Following Grandpa Jess

by TJ Baer

  I headed for the front door, and I had a suspicious feeling that David and Thomas exchanged an amused glance before they followed. I got the door unlocked and stepped inside, and the familiar, warm-cedar scent of the place washed over me in a comfortable rush of you’re home. Even with the news about Grandma still churning in my stomach, I felt myself relaxing as I tossed my book bag onto the usual spot on the couch and flicked on the lights.

  Thomas made a beeline for the fish tank, leaving David and me standing together in the living room doorway, close enough to touch but not actually touching.

  “Sorry about this,” I murmured.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He leaned in, breathing the next words into my ear in a warm rush of air. “I can wait.”

  A wholly inappropriate tingle ran through my body at this, at which point I decided that keeping my current proximity to David was much, much too dangerous in the present situation. I couldn’t help throwing a quick, longing glance at him before I moved away, which I hoped looked sexy and wanton, but which probably came out looking pathetic and desperate. Meh.

  Thomas, meanwhile, had pressed his face to the glass of the fish tank and was gazing into the watery world beyond, locked in a staring contest with one of the goldfish.

  “What do you think it’s like?” he asked idly, while the fish hovered near the wall of the tank, fascinated by the giant looming face staring in at them. “Being a fish.”

  I thought about this for a moment, then shrugged. “Probably not all that interesting.”

  Thomas straightened up and flashed me a toothy smile. “It wouldn’t happen to be feeding time, would it?”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “But only fish food this time, got it? I think we pretty well established last time that goldfish will not eat hamburger.”

  “They won’t eat Burger King hamburgers. But maybe if we got some McDonald’s...”

  “Yeah, that’s a no.”

  Thomas shrugged and sprinkled the water in the fish tank with gourmet fish flakes. The fish, as per usual at feeding time, promptly went nuts and started hurling their little orange bodies at the food, taking quick, nibbling bites of their dinner as it drifted toward the bottom of the tank like a storm of oversized snowflakes.

  There was something strangely peaceful about watching this feeding frenzy, maybe because the whole thing was proof that for some creatures, happiness was nothing more complicated than food floating down from the sky.

  “So,” I said, glancing between Thomas and David with a bracing smile, “what do we feel like for dinner?”

  *

  “No, really, don’t worry,” I said into the phone. “He’s fine.” A particularly loud burst of laughter came from the kitchen, where David and Thomas were apparently still locked in battle over a game of gin rummy. I plugged a finger into my ear and moved a little farther away, into the corner of the living room by the fish tank. “He brought some clothes and his meds, so he can stay over tonight if he wants.”

  “Thank you,” Mom said, sounding tired. “That’s probably for the best. I guess he just needs some time to come to terms with this.”

  I hesitated, not wanting to cause my mother any more stress, but in the end I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Do you really think this was the right thing to do? I mean, there must be some other way—”

  “Please don’t start on that, Jess. Your father and I discussed every available option, believe me. This is what’s best for your grandmother.”

  “Is it, though? Mom, she’s not crazy.”

  “Of course she isn’t. But she’s getting to the point in her life when, well, when she’s just not capable of making rational decisions anymore. She needs special care, and we can’t give that to her.”

  “But there must be—”

  “Jess,” she said sharply, in the same tone that had sent me to my room and grounded me for weeks at a time when I was a kid. “We’re doing what’s best for her. It might not seem that way right now, but you’re just going to have to trust your father and me. Now, are you sure Thomas has all his meds? Even the new green ones?”

  I sighed. “I’ll check, but I’m pretty sure they’re all there.”

  “Okay. Tell him he can stay there with you for tonight, but tomorrow after school he’d better come straight home.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “Keep him out of trouble, and make sure he takes all his medicine, even the—”

  “Even the new green ones. I’ll make sure.”

  “And remember, if he cuts himself—”

  “I know. I’ve got the gloves ready.”

  “And if it seems like there’s anything wrong with him—anything—call me right away.”

  “I will. Good night.”

  “Good night. Tell Thomas I...”

  “He knows, Mom,” I said softly. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  After hanging up, I stood there with the phone in my hand for a long time, staring at the nearest wall and suddenly feeling very tired and very old. For the first time, I started wondering if maybe Mom and Dad were right, if maybe it was best for Grandma to live somewhere where there would be people on call 24/7 to take care of her, make sure she didn’t hurt herself or anything.

  Rationally, I could understand it, but somehow it still felt wrong.

  Before heading back to the kitchen, I took a quick detour to the fish tank, and spent a moment staring in at five full and happy goldfish. “You don’t have problems like this, do you?” I asked the tank. The nearest fish blinked at me and opened and closed its mouth, then turned and swam to the other side of the tank.

  “Smug bastard,” I muttered, and headed for the kitchen.

  “Okay, listen up,” I said because Thomas and David were currently involved in some kind of desperate tug-of-war with one of the playing cards, both of them laughing, “It’s mine!” “No, it’s mine!” while wrenching the card back and forth across the table.

  They froze at the sound of my voice, neither letting go of the card; David gave me a slightly sheepish smile, but didn’t seem particularly inclined to release his grip.

  “Thomas, Mom says you can stay here for tonight if you want. But, you’ve got to go straight home tomorrow after school. Got it?”

  Thomas nodded.

  “Okay. Now that that’s settled, what the hell’s going on in here?”

  “There seems to be a slight dispute,” David said, with great dignity, “over who gets this card.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s mine,” Thomas said helpfully.

  David gave him a friendly but stern look. “Actually, it’s mine. It fell on my side of the table.”

  “But it fell facedown. That means it actually wants to be my card.”

  “If it wanted to be your card, it would’ve fallen on your side. But you’ll notice that it didn’t.”

