December Boys (2 page)

“Y’know,” I said, “You and your mom should insulate the ceilings.” I pointed toward the rafters. “Wouldn’t be too expensive. Build a fake ceiling, stuff a little fiberglass padding up there. You’re bleeding money. Heat rises—”

“Um, so you want to ask me questions about the crash?”

“Right.” I dropped my briefcase on a kitchen table littered with shopping flyers and red-letter final notices. I popped the top and pulled my file. “What day was the accident?”

Brian motioned at the chart in my hands. “Isn’t it in your report?”

“Yes. It is. Just need to hear it from you.”

“Last Monday.” He squinted an eye. “About . . . one thirty?”

“Your mom picked you up from school?”

He nodded.

“What class?”

“Huh?”

“I’m assuming school doesn’t end at one o’clock.”

“Oh. Yeah. After lunch, so, um, trigonometry.”

“You good at that stuff?”

“What? Trig? Yeah. I guess.”

“I couldn’t get past counting on my fingers.” I wiggled my digits for a punchline. He didn’t laugh. “Your mom picked you up from math class to bring you to the doctor?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“What’s wrong?”

“With what?”

“You said you were on your way to the doctor? Were you sick?”

“Oh, yeah. No. Just a checkup, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“There’s only one in town,” Brian said.

“One what?”

“Doctor. Barth. Saint Thomas Court.”

“I know. I talked to him.”

In addition to Brian’s mother Donna, I’d spoken with her coworkers at We Copy, visited the accident site and service garage that was handling repairs, and I’d conversed with the doctor’s office. The boy was the last item on my checklist. I knew DeSouza wasn’t going to be happy losing five grand, Blue Book value same as repairs, but that’s why people have insurance.

“Then he told you I saw him?” Brian exhaled, a clumsy sound caught between nervous laugh and hiccup. “Why are you even here, man? I don’t know what you need me for. If you already talked to Dr. Barth—”

“I told you. Standard inquiry. Your mom hit a telephone pole?”

Brian nodded, jamming trembling hands in pockets. My bullshit meter began creeping toward red. Just a feeling I had. Something about the kid’s agitation and skittishness. I now saw his lip looked a little puffy, swollen, as if it had smacked off a dash on impact. How fast had Mom been going?

I glanced down at the report, pretending to read, peering up, looking him in the eye long enough to make him uncomfortable. Give him time and enough rope . . .

Brian’s breathing sped up.

I snapped the folder shut. What did I care if this kid was covering for Mom’s lead foot? Not like I got paid extra for the personality profile. Judging by the dilapidated, sad state of the house, the Oliskys could use the money. Let them come out a few bucks ahead. Good for them. My day was done.

Turning to go, I saw the photographs on the mantel and immediately recognized the wrestling poses, the staged yearbook kind, singlets and ear guards, grappling tigers ready to pounce. Before the bottom fell out of his life, my brother Chris had been a wrestling superstar for the Ashton Redcoats. Atop the fireplace more action shots from actual meets closed around an unlit candle in the center. Like a shrine.

I stepped past Brian into the small room.

“Hey! You can’t be in there.”

At the mantel, I picked up a gleaming gold trophy. Same heft as when my brother dominated the ranks, emotions ambushing me.

I inspected one of the photographs. The wrestler in the picture
had the same features and facial expressions as Brian. Not like a brother. I mean, identical. Still slender, but tougher, more sinewy, ferocious. And without the glasses.

I turned over my shoulder. With closed folder, I gestured between them, Brian and the boy in the photos. “You wrestle?” He didn’t strike me as the type.

He shook his head. “That’s my brother, Craig.”

I squinted to read the inscription on the wrestling trophy. Craig Olisky. First Place. New Hampshire Regionals.

I went down the line studying the fierce gaze in the snapshots. Cheering crowds, championship ceremonies. Remarkable, the resemblance.

“You look like twins,” I said.

“We are. Were, I mean.”

“You were twins?” I didn’t catch the implication.

“He’s dead.”

I stopped touching Craig’s photos, as if my fingerprints disgraced memories. “I’m sorry,” I said, both for the violation and the loss.

“Painkillers and alcohol,” Brian offered without provocation. “My dad moved out after that. Craig was his boy, y’know? It’s just me and my mom now.” He tried to smile. “Sometimes I think she got the short end.”

