Personal Effects (29 page)

T
HE STREET IS STILL ALL TORN UP, SO
I
PARK MY USUAL
blocks away and walk down. I’m almost to the porch before I see Curtis sitting on the front steps. Between his knees, one step down, is Zoe, her hands wrapped around Curtis’s outstretched fingers. She’s babbling away, and Curtis is so absorbed in her he doesn’t see me.

“Uh, hi,” I finally say when I’m a few steps away.

Curtis’s head pops up and his face breaks into a smile. He looks more like the guy in the picture now. And more like Celia. I had to have been blind not to see it.

Zoe says, “Hi!” and starts to jump from her step, and Curtis wraps an arm around her before she can finish her leap.

“Oh, no, you don’t, Baby Girl.” Once she is secure under his arm, he looks up again. “Let me just run her inside. Be right back.”

He’s up and through the door and back before I have time to figure out whether to sit or not.

“Hey.” He laughs, rubbing his hand over the back of his head. He walks down a few steps and takes a seat, and then motions for me to sit. “She likes the equipment,” he says, waving toward the stuff the road crew left behind. “Can’t get enough of it. But she’s a daredevil, too, so you’ve got to watch her every second.” He rubs the back of his head again. “I just figured we could talk easier if we didn’t have to watch her every move.”

I sit down and carefully settle my backpack on the step beside me.

“I’m glad you came by. I was starting to give up hope.”

“Yeah, I, uh, had to do some stuff, then check out of the hostel.”

“So, you’re really leaving today?”

“Yeah. I have to get back.”

“Too bad,” Curtis says, staring out at the equipment, or maybe at the river across the street. “Would have been nice to show you around. Maybe meet some of our friends. See some of Theo’s favorite hangs.”

“Like?” I ask. Curtis looks at me. I shrug. “Just curious. I really do have to go, but . . .”

Curtis leans back, resting his elbows on the step behind him, stretching his long legs down over several steps. “Well, starting right here. He loved sitting here, watching that river flow by. He loved to go over and wander up and down the bank, chatting with the people fishing or boating by.”

I stare at the water, trying to picture it.

“Friends of ours have a boat. Theo loved to be out on the lake at dawn.” Curtis laughs and stretches even farther out with his toes. “He would make us all get up sick-early and get out there, freezing our asses off, so that he could watch the sky get light. Then he’d come back, have a huge breakfast, and sack out for the afternoon.”

I can picture it. He loved dawn, and water.

“We hiked a lot. He would chart these hikes . . .” Curtis shakes his head and then swings his face my way. “We’d all be cursing him by the end, you know? Punishing climbs, but spectacular views and just amazing descents. He’d find spots so worth the punishment we couldn’t stay mad at him.”

“We were talking about doing the Appalachian Trail when he got back,” I say, hating how defensive my words sound.

“Yeah,” Curtis says, nodding. “I know. He told me.” Something in the way he looks at me makes me want to crawl into a corner. “He thought it’d be good for you to get away alone, so you could get to know each other again.”

Is what I’m hearing Curtis’s own jealousy, like maybe he was mad we were gonna go off for such a long time alone? Or is it that he thought we shouldn’t have to get to know each other again? I feel my anger building. I don’t need Curtis telling me again that I didn’t know my brother.

“Whatever you’re thinking,” Curtis says, breaking off my inner tirade, “you can forget it. You can’t know what I’m thinking, so stop trying.”

“But you can know what I’m thinking?”

“Yeah, ’cause I can see it all over your face. Your poker face is for shit.”

“So, what am I thinking?”

Curtis’s mouth slides up into a knowing grin. “I’m not jealous that he was thinking of hiking the Trail with you. Pu-leaze, like I wanted to go that long without a shower, or electricity, or Ruby Red Cosmos.” He rolls his eyes as he laughs in his chest, then points one finger at me. “And don’t even start on this ‘I knew him better’ shit. We both know that’s not true. You may have known him longer, true. But I,” Curtis says, tenting his fingers over his chest, “I was his future. And Theo over the last seven years? Hmph.”

I’m sulking. I know. But . . . seven years? And I still want to know — need to know. “So, tell me, then, what else?”

