Lyle’s lecture voice could give you a feeling kind of like a stomach wedgie, but I’d learned to copy you, keeping my attention on the TV screen no matter how much I wanted to say sorry. Show it some respect, okay guys? Ben, Dustin, are you listening to me?
Uh-huh, you answered for both of us. And we kept calm as clocks until Lyle was all the way downstairs before you said, for both of us, Shheeez.
“I’M ALL SET.” MALLORY is standing over me, fanning her plane ticket in my face. “Wake up, Bennett. You’re in a daze. They found me a seat. We’re boarding.”
“Why do you always call me Bennett?” I ask. “When it’s just Ben.”
“Because I prefer Bennett,” she says. Her full answer.
I check my Swiss Army watch that Mom sent me this past birthday when I turned eleven. I’d buckled it on before we left home, changing it from the special designed left-handed watch that Lyle gave me the birthday before. The left-handed watch is better, since the windup stem is on the left side and the strap buckles on the right, so technically it’s easier for me to work. But I figure Mom will like to see her gift in use.
“Do we get another breakfast?” I ask Lyle as we join the line of people shuffling onto the plane. Lyle keeps a lobster-claw hand on my shoulder like he thinks I’ll break loose.
“Should,” he answers. We squeeze up to wave at Mallory, already settled in her good seat in the front of the plane.
“Hey, no fair,” I say.
“These malinky legs need stretching space,” she answers. The guy sitting next to her laughs, a sound that wants everybody to know how terrific it is to be in the expensive seats, and his smiled-up cheeks squeeze into two shiny pink eggs.
“Lyle’s legs are longer’n yours.”
“Turn around and heave ho, sport-model,” says Lyle. “This isn’t a cruise. We’ll be off in four hours.”
“I’ll come visit later,” says Mallory. She slips off her sunglasses and closes her eyes, the gold on her eyelids glimmers like fish skin. Eggcheeks gives her the once-over, then stares ahead and darts her sideways eyes. He’s recognized her as the lady from Channel Five. Sometimes it’s cool, she told me once, but mostly it gets you stuck in small-talk quicksand. Best to keep your sunglasses on or your eyes shut.
Lyle lobster-claws me all the way to seats 37E and 37F deep in the back of the plane. “If this explodes, we’re all of us done for,” I say. “Did you know the back and front are statistical crispers? Heads and tails, the most dangerous parts of a plane.”
But Lyle mutters something about how the plane won’t explode because it would be too much bad luck in one week. His answer makes me feel quiet, and I keep my tongue still until he asks why I phoned Mallory.
“Are you mad?”
“Don’t answer a question with a question.”
“It was up to her to come. Besides.”
“Besides what?”
Besides, you need someone for when you see Mom, I almost said, but I didn’t want to get into it with Lyle. So instead I say, “Besides, Mallory’s nice,” which works a little smile into the middle of Lyle’s stiff-edges face.
“She’s nice to be here with us,” he agrees. “She’s missing work, but she says they can spare her for the next couple of days.” I know Lyle’s talking out loud to persuade himself.
“If Mallory says it, she means it,” I remind him.
The pilot’s voice comes on. He introduces himself and talks about the plane ride, then he says I guess the same stuff in Spanish, a long strip of words like burra-burra-caracha-day, and I wish I knew Spanish.
After he’s done, the TV screens show an instructions movie about what to do if we sink or catch fire. I’d already seen it last year, when Lyle took me to Dolphin World. So this time I yawn and budge around to show the other people how I’d been on a plane before and I already know about the secret gizmos above and under my seat. A plane is boring, like sitting in a too-crowded movie theater except for you’re strapped in seat belts and there’s no popcorn. First time Lyle took me on one was a big disappointment.
“Don’t kick,” says Lyle, clapping a hand on my knee. “Store the energy until after we land.”
“Okay.”
“We have to save our strength for helping Dustin, right? He needs us now.”
“Right.” Which isn’t true, because I never knew someone who had less need for people than you. Lyle’s got to have that one figured out by now, but I guess he has a hard time seeing himself any other way than as the guy somebody else might need.
