When You Were Older (retail) Read online

  But that was a circumstantial indictment of my old gang. At best.

  Wasn’t it?

  I went for a run. Finally. I was finally rested enough to give it a try.

  There was only one problem. I was not running in New York. Not in Manhattan. Not in Jersey City. Not in any city.

  Another piece of the ice floe of denial breaking loose, I guess. I’d been refusing to take a good look around me and accept where I’d landed. But the ice shifted as I ran, and I missed New York so much that, at one point, I actually had to stop and lean on my own knees. Try to breathe it out. Anyone driving by probably thought I was just out of breath.

  Good way to disguise grief. I’d have to remember it.

  Then I was forced to admit to myself another problem. Meeting Anat had thrown a wrench into the gears of my half-baked plans. I think, until that moment, I’d believed I would sell the house and take Ben back to New York with me. Even though transplanting Ben was a plan with many potential flaws. But I purposely hadn’t examined them fully in the light of day.

  Now I had something in Nowhere-ville, someone I might not be willing to leave behind. So I ran through the streets of that town, fully understanding that I was staying. My reaction was to run harder, and faster, counting on endorphins to save me.

  Then I saw Vince Buck. He and his parents and his sister – who I went on dates with twice in high school – were getting into the car in their driveway. Vince was in uniform. And I knew this was their actual moment. I could tell by the gravity on the faces of the family. They were taking him to the airport, or the train station. Or wherever you take your son at a time like that.

  Vince had been famous for his shaggy long black hair in high school. Now he was shaved close to the scalp, especially on the sides.

  I stopped. I broke my run.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Vince.’

  By then Vince was the only Buck not in the car. So I couldn’t really say hi to Hannah. I wondered if she’d done that on purpose, or hadn’t even seen me.

  ‘Rusty,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry I missed you guys last night.’

  ‘No big deal. Mark was being weird about it, but you know how Mark is. Nobody agreed with him or anything.’

  Then we just stood there, no sounds except my breathlessness. Already out of things to say.

  But I noticed something. I’d said I didn’t know Vince or Paul the way I knew Larry. But now I knew I was wrong. They were all guys I’d gone to school with. Larry only seemed head and shoulders above the rest because I’d just seen him. Now I was seeing Vince, too. And knowing I didn’t want Vince to come home in a body bag, either.

  ‘So come home safe,’ I said. ‘OK?’

  ‘You bet,’ he said. Not seeming the slightest bit nervous. ‘You know I’m doing this for you.’

  It seemed like a bizarre thing to say.

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Well. You and everybody else who was in those buildings.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Got it.’

  I couldn’t help thinking about Afghani civilians who would inevitably die. Civilians always do. Along with young men in uniforms. And I thought, Don’t do it for me. But I got smart and didn’t say so. I didn’t say a word about pointlessness. I was learning.

  I just shook his hand and then ran again.

  It was a weird morning.

  It was after dinner, and I had just finished washing the dishes.

  I looked around and realized that I didn’t know where Ben was.

  I stuck my head in the TV room. His bedroom. No Ben.

  ‘Ben?’ I called, already at the edge of panic.

  No answer.

  I checked the bathroom. No Ben.

  I found him in the living room. Thank God. And I breathed for what felt like the first time in a long time.

  ‘Buddy. Why didn’t you answer me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was calling you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I walked over to where he was standing. In front of the mantelpiece. Standing staring at the mantel, the way I’d done my first night back. I’d been thinking about the Christmas village. What was Ben thinking about?

  As I moved closer, I saw that one of the pictures of Mom and Dad was missing. But I found it. Just a split second later. In Ben’s hands.

  I reached up and put my hand on his shoulder, but he pulled away from me. Which hurt my feelings. I wasn’t prepared for it to hurt my feelings.

  ‘You miss her,’ I said. ‘Huh?’

  He didn’t answer for a long time. I’d begun to think he never would. He didn’t take his eyes off the picture.

