The Things a Brother Knows Page 14

  WELCOME PFC BO KATZNELSON.

  A man with ruddy cheeks and a tangle of white hair steps toward us. He’s wearing the clothes of someone a fraction of his age. His name is Paul Bucknell. He’s the father of someone from Bo’s unit who’s still overseas.

  “Welcome,” he says. He reaches over and runs his hand over Bo’s head. Rubs it hard like he would his own boy’s. “We’re so honored to have you here.”

  He introduces us around to the crowd, mostly neighbors. Everyone’s got a drink. The barbecue is fired up.

  It’s a party.

  Before I know it I’m holding a plate with a burger, a pickle and a mayonnaisey mound of toxic yellow potato salad. I’m also juggling a red plastic cup of something fruity. I’ve got no idea if it’s alcoholic or not, but I’m praying it is, because this scene is totally weirding me out.

  Our backpacks have been whisked inside. A huddle of men surrounds Bo. It occurs to me that right now might be the perfect time to sneak a look inside that box from Marty Muldoon’s. I could ask directions to the bathroom. Lock the front door behind me. Claim it’s just habit. Track down the backpacks.

  Open Bo’s up …

  My heart slams against my chest just thinking this way. I never got any sort of jittery heart when I used to go looking in his room.

  I sit down in a chair under a tree. Take a deep drink of my fruit concoction. Inhale the fumes from the charcoal fire. Watch the crowd.

  A girl in bare feet rides up on a bicycle. Hops off it and leaves it in the grass. She’s got short brown hair. Cutoff jean shorts. White tank top. Big eyes. A silver hoop in her nose.

  Paul throws his arm out and draws her close and kisses the top of her head. She pushes back against his embrace and wanders to the table. She pours herself a big cup of the fruit punch and downs it in a single shot, then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

  She looks up and locks her eyes on mine.

  I feign interest in my food. So caught up in pretending I wasn’t staring that I shovel a big spoonful of the potato salad into my mouth.

  It tastes more toxic than it looks.

  “What’re you doing?”

  She’s standing in front of me.

  I can’t shake the sensation that she disappeared from the table and reappeared under this tree, that she burned a path from there to here, quicker than the human eye, like the Tasmanian Devil. All I know is that she’s standing only inches away, her waist at my eye level, I’m balancing my plate on my knees, I’ve got a mouth stuffed full of potato salad and she’s talking to me.

  I man up and swallow the food. Wash it down with more punch. Please, God, let it be alcoholic. I’m in desperate need of a little false confidence right about now.

  “I dunno.”

  “Oh. ’Cause it kind of looked like you were staring at me.”

  Busted.

  “I was just zoning out.” I can’t decide if I should stand or not. Right now I’m looking up at her, and that feels sort of awkward. But what if I stand and I’m still looking up at her? That would be a whole lot worse.

  She takes the chair next to mine.

  “I thought it was funny. You staring at me when I look perfectly normal and you’re wearing a hat like the one my grandma gardens in.”

  Oh Jesus. The hat. I whip it off my head and toss it under my chair.

  I run my hand through my hair.

  “So, do you know any of these people?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “Then what’re you doing here?”

  “Apparently I’m embarrassing myself.”

  She takes my cup out of my hand and peers inside. Rattles the ice cubes around.

  “You want more?”

  “Is it alcoholic?”

  “I doubt it. But I could fix that.”

  “In that case, yes.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  She gets up and takes our cups into the house. A big sheepdog jumps up on her as she enters. She ruffles his shaggy hair. Gives him a good scratch behind his ears.

  She returns quickly. Hands me my cup.

  “So I figured it out,” she says. “You’re his brother. You’re not another marine.”

  “How’d you figure that out?”

  “The high and tight.”

  “The what?”

  “The high and tight. The marine’s haircut. You don’t have it. And also, and no offense because I don’t know you, but you don’t look like Marine material.”

