The Things a Brother Knows Read online

  I run almost every day now, and when I do, I chant these words to myself: It’s a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

  I can go farther, longer, harder when I don’t focus on the distance between the place where my aching legs strike the potholed pavement and the place where I can finally slow to a walk, stretch my arms over my head and catch my breath.

  It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

  Then it strikes me today, when I’m not even thinking about it, ’cause that’s how I find most things strike me, that it’s the same slogan used to justify why we’ve been in this war so long, why so many lives have been lost, why so many soldiers have come home without arms or legs or traces of their former selves.

  It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

  It’s the same idea too. Don’t worry about the finish line. Don’t question what you’re doing. Just quiet your mind and keep up the pace.

  “What we need,” Dov says, “is a men’s night out. I’m buying.”

  Dov is notoriously cheap.

  “You can even come along too,” he says to me.

  I’m not sure if this is a crack about my age or the length of my hair.

  “What did you have in mind?” Abba asks.

  “Dinner at the Chinese.”

  That’s what Dov calls the Hungry Lion. It’s the only Chinese restaurant in town and Pearl considers it an embarrassment to her people. Terrible lighting. Sticky floors. Peeling posters of the Great Wall in the windows. Most souls brave enough to eat the food only do takeout. But Dov just loves it to pieces.

  Mom is thrilled because, for once on a Friday night, she can go to services at Temple Beth Torah.

  There’s a party tonight I’m not going to because Pearl can’t go out. I’ll be damned if I’m going to hang out by myself while Zim sneaks off with Maddie Green.

  I’m not going even though Rebecca Walsh might be there and I heard she broke up with Dylan, because I figure this whole Younger Brother of a Returning Soldier thing isn’t going to get me the right kind of attention from her.

  Not that I’d ever use Boaz’s story to score with a girl. I’m not that kind of guy. If I were, I’d make more of an effort with Sophie Olsen.

  Anyway. I tell Dov to count me in.

  “Great.” Dov rubs his hands together. Abba’s still reading e-mails on his BlackBerry. “What’s our ETD?” he asks.

  Dov checks his watch. “Nowishly.”

  “B’seder.” Abba still taps away. He doesn’t look up from his little device but still manages to direct his next sentence at me.

  “Go get your brother.”

  I sit and pick a thread from the hem of my T-shirt.

  “Please?” Abba says.

  It’s practically unheard of for Abba to even say please, and then on top of it he says it in this way that has worry and fear and tenderness all wrapped up in it.

  He’s not really lost in his work, he’s just trying to look like it. He doesn’t want to ask Boaz to join us.

  He doesn’t know how.

  I take the stairs slowly. I stop outside his door. Before I can knock, Boaz opens it.

  “Looking for this?” He holds out my laptop.

  “Thanks.” I take it.

  He’s opened the door enough for me to see that his bed on the floor is made. The clothes and the weights and the papers have all been put away. Everything spotless.

  It’s like he’s opened the door on a room in a parallel universe.

  He starts to close the door again, but I brush by him and step inside, figuring the rules might be different in this upside-down world.

  “We’re going to the Hungry Lion.”

  Maybe Mom was right. Maybe all he needed was time. Maybe he’s coming back around. Maybe that other universe, the one we’ve been living in, maybe that’s the one with the wrong side up.

  “Dov and Abba and me,” I say. “We’re going to the Hungry Lion. It’d be great if you came along.”

  “I don’t know….”

  Boaz is edging me out of the room without actually touching me.

  “Please, just come with us.” Much as I wish it didn’t, this please comes out sounding an awful lot like Abba’s did.

  He’s herded me back into the hallway. He turns around and looks back into his room the way someone might look at a mountain of work piled high on a neglected desk. He sighs.

  “You go ahead.”

  “Okay.” I head back downstairs to face the two people I most hate to disappoint.

  But then Bo clears his throat. “I’ll catch up with you there.”

  On the ride Dov puzzles over this. “What? He’s taking your car?” he asks Abba.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think he just wants to walk,” I offer.

