
“You know he’s a preacher now," Dad says. “Al Green, I mean."
“I heard that," I say.
We are a few miles from the cemetery and already I feel like jumping out of the car and running home. It’s not the knowledge that I’m going to visit my dead brother, because I do that often, but that I know what we’ll find once when we get there: someone defaces his tombstone at least once a week. There’s usually something like “Cop Killer" written over his name. I’ve found dead rats, skunks, human waste; all matter of disgusting items strewn over Lance’s grave.
He was my brother. I’m not sorry about that.
What am I supposed to feel? Am I supposed to admit that my brother was the most evil monster who ever lived? Chances are there are people who would want me to say that Lance deserved to die, that he was a mistake of society, but the truth is I never knew that side of him, never knew he killed a prostitute in Laughlin, Nevada years before he killed a police officer here in town, or that he was even capable of either.
All of that sounds like filler to me. I’ve been on this planet for thirty years, and while I know that doesn’t qualify me as an expert on this existence, I believe you can love someone and never really know their deepest secrets, or begin to understand what drives them to madness. There are places you just don’t go with people you care about, family or otherwise.
After he disappeared from TGI Friday’s, Lance drifted up to Laughlin and got a job drawing caricatures in the lobby of a casino. He’d left a note on Mom and Dad’s kitchen table telling them he was going away, but not to worry. He eventually called me after he’d been up there for about six months and apologized for just disappearing.
“Tell Mom and Dad that it felt too weird being back home," he said. “I didn’t want to see anyone I knew from high school and have them ask me what I was doing. What do you say? I just got back from killing some towel-heads, how about you? You know what I mean, right Daryl?"
“You could have stayed with me," I said. “Just hung out for a week or two until you got back to feeling normal again."
Lance didn’t say anything for a moment. “I couldn’t do that to you," he said softly. “You’re a good kid, Daryl. Maybe you’ll come up and see me sometime? We’ll hit the casinos, maybe rent a couple jet skis and pick up girls on the river. We’d have a good time."
“I’d like that," I said.
“I’m gonna send you a couple of my new drawings," Lance said before we hung up. “I feel like I’m doing some really good work out here."
A few days later, a thick manila envelope arrived at my apartment filled with caricatures, landscapes, and abstract drawings--along with Polaroid pictures of what Lance was trying to capture. He had a clean and oddly effortless way with people’s faces, somehow coaxing humanity out of black lines of ink, and showed an especially flawless knack with children.
As I sifted through the Polaroids, comparing them to the drawings, I came across a photo of a young woman in a bathing suit that had no corresponding artwork. The woman was sitting on a chaise lounge reading a magazine, her eyes shielded by sunglasses, and seemed oblivious to the fact that someone was taking pictures of her. When I called Lance to thank him for sending me his work, I asked him about the girl.
“She’s a friend," he said. “I didn’t mean to send that to you."
“Are you drawing her?"
“No," Lance said.
“You should," I said. “She’s gorgeous. Do you want me to send it back?"
“Don’t worry about it," he said. “Keep everything or throw it out. I don’t care."
“Are you all right?" I asked. There was something in Lance’s voice that made me think he was in a hurry, that he wasn’t really paying attention to anything I was saying.
“I’m late for work," Lance said. “I just have to get down to the casino."
“Maybe I’ll come up next week," I said. “I’ve got a few vacation days left that I can use."
“That won’t work for me," Lance said. “Maybe next month? Definitely come up next month."
After we hung up, I sat for a long time and looked at Lance’s drawings. I noticed that he’d signed each of them, but not with his own name. Instead, in his perfect cursive, he’d written “Art by Honeymoon Lewis" in the corner of each.
Mom turns around in her seat and smiles at me. “We haven’t really talked," she says. “How is everything going?"
“I’m fine," I say. We’ve pulled into the cemetery grounds and are winding through the soft foothills filled with headstones. I’ve always thought that cemeteries were a waste--a place you visit just to feel awful, a place that shows the determined conclusion of everything; how, regardless of the particular trials or tribulations or defining variables of your life, the end result is the same. But I continue to visit because I know that beneath my feet is something that was once my brother.
