Andrew helped me into the basement. We sat on the couch to make a plan. But Andrew began fidgeting. Then he stood up.
“I can’t sit in this house anymore, Felton. It’s completely deadly.”
“Yeah. Outside.”
Andrew helped me into the garage. He pulled two lawn chairs out and set them up and then helped me sit down on one.
“Thank you.”
Andrew faced his chair toward mine. He sniffled. Then straightened himself up, looked me in the eye, and said, “I want to be your brother, Felton.”
It was a peculiar pronouncement. But I knew what he meant. I straightened myself up as best I could and then said, “Thank you. I was thinking the same thing before you came in with that zucchini.”
“Oh, good. That’s good,” Andrew nodded.
Okay. I was ready. Andrew knew stuff I’d been avoiding.
Here it goes:
“Do you remember when Dad died?” I asked him.
“A little bit. Not much. I remember getting closed in a bedroom and you crying.”
“I’d just found him,” I said. “I imagine I was freaked.”
“Yes. It’s fine you were crying. It must be difficult to find your father hanging from the ceiling.”
“Right.” I looked down the drive, the same drive that our dad certainly looked down ten thousand times. “And I believe you’ve come to the conclusion that this Jerri trouble has something to do with Dad.”
“Of course,” Andrew said.
“I didn’t want to deal with it. I’ve been confused, Andrew.”
“I was very mad at you for that,” Andrew nodded.
“What have you found out?”
“Not much. Jerri used to keep a diary, remember?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been looking for it.”
“You haven’t found it?”
“No. I did find out stuff though.”
“Like what?”
“Jerri won’t tell the truth. You ask her a question, and she’ll go crazy.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. She doesn’t want us to know anything about Dad though.”
“Why?”
“I think because she lied about him.”
“Lied? About what?”
“That he was nice.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I found a photo album from their wedding.”
“With Dad in it?” I really hadn’t seen a picture of Dad since Jerri’s bonfire. I had an idea of what he looked like, vague memories. I imagined he looked like the comedian Paul Reiser but also knew that probably wasn’t right. “You saw Dad?”
Andrew nodded at me. “Yes. He was in their wedding pictures.”
“Makes sense.”
“Yes. But”—Andrew squinted at me—“he looked like you.”
“What? Before I got big?”
“No. Like you now.”
“But he was short.”
“Maybe, but his face looked like your face.”
“My face?”
“Jerri might hate your face, Felton.”
“Why? Why would Jerri hate my face?”
“I’m very sure Jerri hates Dad,” Andrew said.
“No. No, she doesn’t. He was a sweet, little Jewish dude. He was…He was just sad. Why would Jerri hate…?” I began to lose my train of thought, and my chin started trembling. “What, Andrew? What?”
“I don’t think he was sweet,” Andrew said. “He looked really mean in the pictures.”
“At his wedding?”
“He wasn’t smiling. He was…He looked really, really angry.” Andrew started crying.
“Where’s the album?”
Andrew said something like “uhhhff,” he clamped his mouth shut, and then he said, “I only found it yesterday. It was above her clothes in her closet.”
“Was she in there when you found it?”
“Uh huh. She was sleeping.”
“Jesus, Andrew. You’re crazy.”
“I took it to my room and looked at it for a long time and then I wanted to Google Dad because I think I’ve Googled Steven W. Reinstein and seen actual pictures of him that I didn’t know were him, but my computer won’t charge, and you wouldn’t let me use yours.”
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.”
“Then, in the middle of the night, Jerri came barging into my room, screaming at me to stop stealing her stuff—to stop torturing her. She was completely psycho, Felton. She screamed and pushed me against my wall and then she burned the album in her shower.”
“That was last night? I slept through that?”
“I don’t care, Felton. I don’t care about her stupid diary anymore. I just want this to end.”
“Yeah,” I nodded.
“I hid in the garden all morning eating tomatoes.”
“You hate tomatoes.”
“I’m hungry.”
“I’m so sorry, Andrew. I’m so sorry.” I gulped for air. My eyes burned.
“We’re both crying like babies,” Andrew said.
“I know,” I nodded. “No dignity.”
“It’s been stolen.” Andrew wasn’t joking.
We stared out across our yard, tall thistles all over the place. We didn’t say anything for several minutes. We both calmed down. Then something occurred to me.
