When You Were Older (retail) Read online

  ‘Until now,’ she said, looking up from her work.

  ‘Yes, until now.’

  I wasn’t going to answer any more questions unless asked.

  ‘Why now?’ she asked a moment later.

  ‘My mother died.’

  ‘Oh. I’m so sorry. I should never have asked.’

  ‘No, it’s OK. So I promised myself I was done with this place for ever. And I built a whole new life. And now all of a sudden the new life is gone, and I’m back here, and I’m stuck.’

  ‘Why stuck? Why can’t you go again, after honoring your mother?’

  ‘Because somebody has to take care of my brother. And nobody else wants the job.’

  ‘Is he much younger, your brother?’

  ‘No. He’s older, in fact. I think he just turned thirty. Unless I’m off by a year. No. I’m not. He’s six years older. So he just turned thirty. Last month.’

  And I hadn’t so much as sent him a two-dollar card.

  ‘If he’s older, then … Oh!’ she said suddenly. ‘I know who you are. You’re Ben’s brother.’

  Small towns. Gotta love ’em.

  ‘You know Ben?’

  ‘Sure, everybody knows Ben. The bag boy. Over at Gerson’s Market. He’s very sweet. Everybody likes him. I heard about his mother. Your mother. Very sad. She was very young. I’m sorry for your loss.’

  I had no idea what to say. So I said nothing. I watched her load tray after tray of donuts into the display case. But then, when she was done, I decided it didn’t look like enough donuts. Not for a thriving bakery on a Saturday morning. Then again, based on the number of customers she had at opening – and it was by then a minute or two after seven – this was hardly a thriving bakery.

  ‘You don’t look like Ben,’ she said, without looking up from her work. ‘He’s so tall. And you’re …’

  ‘Puny?’

  ‘I was going to say, compact.’

  ‘We’re only half-brothers. We had different fathers.’

  She leaned her bare arms on to the clear glass counter and looked right into my eyes. I looked away. I’m still not sure why.

  ‘I heard a rumor about Ben’s brother, but maybe it’s one of those things that people say in a small town, and maybe it’s not even true.’

  ‘That’s all very possible,’ I said. ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘That you worked on the one-hundred-and-fifth floor of one of the World Trade Center buildings, and so I thought probably Ben’s brother is dead.’

  ‘That last part didn’t quite pan out.’

  ‘The rest is true?’

  ‘No. I worked on the one-hundred-and-fourth floor.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘It’s not the kind of thing people joke about these days.’

  ‘So you weren’t at work when it happened.’

  ‘I was trying to be.’ I stopped dead for a minute, gauging how much of this I was really prepared to tell. Testing it like an old manual dipstick in a gasoline tank. ‘I was doing my best to get out the door. And then the phone rang. And I was late. And so I almost didn’t get it. I almost let it go. But then for some reason I did. Get it. And it was my old next-door neighbor. Telling me about my mom. Telling me he had Ben, and he wasn’t willing to have him much longer. So I called in to work and started booking a flight. Of course all the flights were grounded before the morning was half-over …’

  I was careful not to look at her as I spoke. I looked down at my Danish, touched it. It had cooled to eating temperature. I wolfed it down in six bites. It was incredible.

  When I finished, and looked up, she was still leaning on the counter watching me.

  ‘So your mother saved your life,’ she said.

  ‘Not purposely. But yeah.’

  ‘How do you know not purposely?’

  ‘She couldn’t have known.’

  ‘How do you know what people can know? People can do all manner of things if it’s important enough. If a mother can lift a car off her son, maybe she can die at just the right time to save him.’

  I didn’t like talking about my mom. To put it as politely as possible, I hadn’t broken through to any kind of acceptance in the last four days. I was still firmly planted in the initial stage of grief: denial. Her death was still something I was dreaming. A bad dream. But a dream, nonetheless.

  ‘You really think that’s possible?’ I asked, and then slugged down the last of my coffee.

