Brother/Sister (16 page)

Then he started massaging the knots in my neck. Giving me a back rub.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so lonely.

He was kneading his thumbs in these long slow arcs across my shoulders, and drawing circles on my collarbones with his fingers.

I tried to shake him off, but he didn’t notice.

Finally, I shoved him.

“I don’t want this,” I said. “Can’t you see that?”

The look on his face. It was like I’d slapped him. Or like I’d taken his heart and thrown it off a cliff. He just crumbled. Reeling back, slumping dejected on the arm of the couch. I thought he was going to cry.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just, I’m overwhelmed.”

Then I reached out and squeezed his hand so he’d understand.

“Wonder Twins,” I said, throwing him as much of a smile as I could manage.

That was nice,
rubbing her shoulders. The rumors and the lying and the putting a shiny face on had been getting to Ash all week, and her muscles were knotted in thirty different ways. I could feel them loosening and relaxing under my fingers and this was a relief. Finally, I was doing something right, helping her feel better instead of worse.

And I could tell, she was really appreciating it.

Who knows where that might have led as the night progressed. I’d rented
The Hangover
, which I knew she’d been wanting to see. And I’d pulled another bottle of wine up from the basement. Maybe we would have curled up together on the couch and laughed a little. Had a little bit of something like normal. For once. Finally. I was looking forward to a little bit of snuggling.

But no, cause who showed up, right then? Keith. Of course. It was like his house arrest bracelet had started blinking, telling him,
danger, danger, they’re turning toward happy now
, and he had to rush over to ruin our night.

He did his usual nosing around the kitchen, spooned himself up a bowl of risotto, shoved the six pack of near-beer he’d brought with him into the fridge—all except one, which he popped open on the handle of the silverware drawer. Then, carrying the dregs of the salad in one hand and balancing the rest of his loot in the other, he wandered over to sit at the table with us.

“My garden,” he said, picking soggy leaves and cucumbers out of the bowl with his fingers. “Real food for real people.”

“You can really taste the difference,” said Asheley. She didn’t seem disappointed to see him. Not as disappointed as she should have been, anyway.

As he chomped at the salad, Keith was swaying back and forth, like, going into a food trance, muttering about organic this and organic that, and Asheley was nodding along, yessing him, sort of, encouraging him. I’m sure she was just being polite, but still, it was ugly to watch. Keith with his mouth full, flecks of radish and tomato dribbling back into the bowl under his chin, and Ash just rolling with it, like she didn’t have the spirit to stand up for herself anymore. Like things had gotten so hard that I had to do everything.

When he turned to the risotto, he took one bite and made a face. “Great job with the spicing,” he said. He downed half his near-beer and took the bowl of risotto back to the kitchen and dumped it in the compost pail. “So,” he said, “what do we got cooking tonight?”

“You just threw it away,” I said.

“Oh, sorry, I guess I’m speaking the wrong lingo,” he said. “What’s the hookup? What’s on the agenda?”

Before I could tell him that the agenda consisted of marching him back out to his car so we could enjoy ourselves in peace, Ash said, “
The Hangover
. Seen it?”

And then we were stuck with him. Ash had given him an in. I still don’t understand why she was willing to let him play daddy for us that night. It’s not like her. She disliked him as much as I did.

Anyway, I put the movie on and as the opening credits rolled, he started in about, “Speaking of hangovers, your mom’s finally starting to get over hers. I was out there today and we took a nice walk around the grounds. We even saw a lizard.” He flicked his tongue in and out a few times and let his eyes roll around in their sockets. “She’s writing in a journal, really working out the crap in her life. She’s got that sparkle she used to have again.”

So that’s what he was up to. He was delivering the news. Mom would be home soon. I wondered what
that sparkle
might look like. If it would be the same sparkle she’d had when I was young. I hoped so, for her sake. That didn’t mean I was looking forward to her coming home, though. I liked having the house to myself and Asheley.

