Josie and Jack (31 page)

For a moment, I thought I saw the words
EAT ME
floating among the tomato and onion. I tasted; the sauce burned going down. A sprinkle of red chili flakes took care of that. Jack liked spicy food. We would eat heartily.

“Let that simmer,” I said to him as I rinsed the scent of the lilies from my hands. “Don’t stir it.”

We sat together over twin plates of pasta piled high with sauce. There was good wine. Candlelight played romantically over the polished silver; it cast interesting shadows around my brother’s jaw and cheekbones, making him look dramatic and otherworldly. He told me that he was glad that we were still together, that he had never regretted rescuing me from our father’s house, and that he couldn’t imagine life without me.

I said, “Me too,” and stared at my first forkful of pasta, with its hot, glistening strands wrapped round and round in a neat knot. The fork seemed to float independently in midair, unrelated to the hand holding it or the person to whom that hand belonged.

I could not bring myself to put the food in my mouth.

No. That’s not the truth. The truth is that I chose not to eat it. The truth is that when Jack put the first bite into his mouth, I felt some dark place in me
opening,
some place that had never seen sun, never felt fresh air.

When I put my fork down, Jack said, “Are you still feeling bad?”

“A little,” I said.

He gave me a sympathetic look and took another bite.

I didn’t eat anything. Jack ate everything on his plate.

I told him I was tired and we went to bed. The sheets were cold and we huddled together under the blankets. Jack fell asleep quickly, as he always had, his arm draped over me.

I thought I wouldn’t sleep, but I must have. I woke up to the sound of the toilet flushing and Jack crawling back into bed. His skin was clammy and he was trembling.

“I think I’m sick.” His voice was weak.

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” he said and fell back into a fitful sleep.

It didn’t last. Within fifteen minutes he was awake again, groaning and panting. I laid my hand on his forehead. The pulse in his temple fluttered under my fingers. I turned on the bedside lamp and I could see that his color wasn’t good.

I touched his sweaty forehead. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Stay up with me,” he said.

I rose and went to the kitchen. There was some ginger ale in the refrigerator; I poured some into a glass and brought it back to him. He was curled up in a tight ball on the bed with his eyes squeezed shut. When he heard me come near he opened them and they were dark and haunted.

“Maybe you’ve been taking too many pills,” I said.

He shook his head. “The sauce must have been bad. It’s all I can think of.”

I lay next to him in bed and stroked his hair while he tried to sleep. His body was warm and comforting against mine. Once he opened his eyes and said, “Jesus, I can hardly see.”

“It’ll be over by morning,” I said. “Food poisoning doesn’t last.”

He smiled weakly. “Think I’ll live?”

I gave him a critical once-over. “Doubtful.” He laughed painfully.

As time passed, he started to complain of a sharp pain in his gut. Around three o’clock, he asked me to read to him. I found the copy of
Alice in Wonderland
that the doctor had given to me, and I read to him until four, when he said that he needed to use the bathroom. When he finally made it to his feet, he couldn’t walk without help.

By the time he went back to bed, he was panting and exhausted. I picked the book up to read to him again and he put his hand on my wrist. “Don’t, Josie,” he said. “My head is splitting.”

He put his head in my lap and closed his eyes.

He slept restlessly until the sun came up and the light in Lily’s bedroom grew brighter. He didn’t seem to know where he was. He asked me what time Raeburn was going to be home and I said, “No, Jack, we’re in New York. We’re at Lily’s.”

He nodded. “Of course we are. Is she here?”

“No, Jack. Lily’s dead.”

He gazed up at me for a moment with his beautiful green eyes and their long, long lashes. “Josie?”

“Yes, Jack?”

“Just checking.”

“Who did you think I was?”

“Mary,” he said simply.

Then he fell asleep again.

I took his steel watch from the nightstand and put it on, so I know that at exactly ten minutes past nine my brother’s breathing began to come in short pants. I’d been stroking his hair and suddenly my hand was covered in his sweat.

His eyes opened. My eyes were wet, but I felt a great calm as I stroked his forehead and murmured soothing things. I told him everything would be okay. I told him he would feel better soon. I told him that we’d find a new, better life to live somewhere else. I told him that I loved him. Suddenly he opened his eyes wide and seemed to see me, really
see
me, and he opened his mouth as if he were going to speak. He took a breath—a deep, rattling gasp—and let it go. He did not take another one.

For a long time I sat frozen on the edge of the bed and stared at him, trying to memorize his face, his eyes, the smell of him. He was my brother. He was the pivot around which my life had revolved. He was the only person who had ever loved me.

When I moved, it was as if I were moving through thick water. The silence was heavy in my ears. I took his old leather jacket and the high black boots that Lily had bought for me. I took his wallet and the copy of
Alice in Wonderland.
I left Lily’s credit cards. I left her jewelry.