  “No offense taken. I’m Levi,” I say.

  “Celine.”

  “Like Celine Dion?”

  I can’t believe I just said this. I know from a lifetime of jokes about Levi’s jeans that there’s nothing more annoying than someone making an obvious joke about your name.

  “Celine Dion. Good one. I’ve never heard that before.”

  A burst of laughter comes from the swarm around Bo. He cowers. Just a little. Not enough that anybody else would notice.

  “That’s your brother?”

  “Yep.”

  “PFC Bo Katznelson?”

  “He’s the one.”

  She’s pulled her tanned legs up onto her chair and hugs herself around the calves. Rests her chin on her knees. Her toenails are painted dark brown.

  “My brother’s PFC Mitch Bucknell.”

  I raise my plastic cup. She raises hers. “To Mitch.”

  For the record: plastic makes a disappointing sound when it clinks.

  “He’s supposed to come home for a leave in September, but I know enough now not to count on that.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  If Zim were here he’d know how to talk to this girl. He’d be funny and sharp and he’d say more than yeah and he wouldn’t get all obsessed with thinking maybe she’d mixed up their cups when she went to refill them and now he was touching his lips to the same spot she’d touched hers.

  “So what’s it like having him back?” she asks.

  “I don’t know yet. He wasn’t really back long before he left again on this trip and I guess I’m still sort of trying to figure out who he is, like who he is now, and if that’s going to be who he’ll always be, and if that means we’ll all always be different, and if that’s the case, can that be okay.”

  I’m pretty sure I’d be making as much sense if I spoke to her in Urdu, but she nods.

  Across the lawn a loud laugh escapes Paul and his ruddy cheeks turn fire red. He holds his side with one hand and the shoulder of the guy standing next to him with the other.

  “He seems to be having a good time,” I say.

  “Yeah, he’s getting his dose of testosterone. He’s been missing that with Mitch gone.”

  I take the last swallow of my drink.

  “How did your parents handle everything? Your brother’s decision to enlist and all that?”

  “Well, my parents are divorced, but that happened ages ago. My mom’s kind of a hippie peacenik and the whole thing makes her uncomfortable, but my dad couldn’t be prouder. It’s like a big badge of honor around here, having a son in the military. And a marine! The elite of the elite!” She peers into her empty cup. “And I’m supposed to be uncomfortable about having a brother who’s a marine when I’m visiting my mom and I’m supposed to wear my red, white and blue when I’m visiting my dad. But really? I just miss Mitch.”

  She grabs my cup from me and stands up.

  “More?” she asks.

  “In a minute,” I say. Judging from how this first cup hits me, I’m pretty sure I won’t remember much after the second cup, and so far, this is an encounter I’d like to remember.

  She sits back down.

  “What’s your brother like when he comes home on leave?” I ask her.

  “Tired. Hungry.” She thinks it over. “Polite.” She squeezes her empty cup until it makes a clicking sound. “He used to have a whole roster of names he’d call me, things like Butt Brain and Ass Wipe, you know, the basic stuff of older brothers.”

  Do I know? Do I kn
ow the basic stuff of older brothers?

  “But now it’s all Celine this and Celine that—he never used to call me by my name—and it’s all please and thank you and it’s like it’s some sort of privilege to be hanging out at home doing nothing.”

  “I don’t know about the privilege part, but I know about the tired part. Sometimes he sleeps for days. And he doesn’t much like coming out of his room.”

  “Would you?”

  “Would I what?”

  “Would you want to come out of your room if you came back to it after so much time away? Months of living in the dust? Of people shooting at you? Of never getting a moment’s peace?”

  This sounds reasonable enough. It’s probably how Mom sees things. Why she didn’t do anything to intervene. But it’s too easy, even for someone like Mom, who’s looking for easy because the hard answer is too hard to face.

  “Eventually you have to go back to life.”

  She points across the lawn to Boaz. “Looks like he left his room. Like he’s getting back to life.”