Curtis leans his head back and thinks. “Well, he loved the everyday things when he was home. Going out for dinner. Sprawling out on the couch and listening to music or reading. Watching movies. Taking Zoe to the park or playing with her in the backyard. As soon as she could walk, we’d take her on these long, slow walks around the block. I’d beg him to just pick her up already, but Theo insisted she be allowed to walk if she wanted, no matter how slow and backbreaking the walk. Last spring, right before he deployed, he taught her to swim, sort of.” Curtis smiles a far-off smile. Rubs his neck. “He insisted she was ready to swim, and I guess he was right.” He looks at me. “He loved being outside as much as possible, except for in winter. He whined like a baby in winter.”

There’s a flutter of recognition at that. T.J. always hated the cold.

“Big, strong guy, could dig a trench in no time flat, march across a desert, cart heavy equipment for miles, pretty much do anything he put his mind to, but he hated,
hated
shoveling snow.”

Yeah, he really did. Even when we were kids.

“Mainly, when he had time off, we tried to make it last as long as possible. Slowed it down with hikes and movies and dinners and just sitting and talking.” Curtis wipes at an eye and turns his face away from me. “He liked to sit on these steps and watch the world go by. Chat with the people who went past. Wherever we went, he was always talking to people. Sometimes I’d get so mad at him, talking up strangers, wasting time, especially when he had no idea how they’d be about us.”

We sit in silence. Too many questions float in my head.

“Go ahead,” Curtis says, “ask whatever.”

“How long — I mean, when?”

“How long did he live here? Or . . .”

“Yeah, or, well, or when . . . when did he . . . ?”

“When did he know he was gay?”

I nod, not trusting my voice.

“Always,” Curtis says. “He always knew.” He smiles at something only he can see. “He was in such denial when we met. Determined to put ‘it’ behind him. Be normal. Yeah, like that was going to work.”

T.J. was trying not to be like that? And Curtis made him be, or stay, like that?

“The last thing I wanted was to be outed in Basic. Figured the boys would send my black ass home in pieces if they found out. But it was so hard to ignore him. He kept staring. Like he could see right through me.”

Like Shauna, and her looks, her stare that can freeze me.

Curtis laughs. “Damn obvious. Hhm-mmm.” He smiles, then wipes at his mouth until it’s gone. “So, I was keeping as far away from him as I could. But there was something there, even then. And when we got our first night of freedom, well . . .” Curtis’s face lights up, then gets serious again.

“Then why didn’t he . . . ?” I shift so I can see his face without twisting my neck. “Did he really think, you know, that I would hate him?”

Curtis lets out a long breath, shaking his head. “No. However . . .” He measures his words. “He worried that you wouldn’t understand right away, and he couldn’t face that he would have to deploy while you were mad or upset and that he wouldn’t be here to fix it.”

“Did — I mean, the letters, the envelopes — did
anyone
know?”

“The guys in his old unit knew, mostly. And most of them were cool with it. In the unit he deployed with, he wasn’t sure who he could trust, at least not at first. Obviously, he told someone, sometime, because someone knew to call . . .” Curtis presses his knuckles against his mouth, takes a shuddering breath, holds it in for a moment, and then exhales through his fingers, calmed again. “It was hard on Theo. He hated the lying. It tore him up. But he loved the Army.” Curtis’s eyes squint and tense. “Theo felt he was doing what he was meant to do, and he didn’t want to leave anyone shorthanded. Even for me. He went back for the third tour, even though I begged him to get out. We fought about it, about . . .” Curtis swallows the thought, shakes it off, and looks at me again. “He’d never let his unit down. Never.”

I let that sink in, turning it over in my head.

“He couldn’t even be himself, exactly who he was, who we were, but he . . .” Curtis shakes his head. “It wasn’t worth losing him.”

The silence stretches between us. A group paddles by in canoes and someone waves. Curtis waves back, his face softening.

“Someone called you?” I ask.

“Yeah.” His voice is so brittle it almost crackles. “Unofficial, of course. Couldn’t acknowledge anything officially. But . . .” He shakes his head with a nasty look. “I kind of went a little crazy. Destroyed my office. I don’t really remember it all. They said I yelled at him, the guy who called, called him a bastard. Said they could all go to hell.” Curtis shrugs. “Not my finest moment.”

I can only imagine what my father would have done, said, if he weren’t so busy holding it all in. Curtis says something else, but I can’t understand him.