  ‘She’s not coming back,’ he said. ‘Is she?’

  I took a big, deep breath.

  ‘She would if she could, Buddy. But she can’t. No.’

  Another long moment.

  Then I said, ‘Hey. Isn’t it time for those cartoons you like so much?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘It’s six thirty. Isn’t that when the first one comes on?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Want to watch it with me?’

  ‘I guess.’

  He ambled into the TV room with me, still clutching the picture. I sat him down in one of the big stuffed chairs.

  ‘What channel, Buddy?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  I knew that, if left to his own devices, he’d find the cartoons. But I didn’t want to argue with him. So I just started looking for the TV listings.

  ‘Where’s the TV section?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The TV listings. From the paper.’

  No answer, so I just kept looking. I looked on the coffee table. Under the chairs. On top of the TV.

  Then I heard a sound. A muffled banging sound. Like an impact of some kind.

  I spun around to see that Ben had dropped the framed photo on to the rug, and was sitting, leaned forward in his chair, his hands balled up into fists, hitting himself in the head with the heels of both hands. And I mean hard.

  ‘Buddy! Hey! Don’t do that! Stop that!’

  But he didn’t stop.

  ‘Hey! Don’t hit yourself!’

  But I might as well have been talking to the picture, or the rug.

  I tried to grab his arms. In fact, I did grab his arms. But he just kept hitting, pulling me closer to him on each strike. Pulling me right along.

  Then I suppose he got tired of the restraint, because he pushed hard, with both arms at once, and I landed on my tailbone on the rug.

  And that was the start of my temper tantrum.

  I’m ashamed to admit this next bit, but I was tired, and beaten down, and emotional. And so I started yelling at my mom.

  ‘Why did you leave me with this?’ I screamed. ‘I can’t deal with this! I can’t do this! I don’t know how you did this all those years, but I can’t! You should’ve left me some kind of instructions or something!’

  I paused, and listened to the sound of wrist bones on skull.

  ‘I don’t know how to help him! I’m not helping him! This is not fair to me! This is not fair to any of us!’

  Then I started to cry.

  I cried quietly for a few seconds before I realized the room was silent, save for an occasional sniffle from me.

  A moment later, I felt his hand on my back.

  ‘Why are you crying, Buddy?’ he asked, plunking himself on the rug beside me and draping one long arm over my shoulder.

  ‘I miss her, too, you know. Don’t you think I miss her, too?’

  Silence, while he thought that over. I expected him to say it was a hard question.

  ‘But you never saw her.’

  I started to say, Not never. Just not for six years. But then I realized that, to Ben, six years was for ever.

  ‘But I always figured I could.’

  ‘I don’t like it when you cry.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, I don’t like it when you hit yourself in the head. I can’t deal with that. At all. How can you hurt yours
elf like that? I can’t watch that. That must’ve hurt like hell. Doesn’t your head hurt now?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘You must’ve given yourself one hell of a headache.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Want some aspirin?’

  ‘No. I don’t like pills.’

  ‘Now I feel like I should take you to a doctor. Make sure you don’t have a concussion.’

  The arm disappeared from around my shoulder.

  ‘I don’t like going to the doctor.’

  ‘It makes no difference what you like, Ben. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t like.’

  God knows.

  ‘But I don’t like doing things I don’t like.’

  I laughed. In spite of myself. ‘Nobody does, Buddy.’

  ‘Please? I feel fine.’

  ‘Tell you what. This time I’ll figure you don’t have a concussion. This one time. But if you ever hit yourself in the head again, we’re going to the doctor.’

  ‘OK. I won’t, then.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  He pulled himself to his feet. I stayed, rooted to the rug. A moment later I heard the cartoons come on. Full blast. The roadrunner and the coyote.

  I sighed, and got myself up off the floor. Picked up the picture of Mom and Dad from the rug.

