The Art of Feeling

by Laura Tims

  My jaw drops. “You’ve been here six months and you haven’t unpacked?”

  “Gabriel thinks that the longer he spends on business trips, the more likely I’ll get fed up and put everything away so he doesn’t have to do it. He underestimates how committed I am to annoying him.”

  “Business trips? You’ve been here six months,” I repeat dizzily.

  He throws himself on the couch, the plastic crinkling beneath him. “Apparently he has a lot of business.”

  “Your parents can’t be okay with this.”

  “Our parents are okay with anything as long as they’re far away from it.”

  “Where are they?” I’m one more awful revelation away from calling child services. Then I wince at the thought of what Eliot would have to say to child services.

  “Half no idea, half maybe Barbados. Or Venezuela. I guess it’s closer to entirely no idea.” He snickers at my expression.

  I want to kill him. “If I knew you were alone, I wouldn’t have let you go home after last Friday! What if you had a concussion and died in your sleep? Or what if your spleen exploded and you didn’t know because you can’t feel pain?” Horror dawns on me. “Eliot, you’re sick; you can’t live alone.”

  “‘Not feeling pain, that’s not a health problem; that’s a miracle,’” he mimics.

  I wince. Maybe I have been having difficulty seeing Eliot as a sick person, even after researching his condition—he acts more unsick than anyone I’ve met—but this situation is definitely wrong.

  “Besides, I don’t live alone. I have a”—he curls his lip—“nanny.”

  “Where is she, then?”

  “I paid her off.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry, she’s fine with it—now she has time to paint. She sends excellent emails to Gabriel and my mom about how well I’m doing. Gabriel’s the only one who reads them, but I like to make her feel included.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “Divorced when I was nine. He’s somewhere.” He waves like he can shoo away this conversation. “Who cares?”

  “Um—child services?”

  “Stop feeling sorry for me. I told you I hate that.”

  “Well, I hate—whatever this is! Eliot, you need a guardian.”

  “I absolutely do not, and Gabriel knows that as well as I do.”

  “So Gabriel’s your guardian?”

  “You ISFJs. Fixated on whatever you think needs mothering.” He lights another cigarette.

  “I’m not like that—and you already had one.” I snatch his cigarette, searching helplessly for an ashtray.

  “I refer you to my previous statement about not needing a guardian.” He adds in a mutter, “WikiHow didn’t cover this.”

  I collapse on the couch next to him. “You can’t live this way.”

  “I’m alive, aren’t I? Look, a pulse and everything.” He presses my hand to his neck, and I inhale sharply. Even the air in this house feels unbreathed. Maybe Eliot’s a hallucination, some delayed brain damage from the accident—but his heartbeat is warm and strong against my fingers. I stub out the still-burning cigarette on an open cardboard box lid and get up.

  “We’re unpacking. Now.”

  “It’s your right to waste your time however you want.”

  But after five minutes of watching me fumble with boxes on my crutches, he kneels. It only takes us an hour of quiet work to put away the clothes and the spare bedding, and then there’s just the cardboard boxes to crush for recycling. They don’t own much, these two.

  I lift a small instrument out of a box filled with towels. “Gabriel plays the ukulele?”

  Eliot coughs. “No.”

  “You?”

  “Shut up.” He grabs it, but he doesn’t throw it in a corner like everything else. He lays it carefully on the couch. There’s a gold engraving in the burnished wood: To Eliot—happy 9th birthday, Mom & Dad. My stomach twists. How many other things does he care about that he says he doesn’t?

  Now I understand what he meant when he said he and Anthony had a lot in common. Anthony never knew his dad, and his mom spent every other week with a different guy in a different city—that’s why he stayed with us so often. But Eliot didn’t have a substitute family.

  My finger stabs with sudden pain, and I look down. I sliced it on the edge of the cardboard I was absently tearing open. I pinch the skin, and it pops apart in a ruler-straight mouth, dots of blood swelling until the raw pink crevice has a neat brimful.

  Glass sparkling all around me, so bright against the pavement, a spray of light interspersed with flecks of dark red. I feel a hollow shuddering inside me.

