Donny Isn't There When Tom Calls Me for a Ride

8/9/2019 Donny Isn't There When Tom Calls Me for a Ride

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Matthew Roberts

82362 Five Lakes Rd.Bush, LA 70431

985.373.0414

[email protected]

Donny Isnt There When Tom Calls Me for a Ride

1.

Donny is there. Donnys there on the stage in the cafeteria at James Madison

Elementary School for the talent show. He wears a white jumpsuit, thick framed

sunglasses, and a cape. He lipsynchs to Elvis, mimics the Kings patented moves for the

PTA. Taking a knee. Spinning the arm. Being all shook up. Donnys there. Donnys

there in the front room of that low white house on Chastant with the fake suits of armor

flanking the china cabinet. Those fake wood handled swords and maces mounted on

velvet above the lamps behind the couch. A large crucifix on the wall. The heavily

lacquered wood plaque with theFootprints poem found in the home of so many Catholic

households in suburban New Orleans. Donnys there in that front room wearing a navy

blue Cub Scout uniform, his thick black hair no longer greased back, but still plastered

down, over a slim face of freckles with almond eyes. Others are there, wearing bright

yellow bandanas and brass Fox badges. Trey Higgins. Glenn Olivier. My brother, Tom.

The boys make their costumes for the annual Cub Scout parade, paw through bags of old

beads and doubloons from last years Mardi Gras. Endymion. Argus. Rex. Deciding

what to keep and what to throw to the families lined up along Kawanee. Donnys there in

the backyard of that house with Tom, horsing around the in-ground pool. Splashing.

Running. Skinning a knee or elbow on the concrete bottom. Donnys there with Tom at
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the tiki bar at the back of the cabana. The boys sneak slugs of Ten High, fill their pull-

tab Coke cans with rum. Donnys there. Donnys there when Mr. Don comes home late

from the car dealership on Causeway Boulevard, stopping first at Sweet Williams

Tavern and then someplace with the word Lounge in the name. Again. And again.

Donny is there. Donnys in the driveway, washing the Chevy SuperSport his dad

gave him for his birthday the year he gets his drivers license. That black hair standing

out against the red screen that means Under 18. That doesnt matter. Donny stands with

Tom under the fluorescent lights of the convenience store sign waiting for David Seoul,

Chris Wertz, or one of the other older boys to reappear from inside with a six pack of

Miller ponies. Donnys there in the back room of our house playing Intellivision with

Tom, in the garage converted into a game room after the fire, when a knock comes at the

double doors. Ill be right back, Tom says. Donny stays behind, the controller in his

hand, while Tom sneaks off to sit beside The Green Thing on the corner to get high.

Donnys with Tom in the courtyard at Archbishop Rummel, wearing the powder blue

collared shirt and navy pants, each daring the other to ditch Religion to smoke cigarettes

behind the modular buildings, keeping an eye out for Brother ______. Donny has

trouble with math, Tom has trouble at the bus stop with older boys. Donny gives Tom a

ride home in that fine car Mr. Don gave him as a birthday present until Tom transfers to

King. Donny is there. Donnys there when papers are served. Donnys in his own room

in the house on Chastant, a converted garage with Led Zeppelin both on the walls and the

stereo. Donny is there in his room while Mrs. Pat makes pudding on the stove. Donny is

there when Dougie or Dwayne opens the door and find his body, fifteen with a twenty-

two in his hands. The posters are ruined. The record is over, only a buzzing hum coming

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from the speakers and a wet iron smell in the air. They hadnt heard a thing. Nobody

had heard a thing.