WHEN LYLE STARTED DATING Mom, you told me you’d thought she was a client, scared of the peep of her own voice and hunting down Lyle for bravery lessons. Showed how little you knew about her. By the time she met Lyle, Mom was already employed as a telemarketer for an insurance company, selling accidental-death-and-dismemberment policies. This much for a leg, a little less for an arm, and a stash of cash to your next of kin if you packed up and died. Any person selling D & D insurance over the phone can’t afford to be shy, or there goes your commission. Mom never had trouble with talking, no need for Lyle’s help or his book, Speaking to Save Yourself. The fact of it was she met Lyle by pure chance on Valentine’s Day in the Stop & Shop, both of them looking for oven cleaner.
We’d moved into town after Mom left Dad, which turned out to be for the last time, only I didn’t know it then. There’d been a week of driving far, far away from him, then another week in a Budget Lodge motel, until she found us a one-bedroom sublet in the King Plaza Complex.
It’s not much, but it does the job, Mom said. And we’ve seen worse, right? Now that I’ve got a steady paycheck, I think it’s time to plant some roots.
I said I thought so, too, although I was betting we’d hook up with Dad soon enough. He always found us, especially after Mom broke down and called him to tell him where we were. Meantime, I liked the apartment. The lamps, stereo, and TV were all programmed to one handheld remote control. The sofa was a pullout for me, with cushions made from bogus tiger and leopard skin. There was even a stack of naked-lady coasters in the coffee table drawer. Mom said typical slime-dog bachelor pad. She acted to all our apartment neighbors like she’d lived better Before, that the King Plaza was a step down.
It seemed to be only a small while after we’d settled in that I started hearing Lyle’s name. First Mom was talking on the phone to Grammie about the nice man from the Stop & Shop, then next thing I knew I was being baby-sat by pickle-breath Mrs. Roberts from across the hall while Mom met Lyle for dinner and a movie. Then a twelve-red-roses delivery, then me writing Lial called on the message pad while Mom was in the basement doing laundry. He talked low and rumbly, different from the soft static of Dad’s voice.
I still can picture the first time we pulled up in your driveway. I had my fingers on the door handle, ready to jump because Mom had smelled up the car with her hairspray. You and Lyle were standing on the front lawn, tossing a baseball. Snow was heaped up on the sidewalk, but the day was warm, good catching weather. When I got out of the car, the first thing Lyle said to me was that my glove was next to the lamppost. I looked and there it was, a Wilson original, camouflaged on the brown winter grass and smelling like spring.
All yours, Lyle said.
I barely thanked him and had it tried on before you pitched the ball at me, aiming straight for my face, and when I blocked for the catch, the force snapped my wrist back quick and painful.
Whoa, nice play, Lyle called to me, with a smile to water down what you did. But then his eyes strayed to you, unhappy. Lyle doesn’t push it but he wants things to go down easy. That’s why he’s good at his job. He can’t stand thinking about people getting mucked up in the complication of themselves.
Mom was wearing her pink dress and there was no right place for her to sit and watch us, so Lyle had to quit playing to keep her company.
You boys practice with each other, he said, while we fix lunch. But as soon as Lyle took Mom’s arm, you squirmed your hand out of your mitt and tagge
d along behind them into the house. So then I had to go, too, although I’d rather have stayed outside in the good air. There was no yard at the King Plaza, and the desk guy yelled if you ran in the lobby.
This is my living room, that’s a picture of my mom, over there’s my dining room. Upstairs is my bedroom and my work space. In back’s my kitchen. My mom hand-painted those flowers on the kitchen table. That’s my mom’s scarf on the peg by the back door.
You were pointing to everything at once and talking squeaky out-of-breath like a girl.
Where’s your mom now? I asked, confused and wondering if my own mom was breaking the law, trying to steal a husband while the wife was out at work or grocery shopping. I wouldn’t have put a move like that past Mom, she never said no to a little sneakiness, like returning clothes to the store after wearing them with the price tags tucked in, or pretending like she’d never ordered that second or third glass of wine whenever we went out to a restaurant.
You got up in my face and told me in that same girl voice that your mom died from breast cancer two years ago. I had heard about breast cancer and my box turtle, Fast-Slow, had died last year, but I did not want to talk about these wrong things—breasts, cancer, or dying—with you, an older kid I hardly knew.
