Dismantling Evan (34 page)

I think of Brody leaving me in the shed earlier, wondering why he gave me the cold shoulder when Gavin started talking about his dad. “Yeah, well maybe not as much as you think.”

“What do you mean?”

I tell her what happened.

Nikki fiddles with a loose thread on my comforter. “Evan, you have to understand that Brody doesn’t talk about his dad because it hurts too much.”

“I know it does. I just want to be there for him.”

She nods and looks at me in all seriousness. “And you are by doing what you are doing, you are. Hell, he has never talked to Ash or me about Mr. Ferguson’s disappearance and we have known him our whole lives. It is just going to take some time.”

I nod, but I don’t whole-heartedly believe that I am really doing everything I can to help him.

I stay up most of the night contemplating how I can. Yeah, can’t sleep, but not because of the insomnia. Holding up my end of “the doctor’s orders” bargain... somewhat anyway... I tell Mom I’ll be fine getting to sleep. It isn’t a complete lie; I am tired, but then I start thinking about Mr. Ferguson, Gavin, Mrs. Ferguson, and Brody. I yawn as I lay in bed imagining what Mr. Ferguson might look like, how the Fergusons might react if he does miraculously return from Afghanistan. I imagine the Braxton Springs parade that would be held in his honor and how the naysayers, the speculators will feel guilty for thinking anything other than an honorable man being a prisoner of war being brought home to be united with his family who have suffered at the hands of a cruel community. Yeah, I’m a little bitter you could say.

What will the Fergusons do if he doesn’t return? Will Mrs. Ferguson finally get insurance for Brody, Gavin and her? Finally get Gavin back the medications needs? Will Gavin be different because right now, I think Gavin is pretty awesome even with all the quirks. Will he stop reading obsessively? Will he stop quoting Frodo Baggins? Will Hamlet have the same appeal? Will the Gavin I have come to love in a brotherly way still exist?

What about Brody? Will he be able to stop working so hard, dividing his time between Gavin, the shop, and school? Will he be able to pursue his passions? Go to college knowing that Gavin will get the care he needs? Will it take him to a faraway place, and will he become unrecognizable as the Brody I met when I first moved here to Braxton Springs?

Okay, I am driving myself crazy. I toss the covers off and get up to throw some water on my face when I notice a warm glow through the sheer curtain of my side window. That glow isn’t new and I know whose room it is coming from - Brody’s.

Feeling butterflies attack my stomach, I inch over to the window slowly and try to look out undetected, but it is impossible. Brody is literally leaning against the pane of his open window dressed in jeans and a plain white t-shirt. His eyes meet mine and his hair rustles, unruly, in the frigid night air.

Hesitantly, not wanting to be assaulted by the wind, I open my window only half way. “Are you crazy? It is freezing! Close your window!” I hiss at him.

He smiles slyly. “Were you sleeping?”

“No.”

“I was hoping you weren’t.”

“What, did you think if you turned on your light, the glow would somehow call to me?” I say sarcastically.

He bows his head, hiding the growing smile on his face, then looks up at me charmingly. “Can’t say it didn’t work, California.”

I lean against the window pane slyly and respond, “I reckon it worked, Texas.”

“Reckon,” he mimics me, then his smile changes and becomes more serious yet tender. “I was hoping it would come across as romantic.”

I breathe in deep as my teeth start to chatter.

“Kind of like Romeo and Juliet,” Brody adds as he his fixed gaze waits for a response, any response from me.

I wrap my arms tightly around myself as the cold starts to bite at my skin and I shift my gaze away from him. “It is romantic.”

Silence settles between us, lingering with the air long enough for Brody to ask, “About earlier today in the work shed...”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“No, I do,” he says as he shakes his head. His voice suddenly sounds so mature and deep. “When Gav says things like he did earlier... it is just hard for me to take. It is hard for me to talk about him without getting upset.”

“Do you want to come over to the work shed?” I ask guardedly, not knowing how he will take my offer.

He looks off into the distance for a minute as his eyes dart nervously. A war is being waged behind those eyes and I want to reach out to him.

“Do you want to meet in the shed? Talk maybe?”

Suddenly, he looks straight at me. “Yeah, I would like that.”

I should have brought a blanket, jacket, something; it is freezing in here. Really need to get a space heater for this shed. The door knob noisily rotates and Brody appears in the opening. He quickly slips in holding his shoulders up stiffly. “Shit, it is freakin cold!”

He clutches two blankets under one arm. “Here,” he tosses one to me. “Cover up with this.”

“Thanks.” I quickly wrap it around my shudders and he does the same with only the incandescent glow of the moonlight illuminating and filling the space around Brody and I. Neither of us make an attempt to turn on the light.

Silently, Brody carries over the drum of developer then the drum of fixer, sitting one if front of me and one in front of him. He sits down, and I follow suit as he comments, “This night thing is becoming a habit.”

“Night thing?” I question him, not because I don’t understand, but because I want to know what he’s thinking when he asks that.

“Yeah, meeting here in the shed while everyone else is asleep. It’s kind of like a date... sort of,” he says as he pulls the blanket tighter around his broad shoulders. A chill runs the length of my spine but it isn’t from the cold.

“So, I looked up that poem you told me about,” he suddenly says.

Poem?
“What poem?”

“The one with your name in it; ‘Evangeline’ by Longfellow.”

“Oh.” I’m kind of surprised. “Why?” I don’t mean for it to sound rude, but I wonder why he would want to read some poem written from the 1800s.

“I wanted to know why your dad named you after it,” he says as he shrugs. “It is kind of sad and beautiful at the same time,” he adds.

“You really did read it?”

“Yeah, I said I did,” he says jokingly with a hint of defense in his voice.

“Tell me about it?”