The doorman was dozing when I left. I caught a cab at the corner and took it to the bus station. I bought a ticket. Every step was uncertainty and agony, but soon enough I was out of the city and onto the highway, and it was easier.

I left New York.

My brother stayed behind.

Epilogue

T
WELVE HOURS LATER
I stood on the front porch. The door was closed, its chipped paint at once familiar and strange. The elms overhead were bare; the snow was deep and the woods were muffled and quiet. I’d crossed three states on a bus. The air was so clean and sharp that I felt I’d just emerged from a loud, dark tunnel.

There was a new housing development going up. I’d passed it on the way. It had happened before, but never on our side of the Hill. It meant that somebody had died; the houses themselves were protected by historical designation, but the grounds were up for grabs as soon as the dirt hit the coffin. The trees were already a little thinner in that direction. Soon, I thought, the cushion of thick growth that had protected us from the world would be gone. When new houses went up on the cleared lots, they’d be visible from the porch even in the summer, when the leaves were at their most dense.

I knocked.

I’d gotten off the bus in Harrisburg and caught another one to Carlisle. I’d hitched to the house from the bus station. I was tired and it was cold, but Jack’s leather jacket had kept me warm. When I buried my face in the sheepskin collar, I could smell the last year of my life: lilies, mostly; cigarette smoke; and underneath it all, the sweet, spicy scent of Jack’s cologne, and the close air in his room. The lack of him beat within me like a new heart.

His, plus mine, plus the other, made three.

I would think about that later, I decided.

The door opened.

A girl in thick glasses, her dark hair cut in a smooth, severe bob, stood in front of me. She was wearing a long shapeless skirt and a sweater that I recognized as my father’s. “Yes?” she said.

And then she whispered, “Josephine.”

“Margaret Revolt,” I said.

My father and I sat at opposite sides of the kitchen table. I’d already gone upstairs and retrieved my birth certificate from underneath my mattress, and it was safe in my pocket. The kitchen was smaller and dingier than I remembered. There was one patch of sunlight in the room that fell on a long, deep scratch in the floor. It seemed inconceivable that I had ever lived here.

“College was pointless anyway,” Margaret Revolt had told me. “The only reason I stayed as long as I did was so that I could keep taking Joseph’s classes.” She said that she was still learning, that my father was teaching her more than college ever could. Then she had lamely offered me orange juice and I had refused. Now she was hovering uncertainly in the background. It was easy for me to ignore her.

Raeburn’s shirt was clean and so was his hair, which looked as if it had been recently cut. He had new glasses and I thought he’d lost weight. He looked ten years younger than he had the last time I had seen him.

“Where’s your brother?” he finally said.

I shook my head.

Margaret started to speak and Raeburn quelled her with a look. “He abandoned you. I could have told you that would happen. You’re better off without him.”

“I didn’t mean that,” I said. “I meant, don’t ask me. I won’t tell you.”

Raeburn’s eyes gauged me for a moment. “Before she had children, your mother possessed the most brilliant mind I’d ever seen—until Margaret, of course.” He leaned in, close and conspiratorial. “I see her in you. I see her in
both
of you.”

Margaret Revolt moved uncomfortably in the background.

“It was you children who drove her over the edge,” he said.

“No.” My voice was clear and strong. “It wasn’t.”

Raeburn’s eyes shifted from me to the table, and back again. He said nothing.

“Are you staying?” Margaret said.

I looked at Raeburn and realized that I was utterly without fear of him. I was smiling. It felt like the first real smile in years. “Not here.”

My father barked out a short, contemptuous laugh. “Where will you go?”

“Anywhere I want.”

Raeburn took a drink from the glass of whiskey in front of him. He swirled the liquid around in his mouth. His eyes were wary.

“Something’s different,” he said. “What has your brother done to you?”

“It was me,” I said. “I did it. Not him.”

Acknowledgments

I owe a particular debt to Dr. James C. M. Brust, M.D., who could always be counted upon for answers, no matter how strange the question. Binnie Kirshenbaum, Nicholas Christopher, Lauren Grodstein, and Gordon Haber read this book in its nascent stages and told me to keep going. Emily Gohn lived with me through the first six drafts and is still my best friend; Owen King lived with me through the last three and will always be my superhero. Al Sanfilippo, Marvin Frankel, and Nicolaus Mills were lampposts along the way. And, of course, the incomparable Julie Barer and Elaine Pfefferblit helped the story inside my head find its way more fully to the page. Without their faith, talent, and hard work, this book might still exist—but it wouldn’t be nearly as good.

Finally, with much love and gratitude, I would like to thank my family, especially Esther Long and Mary Lou Roe. And, of course, my endless appreciation goes to my mother, Theresa Braffet, whose hands are always full of books, and my father, Jim Braffet, whose head is always full of stories. All of this is yours.