“Are you going to talk through the whole movie?” I asked.

He adjusted his glasses and pulled his chin down into his neck in a kind of
excuuuse me
gesture.

The thing that really got me was that Asheley gave me a critical look too. “You can always rewind,” she said.

And Keith winked at her. Really! He winked and he slouched back and threw his arm wide along the back of the couch, like he was inviting her to snuggle in while we watched the show.

Jesus.

I didn’t even care about the movie by then. The evening was ruined already, so what was the point? The thing I cared about was keeping an eye on Keith.

I could feel myself pulling inward. If I’d thought I could do it without them noticing, if I’d been able to do it without leaving Asheley alone with Keith, I would have wandered off to the cliff. Hung out there alone, throwing pebbles out into the bay. Thinking things through. It’s not like I could do that though, so I just sat there, apart from them, pretending to watch the movie, remembering all the ways Keith had annoyed me throughout my life, all the times he’d lingered out in the yard, digging up weeds and watching as Ash and I played, all the evenings back before he quit drinking when he’d been slugging beers in front of the tube, watching those women’s college basketball games he liked so much. Where was Mom in all of this? Almost every memory I could think of was missing Mom. There was Keith washing his truck and spraying Asheley with the hose. There was Keith picking us up from school. There he was tooling around in the shed, while Ash sunbathed in the backyard. It was always Asheley. That’s where his attention went. Every second of every day he was at the house. Asheley, Asheley, Asheley.

And why? I knew why. I mean, obviously. Ash is a sexy girl. She’s spunky. She’s like sunlight. And he wanted some of that. He wanted to take it and blot it out.

Halfway through the movie, I was snapped back out of my thoughts by this:

“Hey, you know what would make this comedy funnier? A little bit of the
cucaracha
. What do you say, Asheley? Want to get stoned with your mom’s old man?”

“No!” I said. I almost shouted it.

“Relax, Will. You can come too if you want,” he said.

I would have, too, but I figured, if I did, he’d be on to me.

That, and I was filling up with so much rage that I was afraid of what I might do to him.

Will stayed inside,
brooding on the couch. He was acting like a baby, petulant, stewing in his self-pity. I mean, I understand, Keith could be annoying and whatever, but you know? He was there now. Big whoop. It’s not like he was that bad. I was actually sort of happy to see him. In his loopy way, he was a great distraction.

Outside, the two of us sat in the deck chairs on the porch and gazed out at the shadows of the backyard. There was a nice breeze, not too cool, but still refreshing. And the moon was really big—like a half moon, but the line between the light and dark on it was crisp and if you stared hard enough you could almost see the craters on it.

He lit up a joint and took a few puffs, then held it out to me, but I said, no, I’m cool. Watching him get stoned was one thing. I’d done that a thousand times. But actually smoking up with him? That was too weird. I’m not much of a pothead anyway. I’ve only done it, like, twice, with Craig, and both times, it didn’t seem to do much of anything. I think I’m immune to it.

Keith took his glasses off and washed them on his shirt, and then, instead of putting them back on, he held them there in his lap. He kept looking at me, like looking deep, staring, not in a creepy way, more like he was trying to dig inside of me and pull out some nugget hidden in there, hold it up, examine it, figure it out. His eyes, without the glasses on, were terribly sad.

“How you holding up?” he said.

“I’m fine,” I said. I was feeling good about having him around, but not
that
good. Not good enough to go spilling my soul to him.

He just kept staring at me. “Really?” he said.

I nodded.

“’Cause you seem not so good.”

“I am,” I said.

But then, I don’t know. The expression on his face. It was so . . . kind. I sort of lost it. My face went all blubbery and I started quietly sobbing.

Keith took a long drag on his joint. He put his glasses back on. He reached out toward me with an open hand. “I thought so,” he said. He waited for me to take his hand. “You sure you’re okay?”

A new rush of sadness tumbled through me. “No,” I said. More like a squeak than a word.

