Chapter Text
Ian had never been to a funeral before. His mother and father were both only children, who were also born to only children, so there were very few relatives with whom they were close enough to pay their respects to. Neither of his parents – one an anthropologist, the other a psychiatrist – believed western funeral traditions to be particularly constructive. Rather than serving as a homage to the life of a beautiful loved one, they were pity parties, rooms filled with wailing and regrets.
Such wailing interrupted Ian’s train of thought now. Some distant relative he had never met was hunched over his mother’s casket, sobbing. She cried so shamelessly that it felt like an insult, a performance of grief she hadn’t earned. Everyone who was fortunate to really know Penelope was silent, and still she made a fool of herself.
The woman’s husband, clearly embarrassed for her, attempted to console her. He’d lift her to her feet repeatedly only for her body to collapse under the weight of her theatrics again. The bold makeup she had applied earlier that morning ran in dark rivulets down her cheeks and onto the white collar of her blouse. Ian wanted nothing more than to scold her – to tell her to stop disrupting his mother’s rest with her incessant crying. When she finally pulled herself together enough to return to her seat, she’d left tear droplets on the white cushion of the casket. A dark thought crossed his mind then, something almost comforting about the possibility of her death on her way home. He felt the shame of it immediately. He filed it away.
There was a profound anger dancing hand-in-hand with the deepest of sorrows simmering beneath the blank look he wore. His father sat with him in the front pew of the church, treating him like a leper. He would neither touch nor speak to his only son. In the event they accidentally met one another’s gaze, Mr. Weiss would look at Ian like a wounded animal. It was the same expression he had made when the police told him his wife had passed away in the ambulance after the accident. He had been at Ian’s bedside when he received that news, and had not returned to the hospital once after.. His melancholy had already been allocated for his wife of eighteen years. There was nothing left over for the only other Weiss still standing.
Even as they put her in the ground, he would not offer Ian a shoulder to cry on. They drove in the coldest of silences, and did not speak once they arrived home. Ian did not bother to attend school for the next three weeks. He’d wake to the sound of automated voice messages playing aloud from the house phone, reminding his parents father of his accumulating unexcused absences. Whether Mr. Weiss simply didn’t care or genuinely wasn’t hearing them, it was impossible to say. He never left the master wing of the house anymore.
Greer, the housemaid, was on leave. With her and his mother both gone, the house was in disarray. The fridge held nothing but expired food and a thin film of dust had settled over the kitchen counters. Ian had never been taught to cook, so he simply ordered in every day. His mother hates when he eats junk. Hated, he corrected himself. It was still difficult to remind himself to speak about her in the past tense.
By the end of the fourth week, Ian’s principal was in his father’s inbox threatening to get law enforcement involved. After all, truancy was a crime that pointed to child neglect. Only then did Mr. Weiss emerge from his rooms. He had grown a beard in his absence. His impossibly perfect black hair was now unkempt and faintly greasy, grey strands pushing through in places Ian hadn't noticed before. His shirt and trousers were unironed. Ian found himself trying to remember whether it had been his mother or Greer who used to choose and press his clothing for him. Think on it further, he wasn't sure he'd ever known.
“When’s Greer coming back?” Ian asked as they got into the car.
“Not for a while. She’s grieving.”
Mr. Weiss’s answer was clipped, directed at the windshield instead of the only person in the world he had left. Ian wondered if it would kill him to make eye contact as he spoke, or to at least attempt a tone that suggested he didn’t resent the current conversation. Greer couldn’t have possibly been more overtaken by grief than either of them. She never seemed to like his mother very much. In reality, she was probably having the time of her life in some tropical country, drinking out of a coconut. Ian couldn’t remember the last time Penelope allowed her a real vacation. They pulled out of the garage in the new family auto, the same shade of red as the old one. It was his mother’s favorite color.
“Can we hire someone else, then? I can’t cook.”
“Then learn,” Mr. Weiss replied, his voice flat.
Ian stared at him, squinting. “Why are you mad at me?” he asked, his voice cracking on the last word.
