Helix

Chapter 1

"It was the religion that did it. It probably killed him, you know."

Until Andrea spoke these words to him at the funeral, Peter had made no connection between his twin brother's suicide and their official Declaration of Religious Preference at age eighteen. Even after she spoke them, he could only stare at her, wondering where she could have gotten the idea that Jon's interest in religion had prompted him to kill himself.

"It was the religion that did it," she repeated, her teeth clenched tightly together.

"Jon's religion?" he echoed faintly. "How could his Hinduism have 'killed him'? Our religion wasn't that important to us. We never even talked about it."

"Maybe not, but you know he thought about it more than you did." She turned on her heel and went into the temple, her long, reddish blonde hair lifting from her back and settling again as she ascended the steps to the gilded doors. She was as grief-stricken as he, but seemed to have retained the ability to analyze. Peter almost envied her; his own version of grief was manifesting like every other emotion in his life, locked in frozen immobility.

On the other hand, Andrea had been as close to Jon as he had, since they were in high school together, and maybe she was just trying to find something to blame. That had to be it. Jon had taken a little more interest in religion than his twin or their girlfriend, declaring for Hinduism and then actually participating in it. Peter had declared Mormon Catholic sort of by default, and Andrea was so uninterested that she declared Atheism and then forgot it. But even with Jon's extra interest, religion was so innocuous and unimportant that no one could blame it for something as extreme and tragic as a suicide.

The idea shook Peter, though. As he followed his girlfriend into the temple, he eyed the place from a slightly different perspective. He almost resented coming out of his sorrow even for a moment. But as he examined the many-armed statues in their alcoves with their offerings of flowers and incense, and listened to the music of the sitars and tiny cymbals and bells, with a deep pang he suddenly wondered how these things could have appealed to the brother whom he'd known so well in every other respect.

There was a small crowd in the vestibule, and Peter searched the faces, looking for his parents. He saw more than a few people do double-takes at the sight of him. It had to be a shock to see him wearing their dead friend's face, even though Jon had undoubtedly told them he had a twin. Peter tried to give them an understanding smile, but they averted their eyes quickly in embarrassment.

He and Andrea found his parents and entered the sanctuary with them, after taking off their shoes as instructed. It surprised him that everyone had to sit on the floor, which was uncomfortable in a suit. He wondered what Jon used to wear when he came here.

The actual funeral service - did they call it a funeral service in the Hindu religion? -- went on for a little while, but Peter hardly heard what the priest (or brahmin or whatever) was saying. He stared at the little urn before the altar, thinking, "God, that's him. That's Jon. Those ashes in there. His bones, his hair, his eyes, all gone. My own flesh, my own self, just ashes in a little jar." It was almost surreal, like the images in the alcoves with their many arms and their blue skin and their flowers and the moon in their hair. It would have made him want to scream, if he'd been capable of expressing such a strong emotion.

He tried to focus on the words of the service. There was some vague talk about reincarnation in a symbolic way, and Jon remaining alive in their hearts, and so on: the same bland, insipid prattle about goodness and peace and niceness and so on that he would have heard in his own Mormon Catholic church, if he ever attended. Another surreal thing, that his surroundings should be so strange while he listened to the same things he would hear week after week, in any church or mosque or synagogue or temple in the world.

He surveyed his parents, sitting cross-legged on the carpet to his right. His Mormon Catholic mother gazed fixedly at the urn, jiggling the beads of a Hindu rosary that Jon had given her for her birthday two years ago. |The Hindu and Catholic rosaries were virtually interchangeable, but she derived more comfort from fingering the Hindu cult object because it had been Jon's. Peter couldn't begrudge her what comfort she could find, even if it came from such a meaningless object. He stole a quick, uneasy look at his Judaistic father, wearing his yarmulke to honor Jon in his own religious way. The family had had the option of choosing a purely civil ceremony, but David and Margaret Stewart had chosen the Hindu service for their dead son because Jon would have wanted it. They were right, of course. But the weight of all this religious imagery sat on Peter's spirit like a mound of dead, wet leaves in autumn.

"'It was the religion that did it,'" Andrea had said, but she had to be wrong. Religion was unimportant because it was all the same, everywhere you went. Different gods and objects, but the same old sloganeering. Why people used to fight over it, all those centuries till the middle of the twenty-second, he couldn't imagine. It caused no problems if kept in its place. And surely it would never induce anybody to commit suicide. How could she really believe what she'd said? She sat to his left, clutching his hand and staring at one of the statues, tears streaming down her cheeks. It had to be grief talking; she'd never taken religion any more seriously than he had.

He wished he could get out of here. He needed really badly to get away by himself, to try to deal with his own pain and come out of the frozen place where he'd lived for the last week. He needed to seek out some comfort of his own, if it existed anywhere, and find a way to deal with the shock and anguish of his brother's death, and the bleak moments of wondering what he would do now without his other half, his other self. He had never hurt so much in his entire life. And sitting in this place, listening to these words, gave him no comfort at all.