  “Sam?” Eliot says.

  I show him my finger. He makes a disinterested sound and goes back to work.

  His world doesn’t grind to a halt every time he feels pain. It’s ridiculous that mine does, that I’m so affected by a half-inch split in my finger or an old crack in a bone. I should be more than these tiny punctures and fissures.

  Eliot doesn’t know how free he is, even if there is a trade-off. Would I swap years of my life for the ability not to feel pain?

  Yeah, I think. Yeah, I would.

  He tosses the last cardboard box on the pile. “Congratulations, I’ve been successfully bored to death. And the doctors thought I’d at least make it to my twenties.”

  I suffocate my cut finger in my fist. “It looks way better in here now. And it didn’t take long—knew it wouldn’t, with the two of us.”

  “You didn’t know I’d help.”

  “You’re not an asshole.”

  “Years of evidence to the contrary.”

  “Not all evidence,” I say.

  The silence curdles into awkwardness. Eliot returns to the couch. I don’t think he knows the procedure for dealing with a human being in his house.

  “So, I’m starving,” I prompt.

  He says nothing, his brow furrowed.

  “At this point you’re basically supposed to ask if I want anything to eat.”

  He gestures toward the kitchen. “Your ancestors were hunter-gatherers.”

  I walk across the hall. The kitchen is as empty as the rest of the house. No toaster, no dishes in the sink. The fridge isn’t even plugged in. When I open the cupboard, a bug zips out of sight. “Eliot! You don’t have any food.”

  “Keen observational skills are common in ISFJs,” he yells back.

  “What have you been eating?”

  “Eating is a hassle.”

  I’m back in the living room in a millisecond. “Eating is necessary.”

  His sigh rattles the house. “Oh, yeah, it’s a great time, especially when you’re chewing and suddenly your mouth is full of blood—which does nothing to make a ham sandwich taste better. You’d be surprised how similar the texture of a tongue is to most meats. Puts a person off the whole experience.”

  I try not to be as grossed out as I am. “Does that happen a lot?”

  “Not since I was little,” he admits. “Trial and error.”

  “Then you still need to eat. No wonder you’re so skinny. This is ridiculous; is there a grocery store around here?”

  “Two blocks down. If you’re blackmailing me into driving you—”

  Before he can finish, I hobble to the front door and angle it open. I can do two blocks. I have painkillers, and Eliot needs food. Once the Vicodin kicks in, walking is okay, but I’ll pay for it tonight when it wears off.

  The grocery store is a fancy organic one. As soon as I walk in, I stop. I have no idea what Eliot likes to eat.

  In the end it amounts to all the cash I have on me, the Omega-3 bread and dried fruit cereal and the other inoffensive stuff I figure he can’t mistake for his own tongue. Nothing hot or sharp. The cashier raises his eyebrows at me, and I realize I’m beaming at him. This must be how Lena feels when she shops for us on the weekends she visits, loading the crisper with kale and radishes that go mushy as soon as she leaves. It feels nice to take care of someo
ne.

  It takes longer to get back to the house with the bags dangling from my elbows. When I reach the driveway, there’s a new car parked beside Eliot’s, even sleeker and blacker.

  I guess I do get to find out whose brother is worse.

  Inside, Eliot is facing off with a man who looks like he’s in his upper twenties, except for his hair, which is so thinned out he’s almost bald. He has Eliot’s height but none of his exotic vampire-ness. Instead, he’s practical looking in his gray suit, his tanned wrists setting off the glint of a silver watch. Gabriel.

  “Sam, I texted you.” Eliot is colder and paler and angrier than usual. I glance at my phone.

  Don’t come back. Abort mission.

  I’m serious. Go anywhere but back to my house.

  Are you getting these?

  “I couldn’t check my pocket with all the bags on my arms,” I say.

  I mean, a little thanks would be nice.

  “Who is this?” Gabriel’s voice has rounded granite edges. His eyes are dark, not like Eliot’s, but the X-ray stare is the same.

