Ask Him Why (10 page)

“Aubrey and I want to go to Aunt Sheila’s for the summer.”

I just said it straight out like that, over dinner. Aubrey never took his focus off the chandelier.

I watched my mom’s eyes narrow suspiciously.

“Why? You never begged to go to Sheila’s house before.”

“I’m not begging,” I said firmly, and with an unusual dose of poise. “We just think it would be a good idea. You know. Because of . . .” I tossed my head in the direction of the street.

She looked at my father, who nodded so slightly I almost didn’t catch it.

“Okay,” she said. “You’re right. I envy you. Wish I could get out of this fishbowl. But don’t get your hopes up for total peace and quiet. Because Sheila told your father she’s been getting phone calls from the press.”

Aubrey’s eyes came down from the light and the prisms. We looked at each other in silence for a moment. I think we really had been assuming we would live out our summer in utter anonymity and peace.

“How do they even know she’s related?” I asked my mom. It smacked of a complaint, like the world hadn’t behaved properly, and I could fix it just by pointing it out. “She doesn’t have the same last name.”

My mom snorted in that way she did when she wanted to make the point that she knew the world and we didn’t. “These things are not hard to find out,” she said. She ate her lamb curry for a moment in silence, chewing thoughtfully. Or it looked thoughtful, anyway—like chewing and thinking couldn’t be separated out. Then she added, “We’ll call her and see what she says.”

“She said yes,” I said.

A dark silence fell, and I scrambled around in my mind, wondering why I’d so thoughtlessly admitted we’d called Aunt Sheila behind their backs. Truthfully, it really hadn’t occurred to me that we shouldn’t. But the silence felt weird.

“Without asking us first?”

My mother was doing all the talking. My dad was lost in his food, and maybe other things as well. It struck me in that moment that he had turned the important job of calling us on our mistakes over to her, which was unheard of.

“Well,” I said, keeping my voice casual. “What was the point of even bothering you with the idea if she was busy or said no for some reason?”

Another silence, and then she nodded and life went on, so I tried to breathe deeply without letting on that I was relieved.

I chewed a bite of lamb slowly, then said, “Wait a minute. How come
we’re
not getting a bunch of phone calls?”

My mother laughed—actually laughed out loud, like I’d told a merry joke and she’d enjoyed it, if such a thing were possible in the Stellkellner family.

“Honey,” she said. “We’ve had the ringer turned off on that phone since the day this hit the papers.”

I swallowed hard and wondered who had to go through the voice mails, and how many there were every day, and what they said. Maybe that was why my dad looked as though he were lost on some distant planet. Maybe that was why he didn’t say a word these days.

Chapter Eight: Aubrey

April 14, 2003

Dear Joseph,

Ruth and Aunt Sheila said to write to you. I haven’t even thought of anything to say yet, and already I feel bad. Because I want to tell you a lot about how rotten everything is here. But then I think, that’s nothing compared to the rottenness on your end. You’re in jail.

And besides, I don’t want you to feel like it’s all your fault.

I have to be honest and say I really don’t understand why you’re in jail. I mean, I know what the charges are. I even know why people think it’s such a big deal, what you did. I just don’t know what you’re doing in custody.

You were free. Nobody knew where you were. On the cop shows, they call that being in the wind.

Why did you turn yourself in?

I’m pretty sure if it happened to me, I’d still be in the wind. Especially if I were you. Because I just don’t think they’re going to be fair to you.

I don’t think you should be able to put somebody in jail for doing what he thought was right. Not even if the people who are putting you on trial think it’s wrong. I think you should be able to put somebody in jail for purposely hurting somebody else. Or stealing. Or something where you knew what you were doing was wrong and tried to get away with it. But not for this.

I have something I’m going to tell you that I haven’t told anybody else. I’m still reading everything about you online. The news stories and the blogs and the websites for and against you. Except they’re mostly against you. And then I read all the comments.

I can’t stop.

I know I should stop. I think Ruth read them at least once. Because she told me, “Don’t read the comments.” But I do. Because they’re there. Anybody can read them. I feel like I have to know what’s out there for everybody to see.

Is that why you turned yourself in? Because people are saying such terrible things about you? And you wanted them to know you were honest? And maybe you even thought they’d know you’re innocent if you turned yourself in? Because guilty people usually run? Which, well, now that I think about it, you did. At first. But maybe then you thought how that would just make you look guilty?

If so, this is just my opinion, but I think you shouldn’t have. Because they will never give you a break. No matter what you do, it will never be good enough. They’ll always be against you.

It’s driving me crazy. And I can’t tell anybody because I don’t want them to send me to a shrink or something. (Which I think they will, anyway.) But I can’t sleep at night because I lie awake arguing with those people in my head. I feel like I need to find them all and beat them all up. Or maybe first try to change their minds and then only beat them up if I can’t. And I feel like I can’t rest or relax until I do.

But, you know. It’s impossible. It’s everybody.

As long as I live, I’m never going to do what they’re doing. I made myself a promise. And now I’m making the promise to you. I’m never going to judge somebody I don’t know. And if somebody is accused of something in the newspaper or on TV, I’m going to remember that maybe he did it or maybe he didn’t. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know.

