Warren’s Box

*formerly published in Phoenix magazine

The air is thick with heat. I can almost see it as surely as I can taste it; that acrid, dusty flavor that makes my tongue fill my mouth till I think I’m going to choke. Looking for Christmas decorations in August? Fuck me. But when Mom gets a bug in her ear about something, there will be no peace till the deed is done.

Too tall to stand up in what is more crawlspace than true “attic”, I pick my way across the floor joists, crouched over like an arthritic old man. Wouldn’t it be fun if I slipped and ended up crashing through the ceiling into the rooms below? “Look at the mess you’ve made” would be the first thing I heard.

I spy my target, a stack of boxes neatly grouped underneath the sharp eave. There wasn’t much else up here, really. Just the cobwebs of a lifetime of living in the same place.

“All right, you lot,” I say in my best English accent. “It’s off to the Goodwill with you, then.”

I pull the boxes, one at a time, out from under the angle of the roof, clunking my head on the rafters once or twice for good measure, and push them towards the opening in the attic floor. It’s been what, six? No, seven years these crates of tinsel and tangled lights have languished up here in the Florida heat. Seven Christmases come and gone with no twinkles in these windows, no visions of sugar plums dancing in anyone’s head. Seven Christmases without Warren.

My plain undershirt soaked through, I strip it off and mop the sweat from my face. A fresh crop immediately springs up. My short hair is wet from root to tip. I rub my head with my damp shirt and lean back against the wall. That’s when I see it. Tucked into the shadows behind where the Christmas stuff had been is another box. And I see his name.

Warren

is all it says on the box. Just one word, yet the weight of it squeezes my chest, wringing the very breath from me like water from a sponge.

I make my way over to the mystery box and run my fingers over it, tracing the outline. Who put it up here? Eyes closed, breath held, I yank the lid off.

The box is maybe half full. Papers on top, receipts of some kind. The warranty for a desktop computer. Just a bunch of… junk, it looks like. My fingers touch something slick, a photograph, and suddenly I am looking at his face. His smiling face, so like my own. Same unruly mass of dark blonde waves, same glass green eyes. I’m older than him now. He is forever 25.

In the photo he is two weeks shy of turning 20, goofy grin eternally plastered on his narrow face. I can just get the hint of his tongue peeking out from between his teeth, the way it always did when he was really, truly amused. Shirtless, a braided leather choker encircles his tanned neck. I remember this day well. Mom and Dad had rented a boat and taken us out on the Butler Chain. Dad had even let me drive the boat. I couldn’t believe it! For that one moment, I was the master and commander. I was in charge. Then Warren had said he wanted to go kneeboarding and Dad wasn’t about to let me drive the boat and tow Warren. So I relinquished the captain’s chair back to the King while the Prince did his thing, popping off the wake and spinning front-to-back as the board skimmed through the waves. Mom had laughed and clapped and snapped photos. I’d wanted to give it a try but those afternoon storms that marked every day of summer were moving in and we had to start back. I remember how I’d sulked, angry that I had not gotten a turn. Yeah, typical asshole 15 year-old. But Warren was not someone you could stay mad at for long. By the time we had the boat back on the trailer, we were laughing and splashing and shoving each other under water. Brother stuff.

My hand goes to my throat, to the braided leather choker that is always there now. The picture becomes blurred through the veil of my tears, tears comprised of all the things my brother and I never got to say to each other, never got to experience with each other. Sometimes I thought I heard his voice. Was that crazy? Someone in a crowded restaurant or a movie theater would laugh or say just the right thing in just the right way and I would spin around, expecting to see Warren standing there, smiling. He never is, of course.

I let out an anguished cry, half rage/half despair, and fling the box across the attic where it lands upside down in the opposite corner, contents strewn from one end of the small space to the other.

Looking at the mess, the anger leaves me as quickly as it has come, dissipating like smoke rising from a snuffed candle. Resigned, I make my way to the box and pluck it from the floor. Something is stuck in it, pinched in the space where the sides meet the bottom. An envelope. With my name on it.

“To Martin, on his 21st Birthday”

Shit. I slump, falling back until the wall stops me. I feel chilled all over despite the heat of the attic. Warren was three days in his grave the day I turned 21. I’d stopped celebrating that year and had yet to begin again. I didn’t even tell people when my birthday was anymore.

I turn the envelope over in my hands. I hold my breath, pushing it out as I tear open the envelope and remove the folded sheets tucked inside. It isn’t a stupid Hallmark or a check or a gift card or anything like that. It’s a letter.

