The Things a Brother Knows (4 page)

It never occurred to me Pearl might have had a crush on my brother. That was stupid.

I scratch at my neck. Maybe I overdid it with the cologne.

“Okay, you two, remind me why we’re going to this party?” I ask. “Chad Post is kind of a tool.”

“Because you need to loosen up, Levi,” Pearl says. “Get your mind off things. Maybe you can even get somebody to touch your winkle.”

“Like you’re not all over that daily,” Zim snorts.

“Don’t call it my winkle,” I tell Pearl.

“Don’t get bogged down in semantics when we should be working on strategy.”

“The girl does have a point,” Zim says.

Okay, my experience with the opposite sex is pitiful when you stack it up next to Pearl’s or Zim’s. But like I said, the last year or so has been good to me physically. Things should get better from here on out.

“What sort of strategy do you suggest?” I ask.

“Well, you could just get some poor girl rip-roaring drunk,” Pearl says. “But that’s cliché. And morally questionable.” She rolls down her window and lights up a cigarette in flagrant violation of Zim’s rules for his car. “We’ll have to come up with something.”

At Chad’s Pearl flirts with a guy way out of her league. She loses interest and begins all over again with a science fiction nerd.

Zim disappears with Maddie Green, which is something he does at roughly four out of every five parties, but he swears she’s not his girlfriend.

I wander around, skirting the fringes of conversations. Keeping one eye open for Rebecca Walsh, even though she never goes anywhere without Dylan Fredricks.

Chad Post grabs my shoulder.

“Dude,” he says. “I heard about your brother.”

“Thanks,” I say. Then I cringe. Why’d I say
thanks
?

“You must be so psyched to have him home.”

He doesn’t leave his room and he can’t put together a sentence of more than three words
.

“Yeah. I am.”

“How’s he doing?”

Did I mention that he doesn’t leave his room and can’t put together a sentence of more than three words?

“Great.”

“Cool,” Chad says. “Wanna beer?”

“Sure.”

As Chad heads for the keg, I feel guilt creeping up. I called Chad Post a tool, but maybe he’s not so bad.

He returns with a blue plastic cup. He stands next to me, checking out the scene.

“Boaz is so badass,” he says, and then he leans in a little closer. He smells like Doritos. “Do you think he killed anybody over there?”

“I don’t really know, Chad.”

“Well, I think it’s awesome what he did. I’m not saying I’d do it myself, ’cause I don’t wanna, like, wake up before the sun and eat crappy food and sleep in a tent and get blown up, but I totally respect the guys who do.”

“I’ll pass that on.”

“Awesome. Tell him thanks for keeping our country safe from terrorists and shit.”

“I’ll do that.”

Chad wanders off, and I look around for a place to sit. I’m hoping for a spot where nobody will bother me, unless, of course, that person is Rebecca Walsh. Or Sophie Olsen.

I settle into one half of a love seat.

I pick up a back issue of
Time
magazine and try to look interested. There’s a soldier on the cover. Helmet. Desert fatigues. Tired, dusty face. Deep tan.

Pearl squeezes in next to me.

“Way to go. Reading. That’ll woo the ladies.”

She takes a long sip of my lukewarm beer. “Where’s Richard?”

“Where do you think?”

“Maddie Green? So predictable.”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you sound jealous.”

“Please. What about you? How’s Project Winkle coming along?”

I gesture to the empty space around me.

“You need to work on strategy,” she says.

“Don’t you ever get tired of hitting on people?” I ask her. “It looks like an awful lot of work.”

“I don’t get this opportunity every day, you know. Mama Goldblatt robbed me of my God-given right to flirt by sending me to the Convent.”

Mama Goldblatt adopted Pearl when she was eleven months old, and since the day she stepped off the plane as a single mother with that baby in her arms, Mama Goldblatt
has been wildly overprotective—there’s no other way to account for her sending a Chinese Jew to an all-girls Catholic school. She claims it’s because she believes in single-sex education, but I think if she knew Pearl would go ahead and lose her virginity at sixteen anyway, she might have saved herself the tuition and sent her to the public school like everybody else.

“Where’d you tell your mom you were going tonight?”

