by RJ Martin
“I didn’t know there were canals.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw the saleslady behind the counter scowl our way.
“It’s a street where there used to be one in the olden days, not anymore.” She held out yet another blazer. “Now, stop interrupting, or I won’t tell you.”
“You don’t have to.” I slipped this one on and buttoned it myself.
“Yes I do, Jonah.” Angie said my name more than any other person but our mom, so I was used to that. It was her compulsion to speak that shook me, that and the topic. “Jace has lived there since right after she got famous. Their place is two stories high inside with huge windows that only open a little bit at the bottom like in the gym. The couches are in the middle of the room, and there’s a huge flat screen built into the wall. You go up spiral stairs to a landing that has Jace’s desk and the windows that started in the living room keep going right through it. From Rusty’s bedroom you can see the river and New Jersey. It gets all kinds of light in the afternoon.” She pushed both my shoulders up at once. “The sunset painted his whole room red, us too.”
“I think this one is good.” I started to take it off.
“Damn it.” She grabbed the sleeve. “Brown buttons.”
“So?”
“So your shoes are black and so is your belt.” She tossed the jacket across the top of the rack. I guess it was one too many because the whole pile slid off and fell on the floor. “With your newfound interest in fashion, Jonah”—she said my name again; even for her this was too much—“I thought you wouldn’t want to make such a rookie mistake.”
“Excuse me, miss.” The saleswoman was somewhere between Angie and Mom’s age, but her too-much makeup and tinted hair seemed to disguise just where. “Shouldn’t you two be in school?” She huffed toward us in a way that made me believe she had no children.
“We’re in mourning,” Angie said, then made a somber face.
“I am sorry.” The saleslady sounded almost sincere but not completely, like she had to be whether she really felt it or not. Her nametag read “Meg,” and in the store-issued khakis and polo shirt she looked like she’d been shanghaied at the yacht club and was now forced to work there.
“Do you have anything that will fit my freak-framed brother?”
“I’m afraid you’ve tried them all.” Meg started to rehang the blazers.
“Thank you, Meg.” Angie stepped away from the heap on the floor. “We’re going to look somewhere else.”
“Good luck.” Meg curled her lip, and it wrinkled up into a thousand little lines that made me guess she smoked. That and the charred lung smell that fought her perfume for dominance.
“Shouldn’t we just go home?”
“We’d just be there alone so what difference does it make?” Mom was at the hospital with the twins, and Dad was really cleaning the motel, maybe for the first time, for Mémé’s posse of grizzled, Franglais Canucks coming down to say good-bye.
“This one is fine.” I reached for the jacket Meg had just rehung, but she grabbed it out of my hand. “Don’t you want to sell it?”
“Not as much as I don’t want to keep hanging it up for you two.”
“We said we’re in mourning.” Angie wheeled, ready to throw down. “Our grandmother died.”
“Angie, let’s just leave, please.”
“I’m sure she was lovely.”
“She was a farty old sphinx.” Angie’s eyes sparked. Meg had lit the flame.
“If she’s listening somewhere that made her rest so much nicer.”
“If you would stop talking, it would be so much easier for me,” I confided in Meg, the impatient, crabby stranger who had almost zero sympathy.
“You have my condolences,” she tried again. “Now please take them and your sister and leave.”
Angie walked out of the store, and I had no choice but to follow. Behind us Meg clanged the hangers on the rack in one not-very-precise motion and hurried into the storeroom or whatever was behind the counter.
“I’m hungry,” Angie said.
“We could get ball house.”
“I still can’t believe Mémé took them there. I bet they had some kind of a meltdown or something about eating her food.”
“Maybe she was just being nice.”
“That would be even stranger.” Angie walked ahead of me. “I mean, Mémé was not nice.”