  ‘I’m going to put this back now. Is that OK with you?’

  But I asked just as the coyote ran over the edge of a cliff, felt around gingerly in the air with one foot, then waved goodbye and fell.

  A hearty, deep laugh from Ben. I knew better than to try to regain his attention.

  I carried the picture back to the living room and put it back in its place on the mantel. As I did, I looked at my mom, and thought I knew what she would tell me, if she were here.

  She’d say, See? You’re figuring it out.

  ‘Not fair,’ I said, out loud. ‘Not fair that I should have to. Especially all by myself.’

  Tell me all about it, she said.

  At least, in my head that’s what she said.

  18 September 2001

  I WOKE UP early the next morning. Quarter after six. No point going back to sleep. Ben would be in to wake me in just a few minutes, anyway.

  I lay awake in the night light glow, trying to decide if I wanted to go into the bakery that morning. God’s honest truth? I was a little bit afraid of Nazir’s intensity. Not afraid in any real way. Not in a way that would have held me back a week earlier in the history of the world. But in my depleted state … I closed my eyes and felt around in the empty hole inside myself. It felt short on resources, short on resistance. For reasons I couldn’t quite put my finger on, it asked that we please not see Nazir. At least, not this very morning.

  I opened my eyes to see Ben standing over my bed.

  ‘I’ll be up in a minute, Buddy,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t want to go to work today. I don’t feel good.’

  ‘Your head?’ I asked, more than a little alarmed.

  I sat up fast.

  He has a concussion, of course he does, I thought, and I should’ve taken him to the emergency room, whether he liked it or not, and now it’s come back to bite us, and I am a terrible, terrible brother.

  ‘No. Not my head.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Oh. Uh. My … stomach.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It … hurts.’

  ‘Do you feel like you’re going to throw up?’

  ‘No. It just hurts. Just a little bit. Not enough to go to the doctor.’

  ‘If it’s just a little bit, maybe you should go to work anyway.’

  ‘No. It’s too much for work. But not enough for the doctor.’

  ‘You sure it’s not your head? I’m still worried you have a concussion.’

  But I wasn’t. Not by then. I was just exploring the boundaries of his increasingly flimsy complaints.

  ‘I think my head does. Hurt. A little. But not like I had a concussion. Some other way.’

  ‘Some other way. That’s interesting. So what do you think we should do?’

  ‘You should tell Mr McCaskill I’m not coming.’

  ‘I should? Why not you? It’s your job.’

  ‘I don’t know his phone number.’

  ‘How can you work there and not have the phone number?’

  ‘Because Mom had it for me.’

  I sighed.

  ‘Got it. OK. You go on back to bed. I’ll see if I can figure this out.’

  I got up and got dressed, then looked for phone numbers on the side of the refrigerator. I only succeeded in finding mine. Nobody else’s. I dug up a comically thin phone book – for the whole county – in the drawer under the kitchen telephone. I looked up Gerson’s Market.

  I called, but got only a recording with the store hours.

  I found Ben in his bedroom, curled up on his side under the covers.

  ‘You OK here by yourself for a little bit?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Good. Because I don’t have a direct number for him. So I’ll have to drive over there and tell him.’

  ‘Good. Tell him I’m really sick.’

  ‘Really sick?’ I asked, noting he’d gotten sicker in the last couple of minutes.

  ‘No. Not really sick. Not enough for the doctor. Just too much for work.’

  I slowed on my way by the bakery, and tensed. I felt a bracing, an armoring, in that weak spot inside of me. The spot that asked not to see Nazir that day. The spot that couldn’t handle much more.

  But it appeared all had gone well in the night, El Sayed-wise.

  I parked in the market parking lot and made my way through the civil twilight to the door, only to be spotted by that same perky woman. Of course, she unlocked the door and pushed it partway open.

  ‘Ben’s brother,’ she said.

  ‘That does seem to be my name, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Rusty.’

  ‘I go by Russell now, actually.’

