Loss

Fog does not come on little cat feet. It snakes its way across the land, slithering down the San Joaquin Valley, a seductive killer cloaked in gray velvetiness prowling for victims. Silently it swallows everything in its path—a shopping center, a motel, a home. It creeps down highways and roads, obscuring the vision of lonely drivers, luring them deep into the mist. They know they should ease up and take their time. But many don’t. They fall to the fatal charms of the fog and wind up a statistic, a news item at eleven o’clock, a fatality of a sexy predator. We bemoan tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes—those devastating monsters that seize national attention as lead stories on tv and in print. But fog is silent and evades headlines. Its stealth goes unheeded as local weather persons announce a simple advisory, and then move on to the high and low temperatures for the day, the pollen count, and when the next rains will come.

I stood at the kitchen window, the low hum of the refrigerator filling the space of my empty house. As I looked out, the fog formed a dense, vapored curtain obscuring the view of other homes. This mist would not burn off by noon. It would linger, cling to the ground with hungry intent. I sighed, turned, and headed toward my office. I’d already decided to work from home given the weather. I wasn’t sure why I’d already dressed when I could have stayed in my sweats and a hoodie. We kept the house at seventy-two in the winter, my husband not abiding anything lower. And yet a chill settled on me. I reached up and rubbed my upper arms. Something pushed at my thoughts, a memory, but unlike the fog outside, it slipped away almost as soon as it had placed a toe onto the threshold of my awareness. How odd. I shrugged it off and moved from the kitchen into the living room.

On my way, I stopped and looked at the array of photos on the sofa table. One of them was from my parents’ wedding. I picked it up and studied their faces. They looked out with unsure expressions. Each offered a half-smile and eyes that should have sparkled with joy but didn’t. And I wondered if deep down they knew on that day they’d end in divorce twenty-five years later. Some marriages are doomed from the outset, victims of impulse as time chips away at a shaky foundation. They’d met at a Sonic drive-in. My dad was on leave from the military and my mother was a car hop in skimpy shorts and roller skates. Maybe she fell for the uniform and he for her legs. They were married six months later. I’m not sure how many times they tried to hurt or kill each other. I buried most of those memories. But like all buried memories, occasionally they rise to haunt you.

I set the photo down and picked up one of my brother, Bobby. It was his high school graduation picture—his broad smile radiating the mix of pride and happiness at achieving one of life’s earliest goals. In the photo, I saw myself. We were twins, born five minutes apart on a foggy December morning in Merced. No one could tell us apart except for our parents, and on occasion we’d fooled them too. Like many twins, we were close and shared our lives in ways that other siblings didn’t. We both came out to each other at the same time, when we were sixteen. It turned out we had a crush on the same boy. You’d think we would’ve fought over him. But our bond was too thick, too hard for the likes of another boy to break. In the end, he was straight and married his high school sweetheart. Bobby and I laughed it off.

He met someone in college, at UC Davis. I’d gone to UC Santa Barbara. We’d decided to divide and conquer, not to fight after the same men on the same campus. One night he and his boyfriend were headed back to Davis from a party in Sacramento. A heavy fog had settled in, and his boyfriend slammed into the back of another car on I-80. Bobby died later in the hospital from head trauma. For some reason, he wasn’t wearing his seat belt. I had a good hunch why. In spite of the weather, maybe because of the element of danger, he was probably doing something naughty to his boyfriend—and part of me hoped that was the case, so that at least he was having a good time when the accident occurred. That was twenty years ago.

Bobby’s death devastated my mother. She cried for a full week. I came home from Santa Barbara to be with my parents, but I had difficulty dealing with them. I sequestered myself in my old bedroom to avoid the accusations, the impending brawls. They began right after the funeral, and my father started drinking again, the all too familiar clink of ice in a glass each evening as he poured scotch after scotch. They hurled taunts at each other like poison darts.

“You just don’t care!” she once yelled. “You’ve never been the father you should’ve been!”

