Tim and Jeremy dozed during most of the trip to Manhattan. More accurately, they each faked sleeping so they wouldn’t have to talk. There’s something about traveling on a train, the rocking motion maybe, that makes a person feel invisible and outside of time. It invites introspection, and so each brother, wrapped in his cloak of pseudo-slumber, privately dissected the events of the last fourteen hours. Neither shared their suspicion that the plan of bringing Jeremy to Brooklyn was unwise, that maybe they should have called their parents. No, that felt like a last resort and they weren’t there yet. The train arrived at Penn Station during evening rush hour.
Trying to follow Tim’s zigzag path through the crowd, Jeremy felt minuscule and utterly insignificant in the crowded space. Staring at the circles of lights on the ceiling, he bumped into a spiky-haired woman standing in the middle of the concourse yelling into her phone.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, hurrying to catch up with his brother.
“You got to keep up,” Tim said. “I have a class tonight.” He grabbed for Jeremy’s duffle bag, but Jeremy pulled it back.
They ran down the stairs to the subway. Tim swiped his Metro card for Jeremy, who held his duffle high above his head, and they pushed through the turnstile just in time to slip through the closing doors. No seats were available on the Shuttle or on the Brooklyn-bound 5. Jeremy grasped the pole with one hand and hugged his duffle with the other. He closed his eyes. Once his body found the rhythm, it was soothing to stand jammed in so tight with these strangers, swaying back and forth to the clacking pulse of the train. He could imagine falling asleep with the rocking and the singsong phrases from the speakers and the gently blinking colors of the stations lit up in a line on the wall.
Except that the lit-up station names didn’t correspond to the static-blurred PA system announcements.
“What’s with that?” He nudged Tim, pressed against his right shoulder, and pointed to the display.
“That’s for the 2 train,” Tim said. “To the Bronx.”
“But how would you know where to get off, if you were a stranger?”
Tim grinned. “If you were a stranger, you’d be fucked.”
In Brooklyn the crowd thinned and they found seats. A woman on the opposite bench was reading a paperback novel, the slim fancy kind English majors carried. Jeremy couldn’t see the title but the author photo on the back cover was a match for the woman reading the book. An artsy black-and-white pose, but clearly her. He considered pointing it out to Tim, the author reading her own book, sharing a brotherly moment of scorn at her expense. But he didn’t. If he ever accomplished something like that, wrote a book or had a show of his drawings or saved some plant species, he’d want to show it off too. At the moment achieving anything of importance seemed increasingly unlikely. If he blew this semester, he might never even graduate.
“Tim,” he said. “I really appreciate you coming to the rescue, but what about my classes?” He already missed botany lab, Professor Clarke’s eloquent lectures about biodiversity loss, his single room dusty with drying plants and sketchbooks, the radio station hush in the wee hours. “What am I supposed to do in Brooklyn?”
Tim looked down at his lap. “I don’t know. Homework, maybe? Drawing? Or just take a leave of absence and chill.”
Leave of absence? How many species would disappear while he chilled in Brooklyn? A white-capped wave of anxiety broke against Jeremy’s chest. “Orbexilum macrophyllum,” he murmured. “Nesiota elliptica. Begonia eiromischa. Camellia sinensis.”
Tim gave him a nervous look and stood up. “Next stop is ours.”
Tim hated it when Jeremy started chanting his pathetic dirge of dead plants. He couldn’t remember when it started. Sometime in high school, Tim thought. What if his bro freaked out again, like whatever happened last night that landed him in Health Services? Would this be like the months of not-eating and barely-talking that their mom went through when Tian first went to prison? Or like Tian’s creepy post-prison habit of wearing a mess of rubber bands on his wrist and snapping them all day? This freak-out stuff must be genetic, so how long would Tim be safe? Like Jeremy, he inherited the same peculiar mix of Tian’s dark skin and Francie’s blond hair, but so far—knock on wood—he had avoided the nutty genes.
