I was down to one missing cookie when he called in to me.
‘You have to come tuck me in.’
‘Of course,’ I said. Out loud. But not to him. Not loud enough for him to hear. ‘Of course I have to go tuck him in.’
I also had to give him a kiss on the temple, right at his hairline. Just the way Mom used to do. He pointed carefully, so I’d get just the right spot.
‘Night, Buddy,’ I said.
‘Hey. Buddy. Want to know … something?’
‘Sure. What?’
‘Why wouldn’t I see her?’
I tried not to sigh. But the sigh more or less sighed itself.
‘Night, Buddy. See you in the morning.’
I turned out the light. But the world’s brightest night light must have been on at all times. All day as well as all night. Because it didn’t get much darker in Ben’s room.
I CRUISED BY
Nazir’s Baked Goods at six forty the following morning. Stopped out front.
If anything, the street, the town, seemed even more deserted than it had the morning before. Then again, it was Sunday. So it had some excuse.
It struck me that the bakery might be closed on Sunday. A lot of non-essential businesses were, in this Christian town. And maybe that glow of light in the kitchen was like Ben’s night light. A constant.
But then I saw a flash of her head, on her way to the oven, through the window.
I shifted my mom’s old Buick into park, and shut off the engine.
That’s when I noticed the issue with the bakery window. Right on the word NAZIR’S, someone had hit the glass with two raw eggs, which dripped their yolks obscenely down the window and on to the brick below.
I wondered if she even knew yet.
I reached for the front door. Her head came up, and
she
motioned me around the side. I walked around to the tiny bakery parking lot and saw an employee’s entrance into the kitchen. It was open.
She smiled when she saw me come in. That felt good. Seemed like it had been a while since anyone had.
‘So,’ she said. ‘You came back, Ben’s brother.’
I was so tired and disheartened that I was almost willing to accept that as my new name. I offered no answer of any kind.
‘We don’t open till eight on Sundays. So I don’t even have the donuts cut yet. But come in and talk to me. It won’t take too long. And I have coffee made. No offense, but you look very bad. Worse than you did yesterday. I was hoping you would feel a little better by now.’
‘I had a bad night with Ben. Have you got a bucket? Something I could put soapy water in? And maybe a scrub brush or a big sponge?’
She looked at me strangely.
‘Your mother didn’t keep such things at your house?’
‘It’s not for me. It’s for you. For your front window. Somebody hit it with eggs.’
Her smile disappeared. I heard her mutter a couple of words under her breath, but I didn’t make out what they were. I’m not entirely sure they were English.
‘Right on my father’s name?’
So that’s who Nazir is, I thought. That’s the other half of her ‘we’.
I guess I wasn’t answering fast enough. So she went on.
‘So maybe the donuts won’t just be a few minutes. I have to tend to this other matter first.’
‘No, that’s fine,’ I said. ‘You do the donuts. I’ll get the window. I just need a bucket and something to scrub with.’
She looked into my face for a long moment. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
She disappeared into a back storeroom and came out with an aluminum bucket. I watched her partially fill it with hot water at the big industrial double sink. She added a shot of dishwashing liquid.
The bucket steamed as she handed it to me. I thought she’d forgotten the scrub brush, but I looked in and saw the end of it sticking up out of the sudsy water.
‘I don’t know why you’re doing this,’ she said. ‘But it’s nice. Thank you.’
‘I don’t know why you gave me coffee and donuts for free yesterday. But sometimes people are nice to each other. Not everybody’s an ass. I guess I’m apologizing to you for the egg thrower. On behalf of my entire nationality.’
She laughed a little. It was nice to see a bit of lightness return.
‘It’s not your fault,’ she said. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘Right. If I ever catch the son of a bitch, that’s what I’ll tell him about
you
.’
Now her face seemed to have returned to its original
relaxed
smile. And I thought, What a small price to pay for such a good thing.
‘There’s a hose on the other side of the building. In the alley between here and the bank. It’s very long. We use it to hose off the sidewalk out front.’
‘Fine. I’ll be back in a bit.’