  “Maybe.”

  She stands up again, an empty cup in each hand. “I figure I can’t understand what Mitch has been through so I can’t expect it to be like he never left when he comes back. And I figure if that means I have to live without getting called Ass Wipe anymore, so be it. And I figure … I figure you need another drink.”

  After the second round of Celine’s fruit punch, just like I predicted, my head starts getting all swarmy.

  Here’s this girl sitting next to me, talking to me, so, okay, maybe she’s talking to me because I’m the only person here remotely close to her age. But who cares? She’s still talking to me and she smells good and she’s got cool hair.

  But the drunker I get, the less I’m thinking about her and the more I’m thinking about all the things I’ve ignored because I know Bo’s life was hard over there, and I think of all the things I don’t ask him because I’m too cowardly to face him and his high and tight.

  So what do I do?

  Do I march across the lawn and part the crowd and grab Bo by his T-shirt? Do I scream those questions right into his vacant face? How could you leave us so completely? How could you hurt our mother like that?

  Of course I don’t.

  I excuse myself from Celine by telling her I need to pee, and immediately I wish I’d said take a piss because need to pee sounds sort of girly, and it’s also … a lie, because I happen to have the bladder of a desert camel.

  I stumble inside. I wander upstairs where there are closed doors, and I open them one by one, and my heart skips a beat when I see the Beatles poster in what must be Celine’s room, and then finally I open a door to a room that has both of our backpacks on the bed. I reach into his, pull out the box from Marty Muldoon’s and sit on the floor and put it in my lap. I stare at that clown.

  And then suddenly Bo is standing in the doorway.

  He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. His face, the room, the world have turned to ice.

  Two big strides and he’s ripping the box right out of my hands, and when he does the alcoholic clouds in my head part. With crystal clarity I know how seriously I’ve failed him. I know that Loren never would have gone digging through his bag. I know that he is a better brother than I.

  “You looked like you needed help,” he says. “I thought you were coming inside to be sick.”

  He shoves the box back into his bag and he throws the bag over his shoulder and he shuts off the light before slamming the door and leaving me in total darkness.

  I don’t even remember going to sleep.

  But suddenly I’m awake and Bo’s screaming and he’s thrashing around on the floor and I wouldn’t bet my life on it, but I’m pretty sure he’s crying too.

  I jump off the bed and I grab him. I try to shake him but I’m no match. He has me pinned in a blink. His hands around my throat. The back of my head hits the bare wood floor. A hollow thwack that makes my ears ring like church bells.

  Maybe this is what it’s like to wrestle with your brother, I think. Maybe sometimes it goes too far. My brain tries to tell my body that’s what we’re doing. Just wrestling like we never did when we were younger.

  But my body knows better.

  He jumps back. Scrambles to his feet. Looks at his hands like they belong to somebody else.

  I want to shout but instead I barely whisper.

  “What the hell?”

  He sits down slowly on the edge of the bed. Still breathing heavy.

  His voice cracks. “I was dreaming.”

  I lie flat on my back. Rub my throat where he grabbed me. Touch my head where it’s tender. Try to make some sense of where I am, how I got to this place.

  “It was a dream,” he mumbles.

  “Some dream.”

  The night comes back to me in pieces.

  Leaving the room. Finding Celine. More of her fruity drinks. Sitting with her under the tree long after the party ended. Never catching sight of Boaz again. Thinking maybe he’d left. Maybe he’d gone on without me. Not caring anymore. Stumbling onto the open lawn. Lying in the grass. The backs of my knees and arms itching. Not wanting to move. Not even to scratch. Celine next to me. Watching the stars. The earth spinning improbably fast.

  I try sitting up. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. You?” Bo asks.

  “I’m all right.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry for that.”

  Without saying anything more we switch places. I go back to the bed and he goes back to the floor.

  I’m grateful for the darkness of this room. Not even a crack of moonlight gets through.

