***

I sat in my hotel room while Mom made the final preparations for the funeral. She hadn’t called me to ask for my help, so I didn’t come by to see if she needed it. She preferred to do things by herself anyway. That way she could ensure it was exactly how she wanted it. Fewer voices meant fewer conflicts.

I hadn’t ever thought of how Ethan might have resented me. He was going crazy. I needed to make sure that I was far away from him. He was dangerous. And I was right to leave. He crashed his car into a pole and killed Tim. He was dangerous. But I had never thought about how it might make him feel, a person who was isolating himself from his real friends and family faster and faster.

I wondered if my leaving helped him get worse, crash his car. No, he was going to do that either way. Maybe not on that night, but eventually. I had tried to talk sense into him. He didn’t want to hear it.

I couldn’t forgive him, and he couldn’t forgive me.

The letters still laid on the desk, stacked up into small piles. There was nothing else to do, so I picked them up, tossed them on the bed, and started opening them.

I’m so sorry for your loss. When I heard the news, I played Another Time Around for a whole day on repeat. ETG will always be remembered. Thoughts and prayers.

I could barely breathe when I heard Ethan died. How could he? He survived the crash, only to die of a heart attack? I can’t imagine how you feel. I feel sick.

Your music always made me feel happy. Ethan just had that quality about him. He was so energetic. You couldn’t be sad when you were listening to him. I hope that hearing him makes you happy like it does for me, especially now.

I’m so sorry for you. I can’t imagine what it’s like. Try to focus on the good times you had together. I know I will. Hearing your music, it’s like you’re all still there, for a little while.

They continued on like that until the end, each of them saying how sorry they were that someone they had never met died, many going over in great detail how they had cried and cried. Many listed specific songs or qualities about the songs that made them happy, or made his passing a little bit easier. They were all the same. All of them didn’t know him, but thought they did. They cared about his music, his persona, and the loss of that was what hurt them. Listening to him again gave it back to them.

It gave me back to them, too. I was a part of ETG for them forever, whether I wanted to be or not. If I went to college to learn about math, I would still be the man from ETG. And what jobs did they have in math, anyway? Nothing would change that for them, for everyone, there could be only one Geoff.

***

I showed up to the funeral a few minutes early like everyone else. Mom put it in the same small church we had Tim’s funeral in, the one we hadn’t been to since we were little. It looked the same, the grey stone building’s spire only reaching halfway up the second story of the apartment building next to it, a small iron cross overhead. The parking lot was small as well, and people had parked all along the block. They got out of their cars in their black suits and dresses, looking as somber as they should in the late afternoon light.

Inside, the mood was much the same. Some crying, some talking quietly. Ethan laid in the casket up in front of the altar, his senior yearbook photo blown up next to him. Why did Mom use that photo? He looked so weirdly young in it, smiling in a green polo shirt, with a smattering of acne. Still, it might have been best to use a picture from before we got famous, before he dragged us all down with him. He’d tainted anything past graduation, when we got the record deal. He was why everyone was here, and had been before. He didn’t deserve their sadness. He brought it on himself.

But still, everyone was quite sad. They all came here to mourn whatever they thought he was or made him to be. To him he was their hero, or friend, or one famous person they knew well enough to name drop. And so they cried or stared somberly ahead, waiting for the service to start.

The priest conducted a nice ceremony. There was an opening invocation played by the church organist on a piano to the left of the altar, followed by a brief homily by the priest. Then Mother went up to speak, but couldn’t for crying too much. She pressed on, saying a few incoherent sentences over the course of a minute before stepping back down. More people in the crowd cried during her speech. Our old manager went up next. Dressed in a black suit with a far-too-loud red tie, he went on for fifteen minutes telling funny stories about the band, centering on Ethan. He said over and over again how much life and energy he had, how he could always make everyone laugh and how his voice soared. The audience smiled and nodded in agreement with these things, breaking their somber stares. The next person to speak was his friend, Oscar, who happened to be the last person to see him before he drove off and killed Tim. Oscar alternated between laughing, crying, and cry-laughing, talking about being friends with a famous musician, how Ethan had tried to get clean after Tim died, how he cared so much for everyone, how he felt that he had left so much unfinished. The audience ebbed and flowed with him, their tears those of catharsis.

After Oscar, the priest came up again, saying a few more words about loss and life. When he finished, though, he looked down at me sitting in the first row, and asked if I would be so kind as to perform one of our songs on the piano. Mother nodded towards the stage, exaggerating it with her eyes. The audience looked at me, expectant. Their gaze was now partly eager.

The gaping mouth of the stage welcomed me. As much as I wanted to fight it, the decision had been made a long time ago, on a warm Saturday morning with Tim and me playing in the rubber tree. We came down when Mom called. In the den, she had set up a keyboard for me and a guitar for Tim. Ethan stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. She said that since Ethan loved singing so much, we should be in a band with him. Be good big brothers and include him. We said fine and Ethan jumped, yelling and singing on his kiddie microphone. We played for the rest of the afternoon until dinnertime. Ethan had never been happier. I hadn’t either.

From that point on, the songs had a role in these people’s lives that only grew as the band did and needed to be fulfilled. I was the vessel through which they were transmitted. Whether I wanted to be or not, I was the songs.

I stood up, walked across the altar, and sat down at the piano. They waited for a moment, no longer despondent. They were ready. The coolness of the keys moved from my fingers in tendrils up my arms, through my veins and into my mind. The resonance within strings called me home and away, to leave and merge with the song. I answered. I pressed the first key.

And then an acoustic-piano version of “Tonight” played, starting slow in a minor key, each note hanging for a full second longer than the original, allowing the music to fill the sanctuary and envelop the audience. As the singing began, it picked up speed, building on the momentum created and changing to a major key as everyone recognized what was being played. The words, a tribute to the power of a moment, about how one night can change your life forever, rose like a paean with the notes, each more powerfully played than the next. The music compelled them to hold up their phones and record and stream what they were hearing. It exploded into them and out to the world, rising on the invisible radio waves bouncing off and breaking through the stratosphere, boring their way into the computers of those who streamed the video that night, and flying off into the endless expanse, sent by those who were compelled to share it, from now until the end of the world.

 

Matthew Fairchild lives in Southern California and is a graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Chapman University. He has previously been published in Cardinal Sins, Rivet, Split Rock Review, and The Rush, among others. He is also one of the Founding Editors of Anastamos Interdisciplinary Journal.