The Things a Brother Knows (8 page)

“Okay.”

Dov puts his hand on the back of my neck. He grabs my hair with his fist and gives it a tug.

“You’re a good boy, Levi,” he says. “A good, good boy.”

Just like she promised, Christina stops by. It’s a Saturday afternoon. Mom and Abba are off at a movie. It’s the thing they still do together, go to the movies. It doesn’t matter the
topic, the style, the genre—for them, each and every movie is an escape.

I’m sitting on the steps when Christina arrives, watching Zim’s little brother mow my lawn. It used to be my job, but I guess Mom got sick of nagging me. Then Mini Chubby Zim, who gets his entrepreneurial streak from his older brother, went and started a neighborhood lawn-mowing business. Not that I want him out of a job, and God knows the kid needs the exercise, but as I sit here I think,
No more
.

From this day on, I mow my own lawn.

Christina checks her reflection in her rearview mirror before stepping out of the car. She’s wearing a tank top and cutoff jean shorts that highlight the miraculous length of her legs. In her bare feet she still stands a good inch taller than me.

She sits down and pushes up her sunglasses. I’ve never been so close to that butterfly in all my life and it takes superhuman strength not to reach out and touch it.

“For the record, his name is Max,” she says. “And he’s really very nice.”

“Who?”

“My boyfriend.”

“Oh. Him.”

She takes a long sip from the iced coffee she brought with her.

“You know, when Boaz and I were together … that was years ago. I mean, so much has—”

“You don’t need to tell me this,” I say, even though I’ve more or less demanded she explain herself by acting like her jilted lover. Jesus, I’m pathetic.

“I know. It’s just that—”

“Look,” I say. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

We sit like this on the steps for a while, long after the lawn is done.

“So? How should we do this?” she finally asks.

“I hadn’t planned that far ahead.”

“Should I go up to his room?”

I think about the stale air. The mattress on the floor. The tangle of clothes and sheets. The maps everywhere.

I think about that day I walked in on them.

“No, let me. You stay here.”

It’s cool inside the house. Quiet. My eyes take time adjusting from the brightness of the day. I put the pads of my fingers to Boaz’s door. I scratch lightly with what’s left of my compulsively bitten nails.

“Boaz?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I come in?”

“Hold on.”

He comes to the door. He cracks it open and then fills up the space.

“What’s up?”

“Christina Crowley is here to see you.”

I don’t know why I use her last name. Like there could ever be another Christina.

“I know,” he says.

“You do?”

He gestures over his shoulder. “I saw her car.”

That he bothers to pull up the shade and look out his
window strikes me as a gigantic leap in the right direction. Funny how quickly the little things become the big things.

“She’d like to see you.”

Boaz shifts uncomfortably. He moves something from one hand to the other and then holds it behind his back. A shoe box. I recognize it immediately. The black and red top and the picture of a clown in comically large shoes. It’s a box from Marty Muldoon’s. They used to give out Tootsie Pops with your sneakers and they went out of business around the time I grew too old to shop there anymore.

Boaz used to keep that box in the back of his closet. Inside he put everything too special to sit unprotected on his shelf. The kinds of things he didn’t want anybody, mainly me, to touch.

I have to admit, I looked for that box once Boaz left home, but like so much else, it had gone missing.

“She’s out on the front steps,” I say. “Waiting. I’m going to my room.”

Five minutes pass before I hear Bo’s door open. I hear him on the stairs. I hear the creaking of the screen door and then I hear it close again. I wait for the sound of Christina’s car starting up, the sound of my brother finally going somewhere, but that sound never comes.

He’s only gone about half an hour, and when he comes back he goes straight to his cave. I hustle down the stairs and catch Christina just as she’s about to pull away from the curb. Boaz’s window looks out to the front, and now that I know he actually lifts his shade, I feel the need to make this quick.

“So?”

I can see that she’s been crying. Puffy eyes and splotched cheeks. She wipes her face with the hem of her tank top and in the process I catch the briefest glimpse of her bare stomach.