  She walked around the counter, and for one awful moment I thought she was coming right at me. That she might touch me, try to comfort me. Some kind of unbearable human interaction like that. Instead, she flipped on the lights in the seating area. I winced, and covered my eyes with one hand.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You never know. In a world like this, you never know what’s possible. So I figure, don’t say it’s possible, because you don’t know. But, then again, don’t say it’s not possible. Because you don’t know that, either.’

  Suddenly, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  ‘What do I owe you for all this?’

  ‘On the house,’ she said, walking back to her own side of the counter.

  ‘Seriously? Why?’

  ‘Because your mother just died, and you came home all the way from New York to take care of your brother, Ben. And so I say the least somebody can do is give you coffee and something to eat.’

  I thanked her and ran. Or nearly ran. I wondered if she was as aware as I was of my sudden desperate need to get away.

  I looked back through the window and saw her looking out at me. Watching me go.

  I read the name of the bakery again. Nazir’s. That and the accent came together in my brain. And it answered a question. It explained why nobody else but me had come in for coffee and a donut that morning.

  I stuck my head back in the door.

  ‘Where are you from?’ I asked.

  ‘Wichita.’

  ‘I meant originally. Not that I care.’

  Her black eyes burned right through me.

  ‘You care.’

  ‘Not in a bad way, I don’t.’

  She turned her eyes back down to her table again. ‘Egypt,’ she said. ‘We are Egyptian. Naturalized. We are not terrorists.’

  I didn’t ask who the other part of ‘we’ was.

  ‘I’m sorry. I really wasn’t meaning to pry.’

  ‘What did you do there?’

  It was too out of context. It sailed right over my head.

  ‘What did I do where?’

  ‘On the one-hundred-and-fourth floor of the World Trade Center.’

  ‘Oh. That. Advertising. Hatcher, Swift & Dallaire. It’s an ad agency. Or … I guess it was an ad agency. A good one. I was lucky to work there.’

  ‘You’re young to be a New York ad man.’

  ‘That’s why it was lucky.’

  I drove home – back – thinking that, in New York, people would get the difference between a terrorist and a naturalized Egyptian. And maybe even care. But this was not New York.

  I was guessing Nazir’s Baked Goods had been having trouble with cash flow for … oh, about four days. Assuming they hadn’t been all along.

  When I got back, I found myself curled in the middle of the living room rug. Literally. I don’t remember getting there. I just found myself there. I just came to awareness on my side on the rug, in a fetal position. I don’t think I fell, because nothing hurt. I think I climbed down there. But I have no memory.

  I shook, and I sweated, and at one point I buried my face against my own knees and let loose a throat-straining scream. One good pull-every-muscle-in-my-body scream.

  Call it a delayed reaction.

  14 September 2001

  IT WAS THREE days after the towers fell, and I’d been half-walking, half-hitchhiking for about an hour. I mean, since my last ride had dropped me off. Not in total. In total I’d been hitchhiking for most of three days.

  Three days ago, when I’d been closer to New York, my thum
b and I had been greeted like a civilian survivor of an honorable and justified war. But I was very far from New York by now. In fact, I had only about five miles left to go.

  It was also nearly nine o’clock, and dark. People don’t like to pick up male hitchhikers after dark. Doesn’t let them get a good look at the hitchhiker first.

  The car was more like a Jeep or a Land Rover, very old and hulking. I turned when I heard the poorly muffled motor, and stuck my thumb out. The headlights nearly blinded me. I squinted into the light, and watched him roar by without even slowing down. Then, a split second later, the brakes squealed as the monster skidded to a stop. While I was wondering what to make of this, the driver threw into reverse and backed up to where I was standing.

  I waited while he leaned over and rolled down the old-fashioned, low-tech crank window.

  ‘Rusty?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘It’s you. Larry.’

  Larry Del Veccio was one of the guys I’d gone to high school with. This may sound like a remarkable coincidence. But in a town with a population of 2,250, not so startling.

  ‘I go by Russell now,’ I said. Which so did not matter in that moment.

