Chapter Three: Again
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Once Edgerton sat down, Don himself was the only one standing. Everyone else was seated, either on the floor, the old picnic bench, or in Larry's case, cross-legged on the dryer. Terry was telling a story, her expression one of mixed sadness and mirth.
"He kept trying to use some kind of mathematical formula," she giggled from her place on the floor. Her legs were tucked under her in a position of almost feline grace.
"No surprise there," said David, from the bench.
"So, Don and I keep going, and Don gets the right answer time after time after time, and Charlie's just looking at us like we each have three heads." Everyone laughed.
"Did he ever figure it out?" asked Amita.
Terry shook her head. "Don told him, eventually."
"I told him? You told him," Don countered. "His puppy-dog eyes stopped working on me when he was… come to think of it, they never worked on me." The group laughed again, even Larry, though he seemed distracted and distant. Terry launched back into the story as Don made his way to where the physicist was sitting.
After a long moment, Larry spoke. "Do you notice anything unusual about this gathering, Don?"
Don turned and surveyed the room carefully. It was the same garage as it had always been, lovably cluttered and dim, smelling of chalk and laundry and cardboard. Blackboards hung here and there like icons praising the gods of mathematics while piles of old rolled-up blueprints lurked dustily in corners. He focused on the people; Amita, Terry, David, and Edgerton were in a clump under one of the lightbulbs, their shadows falling in starlike patterns on the floor and each other.
"I don't know," he said. "I'm trying to think like Charlie, here… okay, well, it's a big garage, but the six people in it aren't spread out very much."
Larry shook his head. "A good observation, and one that your brother undoubtedly would have seized on. I'm looking, though, at a less mathematical peculiarity. Apart from yourself, we are all seated."
"Yeah," said Don. "Not so unusual."
"Not so unusual," Larry agreed. "Yet we have all, whether consciously or unconsciously, eschewed the same thing." He pointed. Don's eyes followed his gesture to a spot some ten feet away, where sat, out in the open, a small stack of folding chairs. They had not been touched. Larry shrugged and went on. "When we do this, when we observe this ritual, we gravitate toward the lowest point possible – a bench, the floor. Death reduces us somehow, we are 'brought low' by the passing of our fellows." He shrugged again, his chin in his hands. "I thought it interesting."
"And yet," Don pointed out, "here you are on the dryer."
"Here I am." Behind him, Don heard Amita's low, clear voice adding a layer to Terry's story, a similar memory. Larry's eyes flicked to her for a moment and, to Don's surprise, he smiled very faintly. "Astronomers choose the highest point possible for stargazing, perhaps hoping that being closer to the heavens will bring them into a more reverential frame of mind. The cosmos are so spectacular, so enormous, that sometimes it seems that, though we are a part of them, their grandeur can never be a part of us. Each of us is inextricably linked to every other point and piece of matter in the universe… our fates, though infinitesimally, are intertwined."
As was often the case, Don was having trouble following Larry's mode of thought. No response he could come up with seemed appropriate, so he settled on, "Is that right?"
Larry saw his expression and laughed a little. "Perhaps I wish I could sidestep being brought low, that I could lift myself over the grief and see the way to inner peace. But the fact is that this observation I've done has only brought me closer to one fact: Your brother has touched so many lives in so many ways. Whereas most people's influence merely drifts, Charles's ricocheted… until some power-mad, self-important psychopath stepped into his path and swallowed him whole."
Don stared. So did everyone else. The garage was filled with the sudden, shattering silence of six people holding a collective breath, afraid to let it out. Larry seemed to notice their attentions and violently shook his head. "I'm sorry, Don," he said, looking at the floor. "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me."
"I do," said Don. "You miss him."
Larry nodded. "Yes, I do."
It came out as a whisper. "So do I."
Larry slid off the dryer and landed awkwardly. He stumbled a bit, and this time Amita stepped forward and was there for him. Don was glad, in a way. Both of them had loved and respected Charlie with intense ferocity, and could relate to him in a way that almost nobody else could. They had grown up loners, but now they could grieve together.
He turned away and nearly bumped into Terry, who had risen from her place on the floor. She put her arms around him, and Don was too drained to do anything but accept. He could feel the warmth of her face, the strength of her arms, and the genuine feeling behind the embrace, and the feeling was peace, the feeling was resolve.
"I'm glad you're here," he mumbled, and was immediately embarrassed that he'd said it.