“It would be nice if you came by every now and then," Mom says. “I feel like I never get to see you."
“I should get you email," I say. “It’s the best way to get hold of me."
“I don’t understand how you can spend so much time staring at a computer," Mom says. I design web sites for a living--and that’s just what it is: a living. “Do you like your job?"
“It’s what I’ve chosen to do," I say.
“You know what I mean, Daryl," she says. “Does it make you happy? Are you fulfilled?"
There is not a correct set of answers for these questions. Dad always wanted me, like Lance years before, to go into “business"--meaning something that involved the law or balance sheets or stocks. For years, Dad was a partner in a small law firm specializing in bankruptcy, a decidedly unglamorous field of law, and had long hoped that either Lance or I would follow the same path and that we’d open a family practice. Mom only desired that we do what we wanted, and that we had no misgivings about our choices.
“I’m happy," I say. “The job itself doesn’t give me great joy, but the money is good, and I have free time to do what I want when I get home. It keeps me busy."
“You should make time for a family," Dad says, the first time he’s spoken in several minutes.
“He’s right," Mom says.
“Maybe I’ll do that," I say. “Do you know where I can sign up for something like that?"
“We’re being serious," Mom says. “You don’t want to live your life with any regrets about things you could have done. End up in a place like this because you’ve run out of options."
“That’s not why Lance is dead," I say.
“That’s enough," Dad says. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not today."
“Then when?" I ask.
“Daryl," Mom says, “let’s just remember the good parts of Lance right now. Make it easier on all of us."
“You can’t run away from the truth forever," I say. “You can’t just try to rationalize the fact that Lance wasn’t the person you thought he was. When are either of you going to admit that?"
“Not today!" Dad shouts and then turns up the radio, filling the car with music. It doesn’t come close to drowning out the sounds of Mom’s crying.
Lance started getting in trouble in Laughlin. Twice he was picked up for buying drugs, coke both times, and once on suspicion of robbery, but nothing stuck until he busted up a tourist inside the casino. He called me from the county jail and said he’d beaten up a man he was drawing a caricature of. The man had complained that the drawing looked nothing like him, that he certainly did not have a double chin or long black hairs hanging from his nose, and Lance told him he was just drawing what he saw. When the man refused to pay, Lance had severely thumped him with his fold-up easel.
“How much is bail?" I asked.
“No," he said, “don’t worry about that. I go to court in the morning and then I’ll get released. I just wanted you to know where I was."
“I’ll be there in four hours," I said.
“You’re a good kid," Lance said. I was twenty-three.
After I posted his bail, Lance came out of the jail and hugged me in the lobby. He seemed taller than when I’d last seen him at TGI Fridays, and his skin had stretched tight over his face and hands. It gave me the impression that he was somehow growing, that his bones would eventually punch through his skin. I thought then that he might just extend beyond my reach, that he’d slide past me into the sky.
He’d lost weight, nearly twenty pounds by my guess, and his hair was long and greasy. We walked across the street to a crowded diner, one of those places with a checkerboard floor where the waiters dressed like soda jerks, and ordered cheeseburgers.
“You’ve gotta understand something about drawing for these fucking people," Lance said. We were sitting in a booth eating dinner and Lance was starting to get loud. “There’s a certain amount of stupidity you’ve gotta deal with. That’s fine. I can do that. I was a Marine, you know? But you get some poor fucker from Nebraska who wants a fucking portrait of himself to take back to his fat ass wife back home, a fucking keepsake, and he says, you know, make it look real, like I don’t know my fucking job. And so I give him real. I give him two-fucking-dimensions of real. I put my fucking heart and soul into that fucking pen. And you know what he says? You know what this fucking fuck says? He says it doesn’t look like how he wants it to look! So I say lose some fucking weight, you know? Daryl, this guy had it coming like no one has ever had it coming."
Lance never swore--he always said that there were thousands of words better than a curse. He told me once, this was when I was ten and had just gone 0-4 in a Little League game and was trying out all the four letter words I’d ever heard, that swearing was a sign of weakness, a display of caving in.
