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Cope.
Intransitive verb.
To deal with and attempt to overcome problems and difficulties —often used with “with.”
Example “learning to cope with the demands of her schedule.”
Naturally the dictionary definition did not explore the nuances of what it meant to cope. Or not to cope, as Cynthia had accused him daily.
He missed her, his wife.
He missed her fire. He missed the way they used to shout at each other in their early twenties, beside themselves with emotion. He missed the way she used to throw up her hands and scoff, the way she used to roll her eyes at him, the flush in her cheeks when she laid out exactly how and why he was wrong. He missed being able to visualize the bullet points she raised with each swipe of her hand through the air.
He missed Cynthia.
He didn’t know precisely when he had begun to miss her. He saw her every morning, at the breakfast table. Every night when she crawled into bed beside him, switched off the lights, and turned away.
He wished he could blame it on…
What happened.
But he knew he must have begun to miss Cynthia before all of that. He knew that their passion, their fire, had cooled long before the need to shop for a casket.
The average casket was about seven feet in length.
He knew that because he had worked on a case for a funeral home straight out of law school.
Connor had been about six feet tall.
Cynthia still taught at the time, when he worked the case for the funeral home. The third grade.
It took forever to conceive.
The doctors said it was stress. That they were young and healthy and had no fertility issues. They both just needed to relax.
Cynthia did everything to reduce stress. Everything. So many things that Larry himself began to feel stressed about how unstressed she was trying to be. What if they couldn’t do this? What if it never worked? What if Cynthia wore that defeated smile around for the rest of their marriage?
When they finally heard the heartbeat, Larry was more relieved than excited. Relieved to see the worry fade from Cynthia’s face. Relieved that soon enough they were back to screaming at each other over what color to paint the nursery. Larry won that one; they painted it green. He never liked yellow as a gender neutral color. When did you ever see a boy in yellow?
They fought over names for months.
Larry liked David, but Cynthia dug in her heels on the choices she wanted. Trendier names, Larry thought, names that would reveal the kid’s age when he was in his thirties. She chose Connor for a boy, Zoe or Madison or Kaleigh for a girl.
Cynthia refused to find out the sex.
Larry had a feeling it was a boy.
Or maybe it was more of a hope.
Larry honest to God tried to bribe the ultrasound technician to try to find out.
Turned out that Cynthia had bribed her first. Bribed her not to tell Larry. For more money.
They fought about that too.
Larry missed the fighting most, he thought.
Not just with Cynthia.
Not even just with Zoe, though he and his daughter didn’t really fight with each other. They fought for each other, jumping to the defense of the other. Loudly. Proudly. A team in their divided house.
It was obvious that Larry had a favorite. He knew that made him a failure as a parent. He knew that all of the books would say that having a favorite was detrimental to the health of the child.
At the time, Larry thought maybe he was some kind of enlightened person. One who valued honesty. One who could admit that he had a favorite child. That didn’t mean he didn’t love his other kid, just that… Just that he had a preference for which one he would spend his time with given the choice.
It wasn’t like Cynthia hadn’t made her allegiance clear too.
And it wasn’t like Larry hadn’t tried to connect. It wasn’t like he never tried. He tried his best, he reached out, he hung around when he didn’t have to, trying, offering advice, trying to find common ground.
“You wanted to punish him.”
Time didn’t make the words sting less.
It wasn’t the first time he and Zoe had ever disagreed, but it was the first time she had shouted down both of them. Laid their failures out plainly for them both to say. The words stung. Time didn’t help with that.
It also didn’t make them less true.
He had, in fact, wanted that.
He had wanted to punish him.
God, he missed the fighting.
It was much worse to just muddle through the “how was your day”s and “sleep well”s of life.
More than once he had to hold his tongue over meals because he knew he was just itching for someone to shout at him. Held back criticisms, held back insults, because he just knew he was trying to provoke a reaction.
Larry thought, wistfully, that Connor at least always yelled back. He might have been sullen and quiet, but if you said just the right thing, he would yell back.
Larry had wanted to punish him. Not all of the time. But most of it.
He had taken the fight out of Cynthia.
He had turned Zoe cold and callous.
Larry wondered if anyone would find that argument convincing. If there existed a single person who might buy that.
He doubted it.
