Ask Him Why (23 page)

“Dear, dear Ruthie,” he said, and grasped one of my hands in both of his.

And although it was an oversimplification of the man, it struck me that this was his single greatest quality: he made everybody feel dear. And the sad truth of this world is that not many people feel that way, and not much of the time.

I thought about what Joseph said, wondering how he would live without Ham. How even if Ham lived to be a hundred, that would only be five more years. I wondered what I would do without him, too.

He must have seen that on me, or felt it, because he raised my hand to his lips and kissed it and patted it, then said, “Don’t be going on like that, Ruthie. This is not the last you’ll see o’ me. You’re not shut o’ this old man just yet, girl.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know it, in the place in my gut that knows things. I feel it in my old bones. Mark my words, Ruthie. We’re destined to meet again.”

I kissed him on the cheek, mumbled something about him feeling better, and headed off to join Joseph out in the car.

But before I could get to the open bedroom doorway, he stopped me with words.

“Ruthie. If there’s one thing you’re never to doubt, my love, it’s how much Joe is devoted to you and your brother. It’s a kind of love the likes o’ which I rarely see. That’s why I value Joe as much as I do. Not everybody has that kind of love in him. I don’t know what he’s been doing with it all these years, since he couldn’t give it to either one o’ you directly. But mark my words, Ruthie. It’s not gone.”

I smiled, but I think it was a pained smile.

“But
I
need to be,” I said.

And I walked away from everything I couldn’t handle at the time, which was pretty much everything.

We small-talked almost all the way to the airport, and I think we both knew it. But we didn’t say it out loud, and we didn’t push each other over the line into that real place. I think we were both tired from being real—I know I was—and it was such a relief to take the pressure off myself and just chat.

I told him about Sean’s job running a good-sized print shop, and I told him more about Maya than most people would hold still to hear.

He told me about the horse ranch in detail, including his favorite horses and why they were his favorites, and I promised again that I would visit, but by then I’d begun to wonder if I would really keep that promise.

When we got back onto the 101 freeway and I knew the airport couldn’t be far off, I decided to dive into real just once more. Because I had something to say that I knew needed saying.

“Joseph,” I said, to warn him of approaching seriousness. “There’s another question about Aubrey I think you should be asking yourself. You haven’t even touched on the subject of whether you
want
to contact him, under the circumstances. Whether that’s the best thing for you. He’s not exactly your biggest ally. He’s been needlessly hurtful to you in the past, and I guarantee you he will be again if you give him the opportunity. You know how Aubrey is.”

“Actually, I don’t,” he said. “I don’t know him as an adult at all.”

“You remember how he was as a kid, though, right? Well, he’s just like that, only more so.”

A moment of silence. During it, I thought about what Ham had said just as I was walking out the door. I knew Joseph wouldn’t say, “You’re right. I’ll just drop it.” Because then all that love would have no place to go. After ten years of no place to go, I had to figure it wanted out.

“You think I don’t want to get to a place of forgiveness with him just because he said some hurtful things? He’s my brother, Duck. I’m going to at least try.”

“Well, it’s up to you. But I think my point is, it’s one thing to
want
to get to a place of forgiveness. It’s another thing to look reality in the eye and accept the fact that you probably never will.”

When Sean and Maya picked me up at the airport, I jumped into the backseat, because I couldn’t bear not to hug and kiss the baby hello, and you can’t idle your car at that pick-up curb for long.

“Sorry to treat you like a chauffeur,” I told Sean.

I leaned forward and kissed him on the ear before putting on my seatbelt.

“How was it?” he asked as he pulled back out into traffic.

“Strange. Joseph was there.”

“Joseph? Is out?”

“Yeah. Don’t think it didn’t surprise me, too.” I stroked Maya’s soft hair, and she smiled, and everything felt better. “I felt kind of blindsided.”

“Blindsided by who?”

