Every Other Weekend

by Abigail Johnson

  Greg had been easy to like, and Jeremy had idolized him. We’d all suffered when Greg died. But it had been easier to focus on Mom’s suffering, and my own, than consider that Jeremy was suffering, too. I was beginning to realize that just because he didn’t show it the same way didn’t mean he didn’t feel as deeply. It was totally foreign for me to think of Jeremy that way, to know that he not only had those feelings but that maybe all along, he’d been considering mine, too.

  It was a mind trip, and it messed with my brain, making me feel like I needed to apologize and hug him. I couldn’t remember the last time Jeremy and I had hugged. I felt like I needed to apologize for that, too. The words formed in my mouth, but I couldn’t give them breath. Instead I focused on the problem we shared.

  “So what do we do?”

  “For starters, we don’t take any family trips without the whole family. I don’t want her getting used to the idea of us without Dad.”

  That made sense. We were fragmented, but that didn’t mean we needed to form potentially good memories that way. But even though I agreed with Jeremy—a fact that astounded me—I didn’t see that we had a lot of options. “We are literally packed and in the car. Little late to get out of this one.”

  Jeremy was thinking. His face tended to scrunch up when he was concentrating hard on something, like the effort was painful. Brotherly breakthrough notwithstanding, I fell into my old habit and laughed. Jeremy reacted just as predictably by turning around and drilling me in the arm.

  It was going to take more than one conversation to turn Jeremy and me into the kind of brothers who liked each other as well as loved each other. I didn’t need the throb in my arm to tell me that.

  When Mom came back, her makeup was completely redone, which told me she’d cried the first application off. I wondered if Jeremy noticed. Maybe. His face wasn’t contorted, so I assumed he’d abandoned any deep thought as to how to get this road trip canceled, but I hadn’t. I wasn’t going to be able to communicate with him in front of her, but as I rubbed my arm, an idea formed...the barest fragment of one.

  “I think that’s everything,” Mom said. Jeremy only grunted. “Grandma and Grandpa are really looking forward to seeing you two. You’ll be fine for a couple days without your electronics.”

  I didn’t have any more time to think once Jeremy started the car. “Fine,” I said, deliberately letting my annoyance seep through.

  “Ignore him,” Jeremy said. “He’s crying because he won’t be able to call his girlfriend for two days and the world is going to end as a result.”

  What a predictable ass. I tried not to smile. “Careful. Forty-eight hours might be long enough for Erica to realize she’d rather not date a guy who has to shop at Baby Gap.”

  * * *

  We didn’t end up visiting my grandparents. We did, however, back Mom’s Geo into a tree, because Jeremy, short though he was, could still twist around and try to beat the crap out of me all without removing his foot from the gas pedal. Not at all like I’d planned.

  We also didn’t get our phones back, nor were we allowed to go anywhere apart from school. That didn’t end up sucking as much as I thought it would, because for the first time in a long time, my brother and I actually talked.

  Jolene

  I barely remembered driving to the apartment, much less climbing the stairs to Dad’s floor, but when my toes stopped inches from his door, reality jolted back.

  He was there. He had to be. I’d barely seen him in months, and he was going to open the door and see me, talk to me.

  And it was my birthday.

  He’d gotten me a car.

  With a card. Or a note.

  Maybe it had said things.

  Maybe it had said a lot of things.

  Maybe Mom had read it, and that was why she’d burned it.

  Maybe it just said “Happy Birthday.”

  Maybe it was just a card that he’d signed.

  Maybe he hadn’t even signed it.

  Maybe.

  Maybe not.

  I didn’t have my keys. So I knocked.

  And he didn’t answer.

  I knocked again. And I kept knocking. Rap, rap, rap. Boom, boom, boom.

  And then I was crying in the hallway.

  And it was my birthday.

  And he wasn’t there.

  He was never there. He’d probably never been there. No one ever was. No one wanted to be there.

  Mrs. Cho was gone, and Cherry had been gone for longer than I’d realized.

  My knuckles hurt, so I switched hands.

  And then I stopped knocking on a door that would never open.

  I turned until my back was to his apartment, and I slid down to the floor. So what if there had been a card or a note. So what. There’d been nothing—less than nothing—for so long, it wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing he scrawled on a card for my birthday would undo the fact that I’d barely seen him since my last one. All of my insides squeezed tight, as memories from all those missed birthdays piled on top me. It was pathetic, and it didn’t matter. And I had a car. That was great. Tons of sixteen-year-olds would love to get cars on their birthdays.

  A tear splashed onto my cheek.

  I could go anywhere, do anything.

  Another tear, another splash.

  It was my birthday and I was free.

  And I cried.

  * * *

  The hallway made my eyeballs crawl. It had to have been designed intentionally ugly. The carpeting on the lower floors had been replaced during the past month, but Adam’s dad hadn’t gotten to our floor yet. It had the old forest green carpeting with tiny burgundy swirls everywhere. And it looked dirty. The carpet was packed with so many years of accumulated filth that it no longer matched the paint on the walls. And I’d been sitting on it for hours, even knowing that my dad would most likely never show up. Maybe especially knowing that he would never show up. He probably had a different place, a nicer place where he actually lived.