“I just said I was hanging out with you.” Pearl throws her arm around my neck. “Mama Goldblatt never worries when I’m with you. You’re safe.”

“Great. Safe.”

“What? You’d rather be dangerous?”

I put the magazine on the coffee table. Right back where I found it.

I sink deeper into the love seat.

“I’m not sure what I want to be.”

I
’M STARTING TO WONDER
if he ever sleeps at all.

His radio’s on all the time, the dial just a hair off, so there’s constant static. And over that static I hear the click-clacking of his computer keys.

A few times, in the middle of the night when I’ve gotten up for a piss, I can hear him screaming. I know this sounds weird, but he screams softly. He hoarse whisper–yells. That’s even worse somehow than if he just let it rip.

I can’t make out the words but there they are. Word after word after word. Deep in the phantom hours, when the rest of the world is sleeping, Boaz is lost someplace where he’s forgotten he doesn’t talk much anymore.

When I knock, he never opens the door. He asks, “What do you need?”

What
I
need. That’s a laugh. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” Three words.

“All right,” I say. “Just checking.”

Christina Crowley stops by to see him.

She’s sitting at the kitchen table, facing Mom, hands around a glass of iced tea. She’s more beautiful, more perfect, than I even remembered.

I’ve just come in from a run. I figure it beats smoking for clearing my head. Turns out I’m not half bad at it.

Sports were Boaz’s thing. Soccer. Baseball. He was a pretty decent basketballer for a guy his height. After his games I’d head home with Mom and Abba and watch him go off to a party with his teammates.
Maybe someday
, I’d think.

Today I took a morning run. A Saturday. Wicked hot. The air is thick and apparently it’s National Mow Your Lawn Day. I feel like I’ve inhaled a small patch of grass.

Christina stands up. “Oh my God! Levi! Look at you!”

There’s an awkward moment when I think maybe I’m supposed to hug her. One thing I’m pretty sure of is you don’t shake hands with a girl. I’m also pretty sure you don’t hug a girl with a sweat-soaked T-shirt.

I settle for a wave and busy myself getting water.

“I can’t believe how you’ve grown up.” She sits and pulls out the chair next to her. “Come have a seat and tell me what’s new with you.”

I haven’t seen her in three years. That’s a pretty decent chunk of my life.

“Not much, really.”

“That’s not true.” Mom wipes the table where I’ve dripped a bit of sweat. “Levi has started running. And he’s finishing up his junior year. And he … um …” She searches my face. “Come on, baby. Tell Christina about yourself.”

I shrug. “I’ve got Hardwicke for English.”

“Oh yeah. I had her too. Does she still have a mustache?”

I remember Christina complaining about Ms. Hardwicke
to Boaz. That’s why I mention it. I remember everything about Christina.

“It’s pretty much a full-on goatee now.”

“Ha.” She puts a hand over mine. An electric jolt shoots through my weary body.

Mom clears our empty glasses. She backs her way out of the kitchen with a smile and returns to her laundry.

“I came to see Boaz.” Christina leans in close. I can feel her breath on my face. “But I’m getting the message that maybe that’s not such a great idea.”

God, she’s lovely
, I think.

Lovely:
not a word a guy should ever say out loud, unless he’s in the market for a good dope slap, but it sure applies to Christina Crowley.

She’s cut her blond hair to just below her chin, revealing the world’s most beautiful neck, and she wears no makeup. I hate when girls wear makeup. I mean, you’re a girl, right? You’ve got all this soft skin and eyelashes and stuff. Why would you go and slap paint over those amazing natural resources?

Once I walked in on them in Boaz’s bedroom.

If I was sneaking into my brother’s room all those times in some sort of attempt to learn about him, or myself, or what might happen to me in four years, I hit the jackpot that rainy December afternoon.

Boaz, tangled in her arms and legs. Their bodies moving slowly. The butterfly tattoo on her left shoulder.

I stood there for longer than I should have. They didn’t see me. I backed my way out of the room.

For ages I couldn’t look Christina in the eye without my face going hot.

So, now she’s here. That’s gotta mean something. Maybe he was writing her, calling her, visiting her at Dartmouth, all those times he wasn’t writing, calling or visiting us.

