From What I Remember (6 page)

opefully, Kylie is getting on the 3:13 right now at the corner of Buchwald and Center. Otherwise, she’s going to be late, and Mom will be mad. The bus will stop fourteen times before she gets off. The ride is fifty-two minutes long. Unless the bus hits all the green lights; then the ride is forty-one minutes. But this only happens five times a year. Just like me, Kylie likes to sit by the window and look out as the bus cruises toward Logan Heights. There are 186 buildings downtown. More than twenty-nine of them stand taller than three hundred feet. The tallest building in the city is thirty-four stories. One America Plaza. It may not sound very tall if you’ve been to Chicago or New York. I haven’t. So One America Plaza seems really tall to me.

Kylie puts in her earbuds and listens to music so she doesn’t have to talk to anyone. I like to talk to people when I’m on the bus. Sometimes they get up and change seats. Mom says not to be upset, people just don’t like to talk to strangers. Lately, I’ve tried not to talk as much. But when Mom or Kylie aren’t in the mood to talk, it’s hard to know what to do with all the words. There’s always something interesting to talk about, like why certain cacti lean way over but don’t fall to the ground (I suspect this has to do with the moisture content in the cactus fiber), or how the labels on most soda bottles are exactly the same size as the labels on ketchup bottles, almost all of which are manufactured in Malaysia.

I wish I were on the bus right now with Kylie. She always likes listening to me. We could talk about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that I read about in school today.

I hear a key in the lock. Kylie’s home.

ctober 1972,” I say to Jake as I enter the house and see him waiting for me on the maroon chair next to the couch, a bowl of carrots on his lap. I hang up my backpack and step over the enormous pile of laundry deposited at the bottom of the stairs, wondering if it’s clean or dirty. Jake smiles at me like it’s been ten years since we’ve seen each other. Still, it’s nice to be greeted every single day with such enthusiasm. Even if Jake’s brain is a little scrambled from Asperger’s, it feels good to be loved this much. There aren’t a lot of people who feel so positively inclined toward me. “Hurricane Dimitri,” he yells out triumphantly. “Seven people died in Galveston, Texas, and there was twelve inches of precipitation over two days.” Jake eyes shine with excitement.

“Okay…December 1956.”

“Hurricane Meredith. Jamaica lost power for six days. Winds up to 146 miles an hour.” Jake jumps up. His carrots spill across the floor. At thirteen, he’s my height, his jagged energy bouncing off him like electric currents. On the heels of my enormously bad day, I am feeling irritated by Jake, which I try to hide.

“Pick up the carrots, Jakie,” I say.

Jake scowls at me. “No. I won’t.”

I soften my tone. “Please pick up the carrots. And then we’ll keep playing.” I wrap my arms around his hulking frame and pull him close. “Did you have a good day?”

“Yeah. We learned about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” Jake responds, eager to tell me more.

I smile. No matter how bad my day is, Jake can always make me smile. His passion for minutiae is infectious. Until it gets annoying.

“Did you have a good day, Kylie?” Jake asks. He’s been learning about manners and empathy at school, things that don’t come naturally to him. It seems like it’s finally sinking in. Jake is usually so immersed in his own world, he forgets to ask me about mine. Not that I mind. It’s a relief to spend some time in someone else’s reality.

“My day was great,” I lie. I know the truth will only confuse and depress him, just as it does me. He has a limited capacity to understand complicated social interactions, and my life is chock-full of them.

“Me too.” Jake smiles, genuinely pleased. “I like when we both have good days.”

I point to the carrots on the floor. “How about those carrots?”

Jake reluctantly gets down on all fours and gathers up a few carrots. He flicks one under the couch, for fun. He watches to see what I’ll do. I pretend not to see. I’m too wiped to care.

Jake stands up and looks at me expectantly.

“Okay. November 1932,” I say.

“There was no hurricane that month. Just a tropical storm. That’s boring.” Jake peers at me, eager. Too eager. “Give me another one.”

Just once, I’d love to come home, disappear into my room, listen to some Arcade Fire, and spend some quality time writing.

“Okay, here’s a reverse one. Hurricane Dana,” I say.

“Oooh. I know that one.” Jake is so excited, he starts to vibrate.

Jake is smart. Scary smart. People assume he’s stupid because he’s got a disability, but they’re dead wrong. If anything, he’s disabled by his superbrain. The carrots are back on the floor.

