Sons of the 613

by Michael Rubens

  I keep repeating it with as much force as I can muster, over and over again, until my voice is cracking and hoarse, and it dwindles until all I have to offer is a harsh whisper to fend him off. “Leave me alone,” I rasp. “Leave me alone.”

  Leave me alone.

  Why can’t you just leave me alone.

  Then I’m flying, the wind scooping me up out of the mud and lifting me through the trees and high into the storm-tossed night. I kick and punch and thrash about, fighting against it, but it won’t let me free. I’m buffeted between the clouds and the lightning and the dragon, and this is how I’ll die, lost forever with no one knowing what happened to me, never finding my body.

  Except it’s not the wind, I see now, it’s Josh, and I lash out at him. But he’s immune to my violence, holding me tight as I flail and struggle until I’m too weak to fight anymore. He’s carrying me now, carrying me through the rain and the forest and the darkness. Cradling me like a child. Murmuring to me in a quiet voice to calm me, a voice I’ve never heard before. Saying, It’s okay, Isaac. It’s okay. Come on. Come on, little brother. Come with me. Let’s go home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  MISSING THE WINDOW

  “There’s another piece over there. No, there, behind the toilet.”

  I crouch down and spot the shard of glass on the tile floor and gingerly pick it up. Josh is perched on the bathroom counter next to the sink, the unit creaking ominously each time he shifts his weight. He’s absently tossing and tumbling a large rock from hand to hand, the rock that I had launched through the window. The wrong window, it turns out: the bathroom, not his bedroom window, which is what I’d been aiming for.

  There’s a piece of cardboard duct-taped over the window. Josh is there in the room with me, but he’s not there. His eyes follow me as I put the glass into the brown paper shopping bag with the rest of the pieces, but I’m not really entering his brain. If he’s still upset over what I did, he hasn’t shown it.

  I guess I slept for a full day, feverish and delirious. I remember heading into the woods, I remember the dogs, I remember something about a dragon, but not much more after that. I have a very, very vague memory of Josh carrying me home, or something like that, but I had so many weird dreams I’m not sure what’s real. I woke up this morning in my parents’ bed around ten, my fever almost gone. Lisa was at school. I don’t know about Patrick and Terri. Maybe still asleep. Josh was in the kitchen when I wandered in there.

  “Hungry?” was all he said. I nodded, and he jerked his head toward the table. I sat while he cooked sausages and eggs and toast for both of us, and made coffee for himself. We ate together, Josh reading the paper. Not a word passed between us, our residual shared anger hardened into a taut silence. Or maybe not. Maybe a truce of some sort. Or maybe just exhaustion, like so much had happened that neither of us knew where to begin, like a massive tangled knot in a kite string that you just ignore because it’s too complicated to even think about.

  He didn’t speak until I’d finished eating. Then he said, “Let’s go clean up the bathroom.”

  I don’t complain about it as I pick up the glass, my hands in gardening gloves that are stiff from dried mud. It seems fair. I did break the window, after all. It’s a wordless task marked and measured by the clinking of the glass shards as I place them into the doubled-up paper bag, and by the dry start-stop of Josh tossing and catching the rock.

  I was stealing glances at him during breakfast, and I’m doing it again now, trying to detect any evidence of the two Joshes: the Josh I know, the one who very definitely picked me up and tossed me into the creek, and the other Josh, a Josh who may have headed into the woods, into the teeth of the storm, to search for me, and brought me home cradled in his arms. I don’t see traces of either of them.

  Am I angry at him about Lesley? I don’t know. When I let my mind go in that direction I expect to encounter a huge store of emotion. But there’s nothing. I don’t know why I cared about her at all. I just know that I don’t ever want to see her again.

  The silence grows longer still, another presence in the room. I hold out a hand, Josh passes me the broom, and I start to sweep, and that uneven rhythm becomes the sound that indicates the passage of time.

  Then, into the stillness, Josh says, “I threw a TV set through the downstairs picture window once.”

  It’s been so long since I’ve talked that I have to clear my throat before I can start: ahem ahem. “I remember.”

