The Christmas before Brian died, David picked me up at the Amtrak terminal in Sturtevant, about twenty minutes north of Keno (aka Kenosha, Kenowhere, The K). He grabbed my bags and kissed my forehead. We walked to his car.
“Good trip?”
“They couldn’t scan me,” I said. “Or at least, they said they couldn’t. Had to go full pat down.”
“Merry Christmas, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“You need a new chip?”
I looked at my forearm. I could barely see the little bulge. “I hope not. You saw how long it took me to get this one.”
As Amtrak upgraded its routes with high-speed rail, security got an upgrade, too. TSSEA agents and increased wait times had invaded that staple of bucolic travel, the train station, depriving me of the one advantage my ears conferred when they got funky in flight after the accident: I couldn’t fly anymore, so no airport hassles, and no need for a microchip.
“Home,” David told his car. “Don’t be surprised about Brian,” he said, after we were on the highway.
“What do you mean?”
“How much weight he’s lost.”
“Like how much?”
“Just don’t be surprised.”
I thought about the implications of that admonition. “I know you said mom’s been really worried.”
“When was the last time you and Brian talked?” he asked.
“Month ago. Maybe longer. He sounded jittery.”
“That’s Brian.”
“He was talking about how to get into Carthage and wanting to know why I took the Cal-Tech route,” I said. “He sounded positive. Then I’d start talking and he’d interrupt with some totally different subject.”
David thought. “Since we’re on the subject, I’ve been finding it’s best not to get into solutions. Fixes. Brian shuts down and mom stresses out.”
“Fixes? Like a drug fix?”
“No no. Like suggesting another rehab stint. Like methadone. Like asking why Brian just sits around the house, between his drug fixes.”
“Mom’s enabling?”
“Maybe. But what’s the alternative? Getting a midnight call that her baby boy is dead in some back alley?”
On that note, Christmas vacation began.
We drove up to the house and mom must have heard the car doors slam because she came down the steps without a coat and with hugs for me while David grabbed my always-travel-lite gear, plus Christmas presents, and went into the house. Mom looked worn out here in the moon and porch lights, but smiled.
“Good to see you, sweetie,” she said.
I kissed her forehead. “You, too.”
David took my bags upstairs to my old bedroom and came back down. “Let’s get this fire started,” he said, poking and prodding a hive of dying embers upon which he placed another log.
I looked at his strong, veiny hands in the firelight.
“Where’s Bri?” I asked mom.
“He was in his room,” she said.
“Hey big sis.”
“Speak of the devil,” David said.
I gasped, audibly, then stopped myself, as Brian descended the stairs. He looked like a raggedy doll, clothes he used to fill out hanging on him, cheeks and eyes sunken. We hugged and I kissed him. He kissed me. He didn’t smell good. But he was smiling.
“You guys get the gifts I shipped?” I asked.
“Voila!” Brian said, taking my hand and leading me to the tree. His hand was cold.
“I have a couple more things,” I said.
“Are you hungry?” mom asked. “I can warm some stuff up.”
I looked at Brian. I was hungry, but didn’t want to ask mom to cook anything for just one. Brian looked hungry.
“I might have a bite, if anyone else would join me,” I said.
“Stuffed,” David said.
“Brian?” mom asked.
“You asked me earlier,” Brian said. He sniffed and coughed.
“I know, but I thought...”
“I wasn’t hungry then. I’m not hungry now.”
“Mom’s not asking. I am,” I said. “I would love it if at least one of the two most wonderful men in my life would break bread with me.” I took Brian’s hand and felt its veins. I squeezed. He sniffed again, like he had a cold.
“You make it sound like The Last Supper,” he said. He looked at mom. “Okay.”
Mom presented Brian and I with some ham and scalloped potatoes and the most out-of-this-world cranberry cobbler. I was actually ravenous, but seeing how Brian fiddled with his food, I stuffed my appetite and nibbled.
“I’m surprised you got the time off to come home,” mom said. “They keep you pretty busy.”
“I promised myself, no more missed Christmases,” I said. “Dr. Levitt’s very understanding. Unless we’re on deadline. We’ve been on deadline with something forever, it seems like.”
“I met her wife,” mom said. “Para something.”
“Parada,” I said. “And they aren’t married. At least, not yet.”
“She seemed very shy to me. Your boss is so outgoing.”
“How’s the project?” David asked.
“Great,” I said. “The rover and samples are on their way back to Earth as we speak.”
“I remember reading about that,” mom said. “The takeoff from Mars gotta little hairy.”
