The Things a Brother Knows (15 page)

I feel tired. Defeated. Anxious. I feel all sorts of things that lead me into my backpack in search of my running shoes.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope.” I tie double knots and do a half-assed round of stretches.

“Do you want me to go with?”

Zim is in pretty good shape. He’s fast and agile, but I’m not sure he’s much for distance. Not that it really matters anyway, because what I want right now is to be alone.

“No thanks, man.”

He seems relieved.

Pearl flops onto one of the beds and turns on the TV. “At least have the courtesy to bring back some takeout.”

I planned on running by the reservoir. Water is a place for me like the slope of my roof. Rivers. Oceans. Lakes. The pond where I walked with Pearl and Zim. Cheesy as it sounds, water is another safe place for me. I’m a decent enough swimmer,
but really, what I like best is
looking
at water. Standing beside it. Gazing across its horizon.

I read someplace that the human body is sixty percent water. It makes perfect sense. Going to the water is like going home.

But despite all that, I turn away from the reservoir and begin running north. I don’t have my folder with all the printed-out maps. I don’t need it. By now I know the walking route by heart, and I start to run it in reverse.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint
.

Sometimes when I run, I hit this point, two or three miles in, where the act of running suddenly becomes effortless. “Runner’s high,” people call it. It has something to do with endorphins—which are, like, the same chemicals released during orgasm or something, though I can’t say I see much of a parallel there.

Tonight I’m on this runner’s high from the moment my shoes strike the pavement. My body is like this machine and I’m a bystander along for the ride. This body propels me forward.

It propels me north, away from the reservoir.

I’ve got four miles under my belt in no time.

I keep telling myself that I’m not looking. I’m only running. But I study each flash of a face, each blurry window. I glance in the bus stop shelters, even though I know full well that someone who won’t ride in a car isn’t likely to hop on a bus.

I forgot to pack my iPod. I’m not used to running without music. I’m not used to the sound of my own breath.

I decide to turn back when I reach the CVS, and when I do, just as mysteriously as it came on, my runner’s high disappears.

I slow my pace.

That does no good.

I slow it some more. My lungs feel hopelessly small. My legs turn to dead wood.

Finally, I resort to walking.

It’s night now. Full darkness. A stretch of quiet road unfurls itself in front of me. I miss my music. If I hadn’t been raised on horror tales of the fate that befalls the hitchhiker, I might stick out my thumb.

I want to be in one of those two double beds. A pillow over my head to shut out the world.

Eventually I come upon a strip mall. I passed it on the way out, on the other side of the road. This time I notice, tucked in between a Hallmark store and an aquarium supply shop, a narrow and brightly lit Chinese restaurant.

It smells familiar. Where I am exactly I can’t be sure, but this restaurant is this whatever-town’s version of the Hungry Lion. Every town has one. That’s why Dov loves the Hungry Lion so much. It reminds him of a place he used to go in Tel Aviv.

I’ve got nothing on me. No cash. No wallet. No cell phone.

But still, I walk toward it. Toward the upside-down duck carcasses hanging from the windows and the smell of fryer grease in need of a change. Toward the steam-warmed windows.

The place is half full, mostly with large Chinese families—the
true sign, I know, of a restaurant’s quality. There are other people too. A couple of college-age guys. A white-haired woman and an even whiter-haired man.

And in the back, alone at a table with two empty bottles of Chinese beer, a head shaved close to the scalp.

I
’M LIKE A
J
EDI MIND MASTER
. I stand behind him using nothing but the force of my thoughts, willing him to turn around and see me.

Of course, he doesn’t move.

And this I don’t understand.

How can he not feel me standing here? How can he not know that I’m right here, standing behind him? Here, after all these miles I’ve traveled?

I’m scared of startling him or catching him off guard. I’m afraid to say his name. So I stand behind him and I wait.

Still he doesn’t turn. He stays focused on the task of eating his perfectly divided dinner.

Rice. Noodles. Chicken.