I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed looking at her.

“He’s not …” I’m searching for the right words. “I don’t know … what you’d call social, I guess.”

She takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, reaches around and grabs the back of that beautiful neck and begins to massage it with her hand.

She was there the night he made his announcement.

Right after he’d finished his salad. It was a regular dinner. A Sunday night with Dov. It was April. The day had been long and lazy. Unseasonably warm. We’d been talking about the shade of pink our neighbors had painted their house. There was nothing about the evening that would have signaled to anybody that this night would become
that night
.

Boaz had been accepted to Cornell, Columbia, Tufts and Berkeley. Everyone was awaiting his decision, Mom with a sort of giddy anticipation that meant she pestered him constantly.

“So?” she asked for the hundredth time. “Anything you’d like to share with the group?”

“Yes, actually.” He put down his fork. Pushed back his chair just a little. “I’m joining the Marines. I’ll enlist right after graduation.”

There was a silence. A pause during which we all considered whether this was some sort of joke. Boaz could be funny.
He wasn’t always such a serious person. But it was clear he’d meant what he’d said.

He might as well have said he was going to become a ballerina. That would have come as an equal shock. I know that sounds strange when you consider how our father, our grandfather and even our grandmother were soldiers, but that was Israel. This is America.

“But … but … that’s not what people like us do,” Christina said, her lip quivering. When I remember it now, I wonder if maybe it hurt her that he didn’t include her in this decision. That he’d gone ahead and made it, and announced it to her along with everyone else.

“What people like us?” Boaz asked.

“People who have other opportunities. Who get into Ivy League schools. Who believe in … peace and diplomacy over bullying.”

“No, Boaz,” Mom said. “No, honey. You aren’t thinking clearly. No.” Mom’s last
no
was tiny. Like she already knew she’d lost.

Abba and Dov said little that night. It was pretty clear where they both stood. Joining up for a war without a clear mission, when it wasn’t part of the price of citizenship in the country we all called home, wasn’t a choice either of them would have made themselves. And they said this later, each in his own way.

But they didn’t fight him the way Mom or Christina did, and I’m not sure Mom has ever been able to forgive Abba for that.

Boaz started to get angry. “This was obviously not an easy
decision, but it’s the right one, and it would be nice to know that I’ve got the support of my family.” He looked at Christina. “And my girlfriend.”

“But Boaz. Why?” Christina asked. “Why throw away everything you’ve worked toward?”

“Because I can, I’m able, and I’ll be good at it. And if I don’t go somebody else will. And because I’m not throwing anything away. I’m doing what’s right.”

I’d been thinking about him leaving for college. Preparing for it. Wondering what that would mean for me. When you’re fourteen, like when you’re ten or five or two, you tend to see the world in terms of what everything means for
you
. But I’d only imagined him going to Boston. Or New York. Maybe all the way to northern California.

Not some far-off desert country where he could go and get himself killed.

There were so many things I couldn’t wrap my head around.

What would lead somebody like Boaz to give up so much? He had everything, not the least of which was a girl I’d commit a crime for if I thought it might make her glance in my direction.

That night, I was pretty sure he was ready to let her go. But even though Christina was angry, she stuck with him, and they graduated high school as boyfriend and girlfriend, the perfect couple. Whatever happened later, like most of what happened between them, remains a mystery to me.

Nobody bothered to ask what I thought, but I spoke up. My voice was starting to change, and I always cleared my
throat before saying anything, not wanting to leave the squeaking to chance.

“Don’t do this,” I said.

It wasn’t so much that I had an opinion about the war, or even any understanding of what Boaz was signing up for. It was more that I couldn’t comprehend a distance so far, a change so big, and I was already feeling the change start to happen right then, right there. That night.

“Is he all right?” Christina asks me now.

“I’m not sure.”

“Because I don’t know if you read the paper, but there are all sorts of horror stories about the way they come home. All these advances we’ve made in battlefield triage. We keep saving these soldiers with lost limbs or worse, but then we don’t know how to take care of them once we get them home.”

“No, he’s fine. I mean, he hasn’t got a scratch on him.”