When You Were Older (retail) Read online

  ‘Well, goodnight,’ I said. ‘Thanks for looking after him.’

  ‘It was an emergency, honey, but thank God you got home. That’s all I can say. Phil and I are just too old for the whole Ben thing. Maybe you’ll do better, cause you’re young. Good luck.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘You’re gonna need some luck.’

  I didn’t answer that one. I just cut across the lawn to my childhood home, thinking, Don’t you really figure that last comment would have been better left unsaid?

  All the lights were off in the house, but when I opened the front door with my key and stepped into the living room, I could see everything clearly. Too clearly. The room was suffused with a sort of ghostly glow. In my altered state of exhaustion, it seemed nearly supernatural. But it didn’t take long to figure out there was a night light in every room.

  I wandered over to the mantel first, because the photos drew me.

  My mom and dad at their wedding. My mom and dad with Ben and me, ages maybe four and ten. I looked at the sharp focus in Ben’s eyes, the slight glint of defiance and mischief. I’d known Ben that way for the first eight years of my life. Then I’d lived with the changed Ben for ten. I wondered if I was really sure who I expected to meet again in the morning, though my rational mind certainly knew what was what in that situation.

  Then there was the photo of me winning statewide track in high school, and Ben at age twelve, holding a twenty-inch trout in a tippy canoe (the tippiness didn’t show in the photo, but I remembered) on Council Grove Lake.

  I looked again at the photo of my parents, and was hit with a strange and disturbing thought.

  I’m an orphan.

  Then I shook it away again. Orphans were little waifs, dependant minors. I was a grown man whose parents were both dead. Lots of adults fell into that category. Granted, most were older than me.

  Oddly, that chain of thought did not bring me dangerously close to tears. The next one did.

  I looked at the mantel itself, and got a sudden flash of our family’s Christmas village.

  Every year my mom would take down all the photos and knick-knacks and construct the village with decorations that spent the rest of the year hiding, boxed, in the attic, just waiting for their season to shine.

  She used stacks of books for hills, then covered them with chicken wire and cotton batting. The little houses had holes in the back for the bulb of a Christmas light to be inserted, so the houses on the hills glowed with light, as though occupied. A little horse-drawn sled spent the whole season headed down a cotton hill toward a mirror lake it would never reach. On the lake, a tiny porcelain skunk ice-skated, and a family of inch-high deer drank from the silver water.

  And that was the spot where I nearly lost it. But I held tight. I was too unguarded to let anything like real emotion happen now. It would flip me and pin me, and I would lose. Maybe permanently. I had to rest and be strong enough for that fight.

  I wandered into the glowing kitchen in search of something to eat. But I only got smacked again. On the door of the refrigerator, held on with food magnets (an ear of corn, a strawberry, a carrot, an ice-cream cone, a banana), were all five of the postcards I’d sent my mom from New York.

  First I was merely struck by their dullness and lack of imagination. The Empire State building. Rockefeller Center. The Statue of Liberty. The Brooklyn Bridge. Had I really put so little time and attention into my choices? Or had I thought my choices would seem appropriate from this end of the world? Now I stood on this end of the world with them, and they just seemed sad.

  The fifth card was a photo of the World Trade Center. The Twin Towers. It zapped my body with a jolt of electricity. I could feel it buzzing for many seconds, eerie and slow to fade. I pulled the postcard off the fridge, dropping its ice-cream cone magnet on to the kitchen linoleum. I bent down and picked it up, feeling vaguely dizzy, and stuck the postcard back on the fridge with the photo side in. So I wouldn’t have to look at it.

  Of course, that left the message side out.

  It was dated 30 April 1999. ‘Dear Mom,’ it said. ‘Here it is, the job of a lifetime. I’m on top of the world. Wish me luck. Love, Rusty.’

  Rusty? Why did I sign it Rusty? I’d left that name behind on my way to college.

  Amazingly, none of that was the genuine zap I referred to.

  It was the role reversal. The surrealistic role reversal. I’d sent those postcards from a place I viewed as the true world, the only important world, as if dropping them into a void. Almost as if the address on the card had never existed, or at the very least, was not entirely real.

