My Brother's Keeper (13 page)

She waits for me to say more.

I wait for me to say more, too, but I can’t.

She squints at me. She takes out a cigarette and lights it this time. She looks sideways at me as she’s blowing out the match.

“You knew, didn’t you?” she says.

I shrug the kind of shrug where you say yes without technically saying yes.

“And you covered up for him?”

I pick up a coupon that fell out of the copy of
Cooking Lite
and fold it in half. I nod.

“Why?” she says.

I fold the coupon in half again. “I was just trying to help.”

“You were trying to help?” she says, blowing out a plume of smoke.

I nod.

She just waits.

“I thought you’d get upset.” I fold the coupon in half again, then again, then again. Finally, I look up at her. “I didn’t think you could handle it.”

She gets up and goes over to the sink to flick the ashes off her cigarette.

“Besides,” I say to her back, “you were always on the phone with
him”

She turns around and I point to the Food King box sticking out of the trash can.

“Stanley?”

“Whatever.”

She takes a long inhale, then crushes her cigarette in the sink. She paces around the kitchen a little, reties the belt of her robe, wipes down the counter. Then she grabs the carton of cigarettes, dumps them in the trash, and comes back and sits down at the table.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

I don’t understand. I’m the one who’s supposed to be sorry. “About him?” I gesture toward the Food King box.

“No,” she says. “About the whole thing.”

I wonder exactly what she means by this.

“A person only sees what they want to see,” she says.

I still don’t understand. I only know that she’s starting to sound like Mr. D.

She takes my chin in her hand. “I thought something was going on. I just didn’t want it to be true.”

I think about this for a minute. It occurs to me that I didn’t want it to be true either, that I thought that maybe if I sprayed enough Citrus Magic around the house, it wouldn’t technically, actually be true.

She reaches over and messes my hair. Then she stops and looks at me.

“Are you still pulling out your gray hair?”

“Not exactly,” I say. “I rearrange it.”

She fiddles with my hair, moving it around with professional, Hairport-style moves. She stands back and looks at me.

“Don’t worry,” she says.

Don’t worry is the kind of thing people say all the time. But you can tell by the way she’s saying it, she really means it, and she needs me to know she really means it.

So I say okay.

I
think maybe were done, but she scrunches up her eyebrows.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” she says.

I look the other way.

She waits.

“He took my Stargell.”

I look back; her eyebrows are even more scrunched up. “What’s a Stargell?” She says this like it’s a word in a foreign language or a new rap group, like it’s something she’ll never understand.

It’s the one card of the one player I cared about more than anyone in the world, the one guy who never left Pittsburgh for better money or better teams or better towns.

“It’s just a baseball card,” I say, “Really?”

I look at her. Except that all of a sudden she’s blurry, because somehow my eyes are full of stupid, annoying tears. I look away and clear my throat. “Really.”

She sighs. “You know, I think he stole from me, too,” she says finally. “From the tip jar.”

“I know,” 1 say.

She nods, then she cups her hand over her mouth, like she just realized something. “I bet he took my pearl earrings, too,” she says. “The ones your father gave me.”

This is a major violation of the unspoken rule about not speaking about my dad. I fold the
Cooking Lite
coupon into about a million little squares and wait for her to say more.

She stares off into space, then blinks. “It’s okay,” she says. “I never liked them anyway.”

I don’t say anything.

“You know, he used to take money from the grocery envelope,” she says. “For beer.”

“Dad?” It’s weird and also surprisingly not weird to finally say his name out loud.

She nods.

I hold my breath.

She pats the pocket of her robe, like she’s looking for cigarettes. “I thought it was my job to take care of everything,” she says. “I thought if I cleaned up after all the messes he made, then there wasn’t a problem.”

“I know,” I say, because I really do know.

“I know you do,” she says.

Then I get up and go over to the drawer next to the sink, where there’s a pack of herbal stop-smoking gum the Food King bought for her. Which I toss her, underhand, slow-pitch style.

