The Grown Ups (14 page)

“Sammy—”

Sam pushed himself away from the wall and pulled himself up the stairs by the banister. “It's all good. Seriously. 'Night, Mom.” He took the stairs two at a time and slipped inside the unwelcoming, narrow guest room and fell onto the bed. He waited until he heard his mother's footsteps on the stairs, the clank of the water pipes, the flush of the toilet, and then he waited some more. When he opened the door he could hear Tom's low voice, a sigh, and then later the soft snort of his mother, a heavier rattle from Tom. Quickly, he grabbed his backpack up off the floor and then yanked open the one dresser drawer that held a few of his possessions, cramming them all into the bag before pulling hard on the drawstring.

He was briefly paralyzed on the top step, his backpack straps tightened across his shoulders. He listened for the rhythm of Tom's snores and ran down the steps so that the creak of the wood was hidden in the sounds. He was too far down the road toward the center of town before he remembered to take one last look back, and by then it was too late.

In his wallet
Sam had an emergency credit card from his father and thirty-seven dollars in cash. The bus ticket to Boston ate up thirty-six dollars, and the coffee he'd had with his mother kept him awake. The bus was full, an odd mix of travelers, and most of them slept save for an older man across from Sam who rattled a sandwich bag on his lap, folding and unfolding the waxy creases, occasionally taking from the bag a saltine cracker that he ate thoughtfully, slowly, as if he was savoring each bite.

Sam refused to use the credit card, so he trudged through the slushy streets until he found Michael's apartment in the attic of a crumbling brownstone. Lucky for him, he'd happened across his brother's address scrawled on an envelope on his mother's desk. The neighborhood had narrow streets, parking laws that only a veteran cop could figure out, and a variety of ethnic restaurants that papered the nearby buildings with menus. Years before, Sam and his father had helped Michael move in, driving a U-Haul full of cast-off furniture from home. On a steamy August weekend they had set up his couch, his bed, a table and chairs, and a desk. They had gone to the grocery store and filled the refrigerator and at the end of the day they had sat on his small fire escape and grilled hamburgers as if Boston had transformed the three of them into an all-American family unit.

The double doors of the building were wedged open with a brick. Sam climbed the stairs to the top, the heat hitting him in layers. By the time he had arrived at Michael's door he had removed his coat, hat, and gloves.

He had barely knocked when the front door swung open. Suzie Epstein stood in front of him in an oversized cardigan sweater, a Harvard T-shirt, and skinny black pants. “My God, Sam! Everyone has been crazy worried about you!” She threw her
arms around his shoulders. Sam had his coat clutched against his chest, so he leaned forward from the waist, finding his face in her hair, nearly nuzzling her neck.

Suzie let go of him as fast as she had attached herself to him and pulled him inside the apartment. Sam took a quick look around. Books and papers fanned over the couch and onto the coffee table. A mug of unidentifiable liquid and a plate of comma-shaped crusts were also on the coffee table, next to a stack of Post-it notes. The television was on, but muted.

Suzie followed his glance. “I'm a mess when I study. I like to spread out.” She shrugged almost sheepishly. “Michael isn't here. He's at the hospital.” She chewed her bottom lip. “He'll want to know right away that you're here, though. Maybe I should leave a message.”

Sam shook his head. “No, forget about it. I'm not going anywhere.” He could see down the short hall to the bedroom. There was a large pile of clothes on the floor and the bed was a twisted pile of sheets and blankets. Suzie was watching him when he turned back to her and asked, “Can I use the bathroom?”

She nodded and pointed down the hall. Sam closed the door and sat down on the edge of the tub to think. The bathroom didn't have a window and the air was moist. A rubber duck sat on the ledge next to a bottle of bubble bath.

Sam turned on the bathtub faucet and splashed water on his face. The back of his skull was beginning to tighten and hum from lack of sleep. He closed his eyes, just for a moment.

When Suzie knocked at the door Sam jerked awake. “Sam? You okay?”

Sam looked down. The tub was clogged, so the water wasn't draining. He twisted off the water, then slipped the duck off his perch and watched him bob around.