  ‘Sorry about the headlights. Have to keep ’em on bright because one of the low-beams is burned out. Get in, man. You’re going home, right?’

  ‘I’m going … yeah. To … the house. My mom’s house. You know.’

  I refused to call it home.

  ‘Get in.’

  I observed myself, as if through someone else’s eyes, as I got in, levering my huge backpack over the passenger’s seat. My lack of sleep was catching up with me big.

  ‘Really sorry about your mom,’ he said as he gunned the big beast back out on to the little highway.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘So unexpected.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘She was so young. Or at least she seemed pretty young.’

  ‘She was fifty-four.’

  ‘That’s young. I mean, to die.’

  ‘It is.’

  Larry pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket, and pressed the dashboard lighter in with a click. I think he was trying to keep busy. I think conversing with me was not soaking up enough of his evening.

  ‘Vince and I went by and saw Ben,’ he said, gearing up for another try.

  ‘That was nice of you. How does he seem?’

  ‘I don’t know. The same.’

  ‘Does he seem to even get it? About our mom?’

  ‘Hard to say with Ben. If he does, we didn’t see it. So, listen. You were in New York, right? I heard you were in New York. I heard you work in one of the World Trade Center towers, but I’m guessing that’s one of those small-town, get-it-wrong things.’

  ‘No, that was true. Past tense, though. I worked in the towers. Nobody works in them now except forensic specialists and fire crews. And even then it depends on your definition of the word “in”.’

  ‘Right. I knew that. So … where were you? When it happened?’

  ‘Home. I was a little late getting out of the house.’

  ‘Whoa. So you would’ve been …’

  ‘Yeah. I would have been. But, as it turns out, I’m not.’

  ‘So, did you hear it, or turn on the TV, or …?’

  ‘I live right across the river from lower Manhattan. I had a perfect view.’

  ‘You watched it?’

  I didn’t answer. It wasn’t a decision so much. More an absence of emotional fuel. Instead I watched as Larry pressed the lighter to the end of his cigarette, then puffed until it was drawing well. He cracked the window to draw out some of the smoke.

  ‘How’d you feel?’ he asked.

  And I thought, Oh, crap. Now I’m on a therapist’s couch? And then I thought, You really need an answer to that? Like you’re thinking I might say great? I watched it and felt great? But I knew it was just my exhaustion, and really not so much Larry’s failing. So I said nothing at all.

  Larry took a long pull off the Marlboro, tucked high in the crook of his first two fingers.

  ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘That must’ve been something.’

  ‘Look. Sorry. I’m just really tired. I haven’t slept in days. I mean, maybe an hour once or twice, but nothing really. I’ve been on the road this whole time. We’ll get together. Catch up. I just need a couple nights’ sleep.’

  ‘Have to be soon, though. I’m shipping out.’

  ‘To …?’

  ‘Don’t know yet. We’ll see. I’m National Guard. I been National Guard six years, man. Nearly as long as you been gone. We been ready for six years. Three of us from Norville: me and Paul Kager and Vince Buck. You remember them, right? The National Guard Three. We’ll be the first to ship out. First, I think they’ll put us on defending some key US targets. But if we go to war the Guard’ll be the first ones over there. You know. Afghanistan. I hope so. I’d like to give ’em a fresh look at what they started.’

  ‘Sounds pointless,’ I said.

  I didn’t mean the part about defending. I meant the part about what he wanted to give them. I actually hadn’t mean to say it at all. Any of it. I’d thought I’d only thought it. But then I heard it in my ears.

  ‘What?’ Larry asked. ‘What’d you say, man?’

  It was clear, in the way he said it, that he’d heard me just fine.

  ‘Oh, crap, Larry. Look, I’m sorry. I’m just like the freaking walking wounded right now. I don’t know what I’m saying at this point.’

  A long silence. Then I felt his hand clap down on my shoulder.

  ‘Yeah, well. Look. We got you home.’