I stepped out into the cool morning, glad to have a simple, predictable mission. It was that hour of morning my dad used to call civil twilight – the first few minutes you can see your hand in front of your face. Plus the streetlight on the corner helped. Still, it felt for all the world like a movie set. I still was not convinced I was in a real place.
I carried the bucket to the front window, and, thinking very little about who put them there and why, scrubbed away the raw eggs. They were freshly thrown, and still wet, so it didn’t take much. I listened to the sound of the scrub brush bristles against the rough brick under the window, and found it comforting for reasons I couldn’t pin down. I felt the pinch of the muscle I’d pulled in my back the night before. But it was OK. It wasn’t too bad. I fetched the hose from the alley and blasted away the soap, using the force of the water to wash it, and the eggshells, off the curb and into the storm drain. I replaced the hose, turning it off and then releasing the water still trapped inside. Because … I don’t know why. It’s just the way I was taught to do things. I poured the soapy water from the bucket down the storm drain and went back inside.
She looked up and smiled at me. She was just, in that exact moment, slapping an enormous mound of dough – that would soon be my morning donut – on to the table. I stood at the door a moment, watching her roll it out with a heavy wooden rolling pin, in motions almost too fast for my eyes to follow.
‘You can just leave the bucket under the sink for now. And you can wash your hands in that sink, or you can use our bathroom. Thank you.’
‘Oh, that was nothing.’
But it was something. It was just something I didn’t mind.
When I got back from washing my hands, she pointed with a flip of her head to a high stool, which I sat on.
I watched her cut the donuts.
In her right hand she held a metal cookie cutter – well, donut cutter – and she moved along the sheet of dough with blinding speed, leaving classic donut shapes marked into the dough, complete with holes. With her left hand she followed along, pulling them up, leaving the centers on the table, placing the perfect circles on a wire rack.
‘You want to talk about it?’ she asked.
‘What?’ I asked, thinking I sounded like my brother. I could only imagine she was referring to the eggs on the window, and that didn’t require much processing. At least, not on my end.
‘You said you had a bad night with Ben.’
‘Oh. Right. Well. Not a bad
night
, so much. More a
bad
evening. Then he went to sleep at eight and forgot the whole thing, and I was so rattled I was up till three thirty, and then at twenty after six he gets me up to drive him to work. So that’s why I look tired. I mean, even more so.’
‘Grab a coffee.’
‘What a good idea.’
And I did.
‘So,’ she said, when I came back and sat. ‘You want to talk about it?’
I laughed. It felt good. I wondered when I last had.
‘Thought I just did.’
‘Well, that’s fine. If that’s all you want to say about it, that’s fine. That’s up to you.’
I blew on the coffee and took a few sips. I’d never drink any other coffee again. If I ever had to, it would never be good enough.
‘He doesn’t get it about my mom. Our mom. It’s like he literally doesn’t understand the concept of death. Not that I blame him. I mean, he only has just so much to work with, and he can only understand what he can understand. But he still thinks she’s coming back, which is heartbreaking. So I was trying to find a nice way to help him with it. I just said that maybe even though he can’t see her any more, he might still be able to feel her. Feel her with him. And that turned out to be a mistake. He completely flipped out. For … well, I don’t want to exaggerate and say for hours. Twenty-five minutes, maybe. But … let me tell you. It felt like hours.’
She lowered a rack of donuts into the fryer, and a rush of sizzle startled me.
She looked over her shoulder.
‘If he flipped out, then he understands.’
‘On some level. Yeah.’
‘What about you? Can you feel your mother still with you?’
‘I did last night.’
‘Good.’
Silence. For a long time. Long enough that the donuts came out of the fryer, and I watched her glaze them with a big ladle, right on their rack, the excess glaze running back into the well of the metal glazing table.
She brought me one on a paper plate.
‘Careful,’ she said. ‘Hot.’ Then, just when I least expected it, ‘Are you going to put him in a home?’
‘Oh, no,’ I said, without even thinking. ‘I couldn’t do that to my mom. I’ve hurt my mom enough for one lifetime.’
She cocked her head to one side, but didn’t ask any questions.