He didn’t, certainly.
They never told anyone.
The fundraiser surpassed its goal.
The phone calls eventually stopped. They had a high tech security system installed. Zoe started to be able to sleep at night again. Larry didn’t hear her pacing her bedroom upstairs anymore.
He didn’t know who to hold responsible for that.
He thought, just for a second, about Evan and the fire inside of him lit up. He’d lied . He’d conned them. He had allowed them to project all of their regrets on to an imagined memory of a kid that it seemed nobody knew.
It made his blood boil.
For days after, he paced the garage. Trying to decide how to seek out revenge. How to hurt back.
But then he realized that Zoe was watching him, wiping her eyes, and mumbling that it wasn’t worth it. That being angry at Evan didn’t change anything. That hurting Evan wouldn’t bring Connor back.
And Larry.
Realized.
That he didn’t want that.
He didn’t want Connor back.
The thought flashed guilt through him like lightning.
He considered Church. Confession, mostly.
If he unloaded all of his sins, all of his crimes to a man behind a screen, would he feel absolved? How many Hail Marys did it take to make up for letting your child die?
But the thought of admitting to God and the priest that was what happened, that he had let his son die, and he didn’t even miss him most of the time seemed idiotic to the point of insanity. If he were to believe in a God, wouldn’t that admission just damn him then and there? There surely could not be any amount of penance that could take away that burden.
He didn’t know what he believed.
They asked a priest to speak at the funeral.
He asked a lot of questions about Connor’s life. The priest delivered the eulogy, since nobody else could.
It was nice.
Surface.
Without a doubt artificial and canned and vague.
But nice.
Zoe sobbed through the whole thing, and Larry found himself wishing she would stop embarrassing them, be quieter. As if it wasn’t shameful enough that they were there. As if Zoe would have cared at all if none of this had happened. She had refused to visit when they sent him to rehab. Larry had threatened to drag her to the car. Cynthia just put a hand on his arm, no fight in her, and said they were going to be late. Zoe was always saying how she hated her brother, always saying she wished he would just leave her alone. Once Larry picked up her phone by mistake and read through an entire conversation where Zoe complained about being saddled with “such a mess” of a brother.
Larry couldn’t help but feel for her.
He often complained about getting a mess for a son to Cynthia, who would just cross her arms and defend Connor no matter what he’d done. Larry sometimes cynically imagined that she might have defended Connor with her dying breath even if his hands were around her throat.
Larry had been the one to send him away both times, first to his grandmother’s, then to rehab for the damage done at his grandmother’s.
Larry blamed Cynthia for that too. If Connor had gone to stay with Larry’s family, there would have been no drugs to get into.
Larry sometimes wished they hadn’t bothered with rehab. Since it was such a waste of money in the end.
Twenty thousand dollars thrown in the toilet.
It would have been cheaper just to buy the burial plot last summer.
Cynthia had no fight left in her by the time they had to buy the plot. Larry suspected he could have told her they were burying Connor in a garbage dump and she would have shrugged and said that was fine.
He found himself in the basement of a baptist church.
Of all places.
Larry learned, from a memo board, that this space hosted events like this weekly.
Wednesdays were, apparently, for a support group.
For suicide survivors.
Larry thought that term sounded moronic. He thought that term ought to apply to people who had attempted and failed at suicide. He thought that language did not describe those left behind by people who had taken their own lives.
He didn’t know what he was doing there.
It had been nearly a year.
And he was there for the very first time.
He stupidly expected that he would encounter someone he knew from the office, from the neighborhood…
Of course he knew nobody.
This pain was nothing he shared with people in his real life. Not even his family. They’d done their grieving. They’d been doing it all year.
Larry put it off.
He was waiting it out.
Wait and see, wait and see.
If it got better. If it went away. If one morning he would open his eyes and find Connor sullenly eating breakfast at the table, glaring at Zoe over his cereal bowl, complaining that he didn’t want to go to school, complaining about having to drive, lying and saying he wasn’t high.
Larry imagined this scenario often, what he would say if he could go back to that morning. He wouldn’t have stared into his phone, he wouldn’t have scoffed, “He’s probably high,” knowing Zoe would chime in, determining if his suspicions were correct. In his imagined scenario, he would smile. He would laugh. He would make a joke about how he spent half of college high. He’d joke about the tradition of wake and bake in his frat house. He would wait, watch Connor’s eyes pop out of his head. Nothing was less cool than being just like your dad.
