The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara Read Free Book Online Page B

impressive and festive funeral, if only to reassure them. At the time, though, we were not in the habit of attempting to assuage others’ insecurities.
    After the punch and biscuits had been served at the pastor’s house (we did not think it appropriate to invite mourners back to the scene of the death, where the long wisps of grass upon which our father’s spread-eagled body had lain were still matted down in an unsettlingly distinguishable shape), and after we had shaken the hands of the dozen or so people present, we thanked him for his help.
    “It was my honor,” said the pastor, solemnly. He was a blandly handsome man with sad eyes who kept looking lasciviously at Owen when he thought Owen wasn’t watching him. He was not much older than we but already had a defeated-looking wife and two squalling blond sons. “You poor boys—you have only each other now.” (I wondered for a moment if he might have been pitying us not only for being left alone but for being in such poor company; it was clear he didn’t much like us.) To me he said, “God be with you always.”To Owen he said, “Always watch out for your brother. You are his keeper.”
    “What for?” Owen asked. At the time, Owen was very interested in Truth and Justice and was beginning, tiresomely, to dabble in Marxism; he had always been very impressionable. “I shall treat my brother as I treat any of my fellow men, no better, no worse,” he said grandly, and the pastor moved off, sighing and shaking his head.
    Writing this makes me remember how much I miss Owen. I am a little surprised to see those words on paper, 11 but I would be lying if I did not admit it. Despite my many complaints and annoyances, it occurs to me (and not for the first time) that my childhood, while often tedious, was certainly much simpler than my life today. This is, I suppose, as many people remember their childhoods. But back then, I do believe I was familiar with a state that was reasonably close to contentment. I was not funny-looking, I was an adequately skilled athlete, I was rich but not extravagant, I was intelligent, I had interests, I was stronger and swifter than Owen. My schoolmates left me alone: I was never beaten or teased, I never needed friends or anyone else—after all, I had Owen. Now I live a life in which I funnel great amounts of my savings to my lawyers from my barred-in quarters. I am fat and no longer stronger and swifter than Owen, and even if I had any hobbies, I would not be able to practice them. I am living a strange kind of life, a life in which I have no one. My children are gone and my colleagues are gone; everyone who has ever mattered to me has left me.
    Even Owen. Or should I say, especially Owen. We have not, of course, had either the easiest or the most consistent of relationships, but at one time Owen and I were very close, and even when we were not, even when he was passing through one of his childishly enthusiastic phases in which he adopted and abandoned idealisms and philosophies like other boys did girls, he was amusing, and witty, and bright. He was my ambassador to the world outside my own. Not that I myself was immune to romanticism. I remember as a young man once telling Owen that he should fashion himself after me. Look at me, I told him (he rolled his eyes)—I am going to be a scientist. That is all I care about. You are too scattered, I told him. I warned him that he would become a dilettante if he did not become more disciplined. But now I almost admire Owen’s indecisiveness; it was almost as if he, to make up for my single-mindedness, was trying to be of as many minds as possible. I was impatient then, of course, but now I can recall fondly my brother’s prickliness, his fierce idealism, his quickly burning passions. I remember Owen in those days as so vital, so indefatigable, so intellectually nimble in ways I was not. For such different-minded people, we were unusually and energetically competitive, but still—there