Mr. Weiss’s knuckles went white as he gripped the steering wheel as if it were the only thing tethering him to reality. His lips were pressed tightly together. For a moment, he had the look of a man searching all the libraries in the world for just one good sentence to spit out.
“What did you think would come of this, Ian?” he yelled suddenly, his tone turning sharp and accusatory. “This little act of yours?”
“What are you –”
“Did you think becoming a delinquent would break my heart? Make me feel some semblance of pity toward you?”
“I don’t want you to pity me, dad,” Ian replied defensively, genuinely confused by the conclusion his father had somehow reached.
“I don’t know why you’re acting like this, but it needs to stop.”
“I’m acting like this because my mom is fucking dead! A-a-and it’s like you are too–”
“She was my wife before she was ever your mother!” Mr. Weiss howled, slapping the steering wheel. The sound of the impact rang out in the space between them. “You wallow in self-pity all day as if you aren’t the reason she’s in the ground instead of beside me.”
“It’s not my fault!” Ian was openly sobbing now, his breaths ragged and wet.
Mr. Weiss said nothing. He merged onto the highway and drove just above the speed limit. Ian’s cries filled the small space of the passenger cabin like something physical.
“Stop,” his father said, almost softly. Almost like he was begging.
“No. I hate you,” Ian whimpered.
His father reached out to him, resting a hand on his shoulder. The moment they made contact with one another, Ian slammed himself against the opposite door as if he could pass through it. Trying to run away made very little sense in such a confined space, but he was determined. An entire two months of wishing he was dead, drifting about the house a mere husk of the person he once was, all but begging to be seen and hugged and heard – and now, only now, his father chose to reach out. Mr. Weiss stared at him, something pained moving across his face for a moment, and then turned toward the road again. It was easier to pretend. Even when the cries became so loud it was impossible to block them out, It was easier to pretend.
The world was muffled as Ian sat in that chair.
Principal Simmons’s pity was the self-serving kind. He tossed around phrases tabout how he could never imagine losing his own wife, his own mother – how he’d just die if it happened to him – as if the purpose of the meeting was to assess the depth of Simmons’s emotions. A framed photo sat on his desk, taunting Ian: a handsome man, a beautiful woman, two jovial, gap-toothed children. All of them were smiling, and notably, alive. Ian hated the photo. He wondered what it would feel like to put his fist through it.
His father, as committed to keeping up appearances as ever, squeezed his hand. If they had been alone, Ian would have hit him. He preferred it when they fought with their hands instead of their words. It was the only time Mr. Weiss shed his careful composure and behaved like a real human being.
“Ian? Are you listening?” Simmons asked. His father’s grip grew tighter.
“No,” Ian deadpanned. He was no longer interested in pretending.
Mr. Weiss cleared his throat and nodded towards the principal. The hand on his was a firm reminder to behave. Ian smiled as he imagined himself making the man across the desk bleed. If he couldn’t do it, he might as well think about it.
“Since your father has decided to make a very generous donation to our institution,” began Simmons, folding his hands atop the desk, “ we’re prepared to overlook the matter of your chronic absenteeism, provided you make a genuine effort to attend school for the remainder of the semester.”
Ian stood up and walked out.
He could hear his father following him, the measured click of his loafers against linoleum, but he didn’t slow down. He pushed out through the front doors and kept walking until he reached the end of the parking lot, where the pavement gave way to the street and the traffic moved fast enough to matter. Only then did he stop and turn around.
Mr. Weiss was in arm’s reach, but didn’t dare reach out.
Ian tucked his arms into himself. His eyes went glassy. He couldn't go back. He couldn't survive the disingenuous condolences, the soft voices and the careful looks, the teachers who didn't know what to do with him. No one realized how cruel it was to force someone back into a simulacrum of their old life after they had already been irreversibly damaged. The scars on his skin said so. The thoughts in his head said so. Everyone kept insisting there was a way forward, but Ian couldn't find himself in the mirror anymore, and he was starting to suspect the person they were urging forward wasn't him at all.
“I can’t,” he said, broken. “Don’t make me.”