  The first thing I’ve said to him all morning. The first thing I’ve said to him in days.

  “You remember that? You were pretty young.”

  I retrieve another jagged triangle from near the toilet and carry it to the bag. “Why’d you do it?” I ask.

  Josh thinks about it, shakes his head. “Don’t know. I was pissed off about something.” He makes a sound somewhere between a snort and a chuckle.

  It’s quiet again as I sweep. He wants to say more. I can feel it. I want to say more, too, all the questions I have piling up into a disordered, impatient line. It’s a rare opportunity, right now, a chance to address everything, and I don’t want to lose it. I will start with How long was I out? which will take me to What happened? and from there I will move to Why did you have to do that with Lesley? Or start at the top with What are you doing with your life? and work from there. I visualize various strategic pathways, practicing them in my head, knowing that whenever I open a conversation with Josh it will most likely veer off in some chaotic direction.

  I open my mouth to speak, and at the same time he says, “Isaac . . .” and then his phone rings. He looks at it. “I have to take this,” he says, hopping down from the countertop. “Hey, hold on,” he says into the phone, and pauses at the doorway. “Put the bag of glass in the garage with the recycling,” he says to me, “and make sure you mop.”

  Then he leaves.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  THE OTHER SHOE DROPS

  I fall asleep for most of the rest of the day and wake up around dinnertime, feeling woolly headed and grouchy, but not sick anymore. We all eat together, Josh distracted and withdrawn again. I feel strangely calm, but Josh is worse. Like he’s pacing inside, moving restlessly from one end of some dark cage to the other, back, forth, not finding any ease.

  When I first come in, Patrick says, “Yo, he’s up! Dude, what the hell happened to you? You out there having some sort of vision quest?”

  “None of your business,” says Josh, and Patrick drops it.

  Terri has broken three of my mother’s snuff bottles. She was examining them and dropped them and they shattered. Between her and Patrick, and Joey’s incontinence, I think they’ve caused several thousand dollars in property damage over the past few days.

  We’re clearing the table when I hear a car pulling into the driveway and then the slamming of a car door. Then the doorbell rings. The dog starts yapping.

  “Joey, shut up!” say Patrick and Terri in unison. Joey doesn’t.

  The bell rings again, the interval too short for polite doorbell etiquette. Josh is texting and ignores it. The rest of us exchange glances. Joey yaps more, until Patrick nails him with a meatball.

  “Clean that up,” says Josh, still texting.

  The bell rings a third time. Joey can’t decide between yapping and eating the meatball.

  “Someone gonna get that?” asks Terri.

  “Isaac, get the door,” says Josh.

  I have to pass by him to exit the kitchen. He’s focused on his texting, and I slow just enough to be able to do a flyby read of the screen. He’s writing, If I do it, will you show up?

  Do what, I wonder, And who is he talking to?

  On the way to the front entrance I can see out the picture windows in the living room. There’s a massive Chevrolet Suburban filling up our driveway, parked crooked, the sort of car that makes my parents say, There ought to be a law.

  When I get to the front door the Suburban makes sense. There’s a man standing there who could on
ly drive that sort of car: he’s big with a gut, and he’s got buzzed hair with a flattop, a scowly, craggy face, and overall he looks about as unpleasant as they make human beings.

  “Is this the Kaplan residence?” he says the instant I open the door.

  I blink at him. “Yes.”

  “Your daddy home?”

  He’s clipped and unsmiling.

  “Um . . . can I ask what this is in regards to?”

  That’s what my mom says when people we don’t know call or come to the door. It doesn’t have the effect I’m hoping for. Instead the man seems annoyed.

  “Just get your daddy, please.”

  We’ve never used Mommy/Daddy in this house, and the way he says it irks me, like I’m his kid to order around. Then before I do anything his eye line shifts upward and his expression changes slightly, like he’s surprised and trying to hide it and recalculating the situation.

  “Can I help you?” says Josh from behind me.

  “Your daddy home?” says the man again, for some reason trying the same tone with Josh—which, well, mistake.

