Still Life with Tornado (13 page)

I decide not to dawdle.

“Did you ever get your degree in psychology?”

“Not quite,” he says.

“Oh.”

“Are you really a religious freak?” I ask.

“A what?”

“Did you get naked in a river and get baptized?”

“Holy shit,” Bruce says.

“Did you?”

“They brainwashed you.”

“But did you?”

“To my knowledge, I have never been baptized in a river. Or anywhere.”

“Huh,” I say. “So I guess the only thing I know about you is that you're a crappy kayaker.”

“And an awesome big brother.”

“You haven't called me in six years.”

He sniffles again.

“Sorry,” I say. “I didn't mean it like that.”

“Let me talk,” he says. So I shut up. But he doesn't say anything.

“Bruce?”

“I should come visit.”

“You should call Mom and Dad.”

“Not them. You.”

“We live in the same house.”

“I can stay in the B&B.”

“What B&B?”

“I always stay in the one on Pine.”

I'm not computing anything Bruce is saying. When has he stayed at the B&B on Pine? “Why don't we start over?” I say. “Why don't I say
How are you?
and then you tell me how you are?”

“Okay.”

“How are you?”

“I'm good. Life is good. How are you?”

“That's not an answer. Good? Life is good?” Six years have passed and I get
Life is good.
His voice sounds deeper than it used to. He sounds grown-up. I say, “Are you married? Do you have a girlfriend? A job? What are you doing out there?”

“Not married. I work with kids.”

“You're a teacher?”

“I'm a mentor.”

This sounds promising. I wait for more, but he doesn't say more. He asks, “What about you? Tenth grade now? Am I right?”

“Yeah. But kinda no. It's a long story.”

We are vague. Ten-year-old Sarah would be disappointed. Ten-year-old Sarah likes details. Ten-year-old Sarah will probably never come around anymore because I was so rude to her last night.

“What?” Bruce said. “You're not in tenth grade?”

“It's a long story,” I say again.

“I have time.”

“I'm only figuring it out,” I say. “I'm in some sort of . . . transition or something.”

“In school?”

I don't know what to say. Here is a brother I haven't talked to in six years. Now he wants me to tell him how I'm doing when I don't know how I'm doing.

“Do you come back to Philly and not tell us?”

“Kind of,” he says. “I came back twice.”

“And?”

“And the first time I called Mom, but she said Dad didn't want me in the house,” he says. “The second time was for business. I didn't tell them I was there.”

“But I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”

“What kind of kids do you work with?”

“Mostly at-risk kids. Kids who are messed up.”

“Like delinquents or what?”

“All of that. And runaways and kids in the system and orphans and kids who are just bored and don't have much to do. The whole gamut.”

“Is that Bruce?” ten-year-old Sarah says. She's appeared next to me on the bench.

“Shhh.” I'm elated to see her.

Bruce says, “Are you talking to someone?”

How do I explain this?

I say, “I think I'm an at-risk kid.”

“Oh.”

“I stopped going to school. Now I'm just walking around most days.”

“Do Mom and Dad know?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that Bruce?” ten-year-old Sarah asks again.

“Who is that?” Bruce asks.

“My friend from around the corner,” I lie. I turn to ten-year-old Sarah and say, “Yes, now quiet.”

“Are they freaking out over you not going to school?”

“Yeah. And no. It's weird.”

“Are you failing or something?”

“No.”

“How was your birthday?”

What a strange question. My birthday was in March. It's May. Maybe Bruce is so far away now that those dates seem closer together to him.

“It was fine,” I say.

“Sweet sixteen,” he says.

“That's the most unoriginal thing you ever said,” I say.

This was probably the wrong day to call Bruce.

I said I'd call him back tomorrow. I nearly told him I was having an existential crisis, but it didn't seem fair to him. He's in Oregon and a stranger now. I'm in Philly and a stranger now, too.

Ten-year-old Sarah asks, “Wanna go find Earl?”

“I don't follow Earl anymore.” I don't tell her that I think I've become Earl.

“Okay.”

“I think I need a nap.”

“You
were
up all night,” she says.

“Do you want to come to dinner this week?” I ask.

“That's weird.”

“Mom says we're having tacos.”

“I love tacos.”

“I know. I'm you.”

“You don't know who you are,” she says.

We walk back home and ten-year-old Sarah asks me how Bruce is. I tell her I'll know more tomorrow. It's getting near twilight and I feel like last night made me lose a day. Ten-year-old Sarah says she wants to come in and I let her come in because I know Mom will be working and Dad didn't recognize her last time.

Mom is there when we walk in. She doesn't look at first. Just says, “Sarah? Is that you?” Ten-year-old Sarah and I both say yes. “I got the night off—switched with Georgie for Tuesday. Your father got called into work today. Some weekend insurance emergency, I guess. Want to go see a movie or something?” She's dusting the mantelpiece, her back to us. We stand there, twins but not twins, and she turns around.

“Hi,” we say.

She freezes. She puts her fingertips to her chest. She squints. She frowns. She concentrates. She crosses her eyes. She scratches her head. She finds her way to the couch and sits down, still staring. We stand there.

“Sarah?” she asks.

We both nod.

I say, “Dad said she could come for dinner this week but I forget which day.”