Mom rushes down the stairs, her uniform hanging open, her overstuffed purse dangling from her arm. “Can you make dinner, Kyles?”

She kneels down and picks up the carrots.

“Mom, please don’t do that. Jake can pick them up. Right, Jake?”

Jake says nothing.

Mom continues to gather the carrots into the bowl with one hand as she buttons her uniform with the other. “Oh, Kylie, it’s just carrots. Don’t be so hard on him.”

Jake looks at me, and we have a moment of understanding. He’s gotten away with it, as usual.

“Here, honey.” Mom hands me a piece of paper with an elaborate chart sketched on it. “He’s got to do three sets of fifteen each, okay, and that includes the arm stretches and the hopping thing the doctor showed us the other day. He needs it to improve his balance. And don’t forget the pills.” If Mom paid one tenth this much attention to me, maybe I wouldn’t have lost my mind on a squash court this afternoon.

“Okay,” I say.

“I want to play guitar tonight. I don’t want to do the stupid exercises.” Jake’s mood is shifting.

“You can play guitar, honey, after you and Kylie do the exercises, and after you eat dinner. Kylie, I left some salad in the fridge, but you can make some pasta or something. And Dad should be home in a half hour. He came back a day early.”

Mom works as a nurse at Piedmont Retirement Village four nights a week. I’m in charge of myself and Jake those nights. And Dad, whenever he’s around. God knows what will happen once I leave. Dad doesn’t spend a whole lot of time taking care of anyone but himself. He mows the lawn and takes out the garbage, such classic dad duties it would be funny if it weren’t slightly tragic.

“And can you do the laundry, Kyles?”

“Is that clean or dirty?” I ask, pointing to the mound of clothes on the floor.

Mom stares at the pile, confused. “Can’t remember. Can you poke around and figure it out?”

“Sure,” I respond. What else can I say?

Mom pecks Jake on the cheek and then rushes out the door with a wave. “Bye, guys. Love you.”

I look at my watch. Mom’s going to be twenty minutes late to work. Typical.

This has been my life for as long as I can remember. Mom is so distracted by Jake, everything else is an afterthought and I’m forced to pick up the slack. Normally, I don’t complain. It’s pointless. It’s just, today I’m so not into sifting through a heap of potentially smelly clothes and then whipping up dinner for three. I comfort myself with the thought that I’ll be gone soon.

But that comfort is fleeting. As much as I want to escape, I worry about how Mom will handle things on her own. On the one hand, it makes me want to enroll at UCSD and just live at home. On the other, New York City doesn’t seem far enough away. The moon doesn’t seem far enough away.

I’m interrupted from my roundelay of anxieties by Jake tugging at my sleeve.

“Can I tell you the answer? Can I tell you? Can I tell you?” Jake has been waiting patiently, and now he’s bursting to answer the question I’ve long forgotten. Still, he’s made impressive progress at his new school. I am reminded what Jake is capable of when he sets his mind to it. A year ago, he never would have had the self-control to wait. “September 1987. Grenada had bad flooding. Grenada had bad flooding!!”

“You’re amazing, Jake,” I say. And I mean it.

Jake could do this for the next ten hours. He will do this for the rest of his life, actually. This, and recite every iteration of the dozens of bus schedules that service the greater San Diego area.

I wade through the laundry and realize, to my relief, that it’s clean. One less thing to do. I grab the clothes and start to head up to my room. “Jake, I’m going upstairs for a little bit. You want to watch TV? Or read your book?”

“I want to tell you about the Garbage Patch,” Jake whines. “You have to hear about the Garbage Patch. You just have to.…”

I can feel myself shutting down. I just want to proof my valedictorian speech one last time, and get back to my screenplay. But then I see Jake’s hands trembling. He’s verging on a tantrum. I look at his sweet, open face, pleading with me for more time. I plop onto the couch with the laundry.

“Tell me, Jakie,” I say.

I fold the laundry as Jake settles onto the floor.

“Well, it’s twice the size of Texas and located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s made up of plastic and other forms of debris, like fishing nets. Garbage from all over the world gets sucked in by an oceanic gyre, which is a huge system of rotating currents.” He speaks with the zeal of a true believer. It’s not so much the words I’m hearing, it’s more the cadence.