From that point forward, Donny isnt there. Donny isnt there when they find the

note. The note that says he is failing math. The note that doesnt say he wants to live

with his father. Nor does it say that he doesnt want to live with his mother. Just that

hes failing math. Donny isnt there when his mother places that note on a small table in

the front room of the low, dark house on Chastant. Photos in frames. Prayer cards. A

candle. Other things. Donny isnt there that morning when my mother, unable to think

of a way to present the news, wakes my brother and says, Donny shot himself. Donny

isnt there that afternoon as Tom watches children chase each other around the pool at the

Jewish Community Center, splashing and skinning knees and elbows. Tom thinks about

the last time hed seen Donny. It was the week before, and Tom was driving towards

Avron down Chastant after buying smokes from Food Etc. Donny was in front of the

house, leaning against his car. Donny and Tom exchanged small talk about Brother

_______ at Rummel. The bathrooms at King. Other things unremembered. But now

Donny isnt there. Donny isnt there at the wake, but Donnys body is, dressed in a dark

suit with a crisp white collar. His face, the first dead body for many in that room, is a

mystery. How did they make him look so good? Where is the hole? Why an open

casket? Donny doesnt hear people say out loud thatparents should never have to bury

their children while thinking of reasons why and never finding them. Tom is on the left,

along with Dougie, Trey, and the others on the right, hoisting the heavy casket down the

steps. Each one hopes desperately not to slip, trying his best not to think about the

weight of the body inside, trying not to think about how heavy someone can be when he

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isnt even really there. Because Donny isnt there. Donny isnt there in the cemetery as

the sun shines off of the white-washed tombs and the broken brown glass littering the

cement corridors. Pigeons lighting on crosses.

Donny isnt there. Donny isnt there when his parents make a go of it. Not

because they still love each other, but because its what they think they should do.

Donny isnt disappointed when papers are signed anyway. Donny isnt there to help Mr.

Don pack his shirts and leisure suits, that bottle of Old Spice, an unopened carton of

Kools, and his cut crystal rocks glasses into boxes, and then those boxes into the car.

Donny isnt there to watch the brown stain form on the dry slide around the greening

pool. Donny isnt there. Donny isnt there to see the fragile smile on Mrs. Pats face

when she returns from her pilgrimage to Spain. The six-foot rosary of white beads with

the heavy iron crucifix that she gave my mother disappear into a closet in our own house.

Donny doesnt see the bottles disappear from the tiki bar in the backyard, the entire

house. Donny doesnt see bottles brought into Dwaynes room and stashed in the closet.

Donny doesnt see the brown paper bags full of dime sized Ziplocs. Weed cleaned and

rolled on the cover of a Nazareth album purchased at Warehouse Records and Tapes

along with the slim orange package of Zig-Zags. Donny isnt there. Donny isnt there to

see Dougie impress the shop teacher. Rebuild the carburetor. Bleed the brakes. Refinish

the body. Wire the stereo. Donny isnt there in the black and white pictures of Tom and

his friends leaning against one another at Pat OBriens during Mardi Gras. Hoisting cups

of Bud Light poured from plastic pitchers at Parlays. Stacking cans and playing quarters

on the coffee table in our converted garage when the parents went to Florida or Chicago.

Donny isnt there when anyone makes twenty-two.

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Donny isnt there. Donny isnt there when Dwayne passes out in the courtyard at

King, hitting the concrete with a wet smack. When Dwayne graduates a year late, saying

he needs a degree toget a good job, get my life back on track. Donny isnt there when

we hear that Dougie is doing well. A good job. A steady girl. A new house. Helping

Dwayneget right. Donny isnt there when Dougie follows his older brothers example.

A handgun? In the new house? Details are hard to come by. Glenn, Trey, and my

brother didnt talk to Dougie much. Donny isnt there to tell his brother not to do it, to

tell him that papers get served anyway, little brothers make mistakes, or that math really

doesnt matter.

Donny isnt there. Donny isnt there when another family fears things are bad. A

low spot in a childs life. The unraveling of a long relationship, a feeling that things are

going nowhere. She marries within a year, the restaurant folds. No more photos from the

courtyard at Pat OBriens, but still plenty of drinking. And Donny isnt there. Donny

isnt there to offer Tom an alternative to things that loom larger than the bullies at the bus

stop. Donny isnt there to sit on the curb at two a.m. after others move away or start

having children. Donny isnt there to ride shotgun to the Smoky Mountains to spend a

twenty-fifth birthday on the twenty-fifth of August. Donny isnt there. But I am. And

still am. Not for alcoholic fathers or for failing math, but for a pet that needed to be put

down at the vet. A ride home from work. A cold beer and some conversation about an

old friend who committed suicide.

