For the first time in years, I’m relying on notecards to speak. That’s to be expected, I suppose, with my brother’s dead body lying only a few feet behind me, so perfectly prepared that it’s easier to believe he’s just enjoying a good sleep. In fact, that’s how my brother supposedly went. As his obituary states, “Raymond Bauer went peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by loved ones”—not including me. He’d been battling cancer the last two years, so how peaceful his end could have been is up for grabs, but obituaries aren’t the place for gory details.
There are several things going through my head now as I shuffle through my notecards, making sure everything’s in order: why hadn’t I taken the plane home when Raymond’s wife called last month and said things had taken a turn for the worse? why hadn’t I visited more, even before that awful death sentence was passed? why had work seemed so much more important, that next meeting, that next promotion, all those conference rooms filled with people I didn’t give two shits about taking precedence over my best friend?
More than these questions, though: why did the airlines have to lose Raymond’s fucking painting?
Raymond was five years older than I was, and for a project in high school, he painted me a landscape right out of our shared childhood, perfectly capturing the rolling hills leading to the glass castle where an evil king had imprisoned the virtuous queen. That was the story I had written, my own talent that paled in comparison with Raymond’s, whose skill was renowned throughout our small town—but he never made me feel that way, not intentionally, and no one encouraged my writing as he did, not only giving compliments but prodding me to dive deeper into my imagination: who was the queen? why had the evil king taken over? what was the importance of the glass castle sitting high above this green land?
More than these questions, though: what were we going to do to save it?
We marched gallantly through our backyard, Illinois blurring into that whimsical landscape existing only in our minds, until Raymond painted it his senior year, won first place at the art show, and then handed the painting to seventh-grade me and said, “This was the realest thing I ever knew.”
In high school, the art teacher was quick to tell me how much he’d loved that painting and how he actually teared up when Raymond had explained its significance, and I could tell by the anticipation in his eyes that he was excited to see what Raymond Bauer’s sister had in store. How disappointed he must have been when he saw my first efforts, for I never could draw or paint or sculpt. Words were my clay, and the English teachers who had loved Raymond but saw little promise in his talents recognized that his little sister had the gift for storytelling, raising me to his level—but only to them. For everyone else, I was still just Raymond Bauer’s sister.
Unlike my brother, I left my hobby behind in high school, focused on Business in college, and was earning nearly six figures by the time I turned thirty. My brother, on the other hand, got his teaching certificate (in Art, of course), fostered others kids’ talents just as he’d tried to foster mine, and worked on his own creations over the summer.
He never made it big, no installation to speak of, no notoriety except among the children who adored him, and certainly no real money despite his enormous talents. I’d encouraged him to pursue something that would reward him more, that would better show its appreciation (“You can still do your art on the weekends,” I added), but he’d just smile, shake his head, and say, “Kristen, you don’t understand. I can’t leave the kingdom. Who will protect the glass castle if we’re both gone?” I rolled my eyes, and in the patient tone of a parent, I implored him to just think about it. Of course, he never did.
How long I’ve stood here silent before Raymond’s family, his fellow teachers, and his students, I don’t know, but it feels like an eternity. My eyes fall on random words and phrases, written and rewritten feverishly on notecards last night, and they read now just as they did then: inadequate, trite, pathetic. Perhaps words cannot capture the husband, father, educator, and brother this man was, or maybe I’m just out of practice. Or maybe I’d never been as talented as I’d thought I was, my English teachers’ and brother’s words meant more to soothe an ego kicked around by people who were constantly comparing this child to her older, far more talented brother.
Or maybe there’s a better explanation: everything I’ve written the last two decades has been speeches. In the beginning, they were written out word by word, but over the years, I slowly resorted to bullet points, as my ability to lead a room and respond to its temperament improved, my improvisational skills becoming my greatest asset when presenting to an audience. The only things I usually write out now are my PowerPoints, around which my whole speech revolves, and that was the tactic I was going to take with this. A eulogy, after all, is just a speech, and for this speech, that painting was going to be my visual aid, around which I’d construct everything. I’d placed that painting in my checked bag, sandwiched between layers of clothes to keep it protected. (I couldn’t look at it for more than a few seconds when I placed it there, lest I break into sobs and soak it with tears that still hadn’t come in the great torrents I’d expected them to, and I thought then, crazily, how Raymond would have wept, how Raymond always felt what he should have felt one hundred percent, which was why he was the artist, the caregiver, the teacher, the man who’d attracted a packed house at his end; and who would come to your funeral, Kristen, just who the fuck would come to see the sister of Raymond Bauer?)
Last night, I was supposed to write the speech: I would have the painting sitting next to me, and I’d write my eulogy, explaining how Raymond had given me this picture to explain what words couldn’t say. However, there was only one problem with that: the airline had lost my baggage. They had an idea where it may have ended up, but it was all guesswork, and I began to worry I’d never see the painting again. And I wondered why I’d never taken a picture of it because now the concrete memory I could hold in my hands was just fantasy, susceptible to revision and erasure like any other memory, and then a more immediate problem presented itself: how the fuck was I going to write my speech now without a visual? I tried, God knows I did, but without Raymond’s brush strokes, color choices, and deft hand to be the center point of my speech, my words were meaningless.