“It feels weird to say it, because I never said a word against her before, but I think Regina. She sent him to pick me up at the airport. An hour-and-a-half drive down the coast, and she forgot to mention it would be Joseph driving, and I had no idea what to say to him. I just had no time to prepare.”

I caught a glimpse of his face in the rearview mirror, and he was smiling, which made me feel a little cross.

“It sounds like something I can picture Regina doing,” he said.

I sighed. “Yeah. Me, too, now that I think about it. I can see her thinking, ‘Here’s an experience for you, Ruthie. It won’t kill you; it’ll make you stronger.’”

We drove in silence for a time. A minute, maybe.

Then Sean touched on that sixty-four-dollar question I mentioned earlier.

“Does Aubrey know Joseph’s out?”

“I’ve left him four messages, but he won’t call me back. My pesky little brother who calls me nearly every week to tell me his troubles suddenly wants nothing to do with me.”

“You told him the news in the messages, though, right?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Well, now you know why he wants nothing to do with you. Think Joseph’ll try to contact him?”

“Yes. I think he will. I tried to advise him against it, twice, but I still think he will.”

“That should be interesting. We’ll probably see the fireworks from two hundred miles away. So . . . did you ask him?”

“Ask him what?”

“What do you mean, ‘ask him what?’ Did you ask him the obvious question?”

“I don’t even know what you think the obvious question is, Sean.”

“Did you ask him what happened over there?”

“No. What would be the point of that?”

“Isn’t that what you’ve wanted to know all these years?”

“Not really. I read the trial transcript. It was pretty simple. What’s left to ask about it? I asked him the something I’ve really always wanted to know, which was whether he went to Ham’s house seriously intending to jump. You know, that first day when he was twelve. He was surprised, now that I think about it. He said that was totally not the question he thought I was going to ask. I guess he expected me to ask about Baghdad, too. But what more is there to know?”

“What’s missing, Ruth,” he said, “is Joseph’s side of the story.
Why.
Aren’t you curious as to
why
he did what he did?”

“No. I think it’s obvious. He was scared. Two guys died in sniper fire that night. It was dangerous work.”

Silence. A long silence, but I didn’t think much about it at the time. I didn’t realize Sean was disgusted with me until I caught his eyes in the rearview mirror.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m surprised at you, Ruth. How can you just assume he’s a coward? That’s exactly what Aubrey did.”

“Oh, no. Do
not
go there, Sean. Do
not
lump me in with my little brother.”

“Then don’t act like him.”

I felt a little stunned, because Sean and I didn’t argue often, and when we did I could generally see it coming. I had just been blindsided again.

“If he wasn’t scared, Sean, and if he’s so brave, then why did he take off when the army found out what he’d done?”

“And if he’s a coward, why did he go back and turn himself in?”

“Well, why do
you
think he did it, then, Sean?”

“I have no idea. My point is not that I know. My point is that we
don’t
know. So you ask. When you don’t know something, you ask. You don’t just assume cowardice. That’s what the media did. And the kids we went to school with and their parents. And you hated that. They had no idea, they hadn’t been there, they couldn’t possibly know anything, but they were so sure they did. And now you’re doing it, too. Here’s a question. If he was just scared, why did he actually try to stop the mission? If you’re scared, you just don’t go, right? If others are willing to go, why stop them? Why try to shut it down?”

“I have no idea, Sean; I just know it happened. Maybe he was worried for the guys he talked to. Maybe they were his friends or something, I don’t know. What else could it even
be
if it wasn’t fear?”

“I have no idea, Ruth. I wasn’t there. I just know these situations are always more complicated than they look from the outside. Wars sometimes force guys over the line into morally gray areas. Maybe they were asking him to do something he didn’t think was right. I’m just saying you should have asked him. But I guess now it’s too late.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “He wants us to come visit him in Colorado. But I don’t know if you’d want to do that.”

“If I could get the time off work, I’d love it. The famous Joseph. I’m just dying to meet him.”

