I wouldn't answer. I didn't need to. I should not have spoken of him. It was something so secret within me I scarcely knew of it myself. "He's dead now. Maybe he didn't have to be. For awhile I tried to find ways to prove to myself that he didn't have to be, because I was furious with him, with life, family, genetics and chances and the exquisitely cruel way they have of twisting together; then there were the unescapable reasons why he had to be dead. It wasn't his fault. Maybe I could dismiss it, forget about it. He was caught. Genetics. Dopamine receptors. Links between dopamine and types of receptors and gratification, craving, drugs, alcohol, reinforcement, TB and Parkinson's. Athsma. Links. Reasons, proof.

"He tried. Over and over he tried, but he couldn't do it. 'That's all I can think about,' he said. Why? Why? It hadn't always been. Did he slip into it? Did he let himself slide? Or was it one result of continuance a part of which is aging? What could it be? I had to discover why. He was a musician and mathematician, he loved birds and people. Why? Something went wrong. Where? Why? I did a lot of reading."

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Remnants of my focus slipped away. I couldn't stop it. My hands were so clenched on my thighs that my arms and shoulders shook. The muscles in my cheeks quivered. If I tried to talk I would stutter, jerking words as though I were half frozen.

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Dissolved. Things dissolved and slipped away. Life was not cherries or lasagna but inexorable deliquescence.

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"You loved him," Adonie said. It was a quiet statement of her understanding.
I nodded. I had not meant to give any indication, much less agree; I hated admitting it to myself. It was like giving a gift to Jackson who had betrayed me with his failure. That was childish.
But it was a child Jackson had betrayed. I felt choked. But if I did not speak Adonie would think I was about to cry. That would be unspeakably wretched.

"He was something special in my life. When I was little," I added that though Adonie knew the truth. "He taught me to sing with him while he played." I don't know why I said that.
"What did he play?"
"The violin. Guitar. Piano and organ. Harmonica. Banjo, mandolin. The flute, a little. He liked to parachute and watch birds. Then he stopped. He stopped everything."
"Except one thing."

I nodded again. I might cry, and if I did it would not be for Jackson or for myself but for the way life had of changing a smiling baby ensconced in loving arms into whatever hard tragedy it was at fifteen, thirty, sixty years. No matter how hard you tried, it all came to that. It seemed unbearably sad.
And unconscionable.
Not to be tolerated. With no god to blame, what was there?