Mr. Weiss raised his hands in surrender, a gesture that said, ‘what choice does either of us have?’ The world never stopped for anyone, not even for men who have just lost all that made them whole. Things couldn’t continue as they were, it just wasn’t sustainable. They knew they were nearing the end of their list of options.
When his father made a step toward him, Ian stepped back, closer to the curb. It was clever in a way, using your own life as leverage to get someone to listen to you for once.
“Get away from the road, son,” Mr. Weiss said, his expression darkening. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
Ian shook his head. “Not until you promise me,” he breathed shakily. “Don’t make me go through that. I’ve learnt my lesson, okay? I swear. Just … don’t make me go back there.”
“You know I can’t–”
“Don’t give me that, dad! Fucking homeschool me! Something. Anything.”
“Why would I ever do that to myself?” Mr. Weiss said, and his voice cracked in a way that sounded less like anger and more like something finally giving.“The love of my life is already gone, now what, I’m just supposed to give up my work too? My whole life?”
“At least you have a life.” Ian yelled. “Mine is gone! I died in that car the same day she did, right beside her! If you won’t do this one thing for me – ” he stopped, swallowed. “Just let me kill myself and be done with it.”
There was silence, save for the sounds of cars.
Then Mr. Weiss moved. Not slowly, not carefully, just frantically. He crossed the distance between them and grabbed his son and held on. Ian screamed and fought and tried to wrench himself free, all elbows and fury, but his father was larger and more desperate. He dragged him, kicking and yelling, to the car and shoved him into the back seat. Any passerby would have assumed they were witnessing an abduction. The doors locked. The windows didn't break no matter how hard Ian tried. Eventually, he ran out of fight. He sat there breathing hard, staring at the back of his father's head.
As if the meltdown had never happened, he took a deep breath and asked, “Can we stop at McDonald’s?”
Ian sat alone in his father’s study. He took a few last bites of his burger, staring absentmindedly at the array of paintings on the walls. He was oddly drawn to one of them that seemed more eerie than the others. It had a small placard beneath it that read:
Izumi Kato
Untitled, 2009
It was an abstract depiction of a man who looked badly decomposed. Still, he stood upright, with only half of his body beneath the dirt. Two sprouts, one of them flowering, emerged from his lower half, triumphantly breaking through the soil. He was only half dead.
Ian wiped his grease-covered hands on his jeans. Bored, he began to rifle through the papers stacked on his father’s desk. Normally, snooping was the kind of thing that would earn him a lecture, but he didn’t think Mr. Weiss had it in him to complain anymore. Most of them were illegible – session notes, probably, the handwriting of a man thinking faster than he could write. One appeared to be a grocery list abandoned halfway through. Another was a letter written by someone else, and it was about Ian. He didn't get to finish reading it before his father appeared in the doorway.
Mr. Weiss held a cardboard box in his arms. He dropped it onto one of the scarce empty spots on his desk. Inside lay all of the kitchen knives and a few things from his son’s room: a lighter, two boxcutters, a bottle of vodka they’d gotten on a family vacation, and other contraband. Ian frowned at the collection. His father had snooped, just as he had.
“What’s all this?” he asked, clearly unimpressed.
“Things I'm confiscating.” Mr. Weiss kept his voice even. “I don't want to put you in the psych ward, so I'm babyproofing the house.” What he didn't say was that the only reason he hadn't admitted him yet was that he wasn't ready to be alone. “I tried to clean out your room, but frankly, it's full of things you can hurt yourself with.”
“Obviously,” Ian muttered, cramming a handful of cold french fries in his mouth.
“Listen,” Mr. Weiss crouched slightly to better make eye contact with his son. “Next month, you turn eighteen. I know you think you’re too grown up for me to be watching over you, but this isn’t just about me.” He paused. “I'm sorry. For the past few weeks. I know I wasn't … I wasn't there.”
He wanted to say something like, I can’t lose you, too. Half of him still blamed Ian for the way things were, and that half kept getting in the way. Instead what came out was, “I care about you. You’re mine. I made you. You think you’re your own person, but your brain isn’t developed enough for that. You don’t know what you want. Today, you want it to be over. Tomorrow, you’ll wish it wasn’t.”
