by Kerri Zuiker

            “Edward, someone’s on the phone for you…” Becca’s voiced called from the kitchen.

            “Mr. Paxton, I need to go over the arrangements for your mother’s funeral…” That was Father O’Brien.

            “Eddie, man, let me know if there’s anything I can do, okay…?” And my best friend, Jeff, always there, but never actually helpful.

            There were people everywhere, trying to help me out and offer their condolences, and I wanted them all to leave. You’d think after someone you love dies, people would leave you alone for awhile to process what’s going on. Nobody ever does. Instead they invaded my mother’s house – the one I’d suddenly inherited – and refused to leave. And on top of all of the chaos in my house, I could hear my brother upstairs, screaming and throwing things around. I couldn’t blame him. It seemed like an effective way to process grief. Only he didn’t understand grief, didn’t understand death. He was just trashing his room because all of these people being here was not part of his routine, and that was the only way he could deal with it. Naturally, I hated him for it.

            “Jesus, Oliver…” I grumbled, rolling my eyes toward the ceiling and willing him to shut up.

            It didn’t work.

                                                                        * * *

            Everyone was gone. It was quiet. I could finally sit, and breathe, and try not to go crazy…

            Yeah, right.

            No matter how many times I wished for quiet, it hadn’t worked yet. Oliver was still up there, pacing and throwing things.

            It was only two minutes after I’d ushered the last visitor out of my house and all I wanted to do was shut down and go to sleep. Instead, my girlfriend Becca was standing over me, asking, “Edward? Are you gonna…?” She jerked her head up, indicating Oliver’s room above us.

            I glared at her. “Our mother just died, Becs. What the fuck d’you want me to do?”

            She stood up, pointing her finger in the direction of the stairs. “I want you to go up there and take care of your brother!”

            I couldn’t argue with her – she always won, anyway – so I pushed myself off the couch and headed for the stairs. “I’ve got a question for you,” I called back. “How exactly do you think I’m going to do that?”

            “Just be his brother, Edward,” she said from behind me.

            I sighed. “It’s harder than you’d think.”

                                                                        * * *

            His long fingers held the brush steadily, sweeping across the canvas in a smooth motion. His skin was smudged with paint, flecks of blues and greens and white clinging to his fingers. This was Oliver, completely in his element, unaware of anything but colors, shapes, layers, and perspective.

            At least he wasn’t screaming anymore.

            Most of his room, however, was a complete mess. Books on the floor, tables overturned, and the mattress half-pulled off the bed frame. But the corner with the easel, paints, canvases, brushes, colors— that was where Oliver was safe. Nothing could touch him when he was absorbed in his painting, and he liked it that way.

            I stopped at the doorway, watching. “Hey. You okay?”

            That was all I could think of to say to him. I felt bad about it, but I’d spent most of the past five years not living in Oliver’s world. Once I’d graduated and gotten my own place, I’d done my very best to become Mr. Normal. And now, all of a sudden, I was the only person that Oliver had left to take care of him. What else could I say in a situation like this?

            Of course, he didn’t pay attention anyway, didn’t even acknowledge that I was there, so I turned around and walked out of the room. Maybe it was better that way.

* * *

I was sitting in the living room with the lights turned down, watching TV, when I heard him behind me. That quiet, “Hunh…”, the breathy whimpering noise Oliver made when he was agitated or upset. I turned around on the couch to find him standing in the kitchen, staring down into the living room.

He looked lost, standing there and rocking back and forth, hands tangled together, and all I could say was, “Oliver?”

            Eyes focused on the ceiling, out the window, anywhere but on me, he responded quietly, “Yeah.”

            I slid off of the old, comfy couch, and walked up into the kitchen. I tried to get him to look at me, asking, “Are you ready to go to bed?”

            He kept rocking and, almost too quietly to be heard, said, “Can’t… can’t…”

            “What? You can’t what?” I asked, slipping immediately into comforting big-brother mode.

            “…Can’t find Mom. Mom has Oliver’s shirt…” he whispered.

            “Oliver, Mom’s dead. She’s not coming back.”

            He nodded silently, and for a moment I hoped he understood, before he said, “…Of course, tomorrow.”

            “No. Not tomorrow.” I carefully took his arm, and he followed me down the hallway. “I’ll get your shirt, okay? Is it the blue one?” The last time I visited, he wore the same blue long-sleeved shirt to bed every night to keep him warm. I hoped it was still the same one.

            “Blue one,” he echoed, tapping his fingers against his thigh as he followed after me.

