My Brother's Keeper (9 page)

“How come you’re wearing that?” I say.

“Why? What’s wrong with it?” She looks down at her front, like maybe she spilled something on herself and doesn’t know it.

“Nothing,” I say. “It’s fine.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

She walks over to the steps, yells up to Jake and Eli to turn the TV down. Then she smoothes the dress over her stomach, puts on more lipstick, and goes back to staring out the window. “Oh no,” she says. “He’s here.”

“He’s here?” I practically knock her unconscious trying to open the door. But the man coming up the walkway isn’t my dad. He’s shorter than my dad, shorter and pudgy, and he’s holding out a bouquet of flowers and looking like he thinks maybe he’s at the wrong house.

“Well,” my mom says, peeking out from behind me. “Right on time.”

“Right on time,” the man says. He holds the flowers out in my direction, until my mom not-so-gently pushes me out of the way.

“Oh, how sweet,” she says, taking the bouquet.

“This must be your son,” the man says, looking at me.

“Roses,” she says, her nose stuck in the bouquet. “My favorite.”

“Jake?” the man says, extending his hand.

I shake my head.

My mom elbows me in the ribs. “This is Toby,” she says. “Toby, say hello to Stanley.”

I take my hand out of my pocket, wave hello, then fold my arms across my chest. Stanley takes his handshake hand and runs it through his hair, his face sort of stalled in mid-smile. “Nice to meet you,” he says.

“Here,” she says, shoving the roses at me. “Find something to put these in, will you? We won’t be late.” She turns to leave, then calls back over her shoulder and yells upstairs, “Bye, Jake. Bye, Eli.” I let her kiss me, but I don’t wait till she’s gone to wipe off the lipstick like I usually do.

And then they’re gone, and I’m standing at the front door holding Stanley’s bouquet. I walk into the kitchen, stick the flowers in an old Pirates mug, and go upstairs to find out what’s going on.

Jake and Eli are playing Nintendo as usual.

“Who was that?” I say.

Jake wraps Eli’s blankie around his shoulders and waves it like a cape.

“His Heinie!” Eli shrieks. “Mom went on a date with His Heinie.”

“That guy?” I say. “That guy’s the Food King?”

Jake grins. “Yup. Master of the Mini Quiche. King of Crab Cakes.”

“Mom went on an actual date?” I sit down at the desk.

They don’t answer.

“Mom says he might take us to a Pirates game sometime,” Eli says.

“She said he has season tickets,” Jake says.

“So?” I say.

“So, I thought you liked the Pirates,” Eli says.

I shrug.

I get up, then sit down again and open my card collection and stare at the Stargell. Which is the only thing a person can do at a time like this.

A
couple minutes later, Jake punches Eli in the shoulder and gets up. “Ya got me again, Killer.”

Eli gloats, and I wonder if he really thinks he beat Jake. He begs for another match.

But Jake goes straight for his bottom drawer and pulls out a little plastic bag. He stuffs it in his pocket and walks out. I sit there for a minute, not knowing what to do, then I hop up like a human jack-in-the-box and follow him.

When I get downstairs to the kitchen, Jake’s screwing the lid back on our mom’s tip jar. I feel embarrassed for him, the way you feel when you accidentally walk in on someone in the bathroom, but also mad at him for taking her tip money.

Jake turns around.

“What do you want?” he says.

“Nothing.”

Jake starts to go past me.

“Where re you going?” I say.

“Nowhere,” he says. “Wanna come?”

It’s another old joke that isn’t funny anymore.

“Seriously,” he says. “You wanna come?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m just going for a walk around the block.” He pinches his fingers together and I get it; he’s doing an imitation of smoking a joint.

“Nah.” I back up a step. “That’s okay.”

“Whatever,” Jake says, brushing past me, and opens the front door.

We both see that it’s started raining. Jake looks annoyed, then he shuts the door, shrugs his jean jacket off onto the floor, and heads back toward the kitchen. I trot along behind him, feeling like Harriet the Horrible, not knowing exactly what else to do. He goes into the downstairs bathroom, the one my mom calls the powder room, and opens the window. He takes out a little blue pipe, which he fills with pot, and lights it. He pulls the smoke into his lungs, holds it, then sticks his head out the window and blows it out into the rain.