“Everything on Mars has been hairy,” I said. “Watching the rover get out of the canyon was just mind blowing. We almost lost it, like twice.”
“Makes things in Kenowhere seem pretty boring,” Brian said. Sniff, sniff. Cough.
“How’s classes?” I asked.
“Mine?” Brian said.
I nodded between bites.
“Dropped all but one.”
I saw mom turn away. “Why?” I said with my mouth full.
“Wasn’t working out,” Brian said. “I’ll pick them up next semester.” He sniffed.
“You want a Kleenex?” I asked.
“There won’t be a next semester pretty soon,” mom said. “They’re not going to keep letting you re-enroll.”
“It’s fucking community college, mom,” Brian said. “It’s not like Harvard or Cal-Tech or something.”
David looked at me from his stance poking the fire. He rolled his eyes. He looked like he wanted to say something.
“It’s been a godsend,” mom said. “You weren’t ready for Carthage.”
“I was absolutely ready,” Brian said, puffing out his narrowed chest. “That’s bullshit.”
“Ya know,” David walked over with the poker in his hand. “The profanity isn’t necessary.”
“You gonna hit me with that?” Brian asked. David looked at him.
“Why don’t we go sit on the porch?” I asked.
“It’s cold out there, Jenny,” Brian said. The sniffles prompted me to drop it.
“Okay. Downstairs in the men cave.”
“I have just as much right to be here as David does,” Brian said.
I reached across the table to Brian and put my hand out. He looked at it. David receded. I heard mom in the kitchen. Brian finally reached out and took my hand. His fingers and wrist bone were so prominent. And cold. His fingers were like ice. “Okay,” he said.
We went downstairs, Brian leading, to the big, comfy, plush couch that sat in front of the game consoles and 3D portals and the other indoor fantasies that had turned generations of Brians into pale, slender, addicted zombies. Dad didn’t want to get all this stuff, but Brian worked on him relentlessly. Now, it just sat, like so many childhood memories rattling around in place of the children who created them.
Brian rested his head against my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said, after a while. “I hate when I get like that.”
“It’s hard on mom and David,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“They love you so much.”
“I know. It’s not me talking. It’s somebody else.”
Brian took a Kleenex from a box and blew his nose. He wiped his face and around his nose with another few. I wanted to ask him if he was using again, but I knew the answer, so why get into it. Besides, it was too early. You return a stranger when you’ve been away, especially when you come home. I needed time to become big sister again.
“What about you?” he asked.
“Me?”
“Do you love me?”
“To pieces and beyond,” I said.
“You used to say that to me when I was little,” he said. “Like Buzz Lightyear.”
“That’s to infinity and beyond, baby brother. To pieces is way better.”
I turned down the lights and clicked on the television and turned the sound down to watch the late news, “Fox6 News at 11.” David walked downstairs about an hour later. He slid up the dimmer switch, but slid it back down when he saw Brian, head against the couch, mouth open and snoring.
He turned and walked back up the stairs.
You know when you’re asleep and something is waking you but you don’t know what it is and you think you’re dreaming when real sounds are trying to penetrate your conscience? That’s how I awakened on the second day home. The sounds were voices downstairs.
“I don’t care, mom. It was here. Now it’s gone.”
“Nobody stole your money.”
“Yes, they did. It was two hundred dollars in small bills. You knew about it. You saw it.”
“Who would steal your money? Me? David? Jennifer just got here.”
“I fell asleep on the couch last night. When I woke up and went upstairs, it was gone.”
“You probably just misplaced it.”
“I wouldn’t misplace money. I wouldn’t do that. Somebody fucking stole it.”
I got up, bedhead and sleepy eyes, wrapped a robe around me, and started downstairs.
“What’s up?” I said.
Mom looked at me. “Brian thinks someone stole his money.”
“Here in the house?”
“Yes,” mom said. By this time, Brian was downstairs in the men cave, probably rummaging through the couch cushions.
I came down the stairs to mom. “How could someone steal his money in the house?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be logical.”
“No?”
“Not even remotely,” she said. She paused and lowered her voice. “I would really like it if he would just get the fuck out of here.”
I wanted to hold my mother, but she was too agitated. “Mom.”
“I mean it, Jennifer. I can’t...you have no idea. No idea.”
“David tells me,” I said.
“Tells you what, big sis?” Brian emerged, disheveled and red-faced.
I didn’t respond.
“Tells you what? What does David tell you?”
I turned to go back upstairs.
“Don’t want to hear it, huh?” he chided.
I kept moving, one step at a time.
“Just like when dad was alive. Just like how everybody tiptoed around.”