2.

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Tom calls me for a ride. Some days I relish the call, because I need to get out of

the house. Some days it only means trouble for me. Some days he doesnt call me for a

ride. Tom calls me to borrow money. Just for the week. Until pay day. To float his rent

until pay day. But it will be a ride anyway, because I eventually say yes and he will

need the check immediately along with a ride to the bank. Tom calls me for a ride to

review his new lease. I take Tom into the bank to see customer service about removing

an overdraft fee. Tom buys me lunch at the Trailhead. Tom buys me beer with money I

know he doesnt have. I call Mom to tell her that I got the check she sent for his security

deposit. I call Mom to tell her that I will take him to see a dentist after he cracks open a

tooth while falling up the stairs to his third floor apartment. She thanks me for taking

care of him. Im his little brother. Hes three years older than I am. Hell be thirty-five

this year. In many ways I am relieved. I am glad to still be getting calls for rides. At one

time I didnt think that I would be getting these calls. At one time I thought that these

calls would stop. That one day I would wake up and find that Tom simply isnt there any

more, that there would be no more calls. I remember how my heart sank, sitting in that

little apartment I shared with Jenn on that Saturday night, when Tom called me for ride. I

already knew where he was calling from when I heard his voice. Can you come and get

me, he asked. They wont let me go unless someone comes and gets me. I first needed to

know what happened. I needed to know that nobody was hurt. I needed to know that he

hadnt hurt anybody.

Tom was lucky. He and his roommate T-Bone had left the Trailhead and walked

down to Toms little black pickup, and when he tried to pull away without his headlights

on the officer flashed her lights. Tom still lived in the little house on Wood at the time,

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was really only minutes away. It was inevitable. T-Bone walked home, but Tom was

taken to the station just around the block behind St. Josephs church. They wont let me

go unless someone comes and gets me. He sounded scared, but was holding it together

pretty well. I thought about letting him spend the night there. Let him sleep his drunk off

in the tank; let him walk home in the morning. I think about it in the car on the way to

get him because Im not brave enough to say no. When I come to collect him, he

smells like Rumple-Mintz. Jesus, Tom, I can smell you. Did you really think that you

were going to fool anybody? Then he starts in on how close he is to home, how he does

it all the time, how he would have been fine. I try to explain to him that he is putting

other people in danger, that somebody could get hurt. Tom pleads his case down to

Driving While Ability Impaired (DWAI) and I sometimes give Tom a ride to his alcohol

classes near the Lincoln Center downtown. After every class he walks straight to the

Trailhead. He walks home, although sometimes Tom calls me for a ride. Hell slur into

the receivercome on, Matt, Im really fucked up. Sometimes Im there beside him,

drinking, but I ride my bike home, myself more a possible target than a potential bullet.

Tom walks home most nights. He moved into a third floor apartment at 200 W. Laurel

St. a few months before Jenn and I moved out of the same building. He needs to be

closer to the bus route. Tom has no intention of getting a new drivers license. He knows

that if he tries to get one that they will find out he never completed his community

service. So Tom calls me for rides.