  I turned my head with an indifference I didn’t have to fake when I heard footsteps dragging up the stairs.

  It wasn’t Dad or Shelly or anyone I knew. It was a guy in his thirties with thinning blond hair and pale blue eyes. I vaguely remembered him from months ago when I’d been waiting for Adam so that we could build a snowman. He carried a bag of groceries in one arm and a bicycle helmet in the other.

  I didn’t scramble to my feet and try to rush past him. I didn’t move at all.

  “Hey,” he said with slightly narrowed eyes. He’d stopped with one foot on the top step, the other still down behind him.

  I didn’t reply.

  “Forget your keys?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” I turned back to the wall in front of me, staring at the ugly paint.

  He finally fully ascended the stairs and walked toward a door one down and across from Adam’s. He kept glancing at me as he shifted his helmet up under his arm and dug keys from his pocket. “You call somebody?”

  “Nobody with keys is coming here.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “I’m sitting.”

  He shook his head before he unlocked his door and let himself in. He was back a second later, sans bag and helmet. This time he walked right up to me. “Hey, so I’m thinking I need to call somebody to come get you. Whose apartment is this anyway? Ex-boyfriend?”

  I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply through my nose. “Sorry, guy, but I don’t know you, so I’m not going to talk to you right now.” I pulled out my phone and my shiny new car key and held them up for him to see. “I’m not stranded or anything, so feel free to go inside your apartment.”

  “It sounds like you know me.”

  “What?”

  “My name,” he said. “It’s Guy. You just called me guy, and we met once before right in this ha
llway, so...”

  I stared at him with my snottiest teenager face, but he didn’t back away.

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “What’s your name?”

  I didn’t answer, but I saw his eyes flick to the number on the door above me and then back with a different question in his eyes. And I knew. “You’ve met Shelly.”

  His silence was answer enough.

  I let my head tilt backward until it was resting against the door. “Great,” I said. “Then you probably know that my mom’s a bitch, I’m an ungrateful brat, and my dad is the long-suffering saint who tirelessly puts up with us. Did she read you the full transcripts from the divorce hearing, or is she saving that for when she knows you better, so, like, the second time she sees you?”

  “Whoa,” he said, holding up a hand. “I haven’t been here much since I moved in. I’ve spoken to... What was her name? Shelly? I’ve talked to her maybe a couple times passing in the halls, but I don’t know anything about anything.”

  It was impossible to tell if he was lying or not, but it was just another thing that didn’t matter. “Whatever. Look, I don’t really care what you think of me.” He still didn’t move. He was just standing there a few feet from me. “Are you going to leave or what?”

  “Are you?”

  “No. I’m fine. I like being exactly where I am. When I want to leave, I’ll get into my car and go.”

  “And when is that going be?”

  I scowled at him. “What, are you planning a party out here? Go back into your apartment and quit hulking over me.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “But you’re depressing the hell out of me sitting here. Why don’t you come inside with me until you feel like going somewhere that isn’t the hallway?”

  “Pass,” I said. “You’re starting to sound super creepy, Guy. In fact, I’m pretty sure Shelly referred to you as the creepy guy from down the hall. And anyway, what are you, thirty-five? Today is my sixteenth birthday. I’m so illegal it’s not funny.”

  He laughed like I hadn’t just insinuated that he was a pedo. “For the record, I’m twenty-eight. But good to know I look midthirties.”

  I didn’t apologize.

  After a good thirty seconds of silence, he left. He walked into his apartment without closing the door, and a second later he was back, leaning against the frame with a carton of ice cream in one hand and a spoon in the other. I watched him eat several bites, and he watched me watch him.

  “Want some?”

  I made a face and went back to watching my wall. Though I did want some. I hadn’t eaten all day, and the sight of food, even ice cream when I was chilled through from sitting on thin carpet for hours, looked really good. “Are you seriously doing this right now?”

  “It’s really good ice cream. It’s got candy bars chopped up in it.”

  “Why do you care?”

  He didn’t answer, just continued eating. And it suddenly seemed like the best offer I’d had all day, so I stood up, leaving the door to Dad’s empty apartment behind me, and literally took candy from a stranger.

  * * *

  I came to a dead halt the second I stepped into his apartment. My eyes went so wide that I’d swear my eyelashes passed my eyebrows. Like a magnet, I flew to the nearest shelf in front of me and started dragging my hands down row after row of movies. Every wall in the apartment was lined with them. Thousands.

  I let out a laugh.

  “Yeah, occupational hazard,” Guy said, coming up behind me. “I’m a film critic and—”

  I tore my eyes from the shelves and spun to find him right behind me. “You’re the film critic?”

  “I’m a film critic. The film critic? That’s got to be Roger Ebert.”

  “No, I mean...” My eyes widened impossibly farther. “I’ve been waiting to meet you. I heard that a film critic moved in and... I love movies.”