“Don’t point fingers at me!” He bellowed as loud as he could, as though his words could swallow up her insults, make them disappear. “You could’ve stayed home. Taken care of the boys. But you chose work over your own kids!”

“And how would we have lived with your paycheck?” she shot back.

“It was never about my paycheck! I know what you do at work, how you flirt with the cooks, the customers! Just like when I met you years ago.”

She laughed. “At least people find me attractive, you paunchy bastard!”

 I heard slaps. I heard things break. The next night, I snuck out with my suitcase, having left a note on the kitchen counter with the simple message, “Heading back to Santa Barbara. Take care.” Six months later, they split up. My mom stayed in the area and within a year remarried. Her husband was a cop who early on revealed a deep resentment toward me for being the child of another man. On my visits, his eyes would bore into me as he sometimes narrowed his gaze and fix on me. Once he muttered “You think you’re special, don’t you?” After that, I stayed away. My dad returned to his home state of Ohio and moved in with a widowed sister. We didn’t stay in touch, and I don’t know if he’s still alive. I haven’t cared enough to find out.

Most twins in my position would have wailed at the loss of their other half, fallen into a semi-permanent funk and withdrawn from the world. But Bobby and I weren’t the weeping types. We’d learned from an early age to sublimate pain, to embrace thoughts of a better future. We’d inured ourselves from grief in order to cope with our parents and their mutual torture. To be sure, a profound sadness enveloped me when he died—a kind of invisible cloud that stuck to my skin and sank inward. But I learned to live with it, like a chronic illness or a constant dull ache. My husband sees it in me sometimes, when he catches me staring off into the distance or when I’m momentarily distracted from some task. Like this morning, when I was looking out at the fog. For a few seconds I thought I could see Bobby emerging from the mist, as though he were coming for a visit, to check up on me and see how I was doing. He was smiling the way he had for his graduation photo. I’d reached up and placed my hand on the chilly windowpane. But the image vanished.

I set Bobby’s photo back on the sofa table. I looked around and took in the expanse of the living room with its soaring thirty-foot ceiling and textured walls. My husband and I were avid art collectors and we’d adorned the house with pieces we’d gathered over the years on our travels in the United States and abroad. I focused my attention on one painting we’d found in a gallery in Chicago six years prior. It was a large landscape scene by a Russian-American painter, depicting low-hill country with a few lone trees along the banks of a meandering river. Unlike many landscapes that aimed for a pretense of realism or a play with light to evoke sunsets or sunrises, what drew us was the unusual use of color. The river was a sandy brown, dull and sad, as though mud and silt flowed along its course. There was no intent to portray shimmering water or sparkles of sunshine bouncing off a surface of sapphire and turquoise. In contrast, the sky was a brazen red, with just hints of tangerine—angry, yet also inviting, as though full of passion and ready to reach out from the canvas and invite the viewer to touch its audacity. We marveled at the sight and talked about how it captured the duality of so many people—how they could be both unhappy and impassioned at the same time, how they could carry pain and yet be hopeful, how they could love and also despise. We bought it on the spot.

As I examined the painting, a sense of nostalgia washed over me. I wasn’t sure where the feeling came from. I didn’t think about our trip to Chicago. I didn’t think about hanging it for the first time. I didn’t even think about the first painting we’d bought together—a small portrait of two smiling boys, arms draped around each other’s shoulders, posed in front of the steps of a house. That piece hung upstairs in the hallway. Yet, looking at this landscape, I felt as though something in my life was missing or that maybe I’d lost something, but I couldn’t determine what. My heart felt vacant, almost like it wasn’t there, and for a few seconds, time stopped. Almost as soon as the sensation came, it vanished. I shook my head. Crazy.

The rustle of our cat scratching in her litter box caught my attention. I realized I hadn’t seen her most of the morning. She sauntered out of the laundry room, then turned and walked into the living room.

“Hey, where ya been, Pudding?”

She ignored me as she walked past then padded up the stairs. She did favor my husband, but she’d never given me the cold shoulder before. As she disappeared at the landing, the house once again became still. I was alone, and it unsettled me.