“That’s enough,” mom said.
“Tip toe upstairs, Jennifer. Tip toe into the kitchen, mom. Tip toe to your car, David. Mom has a black eye and Brian has a fat lip, so everybody better just shut the fuck up so they don’t get hurt, too.”
I stopped and watched. Brian moved toward mom, apparently trying to intercept her before she went into the kitchen.
“Isn’t that right?” He was in her face. “Right?”
She slapped him and my underweight little brother spun around. He was upon her before I could react.
“Don’t you fucking hit me!” He pushed mom against the wall. I leapt down the stairs and grabbed him and pulled him back and we crashed against the stairwell.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I said. “That’s our mother. That’s our mother!”
Brian panted in my arms.
“You see?” mom said to me. “See how this is? See how life is with my junkie son?”
Brian tried to break free but I was strong enough to restrain him.
“Fuck you,” he said to mom. “Let me go,” he said to me.
“No,” I said.
“I’m gonna head butt you if you don’t let me go,” he said.
“You head butt me, I’ll kick your nuts into your skull,” I said. I don’t know where that came from—maybe the reserve of rage I call upon for acts of construction, my father’s gift to me, the drive that twists through my life like a corkscrew. Or maybe it was just some spontaneous shit, something I figured Brian, with his druggie friends and hard living, would understand.
“Always the peacemaker,” he said to me.
“You need help,” I said. “You know how much it’s killing me to see you like this?” He said nothing. “Do you?” I shook his body. “Do you?” I couldn’t see his face. His back was to me, but his head was motionless and it looked like he was just staring ahead, into I guess the oblivious void he accesses between doses. “I love you,” I said. It sounded corny. I figured it went in one deaf ear and out the other.
“Me too you,” my brother said finally, in almost a whisper.
“Things got really bad this morning,” I told David on the phone. I was lying on my bed, still in my robe, reminded of the tweenager and teenager who used to lie in this exact spot, on her phone or staring at the ceiling, happy, joyous, dreamy, or destitute, depending on the day at school, the night with girlfriends or boyfriends, or most of all, the voices downstairs. “I saw what you’ve been talking about,” I told David.
“I’d have called the cops,” he said. “And Brian knows it. He doesn’t pull that shit when I’m around anymore.”
“You haven’t told me about this.”
“We’ve had cops over several times. Always happens when he’s coming down.”
“What do they do? Arrest him?”
“Yeah they arrest him, if they can’t get him to calm down.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“Tried Him, too,” David said.
“How can mom go on? I mean, I could barely stand to be in the same room with him this morning.”
“Same thing Uncle Ron keeps saying.” He paused. “I’m coming over.”
“No,” I said. “Why don’t you wait a while. Everything’s quieted down. I might see if Brian wants to go somewhere—take a walk, go downtown, watch the snow fall on the lake.”
“He hates the cold,” David said. “But I like the idea of you spending some one-on-one with him.”
But Brian was nowhere to be found after I showered and dressed. Not in his bedroom, where I’d have been lucky to find him in the mess anyway; nowhere indoors; and when I opened the front and back doors and called to him, nowhere around the yard.
“Where’d Brian go?” I asked mom. She was reading on the couch, looked like on an older Ember Blaze, in the low, winter light from outside. “No idea,” she said.
I walked over and sat across from her. I reached and turned on a lamp next to her. “You’ll ruin your eyes,” I said.
“Not with this.” She shook the Blaze. “Reverse lighting technology. It’s even better in the new ones.”
“Listen to you,” I said. “Miss Tech Guru.”
“You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve had to learn,” she said. She was quiet, reading or maybe just staring. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said.
“I’m sorry you had to experience it. That you have to experience it,” I said.
“I didn’t mean to call Brian a junkie.”
“Why hasn’t anything worked?” I asked. “David says you’ve tried everything.”
Mom put her device down. She sighed. “Dr. Russell says it’s like so many diseases. You try a lot of maybe cures and they don’t work. Then you wait.”
“Wait?”
“Wait. Pray. Hope. But you don’t keep trying failed cures.”
“Are you saying you’ve given up? That Brian’s basically gonna die and there’s nothing anyone can do about it?”
Mom hesitated. “It’s not just what I’m saying. It’s what everyone is saying.”
I looked at her. Then I stood.
“Jennifer?”
“I have to get out for a while.” I felt like crying, and I didn’t want mom to see.
“David’s coming by later,” she said.
I shook my head and almost ran to the front door. A few scattered snowflakes were falling and I breathed in the chill, dry air.