The Little Brother

by Victoria Patterson

  At one point, Kevin stood in the middle of the street, and I thought he might cross to where I was hiding, but then he went back to the front yard and stood next to Gabe.

  He and Gabe stared at each other for a giant, earth-sucking vacuum of a pause, and then Kevin said, “Asshole,” pushing Gabe in the chest with his palms, so that Gabe floundered, one hand on the ground, in a half fall, “asshole, asshole, why’d you bring it? It’s your fault.”

  Gabe stood, waited a beat, and then he came at Kevin headfirst in a pummeling body slam. They went down onto the lawn, grasping and fighting, and for a second, on instinct, I stood up, thinking that I needed to help Gabe. It was like watching a lapdog fighting a pit bull.

  Joe and some others broke up the fight, separating Gabe and Kevin a good distance, until they both calmed and got their breathing back to normal. Gabe’s nose looked bloodied.

  I worried that the commotion would wake the people whose yard I was hiding in, but no lights came on. They were probably used to the noise during summer break, or maybe they’d left for another vacation home. No one on the block yelled at us to be quiet or turned on lights or called the police.

  Joe pulled a pack of Marlboros from his pocket and shook one out. He coughed, and then set the cigarette in his mouth. Lit it, coughed again, blowing smoke.

  “Suppose,” he said, done coughing, “it’ll turn up. These things always turn up when you give up looking. Like last week, I couldn’t find my car keys, got all crazy”—his hand flared for a second—“looked everywhere, yelling about it, ‘Fuck, where’re my keys!’ Remember?”—he turned to Sara, and she affirmed with a nod. A pang went through me, understanding that she couldn’t speak out of fear. She didn’t want attention. But Joe didn’t ask her for more.

  “Finally gave up,” he continued, “smoked a bowl, ate some fries, and took a nap.” He paused, took another drag from his cigarette, blew out the smoke. A rush of admiration went through me for how Joe finessed the situation.

  “Then,” he said, “I woke from my nap, went to the fridge to grab a beer, and there they were, my keys, waiting for me on the top shelf next to the milk. I’m telling you. That’s when it happens. When you give up and let it go.”

  Gabe’s head went down—sad, resigned.

  “Worst-case scenario,” Joe said, “it doesn’t turn up. You can just buy another camera. Shit! I’ll help pay for it.”

  Kevin had been listening from his side of the lawn. I saw him take what looked like a long, deflating, accepting exhale.

  Gabe seemed relieved as well, looking up and around, and then moving toward Kevin, no longer worried about getting his ass kicked. I had a flash of Kevin’s head in Gabe’s lap, and Gabe stroking his hair.

  They stood around, discussing the weirdness of losing things and having those things turn up again, until they agreed to go inside and spark up, a peace offering extended from Joe to Gabe and Kevin.

  Sara followed them to the front door, the last to go inside the house.

  So I waited some more behind the bush, my knees pulled to my chest, feet tucked in and warmed within my sweatshirt, and tried to rest. Listened to the American flag clicking and clacking and flapping at its pole, and waited and waited some more.

  The sun began to rise—a flare of light in the dark sky—and then Gabe and Kevin walked out the front door and to Gabe’s truck without speaking.

  Gabe started the engine, and then he pulled out of the driveway and sped down the street. His brake lights went red at the stop sign, and then he made his turn—gone—the street quiet.

  I wasn’t sure what to do, when Sara came out of the door and walked to her car without looking at me. She unlocked it, opened her door, shuffled around inside, and got a sweatshirt. She pulled it on, shut her car door, and walked back to the house, still without eye contact.

  I waited a few more minutes—I counted to 120—and then I did my crouch-walk again, back to her car.

  This time the door wasn’t locked, and I opened it slowly. On the towel-covered camera was a note in Sara’s block-letter writing:

  TAKE IT AND DO SOMETHING. GIVE IT TO POLICE? SHE LOOKS DEAD! YOU SAW IT! THEY’RE WATCHING ME INSIDE HOUSE. I SAID I WAS COLD AND NEEDED SWEATSHIRT. SORRY I CAN’T HELP. EVEN, I’M SORRY. I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO. I’M REALLY SCARED!