I didn’t want to elaborate, but it was too late. I’d stuck my foot in it. Now I had to go on. Otherwise what she was imagining would be even worse.
‘It’s just … I should’ve stayed and helped her take care of him. I know I should have. I’ve always known. But I didn’t stay. The minute I turned eighteen, I ran. And I’ve felt like shit about it all these years. And obviously it’s come back to haunt me. Like karma, but
all
in the same lifetime. But … to put Ben in a home …’
‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘I think he would be unhappy.’
‘He’d be miserable. And my mom. My mom would roll over in her grave.’
And, as that last word came out of my mouth, I broke. I cried.
So, there it was.
For five or six days, nothing. Oh, a little sweating and shaking and screaming here and there, but no tears. But when I said what I said, there it was. My mom was in her grave. Figuratively speaking. The denial cracked like river ice in the first good thaw. The kind of cracks that won’t stop once they get going. They travel. They craze. The whole structure just … well, we all know what it does. It comes tumbling down. Things are like that. You can build them all you want. But they tumble down.
It would not be exaggerating my case to call this ‘The moment I realized my mother was dead.’ And I thought, You should be more understanding with Ben. He gets it on an emotional level, but can’t wrap his brain around it. You did almost exactly the same thing, but in reverse.
She came close to me, but did not touch me in any way.
‘Poor Rusty,’ she said.
It surprised me so much that I almost stopped crying.
‘Who told you my name is Rusty?’
‘It isn’t? I was in the market yesterday, and I saw Ben.
And
I said, “Ben, I met your brother.” But I hadn’t thought to ask your name. So I said, “Ben, what’s your brother’s name?” And he said “Rusty”.’
‘Childhood nickname. I go by Russell now. Ben is having trouble making the switch.’
‘Well, I won’t have trouble making the switch. Poor Russell.’
And she reached out and handed me two paper towels. I wondered if my nose was running. It didn’t feel like it.
‘It’s the best I have,’ she said.
I took them from her. And looked into her face. And fell for her.
Yes. Just like that.
I won’t say fell in love, because I don’t quite believe that. I think you have to know someone better to earn that phrase. But I fell. That’s all I can say. I fell into … something. And hit hard.
Like being hit by a car. And almost as painful. But mostly I mean, just that sudden. There’s no beginning, middle and end to that experience. The split second it happens, it’s happened. In its entirety. The only time that really elapses is the time it takes you to catch up. To absorb what just happened to you. And nobody ever thinks it’s going to unhappen. Do they?
‘Now you’re looking at me strangely,’ she said.
‘Was I? Sorry.’
I looked away.
But a minute later, when she went back to her donuts,
I
looked at her some more. I wanted to do nothing else from that moment forward.
There were just two problems.
One, whether she would ever return my feelings. And two, if she ever did, how to keep Ben from sitting between us on the couch every night.
I took a big bite of my glazed donut.
Three problems. And if it worked out, I would be very fat.
Yes, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Suddenly it was lighter inside my brain. Funnier. Things were looking up.
When I got into the driveway, Mark Jespers was standing out in front of his parents’ house, watering the lawn with a hose.
I waved, and he waved, and then he ran to turn off the hose, and my heart sank. I’ve never been Mark’s biggest fan. And I’d been seriously looking forward to taking a nap. And daydreaming.
Lady bakers, maybe.
He met up with me right in front of my mom’s front porch.
‘You look terrible,’ he said.
‘I just need some sleep.’
He’d changed, Mark. Literally. Physically. He’d bulked up. Gotten into bodybuilding, apparently. He wore shorts and a sleeveless tee, a muscle tee, obviously proud of what he had to show. I wondered if he used steroids. It looked like he might.
‘Hey,’ he said, careening off in another conversational direction entirely. ‘We’re going out tonight to celebrate Larry and Vince and Paul. It’s their last day.’
I had an irreverent thought. I thought, Yeah, seeing as they’re already trained by the National Guard and they’ll be part of the first wave into Afghanistan, it’s probably at least one of their last few. I shook it away again. I didn’t want to think that way, especially about Larry. I liked Larry. At least, better than I liked Mark. And I knew him better than I knew Vince or Paul.