  “Isaac, go away,” Josh says, and sort of shovels me behind him with one big hand. I take a few steps back but linger.

  “My ‘daddy’?” says Josh, flat.

  “Yes. Is he home? I’d like to speak with him.”

  “Who are you?”

  “That’s not your concern. Can I speak with—”

  “It is my concern, seeing as how you’re standing at my front door.”

  “Well, seeing as how you probably don’t own the house, it’s not your front door—it’s your daddy’s. Can you get him, please?”

  “He’s not here. Who are you?”

  “Name’s Tim Phillips.”

  Oh. No.

  Josh shrugs. “Great. Who are you.”

  “Tim Phillips. Senior. Tim Junior is my son. I take it you’re the idiot who hit him?”

  Of course. Of course. Tim Junior finally spilled the beans, overcame his fear of Josh and told his dad everything, and now he’s here and it’s all catching up to Josh, and he’s in huge trouble.

  “Oh,” says Josh, nodding. If Josh thinks he’s in huge trouble, he’s not showing it. “Tim Junior. I get it now. No wonder he’s such a shit.”

  My jaw drops open. Tim Senior’s face reddens. It literally turns red. His hands drop off his hips. Josh stares back at him, absolutely calm.

  “What did you just say?” manages Tim Senior finally.

  “I said,” says Josh, exaggerating his enunciation, each word a separate entity, “your son is a shit. And now that I see you, I understand why, because you look like a shit too.”

  I don’t know why I didn’t expect this. I should have. From Tim Senior’s expression I’m guessing that he didn’t expect this either.

  Long moment of the two of them looking at each other. More recalculating and temper management from Tim Senior, who is somehow nodding and shaking his head at the same time, like he’s trying to draw figure eights with his nose. Then he says, “You got a mouth on you, don’t you.”

  Josh doesn’t respond, just returns his gaze, arms crossed.

  “You’re real brave, aren’t you, beating up on some little kid,” says Tim Senior, trying to regain the high ground.

  “Your shit of a kid is real brave, ganging up on my little brother with all his shit friends.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You teach him to do that? I bet you did. You know something? I never once ganged up on anybody or got in a fight with anybody who didn’t want to fight. Ever. But you, I can tell, you’re just a shit bully, like your shit kid.”

  I can see Senior’s jaw muscles. His fists are clenched.

  “You’re lucky I got a back injury,” he says to Josh.

  “Wow, I really dodged a bullet there,” says Josh, mocking him, and it’s worse because you can see that they both somehow know the truth: Even in his prime Tim Senior would have gotten his head handed to him. Josh is smiling evilly now. He’s enjoying himself, rubbing Tim Senior’s nose in it.

  I’m going to be honest: I’m starting to enjoy it too.

  At this moment I love Josh. At this moment there is actually justice in the universe. Here, shit bully, meet my asshole brother, Josh. Have fun.

  Tim Senior isn’t backing down, but he’s not saying anything else. The two of them are just facing each other in a standoff, Josh still smiling. I’m smiling too.

  But then there’s a subtle shift, Josh’s expression darkening as he remembers something.

  “You know what?” he says, quieter now. “Your shit kid called my brother a ‘stupid Jew.’ Who taught him that?”

  The instant I hear that tone all the fun drains out of it.

  Run, Mr. Phillips, I nearly say out loud. Go now.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Senior.

  Don’t talk. Go. Now.

  “Really,” says Josh, in that same quiet tone. He’s uncrossing his arms. All that pacing back and forth in the cage, and now someone has wandered too close to the bars. I’m going to kill your dad, he said to Tim Junior, and I honestly think it’s about to happen.

  “Josh,” I say. “Josh . . .”

  “Is that how you talk at home?” says Josh. “You got a problem with Jews? ’Cause here’s your chance.” He’s now stepping toward Senior, who is backing up, feeling with his feet behind him to find the stairs off the front porch.

  “Hey, I got no problem with anyone,” says Senior, his hands coming up, palms out. He really didn’t expect this.