  Maybe that’s why I had signed it ‘Rusty’. What did it matter, in fiction?

  Now I stood on the wrong end of the cards’ journey. And this place was all too real. And the place I’d believed in so strongly, invested in so fully, had crumbled like a house of cards.

  I shook my head a little, and tried to clear away any stray thoughts and feelings. I told myself I’d feel better after something to eat.

  To my surprise, the fridge was brimming with food. Casserole dish after casserole dish, some covered with foil, some with plastic wrap, some with their own matching Pyrex covers. And Tupperware. Tupperware abounded.

  Then I realized I shouldn’t have been surprised. Family friends and neighbors had been bringing food for Ben. Of course they had. People do that when somebody dies. Even if the survivor is fully capable. Even if the grieving survivor isn’t Ben.

  I rummaged through a few casserole dishes and settled on a noodle dish with some kind of ground meat in a creamy-looking sauce. It looked like a genuine stroganoff, and very unlike anything that could be purchased at a gas station mini-mart.

  I heated a mound of it in the microwave. But I only ate two or three bites.

  It tasted like something made from a mix, out of a box. The sauce tasted like chemicals. Like butter and milk stirred together with a packet of artificial flavoring. But that wasn’t the worst of it. It tasted familiar. It tasted like my childhood. My personal past.

  I dumped it into the garbage and left the plate soaking in the sink.

  I stuck my head into my old bedroom. It had been converted into a TV room, with two stuffed chairs, and Mom’s sewing machine on a table in the corner. But my trophy case was still there, my track trophies still on display.

  The door to Ben’s bedroom was closed, but a spill of glowing light under the door told me his night light was brighter than all the rest. Maybe brighter than all the rest put together. I didn’t open the door. I let sleeping brothers lie.

  I wandered into my mom’s room, knowing I didn’t want to sleep there, and also knowing it was the only bed available to me.

  I hauled in my backpacker’s five-day pack and pulled out my running shoes, my clean underwear, my dirty laundry from the trip.

  I used my mom’s bathroom, and while I did, I looked at the oversize clawfoot tub and decided a bath would be just the thing. So I ran one. It was deep and it was hot.

  I eased my tired body into it and lay back, eyes closed. I sighed.

  Next thing I knew, I was bolting upright in the tub, sputtering, spitting bathwater out of my nose and mouth. So that was too dangerous. I was too sleepy for a bath.

  I dried off and put on a pair of clean boxers. A tee-shirt would have been nice to sleep in, but I didn’t have one clean. I took a deep breath and climbed into my mom’s bed. Where I knew I was not allowed. With only one exception: if I’d had a nightmare.

  Silently, in my head, I told my mother I believed this just might qualify.

  13 September 2001

  TWO DAYS AFTER the towers fell, I caught a ride in the dark at a little after five thirty in the morning. I knew I was on Interstate Route 70, and that I was west of Indianapolis, but I didn’t know if I was still in Indiana, or if I had passed into Illinois some time in the night.

  Lots of things are a mystery in the dark. Maybe that’s why as many people are afraid of the light as the other wa
y around.

  ‘I don’t usually stop for hitchhikers,’ the driver said, before I was even granted permission to get in. He was sixtyish, with hair that could have been blond, or gray, or both, shaved in an old-fashioned buzz cut. He wore a jersey in a most alarming shade of orange. ‘But I know people are still having trouble getting around. Getting home. Is that your situation?’

  ‘Yes, sir, it is. I’m trying to make it from New York back to Kansas for a funeral, and I booked a plane, but … well, you know.’

  ‘Go on and get in, then,’ he said.

  We drove in silence for a time. How long a time, I’d be hard-pressed to say. Could have been ten minutes, or it could have been half an hour. Or maybe I even dozed briefly and never knew.

  ‘Whereabouts in Kansas?’ he asked suddenly, startling me.