Can I see your room? I asked.
I’ll show you her, you said. There’s pictures.
So while Lyle and Mom made sandwiches and lemonade in the kitchen, we shared a space on the living room couch, a photo album parted over our laps, while you made me hear the story of your mom. You wouldn’t stop about it, how sometimes she used a wheelchair and how she lost her hair from the medicine, and how, right before she died, you all went on a cruise to Bermuda. It was the most perfect week of your entire life, you said. You even saw a thresher shark.
I must have sat there a billion years, watching your grimy fingernail as it dragged over squares of ultrablue sky or a suntanned Lyle, but mostly of your too-skinny mom with her head wound in a scarf and her arms spiraled around a littler version of you.
This is boring, I said after a while.
Leave then. Who wants you here—you or your fruitcake mom? You shut the book and centered it carefully on the coffee table. My dad knows some ladies, but my mom is number one. She’s number one, he tells me all the time. No one can take her place. Your mom’s not so good-looking, either. Her ears stick out.
I pushed my nose into my baseball glove and smelled and hoped for a terrible thing to say back.
My dad could whip your dad in a fight.
Anyone could whip my dad in a fight, you said. Even I could. Maybe one day I will.
It wasn’t the answer I expected. I want to go now, I said.
Go. Who’s stopping you?
Her ears do not stick out.
Nobody asked you to come here. My mom talks to me at night from Eternity and she said, Don’t let strangers in our house, especially not in the dining room with the silver candlesticks, because they could be robbers.
So I punched you where it hurt. I knew, since I was getting beat up a lot in my new school. A good six inches above the belly button, square between the ribs. You doubled over, then jumped, catching my leg as I made a coward’s break for the kitchen. Then you leaped and rolled on top of me, grinding your elbow into my chest until I thought my heart would rupture. I was pounding the floor with my heels and wheezing for Mom, and with her and Lyle only a sprint away, you knew your time was almost up. Still, there were a few seconds left where you could have punched back, jammed some fingers, maybe yanked a joint out of its socket.
Instead you mashed my cheeks tight between your thumb and fingers, then pulled my head rough to the side and dipped your face low to my ear to whisper words damp and hard enough to flood shivers through my body.
You’ll never be my brother.
THE PLANE LIFTS INTO the air. My ears pop and Lyle passes me a stick of gum. He says he bought it at the airport shop along with my apple juice. Lyle is a think-aheader.
“Mal’s probably just starting her champagne and shrimp cocktail.” I try to get a look.
“Sit down, Ben. The seat belt sign is on. They’ll put you in airplane custody if you can’t follow directions.”
“You’re lying.”
Lyle shakes his head. “I’ll have to report you to the GCA.”
“Whatever.” I fiddle for my seat belt. When I was younger, Lyle had me believing that the GCA was a real place, like a courthouse. You were the one who told me there was no such thing as the Good Citizens’ Alliance.
That’s Dad’s phony-baloney, you told me. Only in his dreams is there a place like that. He’d elect himself president. President Citizen.
Even after four years, Lyle won’t let on that the GCA’s a joke.
A plane lady wheels down her cart, asking if anyone wants a beverage. I call out, “Grape pop!” before Lyle can intercept my choice with more juice. Lyle asks for coffee but he doesn’t drink it, just watches it and stirs it with a plastic straw.
“Not since Thanksgiving, right? Five months, it’s been,” he says.
“That’s about right.” I know what Lyle means. It’s been five months since we saw Mom and you. It should have been four months, but you both were on a boat this past Christmas, on a scuba-diving trip along with your new girlfriend, Melanie, and some people from Mom’s job at the vet clinic. So Mom had pushed up your visit to Thanksgiving, except for Lyle made it to be like Christmas, baking his special gingerbread and buying presents, and he didn’t schedule any clients for the whole week.
“Mom brought that free turkey,” I say.
“Free-range, not free,” Lyle tells me. “He seemed good, wouldn’t you say?”
“Dustin? Yeah, he was good.”
“He got tall. He was always going to be tall.”
