He wished it was different. He wished he was valued, a positive force in people’s lives, a good man who would truly be missed by his oldest friends, but in the end, he was unsure.
All Jonathan could offer to this frail woman he’d known for thirty years was “I’m sorry for your loss.” Then he moved down the line of aunts and uncles to mutter the same tired, meaningless phrase while weakly touching strange hands. Mrs. Hendrickson watched him as he went, her eyes wide with rage.
Jonathan spotted Conner and Michael in the adjoining room. The brothers had arrived together and stood together, both wearing similar suits. They had always been like that – a little too similar, too close. They were like two arms of the same body, controlled by the same mind. Conner politely nodded in conversation with an elderly, bald man whose body seemed to shrink from its own skin. Michael kept his hands in his pockets, staring at nothing in particular, barely acknowledging the old man’s existence. Conner was good with people – he always had been. Good-looking, charming, with a trendy, close-trimmed beard and well-kept hair, he could feign interest and make conversation with nearly anyone if a situation required it. He was now a manager at one of the major insurance companies in Hartford, cajoling with other executives, entertaining his bosses with sports statistics and the ability to hold his alcohol, taking frequent trips to Boston to discuss God knew what in relation to insurance dealings. He was always destined for that kind of social climbing; his confidence and competence was etched in his genetic code. Conner’s chameleonlike ability made people comfortable around him. He conformed to their desires so easily that even he was unaware of it. So he nodded and shrugged and looked at the floor and gave all the physical signals of a man completely aware of where he was and why he was there and how he should act to assure others of the solemnity of the moment, to show the appropriate amount of remorse, whether he felt it or not.
Michael just stared and said little. He was bigger built than his younger brother, but was of such a mind that he could not be bothered with the little inanities that made humans so boring. He was the smarter of the two, perhaps to a fault. Michael was an engineer with multiple degrees, his days spent stress-testing military aircraft to the point they broke in order to find the weakness and fix it. He looked at the world the same way, seeing how it worked, finding the weaknesses and then despising them because, unlike aircraft, human weakness couldn’t be fixed. Michael looked uncomfortable in most social situations but seemed especially uneasy at the wake for his old friend. Jonathan could almost sense Michael’s thoughts: Gene broke, Gene took his own life, Gene was weak. Right now, Michael was probably calculating the statistical chances of people in the room driving home tonight and killing themselves.
Gene had certainly been the most boisterous and fun-loving of their small group. He had been one of those naturally happy people, those who are content with minor lots in life, getting joy from easy, simple things like Patriots football, beer, and a job guaranteed to go nowhere but that paid enough to keep him fishing and hunting with his buddies. Who his buddies were these days, Jonathan was unsure. Gene had married once and then divorced, but even that did not deter him from being the kind of guy who was only looking for a good time and nothing more. Luckily, there were no children from that marriage, and Diana wasn’t at the wake. Gene wore his heart on his sleeve, so to speak. Couldn’t play poker to save his life because he had the type of face that constantly betrayed his emotions, his thoughts.
That had all changed ten years ago. Jonathan, Michael and Conner were the only ones who knew why, but everyone else saw it. His mood changed. He wasn’t a good time at the bar anymore. Instead he became that drunken oaf who would either cry into his beer or start a fight. But, of course, no one would acknowledge the change. They preferred to remember Gene as he had been before and ignore the downward spiral. There were a couple of the bartenders from the East Side Tavern in attendance. They had probably seen it coming a mile away.
Jonathan watched Conner and Michael at a distance and then looked away to the rest of the crowd. He didn’t feel he could leave yet, so he waited, shifting back and forth on his feet, hands in pockets, then out, staring momentarily at a generic painting on the wall as if contemplating its meaning, and then staring down at the carpet, tracing geometric shapes in its pattern. He stayed for the penance. He at least owed Gene an hour of his day. Jonathan was comfortable being alone. More and more he found himself alone these days, on the outside looking in and wondering, What the hell happened? Usually, the answer to that question was quiet, sad, and inconsequential – something that could only be expressed with a resigned shake of the head, the way one might react upon hearing news that a child was shot and killed in some far-off place. Jonathan caught a glimpse of himself in a large, gilded mirror. He looked tired and old.
He turned and drifted purposefully nearer to the exit. The outer room had couches, rarely sat upon, which looked as if they were purchased at an estate sale. More suits