  ‘Nowhere-ville,’ I said, forgetting, for just a brief second, to censor myself. Forgetting that some things were meant solely for the silence of the inside of my head. ‘Sorry. I meant Norville. Norville, Kansas.’

  ‘I wondered …’

  ‘When we were kids, we always called it Nowhere-ville. You know. Norville. Nowhere-ville. The temptation was irresistible.’

  He didn’t comment on that, though I expected he was a man who could have resisted the temptation. Instead he just said, ‘I never heard of Norville, Kansas.’

  ‘Thanks for helping me prove my point.’

  Another long silence. Long enough to lull me back into the hypnosis of the road.

  ‘Piece of tough luck,’ the man said, startling me again. ‘To have to add a funeral on top of all this. Someone close?’

  ‘My mom.’

  ‘Oh dear. Sorry I even asked.’

  ‘It’s OK. Yeah. Bad timing. Especially since nearly everybody I knew was in one of those towers.’

  He seemed to consider that for a time. As though it were a thing that might or might not be true.

  ‘Which one?’ he asked, and it seemed like an odd question.

  ‘North Tower. One World Trade Center.’

  ‘Anybody you know make it out alive?’

  ‘Just one that I know of. He was late getting in, like me. My office was above the … you know … the floors that took a direct hit. I heard on the radio news they’re figuring nobody survived above the hit line.’

  Interesting. Interesting how I talked about it as though I were describing the plot of a movie I’d seen two days previously.

  We didn’t talk for a few minutes. I looked out the window to see that the stars had faded, and the barest hint of morning was glowing in the side mirror, to the east. Directly behind us.

  My cell phone rang, and it felt as though someone had dropped a heavy object into my stomach from a long way up. Maybe a cinder block. Maybe an anvil.

  I thought, Please don’t be Kerry. I looked. It was Kerry.

  ‘Mind if I get that?’ I asked my driver.

  ‘No, why would I mind?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just seemed rude.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  I flipped the phone open. ‘Kerry,’ I said.

  My mouth felt dry. Like flannel. I could feel a pounding in my ears.

  ‘They found him,’ she said.

  But I was already armored for it. So her words just hit the armor and slid off.

  ‘Jeff?’

  ‘Who the hell else, Russell? Who the hell else would I call you and say, “They found him” about?’

  True, it had been a dumb question. But this was a new side of her. There was no reason for her to speak in anger to me. Other than having just lost her husband. I decided to consider the circumstances and let it go by.

  ‘They actually found his body? I thought that was impossible under—’

  ‘He jumped.’

  I felt a pinching sensation at the very back of my tongue, on both sides, like a hit of lemon juice, and my stomach tipped dangerously. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I closed my eyes and tried not to see the image. The view I’d seen through my telescope two days earlier. Of course, that hadn’t been Jeff. At least, reason held that it hadn’t been. But it really didn’t matter. Because it had been somebody.

  ‘When are you coming back?’ Kerry asked, a needy, gaping black hole in her voice that I’d never heard before. Then again, these were remarkable times.

  ‘I haven’t even gotten there yet.’

  ‘But … what do you think? How long do you think you’ll have to stay?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘It takes, like … what? Five days or so to plan a funeral?’

  ‘Kerry. I haven’t even figured out who’s going to take care of Ben.’

  That was a lie. Actually. I had. I’d figured out that I was the only candidate.

  ‘I need you here,’ she said, breaking down.

  My heart went out to her … then turned and ran like a spooked coyote.

  I glanced at the driver in my peripheral vision. That was why I hadn’t wanted it to be Kerry. That was why I hadn’t wanted to take the call.

  Well. One of the reasons.

  ‘Can we talk about this later?’

  ‘What’s going on there, Russell?’ Between sobs.

  ‘Nothing. Really. I just got a ride. This nice gentleman is driving me through Indiana—’

  ‘Illinois,’ the nice gentleman said. In case there was any doubt as to whether he was listening. How could he not hear, though? It was the front seat of a goddamn car.

  ‘Illinois. And I would just feel better if we could talk later, in private.’

  ‘This feels bad, Russell. What’re you saying? You’re coming back, right?’