“Good. Then
you
ask him why he did what he did. I don’t want to wade back into that old territory, Sean, period. If I see him again, I’m moving forward. I lived through that old crap once, and I’m not going back there if I have anything to say about it.”

We drove for five minutes or so in silence. Maya had a hold of my index finger and was bouncing it up and down, tugging on it.

“One more question,” Sean said. “If it was so weird, and you were so uncomfortable and felt so blindsided, why didn’t you call me to talk?”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s a good question. I’m not really sure.”

I thought about it for a while and decided the situation had thrust me back into a childhood mode—made me feel like a kid again—and in that feeling, there were no tools to climb out of the discomfort, just as there had been no tools when I was young. And there was no Sean. I’d honestly felt like my teenage self while I was there.

But I didn’t tell Sean that, because I was still a little mad at him for verbally jumping on me. So I kept the truth—one that might have helped him understand—to myself.

And that, I now realize, is how you start the pattern of silences. So innocently and on such a small scale, and then once you open the door for them, they barge in and take on a life of their own.

Chapter Twenty: Aubrey

I didn’t know what time it was. Only that it was light. And that a knock on the door was dragging me out of sleep.

I looked at the clock, and it was seven. I honestly didn’t know if that was a.m. or p.m.

I got up and pulled a light robe on over my boxers. Walked to the door.

“That was everything of yours,” I called through the door. “I swear. If you lost something, it’s not my fault. Look elsewhere. I went over this place with a fine-tooth comb. A flea comb, actually. Everything left in this apartment is mine.”

Silence.

“It’s Ruth,” Ruth said through the door.

“Oh,” I said.

I really, really, really didn’t want to open the door.

I opened the door.

She had Maya on her hip. The baby reached her baby arms out to me. My heart melted. I reached back. Took her by the armpits. Pulled her into my living room. Then I spun her around in the airplane game. It was her favorite. And she assumed the position immediately. Arms outstretched. Legs flying. She giggled, which totally dissolved all the nasty stuff I’d been feeling.

“I’m using your bathroom,” Ruth said. “It was a long drive.”

I stopped spinning and held Maya to my chest.

“No sh—no duh, Ruth. Why exactly did you drive two hours to get here?”

“Because you wouldn’t answer my six messages,” she called back on her way down the hall.

“Three words, Ruth. Take. A. Hint.”

She disappeared into the bathroom without comment. I bounced Maya on my hip. And realized it would be hard for me to have the conversation Ruth and I were about to have. Because I couldn’t yell with the baby here.

“Maya, Maya, Maya,” I said.

She made a sound that could have been any word at all, but probably wasn’t. She reached out with one tiny index finger and touched my lip. Like pointing at me would be the best answer.

Then Ruth came back.

“I called your work,” she said, “and there was a new guy there. He said you quit.”

“Yes. I quit.”

The baby reached out to Ruth. So I handed her back.

“Why?”

“Because it was such bull . . . crap. It had so little to do with actual astronomy. I might as well flip burgers to get myself through grad school.”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

“No. I haven’t gotten another job yet.”

I knew what she was thinking. How like Aubrey to walk off one job without lining up another. She didn’t say so. I expected her to say,
So, are you hitting Mom up for money?
Which I was.

But she didn’t ask.

She just said, “So Jenny’s gone, too.” It wasn’t a question. “Why?”

“Other than the fact that we fought day in and day out? She said I was so obsessed with Joseph when he was in prison that she didn’t even want to know what I was like when he was out. Another loss I can chalk up to my brother.”

Ruth shook her head. Sat down on my couch. The baby bounced up and down. Straightening her legs and folding them again, wired with energy, while Ruth steadied her.

“Not fair to blame that on him.”

“How do you figure?”

“It’s
your
obsession. You were with Jenny for a year. He came nowhere near you in that year. It’s
your
feelings about Joseph she couldn’t stand.”