Ten minutes earlier, I’d manipulated my way inside this kid’s house. Now I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

“Hard to compete with a superstar,” he said.

When he said that bit about superstars, something stirred inside, a realization: I’d never seen my brother wrestle. Chris had been ten years older, putting me at seven or so during his heyday, but still old enough to make a meet. I remembered my mother trying to get me to go see him, and me putting up a fight, refusing,
throwing tantrums. I never saw a match. The thing that had made my brother special, what he had been best at in this entire world—the one thing he had to be proud of. Not a single meet. Years later, I’d talk about Chris’ accomplishments as if they’d been my own, but at the time I’d been jealous. Pure and simple. Chris was such the star, garnering so much attention, even as a boy I was envious of him. Funny, given how pathetic my brother ended up.

“I did it,” Brian said.

“Huh?”

“The accident,” he said. “I was driving the car. My mother was at work.”

I stared, dumbfounded. We were on two separate trains of thought, and circling back to the same conversation took me a moment.

“I’m not on the policy because it’s too expensive to add me, and since my dad left, we don’t have the money. I had that stupid doctor’s appointment. My mom couldn’t get off work. We’re going to England. I mean, I’m supposed to go to England. With the marching band. I play bass drum. I’ll never get to see Europe otherwise. I had to get all these shots for the trip, my mom worries a lot, and the deadline’s coming up, and she has all these Christian CDs in the car. Holy roller Jesus crap—”

“Jesus?”

“I wanted to hear the radio, man,” Brian said, “but nothing would come in. I had some mp3s in my backpack that my friend Jon gave me. But the backpack was crammed with textbooks and pens and earbuds. I couldn’t find anything. I took my eye off the road for a second—not even a second, I swear. I hit the telephone pole.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“I called my mom. Her friend from work drove her over. When
the cops showed up, my mom said she was driving. Am I going to get in trouble?”

I shrugged.

“I don’t care.” Brian Olisky let go a terrific sigh, and a big smile crept over his face, like he’d heard a dirty joke in church and was fighting to suppress the giggles.

“Thanks,” he said.

“For what?”

“I don’t like lying. It was bothering the hell out of me.”

My attention returned to the wrestling photographs on the mantel.

What’s harder? Competing with a superstar? Or carrying the burden of being the last man standing?

D
RIVING THOSE COUNTRY
roads home, the bright, clean moonlight illuminating a path back to my wife so she could tear me a new one for being late and forgetting my cell phone, again, I couldn’t help but think about my brother.

Once upon a time Chris had been bound for greatness. A shot at the Olympics. Representing America. Who knew how far he could’ve gone? Or maybe it was all revisionist, pipe dreaming. Even before our parents died in that car accident, Chris was a mess. Short fuse. Screws loose. A socket wrench short of a toolbox. Once he got hooked on dope, all bets were off, all hope abandoned. A bottom-feeding parasite, he lived a hard existence that stole whatever remained of the brother I’d known growing up. Small-town gossip tarnished his legacy, vicious rumors that refused to go away. I never bought into any of that garbage. Not even when Chris claimed those rumors were true. By that point he couldn’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Which made sorting out the last few weeks of his life so difficult.

Last December, my brother and a scumbag pal, Pete, had been rooting around on a discarded computer, trying to secure personal information. They were running a credit card scam, check fraud, identity theft, whatever people like him did to cheat the system. They’d uncovered dirty laundry on this family up here, the Lombardis. Incriminating pictures of the father, Gerry.
It was hard to trust Chris, especially where the Lombardis were concerned. Long before the drugs, my brother was obsessed with that family, animosity stemming from his days wrestling for Gerry Lombardi in high school. Gerry’s sons, Adam and Michael, so successful with their respective construction and political careers, didn’t help matters; jealousy ate away at my brother. I saw the pictures. Hard to tell one way or the other, but after my brother got his hands on that computer, weird things began to happen. I spotted cars following me. My apartment was broken into. They found Pete’s naked body behind the old Travel Center Truck Stop. Chris lost what was left of his mind attempting to implicate Gerry, his sons, the whole town of Ashton in one big conspiratorial cover-up. And I’ll admit it. I followed him down that rabbit hole. I was so desperate to believe in my big brother again. I ended up on my knees right there with him, scouring the dingy floor for clues, another crackhead searching for crumbs in the carpet. Once Chris died, I knew I’d never get definitive answers. When so much remains open-ended, you can’t shut lids or get any closure. I’d grown to hate the Lombardi family, too.