  Eliot draws back his shoulders with defiance, and if I’m not crazy, some nervousness. “She’s a friend.”

  “You usually don’t bother lying.”

  “He’s right,” I snap. At least I think he is.

  Gabriel’s eyes narrow. “How much is he paying you?”

  Eliot might actually have won the worst-sibling competition. Amazing.

  “Or do you have any mental deficiencies, beyond the obvious?” Gabriel continues. The family resemblance is becoming clearer by the second.

  “She just so happens to like me,” Eliot says stiffly. “See? People like me.”

  “There’s years of evidence to the contrary.”

  I fold my arms. “He’s got tons of friends at school.”

  Eliot shoots me a startled look. Gabriel’s laugh is as deep as his brother’s, but nowhere near as warm. “So you’ve got yourself a lapdog! A puppy with an injured leg that you’ve dragged home. And trained to buy your groceries, apparently.”

  I open my mouth, but I’m speechless.

  Eliot flares, ice turning to fire. “Don’t pretend you’re interested in my life, Gabriel, because even if you were, you wouldn’t be privy to it.”

  I edge toward the hallway to escape the rapid-fire hail of bullets. “I should probably be heading out. . . .”

  “Stay,” demands Eliot, at the same time as Gabriel says, “Feel free.”

  I remain angled at the door, but I don’t leave. Gabriel’s stare lights me up like I’ve done something worth his attention for the first time, but all he says to Eliot is “Tell me what happened to your face.”

  Eliot snorts. His bruises are faded, nearly two weeks old.

  “Who hit you? You promised you’d tell me if it was happening again.” Anger ripples off Gabriel. I realize it’s been here the whole time, filling the room in invisible waves. If what was happening again? Does it have something to do with why they moved here? “If it is, you know what I have to do.”

  I want to ask what he’s talking about, but I also don’t want to give him a reason to look at me again. Eliot, on the other hand, glares straight back at him, neither one of them breaking until I’m expecting their eyes to water.

  Finally Eliot snarls, “Come on, Sam.” But he doesn’t wait for me before he snatches his ukulele from the corner of the couch and stalks upstairs.

  I’m going to flee, too, but Gabriel holds up a hand. “Wait.” He stares at the staircase where Eliot disappeared. “Sam, is it? You really are his friend? Well, congratulations. There’s no predecessor to that title.”

  I feel like I’ll be failing a test no matter what I say. “Right. I’ll just—I should probably . . . It was, um, nice meeting you.”

  “Why are you interested in Eliot?” he asks bluntly.

  My face burns. “You mean interested interested? Because I’m not interested interested—”

  He massages his temples, stretching the skin on his scalp until it shines. “Here’s some advice. And very large corporations pay for my advice, so I would listen. Stay away from my brother. Have a normal high school experience—go to parties, go on dates, whatever it is you people do.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” he repeats like he’s never heard that particular syllable before.

  “Like, why do I have to stay away?” I’m nervous, but even more pissed off.

  Silence. Then he sighs long and hard. “Did someone at your school do that to his face?”

  It’s the weary frustration of someone who loves his little brother, which doesn’t fit at all. There’s a lot a guardian would deserve to know: Eliot’s disregard for his own safety, the paid-off “nanny,” his eating habits (or lack thereof). But would telling Gabriel do anything other than give Eliot a reason to hate me?

  Screw it—if bluntness is the language they understand, I’ll learn it. “Would you care if they did?”

  “Of course I care.” His eyebrows shoot up. “I’m his brother.”

  This family makes no sense. Then again, neither does mine.

  “I just ask because . . .” I flop my hand to indicate the past ten minutes.

  “I was surprised that someone was here,” he says in a pretty explanatory tone for a statement that doesn’t explain anything. “What’s your last name? I assume Sam is short for Samantha.”

  “Herring,” I say automatically before I think better of it.

  He starts typing on his phone and proceeds to ignore me for five whole minutes. “Um . . . are you googling me?” I ask.