Im relieved to get them, precisely because Tom is thirty-five years old. I thought

Tom would be dead by thirty-two. I had set an expiration date on my brothers life, and I

chose thirty-two. I dont know why thirty-two. He was somewhere between twenty-six

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and twenty-eight when I came up with that number, although I cant remember exactly

when. Maybe it was around twenty-eight, when I was spending more time with Jenn than

with him. That would have been when all of his friends were starting careers and

families, his old crowd finally becoming adults. That would have been when he was left

with nothing but a couple of pill-popping drunks who liked to hit the Riverboat casino at

the Williams Boulevard boat launch along the lake in Kenner. They would get coked up

and get in fights. I didnt think Tom would make it, remembering the little mirror I found

in his gray Chevette back in high school. I could tell that he was lying about how much

money he was spending at the casinos. I cant ever bring myself to lie to my brother, and

maybe because of this I can always tell when Tom is lying to me. I would have been

fine. I make that drive all the time. He would have been driving home from Daiquiris

unable to see straight, the lights of that little black pickup weaving a little down Green

Acres, weaving a little along the canal full of night-herons and toads, right at Bissonet,

left on Irving, right onto Purdue Drive to pull into the driveway of his parents house, the

only son yet to leave the nest. But this was never how I saw it happening. I imagined

him in the alley outside some Fat City bar, maybe Uncle Larrys or Zeppelins, maybe

the building where our fathers office used to be, and hes drunk. Hes being manhandled

by some thick-fisted goombahs over borrowed money. Tom is thin, stooped, and alone.

I watch as they beat him unconscious and leave his cracked and bloody body on the

blacktop next to a dumpster full of rotting seafood, alone and unmoving.

Or maybe it was earlier, when he was around twenty-five, sometime after I moved

home after college or during the year right before. Maybe it was during the time he

moved out of our parents house, into the house that smelled like shitthe gassy stench

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of rancid sewer pipes rising from the central register in the hallway. Everything was

filthy, his roommate a well-meaning born-again Christian borrowing money to keep his

hack license, his cab often parked in front of Bills Seafood after hours for the open tap.

That house was a particularly sad place, and Tom started driving home from Daiquiris to

stay at Mom and Dads house rather than return to that awful house. The house sagged,

and the neighborhood kids would break in and steal Toms stuff. The girl Tom had been

dating for the last five years had broken up with him, and I guess he wanted to get out of

the house. Tom had been seeing her for the last five years and now found himself

passing her house everyday on the way home. She found Tom fun during school, her

long black hair always present in the photos from Parlays and Pat Os, one small hand

clutching a plastic cup, the other arm propping Tom up as the drunken mob leans in for

the shot. Things started to change as her friends started getting married to their

boyfriends; those boyfriends starting tile businesses, driving trucks, getting ASE

certified. Tom became something that needed to be fixed. He needed to change. He

tried as best as he could, failing two semesters of college to prove his love. Tom spent

more time in the Sandbar than in the classroom, swilling down light beer with my friends,

occasionally driving up to Baton Rouge to spend the night. He was horribly devastated

by the breakup, and felt only more betrayed when he found out that she married within

the year. Her house, with a new boat out in front, was along the route to that awful shit-

smelling house. He started driving home to Mom & Dads, instead of returning to that

awful house, his little black pickup truck with the Rumple-Mintz sticker turning out of

the Daiquiris parking lot and north onto Green Acres instead of south on

Transcontinental towards Metairie Road. Mom & Dad were worried when he started

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showing up at their house, sleeping on the floor because all of his stuff was at the shit

house, waking up the next day and going to work in the same clothes in which he had

slept. We all knew that it was the after-hours open tap on the keg of Budweiser that

creating the problem. Maybe Mom and Dad saw it as a small black truck in the canal or

wrapped around a streetlight. I dont think so. I think that Mom and Dad saw the same

thing that I did: a body on the bathroom floor, alone and unmoving. Maybe choked on its

own vomit, but more likely pills. A razor. A knife. Sometimes you dont know why you

feel something that you do, and we all felt it about Tommy. It went unspoken among us,

but I started coming home more on the weekends, moved in with my parents and met

Tom after work at Charitys in Fat City, still getting antsy years later whenever a few

days go by without talking to him. This is why I put his age at death at thirty-two. I

didnt think he would make it. This is why I am relieved when Tom calls me for a ride.

This is why I usually say yes.