“Grandma Berba knows what happened,” I said.
“Why?”
“She was here after Dad died.”
“She was? I don’t remember.”
“You were three.”
“You know she hates us,” Andrew whispered, looking over his nerd glasses.
“I think we have to call her, Andrew. I think she better come here. If she will…”
“Jerri is going to go out of her mind,” he said. “I don’t know, Felton.”
“Jerri is already out of her mind,” I said.
“Yes, but even more so.” Then poor Andrew’s lip started trembling again, and his face heated up again.
“I miss Jerri.”
“I do too,” I said.
“I hate Jerri,” he whimpered.
“We have to call Grandma Berba. Or if not her, I guess the cops or something.”
“Grandma,” Andrew nodded.
We discussed what to do next. One thing was very obvious: we couldn’t stay in the house anymore. After going through our immediate options (neighbor, Andrew’s piano teacher, Cody Frederick—Andrew had no idea who he was), I suggested the Jenningses.
“You mean Aleah Jennings?” he asked. “Her dad thinks we’re nuts. Jerri slept in front of their house.”
“I’ve, uh…” I realized that Andrew and I had been so out of touch that he had no clue I’d been with her.
“What, Felton?”
“Aleah’s my girlfriend.”
“Oh my God,” Andrew stared at me. “I forgot she liked you.”
“I…I really like her.”
“I’m so stupid,” Andrew said.
“Do you like her too?”
“Like her?” he asked, tilting his head like he does.
“You know, want her to be your girlfriend,” I said.
Andrew gasped, “No! I’m just embarrassed.”
“Because…” I was confused. “You like her?”
“Because I haven’t practiced piano in over a month,” he mumbled. “I’ll be rusty if I play.”
“That’s the least of our troubles.”
And with that, we decided to go to the Jenningses. Mr. Jennings was kind, and I loved Aleah. I was used to that house, and I needed something steady, which would help me call Grandma Berba, and—maybe most important—the Jenningses weren’t connected to the town, so they wouldn’t tell people about our trouble. If we went to Cody’s, the cops and everybody else would be involved from the start.
Because it was the middle of the day, I assumed that Aleah would be asleep and Ronald would be at the college. There was nobody around to pick us up, so I’d have to ride the bike, even though that jerk Ken Johnson (sorry) had broken my back. I stayed out in the driveway and tried to stretch, in complete pain. Meanwhile, Andrew ran into the house and pulled a bunch of my sweats out and stuck them in a backpack. There was no reason to pack clothes for him because he only owned his pirate outfit. He did grab our toothbrushes and my deodorant. (“You smell sometimes,” he said. “You smell like you haven’t showered in a month,” I said. “That’s fair,” he said.) He also grabbed Jerri’s address book, which wasn’t easy because it was in the desk drawer in her room. He snuck in. She rolled over while he was in there but stayed asleep.
“What in the world would I have said?” he asked. “Felton and I are running away. We’ll send Grandma?”
“She would have strangled you,” I said.
“With her sweaty sheet,” Andrew said.
I laughed.
“It’s not funny. It’s true,” Andrew said.
We began to ride down the drive. Then I stopped.
“Andrew,” I said. “We need my phone charger.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I want to keep my life. It’s really important to me. The charger’s on my night stand.”
Andrew was inside for a couple of minutes. When he came out, he was trying to hold it together. Jerri was behind him. My stomach dropped. Andrew stared at me as he moved forward. He was definitely shaking. Jerri was in her robe. Her hair was frizzed out, and there was no color in her face, and she was super skinny. She followed him through the garage and onto the drive, where she squinted in the summer light. She looked like she hadn’t seen the sun in weeks, which was probably true.
“Felton,” she said. “Andrew won’t tell me what he’s doing.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’re going for a bike ride.”
“You’re what?” She shook her head.
“Just a bike ride, Jerri.” She looked confused. She probably was confused. “Don’t worry, Jerri. It’s going to be okay,” I said.
“Okay, Felton,” she nodded. “You give me a call. Okay?”
Maybe she wasn’t confused.
“Okay, Jerri,” I said.
At the end of the driveway, I looked back. Jerri was still standing there outside the garage.
