I never wanted to quit my accounting practice. I loved everything about it, really: the little old ladies with their shoeboxes of receipts; the local cash businesses that wanted you to help them circumvent the tax man just enough so that they could still feel honest; the puffed-up businessmen who were expecting you to be impressed with the size of their bank accounts, and were quietly infuriated when you refused to give in to their satisfaction.
The problem was, I couldn’t make a living at it. Not really.
It held together, after a fashion, when Claire was working and we were happy living in my condo. But things got tight once Seth was born, even though Claire went back to work sooner than she wanted to. We were cramped in the condo, the three of us, Seth’s colourful toys staking out more and more territory, but neither of us wanted to take up the offers of financial support from our parents.
We bumped along, staying barely on the right side of debt— I’m an accountant after all—but we wanted more kids. We needed a house. I wanted Claire to be able to take as much time off as she wanted when our next baby was born, or to stay home even, if that was her choice. And further down the road there was summer camp, and school trips, and college tuition to think of.
So I knew what I had to do. It had been selfish to resist the inevitable for so long. And if I could be happy everywhere else, I thought it wouldn’t matter much if my nine-to-five wasn’t everything I wanted it to be.
There was only one place that could solve my problem. Johnson Company—maker of widgets and whatchamacallits—was the biggest employer in town, and the only business that had an accounting department. It occupied a low, sprawling campus that was trying to pretend it was located outside of San Francisco, and before the consultants got a hold of it, it wasn’t that bad a place, really. When the Art Davieses and the Don-What’s-His-Names were running the show, I bet it was even fun on a regular basis.
You know, office fun.
I knew before I started that it wasn’t for me, but it was a path to other things. We could buy a house. Less working on the weekends trying to balance the books would mean more time for the family, for me, for golf. And kids should have a house, right, with a sandbox and a swing set in the backyard? With friends on the same street whose houses they could run in and out of like Tim and I did as children.
The last remnants of the idyllic parts of my childhood were still to be found in the shaded streets in the neighbourhood we’d now be able to afford to live in if I took the job, and I wanted to give that to my family.
So I wrapped up my practice and we went into escrow. I started working for Art and found my rhythm. Then Claire got pregnant, even though we’d stopped trying, and it seemed to confirm my decision, a pat on the head from the universe telling me I’d done the right thing.
And right up until the moment our doctor was moving a wand around Claire’s stomach in primordial goo searching for something that wasn’t there, I really thought I had it.
I thought I had it all.
After I ran away from Claire’s daycare, and Claire, and Tim, and the Kiss, I still couldn’t quite believe that what I’d seen had taken place. I spent a couple hours walking around in the rain, letting it seep through my clothes till they clung to me like skin. When I stepped into the Woods, looking for a place to hide, the rain’s clatter and the rustling leaves blocked out everything else but the wish that I hadn’t turned and ran, that I’d stood and fought.
Fought for Claire.
Fought for the life I held in my hand for a minute.
But I’d relaxed my grip. I’d taken my eyes off the ball — just for a second—and my club was whistling through the air with no purpose. A whiff, they call it in golf, after the windy sound your club makes when you swing and miss.
That windy sound was in my head, my heart, my lungs.
That windy sound felt like the soundtrack to taking a swing and missing my life.
I had to go home sometime, I knew, even if it was only to pick up things to change into before I slunk off to some hotel room, or wherever it was husbands whose wives were cheating on them with their brothers spent the night. There had to be some place that fit the bill, right? There was probably even a greeting card for it, but greeting cards don’t tell you how to feel; they assume it. Happy on your birthday. Sad someone died.
Black and white.
White and black.
But how are you supposed to feel, really, when all your worst fears, things you’d never even imagined could happen, actually do happen, actually do come true?
Hearts don’t come with an owner’s manual.
Someone should do something about that.
It must’ve been a couple hours before I got back to our house. I don’t know what I expected to find there, but what I found was Tim sitting on the front steps with his suitcase by his side. He was smoking a cigarette, and I was fighting the urge to ask him if he’d gotten that from Claire too when he said, “About time you got here.”
“Excuse me?”
He stood up. “You’re taking me to the airport. My flight leaves in an hour.”
I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, that he could get his own self to the airport. But then it occurred to me that driving him to the airport would be an excuse to not have to face Claire yet, to not have that conversation, whatever it was going to be.
I nodded and slopped in the puddles that were my shoes towards my car.
Inside, I could feel the wet dripping off me like I’d stepped out of a shower. Claire would’ve been pissed if she knew I was in the car in my present condition, and that gave me a small measure of petty satisfaction.