I popped another piece of gum, chomping to suck every drop of precious nicotine, going at it so hard I was in danger of ripping out a filling. I could feel it again, the pressure in my chest, rib cage seizing up, organs and lungs on lockdown, the inability to catch my breath. I’d been having these attacks for the past year, and the pills the shrink gave me ran out a while ago.

Fuck it. I dug around my glove compartment for my stashed pack of Marlboros. The cigarette was stale as shit, like breathing cinder ash and dry rot, but damn it tasted good.

By the time I pulled into my driveway, I’d burned through my last five emergency butts, but at least the shortness of breath had subsided. I fished the wintergreen mints from my center
console and ground my molars, searching for the spark. A quick brush with my finger, hot breath in my palm, and I was good to go.

I hopped down from the cab, staring at soft soles on hard ice, missing the sound my old boots made crunching snow.

“Where have you been?” Jenny asked soon as I walked in the door. Our fat cat, Beatrice, rubbed her girth against my pant leg, leaving behind tufts of white fur, mewling for more.

“Work.” I shook Beatrice off.

Jenny deadpanned, unsatisfied with my answer. I could feel her frustration bore a hole through the back of my head as I stepped around her for a beer. When I turned, she had her arms folded in a fighting stance, giving me the death stare.

“I had to sign off on a claim in the sticks.” I bent in the fridge and snagged the lone beer from the top shelf.

“This is why you can’t forget your cell. What’s the point of having a cell phone if you aren’t going to remember to take it with you?”

I slammed the door shut. “What’s the point of a cell, period? Jesus, Jenny. Does someone need to be accessible twenty-four hours a day?”

“When someone’s a father and a husband? Yes!” She wrinkled her nose. “Have you been smoking?”

I didn’t bother to deny it. Even with these last six months of patches and gum, I knew I was still impervious to the smell of cigarettes. To a nonsmoker like Jenny, I’m sure I stank like a skunk in the cabbage patch.

“I thought you decided you were going to quit.”

“
I
decided? Y’know, I’m a grown man, and if I want to have a cigarette after a shit day of work—”

“Keep your voice down. You’re going to wake Aiden.”

I popped the top from my brew and took a slug. “Where is my son?”

“Sleeping!”

We stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring each other down, high noon at eight thirty on a Friday night. Seemed all we ever did these days was fight. If we were talking at all.

Jenny blinked first. “What’s going on, Jay?”

I exhaled and dropped in a chair, guzzling half the beer in a single swig. I’d been geared up to go the moment I stuck my key in the hole. “DeSouza had me check on an accident. Sixteen-year-old kid cracked up his mom’s car. I saw some high school wrestling pics at their house. Turns out his brother died.”

“In the accident?”

“No, just . . . died.” I took another pull. “Drugs.”

I didn’t need to make the connection for her. My wife came behind my chair and slung her arms over me, hugging me tight.

“Maybe you should see Dr. Shapiro-Weiss again.”

“Insurance won’t cover any more visits, you know that.” Our HMO’s mental health policy was a joke.

“Then we pay out of pocket.”

“Yeah? With what money?” Even with the steady paycheck of NorthEastern Insurance, we weren’t exactly killing it financially. “We’ll find a way. We always do.”

I hopped up and went to the fridge for another beer. I swung open the door. All out. I checked the pantry, top shelf, bottom, everywhere in between. “Where’s the beer?”

“How should I know? You’re the one who drinks it. You need to talk to someone. You can’t keep this stuff bottled up. You have to find a way to deal with it.”

“It?” I spun around. “And where does ‘it’ go after I’m done dealing with ‘it,’ huh?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. I do. And there is no ‘it.’ ‘It’ is my watching my brother die in front of my eyes. ‘It’ is never getting to say goodbye or I’m sorry your life turned out to be such shit and that I couldn’t do more to fix it when there was still time. Therapy, sharing, all that self-help garbage is hippy bullshit. No reconciliation. No peace. No justice.” I grit my jaw. “That smug mutherfucker Lombardi might as well have pulled the trigger himself.”