The priest was doing something odd now: he seemed to be pouring butter into the small fire in the center of the altar. That was something you'd never see in the Mormon Catholic church, Peter had to admit, but he couldn't understand the significance of it. Some kind of offering, it seemed, but he didn't know to whom. There were many gods in Hinduism, weren't there? It was Buddhism that had no gods. He got the Eastern religions mixed up sometimes. The basic gist of religions might be the same, but the cosmetics varied.

There were a few more unusual ritual acts, and at last it was over, except for the reception downstairs where they were apparently going to eat the food offered to the gods. He would like to have skipped that part, but he couldn't leave his parents alone; he was all they had left now. He shied away from the thought and let Andrea lead him with the crowd as it moved downstairs from the sanctuary.

The basement was like any other church basement, with folding tables set up along the sides and church women dishing out food while people milled about and talked in the middle, balancing paper plates precariously with one hand and eating with the other. Peter made his way to a table and accepted a plate of fruit with a piece of chicken covered in yellowish sauce. He tasted it carefully; it was some kind of curry, with raisins and peanuts in it. Quite good, actually. But he took a piece of flat bread to offset it a little.

As he turned from the serving table he came face to face with a young man, in the traditional Indian white trousers and tunic, who stepped back with a gasp of alarm. Peter saw him immediately realize the mistake, but he said, trying to make it easier, "I'm sorry. I'm beginning to wish I'd worn a mask. It might have helped if I had a prominent scar, or something."

The young man gave a small, wry laugh. "We knew you'd be here, but it doesn't make it easier when we actually see you. I'm sorry if that intrudes on your privacy in any way. We don't seem to be controlling ourselves very well."

"Don't apologize. You knew Jon in ways I didn't, so I know this whole thing is almost as hard for you Hindu friends as it is for me. Especially the way he…" Peter shrugged, unwilling to say the devastating words to a stranger.

"The way he left us, yes," the young man said softly. "It was unexpected. Did he give you any idea he was going to…do what he did?"

His eyes, so brown they were almost black, bored into Peter's, as though he expected Jon's twin to be able to unravel the mystery. "No. He didn't," Peter said abruptly. "And I'm sorry, I don't think I can talk about it."

"Of course. Now I really am intruding. Please forgive me and accept my sympathies, in the name of all Jon's friends here." The young man stepped back to allow Peter to pass by with his food.

He spotted his mother and father across the room with plates of their own, talking to a priest in saffron robes. But Andrea found him again before he could join them, carrying her own plate.

"They call this 'prasad'," she said.

"This chicken dish? It's really good."

"No, this whole act of eating the food the gods give back after an offering. It's called 'prasad'."

"How do you know that?"

"I asked. I've never been in a Hindu temple before, and I thought I'd ask some questions so I'd know what everything means. It's been a few years since we studied all this in school." She seemed to have regained some of her usual equilibrium.

"Does it really 'mean' anything?" Peter said gloomily, stabbing his chicken a couple of times with a plastic fork.

"To some people, yes. It must have meant something to Jon, and that's important. Just think: he must have done this countless times, after meetings. He might have eaten that very same chicken dish, Peter."

A wave of nausea swept over him, and he moved to set the plate on an empty table nearby. Andrea caught his arm, demanding, "What's wrong?"

"I can't bear the thought. Jon in this room, eating this stuff…"

"It actually makes me feel better," she mused. "Think of it, Peter. Jon was here, with many of these people, eating this food just like we are now. Doesn't it make you feel close to him, like you're sharing something with him? I almost feel like he's in the room with us right now."

"But he's not. That's the awful part. He'll never be here again. If you feel close to him, it's just your imagination. Maybe you find it comforting, but I don't."

She touched his stiff cheek, briefly. "I'm really sorry you don't feel comforted. I wish I knew what could help you through this."

"It's alright," he said automatically. "When I get some time to think, I'll be able to sort it out. But I'm glad you feel better, at least." He picked up his plate again. "I just had some guy ask if I had any idea why Jon would kill himself. As though, since I'm his twin, I should have special insight."

"That was tactless."

"But it's not like I haven't asked myself the same thing all week, for the same reason." Peter resolutely put the thought aside and said, "So. Why don't you tell me what else you've found out, aside from this pra - pra - "

"Prasad," she said absently. "And you probably wouldn't like the other thing they told me."

"Oh, go ahead. Why not learn as much as we can while we're here, since we probably won't be back? In honor of Jon, let's say."

Andrea hesitated. "Alright, but you may not…" A little shrug. "One of the older women told me about a funeral custom they used to have, that her grandfather actually performed when he was young, just before the world governments made all the changes. Hinduism used to have a really strong ancestor component, when religion was still passed down through the family. It was the son's responsibility to see that his father and grandfather and other ancestors were kept in good standing in heaven…or wherever they were thought to be. That was what a lot of the home rituals were about, I guess."

