The Things a Brother Knows Read online

  How can he not feel me standing here? How can he not know that I’m right here, standing behind him? Here, after all these miles I’ve traveled?

  I’m scared of startling him or catching him off guard. I’m afraid to say his name. So I stand behind him and I wait.

  Still he doesn’t turn. He stays focused on the task of eating his perfectly divided dinner.

  Rice. Noodles. Chicken.

  There’s an empty chair across from him and I ease myself into it. I brace for my brother’s reaction. In this moment my own anxiety obscures my rationality, because my rational self knows that if I had a chance to think this through, I’d be able to predict Boaz’s response, which is, of course, to have no response at all.

  He looks up slowly. Catches my eye. And then he returns to the business of eating.

  “Hi.”

  It’s the stupidest thing to say.

  Such an insignificant word. At only two letters and one syllable it’s barely even a word at all, and yet, with an entire language from which to choose, this is what I say.

  “Hi,” he says. He reaches for a small bowl of wonton soup, raises it to his lips and drinks from it.

  I feel the sting of tears come to my eyes, which is totally what I don’t need right now. It’s just that I’m so damn tired. So, so tired. But still. That’s no good excuse. I swallow hard. The sting goes away.

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  He shrugs. “Well, you found me.”

  “Yeah, I found you in New Jersey.”

  “Yep. In New Jersey.”

  I stand up. I lean in close to his face and clear my throat.

  The sting in my eyes is coming back so I bite the inside of my cheek.

  “You,” I say, “are an asshole.”

  My chair tips over backward with a loud clatter and I’d like to follow that move with an authoritative storming out of the restaurant, but instead my running shoes make a quiet squishing sound on the linoleum floor.

  Outside, I pace the parking lot.

  Outside, I let some of those tears fall.

  I talk to myself. Mostly a string of expletives peppered with such questions as: Why?

  And: What am I doing here?

  And: What did I expect?

  Your basic existential crap.

  I sit down on the curb. I wipe my face on my T-shirt. I stick my head between my knees and take in some deep breaths.

  I wait.

  Which is really stupid.

  Because he’s not going to come after me.

  That’s for sure.

  Because the truth is, I’m always the guy sitting on the curb. Or on the floor of my room. Or wherever. I’m the one who waits for something that never comes.

  I let a few minutes pass. I let my breathing return to normal, and not that I spend a lot of time crying, but I’ve done enough of it in my life to know that my face tends to get a little splotchy. I give it some time to clear before I stand up and go back into the restaurant.

  Boaz is right where I left him. He hasn’t even bothered to pick up the chair. I reach for it, turn it over and sit down in it again.

  I look at my brother and say, “I’m here.”

  “I see that.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Okay …”

  “I don’t mean I’m not leaving this restaurant. I mean I’m here. I’m here to stay. I mean I’m going with you. Wherever it is you’re going. Whatever it is you’re doing.”

  “No. You’re not.”

  “Yes. Boaz, I am. I’m here.”

  He’s ordered another beer and he drinks from it as he looks at me. I look right back at him even though every fiber in me wants to look the other way. To study the crabs in the tank or the beautiful waitress lingering behind the cash register.

  It’s been only thirteen days since I watched him walk away, from the window of his room with the airplanes and planets still painted on the walls, but it feels like that day took place many lifetimes ago.

  “I’m here,” I say again.

  Boaz reaches for his wallet. He looks over his check and then secures a stack of wrinkled bills under a half-empty bottle of soy sauce.

  He stands up.

  I think he’s about to say something. He has that look of someone putting his thoughts into some sort of order. Whatever the order, I’ll take it. Because something, any string of words from him right now, would be better than the nothing I’m so used to.

  But then he turns and walks out the door.

  This time I don’t knock over my chair. I rise quickly and I follow him. Across the parking lot. Across the empty road.

  “Go away,” he shouts without turning around. He picks up his pace.

  “Not a chance.”

  He takes a side street. Strides past a few apartment complexes. Turns right. Then left. Then right again.

  I follow.

  When I see the sign for the motel I feel this wave of relief. There was a small part of me that worried Boaz had, literally, taken to the streets.

  It’s a two-story motel with doors to the rooms that open onto the parking lot. Bo climbs a flight of steps with me on his heels. He reaches the door to room number 18. He digs into his pocket for his key card and swipes it. He opens the door and sticks a foot in the crack to hold it open, and then he reaches over and grabs me by the back of my neck. He wrenches my head close to his and he whispers with his hot, angry, beery breath, right into my ear: “Get the fuck out of here.”

  Then he shoves me away, steps inside and slams the door shut behind him.

  By the time I return to our motel room—cold, hungry and rubber-legged—Pearl and Zim have fallen asleep. The TV tuned to some unidentifiable cop show.

  They’re on the same bed.

  They’re both in their clothes and on top of the covers and for both of those facts I am deeply grateful.

  I make an effort not to wake them, but by her own admission, Pearl is a miserable sleeper. She shoots up and scrambles for her glasses.

  She looks over at Zim asleep next to her.

  “Oh my God. I slept with Richard. That is seriously ewww.”