  ‘Sorry again.’

  ‘Don’t be. It’s fine. Is Mr McCaskill around?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll get him. Everything OK with Ben?’

  ‘Probably. But he thinks he’s sick.’

  ‘Really? That doesn’t sound like Ben. He hasn’t missed one single day in two and a half years.’

  Then she disappeared, leaving the door to drift closed and me to think that over.

  McCaskill appeared what seemed like seconds later. I knew his face. I knew I’d grown up in the same town with him. But I didn’t know him, not even well enough to connect his face with his name. Until that moment.

  ‘Everything OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘But Ben thinks he’s sick. He thinks he either has a stomach ache or a headache. Or both. Just enough to keep him home, but not enough to warrant a doctor visit, which he doesn’t like.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like Ben.’

  ‘So I’m hearing. It may help to know that he just finally got it last night about our mom being gone for good.’

  ‘Oh. Poor Ben. I mean … poor you, too. My condolences about your mom. So …’

  ‘So. I just needed to come and tell you.’

  ‘Am I missing something?’ he asked. ‘Do you need my help with this in some way?’

  ‘No. I’m just telling you he isn’t coming in to work today.’

  Amazingly, he continued to stare at me in obvious confusion. I almost said something short to him. I almost said, What part of this are you having trouble with? It seems straightforward to me.

  ‘Ben doesn’t work today,’ he said. ‘It’s his day off.’

  I dropped my head back and looked up at the barely light sky.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’

  ‘He’s off Tuesdays and Wednesdays.’

  ‘And he doesn’t even know that?’

  ‘God’s honest truth? I don’t know what he kno
ws. I just know he’s working out good here. I just know he shows up every Thursday through Monday, without fail, and never showed up on a day off yet. I don’t know if he knows it, but then he got upset and forgot, or if your mom used to keep his schedule for him.’

  I brought my head down, and into the shelter of my hands.

  ‘You have no idea,’ I said, quietly, ‘how much I wish I knew where she kept the owner’s manual on him.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Sorry to take your time for nothing.’

  ‘Oh, hell, don’t worry about that.’ Then, just as I was walking away, ‘Rusty.’

  I stopped, and turned.

  ‘Russell. I go by Russell now.’

  ‘Russell. Sorry. I don’t really know you. But in another way I do. I mean, I sort of watched you grow up, but from a distance, you know? Anyway … if you don’t mind my asking … you going to put him in a home?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. No.’

  ‘Good for you.’ Just when I thought that would be all, he added, ‘Probably shouldn’t tell you this …’

  But you will, I thought. And I was right. He did.

  ‘We were sort of … taking bets. Almost. Not that money changed hands or anything. But a lot of us figured you wouldn’t come back at all. Just make a phone call and get him put somewhere. But then we knew you’d have to come back for your mom’s funeral, so that was a stupid thought. So most of us figured you’d come home for maybe five days and get him put somewhere. Can’t recall that anybody thought you’d come back and really take care of him. That can’t be easy.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  ‘I can imagine. Anyway. My point is … I didn’t know you well enough to judge you, I guess none of us did. And we obviously got it wrong. So, sorry about that.’

  I examined the inside of myself for a moment to see if it was worth being offended. It felt like too much trouble.

  ‘Oh, hell,’ I said. ‘I’d probably have bet against me, too.’

  He smiled. And that was my chance to break free. But I didn’t. I walked closer to where he stood, still framed in the sliding door of the market.

  ‘Let me ask you a question,’ I said. ‘Ever patronize the bakery?’

  ‘I don’t, no.’

  ‘Any special reason?’

  ‘Gluten allergy.’

  ‘Ah. Good reason. Still, you could do me a favor. You see a lot of people every day in your work. So if you could encourage anybody to go back in, that would be great. The El Sayeds are hurting. Think how you’d be hurting if practically nobody came in your store for a week. And no end in sight …’