Ask Him Why (22 page)

I slept for part of the morning. A couple of hours, at least. Then when I woke up, I’d missed my first class. And if I didn’t get dressed fast, I’d be late for my second.

The phone rang. That figured. Because it was the worst possible time.

I figured it would be Ruth. And because of that assumption, when it turned out to be Jenny, it was actually a relief.

“I’m kind of in a hurry,” I said, instead of “hello.”

“Why didn’t you come home?”

“I just drove around.”

“I’m not sure I believe that.”

“I don’t have time to convince you, Jenny. I’m late for class.”

“You only drive around when you’re upset. Assuming you’re telling me the truth, what happened?”

“I found out my brother, Joseph, is out of prison. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m really late.”

Halfway to the university, I got a text from her. I shouldn’t have read it while I was driving. I did anyway.

It said,
Pls pack what’s mine. Leave in living room. I’ll pick up while you’re at work 2night.

Without pulling over, I texted back,
Why?

Answer:
Know how obsessed u r with him when he’s in. Don’t want to know what u r like when he’s out.

Chapter Nineteen: Ruth

When I woke up the light hurt my eyes, it was after eleven a.m. according to my watch, and I had no idea where I was. But it took only seconds to remember Ham’s little cottage. I was sleeping on the couch, because it didn’t have a second bedroom. I had no idea where Joseph had slept, and I didn’t even know if Regina was still around.

I sat up and cleared my head for a moment and rubbed my face briskly.

There was food cooking. I could smell it. It smelled like Ham’s lifesaving famous signature breakfast. Normally I’d have been nearly onto lunch by eleven a.m., but I’d had trouble sleeping, and besides, I reminded myself, the signature breakfast could be served at any time of day—though I couldn’t imagine Ham felt good enough to get up and cook it the day after being released from the hospital.

I stumbled into the kitchen to see that it was my brother Joseph doing the cooking. I looked over his shoulder into the skillets.

“Looks and smells just like what Ham makes.”

“It is,” he said. “It’s a pretty damn good facsimile if I do say so myself.”

“How did you learn to do that?”

“I was here every summer, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right. You making it for him? Or for yourself? Or for me?”

“Yes,” he said. “All of the above.”

It didn’t really look like enough for three, which is why I’d asked, but I figured Ham wasn’t nearly back to full appetite yet. Or maybe his appetite had been shrinking as long as I’d known him. Ninety-five-year-olds aren’t famous for eating gigantic meals.

“So he’s awake. Good. I’m going to go in and say hi.”

But by the time I rapped on the jamb of the open bedroom door and peeked in, he must have drifted off again.

“Not quite,” I said when I got back to the kitchen.

“No point waking him until it’s ready.”

I sat down at the table and played nervously with the Mr. and Mrs. Santa salt and pepper shakers, which I’d long ago learned were out all year round—maybe by the same logic that dictated breakfast can always be the appropriate meal. I could feel that I still wasn’t 100 percent awake.

And I still wasn’t 100 percent comfortable being alone with Joseph, but I really had no mental justification as to why that would be. I just knew I wished Ham were here to keep everything balanced, especially me.

“I didn’t mean to sleep so late,” I said. “But I didn’t fall asleep until something like five or six.”

“I had trouble sleeping, too. Wish I’d known. We could’ve sat outside and caught up.”

“Where did you sleep? I lost track of you before I bunked down on the couch.”

“In Hammy’s room. In a sleeping bag on the floor. I thought it might be good to have someone close by. In case he had trouble breathing or anything.”

Silence, a long one, and again it struck me as strange that two people could live together for fifteen years, then spend ten apart . . . and not have much to say to each other while reuniting.

“Where’s Regina?” I asked when it felt awkward.

“She had to go back to Portland. That was all the time she could take off work.”

“I’m amazed she hasn’t retired.”

“No, you’re not. You’re amazed that a seventy-year-old in general hasn’t retired. But you couldn’t be amazed about her.”

“True,” I said.

Then we fell silent again, and the awkwardness and pressure began to feel nearly unmanageable.

“So, where do you live?” I asked, finally.

“Colorado.”

“Really? What’s in Colorado?”

“Me,” he said. He was sliding raw eggs from a saucer into simmering water to poach, one at a time. “I got a job on a horse ranch there. A guy who was in with me hooked me up with the job for when I got out.”

“Like it?”

“I do. A lot. It’s in the foothills of the Rockies. The air is clean. It’s really beautiful.”

“But . . . since when do you know anything about horses?”

“Since I got the job, I guess. It’s kind of a learn-as-you-go proposition.”

More terrible silence.

“You should come out and visit me,” he said, which allowed me to see that he felt the pressure of the silences, too. “All three of you. I’d love to meet Sean and Maya.”

“We will,” I said. “We absolutely will.”

And, you know, I actually wasn’t lying—at least, as far as I knew. I could picture a visit with Joseph with Sean to hold up half of our end of the conversation and Maya as the constant focus. It was the one-on-one that was getting us mired up, and I wanted to get past that. I swear I did.

“You know what’s weird?” I asked, because once you identify that you want to move beyond something, I find it’s best to start moving. “We haven’t seen each other in a decade, and I feel like all we’ve really done is small talk. I’m not blaming you, because I’m doing it, too. I’m just not sure how to stop.”

“Well, let’s just get real, then,” he said, getting down three plates from the cupboard.

“I’ll start,” I surprised myself by saying. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Okay.”