* * *

            Two days later, Becca and I had effectively moved into the house. We’d made a few trips back to our apartment, bringing all of the stuff we needed until we could figure out what to do permanently. I took off work to stay at home with Oliver, while Becca went back to the city during the day to work.

            It was Saturday morning and we were down in the kitchen. I was making pancakes, and she was sitting on the counter in a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Oliver was, thankfully, still asleep upstairs.

            “So,” Becca started to say, and from her tone of voice I knew this was going to be one of those big conversations.

            I turned to her, eyebrows raised in expectation, and said, “Yeah?”

            “What do you think you’re going to do?” she asked, taking a sip of her orange juice.

            “About Oliver, you mean?” At her nod, I said, “Well, I guess I’m staying here. He can’t live on his own.”

            “You haven’t thought about…maybe sending him to—“

            “I’m not sending him to some institution,” I cut her off, angry that she’d suggest it. “My mom spent twenty years taking care of him so he wouldn’t have to live in some strange place. My dad left us because she refused to put him in an institution. I don’t even want to think about that option.”

            “I’m sorry, Edward.” She stared down at the floor, cheeks red with embarrassment. “I guess I was just thinking about you. I mean, this is a big responsibility to take on all at once. You sure you can do it?” she asked.

            I turned back to the pancakes, flipping them over before they burned. “He’s my brother. I’m taking care of him.”

* * *

            The day I had to bury my mother, it should have been rainy, dark, gloomy. Instead it was the warmest, cheeriest Monday there could possibly be this time of year. I cursed the weather for not empathizing with me.

            After the Mass, as I watched everyone leave, I couldn’t help thinking, shouldn’t we have had a party? My mother hated funerals. She thought it was a shame to sum up a person’s life in the course of one depressing ceremony.

            I kind of agreed with her, but how was I supposed to have planned a death party on my own? I didn’t exactly have a huge family to help me out with all of this. And the one person that I had left wasn’t even aware of what was going on. He was standing over by the small group of trees, staring at the way the sunlight sparkled through the leaves. My twenty-one-year-old brother who didn’t understand death, who didn’t even realize we were putting our mother in the ground.

This was it. There was no one else now. Just us.

* * *

            “I don’t know what you want, okay?” I yelled, throwing my hands into the air.

            Oliver put his hands up against his ears, continuing his incessant humming, and ignored the plate of lasagna that he’d pushed away after I put it in front of him. I turned around and stormed down the hallway.

            “You have to tell me what you want, you know,” I lectured, partly directed at him and partly just to vent. “Mom didn’t exactly leave me an instruction manual on how to take care of you. Nooooo, we’re all going along just fine until some idiotic, over-tired businessman falls asleep at the wheel of his fucking Lexus and everything goes completely to hell and I’m stuck trying to figure all of this shit out!” I stopped in the foyer, thumping my head quietly against the front door, and tried to stop behaving like a complete asshole.

            But we weren’t even halfway through the day yet, and already I felt like I was going crazy. I think Oliver had finally started to figure out that Mom wasn’t coming back, and it was beginning to show. He’d been stimming all morning – rocking back and forth, humming, twisting his fingers and waving them in front of his face. It was his way of dealing with something new, his way of calming himself down. Unfortunately, it didn’t have the same effect on my mental state.

            “Mom makes lunch… mom makes lunch. Not lasagna. Of course not lasagna,” he babbled away in the kitchen while I paced angrily back and forth, trying to regain some shred of patience.

            Becca came down the stairs, probably having heard my little outburst, and asked, “What is going on?”

            I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath, and gestured towards the kitchen, “I try to talk to him, he ignores me. I try to feed him lunch, he freaks out. Am I that horrible?”

            She gave me a reassuring – at least I’m sure it was meant to be – pat on the shoulder and strode into the kitchen to calm my distraught brother.

            Five minutes later, I walked back into the kitchen to find Oliver eating happily and Becca leaning against the kitchen island with a satisfied smile on her face.

            I made a helpless, defeated sort of motion with my hands and said, “Okay. What’d you do?”

            “He wanted a sandwich, not leftover lasagna,” she explained, as if it was the most obvious solution in the work. “So I made him a sandwich.”

            Oliver, swallowing a bite of said sandwich, offered his own helpful advice, “Turkey, tomato, mayonnaise, and no lettuce on white bread.”

            Hmph. Why couldn’t he have told me that in the first place?

* * *

            Oliver stood pressed up against the kitchen door, his breath fogging the glass. He’d been like that for awhile, staring out the window at the yard and the trees. I came up behind him and stared out the window, too, trying to figure out what was so interesting.

            “What’re you looking at?”

            “Outside.”

            I laughed quietly. “Do you want to take a walk?”

