The Vet

“There’s a goddamn squatter in our parents’ house. That’s the problem here, Glor, not—” I hear John drilling Gloria, in his usual self-righteous tone, as I get closer to the house. The two are standing at the end of the driveway. They don’t notice me because I’m walking behind the emergency vehicles parked in a row. Too many responders, I think.

I hear Gloria say, “Oh, come on, John. He probably hasn’t even been in there long enough to steal—”

“Sell. Drug addicts steal, and then they sell what they steal for more drugs.”

“You don’t honestly think that he’d sell off Mommy and Daddy’s—”

“Hey, Frankie! What’s up man,” John calls out to me, smiling. I nod. It’s five-thirty in the morning. He must sleep in that suit. Gloria reaches out an arm for a hug, and I graze her hand. Huh, still wears Mrs. B’s housecoat. I remember that thing from when we were kids. I stand a few feet from them, facing the house.

“Hear anything yet,” I ask John. God, I hope he’s alive in there.

“Not a goddamn thing. They won’t even let us inside because it’s not our house. It’s bull—”

“What’s takin’ ‘em so long? They would’a at least brought him out on a stretcher by now. God, he’s probably dead,” Gloria stammers.

“That’d be the best thing for him, Glor. The kid’s been screwed up for years. We always knew he’d be the first—”

“God, Johnny, you’re hateful. That’s our baby brother in there, for God’s sake. Oh God, what if Petey’s dead?” Gloria breaks down.

He’s clean now, you son of a— God, why didn’t I answer my phone the other night?

A cop approaches us, and I know, by his face.

“Mr. Miller, your brother Peter was found dead in the house. I am very sorry for your loss.”

Gloria collapses in sobs. “Oh God, Petey’s dead. Petey’s dead.”

John shakes his head. “I knew it. I just knew it. Can we go inside now?”

“You can, sir, but—” the cop motions for John and me to step away from Gloria. “I have to warn you. It appears he passed a couple of days ago. When it’s been that long— well, he’s not— he’s not going to look like himself. I’m so sorry.”

Oh, Pete. Why man? Was it pills? Please God, tell me he didn’t hang—

“Are you family,” the cop asks me.

“Best friend, since we were three. Frank Walker,” I say, extending my hand.

“Oh, you’re the one who called us to check things out,” the cop says, shaking my hand.

“He hasn’t been answering his phone. He always answers—” Keep it together, Frankie.

“I’m really very sorry for your loss, Mr. Walker,” he says, and I nod.

We start for the house. All I hear is Gloria’s panting. Man, just shut the hell up already. You never did anything to help—

“So, how bad is it in there? The house, I mean. Is it all to shit, or what” John asks the cop in an assuming tone. No answer. He turns to Gloria. “I bet there’s not one goddamn salvageable thing in there.”

“He knows what Mommy and Daddy left us. Wait, you don’t think he sold the—”

“I bet it’ll be months before we can even put the house on the market.”

You haven’t changed a bit, you ass—

“Alright, c’mon then,” the cop interrupts, “don’t touch anything in there.”

Inside, it’s messy—dishes piled in the sink, trash overflowing with take-out containers, piles of old newspapers on the kitchen table and floor. All of Mrs. B’s collections—crystal bells from different states, porcelain poodles and Lladro figurines—still on the same shelves, just like when we were kids. The cop takes us down the hallway, past Pete’s bedroom, which still has all of his baseball trophies suspended on the far wall. I catch a glimpse of the same old antique sideboard, like a shrine, that boasts a framed Purple Heart and the local newspaper articles glorifying Pete as a Gulf War hero.

Pete hates all that shit, I think.

Pete lived with his parents while they were alive, and he had no place to go when they died. For all the favors Pete did for John and Gloria—sticking up for them when they didn’t show up for holiday dinners, babysitting their kids, acting as scorned mediator when the two fought—John and Gloria never offered to take Pete in or get him set up in a place of his own. They knew the army didn’t leave him with much, not as a discharged, injured vet. He wasn’t their problem.

Pete’s voice is in my head, and I remember the night at the bar a few weeks after he got home. He was crumpling a newspaper page into a smaller and smaller ball, with one hand. “Kids,” I can hear him saying, “innocent kids, and the papers call me a hero. More like wrong place, right time.” He threw back a shot of Tequila then slammed the glass down, nodding at the bartender for another. “I ain’t no hero, Frankie. You didn’t see what I saw over there, man. You couldn’t imagine it if I painted you a picture.”

He never was the same after he got back, and he never said anything to me about it again, after that night at the bar.

“He’s down here,” I hear the cop say, and I realize Pete must be in the spare bedroom. He slept there a lot after his parents died.

“Let me go first, Glor. He’s probably got a needle hanging out of his arm” John huffs and pushes ahead into the room.

“Jesus Christ, Johnny. He wasn’t that bad. If it’s drugs, he’d have—” Gloria stops when she enters the room next to John, who has stopped just past the doorway.

I walk in. Pete is on the bed, his back to the door. He’s on his side, half-covered with the comforter. There is no pill bottle, no rope, and no blood. He looks like he’s sleeping. John’s staring hard at Pete’s body—he’s wearing a raggy t-shirt that I remember from his and John’s baseball league.

“I, I don’t understand,” John stutters. “He didn’t OD?”

“He’s been clean for two years, you asshole!” I snap. “You’d know if you bothered to talk to him.”

“We’ll have to do an autopsy to be sure, but as far as we can tell, it looks like it might have been a heart attack,” the cop says in a low voice.

I notice a single framed photograph on the night stand. It’s a picture of their family, all five of them, the day Pete was deployed. “I’m so sorry Pete… sorry I didn’t understand… sorry I didn’t know how to be a better friend or how to help you.” I sit down on the bed and put my hand on my best friend’s shoulder. I need to be sure.

Copyright (c) 2011, 2013, 2015, 2020 by Lindsey Vernon

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