“Can I help you?”
A young woman, pretty, too young for this group stood in front of him, wearing an oversized sweater.
“I’m here for…” Larry’s mouth stopped moving. He couldn’t manage the words.
The young woman smiled, sympathetically, and nodded. “We’re just about to get started. Go ahead and take a seat.”
He nodded. Followed her inside the room, to a circle of folding chairs, half of them empty, the rest occupied by people closer to Larry’s age. Older folks. People who looked like parents.
The young woman in her oversized sweater stuck out like a sore thumb.
“Thank you all for coming,” She said, giving that same sympathetic smile. She introduced herself as Polly, the facilitator. She talked about honesty, about connection. She continued, “I see a few new faces. Our guidelines are simple: respect, care, and non-judgement. We’re all here for support. I want to commend all of you for your courage in coming here tonight...”
She crossed and uncrossed her legs. “Is there anyone who would like to get started?”
An older woman across from Larry took a tissue and pressed it to her lips.
The man beside her touched her shoulder. Looked out over the group. “I’m John. My… My son Daniel committed suicide five years ago. He was… he was twenty.”
There were a few supportive murmurs.
“Lately… I’ve been angry. Because I can’t picture him clearly anymore. His voice… I’ve started going through old home movies. And I realize that I haven’t got any recordings of him speaking from after his voice changed.” He stopped. “I’ve been angry… at myself. Because my job, now, I think… is to remember him. But I can’t… I can’t recall his voice anymore.”
There was a conversation about this. The others normalized the anger. The sadness. The impermanence of memory.
Larry’s fists were clenched in his lap.
Another woman, not much older than Larry, with long dark hair, started. “My… Sorry. My name is Dawn. My daughter, Heather…” She took a breath. “She died six months ago.” She pressed her lips together. “I know it’s stupid… but a few weeks before she died, Heather…” Dawn looked at Larry directly. “She was nineteen… She suddenly had all of these friends. I thought it was a good sign. She’d always been a quiet kid, not a lot of friends, and it was just me and her for her whole life. She started talking online with these other kids, these kids who were doing something for their friend who had killed himself.” Dawn shook her head. “I can’t remember the name of it… but her friends at school were always passing out these flyers, talking about how, you know, we can’t forget kids like that....” She heaved a shuddering breath. “But after a while it just sort of… fizzled out. Her new friends at school moved on to some other topic. And she… Heather. Heather would just sit in her room, watching this video over and over again, of this kid’s friend who…”
Larry inhaled sharply.
“... It was something about falling out of a tree, I think? It was an odd story, I always thought, but Heather would just replay and replay it. And I went into her room one afternoon, and she looks at me and said. ‘Mom. What about kids who people would forget? What happens to us?’”
Larry exhaled.
“I still don’t know. What happens to kids who people forget. I don’t know what I said, I don’t know what I would even say now, if I could do it again…” Dawn buried her head in her hands. “I’m sorry.”
“That was my son.”
Everyone’s heads turned.
“My son Connor… He. He was the kid who. Died.”
Nobody moved or spoke.
“I…” He stopped. “Larry. I’m Larry. My son Connor… he was seventeen.”
A few people nodded.
“He got into drugs for a while… I. He didn’t really have any friends. Most of those kids…” Larry still couldn’t bring himself to say “all of those kids.” “Most of them barely knew him.”
He got encouraging nods and murmurs.
But he had nothing else to say. His lips wouldn’t move. He kept his hands clenched into fists. He had said too much. He had said things he’d never said.
“Thank you for sharing, Larry,” Polly the facilitator said, nodding encouragingly.
The lights were all out when he finally pulled into the driveway. No sounds in the house; no distant music, no Zoe practicing a solo, no loud television blaring, nothing.
He left his briefcase near the stairs. Loosened his tie for the first time, finally. The weather outside was chilly for August, a hint of the weather to come.
In a year’s time, Zoe would be away at school. In a year’s time the house would always be this quiet. Would they ever regain their voices? Be able to to each other again? Would their volume ever return, loud, brash?
He hadn’t noticed the quiet until after Evan stopped coming by.
