A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [52]
Neil picked them up. “Tom,” he said, holding them out.
“My sister’s gone,” the man sobbed in his struggle with the inexplicable, this monstrous and simple fact. “And my parents, they died of broken hearts. But you, you’re still here. Why? How can you be? What kind of person are you? Look at you! You can’t even look me in the eye, can you?”
Gordon shook his head. No.
“Do something!” the man screamed, slapping the wallet at Gordon’s chest in a frenzy of rage and impotence. “Say something! Don’t just stand there, you fucking coward, you no-good bastard, you stupid son of a bitch!” He hit him in the neck, and Serena screamed.
Gordon stood there. He could not express it, could not say that the very fact of his emptiness meant something, that never for a moment had he denied or relinquished guilt, and so in that ineffable way did mourn and suffer her loss. Even his torturous memories were meaningless, as futile as this brother’s outburst. What possible atonement was there for taking her life? What reparation might balance the loss? None, of course. Not even execution or suicide could plug the hole he had made in the universe. And in his own soul. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so very sorry.”
“Sorry! Sorry! What’s sorry? What’s that? That’s nothing! That’s a word! A fucking, useless, empty word, that’s all the fuck that is!” The man’s voice broke with a rubbly gasp, the unseen wreckage of a cave collapsing in on itself.
The door above him opened. “Gordon? Gordon, are you down there? . . . Gordon?” Neil paused halfway down the creaking cellar steps. “What’re you doing?”
“Looking for a ladder.”
“It’s already up here. You were on it.”
“I thought there was another one. A higher one.”
Neil almost seemed to be grinning. “No, you’re hiding down here, that’s what you’re doing.”
He felt sick to his stomach, so drained that his bones ached.
“I didn’t know who he was at first,” Neil said. “Even when he said the name, Tom Ferguson. I didn’t make the connection. He said he just found out you were working here and something snapped inside. He was on his way to work and he just kept driving. From New Jersey. Six hours—he never stopped. All he knew was he had to see you. He said it all blew up, all those feelings, things he hadn’t thought of in years.”
Gordon remembered him sitting between his bewildered-looking father and devastated mother, the younger brother who often wept during the trial. He used to wonder why they subjected him to that, why he wasn’t in school. Now he knew. So that he wouldn’t forget. So that when they were gone, some part of them would still speak her name.
“I told him you’re a good guy, and that’s all I know.”
Gordon nodded.
“What else could I say? You never talk about anything.”
Gordon shrugged.
“You keep it all in, huh? Not like that Dominguez, always mouthing off at somebody. If it wasn’t for his grandmother, I’d fire the sour little bastard.” Neil picked up a sooty coal bucket by the handle and swung it back and forth. “You know, this may come as a surprise, but I envy you. No commitments, no anchors, nothing to hold you back like this shithole here.” He laughed, his gleaming eyes skittering over the dusty crates, teetering stacks of pallets, and cob-webbed signs and warped shelving. Propped against the wall was the original marquee. NASH STREET MARKET, proclaimed the red glass script, dull with grime and dead fuses. “Feels like a tomb down here, doesn’t it? A fucking grave!” He let go of the bucket and drop-kicked it into the marquee.
Gordon jumped with the explosion of neon tubes.
“I should have sold it when I had the chance. But all I could think was, Yeah, and then what the hell do I do? I figured it was too late to start over. I mean, I had a family to support. What was I gonna do, go sell cars someplace? It was like being frozen, like I was encased in this block of fucking ice I’m always trying to see out of, and then