(“…I didn’t create that place, Kristen, you did…”)
Be that as it may, Raymond had brought it to life, and now it was gone, just as he was.
My hands involuntarily balled into fists, but then I went with it and crumbled the notecards into a tight ball and left them lying useless on the podium. It was a terrible speech, anyway. Tears threatened to make an appearance, but not the tears deserving of this occasion and the man serving as its star: they were tears of rage, inadequacy, and impotence, tears of having thought for two decades I knew so much more than he had and had accomplished so much more, and now I had no idea what to say or do, not here or anywhere. I’d beg the audience’s forgiveness, most of them strangers, and simply say Raymond was much better at this sort of thing, he always was
(“…that’s not true, Kristen…)
and then I’d take my seat and wait until the service was over and they planted my brother in the ground. Just sit down, Kristen, before someone leans over and whispers, I expected more from the sister of Raymond Bauer.
(“They don’t want to hear a speech. They’ve heard plenty of those today. And they don’t
want to see my painting, either. They want you tell them a story about the famous duo of
Kristen Bauer and her older brother…
…so tell them that story.”)
But the words won’t come—because they don’t exist. No words could paint the purple and crimson hues burning above that pink-tinted glass castle, into whose walls you could peer and see every possible future, every unexplored past; nothing could be said or written that would capture the bricked pathway winding up the steep hills dotted by trees of yellow and red, an eternal autumn that was the season of our childhood, our imaginations combining to stave off the worst feelings of inadequacy every new school year brought me.
(“I only painted what you told me, Kristen. I was the recorder; you were the creator. So
create it again.”)
“My brother and I…we walked through dreams,” I begin, closing my eyes against the coming tears. “We walked through dreams he later painted. They were dreams I dreamt that kept me safe in childhood. That made an unsensible world make sense. And my older brother, as he did for all his students, he let me dream, and he helped me dream with such clarity and explain those dreams so clearly that he could see them, too. That’s how he painted them years later.”
I open my eyes, but the world is a kaleidoscope of wobbling colors, which makes it all the easier to slip back into that shared fantasy from so long ago, when our story was still those sentences immediately following ‘Once upon a time.’ And how quickly the story begins telling itself, the dream falling from my mind and repainting this drab world so that a little girl could go on adventures with her big brother, so that he could help her battle evils and save the day for so many others like us. “We were knights, and we were wizards, and we were the wise people that could make sense of things, the heroes that raise the sun after an eternal night has robbed the world of everything bright. We walked a perilous path, yet we feared nothing as we ventured upward toward the beautiful castle, made of a pink glass that offered hope and dashed it out just as quickly. No, we didn’t fear that castle suddenly shattering when we entered it, not when we were together.
“This world of ours, much like our own, was one of dangers, yes, but it was one of untold beauties. My brother helped me find that beauty. He helped me shape nightmares and stories I was too ashamed to tell into the best moments of my youth. He helped me find an escape, and he helped me make sense of things, to understand that the colors he used to paint fantasy and the words I used to capture fiction were the truest things we ever knew, and they offered secrets that would make our lives all the more wonderful.”
(“There it, sis. The story. Now lead us home. Take us down that winding path, away from
that beautiful castle, and bring us back home.”)
“In high school, my brother painted that world and gave me the portrait. I, on the other hand, let my hands wander away from the keyboard.” I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and smile. “He was an artist, and I was a storyteller, and together, we made magic.” It was long past due for me to write those words down, this story, our story, the one I’m writing now, to capture that world in writing. “Raymond may be gone, but his magic lives on. In me, and in his family and friends, and especially in his students, of whom I was the first.”
Three pews from the front, a girl who cannot be older than fourteen, bows her head and cries, and she looks so familiar, she may as well be the reflection I cast in those waters we poured so long ago, Raymond, in rivers that ran the length of our kingdom, which flowed into a sea that stretched on for all of time.
(“Very good, Kristen. Now end it before the epilogue becomes its own novel.”)
I laugh through tears. I never knew how to end things, but that’s okay, for I don’t see this as an ending. In fact, I see that bricked path now, winding its way out of church, back up the mountain and toward that glass castle, where trouble is no doubt brewing once again.
“My brother and I walked through dreams. Now…let’s walk that path together, shall we? And I’m sure we’ll hear my brother’s voice encouraging us along the way. He was always so good at that, and nothing will make that end, especially not death.”
No, this is not an ending: it’s just the beginning of a new story, one that feels so wonderfully familiar.//
About the Author
For the last sixteen years, Tim Hanson has taught high school English, a passion rivaled only by his love for writing. His short stories and essays have appeared in nearly two dozen journals and anthologies, and he recently won Flash Fiction Magazine’s flash fiction contest. You can read more about Tim at TSHanson.com.
About the Author
