The Things a Brother Knows Read online

  When the waitress comes by our table I order a cappuccino and immediately regret it when Christina orders a cup of black coffee.

  “Listen,” she says. “I want you to know that I’m going to Washington. Max got a summer associate position at a big law firm there.”

  Washington? Why is everyone going to Washington?

  That’s what I think.

  But what I say is “Really?”

  “In the tax department.”

  “You must be so proud.”

  She eyes me. I figure she must be getting used to my weird, unjustified jealousy by now, just like I’m starting to accept the fact that no matter how pathetic I come off, I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut.

  “Actually, I am,” she says. “Quite proud. There are all sorts of ways to lead a decent, meaningful life.”

  “Parpar,” I say.

  Her jaw drops. Her eyes widen. She leans in closer. She whispers, “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  I don’t need to say anything else. I have my answer.

  “No, really, what was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  She tries staring me down but then she gives. She shakes it off like you would some trick of the light.

  “Look, I am sorry. Sorry to be leaving right now. I don’t even know what sort of help I could have been, but regardless, I’m sorry I won’t be here.”

  “It’s okay, Christina. Boaz is leaving too.”

  “He is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to tell me where he’s going?” She stirs her coffee slowly.

  I take a sip of my cappuccino. “He’s going to hike the Appalachian Trail.”

  EIGHT

  MOM GOES ON A CRAZY SHOPPING SPREE.

  That magic sleeping bag. An equally high-tech tent. An ergonomically designed backpack. Drip-dry pants. A bundle of socks. She picks up two guidebooks to the Appalachian Trail. One with foldout maps.

  She buys three pairs of hiking boots for Boaz to try on in the comfort of his own home.

  She doesn’t make much of his refusal to accompany her to the store. He’s pretty clear about not wanting to drive and she seems to accept this like it’s no big deal. Just another item on her list of Bo’s little peculiarities, like his double-jointed thumb or his birthmark the shape of Texas.

  She spreads her purchases out on the dining room table.

  “So? Whaddya think?”

  I’ve just come in from a run. I’m on my way upstairs to stretch.

  “Looks good, Mom.”

  Clearly, this isn’t the reaction she wants.

  “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to take a little more interest.”

  “What am I supposed to say?” I shoot back. “Nice mosquito netting?”

  She waves me off. “Forget about it.”

  Right then Abba walks in. Home early from work.

  “How far?” he barks.

  “About twelve miles.”

  “B’seder. Maybe next year you’ll try out for cross-country.”

  “Okay,” I say, even though I won’t. Not a chance. But I’m not used to Abba weighing in on what I should do with my life, and I’ve forgotten the words to tell him no.

  Abba gestures to Mom’s table. “What’s with all this?”

  “It’s stuff for Bo’s trip.”

  She starts showing him the boots, the sleeping bag, the water-resistant socks. She’s acting like a hostess on a game show. All these items can be yours!

  I watch Abba turn things over in his hands. They seem to have forgotten I’m here, and that probably means Mom has forgotten she’s mad at me, and that’s good, right?

  And now I can just go upstairs and listen to music and stretch after my run and forget about it, but watching this little show, and all the pleasure Mom is taking in all this stuff, I’m getting pissed.

  Suddenly, I’m taking the stairs two at a time and I’m pounding on Boaz’s door. I’m not lightly tapping, or scratching with my chewed-down nails.

  It’s not an I’m so sorry to bother you knock. It’s an OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR NOW knock.

  Once he undoes the latch I push my way in. Bo steps aside and I spin around on him.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “What are you doing?”

  Boaz backs his way into his desk chair and folds one leg over the other. I have no place to sit because his mattress is still on the floor, and he’s in the only chair, and the absence of this choice, of any place to sit down and talk to him at eye level, leaves me with this wild, untethered feeling.

  “I’m trying to find out what’s up with this whole Appalachian Trail thing.”

  “I’m going hiking,” Bo says calmly.

  “No you aren’t.”

  “I’m not?”

  “No. You’re not. I know you’re not. You aren’t going anywhere near the Appalachian Trail.”

  Bo scoffs at me. It’s the closest he’s come to smiling since I can remember. “What do you know?”

  “Is this some sort of joke to you? Is it? Because Mom’s down with half the stock of the Outdoor Store sprawled across the dining room table, and she’s practically doing cartwheels she’s so amped up. All over a trip you aren’t actually taking.”

  I finally settle for a corner of the mattress on the floor. I don’t know what to do with my legs, so I pull them to my chest in a pose that’s undeniably childlike.

  “What are you up to, Boaz? Huh? I mean, what are you planning? Where are you going? Why?”

  “Levi. Lemme give you some advice.” He leans in closer like he’s about to share a secret with me.

  Then his voice goes cold. Sharp.

  “Stay out of this.”

  It’s a voice I don’t know, but it’s one I’m sure he’s put to good use over the last three years. And to avoid it, and the way he’s looking at me, I stare at the wall over what used to be his bed.

  It’s empty.

  “Where’s my map?”

  “Can you leave now?”

  “I want my map.”

  “Get out.”