Evan was a quiet kid. Made little to no noise. Nothing like Connor.
(Everything like Connor could have been.)
But he quieted the deafening silence.
Larry wondered, suddenly, what Evan had done with all of the things of Connor’s they had given him. It was a relatively small amount of things…. Some clothes that Connor had never really worn, a baseball glove, a book or two…
He hoped Evan kept them.
He didn’t know why.
Larry climbed the stairs, bypassing the master bedroom, his eyes trained on the school photos that lined the wall.
Larry wished he could convince Cynthia to take some of them down.
He hated seeing those photos now.
Especially the ones of Connor as a small kid. There was a little league photo, where he held his bat and smiled this toothy, seven year old smile. He had been good at little league. He didn’t go back in the second grade.
Cynthia showed that photo around a lot when Connor was seven. “Doesn’t he look just like Larry?” she used to say to friends and acquaintances, and they would all nod and smile and laugh affectionately. Connor had looked like him when he was small. Same crinkly eyes, same smile; if you took a picture of Larry from when he was seven and sat it next to that little league photo, you’d wonder who had managed such a perfect photoshop job.
When Connor…
They buried him with long hair. Larry had suggested, stupidly, that they have it cut… He tried to give the funeral home a photo of him from his freshman year of high school, when his hair was still short.
He got just a hint of Cynthia’s rage then.
It was the most he had gotten in years.
She screamed at him the whole ride to the funeral home, not even crying, her fingers clutching her phone which she eventually shoved under the funeral director’s nose saying, “This is what he looks like. He needs to look like this, not like… He wore his hair long, you have to keep it like that.”
Larry won the battle about what he wore.
Cynthia had tried to insist on burying him in those stupid boots and Zoe, far more gently that Larry would have expected, said, “Mom, it’s not like you can see his feet in the casket.”
Which just set Cynthia off again.
Larry wasn’t exactly sure what they buried him wearing. Clothes they had to shop for, he knew. He wasn’t putting his son in the ground in a torn up t-shirt and stained jeans. He knew they picked out dress clothes, but Larry couldn’t conjure the image in his head. He thought the shirt might have been blue.
He couldn’t picture it.
The funeral home put a kneeler beside the casket.
Larry and Cynthia had both been determined to raise the kids Catholic when Connor and Zoe were first born. They struggled through dragging their children to church through their First Communions, but eventually stopped going. They briefly entertained the idea of sending Connor to Catholic school after the seventh grade because he was having so many issues, but Larry thought pulling him out of school would only make the problems worse.
First they dropped down to Christmas and Easter mass. Then, eventually, just Christmas.
Eventually nothing.
Larry shook his head. Lost in thought, these days he was always lost in thought.
He knew where he was going, but he didn’t understand why.
It wasn’t a shrine or a tomb. They had cleaned out some things. Not all of them, but enough that it wasn’t simply untouched.
But a lot was left the same.
There was still a sign on the door that read “Stay Out - Private Property.”
The walls were still painted blue.
The bed was still made up with the blue blankets. Larry felt his insides squirm with discomfort, thinking about how they had let Evan sleep in there. Let him take Connor’s room. The room where Connor had lived, where he had died...
They should have put Evan on the couch.
They should have sent him home to his mother.
They shouldn’t have tried to let Evan fill the gaps.
What had they been thinking? Why had they swallowed that story? It didn’t sound like Connor because it wasn’t him. Of course it wasn’t him. Connor hadn’t had any friends, not since middle school, not since he stopped talking to Brian Harris. Kids at school made fun of him, and Larry tried, he tried, but he obviously failed. He couldn’t spare him the mockery.
He couldn’t spare him.
Larry sighed. Took a seat on the bed.
They’d found Connor in there, in this room, hanging from a belt.
Larry found the search history on his computer after the coroner’s office had taken the body away.
Last search: how to hang yourself with a belt.
The first two results on that page are for suicide prevention.
They checked Connor’s phone. He hadn’t called anyone. In fact, the only calls ever listed were from Cynthia or unknown numbers.
Zoe had been right beside Larry when he pried the door open that day, frustrated, shouting, “Your mother called you for dinner Connor, Jesus-”
Larry could still imagine him there.
