Authors: Swati Avasthi
chapter 15
i
’m on a break at work
, sitting in the café with
Joy of Cooking
in front of me while I suck a smoothie through an extra-wide straw.
After looking at the ingredients for Stroganoff, I decide to try something easier. I’ve only mastered fried eggs and pasta so far. How about a good hamburger or macaroni and cheese? What will my mom think when she comes out here (forty-six days away) and discovers that I can cook? After flipping to the index and back again, I notice that legs are standing beside my table. I look up and see Christian. He’s wearing his scrubs, carrying a paperback, and has his murse (man’s purse) slung over his shoulder.
“Hey, what are you doing here?”
“I thought I’d bring you something to eat. You went off without breakfast, right?” He hands me a banana and puts a granola bar on the table.
“Thanks.” I bend back the banana stem until it breaks and start to peel it. “It’s like a breakfast break.”
“Sure.”
He stands there, and I watch him for a minute. As the silence gets more awkward, I clue in that the banana is just an excuse. I put it down and look at him.
Finally he says, “Oh, and here. You got this.” He digs in his murse and hands me a letter.
I immediately recognize the handwriting. Mom.
“Thanks,” I say, and put it down.
He watches it lying on the table. I’m dying to open it, but before I share, I should probably tell Christian that she is coming.
“It’s kind of interesting, really,” he says.
“What is?” I ask through a banana-filled mouth.
“That she sent you a letter.”
“What kind of cheese do you like? I mean, for mac and cheese?”
He picks up the envelope and flaps it against the table. “It’s thick.”
I tap the recipe. “I once had it with Gruyère. It was great.”
“What was?”
“Mac and cheese,” I say.
He stares at me uncomprehendingly. I lift the book so he can see the cover.
“Oh,” he says. “Okay, I’m heading to the hospital.”
“Thanks for the food.” I take another bite.
He starts to go and turns back. “But she hasn’t written to you before, has she?”
I put the banana down. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
“Yeah, me too. Are you guys still e-mailing?” he asks.
He knows that we are. The apartment is pretty small for secrets. Or for those kinds of secrets, anyway. The letter is sealed; he hasn’t read it. And I don’t think she’s e-mailing him. But maybe she sent her own letter to Christian about coming, and he’s giving me the chance to tell him.
“I’ll bet her left hand is hurting, that’s all. It’s probably hard for her to type.”
“Does it … It still hurts her?”
“Sometimes. She’s keeping in touch; I’m sure she’s fine,” I say, trying to sound confident.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Dakota coming in. She waves, and I return it. Christian looks at her and then back at me.
“Is that the girl who got you the job?” He looks her over and smiles. “She’s pretty.”
I probably shouldn’t care that my brother approves, but still, it matters to me.
I glance at Dakota. She’s talking to Douglas, the cashier, ordering something. Christian is back to staring at the envelope. I grab its corner and slide it toward me.
“Okay, so see you later,” he says, and leaves, and I’m thinking
that was weird
.
And kind of cool
. First of all, while Christian is no longer recoiling from contact, he doesn’t tend to initiate it. Second, I was going to see him in two hours.
Very odd. Maybe he does know. Maybe this was my opportunity to tell him about Mom coming
.
I start to open the letter, but before I have it out of the envelope, Dakota comes over. I shove it in my bag.
“Hey, Jace.”
I slide over, and she sits beside me on the bench so that we’re right next to each other. She puts her water on the table and rips off the top of the straw’s wrapper.
“Was that your brother?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say, trying to remember if I’ve mentioned Christian.
“I knew it. You guys look alike.”
“Funny.”
“Well, I don’t mean your coloring or your features or anything.”
“Thanks. That’s much clearer.” I take the lid off my smoothie and tilt the cup to suck it down more efficiently.
“Shut up,” she says. “You move the same way, you talk the same way, and you have the exact same voice, only you’re a lot louder.”
I stop sucking, my mouth full. Two things my brain processes: 1) she sees a similarity between my brother and me, and 2) she has noticed the way I move. These are two good things.