Why doesn’t anybody do that? Why do they all think they know? They never even met you. They should be able to see how much they don’t know.

Okay. That’s enough of that, because I’m probably just making you feel worse. And it’s their fault. Not yours.

Please write back to me, Joseph. I don’t want to seem like I’m begging. Except I sort of am. It’s so important to me. I need to feel like we’re connected again. Lately I’ve been feeling like you belong to everybody else and not to me. Like those people who are screaming about you are acting like you’re their brother, not mine. And I’m starting to feel like there’s some kind of brick wall between us. And like I can’t see you through it.

I guess I’m starting to feel like they’re right.

So please write back as fast as you can so I can feel normal again. Then in June or sometime during the summer we’ll fly out there and see you. Don’t worry. Aunt Sheila is going to take us. And don’t worry about Aunt Sheila spending all her money on planes, because I can pay for it.

Maybe I can do something you need done. Do you need a good lawyer? Well. I guess I don’t have
that
much money. But I still want you to tell me what you need. Better food? Or maybe even something like cigarettes, either to smoke or to trade for something else? Or is that only in the movies?

Well. I’m going to leave you alone now. Write back. Please. It’s important.

Your brother,

Aubrey Stellkellner

As soon as I finished writing it, I wanted to scratch out my last name. Because Joseph knew my last name. It was the same as his, even though we had different fathers. Because Ruth’s and my dad adopted him. So that was stupid, writing “Stellkellner.” But I didn’t want to scratch it out, because then it would be messy. And it was too long a letter to copy over.

I tried to put it out of my mind, how stupid it was.

I wrote a note to Aunt Sheila to put in the envelope with the letter. It asked her to please call me the minute we heard back from Joseph.

My mom woke me up at seven thirty in the morning. Banging on my bedroom door. I saw a movie once where a mom woke her son with a kiss on the forehead. I envied him so much I almost cried. In front of people. I mean, I didn’t. Of course. But still, that was a close call.

“Up!” she yelled through the door.

“Take a hint!” I yelled back. “I’m suspended.”

“Like I could forget.”

“So why do I have to get up?”

“You have an eight-thirty appointment.”

“What appointment? With who?”

No answer. I heard the scuff of her shoes on the thickly carpeted stairs.

I sat up. Looked around. I think I was still half-asleep.

Finally, I got up and pulled on jeans and a sweater. My favorite sweater. When I wore it, I always felt a little more secure.

I trotted downstairs and found my mom in the kitchen. She pointed to my breakfast, which was sitting waiting for me on the kitchen table. Bacon, eggs scrambled just the way I liked them, pancakes, orange juice.

Sounds like a scene from that movie with wake-up kisses. Except my mom hadn’t made that breakfast. Isabella had made it. I could tell. Because it looked and smelled great. And because the eggs were scrambled just the way I liked them.

No, my mom’s contribution to breakfast was to point at it. Nothing more.

“What appointment? With who?”

“You’re seeing your new therapist today.”

“I don’t want to see a therapist.”

“Really not optional,” she said. “We promised your principal. Now eat your breakfast. Doesn’t pay to get your head shrunk on an empty stomach.”

I wondered if she was guessing. Or if she knew from personal experience.

We waited in the therapist’s outer office. Yes, that’s right.
We.
Me and my mommy. Can you imagine anything more humiliating for a thirteen-year-old boy?

“Why can’t you just come back and pick me up in an hour?” I asked her.

“Because I don’t trust you.”

“To do what?”

“Oh, use your brain, Aubrey. You have a decent brain, you just keep it in mothballs all the time.”

“You think I’m going to run off and get myself an ice-cream soda and then come back here just in time to be picked up and then tell you it went great.”

“Bingo.”

I sighed. It had never occurred to me to ditch the session, actually. But once we’d laid out the situation, I couldn’t deny that it might have. The minute she left.

It was a moot point, though. Because she never left.

My new therapist’s name was Luanne. I thought it didn’t suit her. To me a Luanne was a fluffy type. A girly girl. This girl looked like she could take care of herself and then some. She was probably six feet tall. She had this gaze that I thought could turn steely. But it didn’t, so I’m not sure why I thought so. Her face was no-nonsense. I don’t think she wore any makeup. I also didn’t think she needed any.

I think she was probably multiracial. She had light brown eyes and jet-black hair, and I figured she could have been African American. Or maybe not. Or maybe she was Mideastern or some other ethnicity.

I’m just reporting this. I didn’t care. In fact, if anything, it might have been a point in her favor. In my neighborhood, you could get plenty tired of whiteness.

“Have a seat,” she said.

And she smiled at me. And I liked her.

Which was a problem. I didn’t want to like her.

It embarrassed me to look into her face, so I looked around her office.

I had never seen so many fish in one place in my entire life.

Her office was decorated with seven aquariums.
Seven.
And they were huge. Like maybe a hundred gallons each. Though estimating the bulk of a small body of water was not my specialty at the time. Or now.