“Lance," I said. “Calm down. You’re making a scene. There are kids here."
“It’s Honeymoon," he said. “Okay? Lance is dead and gone. From here on out I am Honeymoon. And tell Mom and Dad that, too. I don’t want birthday cards or Christmas gifts addressed to that son of a bitch Lance."
“Are you on something?"
Lance stared at me from across the table and I could have sworn it was a complete stranger, an alien inside my brother’s body. Then his face softened, his eyes closed, and he took several deep breaths, almost as if he’d just come up from being underwater. “I’m sorry," he said. “You drove all the way up here to get me out of a tight spot and here I am acting crazy. You shouldn’t have to see me like this--it’s not your fault. Christ, it’s not your fault at all."
Lance ended up doing sixty days, got fired from his job, got another on a riverboat and then, rather suddenly, picked up and moved to Biloxi, where he ended up getting married, having a kid, and getting a divorce all within the space of two years. He called me the day the divorce was finalized.
“You should fly out here," he said. “James Taylor is playing an outdoor concert next week and I’ve got a buddy who can get us some good seats. Maybe even backstage passes. It would be a real fun time. You could meet your niece, Carol Ann, too. She’d love to meet you, Daryl. God, it would be great if you could fly out. What do you think?"
“I’d like to," I said, “but I can’t just pick up and leave work. Maybe if we could plan something in advance I could get time off."
“I understand," Lance said. “Hell, I could probably use a little of that structure back in my life."
“Are you working?"
“I’ve got my own stand out in the arts district," he said. “I’m making enough to live on, you know, but Shelly’s got me bent over backwards now." Shelly was his ex-wife.
“Why don’t you come back out here?" I said. “Until you can get back on your feet."
“Maybe I will," he said. “We could have a good time together, don’t you think? Maybe get a place where you could put my drawings on the Internet. I could become rich and famous."
The next time I saw Lance was on television. He was standing in front of a McDonald’s here in town with a gun pointed at a cop’s head. Fifteen minutes later, as I sat riveted to the TV, screaming, crying, begging for something, anything, to happen to save Lance, my older brother shot the policeman. Half a second later, Lance was dead, too. The coroner said to the press that he was shot thirty-six times, but that with the amount of PCP he had in his system, it was probably--“unfortunately," he said--a painless death.
I spray Lance’s tombstone with 409 and get to working on the graffiti. Dad picks up scraps of garbage and old vegetables and tucks them into a sack. Mom stands still a few yards away, her arms crossed over her chest. It’s harder for her, I think, because Lance was a physical part of her for nine months, a part of her that has become wretched with decay, torn by the memory of a newscast she witnessed just like everybody else.
As I scrub, I start to talk to Lance. I tell him that today has been pretty tough, that Mom and Dad just aren’t in tune, and that Al Green was on the radio when we pulled up. I tell him I think hearing “Let’s Stay Together" was an omen, that he was looking down on us and telling us to get along. And then I say, God dammit, Lance. Why did you go crazy? Why did you hurt people? Why didn’t you just come here like we talked about, hang with me for a little while, concentrate on your art? Why did you kill a woman in Laughlin, Nevada? Why did you send me her picture? Did you want to get caught? And then I say, I miss you, Lance. I miss talking about cars, and music and about how if you had a choice you’d just draw all day, never even sleep or eat. I remind Lance about the night we got into a fight at a bar with a guy who said Elton John could kick Billy Joel’s ass and then, later, how all three of us ended up singing terrible karaoke versions of both of their hits. I start to laugh and then I look up and see that my Dad has stopped picking up trash and is just looking at me with this completely lost expression on his face.
“Do you remember how Lance used to listen to those story songs?" I ask.
“I do," Dad says and then he starts laughing. “He used to turn up the volume so loud that the neighbors would complain and Lance would say ‘How can you complain about a Loggins & Messina song?’"
“What was he like as a baby?"
“He was just a kid, Daryl." Dad shrugs. “If you’re asking if there were signs, things we should have looked out for, well, that I don’t know. Maybe your mother does."