R
ight about then, Eli comes in carrying Mr. Furry in a choke hold. Which is not only amusing since Mr. Furry looks so miserable, but which also puts an end to my mom and me having an emotionally meaningful moment.

“Go clean up the den, you two,” she says, popping some gum in her mouth. “I have some calls I have to make.”

Out of habit, I start by going over to the Implosion picture. I dust it off with the elbow of my shirt and set it back down on top of the TV “Toby?” says Eli.

I turn around.

“He’s not coming back, is he?”

“Who?”

Eli points to the Implosion picture. “Dad.”

I stand there for about 185 years looking at Eli in his blankie and cowboy hat, until I know what I’m going to say.

“I don’t think so,” I say finally.

As soon as I say it, I know it’s true. Which, to tell you the truth, doesn’t make me feel all emotionally out of control like it maybe it should. In fact, it feels surprisingly
not
weird, like maybe it was pretty much what I’d figured all along.

“It’s okay, Toby,” says Eli.

I don’t get it.

“He’s like the Easter Bunny.”

I still don’t get it.

Eli flicks the light switch.

“You can still believe in him.”

W
hen I walk into homeroom the next day, everybody stops talking. Which means they were probably talking about Jake. Which doesn’t technically have anything to
do
with me, but apparently people think they have to shut up about around me.

I walk toward my desk. And trip over Badowski’s backpack, which is somehow suddenly in the middle of the aisle.

“Jeez, man,” he says real loud. “What’s the matter with you? You on drugs or something?”

I get a mental image of me punching Badowski in the face but I just walk past him, sit down, and wish I was actually home-schooled.

A
t lunch, Arthur comes and sits down next to me and starts eating his hamburger without saying hello or anything.

I look at him sideways. And see that he’s looking at me sideways.

“You want my Jell-O?” he says.

I don’t, on account of Jell-O being made from gelatin, which I heard is made from horses’hooves, which can probably give you something like Mad Horse disease, but since we haven’t technically spoken since the day in the bus when I almost went postal, I figure it’s the least I can do.

“Thanks,” I say, not exactly meaning for the Jell-O.

He just looks at me. “I hate Jell-O,” he says.

Then we sit there for about 185 years, with him openly hating Jell-O and me pretending not to.

“That was weird in PE the other day when we played that Colonial America thing,” he says finally.

I don’t want to say that it wasn’t that weird, so I just nod.

“Didn’t it gross you out?” he says.

Telling a person you’ll eat their secondhand Jell-O when you think it may give you some rare undiscovered terminal disease is one thing. But telling a person that it grossed you out to hold another persons hand when you actually liked it is another thing.

“Not exactly,” I say.

Arthur looks relieved. “Yeah,” he says. “Me neither.”

He takes another bite of his hamburger. “You think Chrissy Russo might talk to me if I talk to her?” he says.

I guess there are people who like people who like talking about dead people. “Sure,” I say. “If you talk about Kurt Cobain.”

Then we sit there for another 185 years.

“About your brother…” he says.

I stop chewing and wonder if talking about Jake is going to maybe make me feel postal again like it did the other day on the bus. Then I get ready to say I’m sorry, because I don’t want to be like I was the other day on the bus.

And then Arthur says he’s sorry.

“You’re sorry?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sorry it happened.”

At which point, I decide that maybe Arthur
is
the kind of person you can talk to about things. Like how you can be worried about what’s going to happen to your brother, and how you can also still feel like killing him for taking your most precious possession. And how you can wish your brother would come home, and also wish you never had to see him again.

Which I make a mental note to do.

As soon as I figure out which way I feel.

T
hat afternoon on the bus, Martha MacDowell sits down right next to me. Even though there are about forty-five other places she could have sat, and even though I don’t have any junk food like Arthur—who gets on, looks at us sitting together, and actually doesn’t do or say anything emotionally out-there or highly embarrassing and just goes and sits down in the back.

I try to think of something witty to say, knowing that under the circumstances I’ll probably be about as talkative as Kurt Cobain.