“What?”

He looks at me, clears his throat. “He was going to get out. After this tour, he was going to get out. We were just starting to talk about what came next, whether to stay here or go somewhere new, together, maybe buy a house, but he was going to get out.”

I can hear the pain under the surface of his skin, the tears curdling in his chest.

“It was past time. He’d done his part, more than enough. But I guess I didn’t persuade him fast enough.” He looks down at his hands, twists a silver ring on his finger. “That’s all I could think about. And it felt like they killed him, like all that hiding had robbed him of being free, of being fully him — of letting everyone know how truly amazing he really was. To fight, every day, with everything he had, when . . .”

There’s nothing to say. I am instantly angry, but also sad, for Curtis, for me, even for Dad. Not for T.J. He’s gone; he doesn’t get sad.

“Well and truly outed myself, and destroyed my office — tore it apart. Took two of them to restrain me. After that, the separation from the Army was fast and quiet. I didn’t even fight it. I couldn’t fight it. And I came home.”

“Didn’t you want to come to the funeral?”

He grunts like I hit him.

“I mean . . .” I feel like a jerk for asking, and wish I could suck it back in.

He waves me off with the flick of a wrist. “Later, I was — well, really upset doesn’t quite cover it. Devastated?” His mouth turns up, but it’s not a smile. “I should have been there. But I don’t really remember the first few weeks after. I know Will came and got me. I vaguely remember the car ride. That whole week was really hazy. Missy and Will kept me alive. When I could think enough to ask about funerals and everything, well, we heard it had already happened, and . . . it seemed a little too late to do anything official. We had a memorial, later, for everyone here. There are some pictures.” He waves back toward the house.

There’s nothing to say. It’s all too much. My brain has expanded until it’s pressing on my skull.

All that time. All the time we were dealing with the funeral and letters and people and so many freaking offers of help that we changed our telephone number to get away, and Curtis was here, with nothing. And later, when he could think, wouldn’t he have wondered about the letters? T.J.’s stuff? Maybe he knows where the blanket came from, and why T.J. had that medallion, or the compass.

“Hey,” Curtis finally says, sitting up again, folding his long legs to form sharp angles on the steps. “I have some stuff for you. Come on in and I’ll show you.”

I hesitate for just a step, then follow him through the door, pushing down the wave of sick-feeling nerves that rise at the thought of going into his place,
their
place. I can do this. It’s fine.

I expected a replica of next door, but when I follow him in, it’s hard to believe that this place fits into roughly the same space as Celia and Will’s place.

The walls are sleekly white and smooth, but nearly bare. Everything feels sharp and clean. Dark leather furniture. Silver, gray, and black bits here and there. The room is laid out with a sitting area in the front near the windows and a large table at the other end of the room, where a cutout in the wall shows the kitchen. Deep-red walls and black accents peeking through, like the Chinese restaurant Shauna’s sister took us to that time we went to Philadelphia.

A wave of dizziness nearly floors me. This is the room that box in T.J.’s stuff was meant for.

“Yeah, I know, a little much, but be it ever so humble . . .” Curtis waves, walking over to the large leather couch dominating the space facing the front windows.

Between the dining-room table and the rest of the room, there’s a long, narrow table covered in picture frames, just like at Celia’s, except I don’t have to look hard at all to find T.J. here. He’s everywhere. Curtis and T.J. at different places. One with Curtis’s arms draped around T.J.’s shoulders, T.J.’s hand covering Curtis’s on his chest. One of T.J. holding a paddle on a dock, barefoot and sunburned. One of T.J. lying on a beach. One of Curtis in a suit, standing between an older couple, his parents. T.J. and Curtis and Zoe out front. T.J. and Zoe in a pool. T.J. and Curtis sitting on the steps out front, Curtis’s legs extended out from behind T.J., who is sitting on the step in front of him, leaning back, his hands on Curtis’s knees. They’re both smiling at the camera, but it also looks like they were caught midlaugh, like whoever took the picture was laughing with them. T.J. looks so happy. More than that. He looks at home.

“Our friend Alex took that one,” Curtis says behind me. “We had just gotten back from a long weekend in Chicago.”

“Where was this one taken?” I ask, pointing to a picture of T.J., Curtis, and a bleary-eyed Will, all three holding huge empty glass mugs.