Ask Him Why (29 page)

A movement caught my eye, and I turned my head and saw Hammy’s car parked on the shoulder of the highway, with Hammy in the passenger seat. The car was parked perpendicular to the lanes, its windshield—and occupant—facing me, which there would likely never have been room for in real life. But this was a dream.

There was nobody in the driver’s seat. Ham was just sitting there, a passenger waiting to be driven . . . somewhere. I wasn’t sure where.

He raised his arm and waved to me.

I assumed he was calling me over, so I left my path at the cliff edge and walked toward the car, but Ham wasn’t in it anymore. The car was still there, but Hammy was gone.

I woke up and sat up in bed and looked over at Sean, who was fast asleep. I knew he had work in the morning, so I didn’t wake him up to talk about my dream, even though it had felt strangely solid and real, vivid in a way I wasn’t used to experiencing. Normally I didn’t dream, or at least didn’t remember I had, and what little I remembered tended to feel chaotic and make little, if any, sense.

But this had been as clear as water in a mountain stream, the kind that lets you look through and see every rock and grain of sand on the bottom.

In time, I managed to get back to sleep.

After I’d given Maya her breakfast, after Sean had gone off to work, I still couldn’t get that dream out of my mind. So I called Joseph to see if Hammy was okay.

“Joseph,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “Duck. It’s you.” His voice sounded deep, and not just in its register. It sounded emotional, from a place deep in his chest. I could also hear it perfectly, which meant he wasn’t out in the field.

“I just wondered if Hammy was okay.”

“How did you know?” he asked.

And then I knew. I hadn’t known, except to the extent that I had—but when he asked me how I knew, everything felt laid out clearly, and I knew part of me had known all along.

“I had a dream,” I said. “I saw him waving to me in a dream.”

“Sounds like something he would do,” Joseph said.

He didn’t go on. I waited.

Then in time, I said, “So . . .”

“He died quietly in his sleep last night, Duck. Just the way he wanted to go. He wanted to be in his own house, in his own bed, at peace. So he got what he wanted.”

“How did anybody even know so soon?”

“He had nursing care at the end there. I thought you knew.”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

Then neither of us said anything for a long time, and I doubted if I had anything I could bring myself to say—even something desperately simple, like “thank you” or “good-bye.”

“Not to be short with you,” Joseph said, “but let’s talk again when I’ve had more time to process this. I’m kind of a mess right now, but I’ll be okay. It’s not like we didn’t see this coming.”

“What about a memorial?”

“Not sure yet,” he said. “But I promise I’ll let you know as soon as I know.”

“Thanks,” I said.

And we hung up the phone.

I stood in the living room with my eyes closed for a minute or so. Maya was making squeaky noises as she bounced in her playpen, but they were just background to the images in my brain.

I was seeing Ham in that car again, the way he’d appeared in my dream, and wondering why I hadn’t waved back.

I raised my right hand—in real life, right there in my living room—and gave him the wave I owed him.

Then I opened my eyes and got back to Maya, who didn’t mind that I was crying. Babies are good that way. They have lots of things they’re afraid of, but it’s an entirely different list than us grown-ups. The things that scare us don’t make a dent in the little newcomers at all.

Chapter Twenty-Six: Aubrey

The Monday after Thanksgiving, I had a Skype session with Luanne.

“Before you even ask me any questions,” I said, “before you ask me how Thanksgiving went or ask me about my mom, I have to tell you this. I found out something. And I have to tell you about it right now.”

I leaned forward. Toward my computer screen. Braced my elbows on the knees of my jeans.

As much as I could remember it word for word, I told her the story. Just the way Joseph had told it to me.

I watched her face with every sentence. Watched to see what happened inside her as each word hit home. It felt unfamiliar to me, to do that. In a way I couldn’t quite place. But I didn’t remember ever watching her face before as we spoke. In all those many years.

She didn’t let much show.

When I was done, I sat back. Hit the back of my chair with a thump.

“So what do you think about that?” I asked her.

Her eyes met mine. Or they came up to her built-in camera, anyway.

“I realize this is a very ‘therapist’ thing to say. But I think it’s better if we stick with what
you
think about it.”

“I can’t even sort out my thoughts, Luanne. They’re just a big jumble.”

“Go to feelings, then.”

I looked away from her. Briefly at the fish. Then I forced my gaze back to her.

“Guilty. Stupid. Stubborn. Blind.”

A silence.

“Go on,” she said.

“I was hoping you’d argue with me.”

“You know better. Go on.”

I sighed. Closed my eyes. Then looked right at her again.

“Before he told me that . . . I kept basing all my feelings on whether I would ever forgive him. I was waiting to hear what he would say to me. And then I’d sort of be in this high-and-mighty place. And I’d judge whether I was ready to forgive him.” I thought,
There’s that word “judge” again
.
“Plus, I pretty much figured I wouldn’t. Forgive him. Then he tells me that story. At first, I didn’t believe him. But it turns out he told Hamish MacCallum the same thing a couple of days after he got back from Iraq. And then all I could think about was what I said. You know. That day. In front of the cameras. And then it hit me that it should really have been about whether
he
could forgive
me
.”

“Did he seem inclined to?”

“Didn’t seem like he’d ever particularly held it against me to begin with. Which is weird.”

“Why is it weird?”

“You don’t think it’s weird?”

“I think it’s the way we’re supposed to operate, Aubrey.”

