After Eli by Rebecca Rupp Read Free Book Online

it really is possible to die of a broken heart. Though it’s not really a break, Walter says, but more of a pop after part of your heart blows up like a balloon. Great emotional stress, like after someone dies, messes up the heart muscles until they go all weak and start to bulge, and if they bulge too much, you die. Officially this is a condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, which nobody on earth can pronounce except Japanese fishermen, medical doctors, and Walter. The
takotsubo
part is the Japanese word for “octopus trap.” Japanese octopus traps are these big roundish pots, the same shape that a broken heart takes on before it blows.
    At which point Walter got sidetracked onto octopuses and how nobody has any business trapping them because they’re as smart as dogs, so eating an octopus is like chowing down on Man’s Best Friend. Walter’s favorite animal is the octopus.
    Dogs can die of broken hearts. When old Mr. Pilcher, Jim Pilcher’s granddad, died, his dog, Bernie, just lay down and died too. When they all got back from the funeral, Jim said, there was Bernie, all cold and stiff on the floor, with his head on old Mr. Pilcher’s needlepoint carpet slippers, the ones he used to chew.
    When we got the news about Eli, that was one thing I thought of — that I was glad he didn’t have a dog. Or, I guess, an octopus, though back then I didn’t know how smart they were.
    Isabelle thought it would be romantic to die of a broken heart, like Romeo and Juliet, though Walter says that in their case death was helped along by poison, stupidity, and a failure to communicate.
    “If Simon died, I would simply waste away,” Isabelle said.
    We were all sitting under one of the big old trees on the Sowers lawn because it was shady and there was a little breeze. Isabelle was wearing a denim skirt and a shirt with little puffed sleeves, embroidered all over with flowers and birds. She leaned back against the tree trunk and got a sort of dreamy, faraway look.
    “I would lie on a brocade sofa wearing a long white nightgown with little pearl buttons, and a white lace shawl over my knees, and I would grow thinner and frailer and paler, and finally, when the last leaf fell, my spirit would go with it.”
    Simon, aka Simon Dewitt Paxton, was now pigging out on chocolate éclairs in France. Isabelle wore a gold chain around her neck with a little gold pendant in the shape of half a heart, and Simon had a matching gold chain with the other heart half, which showed that they were pledged to each other.
    The only good thing I knew about Simon was that the twins called him Dewittless.
    “When the last leaf falls, can I have your iPod?” Journey said. “And your turquoise bracelet?”
    “If Journey died,
I
wouldn’t waste away,” Jasper said. “I would get to sleep in the top bunk whenever we visit Uncle Paul. And I would get a companion dog.”
    “If Jasper died, I would get
two
companion dogs,” Journey said.
    I must have looked kind of funny then, because Isabelle stopped looking dreamy and told them to shut up, and for a while after that, we didn’t talk about broken hearts or dying anymore.
    How the army deals with dying is with acronyms.
    The worst job in the army must be CNO, which stands for Casualty Notification Officer. The CNO is the person who goes around telling people that somebody in their family has just become a KIA, which means Killed in Action. Our CNO was named Captain Eula Bates, and her teammate was a sergeant twice her size with practically no hair.
    Everybody gets told about their KIA the same way. There’s a standard speech.
    “The secretary of defense has asked me to express his deep regret that your son Eli was killed in action in Iraq when his vehicle encountered a roadside bomb. The secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family in your tragic loss.”
    “Oh, Jesus,” my father said. “Oh, Jesus.” Sort of gasping for air, as if somebody had punched him in the stomach.
    My