“I feel the way I do about him for a reason.”

“You’re hopeless,” she said.

“Then why come here, Ruth? Huh? Why drive two hundred miles just to insult me? If you can’t stand me, why don’t you stay away?”

Maya stopped bouncing. Her face darkened as if she might be about to cry. And I knew I had to tone down the anger. Which was not my strong suit.

“Did it ever occur to you,” Ruth said, “that if you don’t answer six phone messages, I might start to worry about you?”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” I said. I sank into the stuffed chair. The one I never sat in. Because it was lumpy. “I just didn’t want anything you were selling.”

“I wasn’t selling anything. I was warning you.”

“He’s going to try to contact me, isn’t he?”

“Looks that way,” she said.

“Well, call him off.”

“He’s not my dog, Aubrey. I can’t call him off. I didn’t sic him on you in the first place. I told him twice not to do it.”

“Well, tell him again.”

“Excuse me?”

“You have his address. Or phone number. Or something. Right?”

“Well. Ham does.”

“So call him up and tell him to stay the hell away from me.”

Silence. I looked into her face. It seemed set hard, but I couldn’t quite read it. I looked away.

“No,” she said.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?
You
got me into this.”

“What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand, Aubrey? You’re a grown man. Tell him yourself. I didn’t ask for any of this. I just went to see Ham because he was sick. Nobody told me Joseph would be there. I thought he was still in prison. I didn’t get you into this—I didn’t even get myself into it. You’re a big boy, and if you have something to say to him, buck up and say it.”

I rubbed my eyes. Briefly wondered if this could be a dream. But I knew I wouldn’t get that lucky.

“Fine,” I said. “But will you at least get me his address? So I can warn him away before he tries?”

“Yeah,” she said. “That much I’ll do.”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t suppose it’ll make a damn bit of difference to you, but it should. So I’m telling you anyway. The reason he wouldn’t see us when he was in prison is because he couldn’t. Because Brad made him a trade. A sort of forced deal. He paid for decent outside counsel in return for Joseph’s promise that he wouldn’t contact us in any way. If Joseph had broken his end of the bargain, the attorney would have disappeared, and then he could have been in prison for life.”

“Is that what you kept trying to tell me on the phone?” I asked. “You’re right. It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me. Besides, it’s a load of crap. Because that was only true until after his sentencing. Which was ten years ago.”

“Yeah, well, after that it was a little more complicated.”

“No, Ruth. It was painfully simple. He should’ve broken the promise.”

“He’s breaking it now.”

“Too late,” I said. “Time’s up. Game over.”

Now I just had to be sure that Joseph knew that. Before it was too late.

“Okay,” Ruth said, and struggled to her feet with the kid. “We’re going.”

“Now? Already?”

“I can’t deal with you when you’re like this.”

“Like what, Ruth? What am I like that’s so abhorrent to you?”

“He’s your
brother
.”

“Yeah. Got that part. The problem here is not confusion about how we’re related, you know? It’s a bigger deal than that.”

They were halfway to the door by then. And I swear I didn’t think I’d raised my voice. But Maya’s face twisted into a mask of sadness. She burst into tears.

“Oh, Maya,” I said. “Honey. Uncle A didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Forget it,” Ruth said. “She’ll settle down in the car.”

“It’s just such a long drive, you know, Ruth? Two hours each way. To sit here for ten minutes.”

She stopped. Leveled me with that look that used to strike fear into my heart when I was a kid.

“My thoughts exactly, Uncle A. Very long drive. So next time I call you to talk about something you don’t care to discuss, how about you shoot me a text that says ‘I’m fine but I’m ignoring you.’ Save me the long trip.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

“Whatever. We’re out of here.”

Maya looked at me over her mom’s shoulder. She’d stopped crying. But her lower lip still stuck out. And she looked at me like I might be just about to kick a puppy. Which made me feel about an inch tall.

Then the door slammed and they were gone.