Ian rolled his eyes, but there was no real heat in it. He stood up and rummaged through the box, taking care to not cut himself on any of the blades within it. He pulled out a utility knife with the initials P.W. inscribed on the handle. He'd stolen it from his mother's flower arranging table out in the garden, months before the accident.
Before he could even ask, his father denied his request. “No, you can’t keep that. I know what you do with sharp things, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart. He almost never called Ian that. It was because of whose initials were on the handle, Ian decided. They both knew it.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ian said. “I don’t even use this one.”
Mr. Weiss grabbed Ian’s hand roughly and retrieved the knife. Somewhere in between clinical and enraged, it was genuinely difficult to tell, he pulled Ian’s sleeve up to reveal his forearm. Ian looked away. Looking down would make it all too real. Mr. Weiss pressed his fingers onto the scabbed over wounds gently at first, then he dug his fingernails into them. Ian groaned in pain and tried to pull away.
“I hope you know that killing yourself hurts worse than that.”
He released his son's arm. The knife went into the box. A silence fell between them that felt different from the ones that came before. It was less like a wall, and more like two people waiting for the air to settle.
“I'm sorry,” his father said again. He didn't explain it or redirect it. He just let it be there.
Ian looked down at his arm. “Okay,” he said. Which wasn't forgiveness, but it wasn't nothing.
The phone came next. Mr. Weiss held out his hand and Ian gave it up without much of a fight. He’d been grounded enough times to know the procedure. He was too tired, and besides, there was only one person who texted him anything worth reading, and those conversations had lately felt like pressing on a bruise to see if it still hurt.
His mother's study smelled like her. That was the first thing he noticed when his father laid the air mattress down in the corner. It was something faintly floral, and beneath it the dry papery smell of old books. He hadn't braced for it. He lay on his back in the dark with the door open and the hallway light spilling in across the floor, staring at the ceiling, trying to decide whether the smell was a comfort or a cruelty.
He thought about what Leo, his best friend, had said to him a couple of days after the funeral. They'd been sitting on the curb outside because Ian hadn't wanted anyone in the house, and Marcus, in his infinite wisdom, had asked what it felt like when he ‘died’.
Ian had just looked at him for a moment.
“That is the most insensitive thing anyone has said to me since my mother died,” he said, “and people have been saying insensitive things to me basically nonstop for a week.”
“It's not insensitive, it's curiosity. There's a difference.”
Ian picked at the rubber sole of his shoe, where it had started to peel away at the toe. "It didn't feel like anything," he said finally. “That's what no one gets. It should feel like something. It felt like nothing.” He turned the thought over. “There isn’t anything I could compare it to. Not everything feels like something else.”
Leo nodded like he understood. Ian was fairly certain he didn't. But he'd stopped asking questions, which was the next best thing. People are so desperate for understanding that they’ll beg for a subpar comparison to something that stands in a category of its own. It’s why people become anthropologists. It’s a futile attempt, a grasp at understanding other people’s experiences, even though we all know it’s impossible. You could read a book that recorded every micromoment of a person’s life, and you would never truly be able to understand them. We’re all cursed to be alone in the most intimate of ways, to be ourselves and nothing more.
Lying in the dark now, Ian thought about that. About how a room full of someone's things was supposed to feel like something and didn't. The stacked books. The framed prints. The small clay dish on the desk where his mother kept paper clips and hair ties and a button she'd been meaning to sew back onto a coat for at least two years. Every object in this room said someone lives here. Every object in this room was wrong. A room that belonged to someone who no longer existed wasn't a room anymore, it was just a faraway concept. A museum of a life that had already closed its eyes and drifted off into something unknown. You could stand inside it and feel the shape of what once was, the sense that something should be registering, and still feel absolutely nothing.
He closed his eyes. Down the hall, he could hear his father moving around. They were the soft sounds of a man who was also still awake, also still figuring out how to be in the house without her in it. It was almost companionable, in its way. Two people not sleeping in adjacent rooms.
He stared at the ceiling a while longer, and eventually, without meaning to, he slept.
He dreamt of her.