Tim shoved his suitcase into the back seat and climbed in next to me. I started the engine, turned on the wipers, and listened to them slap against the glass as I pulled out of the driveway.
“Jeff—”
“No. I’ll drive you to the airport, but that’s it. I don’t want to hear it. And if you don’t like it, you can get there on your own.”
He paused. “All right. If that’s what you want.”
I turned on the radio, turning it up full blast, like I hadn’t done in years, and certainly not with someone else in the car. It was some stupid ’80s station, playing a Rush song I hated—there’s never any need for Rush, really—and I could tell by the way Tim was clenching his hands that he wanted to turn it off.
Denying him this, even if I was cutting off my own nose to spite my face, was another notch of satisfaction in a day where every notch counted.
If I could’ve made the radio play “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” through sheer will power, it would’ve made my day.
I turned off the road at the airport exit. “What airline are you flying?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Are you going to check your ticket or should I drop you wherever?”
“It’s not that big an airport. I’ll figure it out when I get inside.”
“You don’t even have a ticket, do you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Right. Whatever. Asshole,” I muttered under my breath, but not, you know, that quietly.
He cleared his throat in a way that let me know he’d heard me despite the computerized crap screaming from the car’s cheap speakers.
“Pull over,” Tim said.
“The terminal’s right ahead.”
“I mean it, pull over here.”
I slowed the car and pulled onto the shoulder. The front wheel bumped against a large rock. “Suit yourself.”
Tim got out of the car, and I sat there, waiting for him to get his suitcase out of the back, thinking that it was par for the course that he was going to get the last word.
My door swung open.
“Get out,” he said.
I looked up at him. He loomed large as always but also, in a way, he looked small, like Seth when he was trying to act like a grown-up.
“Just go, all right?”
“No. Get out. Let’s do this right for once.”
I got out of the car. It was still raining, but it was more of a foggy mist. A perfect setting for a duel, or whatever Tim had in mind.
“Are you saying you want to fight?”
“Not exactly. I want to tell you something first, and then I want you to hit me.”
“You want me to hit you?”
“That’s right.”
“Just …” Trust me, he was going to say. “Will you do it, already?”
“All right. Fine.”
I raised my fists, trying to remember the last time I hit someone in the face. Trying to remember if I’d ever hit someone in the face.
“Hold up,” Tim said. “Listen to me first.”
“I don’t need you to say something to make me hit you.”
“That’s why I need to say this first.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m going to give you some advice, Jeff, and then you’re going to hit me and I’m going to fly out of here.”
“Get on with it, then.”
“One minute doesn’t erase a thousand.”
“Of all the … what the … maybe it does.”
“No, not unless you let it.”
“How would you know, anyway?”
“I know, okay? Let’s leave it at that.”
“No, I need you to tell me.”
He sighed. “I let one moment, one idea, ruin my thousand moments, all right? And I’ve regretted it ever since.”
“And what? That’s supposed to make me forget about today?”
“It should.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I don’t know anything. That’s my whole point. She was sad, Jeff. She was vulnerable and I took advantage. And I’m a complete asshole for doing that, but that’s all it was. It didn’t mean anything. Not to her. And I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry I had anything to do with it.”
“Yes. I’ve been feeling like a jerk for a long time. Ever since I found out about you and Claire. Before that even. And when you feel like that … well, let’s just say it’s not much of a stretch to start acting like one. I fucked up. I’ve been fucking up forever. And I’m sorry. You’re my brother, and I’m sorry. Now hit me, and go home to your wife.”
I stood there staring at him, a foot away, as wet as I was now. My brother. Someone who knew things about me I’d forgotten. Someone who I betrayed, and who betrayed me in return.
Hitting him wasn’t going to solve anything.
But I did it anyway.
When I got home from the airport with grazes across my knuckles and a dull ache in the joints of my hand, I felt like Grady Tripp at the end of the Wonder Boys. Too many things had happened in too short a time span. Did people’s lives really change this quickly? Years of sameness, and then a few hours, a few moments, and everything’s different? But, yes, of course they can. It happens all the time.
My clothes had dried on me in the way that only happens after you’ve been soaked to the bone, and they felt stiff and uncomfortable. I wanted to strip them off, climb into a steaming shower, and then sleep, but I knew that might be a long way off.
When I walked through the front door, Claire was sitting on the couch in the living room under the reading lamp with her feet curled under her, staring off into space. Her eyes were red and puffy, and the wastepaper basket nearest to her was full of balled-up Kleenex.
“Upstairs. Asleep, last time I looked.”
I checked my watch. It was seven, early for him to be in bed.
“Does he … is he okay?”
“He has a slight fever. He actually asked to go to bed.”