  “Walk? What kind of mishugas is that? It’ll take him the better part of an hour.”

  “Dov,” Abba says. “It’s okay. If that’s what he wants.”

  At this point Dov makes the switch over to Hebrew and they go back and forth for the rest of the ride and I stare out the window.

  We take our time ordering. Service at the Hungry Lion is slow on the best of days, so as it turns out, Boaz arrives just after the food.

  He takes a seat and immediately starts filling his plate. He orders a Chinese beer from the waiter. When he last lived at home he was too young to drink, and the ease with which he orders alcohol in public is maybe the most grown-up thing I’ve ever seen him do with my own two eyes.

  Dov is on a tear about a recent rash of theft in his neighborhood. He links it, through his own brand of improbable logic, to the overconsumption of processed foods.

  “Ingesting all that crap makes decent people do indecent things.”

  Abba calls Dov insane.

  The night feels normal, almost.

  Boaz doesn’t say much, but he eats and he watches Abba and Dov go back and forth in their ridiculous argument. Even I’ve learned by now that Dov sets a trap with his proclamations, but each time, without fail, Abba steps right into it like he’s never come across one before.

  “So, motek,” Dov says to Boaz. “Did you get enough to eat?”

  “Sure did, Dov.”

  “Like I said, I’m buying. So if you want to order more …”

  “I’m good.”

  Bo shoves his empty plate away from him. Dov stares at it.

  “Levi went and got himself a job this summer,” Abba says. “He’s selling movie tickets.”

  “No, Abba, I’m working at Videorama. It’s a video store. We rent DVDs.”

  “So why don’t they call it a DVD store?” Dov asks.

  I don’t respond because I know how to skirt a trap.

  “Boaz,” Abba says carefully. “Any thought about what you might do this summer? If not, I was thinking—”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “I’ve thought about it.”

  The entire restaurant goes quiet. Strangers put down their chopsticks. The man at the counter ceases yelling orders to the guys in the kitchen. The fluorescent lights, on their last bit of juice, quit their buzzing.

  Okay, so none of this really happens, but that’s how things feel to me.

  “And?”

  “I’m going on a hike.”

  “For the summer?”

  Boaz nods. “The Appalachian Trail.”

  Abba and Dov exchange a look: That makes perfect sense. They turn to Boaz and bob their heads approvingly.

  Boaz takes another pull from his beer. I study his face.

  Not a hint.

  Nothing to give away that what he just said is an absolute lie.

  I’ve seen the maps. The maps Boaz browses online and some he created himself, linking one location to another, on a Web site that lets you do that sort of thing.

  I’ve learned a ton looking at those maps.

  I know Boaz prefers the scenic roads, avoiding highways at all costs. He’s researched which bridges are pedestrian accessible, where t
he campsites are and the cheap motels. Boaz connects specific addresses in Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland and Washington, DC, into one long ribbon of a route. And he’s broken that route down into increments of around twenty miles.

  He’s done no research whatsoever on the Appalachian Trail.

  I know if it came to it, I couldn’t prove positively that Boaz is lying, that he isn’t planning on hiking the Appalachian Trail. I took a logic class last fall. I had to practically hold Zim’s hand through the class and painstakingly explain the reading to him. I know what it takes to prove a theory. It’s harder than you’d think.

  Logic gets me no place when it comes to Boaz. I have only my instincts and some shards of evidence. But still, there are some things a brother knows.

  So I know this: he’s lying.

  And he’s pretty damn good at it.

  SEVEN

  PEARL SERVES ME A SNICKERDOODLE frozen yogurt. I feel about frozen yogurt the way I do about cats and Broadway musicals. I’m not a fan.

  “Just eat it,” she says. “Make like a paying customer.”

  “I’m not paying for this.”

  She sighs. All exasperation. “I know, moron. I just started this job three days ago. I don’t want it to look like I’m screwing around in front of Il Duce.”

  “Huh?”