Dear Martin,

Look at you. You’re 21 now. A man. Yeah, right. Nah, I’m kidding. Actually, I envy you. You’re on the cusp of so many great things. You worked hard, fought through all the shit life threw at you. All the shit mom and dad threw at you. I know it was hard for you. I tried my best to keep the focus off of you a lot of the time. I wanted you to have the chance to live your own life as you chose it, not as it was chosen for you. I didn’t want them to take control of your every move like they had with me.

I’ll tell you a secret. Remember when Dad started riding you about not making the JV baseball team your Freshman year? Well… I kind of flunked my AmLit class that term on purpose so they would stop harassing you and get back to me. I always felt like I had to protect you. I was worried that somehow they would break you. Like they broke me. I gave up after a while, ya know. Gave up trying to make my own decisions, forge my own path. I always felt like a disappointment to them. Maybe that’s what I envy most of all: you don’t have to live with that constant fear of making a mistake, of letting them down.

I hope you realize how lucky you are. You’re free to blaze your own trail. You can try and fail and make mistakes and try again. You are pursuing your dream and I am so proud of you for sticking with it. You are going to be a great teacher one day and I can’t wait to see you walk across that stage with that sheepskin.

Did I ever tell you I wanted to major in music? You shoulda heard Dad flip his lid at that one! Got the old “we didn’t work and sacrifice and struggle all these years so you could blah blah blah” speech. I know you’ve heard it once or twice yourself. So, I went into engineering. Followed in Dad’s footsteps like he always wanted. Not that I’m not good at it and not that I didn’t want to make him proud. I guess that’s what it all boils down to: just wanting to make them happy. Though I never feel like I quite achieved that goal.

Alright, bro. Chase that dream. Hold on tight. And remember I love you. Mom and Dad love us both. They just show it in their own way. I’ve made my peace with it. You can, too.

Happy Birthday!

Love, Warren

The weight on my chest, the ache in my gut. Tremendous. Am I delirious from the heat? No, the letter is real. I can feel its sweat soaked roughness on my skin as I hold it against my heart. Make my peace with it? How many “why can’t you be more like Warren’s” had I endured? How many derisions and put downs? I’ll never forget my father’s reaction when I’d affirmed (for the hundredth time), that I was going to pursue teaching.

“Those who can’t do, teach,” he’d mocked.

He thought I’d never amount to anything. I looked at the letter again, at Warren’s precise, linear handwriting.

How lucky you are… I’ve made my peace with it. So can you.

What did that even mean? These last seven years I’d watched helplessly as the life faded from our parents’ eyes. The passage of time had dulled the pain precious little, and it seemed that they would wear their figurative funereal crepe till the day they died. Would anything make them happy? It seems that even Warren couldn’t do it. The Golden Child, the perfect one who always made the A and hit the home run. Even when I’d done the exact same things, I had been looked upon as less. If he couldn’t make them happy with the way he lived his life… who was I to think I could make them happy after his death?

Mom’s voice, impatient as ever, snaps up from the floor below.

“Martin, are you still up there? You didn’t run off and leave the door open, did you?”

“I’m still up here, Mom.”

“Oh. Are you almost finished?”

“Yeah. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

“All right. Come get a glass of water when you’re done. It must be warm up there. I don’t need you getting sick and hanging around here all night.”

I laugh at that. Warm? Just a tad, yes.

After I lower the boxes down from the attic and stack them in the foyer, I do as my mother had asked and go into the kitchen for a glass of water. I’d cleared up the scattered contents of Warren’s box and tucked it back under the eaves where I’d found it. Minus the letter and the photo, that is. Those are now in my back pocket.

“Right,” I say to Mom. “I’m off then.”

“Don’t do that silly British thing,” she grumbles.

“English.”

“What?”

“The accent. English, not British.”

She just rolls her eyes. “You are so odd. Don’t forget to drop those things at Goodwill. Do it today, please. I don’t want them hanging around.”

“I will. I’ll go right now. Okay?”

I look at her for a moment: short auburn hair that was showing a little more grey each year, tiny frame that belies her strength, those same bright green eyes I see staring back at me in the mirror each morning. Warren’s eyes. I sometimes think my parents avoid making eye contact with me. Looking me straight in the face is like being bitch slapped with the image of their dead son.

“I love you, Mom.”

I leave before she can respond and go on my way. Go on my way to stop at the Goodwill, to head home for a shower… and to make my peace with the way of the world.