  I stuffed the note in my pocket and jog-walked to my car, three blocks down, carrying the camera wrapped in its towel. The air seemed static, and the rising sun cast a shimmering, halo-like purple-yellow on the horizon.

  Walking beneath a tree, I looked up to see its leaves trembling and glittering above me, their undersides pale. It smelled of salty ocean and grass. Although I moved quickly, everything seemed to be in slow motion, as if in a movie.

  In the home to my left, a light came on. Two houses down, a garage door rattled open, and a car engine started.

  After that, I had tunnel vision, not looking around me, ignoring noises, focused only on getting to my car.

  When I got home, I opened the back door quietly and went straight to my bedroom, setting the camera beneath my bed with the towel over it and my sweatshirt over the towel. A bread loaf–size lump.

  No Gabe at home, I knew, since his truck was not parked outside.

  Then I sat down on my bed and thought about what I should do. But I had no idea.

  My alarm clock showed 6:04 AM, and I didn’t know whether to start my day or try to sleep.

  An early riser, my dad usually woke at 6:30 AM and started brewing his coffee soon after. He would be suspicious if he found me up this early.

  I wasn’t hungry for breakfast, and I felt a numbed panic. Whatever adrenaline had gotten me through hiding and escaping with the video camera had worn off—or was in the process of wearing off—and sitting on my bed, alone, thinking about what I’d seen on that little screen, and about Sara’s involvement, made everything seem hopeless and unbearable and terrifying.

  I tried reading Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye for distraction, but after five minutes or so of the sentences wobbling, I set the book back down.

  The very fact of the video camera, and what it contained, and its presence—right under the bed—really freaked me out, as if I’d had something to do with the content, or as if what I’d seen was alive and happening now, on the morning of July 6, not on the Fourth, just by its existence and my awareness.

  Then my cell phone rang, and I figured that it was probably Sara telling me what to do, but when I flipped it open, I read my caller ID: BRO.

  A burst of fear as I answered, saying, “Hey, what’s up?” My voice sounded shaky but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “You awake?” he said.

  “I am now. Where are you?”

  An indistinct shuffling noise while he paused, and then he said, “Kevin’s.”

  “What’s up?”

  He didn’t speak but I could hear him breathing into the phone.

  “Gabe,” I said, because I didn’t think I could wait, “what’s up?”

  “I’m just wondering,” he said, “if you’ve seen my video camera. I can’t find it.”

  “No,” I said, my heart speeding. “Do you want me to look for it?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’d be great. Thanks, dude. I don’t think I left it there. But can you look?”

  “Sure,” I said, and instinctively, I pushed with my heel to make sure the camera was far beneath my bed, invisible. “I’ll call you if I find it.”

  “Thanks, little brother,” he said. He hadn’t called me that in a long time, and it made me so sad.

  “I’ll be by later,” he said. A short pause, and then he added, “Hey, don’t look at what’s on there if you find it, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. To be honest, I wanted to tell him right then that I knew. I imagined we’d both cry, and that he’d be remorseful. I’m not sure what stopped me, except for an intuitive sense that he wanted only to save his own skin.

  “Promise?” he said.

  “Yeah
,” I said. “I promise.”

  We said our good-byes, and then I sat for a moment, feeling bad for having lied to him. From his voice and request, I knew that he didn’t suspect me at all. But I remembered what was on the camera, and any guilt morphed into horror and fear. No matter if I wanted to forget, I couldn’t.

  I heard the faint noises of Dad in the kitchen, shuffling around, brewing his pot of coffee. He would be in his bathrobe. I thought about taking the video camera to him, showing him. But it scared me, knowing that he might not do anything about it, and that he might destroy the camera.

  Thinking back, this was pivotal, and the first time I didn’t believe in or trust my dad’s decision-making abilities.

  Had I gone to him with the video camera, I would have been making a conscious decision to probably let Gabe, Kevin, and Kent off the hook. But what I’d seen, along with the knowledge of Sara having witnessed it as well, had extinguished that possibility.

  I tried lying down on the bed and deep breathing to ease my panic, but after a few moments, I gave up and went to the bathroom. I tore up Sara’s note and flushed it.

  A long, hot shower later, I stood towel-dried in my boxers in front of the mirror, and with skin flushed from the heat, I watched myself cry.