There is tension in my house right now. My wife is angry because I lend my

brother money. She is angry because it directly affects us. Us, she says. But she feels

she doesnt have a say in the matter. Shes right; she doesnt. She thinks he drinks too

much. Shes right; he does. Like so many people, my wife probably looks at Tom and

sees a waste. Like so many people, maybe she looks at Tom and thinks that he needs to

be fixed. I know she thinks that he shouldnt have any help until he learns to help

himself. Thats not the way it works. Hes family, I tell her. Family takes care of one

another. If we dont, we might one day open the door to a bedroom full of the sick buzz

of flies, static from speakers being interrupted by the hiss and click of the turntable

needle repeatedly bouncing off the records end. In that room might be a body, broken,

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alone and unmoving. There might be a note for display on an end table shrine, along

with the gold dangle earring, the senior photo, the unfinished coconut ashtray from shop

class. A little brother left behind to lift a casket down church steps because he couldnt

be bothered to help.

One day Tom calls me for a ride and when I follow him upstairs, I watch as the

legs on his ferret, Chuck, continually slide out from under him. In the next few days

Chucks condition will worsen, a fatal cancer of the lymph system common in ferrets,

until the poor animal is dragging its hindquarters behind itself on the hardwood floors

like a dirty rag. I take Tom to my vet to have Chuck put down. Tom keeps stroking the

animal and kissing its forehead, apologizing for what he is about to do. He doesnt want

the animal to suffer any more. I pay to have the animal put down, pay to have the body

destroyed instead of thrown in a dumpster but decline to keep the ashes. Tom sits on one

of the chairs, rapidly bouncing one leg and trying not to make eye contact.

Alright, lets go, I say.

Thats it?, Tom asks.

Yeah. Thats it, I say.

Tom needs a cigarette and a beer, and everyone at the Trailhead makes a

sympathetic awww noise and sometimes places a shot of Rumple-Mintz in front of him.

Tom doesnt talk about Chuck. Instead, Tom wants to talk about Donny Willem, my first

dead body. Tom tells me about the last time he saw Donny.

3.

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Jenn and I know that we cant stay in Fort Collins. I am applying for jobs every

year. We are pregnant again and arent making enough money. We cant seem to make

ends meet, are too often buying groceries and gas on the credit card. During this

pregnancy, Tom moves out of the apartment on Laurel to live in a one-bedroom across

from the Trailhead. People help him stumble across the street, but usually leave him at

the door fumbling for his keys. One night he falls down the stairs, breaks his nose so

hard that he cant see straight for a few days. Everyone asks me what my brother is

going to do without me around if and when I move. I dont know, I answer.

Whenever I dont hear from my brother for a few days, I start thinking about

things I dont want to think about. I wonder if he is lying on the sofa at home, not

breathing, his heart and lungs exhausted, his arm nonchalantly resting across his forehead

as if he were only sleeping. Im afraid that hes been rolled by bums in the dark alley

between Matthews and Remington, eyes swollen shut, lips split, stabbed in the gut with a

penknife and left to bleed to death. I see a cracked and broken body at the base of the

stairs, alone and unmoving. But what disturbs me the most is when I wonder if he is just

sitting at home by himself, thinking about things he shouldnt be thinking about. Talking

to his cat about things he shouldnt do. Apologizing, as he always does. He is always

apologizing for something.

My biggest fear is that something will happen one day, and that people will heave

a sigh of relief. That there will be nothing to worry about anymore. That there will be no

more apologies.

Its the end of July and its hot outside, probably around 100 degrees. Tom will be

thirty-five in August, and has decided to move, packing up his one bedroom apartment

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for the studio in Old Town across from the Trailhead. His new place is non-smoking.

And starting in October, Fort Collins will join a handful of cities in banning smoking in

restaurants and bars. Tom decides to quit smoking. Now its humpday. They say all it

takes to quit is two weeks. Today is eight days, a week and a day without a smoke. Hell

kill for one today. Its the down time that gets to him. The times when hes not doing

anything, like riding in a car or walking between holes of a disc golf course. His leg

bounces. He chews a toothpick, a pen, anything. He gets crabby. Today we decide to

duck out after finishing the 6th hole. Its hot, clouds of flies hover in patches near the

ditch that cuts across the common. Tom needs a smoke. Hes been going all day and

hasnt really eaten anything.