“Well. Maybe. But nobody ever does.”

“Beg to differ.”

“Not in my family,” I said.

I thought I saw the tiniest flicker of a smile at one corner of her mouth. “Well,” she said, “Joseph was out of your family for a lot of years. That might’ve helped.”

A long silence.

I knew I’d skipped something. Something that had a kick to my gut when I thought about it. I’d been heading for it. But then the conversation had taken a turn.

When it came back, it kicked me again.

“It hurt him, though,” I said. “Hamish told me so.”

I was surprised by her reaction. I guess I’d expected it would kick her, too.

“You knew that,” she said. “That’s why you did it.” She rocked her chair back. Steepled her fingers in front of her chest. Her eyes still didn’t betray much. “It was a very purposeful, premeditated action to try to hurt him,” she said. “That’s what made it a radical act. And I think you were the only one who didn’t see the fact that, no matter how much you were hurting, Joseph had never done anything purposeful and premeditated against you. So that’s why everybody was shocked except you.”

“In other words, I’m an idiot.”

“In other words, you were an impulsive boy, and now you’re a man who’s able to look back and see things more clearly than he saw them then. Better late than never.”

I looked into her eyes for a minute. And she stared right back. It was almost as though we were challenging each other. Daring each other to go a step further.

“He invited me to come out and work on that horse ranch with him for a month. In Colorado.”

“Would you want to take that much time off school?”

“I’m not going to Colorado,” I said. “I know that much. But I did tell him I’ve been wanting to take some time off. Especially now that I lost that job at the restaurant. A month, maybe. That’s what he offered. Also . . . I told him I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go back to school. You know. Be an astronomer at all. That it was all up in the air. But I do. I mean, I am. I’m going to go back to school. I’ve thought about it a lot in the past few days. And I’m going to keep going. I am.”

“But you still want that month off.”

“But I’m not ready for that whole Colorado thing.”

“Why not?”

“Look. It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I have no money. I had to borrow twenty dollars from Ruth to put gas in my bike. To get home from Thanksgiving. I cleaned out my bank account when I got home, and it’s been barely enough to eat on. I can’t afford to get to Colorado and that’s that.”

“But if you could?”

“But I can’t.”

“But if you could?”

“You really want to go around again?” I asked.

She sighed. Then she asked me to talk a little about my mother. You know. Dying.

So that’s what we did for most of the rest of the session.

Right after she told me our time was up, just before we clicked out of the Skype call, she said this.

“Did you notice something different about today?”

I had no idea where she was going with that. Everything seemed different. It wasn’t the kind of difference that could be pinned down, though, I thought. Summed up in a neat little phrase or two.

“You mean, other than the fact that my mother is dying and my brother did what he did because of me? Because that’s some difference right there.”

“I didn’t mean content-wise.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay. I give up.”

“You didn’t look at the fish today,” she said. “You looked at me.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess I didn’t notice that.”

Except I
had
noticed myself noticing that. In a way. But I guess part of me didn’t realize until she pointed it out. You know. That it meant as much as it probably did.

After the session, I wandered out to my mailbox.

I found two bills. A pile of junk mail. A letter from my mom.

I opened the letter on the way back to my apartment.

It was a short note. Wrapped around a check for a thousand dollars. Twice what she normally sent.

Aubrey honey,

You might as well have some of this now. You and your sister will be dividing it up soon enough.

Love,

Your mother

In my head, Luanne asked her question for a third time.

“But what if you could?”

Mrs. Morrison answered her apartment door on the fourth knock. She was old. It was hard for her to move around.

Just for a moment, I felt bad. Asking her to look after the fish again. She just had, over Thanksgiving. And I knew it was hard for her to go up and down those stairs.

Her face lit up when she saw me. Which, I realized, it always did. And that’s something. You know? That’s no small moment.

“Aubrey.”

“I had a thought,” I said. As I said those words, I realized: yes, I had a thought, but it was a new thought. It was different from what I’d planned to say when I knocked on her door. “I’m going to go away for a while. Longer than usual. I hate to ask you to go up and down those stairs. You know. Every day. For a month. So what if I just drain those tanks? Right now. Take the fish out. Put them in bowls or something. Take most of the water out of the tanks. Carry them down here. Get them all set up again in your apartment.”

I watched the wheels turn in her head. Watched her run her hands across her apron. She always wore an apron. She usually ran her hands across it. Especially when she was thinking.

“I’d love to have them, dear,” she said. “But . . . so much work for you to move them. And then in a month, when you get home, having to go through that all over again . . .”

“I wouldn’t, though,” I said. “If you like having them, I’d just leave them with you.”

Her head rocked back a little in surprise.

“Those beautiful fish? Why, you’ve been collecting them for years, Aubrey. All those hundreds of dollars’ worth of fish and equipment. Why would you want to give all that away?”

“I feel like I’m done with them,” I said. Knowing it and saying it at exactly the same time. “I always used them the wrong way, I think. To have someplace to look. You know. When I didn’t want to look at what was right in front of me. They were a distraction. I don’t think I want to use distractions anymore. I think now I mostly need to look where I’m going.”

I cashed Mom’s check and just kept driving.

I’d filled a big, technical several-day backpack with clothes and a few personal items. It was strapped onto the sissy bar on the back of my bike. The one I’d bolted on because Jenny thought I accelerated too fast. Because she was scared she’d blow right off the back. The one I’d never bothered to take down.