“What? You don’t believe me?”

“No, it isn’t that. I just want to know why you think it is sad and beautiful at the same time.”

Brody’s features become weighted with a sense of seriousness as he looks into the glowing ray of the moon shining through the shed window. “This girl, Evangeline, and the guy she is supposed to marry, Gabriel, they are separated when they are exiled to the United States. Throughout the poem she travels all over in search of Gabriel, her true love.”

He draw his eyes from the hypnotic state the moon had him in, and looks at me. “She finds him just before he dies.”

“That is really... sad.” I’m having a hard time finding the beauty in it. “What makes it beautiful to you?”

Brody shrugs. “She traveled across the country to find him. She is one determined woman. Anyway, I’m sure there is some scholar that has analyzed it to pieces over and over again, but the beauty to me is that she gets to see him one last time before he dies. That is beautiful to me.”

We both sit silently and I contemplate the beauty Brody finds in it when all I really see is the sadness. Does he think of me as being this determined Evangeline from the poem? Does he really think that seeing someone before they die is a beautiful event? It is tragic. It is sad and full of pain. I can’t wrap my mind around his line of thinking on this one.

“If I could see my dad again, just once more, that would be beautiful,” he says shakily. Everything becomes clear suddenly and I understand why the poem is beautiful to him. It is because of his father, his disappearance, and the thought of maybe not seeing him ever again.

Then, something happens that I’m not prepared for. Brody begins to weep. He lowers his head, the heavy blanket laying over his rocking shoulders as his body responds physically to his soft cries. He tries to mask the cries by keeping them as silent as possible; holding them in and trying to remain strong. But, I can still hear them in the silent night of the work shed.

He shouldn’t have to be alone as he breaks like this.

The desire to wrap my arms around his broad shoulder and just hold him is too strong to deny. I close the small distance between us to hold him and just as I touch his shoulder, he opens his arms and pulls me by the waist into them.

I feel on the verge of weeping as well. Weeping for this son that doesn’t know if he will ever see his father again.

His cries begin to soften then cease, but he doesn’t pull away and neither do I.

I can’t really think of anything profound to say, the only thing that comes out is, “I’m sorry.”

His chest presses against mine as he breathes in then out with a deep, cleansing breath, the heat of it warming my shoulder.

“There is nothing to be sorry about, California,” he says.

He is right, but I still want him to know that I share this sorrow with him even though it will never be as strong as his, Gavin’s, or his mother’s.

Then it occurs to me; the poem, my name. He will always associate me with the beautiful image of seeing his father one more time until the day he returns... if he returns.

“My name,” I say through ragged, emotional breath.

“What?” he mutters

“My name will always make you think of...”

Brody pulls his head from my shoulder and puts his hands on either side of my head. His voice is an emotional whisper. “Listen to me. It means so much more. Your name means determination, loyalty, spirit, bravery, and so much more Evangeline because you have made the name your own, not some poem that an old crotchety poet wrote in the 1800s. You are the Evangeline I think of every time I say your name. Every time I think of you. It is only you.”

Unexpectedly, his lips capture mine in a kiss that takes my breath. It is stormy, broken and enthralling all at once. Not how I expected a kiss to be. I am so wrong to have thought a passionate kiss would be anything other than this, right now. At some point I drop the blanket around my shoulders, and rest my hands on his chest before moving them up around his neck. I don’t want this moment to stop, but I need to breathe. I pull back slowly, but not far enough that I can’t feel his urgent breath on my lips. We kneel together, disheveled, gasping, gulping, and trying to catch our breath, sealed in each other’s arms, captivated by each other. Brody lowers his gaze, places his hand over mine, which is still planted on his heaving chest.

“I’m falling in love with you,” he says in a shaky voice as he pulls me down to him, cradling me in his arms.

For a long time we sit together, me on his lap, the blanket wrapped around us both keeping the cold out. The silence between us isn’t uncomfortable or barren and the cold in our world doesn’t seem as frigid anymore. I smile to myself as I think of Brody’s word for Longfellow; crotchety. I imagine him sitting on a stool at a counter top much like the one under the moonlit window, dabbing his feather pen into an inkwell, grumbling to himself about Evangeline and Gabriel.

“Crotchety poet, huh? Pretty sophisticated words, Texas.”

He groans a little then laughs softly before he says, “I have to keep up with you, California.”

He tugs me closer, wrapping the blanket tighter around us and I settle deeper into his arms. In the stillness of his warm embrace I wonder how someone like Brody could possibly be falling for someone like me. Then, I worry that the only reason is because he doesn’t really know me... the hidden me.

November 2013

Justin Smith and Ernie Gonzales talked to me today. I was kind of surprised and nervous, but I told myself that I needed to act like one of them. I needed to try.

I did it. Justin asked if I could help him with his math during lunch. Ernie said he needed help too. I told them I couldn’t during lunch because of Brody. He wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t even listen to me if I told him they needed my help and were being nice to me. He would tell me I didn’t understand, but maybe he is the one that doesn’t understand.

I told them I could help them during math class which is right before the newspaper lab.

I thought it sounded better to tell them that rather than tell them I couldn’t because my brother doesn’t think anyone would talk to me unless they were going to pick on me.

Ernie said, “Gavin, you are a pretty cool guy.”

Those were his words exactly!

Justin thanked me for agreeing to help them. He said they would make it up to me someday.

I have been helping them for two weeks now, but nobody knows except Ernie, Justin, my teacher, and I. Evan almost caught me with them after math one day when she was walking down the same hall as me. I just shrugged when she asked if Ernie and Justin were bothering me. She didn’t ask if they were talking to me or if they were my friends. She just asked if they were bothering me. It must be surprising for her to see anyone just talking to me and not bullying me.