  I looked up to see him pull into the driveway of the house I’d lived in for eighteen years. From the day I came home from the maternity hospital to the day I went off to college, believing in my heart that I’d left Nowhere-ville for good and for ever.

  I still refused to call it home.

  I went first to the Jesperses, next door, thinking they had Ben.

  I stood in front of their door with my oversize pack at my feet, and knocked, expecting Phil to answer. Instead I got his wife, Patty. She looked pretty ruined, not to mention more than six years older. Her long hair was uncombed, and she brushed it off her face with her hands. I was pretty sure I saw some gray I’d never seen before.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she said. ‘Oh, thank God. You finally made it.’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry it took so long.’

  ‘Well, honey, it’s not your fault.’ She moved in and trapped me in a bear hug I’d have been happier without. ‘I mean, no planes. I heard all the rental cars in the country were rented out, even.’

  ‘Yeah. I heard that, too. From every rental car company I called.’

  ‘Well, we’re just so relieved to see you. And, first of all, before I say another word, we are so, so sorry about your mom. Poor baby, you must just be devastated. I didn’t want to miss saying that. But … and please don’t take this the wrong way, honey … we love Ben. No way we’d let him be on his own, even for a couple or three days. But, honestly, honey, we had no idea. We really don’t have the patience for it. Not at all. We raised two of our own, and that’s enough for the whole “Are we there yet?” thing.’

  ‘Yeah. How is Mark, anyway?’ One of the other guys I’d gone to high school with, not to mention a same-age next-door neighbor for eighteen years.

  ‘Oh, fine, but now he’s talking about enlisting, and I’d like to wring his neck.’

  ‘Lot of that going around,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I guess folks figure something needs to be done.’

  That’s when it hit me that I had no energy for digressions. Even though this one was my own fault. I’d have to be more careful.

  ‘But … back to Ben. You told him about …’

  ‘Oh, sure, honey. We told him everything, as nice as we could, we even took him in to your mom’s doctor so he could explain to Ben all about what an aneurysm is. And then on the way home he asks, for about the hundredth time, when she’s
coming back. We’re just about running out of … well, we just can’t take much more.’

  ‘Send him out, then.’

  ‘Oh, he’s not here.’

  ‘He’s not? Mr Jespers said—’

  ‘We tried, honey, God knows we tried. But you know how your brother is. Everything’s got to be familiar. Got to be his own little routine. So we’ve been putting him to bed in his own bed, and then the last few nights Phil slept on the couch over there, case he needed something in the night, or got scared. But tonight we figured, from when you called and all, that you’d be in soon enough. Ben goes to bed at eight. Every night. Eight. Not a minute sooner. Not a minute later. Wait, let me get you the key.’

  She disappeared from the doorway, and I stood, shivering slightly. I looked up into the yellowish, bug-repellent porch light and squinted. I was so tired that just for an instant I lost track of my surroundings. Things whited out, the way they do in that split second just before you lose consciousness.

  Part of me was wishing she wouldn’t come back. Because I didn’t have the energy for her. But that was stupid, of course. I needed the key.

  A second later she reappeared, and pressed it into my hand.

  ‘You’ll have to take him to work in the morning. He goes in early.’

  ‘Ben has a job?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Sure, honey. You didn’t know? Ben’s been bagging groceries for near on to two and a half years. It’s working out real good. Everybody likes him. Somebody has to drive him there and pick him up, though. He can’t ride the bus. Your mom tried to teach him to ride the bus, but he got lost every time. Every damn time. One time it took her half the day to find him again, even though the whole damn town was on alert to be looking out for him.’

  Mom’s older son got a job bagging groceries right around the time ‘her baby’ got a job with one of the best ad firms in New York. Much as I was accustomed to Ben’s condition, this seemed weird.

  I needed to get out of this conversation. I needed sleep.

  ‘I don’t have a car, though.’

  ‘Take your mom’s car.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Do you know where she keeps her keys?’

  ‘No. I don’t. Sorry. But maybe Ben does.’

  Sure. Cling to that, let’s.