She raises an eyebrow. “Are you going to swallow that?”
I do. “Thanks. I mean, whatever. Thanks.” I pause. “You overheard us talking?”
“No, he was looking for you earlier, and I told him you were on break.” She grabs her hula hoop–sized earring and tugs on it. “So, I’m probably going to regret this, but I was wondering if you … Have you ever had Indian fry bread?”
I shake my head.
“’Cause out by Jemez, I know a place that … You know, if you wanted to.”
I smile, flattered by her sudden case of inarticulation. But then an image flashes:
Lauren collapsing on the street, her legs splayed, her shoulders jolting when she cries
.
“Well,” I say slowly. “Not like a date or anything, right?”
“Well, no. No. Nothing like that. I mean, do you want it to be a date?”
“I’m still kind of seeing someone else.”
Can’t exactly extract Lauren from my head. Ever since the blister popped, it’s sort of oozing everywhere.
“Oh,” she says.
“Then sure. I’d love to. When do you have off?” I ask, even though I know when; I’ve been trying to match my schedule to hers.
Why am I doing that, when I’ve just blown a chance to date her?
I’m seeing someone else?
Where did I get that?
We set a time, and she walks out of the café, but as she turns the corner, she checks to make sure I’m watching her.
When she has disappeared from eyeshot, I pull the envelope out of my backpack. I stare at it for a second. Every day I click on my mom’s e-mail and rush-read. Then I reread it. This time the clean white envelope waits for me, and I hesitate. Christian is right. Why is she writing me?
I tap the envelope, making sure the letter has slid down before I tear off the end and let the papers fall onto my fingers.
Jace
,
I wanted to assure you that I’m coming, and this changes nothing, but we’ll need to talk when I get there. I’m so sorry. Destroy your copy, so that you can say you didn’t know about it
.
Love you,
Mom
Okay. I have no idea what she’s talking about.
I fan out the papers. It’s a photocopy of a warrant for my arrest. Lauren’s well-rehearsed signature is scrawled on the bottom of the complaint.
Good for you, Lauren. Good for you
.
chapter 16
m
y breath frosts
the way-too-early-morning air. I can’t believe Christian convinced me to hike this early. We get off something called a tram, which is like a small subway car that hangs from a cable. The cables are strung on these enormous towers, and the tram rides them up, up, perilously up the sheer cliffs of the mountains. I’m glad when my feet hit the deck.
We climb along the crest, and I’m getting amazing views. I have never been at the top of a mountain before. The land is dry and ragged. I had always assumed it would be like a hill, smooth and graduated, but it’s more like a huge dome that’s been sliced in half. There are jagged outcroppings and deep fissures.
It’s so early that beneath us everything just looks dark, and since I don’t have a tripod and don’t want to use a flash, I keep my camera tucked away. I’m wondering why we had to get up so early.
Once the sky begins to lighten, Christian points, and I follow his gaze and startle. Hot air balloons dot the sky. Red, yellow, and blue. Striped and solid. Untethered, they hang as if weightless.
“The Balloon Fiesta,” he explains. “Mirriam and I came out here last year. Isn’t this a great way to see it?”
We scramble up to the edge. I pull out my camera and try to shoot, but in the finder, the view loses something. I keep trying until I realize that I’m boring the heck out of my brother. We sit, dangle our feet in the endless drop, and watch the sky fill with little dots.
When I was little, it used to irritate me that my mother would anchor all birthday party balloons to my wrist. I would work at the ribbon until I could get them free just to watch them float up into the ether, on to something new.
“How do they work?”
He explains about mixing air with propane and heating it up for liftoff, about the gondolas where the pilots sit, and it’s like we’re back to the days when he knew more about everything than I did.
He takes off his pack and sets it down. I unzip it and dig out the trail mix that is our breakfast. He pulls a thermos out, unscrews the top, and pours. The brown liquid sloshes into the metal cup.
“Tea?” I ask.
“No. On a morning like this? Hot chocolate.”
I inhale the scent.