The mall was really old, like from the seventies, and had brown-and-orange carpeting that ran up the walls. After walking by a few vacant shops, we passed the jock sneaker store. Dwight worked there on weekends and after school. He’d been kind of cool on retreat. At least compared to everybody else. He didn’t talk to me before I left, but no one did. He might’ve gone dark side and shunned me like the rest of NC3’s elite. Or he could have just been death averse. Lots of kids shied away from any brush with the end. I knew because I often had to work the funerals because other guys were too scared. Not just now I was older but two or three years ago when I was still really a kid.
“Are you listening, Jonah?”
“I don’t think Mémé died to ruin your weekend.”
“It was already ruined.” Angie stopped. We were right next to the fountain made of seafoam-green tiles and never worked. Beneath the murky water, the bottom was full of pennies. As if wishes tossed into a stagnant puddle had any chance at coming true. There was a skylight above us, and the light got in my eyes.
“We were at this amazing, amazing, best party I’ve ever been to.” Angie was relentless. “And there was this Dutch photographer who had pictures in Vogue.”
“Is Holland famous for photography too?”
She shot me a shut-up-or-suffer look. “His name was Kristof, and he was walking around taking shots of all these models who were just hanging out and stuff. Rusty introduced me to him, and Kristof pointed his camera at me and said he liked what he saw.”
“Really, that’s awesome.”
“Rusty went to the bar.” She ignored me. “He was going to get us all more champagne, you know, to celebrate my potential.” That’s when her face kind of fell a little. “Then he didn’t come back.”
I wanted to walk again, to leave her there, but Angie was my ride, and we still needed to get my blazer. So, I just looked down at my scuffed-up boots that were not comfortable on thin mall carpeting.
“I found him in the corner with his cell phone pressed to his ear.” Angie acted it out for me. She wrinkled her forehead and pretended to be completely wrapped up in the call. “I jumped in, you know….” Angie waved her arms like a drunk cheerleader and repeated the laugh she must have given that night. It was her best movie-star-runway-model mix I ever heard. She shifted to mimicking him again and demonstrated how Rusty’s eyes must’ve bugged when he saw her. “I grabbed the phone, but he hung up.”
“How do you know it was a he?”
“Because after we were the first ones to leave the party, and Rusty went to sleep on the couch because he wasn’t ‘feeling good,’ I found his phone on the bathroom counter and called the last number in the log: Our Lady of the Hills.” She started walking again and when I didn’t follow right away she just kept going.
AT THE next, older-man store, the blazers had gold buttons, and Angie said simply, “No way.”
I walked beside her back to the first, preppier one where the brown buttons would “have to do.” She sent me in with the cash, and I raced to get the jacket before Meg could stop me.
“I’m buying it.” I held the bills in one hand and the jacket with the other.
“Wait outside.” Meg took the blazer and cash and went to the register. As she rang it up I saw a head pop out from the storage room but the man was not a stock boy or store manager. He was not a stranger either. I knew him from his silvery Cossack dome: Bart’s father, Big Bart Tack Sr. Meg shooed him back behind the door and quickly glanced my way. I ducked and pretended I was interested in the buttoned vests they were always trying to make cool again. After she was done ringing it up
, Meg came out and handed me the bag, change, and receipt.
“Thank you.”
“Enjoy.” She fake smiled again and retreated back through the door behind the counter. I felt bad the blazer cost most of what Dad gave us, but Angie insisted we spend the leftover change on lunch. We did in fact stop at the ball house and it did feel strange so we stayed in the car.
“Why did you call him?”
I didn’t answer. Angie had ordered her burger with no onions and that meant waiting off to one side for the special order.
“Did you and he…?”
I didn’t react. No facial expressions, nods, sighs, nothing and maybe that was an answer.
“Is Rusty gay?”
“You tell me.”
“Should I hate you or what?” Angie answered with a question and stared right at me. “Jonah?”
I turned away from her and looked out the window. Where was her stupid burger?
“Jonah, oh my God!” She sounded terrified. This made me look up just in time for my sister to slap me. I was shocked. It was like an old movie and just like in one, I had it coming. We stared at each other for a long couple of seconds before Angie burst out laughing.
