And then it passed, and the horror of Katie's removal from the earth? the total lack of her? swam back through his blood and he felt pulverized by it.
There was a gun in the house. It had belonged to his father, and his mother had left it behind the removable ceiling slat above the butler's pantry where his father had always kept it. You could sit on the counter of the butler's pantry and reach under the lip of the curved wooden cornice, and touch the three slats there until you felt the weight of the gun. Then all you had to do was push up, reach in, and curl your fingers around it. It had been there since Brendan could remember, and one of his first memories was of stumbling out of the bathroom late one night and watching as his father withdrew his hand from underneath the cornice. Brendan had even taken the gun out and shown it to his friend Jerry Diventa when they were thirteen, Jerry looking at it with wide eyes and saying, "Put it back, put it back." It was covered in dust and quite possibly had never been fired, but Brendan knew it was just a matter of cleaning it.
He could take the gun out tonight. He could walk down to Café Society, where Roman Fallow hung out, or over to Atlantic Auto Glass, which Bobby O'Donnell owned and where, according to Katie, he conducted most of his business from the back office. He could go to either of those places? or better yet, both? and point his father's gun in each of their faces and pull the fucking trigger, over and over and over, until it clicked on an empty chamber and Roman and Bobby never killed another woman again.
He could do that. Couldn't he? They did it in the movies. Bruce Willis, man, if someone killed the woman he loved, he wouldn't be sitting on the floor, holding his ankles, rocking like a Sped case. He'd be loading up. Right?
Brendan pictured Bobby's fleshy face in his sights, the man begging. No, please, Brendan! No, please!
And Brendan saying something cool like, "Please this, motherfucker. Please this all the way to hell."
He started crying then, still rocking, still holding his ankles, because he knew that he wasn't Bruce Willis, and Bobby O'Donnell was a real person, not something out of a movie, and the gun would need cleaning, serious cleaning, and he didn't even know if it had bullets because he wasn't even sure how to open the thing, and when you got right down to it, wouldn't his hand shake? Wouldn't it shake and jump the way his fist used to when he was a kid and knew there was no way out, he was going to get into a fight? Life wasn't a fucking movie, man, it was?fucking life. It didn't play out like it did where the good guy had to win in two hours so you knew he would win. Brendan didn't know much about himself in the hero sense; he was nineteen and he'd never been challenged in that way. But he wasn't sure he could walk into a guy's place of business? that is if the doors weren't locked and there weren't all these other guys hanging around? and shoot the guy in the face. He just wasn't sure.
But he missed her. He missed her so badly, and the pain of her not being around? and not ever going to be around again? made his teeth ache until he felt he had to do something, anything, if only so he'd stop feeling like this for one fucking second of this newly miserable life.
Okay, he decided. Okay. I'll clean the gun tomorrow. I'll just clean it and make sure it has bullets. I'll do that much. I'll clean the gun.
Ray came into the room then, still wearing his Rollerblades, using his new hockey stick as a walking staff as he seesawed on wobbly ankles over to his bed. Brendan stood up quick, wiped the tears from his cheeks.
Ray took off his Rollerblades, watching his brother, and then he signed, "You okay?"
Brendan said, "No."
Ray signed, "Anything I can do?"
Brendan said, "It's all right, Ray. No, you can't. But don't worry about it."
"Ma says you are better off."
Brendan said, "What?"
Ray repeated it.
"Yeah?" Brendan said. "How's she figure?"
Ray's hands went flying. "If you left, Ma would have bummed."
"She'd have gotten over it."
"Maybe, maybe not."
Brendan looked at his brother sitting on the bed, staring up into his face.
"Don't piss me off now, Ray. Okay?" He leaned in close, thinking about that gun. "I loved her."
Ray gazed back, his face as empty as a rubber mask.
"You know what that's like, Ray?"
Ray shook his head.
"It's like knowing all the answers on a test the minute you sit down at your desk. It's like knowing everything's going to be okay for the rest of your life. You're going to ace. You're going to be fine. You'll walk around forever, feeling relieved, because you won." He turned away from his brother. "That's what it's like."
Ray tapped the bedpost so he'd look at him, and then he signed, "You will feel it again."
Brendan dropped to his knees and shoved his face into Ray's. "No, I won't. Fucking get that? No."
Ray pulled his feet up onto the bed and backed up, and Brendan felt ashamed, but still angry, because that was the thing about those who were mute? they could make you feel stupid for talking. Everything Ray said came out succinctly, just as he'd intended. He didn't know what it was like to fumble for words or trip over them because his speech was going faster than his brain.
Brendan wanted to spill, he wanted the words to come out of his mouth in a gush of passionate, fucked-up, not entirely sensible, but completely honest testament to Katie and what she'd meant to him and how it had felt to press his nose against her neck in this bed and hook one of his fingers around one of hers and wipe ice cream off her chin and sit beside her in a car and watch her eyes dart as she came to intersections and hear her talk and sleep and snore and?
He wanted to go on for hours. He wanted someone to listen to him and to understand that speech wasn't just about communicating ideas or opinions. Sometimes, it was about trying to convey whole human lives. And while you knew even before you opened your mouth that you'd fail, somehow the trying was what mattered. The trying was all you had.
Ray, though, no way he could grasp that. Words for Ray were flicks of the fingers, deft droppings and raisings and sweepings of the hand. Words were not wasted with Ray. Communication was not relative to him. You said exactly what you meant, and then you were done with it. To unload his grief and over-emote in front of his blank-faced brother would have merely shamed Brendan. It wouldn't have helped.
He looked down at his scared little brother, backed up on the bed and staring at him with bug eyes, and he held out his hand.
"I'm sorry," he said, and heard his voice crack. "I'm sorry, Ray. Okay? I didn't mean to blast you."