“Hey,” he said, “hey.” He squeezed out the cherry on his joint and slipped the roach into his pocket, then standing up, he said again, “Hey.”

And I let him hug me. I needed
someone
to hug me. Someone other than Will. He patted my back a little and just held me, whispering, “Okay, now. It’s okay,” over and over. I must have sobbed on his shoulder for like ten minutes. It was completely sopping wet by the time I got it together and pulled my head away.

“Wanna talk about it?” he said.

I nodded. Everything was flooding up in me and I couldn’t control any of it.

Then I thought of Will. I’d almost forgotten him in there. I felt a shot of panic—fear—thinking maybe he was listening in somehow. Watching us at least. Making assumptions. When I glanced through the sliding glass door, though, he was still brooding, staring at the TV, totally wrapped up in his dark mood.

Keith saw me look, and he glanced in too. “Wanna take a walk?” he said.

I nodded again. But where would we walk to? The pathway through the woods? The cliffs? I couldn’t bear the idea of going there. “Maybe just a little ways out into the backyard, though,” I said. “Just far enough—”

“I understand,” he said, throwing a half-nod toward Will.

“Grab your chair.”

We dragged our lawn chairs down the slope to the fire pit at the far corner of the yard and situated them so we were facing the deck—that way if Will slipped out to find us, we’d see him coming. We sat back in our chairs, staring up at the sky. Thin wispy clouds were floating up there, frayed white lines cutting across the stars.

And I told him everything. Well, sort of. Not exactly. I told him about Craig and Naomi. How Naomi’s body had washed up and all that. This wasn’t news to him. He watches the news. He reads the paper. And how Craig was missing. How I hadn’t heard from him. I didn’t lie exactly. I mean, I didn’t say anything that wasn’t strictly true. But I made sure to stick to the facts that had been reported. I didn’t mention the roles Will and I had played.

Anyway, that’s not what mattered—the facts, I mean. What mattered was that Craig and Naomi were gone and I was a total wreck about it.

I told Keith how I felt like my world had gone crazy. How things had started to seem like they didn’t mean anything. How everything tasted empty and gray. And how I felt, not numb, exactly, more like the opposite, like my emotions were so strong and overwhelming that they became a constant ache, they became all one unending painful thing, and I wondered, would this ever change? Or would I be submerged in this pain for the rest of my life?

“Kiddo,” he said, “I can’t answer that for you. It might stick around. Or it might not. It might soften a little and mix itself up with everything else you’ve got inside you, become another of those things that hurt to think about.”

He went quiet for a minute. His face, in the shadows of the yard, looked so old, like, filled up with the history of his own pain. He reminded me of a redwood, like he’d seen the sad things time sent rambling past him, and their history was etched in his skin like furrows in bark.

“I wish it weren’t so, though,” he said quietly. “Your mom and me. We want you kids to be . . . okay. It might sometimes not seem that way, but . . . there it is.”

He was crying. I’d never seen him cry before. He didn’t make a sound. He just shook a little in the shoulders and fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. Then he started to sing in a hoarse whispery voice.

“Neil Young,” he said. “He knows how you feel.” And he went quiet again.

It was weird. For the first time in my life, I felt totally comfortable around him, more than comfortable.
Comforted
. Like all that time I’d thought he was just hanging out ’cause he didn’t have anything better to do, all those awkward and sort of icky ways he’d look at me—I’d misunderstood everything about him. He’d been trying to, I don’t know,
care
about me or something.

Then I started crying too. ’Cause, really, who’d ever cared about me before? It didn’t even matter if he didn’t know what to do. What mattered was that he tried.

I reached across to him and held his big calloused hand.

He smiled—just for a second. He squeezed my fingers. “I’m sorry,” he said.

We sat there for I don’t know how long.

Then finally, Will’s shadow appeared behind the sliding glass door. He stood there for a moment, watching us. Sliding it open a crack, he stuck his head out. “Are you ever going to come back in? Jeez!”