“Does she know what we’re doing?” Andrew asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
***
It was probably good for my back to be riding the Varsity. It hurt like crazy to go up the hill on the main road, but by the time Andrew and me got to the top, I was sweating, and my back was looser. Because he’s small and really isn’t and will never be an athlete, Andrew rode incredibly slow. I could’ve biked circles around him. If my back didn’t hurt, I probably would have. We only had one conversation as we rode. It was very short.
Going up the hill, I said, “Andrew, why did you burn your clothes?”
“I wanted to scare Jerri into talking to me.”
“That backfired.”
“Yes. She told me the only way to move forward is to destroy the past.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said.
“It makes no sense,” Andrew said.
“I mean, that explains her behavior.”
“Her whole stupid life.”
We didn’t say anything else as we rode, just pedaled. But when we hit the edge of my paper route, Andrew stopped.
“I think we should call Grandma Berba now,” he said.
“Why?” I really didn’t want to call her.
“Because she’s a terrible person and if she tells us…you know…tells us where to stick it, we’ll have a different situation on our hands. You know what I mean, Felton?”
“No.”
“I want to have our situation in hand before we go to the Jenningses so we can tell them what’s going on truthfully and completely,” he said.
“Oh, yeah. You’re smart.”
“Yes,” Andrew said. He swung his backpack around and pulled out Jerri’s address book. Then he handed it to me.
“You call,” he said.
No. No. No. Grandma Berba has never liked us—me and Andrew knew it. She called on our birthdays, said happy birthday, and then hung up. At Christmas, she’d send cards to Andrew and me and always wrote “Happy Chanukah” in them because our father was Jewish, even though there was always a Christmas tree or a baby Jesus on the front. She’d also send ten dollars. She never came to visit. She never invited us to Arizona. She moved there right before I was born. I only remembered her at all because she was around right after Dad died. Before she went back to Arizona, she shouted at Jerri. I don’t remember what it was about, but Jerri shouted back. Jerri freaked on her. She wasn’t a very good grandma. Jerri wouldn’t ever even talk about her. So I wasn’t exactly excited to make the call. I found her number in the address book.
“Okay,” I said to Andrew. “I’m calling.”
I punched in the numbers real slow. My heart pounded. My back hurt. I pressed the Call button and then held my breath. All this fear expanded in my chest. My phone hand was shaking. In a second, the phone at Grandma Berba’s was ringing. It rang three times. Then someone picked up.
“Hello,” the voice said. But it seemed too young to be a grandma.
“Um, could I talk to Carol Berba?”
“Speaking.”
“Grandma?” I said.
There was a long pause.
“Yes?”
“This is Felton. Felton Reinstein.”
“I know who this is, child.”
“We…Me and Andrew…”
“Tell me you’re safe.”
“I…I don’t know…” And then I just started sobbing. I couldn’t hold it in. I was totally sucking air. Gulp. Gulp. Gulp. Snot poured out my nose like in that football movie with the broken legs, and my eyes burned. I choked. Finally, I got out: “Grandma?”
“I’ve been expecting this call for ten years. What’s your phone number? Is it the phone you just dialed from?”
“Yes.”
“Felton. Please. Are you safe?”
“I think so.”
“I’ll call you back in ten minutes with my itinerary. You hold on, Felton.”
I hung up the phone and looked at Andrew. He was bawling.
“She’s not interested in us, huh?” he said.
“No. No. She’s coming.”
It’s 5:41 a.m. I think most of the time, Grandma is up by now. She’s not this morning. I just went upstairs to take some of her iced coffee out of the fridge because I just want to stay awake. It was a long night, and Grandma is snoring in the guest bedroom. I’m sorer right now than I was riding the bike to Aleah’s that day.
You can’t think Grandma is mean any longer. I won’t let you, okay?
Grandma sold insurance, and she made a lot of money, and Jerri told her she didn’t want Grandma’s money-grubbing values to affect us kids because Grandma wanted to go after Dad’s parents for more support money after he died. Jerri capped our presents at no more than $10, so Grandma sent $10, and Jerri told her there was no reason for us to see Grandma’s Arizona condo with the pool or Grandma’s BMW because then we’d value money over…what? Not family, because Jerri kept us from our family. Maybe vegetables or nature. So Grandma backed off and waited, even though she knew it made me and Andrew think she didn’t like us. She also said that maybe Jerri was right about some of her values because me and Andrew sure turned out to be sweet kids.
Okay.
Let’s go.