Still, Tim didn’t get why Jeremy went all convulsive about dying flowers. If he cared so much about the health of the planet, he should major in something useful, like business or even medicine. Tim’s economics professor said that global warming wasn’t even real, just a commie plot to destabilize the fossil fuel companies.
Why on Earth had he invited Jeremy home with him?
Not only that, but Jeremy had asked a damn good question on the train, Tim thought as they trudged up the stone stairs at Borough Hall. What was Jeremy going to do with himself? Tim hadn’t thought beyond the fact that his apartment-mate got a last-minute opportunity to study in Spain for the semester, so the second bedroom was empty and paid for. Maybe Jeremy just needed a few weeks away from all those science labs and his dying species obsession. Spring was coming. He could sit bare-chested in the Japanese garden at the Botanical Gardens, commune with nature and contemplate his navel until he was ready to resume real life. The image made Tim laugh out loud.
“What’s so funny?” Jeremy asked.
Tim guided them around the corner onto Court Street. Jeremy probably wouldn’t be amused by his fantasy. “I was just thinking that Brooklyn has these awesome Botanical Gardens. You could hang out there. And you could, maybe, you know, get some plants for the apartment. Make it look nice.”
Jeremy’s reaction was visceral and unmistakable. Tim held up his hand, acknowledging his mistake, but Jeremy said it anyway. “It’s not about prettying up the house like, what’s-her-name, Martha Stewart. It’s about whole species of living organisms disappearing from the Earth forever. That’s huge, you know?”
“I know,” Tim said. “Sorry.” He brushed his hand over his close-cropped hair. “We’ve got barber shops too. You could get a haircut.”
Ten blocks later, Tim unlocked the apartment door and kicked his backpack out of the way so they could enter. He had lucked into this primo rental because the owner desperately needed help keeping the accounts of the bookstore downstairs. It was a sweet deal—for eight hours of work each week, he got a two-bedroom apartment. His roommate’s rent paid most of his other expenses. Tim could afford to help his brother.
“That’s your room to the left.” Tim pointed down the hallway and scooped up his backpack. “Got to run. My macro professor actually takes attendance. Help yourself to food—there’s cereal, milk, potato chips, maybe some peanut butter. Take-out menus on the TV. Or you can wait for me to get home and we’ll go out.”
Tim hesitated in the doorway. Jeremy looked shell-shocked, still hugging his duffle like a drunken girlfriend who couldn’t stand up on her own. Tim wondered if Jeremy had ever had a girlfriend, or if he just loved the female parts of flowers. The pistil, wasn’t it? Or the stigma? He blanked on the textbook diagram in his required freshman biology course.
He pointed to Jeremy’s duffle. “You can put that thing down. Unpack. Or just sleep. Or go out. Make yourself at home.” He tossed the extra set of keys at Jeremy. “Nice catch, bro,” Tim said, turning away.
He was late, and he had to get away from Jeremy’s dead face. He pulled the apartment door closed behind him with a heavy clunk. He took the stairs two at a time and jogged to the subway. He loved his brother, and there was the pledge and all, but still. What the fuck had he gotten himself into?
Once he was alone, Jeremy let his duffle thud onto the oak floor and looked around. The apartment was small, but it was neater than he would have expected of Tim. No crushed beer cans or empty pizza boxes like the few off-campus apartments he’d visited at UMass. And it was quiet, no music seeping through thin dorm walls or the thumping of footsteps down the hallway. He missed all that. He wished he were back in his dorm. Or even sitting with Patty and her mustard sweater in the exam room. He dug in his pocket for the business card she’d given him. Maybe he could call. Because, really, what difference did a change of place make? Why should being in Brooklyn slow down the parade of ecological horribles marching across his brain? Why should a different city banish the funeral march of dead plants?
Jeremy knew what his twin was thinking. He could read in the set of Tim’s jaw that he was already regretting his invitation. He bet that Tim was thinking about their father, worrying that Jeremy would go all soft too. Tian still looked dangerous, with his grim expression and prison tats, but inside he was boneless, diminished. Jeremy wished he could have inherited his dad’s tough looks and his mom’s tough insides, but he got only Francie’s blond genes and Tian’s mush.