The food came, and we didn’t drive away. Angie made a cold pack out of the ice in her Diet Coke and the food bag. She said it was to not “leave any incriminating marks.” Afterward, we bit, chewed, and slurped in absolute silence. I especially wanted to ask whether my sister was going to out me or not. As the wax-paper logo disintegrated against my cheek, I hoped maybe if I said nothing about it, the slap would be enough and we could both forget and move on. My cheek throbbed, but I was happy for the first time in a week. Rusty really wanted to be with me instead of Angie. As I finished my fries, Angie’s phone chirped and made us both jump. She read the text, turned toward me, and glared.
“What?”
“Maya wants to know if it’s true what they’re saying?”
“If what’s true?” My whole body tensed, and for the first time in my life the fries no longer enticed me.
“That an angel told you about Mémé?”
“WHY DOESN’T Angie come?” Mark bounced up and down on his bed. Today they had him in teddy bear pajamas that looked so soft I was kind of jealous.
“Is she still making models?” Luke stood on his bed and held up one of his Matchboxes he decided could fly. They were supposed to be quietly coloring while I tried to start my homework, but the crayons remained untouched. The room had animals on the wallpaper, except in the wild the different species would never be together. There were kangaroos and lions, dinosaurs and bears. This made me mad because it was like kids in here wouldn’t need to know the truth. They might not grow up, so why bother to explain evolution or natural habitats?
“She’s helping Dad,” I lied. Really I had no idea where she was. Only that, because I was here, there was no way she would be. After what happened between us at the mall and then at the ball house we both needed a time-out. I worried Angie might never want to be around me again. The only thing she still shared at all were texts and tweets she got about me. A debate was raging between those who went on retreat and now even some others who didn’t, about what happened there and why. Did I have a premonition? Was I really crying when they found me? If I was crying, did that mean I had a vision or was I just a homesick pussy? I had no time for it and was glad to be out of school all week, but I hated the reason. At least it would all be over by the time I got back. Some couple would break up or a girl give a hand job to a bragging jerk and the whole school would forget me like usual. Except now it sounded not so bad.
“Is Mémé in heaven?” Mark wheezed.
“She and Grandpa Hank are both there.”
“What do they do?” Luke slammed his flying car into the mattress.
“Same stuff they used to do, I guess.” Another lie, but how do you explain no longer having a body or worldly cares and being forever in his loving embrace to two little kids going stir crazy?
“Boring!” Luke brought me back to my happy diversion. The word was new to their vocabularies, and I got a sense my little brother was talking about his present circumstances as much as the afterlife.
“Boring.” Mark picked up on Luke’s comment, fell backward, and threw his arms over his head. He tried to be a brat, but his lungs refused to cooperate. Even that little bit of exertion made him cough. As if on cue, Luke did the same. There really was no difference between them anymore. Both had almost tragically died and were now magically fighting their way back. The only difference was now they had excellent care. All the attention the accident drew brought specialists who waived their astronomical fees. They found better treatments and could attack the “latent viral causes” I had trouble understanding. Basically the little guys had a flu, sort of, for, like, forever but these heavy hitters found it, isolated it, and now they were killing it, a little more each day. That’s how my mother explained it to Angie and me. I didn’t think she fully understood either, except the most important part: her boys would be better.
WHEN I was finished visiting my brothers, I explored. This part of the hospital was new and had lots of yellow and blue everywhere. Even the floor tiles were darker shades of both in a checkerboard pattern. The signs that indicated what was where were wooden and painted bright green. The big windows that didn’t open had stickers on them with famous cartoon characters in pediatrics, where the twins were, and then flowers or birds everywhere else. Posters at regular intervals along the walls showed people of various ages, depending on what floor you were on, holding hands or waving at the sky. If it weren’t for all the sad people with tubes running out of them in those ass-showing gowns, you’d think it was Oz.