I reach up and turn on the fan. Then I go get the Citrus Magic.

I
’m upstairs lying in my bunk, looking at the Stargell, when Eli comes and taps me on the shoulder. “Can I ask you something?” he says.

Whatever it is, I hope it’s not about the Easter Bunny.

He looks worried. “It’s about Mr. Furry,” he says.

He waits for me to say something like I usually do about Mr. Furry being lame and stuck-up compared to Harriet the Horrible. Under the circumstances, I decide not to.

“Have you seen her lately?”

I shake my head. bnes missing.

“So?”

“So.” He pulls his blankie up around his neck. “So I’m scared.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “She has to be around here somewhere.”

Eli shakes his head. “I think she got out. The window to the downstairs bathroom was open.”

“Jake!” I yell. “Mr. Furry got out.”

Now Eli looks really worried. “Jake went out,” he whispers.

I slam my binder shut.

Eli jumps. Then he pulls his blankie over his head. Little sniffling sounds come from under the blankie.

I get up, squeeze the spot on the blankie that I think is his shoulder, and tell him I’ll go look for Mr. Furry.

“Just so you know,” I say, “I’m not doing this for Mr. Furry. I’m doing it for you.”

A tiny “thanks” comes from under the blankie.

I
walk up and down ye olde streets of Colonial Mews shaking a can of Liver Lovin’cat treats and calling out to Mr. Furry like she’s my long-lost best friend.

“Mr. Fur-ree? Oh, Mr. Fur-ree,” I sing out, feeling like a complete idiot, not to mention a complete fake.

It starts to rain again right about the time I’ve made my second lap around the neighborhood, but I keep going, shaking the liver treats and serenading a cat I don’t even like. I pull my jacket over my head and decide to make another sweep of the parking lot, when I finally spot her under a car in the last row. I creep over to the car, shake the can of Liver Lovin’treats like bait, then charge for her and grab her by the tail. She whips around and bites me, then darts across the grass and around the corner of a row of condos.

I trot along after her, even though I’m pretty sure that chasing a stuck-up cat around in the rain is a good way of getting pneumonia. I find her a couple minutes later, hiding in a little kid’s plastic playhouse in somebody’s AstroTurf yard. Even though there are probably laws against trespassing in kids’playhouses, I tiptoe up to the playhouse, bend over, and sneak in. This time I don’t even try to use the liver treats; I make a lunge for her. She darts out the door between my legs; I give up and start walking home.

Just as I reach for the doorknob, Mr. Furry shoots out from under the Dumpster, runs across the yard, and slips inside the door. She doesn’t even look wet, she just looks annoyed, like I’d been keeping her waiting.

T
he next day at the end of school, I take the scenic route around the upstairs hall on the way to my locker, thinking that maybe I’ll see Martha MacDowell at her locker. But by the time I get there, she’s gone, which is probably good since I had no idea what I was going to do if she was there.

After that, I skateboard over to Mr. D’s because I just feel like doing stuff for him, not for money even, just to hang around with somebody who’s the same every time you see them and not suddenly hanging out with people who smoke pot or suddenly start dating people who star in TV commercials dressed like a member of the Royal Family.

“Toby,” he says as soon as I walk in. “How ya doin’?”

Usually, when people ask you how you’re doing, they don’t really want to know actual details, like how you’re afraid to ask your mom for new cleats. But when Mr. D asks, you know he actually wants to know.

“Okay, I guess.”

Mr. D tosses me a pack of WarHeads. “You don’t sound so sure.”

The WarHeads are the extra-hot kind that explode on the roof of your mouth, the kind that can make your eyes get watery if you’re not careful.

“I miss my dog,” I tell him. “Harriet. Harriet the Horrible.” This isn’t what I meant to say, but it’s true. “I know it sounds dumb,” I said, “but I do.”

Nobody else thought Harriet was so great, partly because she had really short legs and a pointy head that made her look sort of like a hyena, but mainly no one was too crazy about Harriet on account of her bad breath. But at least she was always the same. She was always glad to see you when you came home, and you could count on her to get up on the couch next to you and thump her stubby tail against your leg and smile her hyena-dog smile at you and breathe her bad breath on you no matter what.

I tell all this to Mr. D, who just stands there nodding like what I’m saying makes perfect sense.

