Dear Alex

CW: Grief, graphic depictions of decomposition, and ambiguous loss.

August 22nd, 1997

Dear Alex,

Remember Otzi the ice man? And how when we were little we'd play Otzi and the neighbor's dog would lick your face and ruin the game? If you were stupid enough to die down there, you picked a really shitty place. People don't mummify in Georgia or Florida or wherever. They turn into ooze and muskrats eat them. And honestly, Florida? Gross. It's like... all old people and kids in Mickey ears. It is not fit for oozing or living. You literally could not pay me.

Dad is really pissed about the truck, by the way. Uncle Billy said it's gonna cost $500 to freight it back, and dad says it's out of your ass. He had to pick up extra shifts in Hooksett to pay for it, and mom has to drop him off on her way to work. And it's in the opposite direction, and the Sonata already has like 180k miles on it, so basically everyone is pissed. It's probably good that you're staying down there. Oozing or whatever.

I'm thinking I give you like... a month. One good month, and then I'm taking your room. Kelly got a blowup couch for her birthday and it's the wrong color and we all know exactly how spoiled she is so her parents bought her another one. They lost the receipt, so they can't return the old one. I was thinking if I pretend to like her for like... a week or something, she might give it to me. I could put it in your room. I bet if I paid for the paint, mom and dad would let me paint it too. I could make it black. Like a cave.

Anyway, you probably don't care, but in case you do, I'm pissed too. Mom and dad are un-fucking-bearable and I just get to be here. Alone. Taking it. Also? I would have told them if I knew you were gonna take the truck. You should have told me you were gonna take the truck.

All this to say fuck you and the Tacoma you rode off in.

Jess

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December 15th, 1998

Dear Alex,

I got into Dartmouth. I wrote my essay about you, actually. My college counselor Mrs. Ryan said it was "a poignant meditation on rebuilding in the wake of loss and uncertainty." Ha. Okay. Sure. Because the thing is, no one is rebuilding. The same sheets are on your bed, Alex. From like... a year and a half ago. If you'd left a fucking... ham and cheese sandwich on your nightstand, that would probably still be there too. You don't even get to be a ghost because nobody knows if you're decomposing somewhere or haunting a bar in Fort Lauderdale. So thanks for that.

Anyway. I haven't told mom and dad. I don't even want to. Because they'll act like it makes up for the fact that you're a fuck up for like two minutes, and then it'll just be another thing to pay for. I'll probably just go to SNHU instead. And turn your bedroom into my office.

Dad had to get a new truck, by the way. The transmission died. He's said your name more times in the past week than he has for a year. "Fucking Alex and his joyride." "If Alex had just taken a bus..." "1200 miles down 95, Alex? 1200 miles." Which also? Just like... a really embarrassing deficit of imagination from you, big bro. Just straight down 95? Pick a number and follow it for twenty hours? Yawn. If I'd decided to just steal dad's truck and leave everyone wondering, I'd have at least zigzagged all over the contiguous United States. And I definitely would not have ended up in Florida. Or Georgia. Or wherever you are.

I've been thinking about bones a lot lately. Me and Matty went to Battery Point a few weeks back and there was a deer skull right on the side of the trail. And like... the spine was still attached to it. Just a skull and a spine and it's weird because the spine looks like it should but it's kinda hard to imagine the skull being inside Bambi, right? And I was just wondering how long it took to get like that. And how long it had been sitting there. And if the hair and skin and meat just like... rotted off, or if something chewed it off. It probably happens faster in Florida.

Anyway. I'm gonna go ahead and include my Dartmouth essay. In case you want to see how helpful your disappearing act has been for me personally in my pursuit of higher education. I haven't shown it to mom and dad. You could not pay me. I haven't shown it to anyone but Mrs. Ryan and Dartmouth, obviously. I don't know why I'm showing it to you. Probably because you'll never see it.

All this to say fuck you and the Tacoma you rode off in (RIP, Tacoma).

Jess

###

I am an only child. Rather, I am now. I haven't always been.

Alex was born on January 18th, 1979. I am told it was snowing. I wouldn't know. I wasn't there. Alex is my older brother. Or was. Again, I wouldn't know. I wasn't there. He died or didn't die somewhere around August 18th, 1997.

The last time I saw Alex, I was sneaking in. From somewhere I shouldn't have been. From making the kind of trouble that gets you grounded but doesn't end up in college essays. Alex was sneaking out. To make the kind of trouble that does end up in college essays. We both knew which stairs creaked and to lift up on the knob of the back door to keep it from whining. It was dark, and I felt him more than saw him as we brushed past each other in the downstairs hallway. "Don't tell mom and dad," he said. I can still hear it.

I can't. Not really. I can hear what my brain reconstructs as his voice, but it's always just mine. Pretending to be his.

I went to sleep. He went down 95. I like to imagine the windows were down and that he was listening to Elliott Smith and the highway smelled like skunks. I like to think he found a diner that served pie by the slice and he got a second piece for the road and had to swat flies away from it because the windows were down. I like to imagine a lot of things. The fact is, I wouldn't know. I wasn't there.

I do know he probably filled the tank four times between Manchester, New Hampshire, and the Georgia-Florida line. I know he stole Christmas money out of my dresser to do it and to buy the pie. If he bought it. And MapQuest tells me he drove 1,153 miles to Goodbread Road where my dad's truck stopped being useful to him. I know my dad had to pay $525 to have it freighted back and that my brother did not come with it. I know that I was mad, and that I'm still mad, but maybe I'd have waited to be if I'd known he wouldn't come home.

I am an only child. Rather, I am now. I haven't always been.