There’s an empty chair across from him and I ease myself into it. I brace for my brother’s reaction. In this moment my own anxiety obscures my rationality, because my rational self knows that if I had a chance to think this through, I’d be able to predict Boaz’s response, which is, of course, to have no response at all.

He looks up slowly. Catches my eye. And then he returns to the business of eating.

“Hi.”

It’s the stupidest thing to say.

Such an insignificant word. At only two letters and one syllable it’s barely even a word at all, and yet, with an entire language from which to choose, this is what I say.

“Hi,” he says. He reaches for a small bowl of wonton soup, raises it to his lips and drinks from it.

I feel the sting of tears come to my eyes, which is totally what I don’t need right now. It’s just that I’m so damn tired. So, so tired. But still. That’s no good excuse. I swallow hard. The sting goes away.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

He shrugs. “Well, you found me.”

“Yeah, I found you in
New Jersey
.”

“Yep. In New Jersey.”

I stand up. I lean in close to his face and clear my throat.

The sting in my eyes is coming back so I bite the inside of my cheek.

“You,” I say, “are an asshole.”

My chair tips over backward with a loud clatter and I’d like to follow that move with an authoritative storming out of the restaurant, but instead my running shoes make a quiet squishing sound on the linoleum floor.

Outside, I pace the parking lot.

Outside, I let some of those tears fall.

I talk to myself. Mostly a string of expletives peppered with such questions as:
Why?

And:
What am I doing here?

And:
What did I expect?

Your basic existential crap.

I sit down on the curb. I wipe my face on my T-shirt. I stick my head between my knees and take in some deep breaths.

I wait.

Which is really stupid.

Because he’s not going to come after me.

That’s for sure.

Because the truth is, I’m always the guy sitting on the curb. Or on the floor of my room. Or wherever. I’m the one who waits for something that never comes.

I let a few minutes pass. I let my breathing return to normal, and not that I spend a lot of time crying, but I’ve done enough of it in my life to know that my face tends to get a little splotchy. I give it some time to clear before I stand up and go back into the restaurant.

Boaz is right where I left him. He hasn’t even bothered to pick up the chair. I reach for it, turn it over and sit down in it again.

I look at my brother and say, “I’m here.”

“I see that.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Okay …”

“I don’t mean I’m not leaving this restaurant. I mean I’m here. I’m here to stay. I mean I’m going with you. Wherever it is you’re going. Whatever it is you’re doing.”

“No. You’re not.”

“Yes. Boaz, I am. I’m here.”

He’s ordered another beer and he drinks from it as he looks at me. I look right back at him even though every fiber in me wants to look the other way. To study the crabs in the tank or the beautiful waitress lingering behind the cash register.

It’s been only thirteen days since I watched him walk away, from the window of his room with the airplanes and planets still painted on the walls, but it feels like that day took place many lifetimes ago.

“I’m here,” I say again.

Boaz reaches for his wallet. He looks over his check and then secures a stack of wrinkled bills under a half-empty bottle of soy sauce.

He stands up.

I think he’s about to say something. He has that look of someone putting his thoughts into some sort of order. Whatever the order, I’ll take it. Because something, any string of words from him right now, would be better than the nothing I’m so used to.

But then he turns and walks out the door.

This time I don’t knock over my chair. I rise quickly and I follow him. Across the parking lot. Across the empty road.

“Go away,” he shouts without turning around. He picks up his pace.

“Not a chance.”

He takes a side street. Strides past a few apartment complexes. Turns right. Then left. Then right again.

I follow.

When I see the sign for the motel I feel this wave of relief. There was a small part of me that worried Boaz had, literally, taken to the streets.

It’s a two-story motel with doors to the rooms that open onto the parking lot. Bo climbs a flight of steps with me on his heels. He reaches the door to room number 18. He digs into his pocket for his key card and swipes it. He opens the door and sticks a foot in the crack to hold it open, and then he reaches over and grabs me by the back of my neck. He wrenches my head close to his and he whispers with his hot, angry, beery breath, right into my ear: “Get the fuck out of here.”

Then he shoves me away, steps inside and slams the door shut behind him.