Mom has stepped away from us and is walking slowly along the gravel path that surrounds the rows of graves.
“You haven’t talked about it?"
“Of course we have," he says. “There are distances between everyone, Daryl. We have ours, too."
Down the hill from us, a group of kids has gathered around a grave. They are all wearing football jerseys and after a few moments they break into song. It wafts up in the air and for a moment Dad and I stop cleaning and just listen.
“So much sorrow here," Dad says and then he touches me lightly on the arm. It feels warm and I wonder how long it has been since we’ve hugged. A year, I think. Maybe more.
“Did you ever think this could happen?" I say.
“How do you prevent the inevitable? How do you teach your son not be a serial killer, Daryl?" Dad says. “I wish someone could tell me."
“I miss him," I say.
“So do I," Dad says and then we get back to cleaning Lance’s grave so Mom can have her time alone with him.
The police scoured every piece of Lance’s life. They trundled through his apartment in Biloxi, through his belongings stored at Mom and Dad’s house, through the photos and art he’d given me, and put together a picture of a man I did not know. They were certain he’d killed the woman in the Polaroid--a prostitute who often stayed in the hotel Lance worked at--and were under the assumption he’d killed another two women in Mississippi. There were drawings.
Lance’s ex-wife, Shelly, didn’t come for the funeral. She said she didn’t want to put herself and Carol Ann through that sort of spectacle. She’d rather remember him as a human, not an atrocity. And those were her exact words. Two weeks later, she flew into town with some of Lance’s belongings and so Mom and Dad could meet Carol Ann.
“These are all his records," Shelly said. We were standing outside my apartment unloading boxes from the trunk of Dad’s car. Shelly was a pretty girl, not even twenty-one then, but time and circumstance had already begun to weigh on her. I thought how when I was twenty-one, eight years earlier, I still felt like a kid, still wondered when I was going to suddenly become an adult. There was an eternity about things then, but Shelly had needed to become an adult in an instant and I felt sorry for that.
“You should keep these," I said. “He’d probably be happy to know you were listening to them."
“I don’t want them in my home," Shelly said. “I hear him in every song and I can’t live like that."
That night, I sat on the floor for hours playing old LPs, cassette tapes, and CDs. I listened to Harry Chapin and Jim Croce, Neil Young and John Denver, Al Green and Otis Redding--I listened to every song I thought Lance loved until they all started to sound the same, until the sun was rising and I was drunk and crying and wondering how you lose sight of the people who mean something to you.
The days unwind like an old alarm clock. I wake up. I go to work. I eat. I drink. I talk to my dead brother until I think I can hear him in the grooves of his old records, until I am clear that none of what existed in him exists in me.
I go to a pottery class with my mother. I go to garage sales with my Dad and together we search for a cigar box that will mean something to us. We buy hundreds and none of them do the trick. I enjoy our time together but think that in some strange way, Dad feels he’s paying a tithe for a life he might have otherwise given up on--his and mine.
And still.
Honeymoon Lewis arrives via UPS and stares down at me from the wall. Shelly calls to make sure the painting has arrived safely, makes sure the police sent it to where she specified. He stands barefoot on the hardwood in the kitchen of our childhood home. He has a strong jaw, dark blue eyes and wispy brown hair. It is Lance’s finest work--a self-portrait of a man who never existed, a dream for time and hope. It is familiar and haunting, yet when all the familiars pass away, when I stare at the painting for hours imagining Lance at work, all that is left are his strokes with a paintbrush, his fine-tuned hand on canvas.
It is Tuesday again and tonight I raise my glass to Honeymoon Lewis and we drink and we sing story songs until dawn.
Tod Goldberg is the author of the novel Fake Liar Cheat (MTV Books, 2000). His fiction has appeared in various publications, including The Santa Monica Review, The Sun, Other Voices, and Indigenous Fiction. He has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and was "short-listed" for the award in 1999 and 2002. He lives in Palm Springs, California and teaches Creative Writing at UCLA, California State-Fullerton, and California State-Northridge. His second novel, Living Dead Girl, is scheduled to be released in May 2002 by Soho Press.
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