She stood clumsily, then fell back to the couch, clutching her foot.
“Foot cramp,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Ouch. Sorry.”
“No, I deserve it.”
“Claire—”
Her fingers worked at the knot in her foot, which I knew from long experience could be excruciating. “No, I do.”
I wanted to go to her, put my arms around her, and wait out the cramp like we’d done so many times before, but the image of her in Tim’s arms held me back.
“Will you sit for a minute?” she asked. “You’re making me nervous, standing there like that.”
“How am I standing?”
“Like you’re wondering if you should pack your things.”
I let that hang there as a deep weariness settled over me. I closed my eyes for a beat, two, then Claire was there, at my shoulder, leading me to the couch.
“You shouldn’t walk on that. You’ll make it worse.”
She grimaced and I could see her fighting the instinct to fall to the floor and cradle her foot in her lap until the cramp passed. Sometimes it was fast, but a few times I’d found her in the hall, or the bathroom—wherever she was when the cramp hit—where she’d been stranded for half an hour or more.
She pressed on and we were on the couch, both worn out and gripped by pain.
“Can I talk? Will you listen?” she asked.
I looked her in the face for the first time. Her eyes were the colour they only were when she’d been crying. They always turned this amazing shade when she was particularly upset.
“We don’t have to do this now. We can wait till you feel better.”
“I’m not going to feel better until I put this right. If I can.”
“What did you want to say?”
She blew out a long breath. It reached my face, a sweet smell I always associated with kissing her. And in thinking this I knew—I was going to forgive her.
Probably.
Assuming that’s what she wanted.
“I’ve screwed everything up, haven’t I?” she said.
“Do you really want me to say?”
“I guess I meant it more rhetorically, but I wanted to tell you I was sorry. I mean, of course, you know I’m sorry, so desperately sorry. I won’t insult you with the details, unless you want to know—”
“No!”
She started. “No, of course you don’t. And there’s nothing to tell. You saw everything there was to see.”
“Did I, Claire? Did I really?”
Did I see what’s in your heart? I wanted to ask, but didn’t.
“You did. And Tim’s gone.”
“I drove him to the airport.”
“You did?”
“You didn’t know?”
“He packed his stuff and left. Said he wouldn’t be back. Did he … you drove him to the airport?”
“I did.”
“I wanted to hear what he had to say for himself. And punch him in the face, though that was his suggestion.”
“You what? You’re not making sense.”
“No. Nothing is.”
She fell silent, her hand massaging her foot idly. I could tell by the way the muscles in her neck loosened that the worst of the cramp had passed.
“Is that it?” I asked.
“No. I’ve been sitting here, trying to think of a way … trying to make you believe me. I know it’s always been hard for you that Tim and I were together. I know you’ve wondered about him, about us.”
I didn’t deny it. How could I?
“I’m not saying that I don’t understand how you feel. I’ve always known, really, and it’s something I should’ve worked harder to correct.”
“Because I was totally in left field?”
“Not totally, but not in the way you mean.”
“So you haven’t been harbouring some secret wish that he’d come back? Declare his undying love for you? Beg you to take him back?”
She smiled uncertainly. “Of course I have, or a small part of me has, anyway. Just like I bet what’s-her-name—Lily—is wishing that same thing about you sometimes, no matter how happy she is right now.”
“But the difference is, I haven’t turned up.”
“Right, but you have to let me have that, Jeff. That’s the part of girl-Claire that was hurt by the first person … it’s not real, is what I’m trying to say. It’s revenge. And revenge isn’t sweet. And it isn’t the point.”
“Do you remember why I told you I came back here? Why I wouldn’t move away with Tim?”
“Because of your dad? That promise you made him?”
“Right. I know it sounds stupid, and part of me was probably just testing Tim, but it was important to me to do what I said I was going to do. But if I’m being perfectly honest, if Tim had shown up in those first few months, I probably would have left. My dad would’ve been hurt, but Beth had already broken his heart. He would’ve gotten over it. Anyway, all this to say that he might be the reason I came home, but he’s not the reason I stayed.”
“What’s the reason, then?”
“Do you really not know?”
“I only know what you tell me.”
“I hope that’s not true, but I will say it. I’ll say it if you promise to believe that I’m telling you the truth.”
I turned away, looking into the gloom beyond the puddle of light from the reading lamp. Little balls of it reflected off the photographs on the wall leading up the stairs where our son was sleeping, oblivious to the chaos in his own house.
“All right. I promise.”
She placed her hand on my arm. “I came back for my dad, but I stayed for you, Jeff. I stayed for you.”
And because I’d promised, I believed her.
And in the end, I stayed too.