He raises it to his lips and drinks. I pop some of the trail mix into my mouth and chew. It doesn’t taste nearly as cardboard-crunch like as usual. Maybe I’m starting to appreciate tasteless food.
I stare at the horizon. There must be hundreds of balloons pinned against the sky. Suddenly the motionless picture is broken as one balloon, shaped like a cactus, falls under the orange-and-yellow-striped orb next to it. It sinks below the ridge, out of sight.
“You came here with Mirriam last year?”
He mumbles a yeah and seems suddenly fascinated by the rock we’re sitting on.
“You guys doing okay?” I ask. “You and Mirriam, I mean.”
“Well.” He leans down and brushes some gravel over the ledge. It drops out of sight, like it never existed.
“You’ve seen us. We don’t usually fight. I mean, remember the night you showed up? She just went to her apartment, no questions asked. That’s what I’m used to. That level of faith.”
I wait, knowing another question will make him quiet, but quiet will make him talk.
“Now she wants me to … talk to her,” he says.
“About Chicago? Before you left.”
“How am I supposed to do that? How can I sum all that up? ‘It was awful. It’s done.’”
“She doesn’t like that informative and emotional answer?”
“Smart-ass,” he says, and bumps me with his elbow. “She says the fact that I don’t want to talk means that I should.”
“That’s kind of twisted.”
He sips the hot chocolate. “Maybe she’s right.”
He looks out again, and he’s not watching the balloons. I wait, letting the silence erode his barriers.
He continues, “I don’t know. I think she has a right to know, don’t you? It’s not technically a lie, a lie of omission. But whatever it was, it’s the cold opposite of intimacy.”
I can just about hear the fight he had with Mirriam; I recognize her words coming out of his mouth. I remember that when I eavesdropped, he promised her he’d talk about it another time. I’m guessing he hasn’t.
He picks up a piece of gravel and throws it. He collects a handful of pebbles and starts tossing them over the edge one by one.
“Why don’t you tell her about the time with the hammer?” I ask.
His mouth turns down.
“Okay, what about the time he cut her hair off when that guy at the Historical Society told her he liked it?”
“He what?”
“Oh, yeah. That was after you left.”
He looks down at the rock floor and then tosses another pebble over.
I try again. “Well, what about when he—”
“Jace.”
“What?”
He stands up, and this time looks after the pebble as he drops it.
“She’s easy to talk to, actually,” I say. “She’s not as judgmental as I expected.”
He snorts. I collect my own handful of gravel, scooping out the broken bits from a divot in the rock floor. I stand up next to him and watch the balloons.
“How many are there?” I ask.
“Hundreds.”
I take a breath and then go ahead and test the ground rules.
“Why don’t you tell her about what happened when he found you in New York?”
He glances at me. “Did anyone ever tell you subtlety isn’t your forte?” He pulls his shirt out from the grip of the pants waistband and lifts it. His skin knitted into a slim ridge on his back. “I told her I got mugged.”
“But that scar is … perfect,” I say, looking at the smooth line.
“Surgery. I had left, and you know how he is. How well do you think he would deal with that? He told me he’d kill me, and he certainly did try. I don’t know which blow broke my ribs. One of them punctured a lung, so the ER docs had to operate.”
I am quiet and watch the sun creeping up the mountain’s face, pushing the morning blue before it.
“He was waiting for me when I walked in. My roommate let him into the dorm. He was just sitting on that ratty old couch, you know the pull-out you’re sleeping on? He said one of his law clerks had a cousin running in the New York Marathon, and so she looked up the results. Her cousin and I crossed the finish line one after the other.”
I start putting two and two together: he won’t run in Boston because my dad might find him. We all knew Christian wanted to run that marathon. When I think about it, my dad watches it on TV every year. I always thought of it as a homage to Christian, not as a way to find him.
He continues, “He knew I had been accepted at NYU, but the scholarship letter came after I left the house, so he never thought I could afford it. He found my dorm through the school records. Remember, I was only seventeen when I went to college, still a minor. Anyway, he told me I was coming home and didn’t I know I was breaking Mom’s heart and how she worried and a bunch of other crap. He didn’t mention you, and I … didn’t ask. I’m really sorry about that, Jace. I mean it.”