It strikes me now that seeing each other again couldn’t possibly have been easy for either of them. I have nothing, no point of reference. No way to know how that must feel.

“Well, thanks,” I offer.

I also, clearly, have no understanding of how to talk to girls who’ve been crying.

“For what?”

“For getting him out of the house.”

“We went for a walk,” she says. “He wouldn’t get in the car. I wanted to take him to this place we used to go, this spot in the woods near the pond, but he refused to get in my car. I asked if he still had something against my driving. He used to be the worst backseat driver. Always criticizing. But no, he said he wouldn’t get in anyone’s car. No car at all.”

“Okay …” I have no idea what else to say.

All I know is I want to reach out and stroke her cheek, to erase the redness, the puffiness, the sadness.

“So I said,
Well, if you don’t ride around in cars anymore, how’d you even get home from the airport?
” She readjusts the mirror.

Then she turns to me. “He said he walked.”

I remember the night Boaz came home. How he just appeared at the door. Suddenly. Silently.

“He needs help, Levi. Beyond what you, or your family, or certainly I can give him. You all must know that.”

“He’s been deemed healthy.”

I can’t believe I say this. It sounded so lame when Dov said it to me and it sounds even lamer now.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not really sure.” I look up to Boaz’s window. I can’t tell for the glare of the sun if the shade is up or down. “You’d better go.”

I straighten up and put my hand on the roof of her car. I give it a slap and she takes this as a cue to drive away without looking back.

I
GET THE JOB AT
V
IDEORAMA
and I break the news to Zim while watching him shoot baskets.

He takes it pretty well.

“That’s okay, man,” he says. “I’m still waiting to hear from the hair salon. I think my chances there are excellent.”

The thing is, he’s not kidding. He’s not going to cut hair or anything, he’s just going to sweep it up off the floor, but he’s hoping if he proves himself, he may get the chance to wash it from time to time.

“All that lady hair,” he says wistfully. “So totally awesome.” In case you hadn’t already figured it out, Zim is kind of a freak.

Pearl got a job at Frozurt, this frozen yogurt place three blocks from Videorama.

Finals are almost over. Then there’ll be a whole round of parties I’m likely to get invited to now that I’m a minor celebrity at school.

I’ve been waiting for news of standardized test scores or a winning baseball team or some sort of PTA meeting to bump
the following words, built out of magnetized black block letters, from the big white sign in front of the main entrance to the school:

It’s been up there ten days now. Like Bowers’s little morning assembly speech wasn’t enough.

Suddenly I’ve become the guy everyone goes out of his way to slap on the back, or say hello to, or share information with about the big party after finals that might have otherwise been kept a secret from someone with my social standing. The whole situation just sort of creeps me out. I want those letters gone, but it doesn’t much matter what I want.

I guess I understand why they’d put that up. Bay State doesn’t have much of a history of graduating eighteen-year-old marines. Most seniors go on to top colleges or at least low-tier colleges for spoiled rich kids.

So the school is taking some sort of pride in him, and I get that, I do. But they don’t know what all this has done to him.

I don’t mention the sign to anyone at home, but now Mom is dropping me off at school because she needs the car I usually drive. Zim is out sick with some totally manufactured ailment, so I can’t catch a ride with him, which means that on top of suffering the indignity of being dropped off at school by
my mother, I’m staring down the dark tunnel of a do-nutless morning.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” She puts the car in park and gazes at the sign. “It’s wonderful, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know, Mom. I guess so.”

“Well, I’m going inside to tell Judy how much we all appreciate this.”

Judy Ulene is the principal. Only parents are allowed to call her Judy.

“I’m guessing you haven’t told her yourself.”

“No, Mom, I haven’t.”

“Why not?”

I know I’m getting accused of something here, but I’m not totally certain of what. Laziness? Thoughtlessness? Self-absorption?

Any of these is way better than what I’ve got a feeling she’s really digging into me for: not supporting my brother enough.

“Because,” I say. “I guess I don’t think that a sign is all that important.”