  16.

  JULY 6

  I WANTED GABE’S SAMSUNG video camera out of my possession. That was all that I knew for certain. But I didn’t know how to make it happen. So I dressed and prepared myself for the day, all the while wondering how to make it through the hours ahead, and how to get rid of the video camera.

  I called Mike’s cell but it went to voice mail. I called his house, and his mom told me that he’d left with his dad and sisters to visit his grandma in Whittier. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Your voice sounds different.”

  I made my bed. Brushed my teeth. Tucked in my shirt. Put on my socks and shoes. Each small action felt momentous, as if it would lead to an answer, to a bigger and greater action.

  The Fourth had fallen on a Friday, and now a bright Sunday loomed, birds whistling their songs outside my bedroom window.

  I thought of calling Tove. But what would I say? Are you okay, Tove? Do you know what happened? Did you black out?

  Part of me believed that if she didn’t know, she’d be okay. She was okay if she didn’t know. Right?

  I’m not going to relay what I saw on that video. But I will say that Tove looked dead, which scared Sara the most. So I knew that most likely she had blacked out, and had been unaware of what had happened to her.

  I’d had a few blackouts—most recently at the girls’ volleyball party—as if what happened hadn’t happened, because I had no memory of it. If someone told me, then there might be flashes of memory, like a ghost me had been there instead of the real me.

  If Tove didn’t know—didn’t remember—I didn’t want to be the one to tell her. She would be safely unconscious, shielded from the pain. I didn’t want her to have flashes of memory. I wanted it not to have happened. She wouldn’t want to know.

  I thought about her parents—Ben and Luanne—and how they both volunteered in our classes in grade school. Luanne, petite and with brown hair like Tove, deceptively normal-looking, bringing her guitar for sing-alongs. Ben with a patch of grayish-white at the back of his hair, as if someone had settled a hand there, full of chalk, rubbed it in, and then pulled the hand away. He’d been fond of me once and had told me, “If I had a son, I’d want him to be like you.”

  I remembered sitting in plastic chairs with Tove, first grade or second, listening to her explain her name. “It’s a Scandinavian name, the author of my mom’s favorite books when she was a kid. The author’s a Finn, pronounced Thou-vé, last name Jansson, but no one says it right, so I’m just Tove. There’s also ‘Jabberwocky,’ a poem by Lewis Carroll. A tove is part lizard and part corkscrew. It nests under sundials and eats cheese.” Then I remembered how Melissa, that afternoon at the pool, had thought long and hard and then called Tove “weird,” and how I’d always suspected this to be a shared trait between Tove and me.

  Wouldn’t everyone be better off—Tove, her parents, Gabe, the Ks, all of us—if the camera didn’t exist? And if it didn’t exist, we could pretend—those of us who knew—that it hadn’t happened.

  With this in mind, I grappled with destroying the camera. Taking a hammer to it. Setting it on fire.

  Or I could delete what I’d seen. Delete everything and leave the camera somewhere for Gabe to find. He would be so relieved that he would change his ways. We could pretend that what had been on the tape hadn’t happened. It would never happen again.

  But it did happen. I’d seen the proof. It was etched permanently inside me. If I destroyed the camera and the evidence, I’d always know.

  Then I thought about calling Sara. You’re the one that got me into this mess, I would say. You figure out what to do. I’m giving the camera back to you. I want nothing to do with it. Forget about me.

  But then I remembered her fear. I wanted to protect her from what we’d seen on the camera, and from having to be involved further. I also liked the idea of being her savior. I wanted to help her.

  I had my phone ready and came very close to pressing Sara’s number. But then I flipped it shut and put it back in my pocket.

  I heard voices coming from the living room or kitchen, two that I recognized—my dad’s and Sheriff Krone’s—and one that I didn’t know.

  My dad wouldn’t suspect anything from my being awake now, so I decided—since I didn’t know what else to do with myself—to join them.

  A quick fantasy floated through me. I would give the video camera to Sheriff Krone. He would know what to do. You did the right thing, son, he would say. If Dad protested, he would tell him, This is way beyond a Get Out of Jail Free card, Dan. Appropriate measures need to be taken.