She flips her hair over her shoulder, giving off the clean laundry smell. Then she looks at me. “You don’t mind if I sit here, do you?”

I say yes, which I realize too late sounds like I
do
mind. But I don’t. Which means the right answer, grammatically speaking, is no. Which means I then say no.

She looks at me like maybe I have a split personality disorder.

So I say “Stay,” which makes me sound like an instructor in a dog obedience class.

She gives me a sort of weird look, but she stays.

I wipe my hands on my jeans.

I clear my throat.

“Nice weather out there,” I say. I actually point out the window, which at that moment I want to jump out of.

But she smiles. “I like spring,” she says.

“I like it too,” I say.

Then we sat there liking spring for about 185 years.

“I like how it smells,” I say finally. “Like dirt and stuff”

She laughs. “Like dirt? That’s such a boy thing to say.”

I start hoping the bus will be rear-ended by a Mack truck, which would either put me out of my misery or at least give me a reason to accidentally hold her hand.

“You have gray hair,” she says finally, which coming from her sounds like a simple fact, not like I’m a freak of nature.

“They’re not all gray,” I say. “Just thirty-two of them.”

She bursts out laughing.

“You’re funny,” she says, I say thanks, then sit there trying to be funny again. Except that not only can I not say anything funny, I can’t say anything at all.

“Hey,” says Martha finally. “At least you’re not bald.”

At which point I burst out laughing, which to tell you the truth, isn’t something I’ve felt like doing much lately.

Then she says we’re at her stop. While she’s gathering up her books, I lean toward her in a totally unobvious way, trying to get another whiff of her clean laundry smell and pretty much deciding to rule out the home-schooling thing.

F
or the rest of the ride and all the way home from the bus stop I feel about as good as a person can probably feel without actually being on antidepressants.

Until I get home and sit down on the couch and the doorbell rings. It’s the Food King standing at our front door with a couple bags of Chinese food.

“Mind if I come in?” he says in his polite, nice-guy way.

I don’t say if I mind or not, but I let him come in. “My mom’s not home yet,” I say.

“I know,” he says. “She’s on her way with Eli.”

I nod and try to make a face like I knew that already, even though we both know I didn’t. Then I stand there trying not notice how good the food smells.

“Smells good, doesn’t it?” he says.

I shrug like maybe it does or maybe it doesn’t.

“Do you think we should set the table?” he says.

I say I guess so, and then pray that we don’t have to have a male bonding moment trying to decide which side the forks go on or something. At which point Eli comes blasting in through the front door and hugs, actually hugs, the Food King. My mom comes in right behind him, but before I have to witness the possibility of my mother having actual physical contact with someone of the opposite sex, Mr. Furry shoots out the front door.

“I’ll get him,” I say, secretly thanking Mr. Furry for giving me a chance to escape.

After which, I stalk Mr. Furry around ye olde condo, shaking the can of Liver Lovin’cat treats and trying not to think about everybody inside eating Chinese food without me.

Finally, I spot her under a bush next door. I reach out for her but she swipes a paw at me, scratching my wrist. Apparently, Mr. Furry’s forgotten all about our tender moment under the Dumpster the other night.

I walk across the yard, deciding she is a lame pet after all. I crouch down next to the Dumpster and make you-can-trust-me sounds. Then, when all she does is hiss at me, I make a grab for her. She skitters to the other side of the Dumpster. I’m about to swear at her when I realize someone’s watching me.

It’s the Food King.

“How’s it going?”

I shrug.

“I’ve heard you’re pretty good at this, but I thought maybe you could use some help.”

I shrug again.

The Food King points to the liver treats. “May I?”

I think about the Chinese food inside getting cold, and I hand him the can. He takes them out one by one and makes a trail of liver treats leading from the Dumpster to our front door.

Then we both wait for Mr. Furry to come out. Which she eventually does, twitching her whiskers and giving me a highly offended look. But she eats the treats one by one, looking like her usual dignified self, until finally she’s back at the front door.