Terry didn't seem to notice. "I couldn't be anywhere else," she said. "Don… I'm so sorry you have to go through this again. You shouldn't have to, it's not fair."
"Thanks," he said. "I know."
In time, they all sat down again, and this time, they all sat on the floor. Gradually, the talk began, aimless and quiet, by turns knife-sharp and soothing. Don found himself drifting in and out of awareness – like Amita, he had barely slept since the shooting. He remembered David telling a story about his bewilderment upon meeting Charlie, and Amita sweetly recalling all the times that Alan had dropped hints that she and Charlie should become an item. He remembered very clearly when Larry took both of his hands and said, "Ha'makom yenachem etkhem betokh she'ar avelei Tziyon vi'Yerushalayim," and his absolute astonishment when Amita, haltingly but confidently, did the same.
Beyond that, things were hazy. He drifted into a dreamless sleep, only to awaken when he heard a soft noise at the edge of his consciousness. Moonlight poured through the scattered windows, and Don sat up, wincing against a crick in his neck. Someone had covered him with a quilt that smelled like dust and cedar. "Hello?" he said, confused.
"It's me, Donnie," said his father, who was sitting with his back against the dryer. "You fell asleep out here?"
"Yeah, I guess I must have." Don twisted his head to the side and felt a satisfying crackle in his neck. "What time is it?"
"Almost four. You know, your aunts were all berating me for letting you get so thin, and you know how much I hate to agree with your aunts, Don, but they're right. You do plan on eating sometime in the near future, don't you?"
Don shrugged. "Haven't been that hungry, Dad."
Alan shook his head. "No. Neither have I."
The quilt was warm and only slightly scratchy. Don could feel himself drowsing again when his father said, "You are not to blame, you know."
Don blinked at him sleepily. "What?"
"Charlie would have gone out there even if you'd told him not to, even if you'd chained him in a basement somewhere, he'd have found a way to get to you. The man who did it was not right in his head, and that is not your fault."
"I… I wasn't thinking that," replied Don honestly.
"No, but in a few days it was going to hit you," said Alan softly. "Maybe even tomorrow. I've seen it before. You take too much on yourself, Don. And if I can convince you now that you're not to blame, I'm going to try." He moved to hunker beside Don, smiling gently. Behind the smile, Don could see the inexpressible sadness in his father's eyes. "I tried to convince Charlie not to go to the crime scenes, that he could help you just as well from a safe distance. And you said it yourself – he was a grown man, he made his own decisions. He decided to help you."
He hesitated. "What is it, Dad?" Don asked.
A sigh. "I don't know if you know this, Don, but Charlie compared himself to you his whole life. He wanted to be like you, and there were times when I think he wanted to be you. I know you spent a lot of your childhood resenting him –"
"No," Don said. His hands were twined into his hair. "No, I never resented him."
"You did," said Alan, without rancor. "You never said so, but there were times when you wished that he wasn't so special. You can't tell me that you never once wished that he was just a normal kid brother."
Don said nothing. It was true, after all. He'd made peace with his brother's brilliance long ago, but it had taken time. Maybe too much time. He remembered staying up past midnight, struggling with math homework that he'd bitterly known would take five-year-old Charlie approximately two minutes to complete. He'd hidden all of his completed math tests under his mattress after Charlie had come to him one morning and offered to show him what he'd done wrong. "You've gotta remember to carry the numbers, Donnie," he'd said, picking at a scab on his knee. "Won't work if you don't."
"Maybe," Don finally answered. "Not for a long time, a really long time, but yeah, sometimes it was kind of a strain, being his brother." He heard the words and couldn't believe he'd said them. He wanted to take them back; he wanted never to have felt that way.
Alan nodded. "People don't tell you this enough, but I don't want you thinking, ever, that you are any less extraordinary than Charlie."
It was too much and he was too exhausted. Images flooded his mind; David's shoulder hitting Charlie's back half a split second after it was too late; Amita's cry of despair at Cal Sci; recitation of the kaddish; shoveling earth onto the casket at the funeral; Larry's outburst. He'd had no sleep and a lot of sun and more sorrow than one body can hold, and it was four o'clock in the morning and the only other person in the room was the one person who could possibly feel the loss as acutely as he himself could, and so he put his hands over his face and felt tears pooling in his palms. He didn't want to do this, he hated to cry, but there was nothing more to do. It was this or go mad.
Alan stayed there, one hand on his shoulder, until he fell asleep again.