  I stop looking at his e-mails. I stop scouring his maps. I’d like to tell you that I came to this decision in a moment of clarity, that I realized how wrong I’d been to stalk Bo’s online trail.

  What a violation.

  How unbrotherly.

  But the real truth is that I didn’t come to this decision: Boaz did.

  He returns my computer after canceling his e-mail account and erasing his online history. He isn’t just covering his tracks. He’s ended the trail altogether.

  Zim comes to visit me at work. He’s still looking around for a job. His dream of spending the summer with his hands deep in women’s hair didn’t pan out. It kills me, because Zim has an encyclopedic knowledge of film. He deserved this job. He should be the one sitting behind the counter eating microwave popcorn all day.

  He rubs his hands together. “Time to start planning the big one.”

  He hops up on the counter and dangles his legs off the side. Bob never seems to mind Zim hanging around. He cuts me a lot of slack. I can see it in the way he looks at me. That mixture of deference and respect. Like by living down the hall from my brother, I’ve caught a bit of his heroism, the way one might catch a cold.

  “What’re you talking about?” I ask Zim.

  “Our eighteenth birthday, my Birthday Brotha. In the eyes of many, we will, at long last, be men.”

  Oh, right. Our birthdays are only a few weeks away. Thank God I’ve already gotten the ball-cradling checkup out of the way.

  “Let’s do something seriously raging this year. Something to prove ourselves worthy of the right to vote and smoke.”

  “And join the military.”

  “Right.”

  A silence follows. I’ve deflated poor Zim.

  “He leaves tomorrow?” he asks.

  “Yep. Tomorrow.”

  “And still no idea what he’s up to?”

  “Nope.�
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  “Maybe he’ll prove you wrong. Maybe he’s really off to hike the Trail.”

  I sigh. “Yeah, maybe.”

  Zim wanders off to browse the horror section.

  I hate being a downer, but I don’t care much about what birthday is on my horizon, and for sure, I don’t feel much like a man.

  I try to remember if we had a farewell dinner before Bo left for boot camp. If we did, it was nothing like this. No festivity. Tonight Mom’s got the Beatles on in the kitchen and she’s singing along and I’m thinking how much it burns when your mom loves the same music you do.

  I’m also thinking that maybe I should forget what I know.

  Zim could be right. Maybe Boaz will prove me wrong. I should just put aside all that logic, tuck into Mom’s farewell dinner and believe in the Appalachian Trail.

  It seems to be working just fine for everyone else.

  Take Abba. He comes home, arms full of wine. He’s crazy about his wines. Special occasions call for wines he spends real money on, and that means you’d better brace for a long speech about oaks and tannins.

  He likes to make me taste the ones he’s most excited about.

  “Delicious,” I say, even though to me, wine tastes like grassy Band-Aids.

  Dov comes over with a special package for Boaz.

  “It’s from Mr. Kurjian,” he says. “An Armenian lunch for your first day on the trail.”

  “Thanks, Dov.” Without looking inside, he puts the bag in the refrigerator.

  “You all set?”

  “Think so.”

  “How about some cash?” Dov reaches for his wallet. Sometimes he acts like a crisp twenty-dollar bill is the answer to all life’s troubles.

  “Nah. I’m good.”

  “You sure?”

  The way Dov narrows his eyes at him, I question what he believes.

  “I’m sure, Dov.”

  We sit down to eat. I swirl the little bit of wine around and around in a comically oversized glass. I take a deep whiff. Then a sip. “Delicious.”

  All through dinner and dessert, through the several glasses Abba fills for him with expensive wine, Boaz never once looks in my direction.

  With cottony eyes I make out the red digital numbers.

  Five. Five. Seven.

  The buzzer on this very same clock usually fails to wake me, but this morning, at this obscene hour, the gentle click of Boaz shutting the front door behind him does the job.

  I climb out of bed, scramble down the hallway, enter my brother’s empty room and head straight for the window facing the street.

  I pull up the shade to a soft pink sky.

  Somehow he looks small under the weight of all his things. He’s walking down the painted white dashes that divide the two sides of the road. There’s no traffic to contend with. All the world is sleeping.

  I watch him go. Wondering if he’ll bother to look back. Not sure what I’d do if he did.

  Wave? Or duck so I couldn’t be seen? Maybe I’d shout out his name. Wake the birds and the neighbors.

  Maybe I’d find something to tell my brother, finally. Something important. One of those things people say at life’s big moments. The kind of thing that makes you think: I’ll remember that.

  Maybe those sorts of words would find their way onto my tongue.

  Maybe.

  Boaz reaches the corner. His final chance to turn back and look.

  I close my eyes tight. Shield myself from a glare only I can see. When I open them again, Boaz is gone.

  I sit on the floor of his room and dig my hands into his carpet.

  I imagine his path through the neighborhood. Even with everything he’s been through, with as far away as he’s gone from here and how he returned some other version of himself, he must still know these streets.

  These are our streets.

  He just turned up Archer, where I took the first spin on my bike without training wheels. Then he’ll go down Lincoln, where when I was seven, Abba broke the news that the family dog died, his face sad and serious. On Burr Street, where he’ll start heading south, Mom told me that Dov was in the hospital, but not to worry, he’s an ox. He’ll be okay. And then Pierce Avenue, where Abba tried out his lame version of the “sex talk” and I pretended what he said might have some relevance in my natural lifetime.