  “The boss. He’s kind of intense.” She motions toward him over her left shoulder. The kid can’t be a day over sixteen. He has the acne to prove it.

  “Him?”

  She nods.

  I take a bite. “This is disgusting.”

  “Is that why you’re bothering me at work? To malign my product?”

  “No.”

  “Well?”

  “It’s Boaz.”

  The door opens. It’s Zim.

  He still doesn’t have a job, but he’s kept tight track of my schedule. He knows I’m on break and I spend my breaks with Pearl. He orders vanilla. She makes him pay.

  Pearl looks at her watch. She does a little curtsy. “Could you take this one, sir? I’m due for my fifteen-minute break.”

  Il Duce rolls his eyes and steps up to the counter.

  The heat outside melts my yogurt.

  “Nu?” Pearl has picked up some of Abba’s vocabulary.

  “Yeah,” Zim says. “Nu?”

  “He says he’s going to hike the Appalachian Trail.”

  “That’s good, right?” Zim asks.

  “It would be if that’s what he was really planning on doing.”

  Pearl lights up a Marlboro. She positions herself facing the entrance, so she can ditch the cancer stick if her boss comes after her.

  She takes a deep drag. “So what’s his real plan?”

  “I don’t know. But he’s heading south. Stopping all sorts of places. I think he’s going to Washington, DC.” I take a bite of my yogurt. “Jesus. What’s in here anyway?”

  “Snickers.” She shrugs. “And Doodles.” She takes it and throws it into the Dumpster.

  “Maybe it’s a good thing that he’s getting away. That he’s going somewhere and doing something.” Zim has a yogurt mustache. The guy eats like a child. “So what if he’s not hiking the Appalachian Trail?”

  “He’s lying,” I say.

  “So? Everybody lies,” Pearl says.

  “Right. They lie to cover up for something bad.”

  She stubs out her cigarette. “What’s so bad about going to DC?”

  “The fact that he has to lie about it.”

  Suddenly, I’m all agitation. Damp armpits and itchy scalp. I swat at a fly that isn’t there.

  I’m not sure what’s gnawing at me exactly. I haven’t played out any worst-case scenarios because I don’t really have any to play out. It’s just worry, like the kind I always get in the ocean. That uneasy feeling when the tide first starts its tug away from shore.

  I sit down on the curb. Pearl and Zim sit on either side of me.

  “The weirdest part is, I’m pretty sure he’s planning on walking.”

  “Levi—”

  “Please. I can’t have another conversation about how he’s a hero. So if you’re going to say that, or something about how he just needs to do whatever he needs to do, or about how he needs time, or some sort of bullshit like that, please, don’t.”

  “Relax, dude,” Zim says. “I was just going to tell you you have snickerdoodles on your shoes.”

  Pearl reaches over with a corner of her apron and wipes the spot of yogurt off my Vans. She drapes an arm around my shoulder.

  “We’ll figure this out,” she says.

  I know this is just Pearl saying one of those things friends say. And I know it doesn’t really mean anything. And I know Pearl always does this in the moments when there really isn’t anything else to do. But still.

  I’m glad to hear her say it.

  Mom gets herself all worked up over Boaz’s trip. She races out and buys him a sleeping bag made of material she read about in the science section of the New York Times that weighs only a few ounces and keeps you warm in the Arctic and cool on the surface of the sun. Or something.

  “I went camping one summer with some girlfriends,” Mom tells me as she’s cooking dinner.

  I’ve offered to peel potatoes.

  “It was a gas. I loved being so far away from everything. It’s amazing how quickly we can adapt to the absence of all those things we’ve invented to make our lives more comfortable. I wiped my bottom with big-leaf aster!”

  “Mom. Seriously. Gross.”

  “They’re these wonderful big heart-shaped leaves that grow everywhere. Always within arm’s reach.”

  She smiles and salts the boiling water. Some salt spills on the counter and she picks up a pinch and tosses it over her shoulder.