By the time I return to our motel room—cold, hungry and rubber-legged—Pearl and Zim have fallen asleep. The TV tuned to some unidentifiable cop show.

They’re on the same bed.

They’re both in their clothes and on top of the covers and for both of those facts I am deeply grateful.

I make an effort not to wake them, but by her own admission, Pearl is a miserable sleeper. She shoots up and scrambles for her glasses.

She looks over at Zim asleep next to her.

“Oh my God. I slept with Richard. That is seriously
ewww
.”

She hops over onto the other bed, and I sit at the edge in the not-quite-total darkness and tell her that against all odds I found my brother, in a strip mall Chinese restaurant, sitting at a table with empty bottles of Chinese beer and an equally empty face.

“How’d the food look?”

“Not the point.”

“Right. Sorry. You know me and food. Please, go on.”

I stretch out next to her and I tell her everything.

“He’s in trouble,” I say when I get to the end.

“We know. That’s why you’re here.”

A long silence follows during which Pearl falls back asleep, her glasses askew. I remove them from her face and hold them in my hand, and I wake to the first hint of the morning light clutching them to my chest.

We head right over to the motel but Boaz has already checked out, which doesn’t come as much of a surprise. We find a 7-Eleven and we drink our coffees and eat our do-nuts in the parking lot, on the hood of Pearl’s car.

I lean back and close my eyes to the sun. I can almost trick myself into believing we’re sitting out on the slope of the roof.

“So what’s next?” Zim asks.

“Yeah,” Pearl says. “What’s the plan, boss?”

My head is swimming.

My neck is still sore.

I sit up. “Okay. Here’s what I know. One: I know where
he’s going tonight. Two: I know he doesn’t want me going with him. In fact, I’m pretty sure he hates me. So for the sake of this list, let’s make that I know he hates me number three. Four: I know he might change his plans for tonight simply to avoid seeing my face again. Five: I know I’ll never find him if he decides to do that. And finally, six: I know this coffee tastes like doody.”

I dump what I have left onto the concrete.

Pearl climbs down and opens up her driver’s-side door.

“C’mon, fellas. Hop in,” she says.

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of walking.”

“You barely walked at all.”

“Tell that to my calves.”

“So? Where?”

“To eat a proper breakfast. With, like, protein and grains and all that. And later on, we’ll deliver you to Edison and I’ll go back to Frozurt and my puzzling flirtation with Il Duce. And Zim will go back to the life of a drifter unless Bob takes pity on him and lets him have your old gig at Videorama, but until then: breakfast. And after that, Edison. And in between: we’re going to the movies.”

The two-plus hours in the darkened theater, empty but for the three of us, does manage to distract me. Which is the effect I’m pretty sure Pearl was going for. I even doze off for a few minutes somewhere right in the middle of an extended action sequence.

When it ends, we stumble out into bright sunlight and damp air thick as Jell-O. The heat wave is back with a vengeance.

On the drive to Edison we keep mostly quiet. I let Zim ride shotgun. I’m remembering the trip to my first summer at sleepaway camp. Mom behind the wheel of the car I would eventually come to drive, the soft British lilt of the NPR reporter on the radio, the fat pines of northern Vermont, the yearning for home.

Unlike that summer, I now have the power to say:
Turn this car around
. Pearl will do whatever I ask. She is, after all, one of my two best friends.

I want to say it, to shout it, to grab the wheel right out of her unsuspecting hands, which are resting, in typical Pearl fashion, at ten and two o’clock. I want to wrench that wheel like Boaz did my neck. Turn it in the opposite direction.

But instead I stare out the window at the ugly stretch of gray interstate and I wonder how I’ll get through this day. This afternoon. This evening.

This summer.

We stop a few blocks away from our destination.

Pearl turns off the car.

“I can go with you,” Zim says. “For real. There’s nothing much at home for me anyway.”

“It’s okay, Zim.”

“I know it’s okay, Levi. That’s not what I’m saying here. What I’m saying is you’re my friend. My birthday brother. I don’t want you to have to do this alone.”