We pass a new memorial. This area is filled with them. Trees. Benches. A

bridge. Everything has a bronze plaque attached to it. This one is a small fir, some

petunias, a juniper and some phlox, all mulched into a nice peanut shaped mound. The

plaque riveted to the rock reads: The Survivor Coalition, 2002. Tom gets crabby, a black

cloud settles over him, his face curling downward into a sneer. He starts badmouthing

the survivors. He refers to their failures, how they failed only because they didnt

succeed. He is contemptuous of the idea that depression is an illness, that some people

could not ask for help, that some people didnt think that they needed help. That those

people succeeded in going where we all thought he might have been thinking of going

once. Hell give up smoking for six weeks and start working at the Trailhead part-time.

When Jenn goes back to work at the Cupboard, Ill wheel Chloe and my new son,

Carter, downtown to the Trailhead when its time for lunch. Tom will make Chloe a

grilled cheese sandwich and well split some cheese fries and watch an afternoon football

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game. The job prospects are becoming more promising, and Tom needs to spend time

with Chloe. I want her to know her Uncle Tommy. He calls her by our pet name for her:

B. When we visit him at the studio across the street from the Trailhead, she dangles toys

for Sam, a cat from the animal shelter we visited several times, each visit to the shelter a

call for a ride. Now, when Tom calls for rides, I always say yes. Im trying to spend

time with my brother. Well be moving soon, and all I can tell people when they ask me

about Tom is I dont know.

Early during the same week I will move to Arizona, Tom calls me for a ride.

Tom calls for a ride to help him move his stuff into a new basement apartment across the

street from Aggie Liquor. He says that he knows he is drinking too much, that he is

getting too fucked up all the time, but he is hopeful that this new place, a good five city-

block trudge home from the bar, will help him to slow down. The night before we leave,

the last thing I drop off to him is a bunch of food from our kitchen and our plastic deck

chairs. Im sure Tom wants me to stay out that night,grab a few beers, but I have to get

my family to bed. We sleep on a blanket on the floor of an empty house that was never

ours in the first place, the carpet still damp from the steam cleaning earlier in the day.

Jenn wants to have one last breakfast at Avogadros Number, and Tom walks

down from his new place around the block to join us, to kiss the kids on their foreheads

and say his good-byes. I feel guilty, leaving him alone in Colorado, because Im the one

who moved him out here, who moved him out here to be with me, where I could keep an

eye on him. I felt the same way when I first moved out of our parents house for

Colorado, and again when I left him alone in a house so I could begin to share my life

with Jenn. Only this time Im not moving around the block or to the other side of the

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university, Im moving to Arizona. I dont like the idea of leaving him alone, one more

person abandoning him in part because we can no longer accommodate his lifestyle. One

more person in Toms life that he wont be able to call for a ride. One more person who

isnt there. Its nice to believe that Tom understands, that he knows that there are others

who require our time and attention; we have other responsibilities. Where does one

family end and another begin? We take a long time to eat breakfast, and Jenn starts to

cry when it is finally time to go. She hugs and kisses Tom, tells him to take care of

himself. The kids give him big squeezes. Tom and I try hard to keep our shit together,

hold tight to each other for what seems like too long, choke out a few words that I wont

recall, and then he turns and I watch him walk up the street without looking back. I climb

into the passenger side, unable to drive, my lip quivering. The car pulls away from the

curb and towards some kind of future for me, the future I have feared since that first dead

body in a dirty cemetery filled with pigeons and broken beer bottles. Once in the car, I

dont bother looking for Tom. I dont want to look. I dont want to look because Im

afraid that I wont see him, that he will already be gone, that Im too late, that I will turn

my head and find that Tom isnt there.

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Donny Isn't There When Tom Calls Me for a Ride