You are coming home next weekend to see your niece. She just started walking. You were so excited.
You are supposed to be coming home.
You are supposed to be coming home alive.
• • •
It’s five minutes after five o’clock on February 19, 2015. I’m changing the baby’s diaper in the bathroom of the Center for Hearing and Speech when the phone rings. It’s an unknown LA area code. I press ignore and continue to deal with the dirty diaper.
I’m in a notably good mood. Iris just killed it at her monthly speech therapy session. Mike and I radiate pride and joy. Also, my thirty-fourth birthday is tomorrow, and we’ve actually made plans. Mom and Dad will come over with Star Pizza and birthday cake. Knowing Mom, it’ll be a white sheet cake with white icing from the grocery store. I’ll blow out my candles and make a wish, then Mike and I will put Iris to bed and head to a neighborhood tiki bar with adult friends to drink colorful drinks out of ceramic mugs that are lit on fire. A truly rare occasion. I’m ready.
The phone rings again. Same unknown LA number.
I have imagined this moment before.
I answer.
“Is this Stephanie Wittels?”
“Yes.”
“Is Harris Wittels your brother?”
“Yes.”
“When was the last time you spoke to your brother?”
“I don’t know. Why? What’s going on? I’m changing my baby’s diaper.”
“Is there another adult with you?”
“Why? What happened? No! Wait. WAIT!”
I scream for Mike down the hall. He runs in and grabs the waist-down naked baby, who is now shrieking.
And then she tells me:
He’s dead.
He died.
Your brother died.
He is dead.
I fall onto the faded blue tile of the bathroom floor, screaming and crying in agony. The detective remains on the phone, reciting her lines about being sorry and needing to ask me a few questions. The baby won’t stop shrieking, so I push myself off the bathroom floor and rush down the long hallway toward the entrance to the building. The few people left at work stare, confused. It’s a lot of emotion for five o’clock on a Thursday. When I head outside, it’s jarring to see that the world is still turning. Everyone is still doing all of the things they normally do at rush hour: driving, talking, texting, honking. The sun is shining. It’s a beautiful day. Tragedy always strikes on a beautiful day.
I fall to my hands and knees again and pound my fists on the pavement. (I literally do this.) Mike rushes outside and embraces me on the ground like a blanket. “Oh God!” he cries.
I manage to continue holding the phone to my ear while the detective provides details:
“…A balloon. A spoon. A syringe cap but no needle…” She asks questions: “Was he suicidal?”
“No.”
“Did he have any medical issues?”
“Yes. He was a drug addict.”
A balloon, a spoon, a syringe. Obviously, he was a fucking drug addict.
“I tried to contact your mother but couldn’t reach her,” she says.
I realize at this point that I’ll have to tell Mom her only son is dead and that would be the most horrific moment of my life—even more horrific than this one.
The detective tells me to call her with any questions, and I hang up the phone.
Still sobbing, I dig the car keys out of my purse and notice the baby isn’t in Mike’s arms. “She’s with Amy,” he says. Her speech therapist. “She’s okay.”
I keep repeating that I have to get to my parents. Mike tries to reason with me that I am in no condition to drive, but I am currently unreasonable and get in the car anyway. Somehow, I navigate the familiar way to our parents’ building while carrying the most unfamiliar sickness in my gut.
Dad is walking up from the parking garage as I pull into the driveway of their high-rise. Once I say the thing I have come to say, his world will collapse like mine just did. We sit on a smooth concrete bench outside the building. He’s right beside me, but there’s a chasm between us. He’s on one side, and I’m on the other. Tell me, how does one say a thing like this? How does a person tell another person his youngest child is dead? How would you write this scene—the scene where I destroy our father with a single sentence? I say it in between sobs. I don’t remember how. His face goes blank. A tear falls out of his eye, but he says nothing.
Mom isn’t home. She’s out with friends: a movie and an early dinner. Dad and I take the elevator to their unit on the seventeenth floor and sit on the couch, shifting between intermittent sobs and silence. I grip the phone, unsure of what to do with it, then pace the floor, hysterical, while Mom enjoys her final moments of ignorant bliss. Mike comes in with Iris, who always gets hysterical when I get hysterical, so I try to stay calm.
Your business manager calls, and I scurry down the hall to Mom’s bedroom. I sit at her desk, so neatly organized, and scratch down some notes on her Houston SPCA notepad.
He is notably kind. He sends condolences. He says he was at your LA home today when the detectives arrived. He says something about a coroner’s notice being affixed to the front door of the house, telling the world you have died. He tells me he doesn’t want to rush me and knows this is a deeply personal time for our family, but that once the news gets out, it will be a runaway train out of our control. He says I need to tell my mom as soon as possible.
I don’t fully understand what he means. You are my brother. You are my brother who died. I don’t realize who you are to everyone else.
Mom is still not fucking home. I don’t know what to