            “…Take a walk,” he repeated, laying one hand flat against the glass. “Only with Edward. Don’t go without Edward.”

            “That’s right. Where’s your jacket?” I asked, showing him I already had mine on.

            He immediately went to the coat closet to find his jacket, and after putting on his shoes, followed me outside, nearly bouncing with excitement.

            The path in the woods behind our house had been my favorite place to run around when I was younger. I remembered spending days out there in the summer, playing games with my friends or exploring with Oliver. For me, it was kind of nostalgic being back there, but for him, it was just as exciting as it had been years ago.

            I watched, hanging back as he walked down the path, head constantly moving to take it all in. Occasionally he’d stop, one hand coming up to tangle itself in his dark hair as he stared out into the woods. Every tree, every flower, every squirrel and bird and cricket, he wanted to see it. He crouched down at the edge of the path to watch a robin hopping around in the grass, completely fascinated, and I wished for a second that I could be that open and uninhibited.

            A frog croaked from somewhere near the stream and he laughed with glee at the sound, throwing his head back with a grin. He stood up and scanned around for a sign of the little thing. I didn’t see it either, but it croaked again and Oliver responded with the same wild laughter.

            “Where’s the frog?” he asked, running up to me.

            “I don’t know,” I replied with a shrug. I smiled at his excitement. “He’s probably afraid of people.”

            Oliver paused for a moment, head tilted, then set off across the path, saying, “…Find the frog.”

            “Whoa, hey!” I reached out an arm and pulled him back. “Remember the rule? What’s the rule?”

            He hung his head down and replied, “Stay on the path, Oliver.” He planted his feet firmly on the ground.

            “That’s right. Stay on the path. I don’t want you getting hurt,” I told him seriously. Then I grinned at him, and said, “But I’ll race you back to the house.”

            “Race?” His eyes lit up immediately. He loved running, especially because he knew he could usually beat me.

            “Yeah,” I agreed. Before I could say anything else, he took off running with a laugh and I chased after him.

* * *

            Eventually, I had to go back to work – there was only so much leave I could take before they fired me – but there was still the question of what to do with Oliver. Until I could find some sort of caregiver for him, I decided to take him to work with me.

            Before we left that morning, I sat Oliver down with me on the living room couch, making sure he was looking at me before I spoke to him.

            “Oliver, are you listening to me?” I asked.

            “Yeah…”

            “You sure?”

            “Yes, listening,” he insisted, playing with the hem of his t-shirt.

            “I can’t leave you in the house by yourself, so you’re coming to work with me today, okay?” I explained.

            He obviously had other ideas. “Yeah, go… go to work and paint in your room.”

            “No, you’re not going to paint in your room,” I corrected. “Oliver is going to work with Edward. To my office. After work, when we come home, you can paint in your room. But I’ll bring a notebook so you can draw, okay?”

            He nodded, fidgeting. “Yeah, okay. Draw and paint in Edward’s office.”

            “No painting,” I repeated. “Just drawing. With a pencil and paper. Do you understand?”

            “Okay, just drawing,” Oliver agreed, and I sent him into the kitchen to eat his breakfast.

            We got to my building almost on time, and Oliver followed me up to my tiny office, where I sat him down at the small table by the window. I handed him a sketchbook and a few pencils, and he immediately opened it up and started drawing.

            The day passed by with surprisingly few incidents. Oliver spent most of his time plugged into my iPod, big headphones covering his ears as he sketched away. I, on the other hand, had to frantically try to catch up on all of the work that I’d fallen behind on while I’d been gone. Whenever Oliver didn’t specifically need me for something, I just let him be. By the end of the day, he’d filled up half of the sketchbook and switched over to staring out the window at the cars down on the street.

            After I’d turned off my computer and started to get ready to leave, I picked up his sketchbook and started flipping through it. I landed on a drawing he’d done of the woods near our house. There it was, an almost exact replica of the path we’d walked on the other day, detailed down to the small curves in the path and the ripples in the stream.

            Oliver turned around and saw what I was looking at. “Can’t find the frog,” he said solemnly.

            I made a sympathetic face, scanning the drawing again. Sure enough, he had even included the robin he’d been watching, but there was no sign of a frog anywhere on the page. “Still can’t find him, huh?”

            He shook his head sadly and I reached out a hand, pulling him up off the chair.

            “We’ll find him one of these days,” I said, picking up his backpack.

            “…Find him,” he repeated quietly.

            “Time to go home now.” I guided him out the door and shut the light off behind us.

            “And paint?” he asked, making sure I’d keep my promise.

            “Yeah.”

            “Forever?”

            “Well, until bedtime…”

-END-

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