His face had been pale. The autopsy determined he had asphyxiated. No broken neck.
The funeral home had to cake on flesh colored makeup to high the bruising under the collar of his shirt. Of course they couldn’t get it all. It made his skin look waxy and dark. Connor had been pale in life; in death he was almost tan by comparison.
Larry tore his eyes away from the support beam where Connor had attached the belt.
He turned his eyes to the bedside table and pulled open the drawer.
He didn’t know what he hoped to find. What he thought might be there that Cynthia hadn’t already cleared out.
Inside the drawer sat a hard pack of Marlboro reds and a bic lighter.
Larry smirked.
If Connor had known about Larry’s days in law school, existing purely on Marly Reds and black coffee he would have kicked the habit immediately.
Or not.
Outside, one night.
Connor smoking.
He didn’t try to hide it.
Larry frowned. “Those things will kill you.”
Connor shrugging.
Dark, so dark outside, the streetlamps didn’t touch the yard.
“Well, give me one.”
Connor raised an eyebrow but didn’t protest. Just handed over the pack. He lit for Larry; Larry didn’t know where his son had learned that particular smoker’s etiquette.
“You can’t keep doing this.”
Connor shrugged. “Are you going to stop me?”
“I might.”
It was an empty threat.
The smoke was ragged in Larry’s throat. He had quit in his mid thirties. Zoe had been little, had protested the smell.
It had been years. He’d forgotten the way cigarette smoke mixed with the moonlight. He’d forgotten the sour taste.
“Your mother would kill you if she found out.”
“She knows though,” Connor said, putting the cigarette to his lips again. “She already knows.”
“How’d you get these without ID?”
Connor shrugged.
They smoked in silence.
“It’s getting colder.”
“It is.”
“You’re going to keep wearing those longsleeves for the rest of the summer? You’re paler than a Victorian heroine.”
Connor shrugged. “It’s not like I’m ever outside.”
Larry sighed on his exhale, blowing smoke from his nostrils. An old party trick. “You need to start thinking about college.”
“I’m not going to college.”
“You should be thinking about it, Connor, it’s the only way to get anywhere. I know it seems like a joke to you now, but when you’re twenty five and you can’t get a real job you’ll see I was right.”
Connor said nothing. He took another drag. Blew the smoke out slowly. “I’m not going to college, dad.”
Dad.
When was the last time he heard that?
For months now, maybe years, it had been nothing and if it was ever something it was “Larry” or “Fucking Larry.” Never dad.
It wasn’t right hearing that.
“You have to go.” That was all he could say back. His throat was choked up.
“I’m not going to college, dad,” Connor tried again. In the dark, in the moonlight, the bags under his eyes were more pronounced. He looked like he was sagging under the weight of holding himself up. “I’m dead.”
Larry took another drag. “Now you’re just being ridiculous.”
“I’m not the one talking to myself.”
“You always were such a little shit, you know that?”
“Taller than you though.”
“You get that from your mother.”
A look from Connor, raised eyebrows.
“Got that from her.”
“You didn’t cry at the funeral.”
Larry shrugged. Took another drag.
“You know I knew him, right? Evan? Not well. We weren’t friends, obviously. But I…” He stopped, took another drag. “I kind of tried there. At the end. With him. That’s why I signed his cast. I thought… I don’t know.”
Larry smiled. “I was a little worried when I read that letter that you had some kind of… thing for your sister?”
“What the fuck ? That’s so messed up. You watch too much Game of Thrones .”
“Watch your mouth.”
Connor smirked. “I did like the thing about the orchard. It made a good story.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. I mean… I always liked that place. If I knew about his uh… tree thing I might have even mentioned it to him. You know. If we had been friends.”
“Hmm.”
“I don’t think he’s a bad guy. Maybe a little stupid, but not a bad guy. I’m glad you didn’t tell people about it.”
“I guess.”
“Can’t believe you wanted to give him my college fund, though,” Connor said, laughing a little. “You barely knew the guy!”
Larry sighed. “That was your sister’s idea.”
“My sister was sleeping with him, so I can at least understand why she might have thought it was a good idea.”
Larry shook his head. “They weren’t.”
“They definitely were.”
“No! Evan’s… There's no way. The kid could barely string two words together.”