"The home rituals." Peter digested the idea a moment. He couldn't imagine doing anything religious at home, with his parents. The idea repulsed him. "But you mentioned a funeral ritual," he dragged his thoughts back to Andrea.

"Yes. She said that the father's body used to be burned in a funeral pyre…"

"I remember hearing that. Pretty barbaric."

"It was more than just that. After the fire was out, and the bones were left on the pyre, the woman told me that in order to allow his father's spirit to escape to the next world, the son had to smash open his father's skull." She stopped. "Peter? Are you okay? I'm sorry, I knew I shouldn't have mentioned it."

He couldn't stop his hands from trembling. Any minute now, he was going to drop his plate. He backed against the empty table and blindly set the plate on it. "Oh god, Andrea. Why did you tell me that? Is that another thing you wish we could share with Jon?"

"Peter, I'm sorry, I should never - " She tried to take hold of him, to calm him down, but he pulled out of her grasp. With a stifled groan he fled the place, taking the stairs two and sometimes three at a time in his desperation to escape.

* * * * *

He went home, having nowhere else to go. As he pushed the door shut and leaned against it, surveying the large living room, he was actually relieved that he'd never shared this place with his brother. They'd lived together in a two-bedroom apartment till a year ago, when they'd gone separate. So this was a refuge where nothing would bring a sudden keen recollection of Jon, and there were no empty places where it might once have been natural to find his brother waiting. The place had been empty from the start, so there were no gaping voids now.

He undid his shirt partway and flung his suit jacket onto a chair. "Phone. Off," he said aloud, and saw the "Off" light go on, on his terminal. The last thing he needed tonight was an intrusion into his privacy. Any intrusions, in fact. "Door. Lock," he added, listening for the click from the doorway behind him.

It wasn't easy putting on a brave show in public for family and friends; what he wanted most right now was to splash his exhausted face with cool water. Maybe he'd put his whole head under the tap to see if the water could revive him. Maybe he'd put his face in the basin and drown.

Stop it. Stop. That wasn't a thought he could allow himself, even as a joke, even for melodramatic effect, after what had happened to Jon.

He took his shirt off and draped it over the bathroom doorknob. The tap water was cool and soothing as he lifted his hands and splashed it on his face. He could feel it trickling down his arms and dripping off his elbows. It tickled. A very simple, enjoyable feeling after the complexity of his feelings in the last week.

He raised his head and looked into the mirror. Ah. There was at least one reminder of Jon in this apartment. In this place, and any other place he could ever go. Jon's face stared back at him from the mirror: straight, light brown hair tumbling onto his forehead, oval face, deep brown, thoughtful eyes. They stared at each other, he and Jon, for a very long moment.

Peter reached without looking, and found his heavy ceramic drinking glass. He smiled sardonically. "Bend forward," he whispered, his voice cracking a little. "So I can smash your head in and send you away."

Dammit, his hands were shaking again. He watched the glass fall in slow motion and break into a million pieces in the basin. Strangely, he seemed to be falling with it, and suddenly realized that his knees had given out. He sank helplessly to the floor and found himself leaning against the toilet, his whole body shaking now. The sobs were earthquakes, heaving through him as he cried. He huddled into himself on the floor as his grief poured out in a violent flood. If he'd been able to think coherently, he might have wondered if he could ever come back after this tidal wave swept him so far away. But he was beyond thought as his grief at last found a means of escape.

It was a very long time before the flood subsided. He gradually came back to an awareness of himself, curled like a fetus on the floor, whimpering a little as the tide receded. He was drained, as ragged and exhausted as though he'd truly been washed up like seaweed on a beach. With some effort he got up on one elbow, and slowly pushed himself into a sitting position. He leaned back against the toilet, looking around and taking a long, deep breath. He hadn't lost control like this for nineteen years. It terrified him.

And yet, for the first time since he'd heard the news of Jon's death, he felt like he could think clearly. With the breaking of the dam inside, the frozen paralysis of the last week was gone. It still hurt worse than anything had ever hurt in his life. But he felt as though he could go on from here and maybe figure something out. The relief was so palpable he could almost see it hanging around him like a cloud.

Peter closed his eyes and breathed it in, flexing his hands and feet as though the feeling were returning to them after they'd been frozen. His breath caught as he sensed something else, and he kept his eyes closed, waiting. For a few poignant seconds it was as though Jon himself were in the room with him, leaning against the doorframe with that lazy smile of his. Not saying anything, just…being there, as Peter needed him to be. It was a strange, wordless kind of communion. And it was infinitely comforting.

But after a bit, it was gone. All there was Peter, shirtless, sitting on the floor. He got to his feet, wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands, and began cleaning the glass out of the sink.