I look down at the rock and suddenly want to become a part of it—smooth and simple, just melt into the earth. I should probably tell him it’s okay, that I get why he couldn’t take me to college with him.
“I had asked the Costacoses to keep an eye on you, but when you guys moved and he hadn’t hit you … And I didn’t tell them about Mom, so they were just trying to make sure that he didn’t start in on you … Guess they weren’t good at judging that sort—”
“I managed.”
“Did you?” He throws the whole handful of rocks, and I watch his chest expand and contract fast. He presses his elbows to his sides.
“What do you think happened after you left?” I ask.
“I know exactly what happened, Toad. Hell, I taught you how to do it, didn’t I?”
“Do what?”
“How to provoke him so that he’d let it out on us, rather than her.”
I wonder if he’s remembering the same night I am, the first night my dad hit him.
“Every kid wants to be just like his older brother, right?” he says. “How many times did Mom tell me that? And still, I showed you. Why did I think that you wouldn’t step up, step right into my place?”
“What else could you have done?” I ask, hoping for an answer that makes sense.
“I could have killed the bastard.”
I watch his breath float in the air, coming in fast puffs. I feel like I’m talking someone down off a roof. I tread carefully. “You’d be in jail.”
“Yeah, and Mom would be out, and you would be out, and I wouldn’t spend half the time hating her and the other half hating you because you still get to e-mail her.”
I clench my teeth together to keep from asking why he doesn’t contact her again. I look down and try to dig my shoe into the stone.
“She talks about you all the time, Christian. She wants to know how you’re doing.”
“Then she can leave him,” he says.
I lift my head and look at him as I get it. “You gave her an ultimatum? You told her you didn’t want to hear from her unless she left him?”
“I used to write all these lies. I’d make up these desperate situations to try to make her come out for me.”
“And she still wouldn’t?” I thought she’d do anything for Christian, her golden child.
He raises his palms and mocks looking around for her. “You’d think I’d give up, stop sending the money. She used to tell me she would leave him and then … nothing. If she was going to, she would have by now.”
“Christian,” I say, taking a deep breath, “she’s going to be out here in thirty-nine days. She promised me. Thanksgiving.”
“She
promised
you?”
I nod.
Christian’s face rushes through emotions so fast it looks like a train is passing, windows flashing, over his features. He sits down slowly. I walk over to him and sit with my legs dangling in free space. We stare out at the balloons, silent, while he adjusts his whole guilt-inspired world.
“He’ll come after her,” he says.
“If he can find her. He won’t think to look for her out here. If she can just get out cleanly, she’ll disappear.”
He nods.
The sun has scaled the cliff, and I watch the blue rock beneath me turn white as the sunlight finally finds us. The slanted rays carry heat to my legs.
Eventually he says, “I suppose Mirriam’s going to get to see my family for herself.”
“It won’t be enough to get you guys on the right track.”
He shakes his head. “I know. I’ll tell her about New York. It wasn’t that hard to talk about it.”
“Let me know if you need to practice another story. I know them all now.”
“God, you
are
a smart-ass.”
I grin, and he swats at the air between us.
“Thirty-nine days, huh?” he says. “You’ve been counting?”
“I don’t know the hours or the minutes.”
He smiles. “That’s only because you don’t know what time she’s leaving.”
“Now who’s the smart-ass?” I say. I look down and see something moving beneath us. “Christian, is that a bear?”
“Yup.”
Christian holds me by the elbow as I lean forward, my torso over the edge, and watch the dark shape lope along, nose to the ground, searching.
“You’re not in Chicago anymore, Toto. Come on.” He pulls me back from the edge, and we return to our spot on the broad, flat rock.
He grabs the thermos, pours more hot chocolate into the cup, and hands it to me. No hesitation. No this is my cup and that’s yours. I hold the warm metal in my hands, tip the cup, and let the chocolate wash into my mouth.