  She hops over onto the other bed, and I sit at the edge in the not-quite-total darkness and tell her that against all odds I found my brother, in a strip mall Chinese restaurant, sitting at a table with empty bottles of Chinese beer and an equally empty face.

  “How’d the food look?”

  “Not the point.”

  “Right. Sorry. You know me and food. Please, go on.”

  I stretch out next to her and I tell her everything.

  “He’s in trouble,” I say when I get to the end.

  “We know. That’s why you’re here.”

  A long silence follows during which Pearl falls back asleep, her glasses askew. I remove them from her face and hold them in my hand, and I wake to the first hint of the morning light clutching them to my chest.

  We head right over to the motel but Boaz has already checked out, which doesn’t come as much of a surprise. We find a 7-Eleven and we drink our coffees and eat our do-nuts in the parking lot, on the hood of Pearl’s car.

  I lean back and close my eyes to the sun. I can almost trick myself into believing we’re sitting out on the slope of the roof.

  “So what’s next?” Zim asks.

  “Yeah,” Pearl says. “What’s the plan, boss?”

  My head is swimming.

  My neck is still sore.

  I sit up. “Okay. Here’s what I know. One: I know where he’s going tonight. Two: I know he doesn’t want me going with him. In fact, I’m pretty sure he hates me. So for the sake of this list, let’s make that I know he hates me number three. Four: I know he might change his plans for tonight simply to avoid seeing my face again. Five: I know I’ll never find him if he decides to do that. And finally, six: I know this coffee tastes like doody.”

  I dump what I have left onto the concrete.

  Pearl climbs down and opens up her driver’s-si
de door.

  “C’mon, fellas. Hop in,” she says.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of walking.”

  “You barely walked at all.”

  “Tell that to my calves.”

  “So? Where?”

  “To eat a proper breakfast. With, like, protein and grains and all that. And later on, we’ll deliver you to Edison and I’ll go back to Frozurt and my puzzling flirtation with Il Duce. And Zim will go back to the life of a drifter unless Bob takes pity on him and lets him have your old gig at Videorama, but until then: breakfast. And after that, Edison. And in between: we’re going to the movies.”

  The two-plus hours in the darkened theater, empty but for the three of us, does manage to distract me. Which is the effect I’m pretty sure Pearl was going for. I even doze off for a few minutes somewhere right in the middle of an extended action sequence.

  When it ends, we stumble out into bright sunlight and damp air thick as Jell-O. The heat wave is back with a vengeance.

  On the drive to Edison we keep mostly quiet. I let Zim ride shotgun. I’m remembering the trip to my first summer at sleepaway camp. Mom behind the wheel of the car I would eventually come to drive, the soft British lilt of the NPR reporter on the radio, the fat pines of northern Vermont, the yearning for home.

  Unlike that summer, I now have the power to say: Turn this car around. Pearl will do whatever I ask. She is, after all, one of my two best friends.

  I want to say it, to shout it, to grab the wheel right out of her unsuspecting hands, which are resting, in typical Pearl fashion, at ten and two o’clock. I want to wrench that wheel like Boaz did my neck. Turn it in the opposite direction.

  But instead I stare out the window at the ugly stretch of gray interstate and I wonder how I’ll get through this day. This afternoon. This evening.

  This summer.

  We stop a few blocks away from our destination.

  Pearl turns off the car.

  “I can go with you,” Zim says. “For real. There’s nothing much at home for me anyway.”

  “It’s okay, Zim.”

  “I know it’s okay, Levi. That’s not what I’m saying here. What I’m saying is you’re my friend. My birthday brother. I don’t want you to have to do this alone.”

  “I won’t be alone.”

  I’m not even sure I believe what I’ve just said but we let it hang there in the air between us.

  “I think maybe Richard is right,” Pearl says. “And you know that’s saying a lot if I’m willing to admit when Richard is right.”

  “You guys. Thanks. Really. For everything.”

  I open the door.

  I grab my pack from the trunk. I come around the side and lean in Zim’s window.

  “I feel like we’re dropping you off at college or something,” he says.

  “Yeah, and he’s totally embarrassed by his dorky parents so he’s making us leave him a few blocks away,” Pearl adds.

  I stick out my hand and Zim slaps it.

  “Peace out,” he says.

  I walk around to Pearl’s side. She jumps out of the car and throws her arms around me. She squeezes hard. Then she hops back in.

  “Try and avoid killing each other on the way home,” I say.

  “Try and avoid chafed balls,” she shoots back, and then she peels out, because Pearl has never let an opportunity for drama pass her by.

  I’m standing in the middle of the road.

  It’s one of those moments that feel like a big metaphor. You know those moments. The kind where the hero, not that I’m calling myself a hero, because if there’s one thing we all know, I’m no hero, but in these moments the “hero” stands in the middle of the road. He can walk one way, toward the unknown and toward his fear. Or he can turn the other way and walk toward home and everything familiar.

  But the thing is, this isn’t a big metaphor, because in those moments there’s a choice.

  The hero must choose his path.

  And for me, right now, there is no choice at all.