  “What are we doing, Boaz? What’s all this about?”

  It’s not in a red plastic cup but in this darkness that I finally find my false confidence.

  I can hear him shuffling around. Trying to remake his pathetic bed of cushions. He settles in. Goes quiet.

  I try again. “Where are we going?”

  There’s a long silence that follows, but I hang in.

  “There’s something I need to do.”

  The box. What’s in the box?

  I only held it for a couple of seconds. It was heavy. Heavier than you’d think for a box built to hold the shoes of a child. I put it in my lap, without any thought, and before I knew it Bo was coming at me with a face made of ice.

  “What do you need to do?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  I wish I didn’t know about that stupid clown and his idiot’s smile.

  “You can’t tell me or you won’t?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is that I’m on this trip too, and it would help to know why I’m here.”

  “Why are you here?”

  There are benefits to not knowing things. To never caring about anything. If I could turn the clock back half a night, I’d choose to keep my hands out of his things. I wouldn’t have touched that box.

  “I could go home tomorrow.”

  “Then go.”

  “Fuck off. Maybe I will.”

  I roll over and face the wall and pretend to go to sleep, even though I know sleep won’t come. And I know that when tomorrow does, though I may not know where I’m going, I know where I won’t be going.

  I won’t be going home.

  SIXTEEN

  I WAKE UP EARLY and I sneak outside to the front lawn, which is damp from the sprinklers, and I look through my folder for the letter from her, the one without the perfume and lipstick kiss, and I dial Christina.

  It’s six-thirty.

  “Hello?” says a very sleepy and decidedly male voice.

  “Is Christina there?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Levi. Tell her it’s important.”

  The sounds of rustling sheets and whispers follow. Then the sound of feet on the floor and a door closing.

  “Oh God, Levi. What happened?” She’s brea
thing heavy into the phone.

  “Nothing. Sorry. I mean, I’m not sorry that nothing happened, I’m sorry to call you so early, but the thing is it’s hard to find a time when he’s not around, and he’s still sleeping, we had sort of a rough night, and I wanted to talk to you, because he’s not hiking the Appalachian Trail, he’s somewhere in New Jersey, Riverside to be precise, and I’m with him, and we’re heading toward Washington, and I don’t know why, but I’m wondering if it’s really you we’re heading toward.”

  “Slow down, will you? I’m still half asleep.”

  I breathe in the scent of wet grass.

  “Did you break up with him?”

  “What?”

  “Did you dump him once he got over there?”

  “It’s more complicated than you’re making it sound.”

  “Was it complicated? Really? Or did you just meet someone else?”

  “Levi, what is this about?”

  I sit down. I don’t care if my clothes get wet. I don’t care if the grass makes my skin itch. I see someone go running by, somebody about my age, enjoying a morning run.

  “I guess I’m calling to ask if you think there’s a chance he isn’t over you. That he’s trying to prove something to you with all this walking. Maybe he wants to win you back. Maybe he has something to give to you.”

  “Oh, Levi. I don’t think so. I don’t think you understand.”

  “I know I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything, and I certainly don’t understand him. I don’t know who he is anymore. Or maybe I never did. But I certainly don’t understand who he is now.”

  A long silence follows.

  “Listen, Levi. I want to choose my words carefully here, because I don’t want you to think I don’t care about Boaz, because I do, but he was my high school boyfriend. I’m not in high school anymore and neither is he. I know it seemed to you like nothing else mattered to us but each other. That’s the myth of young love, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s not a myth, maybe it’s true for a time. And you were just a kid back then, so I know that’s how you saw us. As two people who loved each other until nothing else mattered. But other things mattered. Obviously, other things mattered more. He went his way and I went mine. And I still care about him, I do. I’ll always care about him. But this isn’t about me. I can promise you that. And whatever you may think, I don’t know him the way you do. You know him,” she says. “You know him better than I do, because I was his girlfriend, Levi. And you. You are his brother.”