“This—this is your—friend? From around the block?”

“Hi!” ten-year-old Sarah says with a wave. Same wave I have. Same wave we've always had. The circular fun wave.

“He said we were going to have tacos,” I say.

Ten-year-old Sarah says, “I love tacos!”

Mom is speechless.

“And I love movies!” ten-year-old Sarah adds. “Can we go, Sarah?”

“I need a nap,” I say.

Mom says, “I need a glass of water.”

I go to the kitchen and get a glass and get her some water out of the water cooler we have because of trihalomethanes. Philadelphia water has some history with trihalomethanes, and Mom avoids cancer when she's not in the ER. Who doesn't?

As the water
glup-glup-glups
from the cooler into the glass, I hear ten-year-old Sarah talking to Mom, but I can't hear what she's saying. When I come back into the living room, they are both sitting on the couch.

“We're going to a movie!” ten-year-old Sarah says. “You can come with us. Or you can take that nap if you want.”

I look at Mom. “Isn't that a little weird?” I look at ten-year-old Sarah. “Don't you have to be home by dark?”

“I know who she is,” Mom says.

I don't answer.

“How could I not recognize my own daughter?”

This is all happening too fast. And I've stopped thinking about how unoriginal everything is because this is original.

This is original.

We stood at the omelet station at the breakfast buffet—me, Dad, and Bruce. Mom preferred the Mexican yogurt and fresh fruit for breakfast. So far, none of us had contracted Montezuma's Revenge and Mom trusted the fruit even though the guidebooks say to avoid the produce due to it being washed with tap water.

Dad and I had already ordered our omelets. Dad said, “Bruce, what do you want in yours?”

The cook stood waiting, but Bruce wouldn't answer.

Dad said, “He'll have the same as I'm having.”

When we left the omelet station with our plates full, Dad turned to Bruce and said, “What the hell is your problem?”

Bruce didn't answer. This was not Bruce's usual behavior. It was as if something were happening to Bruce in Mexico. I don't know if it was the lying, the truth, the seaweed, or the shooting stars that changed him, but he was different on Day Five than he had been.

Dad bragged that he'd reserved two umbrellas on the beach. Up until Day Five, he'd only reserved one umbrella because Mom said it was rude to take up too much space with our rule-breaking. But Day Five he went all the way. He said, “I paid to come here and sit on the beach with my family.” He was talking like all the other selfish bastards at the resort now, except when he said
my family
he sounded like he owned us, not like he loved us.

Halfway through breakfast Bruce asked, “So what are we doing today?”

Mom didn't answer because Dad was the vacation planner.

Dad didn't answer because he was giving Bruce some payback in the not-talking department.

I said, “I want to swim, but then I want to do something else.”

“What else is there to do?” Mom asked.

“I saw on the daily newsletter that there's a Ping-Pong tournament and stuff like that all afternoon. Games and a nature walk, too.”

“I didn't come here to play Ping-Pong,” Dad said.

“Okay,” I said.

“There's a kids' club schedule at the main desk,” Mom said. “We'll go look at it after breakfast, okay?”

She said that to me. But Dad acted like she said it to him. He said, “I don't need to look at the fucking kids' club schedule. I'm not here for games.”

Mom said, “Why not let them go and have fun?” I wanted to tell her that the kids' club was for little kids, not for me and Bruce, but I kept quiet.

Dad looked at Bruce. Bruce was pushing his food around on his plate.

“It's not up to
you
, Helen,” Dad said. He was acting so cranky, we all just stared at him while he shoved his omelet into his mouth and washed it down with the watered-down orange juice they were passing off as fresh-squeezed when anyone with taste buds could tell it was mixed from powder.

Mom got up and I got up and Bruce got up. We all went to look at the kids' club activity schedule for the day.

Mom and Bruce had a conversation while I asked a balloon man in the lobby to make me a dolphin. When I came back with my balloon dolphin, Mom said, “Okay?” to Bruce. Bruce said, “Okay,” to Mom and then they hugged.

They both made a big deal out of my balloon dolphin.

When Mom headed back to the room, she looked at Bruce and said, “Ten minutes?”

He said, “Okay.”

But we didn't wait ten minutes.

We stood outside the door and listened to them fight. Dad said Mom was undermining his authority. Mom said “What authority? This is vacation!” Dad said she knew damn well what he was talking about. Mom said, “I think you're going deeper, Chet. I think you need to stop and remember why we're here.”

“And why are we here, Helen?” he yelled.

“To help you,” she said. “To help you learn how to relax.”

“And you think I'll relax when you undermine me? You think I'll relax when you're a bitch to me in front of my kids?”

That's when Bruce touched his room key to the doorknob with his shaking hand and we walked in. It hadn't been ten minutes. Probably more like five.

Mom was sitting on the sofa. Dad was standing above her with his arms wide, making his point. When we walked in, he put his arms to his sides and walked toward their bedroom. His fists were clenched. He didn't even look at us.

Mom said, “Oh, hey, kids! Get ready for the beach!”

I said, because I was ten and excited for the kids' club, “After the beach I can still go to the kids' club, right?”

Mom said, “Sure, honey.”

Dad came in from their bedroom and just stood there.

Bruce said, “When are you going to just be nice to her?”