  Come to think of it, most of the important conversations I’ve had in my life took place while walking these streets. Walking, like running, gives your body something to do while your head is reeling.

  Soon he’ll leave the neighborhood. He’ll start heading west on a complex combination of the less-traveled roads, the ones friendlier to someone with nothing but a backpack and a pair of fancy boots.

  I know where he’s headed. I’ve seen the maps. I’ve read some e-mails.

  First to Poughkeepsie, to meet up with a guy named Loren, who I first mistook for a girl. That would make sense to me. Walking across three states for the love of a beautiful girl.

  But no.

  Loren is a guy, someone Boaz served with, judging from the nature of their e-mails. Honestly, I barely get what they’re talking about, and maybe someone else would say the same thing about an exchange of messages between me and Zim, or me and Pearl, but this feels different.

  Anyway, the one thing I do understand is that Loren doesn’t know what Boaz is up to any more than I do, because when he asked, Boaz just said he’s passing through Poughkeepsie.

  I figure it should take him around nine days to get there. That’s if he walks about twenty miles a day.

  I go back over the neighborhood walks of my past. The ones where I’m sorting through some difficult piece of news. I always had someone next to me, someone to talk to. And it kills me that Boaz, even if he is the King of Silence himself, is on this walk alone.

  I stand up and go back to my room. I’m hoping to drift back to sleep, though I’m pretty sure that won’t happen. I climb into bed, pull up the covers and brush up against a foreign object.

  I’ve lived my entire life sleeping alone in this bed, so the presence of something next to me, anything next to me, delivers quite the shock.

  It’s tucked under the covers, on the side of my bed closest to the wall. I reach for it—a long, rolled-up piece of paper wrapped in a rubber band, frayed around the edges. I slide off the rubber band and unfurl it slowly. In the dim light of my room, my eyes take their time adjusting.

  Pastel-colored states and baby-blue oceans swim into view.

  My old Rand McNally map.

  Boaz must have snuck in here in the dark—maybe he padded across my rug in his tube-socked feet.

  I stare at the map while the sun comes up. Boaz didn’t take the time to erase his pencil scrawlings. They practically fill the Atlantic.

  Are they clues? Is this an invitation? Does he want me to know where he’s going? Does he want me to find him? Stop him? Join him?

  Or is he simply giving me back what I demanded, like a whiny little brother?

  I roll up the map. I stash it under my bed.

  I never go back to sleep.

  NINE

  I SIT INSIDE VIDEORAMA ALL DAY, alone but for Bob and the fake buttery smell of microwave popcorn.

  Outside in the world people are swimming in creeks. They’re riding bikes, maybe giving a friend a lift on the front handlebars. Somewhere out there a boy is gearing up to kiss a girl for the very first time. Maybe on a camp tennis court, in the fading light of day, to a chorus of just-stirring crickets.

  Outside someone is walking toward something.

  For something.

  Because of something.

  I don’t mean to romanticize the messed-up world of my brother, but any way you cut it, as I sit in here running the scanner over bar codes and calculating change for a twenty, I’m wasting the minutes away.

  And then I have this revelation that is so totally not a revelation, because I’m pretty sure revelations are supposed to rock your world to the core and this is the most obvio
us thing ever, but here goes: There’s more to do. More I can do. There is more than this.

  I race to Frozurt on my lunch break.

  I’ve discovered I’m able to stomach the peach, if it’s the price of spending time with Pearl. She readies my order when she sees me walk in. Granola on top.

  “You better eat quick,” she says. “I don’t think Il Duce much likes your lunchtime visits.”

  “So what?”

  “So we don’t want to make him angry. Nobody likes Il Duce when he’s angry.”

  I can see him sitting in the back office, in a swivel chair, talking on the phone and folding paper airplanes.

  Pearl leans over the counter. “How’s your day going?”

  This isn’t idle talk. She’s asking something bigger. How is this day going?

  The fifth since he’s been gone.

  I tell her how I woke to an empty house. It’s not unusual for Abba to rise early and head in to work. He’s not the type to linger over the paper and a cup of coffee. But today Mom was gone too. She left a note on the table.

  Off to interview for a freelance thing.

  Waffles in the fridge.

  So I tell Pearl that waffles don’t belong in the fridge, and Mom doesn’t belong at a job interview. Both disrupt the natural world order.

  “I guess it’s time,” Pearl says. “She’s no longer got any business sitting home worrying. And besides, the pay is lousy.”

  “She’s got plenty of reason to sit home and worry.”

  “She might, but fortunately, she doesn’t know it.”

  “But I do.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “And I’m going to do something about it.”

  When I get home from work there’s a letter waiting for me.

  The letter is from Christina Crowley.

  I take it up to my room and lock the door behind me. I climb out onto the roof. I hold it in my hands and stare at my name in her handwriting.

  I don’t want to open it right away.

  I want to know what it feels like to sit with an unopened letter from Christina Crowley in my lap.