“Son,” he says after I finally shut up about how great Harriet was. “Living is all about letting go.”

I don’t know what he means, and to tell you the truth I’m not sure I agree, since we’re both card collectors, which, if you think about it, isn’t about letting go, it’s about getting and keeping stuff. But I say I do, making a mental note to tuck this little bit of Yoda-type philosophy away for future use, since Mr. D seems to be so serious about it, calling me son and all.

“I know how you feel, though,” he says. “Most of the time, I can let go, but some days…” He sighs. “… Some days I really miss my wife.” He starts patting his back pants pocket for the old plaid handkerchief, and I realize that if I don’t do something quick, things could get emotional.

“Yeah,” I say. “But I bet she didn’t have bad breath like Harriet.”

I know, right as I’m saying it, that it’s kind of politically incorrect to compare a beloved dead wife to a dog with hyena breath, but it cracks Mr. D up. He claps me on the back, gives me another pack of WarHeads, and stuffs his handkerchief back in his pocket. And I stay there till closing time, tying up the recycling, reaching up to get stuff on the top shelves where Mr. D can’t reach, and feeling almost like I used to feel watching TV in the afternoons with old Harriet.

T
hat night after hanging up the phone, my mom announces that the Food King is taking us to a Pirates game tomorrow.

I know without even checking the paper that Kip Wells is pitching, probably with Mike Williams as closer, and Pokey Reese is back in action at second base after a pulled groin—a game any kid in his right mind would want to see.

“I have to work for Mr. D that day,” I say.

She gives me the maternal eyebrow scrunch, which makes me wonder if
I’m
in my right mind.

“Really,” I say.

I think maybe she’s about to say something, but then she unscrunches her eyebrows. “Oh, well,” she says. “Okay.”

Which, to tell you the truth, makes me feel worse than if she’d said “What do you mean you’re not going?” which I was expecting, maybe even hoping for. Because even though I’m not sure I want to go see the Pirates with someone who’s not my dad, I at least want her to ask me about not going, or maybe even try to talk me out of it and not just say okay.

T
he next morning, Jake keeps humming the National Anthem and saying “Play ball,” the way our dad used to do; Eli keeps asking our mom if she thinks Stanley will buy him a Pirates jersey, and our mom keeps trying on different outfits, until the Food King finally pulls up in big black SUV and they all leave.

The house is instantly empty and way too quiet. I open the fridge and poke around for something to eat. I grab a piece of my mom’s Weight Watchers cake, eat some of the frosting off the top, then shove it back in the fridge. I make a point of slamming the door, which feels lame and stupid and not at all impressive since there’s no one around to hear it except me.

After a while, I wander into the den, turn the Implosion photo faceup, and nudge Mr. Furry out of my seat. She gives me a how-dare-you look, then saunters out
of
the room in her stuck-up cat way, while I turn on the TV. Which, since it’s pretty much always on ESPN, means I’m sitting there watching a pregame interview with Pokey Reese, who’s in the middle of saying how today’s game is going to be the turning point of the season, when I snap off the TV, leaving his voice hanging in mid-word, and wonder what I’m gonna do for the rest of the day.

A
couple of nights later, our mom comes home from work extra late and extra tired from having to do highlights on one of her regulars who showed up for her appointment late, and then only gave her a five-dollar tip. Jake’s not home yet, which she doesn’t seem to notice, the way she also doesn’t notice how he comes home later than me a lot of days—even though we’re both supposedly at baseball—and how there’s only one uniform in the laundry every week.

“Did anyone call?” she says, meaning His Heinie.

I shake my head.

She frowns.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, I say.

She nods, straightens her back a little, then puts on a smile.

“I have an idea,” she says after checking in the refrigerator. “Let’s order pizza.”

I’d been thinking of maybe asking her to make the orange meal, which is sort of like our family’s karaoke. It’s a meal Jake and I invented of all orange foods— macaroni and cheese, Cheetos, mandarin oranges, and Sunkist sodas—which we used to have on special occasions, like when one of us lost a tooth or learned how to ride a two-wheeler. It wasn’t a special occasion or anything, I just wanted to have something like we used to have, so maybe things would feel like they used to feel.

But when I start to ask, I can see the terminal headache look on her face.