  Sure. Like that’ll keep her bad luck at bay.

  She chuckles to herself. “Big-leaf aster. I never quite got how funny that sounds when you consider what it is we were doing with it.”

  I have to admit it’s good to see Mom happy. We haven’t spent time like this, talking in the kitchen, since I can remember. Some of that has to be my fault. When was the last time I offered to peel potatoes?

  This is how it should be. Now that he’s back, this is how it should be. We should stand around the kitchen and laugh. We should talk about stupid things that don’t matter too much.

  Here we are, finally, where we should be, and now he’s planning on leaving us again.

  “This is going to be so great for Bo.” Mom dumps the peeled potatoes into the water. “I’ve always wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail. Once, I suggested it to your father, that we take a family trip, just a long weekend, but he thought you were too young. He didn’t want to have to carry you on his shoulders the whole time.”

  “Sorry I blew your plans.”

  “Don’t be silly. You would have been fine. Abba was wrong. You’ve always been tough. A little go-getter. You would’ve kept up and probably led the way.”

  I’m not quite sure who she’s talking about. It certainly doesn’t sound anything like the me I know.

  “Anyway,” she continues, “I think this might be just what our Boaz needs. A chance to get his head on straight. To let go of everything. To worry about nothing but the sounds of the birds in the trees or how to heat up a can of beans over an open fire.”

  “I think he’s planning on being gone for quite a while,” I say carefully. I’m torn between wanting to prolong Mom’s good mood and wanting to lay everything out on the table.

  “So?” she shoots back. “Don’t you think he’s earned himself a vacation?”

  She breathes in through her nose and starts her gentle humming.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes?” She turns her back to me. Busy at the stove.

  “Nothing.”

  Maybe it’s better for her, for us all, to imagine him on vacation. Walking nature’s glorious paths. Wiping his ass with big, soft leaves.

  Let us imagine him warm in the Arctic and cool on the su
rface of the sun.

  We’ll stay right where we are. Right where we’ve been.

  Waiting.

  All those trips to his room. Running my hands over his possessions. I never once took anything. Not a penny. Not a pair of socks. Not an old piece of Halloween candy.

  Nothing.

  Until now.

  The way I’ve looked into Bo’s online history, the way I’ve scoured his maps, and now, the way I’ve uncovered the password that allows me access to his e-mail—I just don’t see how you can call it anything but theft.

  It’s no different from when I used to steal Twix bars from the supermarket on my way home from fifth grade, except that then I felt only slightly guilty.

  Now I feel a big sort of guilt.

  A grown man’s guilt.

  But I also feel like I’ve been driven to steal, which I know sounds a lot like blaming the victim.

  I mean, I can’t say the Price Chopper had it coming. No amount of bad Muzak or frigid temperatures gives someone the right to steal a Twix bar. But the way Boaz has been, the way he’s acted since he’s been home, the way he went off and wrote us all out of the story of his life, the way his behavior would lead any reasonable person to want to understand more, all I’m saying is: he kind of asked for it.

  So yes, I blame the victim.

  His password is PAR-PAR.

  At first I have no idea what this means. I try to see if there’s some numeric equivalent. Like the way I tell people my cell number is the UGLY Hotline because the last four digits, 8459, spell out UGLY on a phone.

  PAR-PAR. 727-727

  Is it an important date? Part of his social security number? Does this have something to do with airplanes?

  I spend a good hour like this because that’s the way my mind works. I’m more a numbers guy than someone who’s clever with words.

  Finally I stick it into my search engine.

  I run it through the same translation program I use when Abba swears in Hebrew.

  And there it is.

  Parpar. The Hebrew word for butterfly.

  Christina calls and asks me to meet her for a cup of coffee.

  I can’t because I’ve got a checkup with the pediatrician I’ve had since birth, the one with the Barney poster on his wall I stare at while he cradles my balls in his hairy, spotted old man’s hand. So naturally I lie and tell her I’ve got to work. We make a plan for the following afternoon.