The bell has already rung for first period and we’re parked in the loading zone. Some stragglers are racing full speed up the steps to the school, but time has slowed down inside this car.

In some ways, we’re on the brink of having one of the first real conversations we’ve had in years.

“Care to explain?”

“Mom. Those words up there … they’re just empty words, put up by some underpaid janitor on a shaky ladder.”

“That is your brother.” Spit flies from her mouth and hits the windshield.

“No, Mom. My brother is home holed up in his room. He won’t do anything. Or say anything. Or go anywhere. He won’t ride in a car. Did you know that? He doesn’t need to be worshipped by people who don’t know him or understand him. He needs help.”

Mom slumps down into her seat, and I start to feel bad for snatching this small moment of happiness from her.

“What he needs is time,” she says. “Time to readjust. To remember who he was and what he wants his life to be. He needs us. To be with his family again.” Her voice has lost most of its size.

“Don’t you think maybe what he needs is some psychiatric help?”

“They screen all returning soldiers for mental health issues before they’re discharged. He passed. They said he’s healthy.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Look, he’s fine. He’s going to be fine. He has us. He has our undying love and support. He just needs time.”

Mom turns to me, all optimism suddenly.

I can’t quite figure her out. I mean, she’s a really smart woman. She grew up with really smart parents. There’s no reason for such a blind spot when it comes to Boaz, except that I guess she’s always had a blind spot when it comes to Boaz. He can do no wrong. Nothing can go wrong.

She’s wearing the smile I’ve grown accustomed to. The kind that it takes some effort to believe in.

“I’m going in there to thank Judy. And you, young man”—she reaches over and tousles my hair—“are going to go ask your teacher’s forgiveness for arriving so terribly late to class.”

I run almost every day now, and when I do, I chant these words to myself:
It’s a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a marathon, not a sprint
.

I can go farther, longer, harder when I don’t focus on the distance between the place where my aching legs strike the potholed pavement and the place where I can finally slow to a walk, stretch my arms over my head and catch my breath.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint
.

Then it strikes me today, when I’m not even thinking about it, ’cause that’s how I find most things strike me, that it’s the same slogan used to justify why we’ve been in this war so long, why so many lives have been lost, why so many soldiers have come home without arms or legs or traces of their former selves.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint
.

It’s the same idea too. Don’t worry about the finish line. Don’t question what you’re doing. Just quiet your mind and keep up the pace.

“What we need,” Dov says, “is a men’s night out. I’m buying.”

Dov is notoriously cheap.

“You can even come along too,” he says to me.

I’m not sure if this is a crack about my age or the length of my hair.

“What did you have in mind?” Abba asks.

“Dinner at the Chinese.”

That’s what Dov calls the Hungry Lion. It’s the only Chinese restaurant in town and Pearl considers it an embarrassment to her people. Terrible lighting. Sticky floors. Peeling posters of the Great Wall in the windows. Most souls brave enough to eat the food only do takeout. But Dov just loves it to pieces.

Mom is thrilled because, for once on a Friday night, she can go to services at Temple Beth Torah.

There’s a party tonight I’m not going to because Pearl can’t go out. I’ll be damned if I’m going to hang out by myself while Zim sneaks off with Maddie Green.

I’m not going even though Rebecca Walsh might be there and I heard she broke up with Dylan, because I figure this whole Younger Brother of a Returning Soldier thing isn’t going to get me the right kind of attention from her.

Not that I’d ever use Boaz’s story to score with a girl. I’m not that kind of guy. If I were, I’d make more of an effort with Sophie Olsen.

Anyway. I tell Dov to count me in.

“Great.” Dov rubs his hands together. Abba’s still reading e-mails on his BlackBerry. “What’s our ETD?” he asks.

Dov checks his watch. “Nowishly.”

“B’seder.”
Abba still taps away. He doesn’t look up from his little device but still manages to direct his next sentence at me.

“Go get your brother.”

I sit and pick a thread from the hem of my T-shirt.