“Sam?” This time Suzie tried the knob. Sam hadn't locked it and she came right in. “Sam?” she said again. She didn't seem surprised to see him on the edge of the tub.

“Hey,” he said weakly. “I'm pretty tired.” Suzie's face looked fuller, and her hair was way past her shoulders. Sam slipped his hands beneath his thighs.

“Of course. You can crash in the bedroom. I have class in twenty minutes, so I'm leaving. It will be quiet.”

“Do you live here?” Sam asked.

Suzie took a step back. “No.”

“You stay here?”

“Sometimes.”

“You just didn't happen to run into Michael a few weeks ago, did you?”

She gave him a little half smile. “Well, we did run into each other that way. But it wasn't a few weeks ago.”

“How long ago was it?”

She bit her lip. “Eight months ago.”

“Wow. So you guys just clicked, huh?” Sam attempted indifference even though he was burning with curiosity.

Suzie's cheeks flushed. “Sam, we should have talked about this. Or I should have told you I was coming home with Michael. I know it's a little weird. But, Sam—we were babies.”

“Yeah.”

“What you and I did when we were fifteen has nothing to do with my relationship with Michael.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean . . .” Suzie swallowed hard. “I had feelings for you, sure. I hated to leave you.”

“But you gave me a hell of a going-away gift. One that my brother seems to know nothing about.”

“What does it matter now?” Suzie whispered.

She took a step closer.

Sam grabbed her hand. She didn't pull back. “Does Michael know what we did in your basement?”

She shook her head. Her eyes were huge, liquid. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it and she did not squirm away. He kissed it again, harder. And then Sam took his tongue and pressed it against her palm. He heard her sharp intake of breath and thought he could probably kiss her mouth, maybe even slip his hand up beneath her Harvard T-shirt to cup her breast.

But when he looked up at Suzie there were tears streaming down her cheeks. Sam dropped her hand and stood up. Without a word he walked out of the bathroom and across the hall to the bedroom and shut the door in her face.

Sam woke up
in his brother's bed with the realization that Suzie slept there with Michael. He stretched his arm beneath the pillow and his fingers found an abandoned hair tie. He pulled it out and examined the strands of thick, dark hair before he tossed it onto the floor. He had been an idiot to think Suzie Epstein had been pining away for him because they'd enjoyed some fun times in her basement.

Sam rolled over and reached for the phone and called his dad. The phone rang and rang. Sam pictured the kitchen, the garbage overflowing with takeout containers, the empty lounge chair in front of the TV where his dad fell asleep most nights still dressed in his work clothes. He let the phone ring until the machine picked up, and then he thought to look at his watch. His father was most likely at work. He dialed the office number and waited for the voice mail. “Dad,” Sam said as his voice echoed into the receiver. “I'm at Michael's.”

After he hung up he dialed Bella's number. She picked up on the second ring.

Sam dropped the phone when he heard her voice. He fumbled with the receiver and slammed it down before she said anything else.

In the kitchen Sam found a canister of beans and a grinder, stale Italian bread, and a container of curried chicken that looked too old to reheat. He made coffee using a paper towel for a filter, toasted the bread, and stood over the sink peering out the triangle-shaped window tucked up under an eave. The view was all angles and rooftops. Sam heard the front door open and close, a bag drop, and then the heavy shuffle of someone who was dead tired. He didn't have to turn around to know it was Michael.

“Dude,” Michael said slowly, “what the fuck is up?”

Sam turned around to see him pouring a cup of coffee. Michael raised his mug in greeting and then his face disappeared as he drank.

“I guess you were right,” Sam said. “I should have just talked to Dad.”

“Everyone deserves the right to disappear, I guess.” Michael sighed and ran a hand through his hair, but he looked unconvinced. “At least once.” He leaned back against the counter, crossed his ankles, and looked at Sam. “But you could have called.”

Sam had not expected this response at all. He'd thought Michael would come in guns blazing, calling Sam a loser. This probably meant that Michael had told their father about Sam flunking out of school. “You told him?”