  But then I remembered Krone’s manipulative and ingratiating manner at Banderos Steakhouse. How he’d swung the blond woman from the bar to face us and pretended to handcuff her, and then slapped her ass. Given me a backhanded compliment, while at the same time letting me know that he controlled my dad.

  I couldn’t give him the video camera, because I didn’t trust him.

  With a sick, uncanny sensation, I walked down the hallway to the living room, letting my hand skim the wall.

  But they weren’t in the living room, so I made my way to the kitchen.

  I’d never seen the man who was with Sheriff Krone and my dad, but I knew—even though all three were dressed for golf—that he was Assistant Sheriff Scott Jimenez, Krone’s right-hand man. Something about his air of authority, coupled with an attentive and fluctuating deference to Krone and Dad. Slim and brown-skinned, with a classic square jaw and a full head of dark hair, he stared at me for a long second, and then he smiled—his face boyish and handsome—setting his hand out for me to shake. “Well, well, well,” he said, with the jovial gallantry of a practiced salesman, “this must be the famous Even Hyde.”

  The strength of his handshake surprised me.

  Sheriff Krone slung an arm around my shoulder and pulled me to him. He made as if to knuckle my head. He knew that I disliked him and was letting me know that he knew while also working at making me hate him more, all for his entertainment.

  “Even,” he said, crooking my head in his elbow, “how’s it going?”

  I struggled to free myself without appearing too hostile.

  Dad, smoking a cigarette, said, “Leave my boy alone.”

  To my relief, Krone did, releasing me, saying, “Okay, not a big deal. Just being friendly.”

  He leaned forward and slapped my back—one last seemingly sociable but intimidating and hostile action.

  I felt rather sick and hot, wishing I’d stayed in my bedroom. My eyes wandered around the kitchen, wondering how to escape.

  Jimenez reached into his pocket and extracted a small bottle of aspirin, shaking a few into his hand. He swallowed them dry and noticed me watching. “Want some?” he asked, exte
nding the bottle to me.

  “I’ve got a headache,” I said, accepting them. I took two with a glass of water from the kitchen sink.

  Jimenez smiled at me impersonally, and I felt like a caddy at his country club to whom he’d just granted a favor.

  Krone said, “I sure hope you don’t get migraines like your pop.”

  “It’s just a headache,” I said.

  Dad began to cough, his face reddening and crumpling, and I refilled my glass with water to help him. He set his cigarette in an ashtray and drank the water down.

  When he finished, he said, “Thanks, Son.”

  “Smoking,” said Krone solemnly, “is a bad habit.”

  Dad glared at him and said nothing.

  “Lung cancer,” Krone said, “diseases, all of these things can be prevented.”

  Jimenez reached for the Newports on the kitchen counter and lit one for himself in solidarity with Dad.

  Dad’s cigarette smoldered in the ashtray. He looked at it and said irritably, “I’ve been smoking since I was ten, and I’m fine. You think I don’t know what I’m doing? ‘Stop smoking, drinking, cut out the caffeine, eat better, more vegetables and greens, less meat, be careful about your cholesterol.’ You don’t think I’ve been hearing these things from my doctors for most of my life?” He waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “What the fuck do they know? How about you mind your own fucking business and not tell me what to do.”

  A stunned silence, and then Jimenez blew a puff of smoke.

  “Jesus,” Krone said. “Relax.”

  Dad shot him a hostile glance. Nobody seemed to know what to say.

  We watched Dad take his glasses off and spray the lenses with Windex. He rubbed and polished them with a paper towel, and his eyes looked weak and watery and small, a vague blue, crinkled at the edges. Putting the glasses back on, he said, “Golfing with the Millers?”

  “Sure thing,” said Krone. He sounded relieved to have a less contentious subject change. “Pretty thing, that wife of his. Dark hair and blue eyes, nice figure, the real deal. She’ll be there today. None of that silicone. Too much makeup, maybe a little less lipstick would be nice. Gets on her teeth. Three sons but she looks good.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “A ton of money. We’re talking money like you wouldn’t believe. Two helicopters, a private jet. All of it new money, so they’re happy to show it off. She wants to contribute and he wants to do what she wants.” He laughed, ran a hand over his balding head. “Hell,” he said, “I want to do what she wants.”