Which kind of gets me, since it’s looking like I’m not going to be tall like you or like Lyle. Runt, you used to remind me. Or Big Ben, for a joke.
“His hair covered his ears,” I remind Lyle. “You didn’t like it that way, but he said it was the style there. Sure isn’t the style here, huh?”
“Mmm.” Lyle closes his eyes. His hands rest under his head. He is twisting off each part of Thanksgiving and then putting all the pieces back together. Soon he will ask me a question about a wrong piece. Sure enough, a few minutes later, he opens his eyes.
“Did you think he was too skinny?”
My mind works on that one. Then I say something about how living at the beach, I guess a person’d get skinny. Running and swimming all the time. “Dustin told us he was always outside,” I remember. “He bought that surfboard. He said he was on the beach night and day.”
“Mm-hmm,” Lyle answers. “He’s loved water since he was a baby. Probably we should have taken more vacations upstate, near the lake. That might have been—”
“Even Mom looked skinny, for her.”
“Well, but that’s from smoking,” Lyle says. “A pack-a-day habit destroys you. Appetite, lungs, metabolism. If you’re not smarter with your own health when it comes time to make those choices, then I must have raised you wrong.”
Only lately Lyle has let slip a few bad things about Mom. Lyle’s words usually line up straight on a balance beam of caution. Could be it’s because I’m getting older, and he feels more man-to-man. Could be because by now he figures Mom isn’t coming back to us. Which is something I knew the day she left.
MOM MOVED HERSELF AND me into your house pretty quick after our first visit. I knew you weren’t one hundred percent happy about it, but I wasn’t the one making decisions. All I could try to do was to keep out of your way during your gloomy fits; let you eat the last of the taco chips or watch whatever you wanted on TV, even if I’d got to the remote first.
Besides, it soon came plain to see that your moods depended more on what was churned up inside you than what happened around you, which made you hard to predict. One minute you were letting Mom dance you around the kitchen with the stereo turned up past the 40 dB lin
e, the next thing we’d find you sitting in the dark on the back stoop, telling us no, you didn’t feel like eating dinner and no, you didn’t want to come inside. Lyle told me and Mom that your moodiness had been a part of you since always. He said this in a sort of emptied-out voice, like that lost way people comment on how the universe is too big for measuring, or how many hours a person sleeps in one lifetime.
Meantime, Mom never seemed to be anything except for excited. On the phone to Grammie, she went on and on about whirlwinds and getting swept off her feet, like Lyle was a twister running her down. Most likely there should have been more waiting time, but I guess when two people don’t want to be alone, there’s nothing to stop them from crashing into each other.
Mom dialed-a-lawyer to start the divorce from Dad, who finally showed up late that spring, wearing some extra pounds around his middle and smelling too strong of ketchup and coffee. He took me to lunch at the doughnut shop and promised to call me every week and maybe take me out to see the Space Station that summer, just us guys. I told him that the Space Station was a great idea, and I watched Dad’s car all the way down the block after he dropped me off, but he had been promising me the Space Station since I was four years old. Dad’s leaving was mud on my heart, but it was also a feeling I’d got comfortable with. Through all the years I remember of Mom and him, there was never a time when one or the other wasn’t threatening to go.
Until Lyle’s, I’d been everywhere and lived nowhere. I’d camped out in apartments and trailers and mobiles and sometimes with Grammie, who’s way up north and lets me eat corn chips and red hots for dinner. I’d sat in passenger seats, slept in lobbies, waited on doorsteps, played at neighbors’ houses—it didn’t matter where I spent my time so long as I stayed Out of the Way while Mom and Dad messed up or straightened out things between them.
But I’d never been part of a real house, with a newspaper delivered to the front lawn and yellow tomatoes growing out back. So in my mind, you were the lucky one. You’d had the paper and tomatoes your whole life, and the way I saw it, Lyle had rooms to spare. Even if you were mad that I was budging in, I didn’t concern myself about it, not really. Not enough to say I didn’t want your work space for my very own bedroom. Not enough to stop myself from scraping BEN into the trunk of your backyard maple. Not enough not to list your address as mine when I started scouts camp that summer.
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