  “Yeah?” Guy said, his lips curving up. “Guess it’s a good thing we found each other.”

  ADAM

  My arm went numb all the way down to my fingertips before pain crashed back up, all courtesy of the dead-arm Jeremy just gave me. The worst part was that I couldn’t hit him back. It was all part of the moronic agreement we’d reached to help reunite our family.

  The first thing I had to do was stop being a jerk to Dad. Anytime I started, or Jeremy perceived that I was starting, he got a free shot.

  Jeremy grinned at me and readied his fist for the next hit.

  I just stood there. Outside Dad’s apartment. When I didn’t have to be there. It wasn’t a holiday or special occasion. It was a Wednesday. It was nothing. Which was why Jeremy said we should visit him. We.

  Mom had looked like we’d asked to shove her into a small, dark box filled with spiders suspended from the top of a skyscraper. There it was, all her fears rolled into one: her sons wanted to leave her. She managed to smile and cry at the same time. She wanted us to go, but clung to our shirts a little too strenuously to really sell it.

  But we’d gone. We were there; Jeremy was letting us in with his key, while I tried to force my jaw to unlock. It was harder than I’d thought. All I had to do was speak first, say hi or anything before Dad could. That was what Jeremy and I had agreed on in the car.

  But it wouldn’t come, that tiniest of almost all words. I wasn’t even especially mad that day. Yeah, Mom had started crying when we left, which had made me want to kick Dad in the nuts, but then Jeremy had stopped the car and run back to hug her on the steps. It was nice. It was the kind of thing I would have thought of, if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with having to choke out impromptu civility with Dad.

  Greg would have done it.

  I looked at Jeremy again. The grin was gone. I could see him pleading with his eyes as I stood in front of Dad. We need this. They need this. One word.

  “Hi.”

  I never knew a word could physically hurt, but that one did. It clawed up my insides so that every breath after felt raw. But I did it. Jeremy’s whole body relaxed, and he jumped right in, taking over the burden of the conversation both for me and Dad, who looked as stunned by my greeting as by our unscheduled arrival.

  Seeing Dad, I believed what Jeremy had said about him, which made me realize that I hadn’t before. Dad wasn’t doing well; he just wore a better mask around us than Mom did. But that day, he hadn’t had time to disguise his red eyes or hide the photos he’d been looking at.

  It was microscopically easier after that.

  He hugged Jeremy and looked back and forth between us. “No, of course I’m glad you’re here. I just didn’t know you were coming.”

  That was obvious, given the coat he’d been shrugging into when we’d come in and the keys in his hand.

  “If you’re going to grab food, I could eat.” Jeremy looked to me to make a similar statement, and though it hurt as much as my greeting, I nodded.

  “Food sounds good.”

  Dad looked pained. He kept glancing at the door, then back again at us. “Yeah, I was gonna eat...after.”

  Something vile squirmed in my gut and my entire body clenched. “He has a date.” I spit the words at my father and Jeremy looked almost as disgusted as I did before denials started pouring from Dad.

  “What? No. Never.”

  But I didn’t believe him, and Jeremy wasn’t rushing to his defense either.

  “I’ve been going to a place and—” His face contorted a little. “Look, come with me, all right? I’ll show you.”

  Jeremy and I hesitated, but when Dad moved into the hall, my brother gave me a look, and we followed.

  * * *

  “Church?” Jeremy said, drawing his brows together as we walked up the steps to a large old redbrick Byzantine-inspired building with a sign that read Tenth Presbyterian Church. I shared my brother’s frown. Church wasn�
��t a new thing for our family. We—Jeremy and I—went every Sunday we were with Mom to the same church we’d been baptized in as babies. We hadn’t gone with Dad during his weekends yet, because he’d said he was still trying to find the right one—not that I’d ever seen him looking. If he’d found one, then why not say so? Why drag us outside in the freezing cold as night fell?

  Dad walked forward and opened one of the doors for us to go inside.

  There were massive marble columns, floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows, and rows and rows of carved wooden pews inside, both on the ground floor and in balconies that lined the sides of the sanctuary. The building appeared to be empty.

  Dad led us down a narrow, steep staircase and through a hall that branched off in several directions before we stopped in front of the last room on the left. Inside, a group of people had arranged themselves in a circle of chairs in the center of the room.

  I knew what this was, though I’d never been to one before. A support group.

  Dad greeted a few people and introduced Jeremy and me as his sons before directing us to grab a few more folding chairs. Jeremy moved right away, and the people already sitting began to move back and make room for us, but I stayed in the doorway. I flinched when Dad put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Okay.” He quickly drew his hand back. “Right. Well, this is where I’ve been going.” Dad lowered his head along with his voice. “These are all people who’ve lost someone.”

  My face felt hot, and I couldn’t seem to inhale enough air. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see any of their faces. “Since when?” I asked. I didn’t know what exactly was bothering me. The fact that he was in a support group, or that he hadn’t told us about it.

  “A while,” he said. “First back home, and then when I moved out, I found this one.”

  I took a step back into the hall. “Does Mom know?”