  I walk the three blocks to the address Loren gave me. And I do what I know. I wait.

  I sit out on the curb.

  I’m facing what could be any house on any street in any town in America. Neatly trimmed hedges. Manicured lawn. There’s an American flag hanging limp from a flagpole. In this perfectly still air it’s got no place to go.

  I wonder if there’s a son in this house, another son who didn’t join the army, a son whose job it is to mow this lawn. I wonder if this son still mows this lawn so that his mother doesn’t have to hire the kid across the street.

  I can’t tell if Boaz has arrived already. If he’s eating a home-cooked meal. Talking and sharing stories with a table full of strangers.

  Or if he’s still on his way. Still walking. Somewhere on the streets of New Jersey.

  There is only one way to find out.

  I ring the doorbell. A woman answers. She’s got fire-red hair and a face like a slab of white marble.

  “Bo,” she says, and she reaches for my backpack. “I’m so happy to have you here. Let me take that from you. You must have had a long day.”

  I think back on the movie. The total lack of a plot and—except for a fantastic naked breast or two—the absence of any memorable moment. But that’s not what she means by having had a long day.

  I guess I can forgive her the mix-up. After all, I’m a complete stranger showing up on her doorstep with a backpack and hiking boots. But still. I don’t look much like a marine. First there’s the issue of my hair. And then, my less than worthy biceps.

  I tell her I’m his brother. That I’m meeting him here. I offer to wait outside but she’ll hear nothing of it. She whisks my backpack off someplace and returns with a can of Coke and a plate of cheese and crackers.

  I learn that her name is Maria. That her son’s been in three and a half years now. He enlisted on his eighteenth birthday. She’s got pictures of him in uniform on every horizontal surface of the living room. There doesn’t seem to be a father anywhere, but it’s not my place to ask. Just photos of her son. Chin forward. Serious. Determined. The kind of face that’s stock for these sorts of pictures, except for the galaxy of freckles scattered across his cheeks.

  She tells me how lucky we are to have our soldier back.

  I tell her I know.

  Then the doorbell rings.

  I try to keep a calm face. I try not to give away any of my panic. I don’t want to be the cause of a scene inside this woman’s house. She seems kind of fragile, and she’s a good person. Just look at this cheese plate.

  She goes to the front door and welcomes him with a hug. She leads him inside, over to me and the plate of cheese, and when he sees me he says: Hey.

  Just hey.

  All casual, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to see me sitting here in this woman’s living room. But in this hey there’s a glimmer of respect. I’ve found him again, far away from where I found him last.

  I say hey back.

  She asks him what he’d like. He says he’ll take a Coke too. She goes to the kitchen and he sits down next to me.

  “You’re persistent.”

  “I am.”

  “What do you want?”

  What do I want?

  What do I want?

  I want to rewind the clock three years. I want him sitting on the couch watching movies with Christina. I want to hear his easy laugh. I want him to have done what every other high school senior at Bay State does—I want him to have chosen where to spend his next years from a list given to him by the sour-breathed college counselor, Mr. Hayes.

  Or if not that, if he really had to become a part of this war that every sane person knew was a losing proposition, I want him to have gone and not lost himself someplace along the way.

  I want to stop being angry at him for disappearing. I want to love him again. I want to help him.

  “I want you to come home,” I
say.

  “I can’t do that now.”

  “Then I want to go with you.”

  Maria returns with his Coke.

  “Suit yourself,” he says under his breath.

  She feeds us. She tells stories of her son. She’s baked us a cake and I remember the night Boaz came home and how part of me thought we should have had one then, and I think of this cake as the negative image of that imaginary cake. This cake marks the beginning rather than the end of a journey.

  She shows us her son’s room, which has only a single bed, and she apologizes but says she was only expecting one, and anyway, it’s all she has, and Boaz, in a voice so sweet I think maybe there’s a ventriloquist hiding somewhere behind the curtains, tells her it’s okay. He prefers the floor anyway.

  She says good night. But then she stops and turns around and comes back into our room. She says she has one last thing to ask us.

  “Will you pray with me?” she says.

  And before we can answer she’s dropped to her knees. We kneel beside her. She asks God to watch over her son. To watch over all the brave men and women who are so far away from home. To see that the troops successfully complete the mission on which they’ve been sent. She asks God to watch over the families who are waiting for them to return.

  I’m not someone who prays. I’ve never asked God for anything, because I sort of figure there’s no point. The only thing I got out of Hebrew school was Pearl.

  I look over at Bo. Either he’s praying hard too or else he’s used to being around people who pray and he knows how to put on a good show.

  I close my eyes and I give it a try. I don’t know what to think about the mission. I’m not sure I know just what it is, so I can’t go ahead and pray that the troops complete it. But there are other things I can try to pray for, I figure.

  Please, I think. Please let Maria’s son come home safely. Let him come home the person he was before he left. Let him not close his door on her.

  She gets up again. Says good night for the second time. But this time she hugs Bo before she leaves.

  I ask him if he wants to play some cards.

  He ignores me. Not that I can blame him. It’s a strange question to lead with after what just happened in this room, but I’m not so great with transitions.