  “Honor roll for three out of the past four years, but no high honors. No awards or recognition, apart from an old article in the Forest Hills Weekly about scoring points in a lacrosse game. And your mother died in an accident around the same time we moved here, which explains your leg.” He says it exactly like Eliot did: no emotion attached, no awareness of the lance it sends through my chest. “Eliot has little patience for stupidity, and he’s of the view that everyone is stupid, so he has little patience for anyone. What’s special about you?”

  I blink at him. He waits.

  “Am I actually supposed to answer that?” I ask after a minute.

  “No, asking people questions is how I request that they stand there gaping at me.” His phone rings, and he mutes it. “Eliot doesn’t do people. So what are you?”

  “He doesn’t do me either,” I say, and follow up with a strangled giggle. Fantastic. This is exactly how I wanted my first interaction with Eliot’s family to go.

  “I see. You hang around him because you’re too moronic to know better, but that doesn’t explain why he hangs around you.”

  “I’m not a moron! And honestly I don’t think you have the right to police his social life when you abandon him all the time, even with his condition.”

  I cover my mouth, but he’s staring at me in shock, not anger.

  “He told you about his condition?”

  I nod, electing to skip the story about relocating his shoulder.

  He shakes his head contemptuously. “So you know him enough to know that, but you don’t understand him or you’d know why I keep out of his life as much as possible.”

  My anger makes me feel less intimidated. “Look, he obviously needs someone to keep an eye on him—he barely eats, he—”

  “If I ‘kept an eye on him,’ I’d go blind. He takes it as an insult whenever anyone tries to parent him, and he gets revenge by doing whatever would make a parent insane with worry. If you think he’s self-destructive now, you should see him when he’s convinced I’m hovering. If I spent all my time here, he’d kill himself within the week to spite me for attempting to keep him alive.”

  So he wants to prove he can take care of himself, and he does it by not taking care of himself. “Sounds like Eliot,” I mumble under my breath.

  Again Gabriel eyes me like I’m a math problem he can’t solve. “I have my methods of monitoring him from a safe distance, so if
you’re tailing him because you think he needs a babysitter, he has one, and you wouldn’t be qualified to handle him anyway. I’m the only one who understands what he needs.”

  I’m going to inform him about the nanny, but he cuts me off. “I know he paid off his caretaker. He visits her house every few days to proofread her fake emails, and she has a chance to evaluate him with his guard down. I left Miami early once I heard about his face.” He closes his eyes briefly. “And he sees a therapist weekly. Trust me, he’s not left to his own devices nearly as much as he thinks he is.”

  “He has a therapist?” It must be a really tolerant therapist who’d stick with Eliot. “Then what’s his . . .”

  Gabriel folds his arms.

  “Like, his . . .” I make helpless shapes with my hands.

  “Every diagnosis has been suggested to our family before, mostly by first-grade teachers, I might add. But there is no psychology textbook that will tell you how to fix Eliot.”

  “I don’t want to fix him.”

  “So you must like him. And you wouldn’t have had the chance if he hadn’t liked you first.”

  The question hangs in his voice, but I have no answers. I don’t know what makes me special enough for Eliot either. What happens when Eliot figures out that nothing does?

  “Why hasn’t he ever had any friends?” I ask to distract myself.

  “His own logic is the problem. When no one likes you, there’s two possible explanations: that there’s something wrong with everyone, or that there’s something wrong with you. The former is safer, don’t you think?” He rubs his forehead and looks around. “I see he unpacked.”

  “We did it together.” Indignation swells in me again. “Why did you leave him in a house like that?”

  “It’s tiresome to keep packing and unpacking. Six months is more than our average for staying in one place. Also, I know how much he wants to stay by how soon he unpacks.” He keeps a sideways eye on me. “He usually doesn’t bother.”

  “What do you mean, more than your average?” I blurt. I force my volume down, but my voice still sounds panicky. “You two move that often?”

  “Kids your age aren’t kind to people like Eliot. What’s more, he’s not kind to them.” Gabriel exhales, and I get the sense he’s needed someone to vent to about Eliot for a long time. “Eventually it reaches a certain point, and I have to relocate us before he’s hurt.”