“Did you come here when you were twelve to seriously jump off that cliff?”

I watched the gears turn in his head for a second or two, thinking he seemed a little off balance. Or maybe that was me.

“That was
so
not the question I was expecting,” he said, and he came and sat across the table from me. “Honest answer, I swear: I don’t know. I know how it felt, and it felt so real inside me. I think I really believed at the time that I was serious. But I’d just read that article about Hammy. And now that I look back on it, I can also feel how his reaching out to people was a very real draw for me at the exact same time. So I know it sounds like a yes or no question. And I swear I’m not ducking it. But I don’t have a better answer for you than that.”

“That one’ll do,” I said.

“Besides, I’m about to burn the bacon.”

He got up and turned back to the stove, where he began dishing the food up onto plates. All except the eggs, which he checked, but left simmering. He pushed the lever on the four-slice toaster, and three slices of bread disappeared into it.

“I have one for you, too,” he said. “Does Aubrey know I’m out?”

“
I
didn’t even know till yesterday.”

“But that doesn’t really answer the question, Duck. Because that was yesterday.”

Then I felt a little ashamed, because he was right—I was evading.

“I called him,” I said. “But I had to leave a message. And he hasn’t called me back.”

I watched him use a slotted spoon to rescue the eggs one at a time and set them on paper towels to drain.

“So I guess my real question, then,” he said, “is whether I should even try to contact him.”

“That would be the sixty-four-dollar question, all right.”

“Why do you think I’m asking?”

“I’d have to say no. I’d say let him come to you.”

“But will he ever? Come to me?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t suppose he will.”

“I’m going to go wake Hammy and get him out to the table,” he said.

And that was the end of that—both the small talk and our first attempt at getting real.

Joseph walked Ham to the kitchen table with one arm hooked through his. My old friend looked even shorter than I remembered him—which was not necessarily an illusion—and he’d lost more weight. Maybe I just wasn’t used to seeing him in pajamas, but he looked bone thin. But his face was bright, his smile unchanged.

He was just very weak.

“Oh, poor Ham,” I said. “We should’ve brought breakfast in to you.”

“Don’t think I didn’t try,” Joseph said. “Hammy’s not the breakfast-in-bed type.”

“Especially when you’ve been sick,” Ham said, reaching one thin arm out to steady himself on the back of a kitchen chair. Then Joseph helped him ease into it. “Makes you feel better to be up and around. Lying there feeling sick is not always the best path to feeling well again.”

I sat next to him at the table and was shocked to realize I could hear the wet rasp of his breathing—actually hear what was happening down in his poor embattled lungs.

“How do you feel today?” I asked.

“Better. Thank you, love. They have me on those strong antibiotics, so we’ll get the best o’ this bugger yet. Meanwhile, Ruthie, I sure hope you came here to see your dear brother Joe and not just me, because I’ll be on my feet in no time, love. I’m just an old man with a bad cough. Nothing interesting about that. Like they say in the cop movies: ‘Move along, show’s over. Nothing more to see here.’ No reason to spend hours flying just to hear me struggle to clear my old lungs.”

Then, as if on cue, he launched into a coughing fit. Joseph handed him a handful of tissues, and I carefully looked the other way as he hawked phlegm up into them and wiped his mouth.

Joseph served our breakfasts.

“No, I came to see
you
,” I said. Then I bit off half a slice of bacon in one enormous bite. “I didn’t even know Joseph would be here,” I added, mouth still full. “I didn’t even know he was out.”

“Regina didn’t tell you?”

“No. Not a word.”

I glanced over at Joseph to see if he was following the subtext I was trying—and failing—to hide. But I should have known. Joseph was not a stupid man.

“She’s always up to something,” Ham said. “Now, tell the truth, Ruthie. How’s it feel to see your old brother after all these years?”

“Well . . . it’s great,” I said. Which was the truth, but not the whole truth. In fact, if I were being completely honest, I’d have to say it was less than 5 percent of the truth.

“And that,” Ham said, “no offense, Ruthie, sounds more like the story for publication.”

I loaded up my mouth with fried potatoes and sighed, mostly because they were so good. I’d tried to make them at home from time to time, but they were never the same. I chewed for a moment in silence.

“Confusing,” I said. “I feel like it’s something I could have done a better job on if I’d had time to adjust, which I guess I always thought I would have. You know, when the time finally came. It’s good to see him, but it feels sad, too, because he’s in his thirties and I don’t even know him as an adult, and it’s hard to know how to talk to an almost-stranger who’s supposed to feel like family. And also . . . it’s bringing up a lot of bad memories from when I last saw him, which was when all hell was breaking loose. But I hope that wasn’t too much honesty. No offense intended, Joseph.”

“None taken,” he said, but he looked and sounded sad, too.

“Good to get the truth out into the air,” Ham said. “Everything grows best in oxygen and sunlight except secrets and guilt and regrets. They like the dank spaces. Drag them out into the light and they fail to thrive.”

We ate in silence for a good half of the meal.

When Ham finally spoke, it startled me.

“So how long can you stay, Ruthie?”

“I have to leave in the morning. I have to figure out how to get back to the airport.”

“Joseph can drive you in my car.”

“Oh,” I said. “Good.”

But it didn’t feel good. Another hour and a half, alone in the car together, struggling to find words to say to each other. That did not sound like a good thing at all.

Ham was in bed the following morning when I went in to say good-bye.