There are still pictures on the wall, but we don't look at them. Not even the one of him with both front teeth missing and a scab on his chin. We keep his door shut and we mutually agree to ignore a handful of days on the calendar. We don't celebrate his birthday and there are no presents under the tree for him on Christmas. We don't have to have whole cranberry sauce on the Thanksgiving table anymore because no one else likes it. We don't mourn him. We don't even talk about him.

There's a gap between staying and leaving that has no name, and I think that's maybe where Alex is. In a place where you've decided to go but can't decide on how completely, so the people who weren't there don't know. Sometimes when I squeeze my eyes shut tight I can almost feel him, like we're brushing past each other in the hall again. Like his voice is his own and not mine groping at a memory.

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January 18th, 1999

Dear Alex,

It's your birthday. Twenty. Twenty years. Or maybe it was eighteen. Or nineteen. There's no one to ask. I've been thinking a lot about headstones lately. What would we even put on yours? Beloved son and brother? January 18th, 1979 – unsure, thanks for asking? And do you like... even bother to dig a hole?

I looked it up, by the way. It's seven years. You'll need to be gone another five and a half before we have to decide what goes on the headstone. Whether we say beloved or missing or dead or whatever. Whether to dig the hole or not and whether to buy a coffin or not and fill it with whatever the fuck goes where a body should be. And I can't decide what's sadder. An empty coffin, or a full one.

If I got a vote (and I probably won't), I'd fill it with rocks. Remember when we used to go down to Dorrs Pond and throw rocks through the ice when it started forming at the edges? And you'd try to punch pictures in the ice like the ticket guy on the Santa Express that time we went with Aunt Mo? You have horrible aim. Had. Have. I don't know which one. Either way, it's embarrassing, honestly. I'd have run away too if I had shitty aim like you.

It would be little rocks, by the way. So we could shake your coffin like a maraca. I dunno why. I just think that would be fun.

When July eighth comes and goes I'll be eighteen. Which means it'll be the last birthday you're 100% for sure older than me. What do you even do with that? When your brother is frozen in time? When your brother maybe got older but maybe didn't. Is maybe working for a cable company in Georgia or maybe has a cardboard sign and a paper cup on the side of some dingy road or is maybe collecting moss in some wetland like a pile of rocks? What the fuck am I supposed to do with that, Alex? Little sister, only child, big sister? Like what the actual fuck, Alex. God I hate you.

All this to say fuck you and the Tacoma you rode off in.

Jess

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July 19th, 1999

Dear Alex,

Millie went missing a few weeks ago. She got in a fight with a fox, we think, last winter, so we've been keeping her in at night. I dunno who dropped the ball, but someone did. Anyway. Mom shook her food for like two hours and she never came back. Dad was pretty pissed, mostly because mom was crying over it and he's allergic to feelings, but also because she was his cat. Even if he'd never admit it. He blamed me, by the way. He wouldn't have left the cat out and look at your mother, she wouldn't have, which I guess left me. And you know who I blamed? You.

Because here's the thing, Alex. Everyone fucking hates that cat. I swear to god if she wasn't so annoying about it, no one would remember to feed her. If you hadn't left first, mom wouldn't have been calling pet psychics (yes actually) and dad wouldn't have been photocopying a bajillion stupid signs in his awful fucking handwriting at Staples. And I wouldn't be driving all around Manchester in a car with no fucking air conditioning hanging the stupid signs and inspecting roadkill to see if it's our roadkill.

Last week I was on the way back from Massabesic and there was a calico on the shoulder of Wellington. It had rained the night before and it looked like a pile of wet laundry. I was literally dry heaving before I put the car in park. Do you know where maggots come out of dead cats, Alex? Probably the same places they come out of dead people. Its ears and eyes and mouth and its asshole too. Somewhere in Florida or Georgia or wherever, maybe maggots are coming out of your asshole. And you'd deserve it.

Anyway, it wasn't Millie. She came back two nights ago. Mom has been crying ever since.

All this to say fuck you and the Tacoma you rode off in.

Jess

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August 18th, 1999

Dear Alex,

I ran out of stamps. I bought a little book of them two years ago. They aren't even enough to post a letter anymore. I'd have to add a one cent stamp to all your letters.

Matty's mom Barb rented a place up on Ossipee for the week. It had a pontoon boat and water skis and it was so fucking hot we had to sleep outside. We pulled the cushions off the couches and chaises and made a giant bed of them right on the dock. It got me thinking about the summer Meme and Pepe rented the cottage at Merrymeeting with Uncle Billy and Aunt Mo and we had to share the loft with Cousin Eddy. About how you slept between us on the futon so he wouldn't fart on me. How you hit him when he held me under water for too long and made me cry. I've been thinking about how you let me use the good life jacket when we went tubing even though the other one made your armpits bleed. Eddy never asked about you, by the way. When you left. I used to keep a mental list of people who gave a single fuck about it, you leaving. People who bothered to ask why you weren't at Christmas or birthdays or my graduation. I stopped.

What I'm trying to decide is if hitting Eddy makes you a good brother. If fucking... absorbing farts makes you a good brother. I'm trying to decide if leaving makes you a bad one. It's not even the leaving, honestly. I was wearing my favorite Aeropostale hoodie and those jeans mom always begged me to hem and the Old Navy flip flops with the lemons on them when we slid past each other that night. When you said don't tell mom and dad and I didn't. And I think maybe that's what makes you a bad brother. That I had to throw away the hoodie and the jeans and the flip flops because I didn't tell them and I couldn't look at them anymore.

So I know it's still five years, but I just packed all my shit for school, and I don't want to pack stationery. And I don't want to buy more stamps. So I think maybe I'm done with the letters. I thought of addressing them to Alex Foster, Goodbread Road, FL, but then I realized they'd just end up like you. Lost. So I'm just gonna leave them here, on your dresser.

All this to say fuck you and the Tacoma you rode off in.

Jess