Connor raised his eyebrows. “I mean, believe what you want, I guess.” He shook his head, still smiling. Larry hadn’t seen him smile that much in… forever. It was almost contagious.
Connor’s cigarette had burned down to the filter. So had Larry’s.
“One more?” Larry asked.
“Alright.”
They each stubbed out their cigarettes and lit new ones.
“Your throat’s gonna hurt like hell tomorrow, old man.”
Larry shrugged.
“You should go back,” Connor said conversationally. “To the group. You should go back.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Why?”
“That other woman’s daughter…”
“Was sick. Like me.”
Larry took a drag to keep from talking. He found that he couldn’t quite look at Connor. He was afraid if he did he might turn to stone.
“Mom would be happy to hear you went.”
“I doubt that.”
“She would probably even go with you if you went again.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Why not?”
“She’s barely hanging on as it is…”
“Do you know that, though? Do you really know? Or are you just assuming?”
Larry frowned. He didn’t know. “What if she never gets over this?”
“I’m not sure it’s something people actually get over.”
“Why?” Larry asked suddenly, before he could think, turning to look at Connor. “We never treated you badly, we didn’t hit you… You had everything you could have ever possibly wanted. Why did you do this? Why did you do it to us?”
“I didn’t do anything to you,” Connor said, putting the cigarette to his lips again.
“You did, though. You can’t make excuses for this. You hurt… you hurt everyone. What you did… I don’t understand. I don’t know how we’re supposed to deal with this, to cope with this… It’s. It’s unimaginable, this, it’s beyond words what you’ve put us through...”
Connor shook his head. “You don’t get it.”
“Then make me understand! You left us with nothing, Connor… not even a note.”
“I was sick, dad. There’s nothing more to it.”
“Bullshit.”
“ Language, ” Connor said sarcastically.
“That… that can’t be it. That can’t be all . There… there has to be something else. Something I could have done...”
“I can’t give you anything else, dad. You know I can’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
Connor frowned. He looked almost sad. “Because this isn’t real . Because I’m dead. I can’t tell you anything else because you’re alone out here, talking yourself.”
Larry’s heart sank.
He blinked, glancing around.
He was alone, of course.
Out on the back patio, smoking one of Connor’s cigarettes, snatched from his dead son’s bedroom, alone.
There were three cigarette butts on the ground.
But Larry had a feeling two of them were old. Years old even.
He wanted to shout for Connor to come back. He wasn’t finished yet. He hadn’t said what he needed to say yet.
“I’m sorry,” he said to no one in particular, to the wind, to the overgrown grass of the backyard. “I could have done more… I could have done something… I’m sorry.”
There was no response, of course.
Nothing by a gentle breeze, bringing with it the oncoming autumn.
Larry finished the cigarette. Stubbed it out with the toe of his shoe. Savored the sourness in the back of his throat, the burn in his lungs.
Turned and returned inside.
He showered before he got into bed with Cynthia. Brushed his teeth twice, until the nicotine had been rinsed from his lips. Even then she wrinkled her nose at him when he pulled back the covers. He should have assumed she’d still be awake.
“You’re smoking again?”
He shrugged.
“Where were you all night?” She asked. “It’s late. I was starting to worry.”
“I…” Larry heaved a sigh. “I went to this. Uh. Support group downtown.”
Cynthia raised an eyebrow. He’d always thought she had an exquisitely expressive face. Her brows were fine and arched. She could raise just one of them and communicate so much in a single twitch.
“It’s a… support group for parents who have… lost a child to suicide.”
Cynthia’s chin wobbled slightly, her eyes glassy. “H-how was it?”
“Fine.” Larry nodded. “I think I’ll go back.”
Cynthia smiled.
“Maybe… maybe you ought to come with me? Next time?”
Cynthia smiled. “I’d like that.”
She slid her hand into his.
“We should visit him…” Larry said. “We haven’t gone to the cemetery, all of us, I mean, since they finished the headstone.”
“Alright,” Cynthia said, giving his hand an encouraging squeeze. “Zoe and I were talking… and we thought that, before school starts up again. We thought we might want to go to the orchard. Have a picnic? I know it’s… I know it wasn’t, but we got to talking-”
Larry felt a sudden squeeze around his heart, just for a second. “I’d like that.”
She smiled at him.