Just then I heard the whir of the garage door as it opened, followed by the same sound as it dropped back into place. The ADT alarm dinged to signal that someone was coming through the door. I wondered what my husband was doing home. It was only eleven o’clock. He should’ve been downtown at his office. He hadn’t called to let me know he was coming. I turned and saw him emerge. He trudged into the family room and dropped onto the sofa, burying his head in his hands. I detected a low moan and then quiet sobs. I glided through the connecting hallway and over to him.

“What’s wrong, Jeffrey?”

He didn’t respond.

“Honey, what’s wrong?”

I caught a muffled sound coming from behind his hands. I stood there, perplexed, feeling helpless. I reached out for him, but he abruptly stood, then charged for the refrigerator. He pulled out a bottle of chardonnay we had opened the night before. He retrieved a glass from the cabinet and poured himself a hefty amount. He swirled the wine around just a bit, and I watched its amber color eddy within its confines, reflecting the overhead kitchen lights. Jeffrey took a large swig then drew his hand across his mouth. He looked out the window.

“Fucking fog.” He spat the words out. He brought the glass to his lips once more and drained its contents. Again, he poured.

It was not like him to touch any alcohol until the workday had ended and it was time to relax. His career as an attorney had its stress and mine as an academic had its share of push and pull. So, we enjoyed our evening wind-downs with a good wine and even an occasional vodka martini. But what I saw, what I’d just witnessed was incomprehensible.

“Jeffrey, what’s going on?”

He downed the entire glass and then placed it in the sink. He rested his hands on the counter and bowed his head. Once more, I heard low sobs as his body shook slightly. I waited. Over the years I’d learned patience in our relationship, not to push him, not to engage him the way my mom and dad had engaged each other. We weren’t my parents, but I was smart enough to know how children repeat the patterns they witness, how they recreate in others what they learned early on by watching and listening. We are, after all, like cocoons with butterflies inside, waiting to emerge in an adult stage, changed from what we were when we crawled along the ground, wanting to be different, wanting to be better. Jeffrey was clearly in a state and I needed to give him room.

He reached into his pocket and fished out his phone. He pressed a name in his contacts, then brought the phone to his ear.

“Yes. I need to speak to Tony Marshall. Tell him it’s Jeffrey Lyons.”

I stood, transfixed, not understanding. Tony Marshall was our financial planner. He also handled our life insurance policies.

“Tony?” Jeffrey said. His voice tottered between business and sorrow. “I . . . I just got back from the sheriff’s office. I have some . . . some bad news.” He continued to speak.

The words hit me with the force of the Santa Ana winds. I stumbled backwards as they echoed among my thoughts, reverberating along the canyons that had formed between memories and images. Another chill ran through me as I listened, my gaze fixed on my husband’s face as tears trickled down his cheeks.

I had gone out that morning for a routine doctor’s appointment in Merced. A twenty-minute drive in good weather. I should have known better, should have called and rescheduled. I’m not sure what pushed me to go. I’d made it as far as three miles on highway 99 when a semi’s taillights began to flash in the mist and the truck fishtailed then jackknifed. I made the mistake of breaking hard. The pavement was slick with fog sweat. I don’t recall what happened. I just remember being home, walking into the kitchen.

Jeffrey ended the call and set his phone down on the prep island. With the back of his hand he wiped his nose, the tears having dried up, leaving soft trails on his face. He drew in a deep breath, looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head.

“Barry, you should have stayed home,” he said. “Why didn’t you stay home?”

Then he hurried out of the kitchen and down the hallway, his steps thudding on the wooden stairs as he climbed to the second floor.

Quietly and slowly, I moved to the window and looked out. The fog hung like a hazy shroud. I reached up and touched my chest, hoping to feel the beat of my heart, the pulse of life. It felt as vacant as it had before, and then I understood everything. Out in the mist, I saw Bobby materialize, striding purposefully toward me, a broad smile across his face.

He waved, and I headed for the patio door, ready to go out and meet him.