  ‘I’d rather talk about this later.’

  ‘I’m going to see you again, right? Because I’ve got nothing here. I lost everything, Russell. You’re coming back. Right?’

  I swallowed a little of the flannel in my mouth with great effort. The silence lasted too long, and we both knew it.

  ‘He was my best friend, Kerry.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Not over his dead body. You know.’

  ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she said.

  And, though it’s strange to report, I sat still in the car, my cell phone to my ear, realizing I didn’t know this woman at all. Realizing that the phenomenon of attraction – all attraction, not just mine – is a form of illusion. Under the illusion lies a real person. But which one? What person? That’s the part you don’t get to know. Until it’s too late.

  ‘I’ll call you when I’m in-between rides. Do you have anybody you can call? Anybody who can be with you?’

  A couple of loud sniffles. ‘I could call my mother. See if she’s home.’

  ‘You called me before you called your mother?’

  ‘I thought …’

  ‘Never mind. I’ll call you as soon as I can.’

  I flipped the phone closed. Awkward silence.

  What exactly do you say to a stranger who just overheard all that? What does he say to you?

  Apparently nothing.

  ‘You got quiet,’ I said after a while.

  ‘It’s none of my business,’ he said.

  I watched the sky lightening.

  ‘I guess I should’ve let that go to voicemail.’

  ‘I could be wrong,’ he said, ‘and if I’m wrong I apologize. And even if I’m right, I know it’s none of my business. But it’s sounding like you were having an affair with your best friend’s wife. And I don’t know what to say to a man like that. Even if it is none of my business. It sort of found its way into my car, though. Otherwise …’

  ‘I never touched her. We never touched each other. In any way. Ever. It was just something that happened … you know … on a feeling level. It was just feelings.’

  ‘Where I come from,’ he said, his knuckles pale on the steering wheel, ‘you don’t even have feelings for your best friend’s wife.’

  A flare of my own anger surprised me.

  ‘Oh, thank
s,’ I said. ‘Thanks for letting me know. You seem to know everything, so … care to let me know how I go about not having feelings?’

  A long silence. I watched him chew on the inside of his cheek. Then I looked in the side mirror and watched the sky reddening. I figured he was just looking for a place to pull over and let me out.

  I looked back to see his right hand extended in my direction, as if he were waiting for me to shake. Which, it slowly dawned on me, he was.

  ‘Accept my apology?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. A bit dumbfounded.

  I still had not shaken the hand.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry. Hearts pretty well do what they do. Can’t tell ’em much of anything. I guess it’s mostly what you actually do that you gotta answer for. So … forgive my outburst?’

  ‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ I said, staring at the hand. I shook it. It felt calloused and dry. ‘Everybody’s just a little on edge. More emotional than usual.’

  ‘Got that right.’

  We rode in silence for a long time. I watched him pull an individually wrapped toothpick from the pocket of his orange jersey and peel back the paper. I expected him to pick his teeth with it. Instead he just held one end in his mouth. The world’s smallest cigarette, without all that dangerous smoke and fire.

  Insects were hitting the windshield. We were driving through an agricultural landscape, and big bug after big bug tapped the glass, each leaving a whitish splotch to mark the moment of its death.

  ‘Besides,’ he said, as if we’d never paused the conversation. ‘You told her just exactly the right thing. Not over his dead body.’

  I stared at the bugs some more.

  ‘It wasn’t as noble as it sounded,’ I said.

  I remembered a joke my friend Mark had told me in grade school. Well, my acquaintance Mark. I grew up next door to him. But we never really fit quite right.

  What’s the last thing that goes through a bug’s head when it hits your windshield? Its ass.

  I didn’t think it was funny.

  Maybe it’s an overload of empathy on my part, or maybe I just have a too-well-developed sense of fairness. The problem with that joke is that it’s only funny if you’re not a bug. Call it weird, but I can’t help putting myself in bug shoes. Hey, that was my uncle Joe’s ass. That’s my friend Hector on that windshield. And it’s not so damn funny.