“I had to.” Michael shrugged. “I wasn't going to, but he had no idea where you were or what you were doing.” He paused. “I had to give him a reason. You could have been dead. You could have
done something stupid, he didn't know. I mean, what the fuck, Sam?”

“Did Mom call?”

“I called her.”

“But she didn't say anything?”

“No.” Michael shook his head. “She didn't give you up.”

Sam shrugged. Apparently Bella had kept that secret as well.

“I think you may have fucked things up with the father of your girlfriend, though; no one likes to see his daughter upset.” Michael gave Sam a strange look. “Bella said the last thing she knew you were heading to see Dad.”

“She's not—” Sam stopped. Why was he denying that he had treated Bella like a girlfriend? What was the point? He had made a mistake thinking Suzie still thought of him. He had treated Bella like she was his second choice, when that wasn't the case at all. But now he had screwed that up too. “We're not together.”

“Not now you're not.” Michael snorted. He tipped the mug to his face, finished his coffee, and set the mug in the sink. “Should we go get a bite? Come on. I'm starved.” Michael turned and Sam followed him because he seemed to leave no other choice.

At the diner
they were served massive plates of food that both of them barreled through as if it was their first meal in days. When Michael was done, his plate wiped of any edible residue, he pushed it into the center of the table and leaned back against the red Naugahyde booth. “Fuck, medical school is going to kill me.” He shrugged. “Residency is going to be a cakewalk if I survive the next year of med school.

“What's up?”

“I finish my oncology rotation in a week. It's been brutal. As of
right now . . .” He glanced at his watch. “I haven't slept in twenty-seven hours.”

Sam wasn't sure exactly what he meant by
rotation
. But he didn't ask.

“How do you do that?”

“Coffee and willpower. Next up is gyno.” Michael rubbed his face as if he were scrubbing it with a washcloth. “Waaaaaa,” he said, and shook himself awake. He lifted his mug at a passing waitress, who stopped to give both him and Sam a refill.

“So what does this rotation involve again?” Sam genuinely cared, but he didn't want to sound stupid either.

“I see patients on rounds, all under the supervision of a doc, and then I have to take an exam after each rotation and I have to do really, really well. Because I want to get my first-choice residency.”

“Which is?”

“Mount Sinai or New York–Presbyterian. I want to specialize in pediatric cardiology, and those hospitals are among the best.”

Sam nodded, feeling lost.

“And Suzie is applying to NYU, Columbia Med, Harvard, natch, Johns Hopkins.”

“So.” Sam cleared his throat. “Suzie . . .”

Michael grinned and his entire face changed. “Yeah, Suzie. Surprise, right? How did I fall in love with the girl next door?”

His question didn't seem to beg for an answer. Sam took a swallow of his coffee as Michael took a twenty out of his wallet, tucked it under the bill, and waved away the change as the waitress slid it off the table.

As Sam watched the simple transaction he realized that both the dollar he had in his wallet and Michael's twenty were
courtesy of their father. A third-year medical student had no time to pick up a part-time job; the earnings from every crappy summer job Sam ever had never lasted past November. The bank accounts he and Michael had existed because their father supplemented them. If ever he had any illusion that he could survive in the world without his father, Sam was dumber than he already felt.

Sam made an
agreement with his father that he would return to school to officially withdraw from classes and pack up his things. On a Thursday morning Sam dropped his father off at the train and took the car. During the drive he had imagined a heart-to-heart with the registrar, and he tried to think up a good excuse for being a total fuckup, but when he got there all he had to do was sign a paper that said he was voluntarily withdrawing and that he understood his ID card would be deactivated. No one asked him why or to rethink his decision. The RA let him into his old room and stood out in the hall talking to his girlfriend on the phone while Sam shoved clothes into a duffel bag and left a note that his roommate could have the microwave.

When Sam got in the car he looked at the clock on the dash and was surprised to see that officially changing his entire life had taken less than an hour. He turned the key in the ignition and sat and sifted through the papers. Three quarters of the way through his junior year his GPA had been a 1.6. Sam crumpled the papers from the registrar's office and dumped them in the trash.