I walked everywhere I was allowed to and even a few places I wasn’t. Oncology, you know, cancer, was the saddest. The people looked thin and bald and their families cried in the hallway. The area where they gave the colonoscopies smelled like poop mixed with vapor rub but made me laugh. See, after they got done putting a camera up the butts of these old men, like my father’s age, they had to lie around and fart all the air out before they could go home. I wasn’t sure what to think except I was pretty sure I’d get in trouble for being there. I was about to leave, but I saw this old lady was all curled up on her bed, and the nurse didn’t talk to her all caring and warm, like they did on television.
“Listen to me, dearie,” the nurse scolded the scared old woman in an accent that sounded like somewhere Caribbean or maybe even Africa. “I don’t have all day, you know.” When she walked away, I eased from behind the bright orange curtain with ducks on it and smiled at the old lady. She just looked up at me with a kind of frightened stare. That made me think she had troubles like Grandpa Hank did, getting confused and stuff as well as Mémé’s problems maybe too.
“Hi.” I pulled up a chair like I was her grandson. “It’s me, Jonah.” She didn’t answer, so I got real brave and took her hand. “It’s okay.” I spoke softly and made sure she saw me when I did it. Then I made a funny face, like I did with the twins, and let one rip. It was loud and long, thanks to my vending machine sandwich, and shifted tones. When the poor woman tried to pull her hand away, I didn’t let go. “Your turn,” I tried to say, but I was laughing kind of hard. I don’t know why, but farting is funny, at least to me. Except when Mémé really let loose and I almost got asphyxiated. Her lips didn’t smile, but the wilted old lady’s eyes did. The next thing I knew she squeezed like crazy on my hand, and her burner came out like a foghorn. A couple of the dad types in the surrounding beds even clapped.
“What are you doing here?” The nurse’s scowl reminded me of an island version of Sister Margo. “You can’t be here, young man. Go on now.” She actually shooed me out. “And you don’t come back here.” That was exactly what I wanted because that would mean the twins were at home. Part of me kind of wouldn’t mind coming back either if this hostile nurse would let me. For the first time in a while, I felt I’d done good; a little light as Jace woul
d say.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE RAYS of a real spring morning reflected off Mémé’s walnut coffin. I didn’t serve at the Mass but sat in the first row next to Angie. “I’m going back to hating you after the funeral” were her first words to me since the mall except for her occasional updates on the tweets and texts between my classmates, and now some kids from Lake Henry Regional, about the mystery, miracle, or whatever that happened at Our Lady of the Hills.
“Half the school is here.”
“It’s nice they came.” It was hard to see their back row perch through the haze of sunlight spilling across the empty middle pews between us.
“I’m sure they’re mostly your friends.” I figured it was a show of support for my popular sister. “That should make you feel better.”
“Chad and Darcy are here too.”
I hadn’t spoken to Chad since I left the retreat. Darcy called me last night after the wake they didn’t attend. She wanted to know if it was okay with me if Chad came to the funeral. I wanted to tell her I had so much to tell him. Mostly, I’m sorry a million times. Instead I just said, “Yeah, sure.”
Angie’s phone buzzed in her pocket—at least it was on vibrate—and she fished it out. “Saved Son tweets you once predicted he’d get hurt sleigh riding and then he broke his arm. #Prophet.”
“That’s just Fred Granger.” I shook my head. “The snow was melted. You could see the rocks. It didn’t take divine intervention.”
“You want to reply.” She held out the phone.
“Maybe later.” I turned my eyes front.
“It won’t stop until you do.”
“They’ll get bored.” I made it sound like that was what I wanted. In truth, I wasn’t as sure as I thought I should be. Maybe when things died down, I would think it through.
“I just hope it’s soon before this gets out of hand.”
“You could respond if you want.”
“This is your deal, little brother.” She sat back too. The phone buzzed again. “Angels helped you get all those cool kids to go on retreat.”