  “Yeah? Well, I got a problem with you,” says Josh, and I can already see what’s going to happen the instant before it does, the jarring shove that sends Tim Senior backwards to trip over the low evergreens that border the front path and land on the lawn on his ass. He has barely stopped skidding when I’m turning and sprinting back to the kitchen.

  “Patrick. Patrick!”

  He’s at the table, reading one of Josh’s gun magazines. Terri and Lisa have moved to the back porch, Terri braiding Lisa’s hair.

  “What?”

  “Get out here, quick!”

  I have to pull him out of his chair and then push him along the hallway to the front door and out onto the front porch.

  “Oh, damn,” says Patrick when he takes in the scene, “he’s gonna kick that guy’s ass.”

  They’re in the middle of the lawn, Tim Senior alternately backpedaling and trying to get around Josh, who keeps moving to cut off access to the driveway. Tim Senior has a grass stain smeared on the back of his pants and on his shirt. He has stopped talking, everything happening too fast for him. He looks frightened, finally understanding exactly what sort of creature he’s dealing with.

  “Josh, stop it,” I say, “stop it!”

  Josh is not stopping it.

  “I think you got Jew issues,” Josh is saying. Shove. “I think you’re a shit bigot.” Shove. They’re big grown men, but it’s just like on the schoolyard, the shoving thing, one kid the aggressor, the other moving backwards and trying to look brave, bringing his own arms up and sort of pushing back at the same time he’s shoved.

  “Josh, stop it!” I say again.

  Whap. A taunting, glancing whap on the side of the head.

  “Damn,” says Patrick.

  “You have to stop him!”

  “What?”

  “Stop him!”

  “I’m supposed to stop Josh?”

  “Yes!”

  WHAP! Josh smacks Tim Senior again. He’s toying with him, humiliating him, and it’s a tossup whether he’s going to be satisfied with these relatively harmless blows or if he’s going to unload on him for real.

  “Patrick, do something,” I plead.

  Patrick scratches his head. “Yo, Josh,” he says, not very loud.

  I get behind Patrick and shove him in Josh’s direction. “Get in there. Stop him!”

  Patrick sighs and walks cautiously over to the two of them, slowing even m
ore as he gets close. Then he does the hockey ref thing, waiting for an opening and then stepping between them and hugging Josh and walking him backwards and doing his best to create space between the two.

  “C’mon, dude, leave it. Leave it,” he says while Josh continues to jaw at Tim Senior, tossing out more schoolyard prefight epithets and making a few efforts to get past Patrick. He’s still between Senior and his car, though, and each time Senior tries to go around him Josh moves to block him.

  Tim Senior, meanwhile, is pointing at Josh with one finger while fishing in his back pocket with the other hand.

  “You think you’re tough?” Senior is saying. “You’re gonna be real sorry about this, tough guy. I got lots of friends on the police force,” says Senior.

  “I bet you do,” says Josh. He then tells Senior exactly what sort of friendship he thinks it is, a particularly intimate and unsavory type.

  “Oh, that’s clever. That’s real clever,” says Senior, and now he’s pulling out his cell phone and trying to dial while still keeping an eye on Josh.

  “Yeah, the big guy thinks he’s tough,” says Senior, punching numbers—three numbers, to be exact. “You can show how tough you are when the cops come and Taser you.” The phone is at his ear. “I’ll be standing here, laughing.”

  He’s right, of course. Now the tide has reversed and is flowing in the other direction.

  “They deal with assholes like you every day of the week, big guy. Every day of the week,” says Senior, and Josh is hesitating. “Yeah, that’s right,” says Senior, nodding in satisfaction, “you’re gonna see just how tough you are.”

  He’s back in control. Josh is in huge trouble, because this is how grownups deal with situations like this: They don’t have fistfights, they call the cops and the lawyers. “I thought I could settle this with an adult conversation with your folks,” says Senior, now looking at his phone like he’s not getting a signal, “but I guess”—he redials—“we’ll just . . . do this the hard way.”

  Then someone roughly pushes past me.

  “Hey,” says Terri. “HEY!” she says again, and she’s got that voice that could penetrate a reinforced nuclear bunker and kill everyone inside. Senior turns.