“Here,” Luanne said. “Fish. Are you happy?”

And she turned her laptop computer so that she disappeared from the monitor entirely.

It was our next regularly scheduled session. I’d been tempted to try for a cancellation. Ask her to squeeze me in. Instead, I’d decided to man up. Maybe because I had trouble admitting I couldn’t handle things on my own.

“Very funny,” I said. “I’d like to see a little of you, please.”

Exactly half of her face moved onto the right-hand side of the monitor.

I rolled my eyes but didn’t comment.

“What’s up?” she asked. “You look off-kilter.”

“My sister was here.”

“Sounds like a good thing.”

“Not really. She drove all the way out here because I wasn’t answering her calls. Then she dropped the bomb on me that Joseph is about to try to look me up. And—get this—when I said I didn’t want that, she left after about ten minutes. Got all pissed at me. Wouldn’t even stay so I could get a decent visit with the baby. She said she can’t deal with me when I’m like that. She said, ‘He’s your brother.’ Like I owe him something. It just bothered me that she’s on his side, not mine.”

“Then I really hate to tell you: I am, too.”

“Oh, crap!” I said. And leaned back hard and hit the back of my chair. “Don’t I pay you to be on my side?”

“No. You don’t. You pay me to help you get better. And then you define being on your side as not challenging you in any of the ways that will help you get better. So, that’s the long version. Short version: no. He
is
your brother, Aubrey. And people regret letting those relationships go. Not always, but the vast majority of the time they do. And I just don’t see what it would hurt to hear him out.”

“It
would
hurt me, though. It hurts me just to think about him.”

“I didn’t mean it wouldn’t cause you discomfort. I meant it wouldn’t cause any genuine harm.”

“Why should I purposely walk into an experience that causes discomfort?”

“Says the man with the toothache.”

“Wait,” I said. And rubbed my face briskly. Like that would help. “I must’ve missed something. Who has a toothache?”

“It’s a metaphor, Aubrey. When you go to the dentist for a root canal, or even a filling, it hurts. It’s a lousy experience. When you go to a doctor to have a cancerous tumor removed or to have bypass surgery, you’re going to wake up in a lot of pain. So why even do it? Because there’s something wrong and it needs fixing, that’s why. Everything gets worse before it gets better, Aubrey.”

“There’s something wrong with your metaphor,” I said, “because there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m fine.”

“So I guess that concludes our therapy experience, then. I had no idea you were cured.”

I sighed. Looked at the ceiling. Then at the fish. Looked around the room, but I had no idea why.

“You know I’m not going to talk to him, right?”

“I know you’re not going to talk to him today. I was hoping you’d leave open the possibility that the future can be different.”

“In a lot of ways it can,” I said. “Not that way. Ruth texted me his e-mail address. And his phone number. But that was stupid, because I’m not going to call him. I’m going to e-mail him and tell him to stay away from me and leave me alone.”

“You still haven’t told me what it can hurt.”

“I hate it,” I said. “I hate that . . . you know. That thing that happens.”

“No, I don’t know. Lots of things happen. Specificity, Aubrey.”

“When you think you know how things are. What’s real. What happened. And then somebody else starts talking, and suddenly they’re trying to tell you reality was something entirely different than what you saw with your own eyes. And they expect you to go back and like . . . I don’t know . . . retroactively change what you think happened. And I won’t know if he’s lying to me. Or if I was just wrong. Or if he was just wrong. Or if reality can be two entirely different things at the same time, which sort of makes me feel like my head is about to explode.”

“Or maybe your reality is your reality, and Joseph’s is his.”

“That’s the exploding-head option,” I said.

She smiled with one corner of her mouth. At least, I think she did. She showed that half smile often enough. But I could still only see half of her face on the monitor, so I couldn’t say for sure.

“Why not e-mail and tell him to please not contact you until you say you’re ready?”

“Okay,” I said. “I can go with that.”