  “But all its family is all over here.” With his free hand, Thomas flipped over his cards to show a ten, jack, king, and ace of diamonds. He leveled a heartbreaking stare on David, his lower lip wobbling alarmingly. “Do you really want to take it away from its family?”

  David stood it for longer than I could’ve, but in the end, he sighed and let go of the card.

  Thomas grinned and held the queen of diamonds high into the air, then went for a victory lap around the apartment.

  “And here I was, worried you two wouldn’t get along,” I said dryly.

  David grinned at me. “We both share a healthy interest in the bizarre.”

  “You’re both nuts.”

  He laughed. “Maybe. But it keeps things interesting, doesn’t it?”

  The doorbell rang before I could reply, and Thomas broke off his victory dance in favor of peering out through the kitchen window.

  “Pizza!” he announced, and after a quick pit stop at the counter to pick up the twenty I’d left there, he sprinted for the front door. I grinned and dropped into the chair beside David.

  “He’s always been like this,” I sai
d. “Nothing ever gets him down for long. Even things that really should.”

  “It’s a good skill to have,” David said. His eyes were fixed on mine, a gentle smile on his lips. “He seems like a really good kid.”

  I felt an unexpected lump in my throat. “He is. He’s the best.”

  I don’t know what I’ll do if...

  I drowned out the thought, which cropped up far too frequently these days, with a loud mental chorus of, LA LA LA LA LA.

  Worked every time.

  I opened my eyes, realizing only as I did so that I’d closed them, and found David frowning at me. His lips were pursed in an imminent question, so I responded like a mature adult and jumped to my feet like my chair was on fire. “I’ll go see if Thomas needs any help with the pizza,” I said, and left the kitchen before David could say anything.

  Out in the hall, I saw Thomas with his arms full of pizza-scented cardboard and the delivery guy nowhere in sight, presumably having already gotten his cash and headed back to his car. Thomas, meanwhile, was trying valiantly to close the door while still keeping the pizza box balanced in his arms. He seemed to be enjoying himself, but in the interest of keeping out the cold, I ducked past him and pushed the door shut. The warm, tomato-and-cheese scent of the pizza hit me as I moved, and my stomach gave an embarrassingly loud rumble, like an eighteen-wheeler hurtling past at ninety miles an hour.

  Thomas snickered and flashed me a grin over the pizza box. “Hungry?”

  I took the box from him. “You would be too if you’d spent your whole lunch break looking for séance supplies.”

  His smile faded, and I cursed myself for bringing up the séance—and, by association, Grandma. Before I’d managed to work out an apology, though, the smile was back, if a little less effusive than before.

  “I like David,” Thomas said in an undertone, presumably so the man himself wouldn’t overhear from the kitchen. “He’s a good guy, and he seems really weird.”

  As this was one of the highest compliments Thomas ever bestowed, I ruffled his hair. “Thanks. He likes you, too.”

  He gave a slow, evil smile. “He likes me now. But he won’t when I’ve finished destroying him. All his cards will be mine!” Holding his hands up in the air, he gave a cackle of malevolent “mu-ha-ha” type laughter.

  Shaking my head at the general weirdness of my younger brother, I got a better grip on the pizza box and led the way into the kitchen, where David was hard at work picking up playing cards and tucking them neatly back into their box.

  “Hey, the game wasn’t over!” Thomas protested from behind me. “We weren’t done yet!”

  “Oh, really?” David asked innocently. “I thought you left the room because you’d decided to forfeit.”

  “I was winning!”

  “It was very nice of you to forfeit, then.”

  Thomas tried to scowl at him, but a grin kept peeking through as he sank into his chair. “This isn’t over,” he said, jabbing a finger at David. “After dinner. Rematch.”

  David smiled. “If Jess doesn’t mind...”

  “He needs to avenge his honor,” I said, pulling open the pizza box. “I respect his decision. I have some homework to grade, anyway.”

  Thirty-some minutes later, I was sitting on the couch with a pile of messily written essays on the musical Camelot, David seated cross-legged beside me while Thomas sat on the floor with his elbows on the coffee table. The two of them were focused with intense concentration on the cards in their hands, and for long stretches of time there was no sound in the room except the bubbling of the fish tank and the scratch of my red pen on the essays.

  “A-ha-ha, I’ve got you now,” Thomas said in a deep, villainous voice, and I heard the soft thwap of cards being laid out on the table.

  “That’s what you think,” David murmured. Thwap-thwap.

  “No!”

  And so on and so forth, until the game concluded with David winning and Thomas clutching his chest and falling backward onto the carpet, choking and moaning.

  “Good game,” David said and excused himself to use the bathroom.

  As his opponent left the room, Thomas gave one last gasping breath and lay still, a pose he managed to hold for all of about three seconds before jumping to his feet and coming to flop down on the couch beside me.

  “Thanks for letting me stay here tonight, Jessie,” he said with sudden seriousness. “I know you probably wanted to...you know. Be alone with David.”

  I felt a bit of heat rising to my cheeks but forced myself to ignore it. “It’s okay.”

  “So.” Thomas scooted a little closer to me, his voice low. “How are things going?”

  I couldn’t help giving a sappy little smile. “Not bad, actually.”

  Thomas grinned and started nudging me with his elbow. “I told you things would work out.”

  “I should never have doubted you, oh Great One. Now would you mind stopping that? I’m getting whiplash.”

  “Sorry,” he said and extracted his elbow from where it had taken up residence in my side. “So, do you think something’ll happen tonight?”

  I choked. “Of course not!”

  “Why not?”

  “Little brother. Next room. That kind of thing.”

  Thomas rolled his eyes at me. “Jessie, I don’t care if you guys have sex. I’m not a little kid, you know. As has previously been mentioned, I’m sixteen.”

  “I-I know that.”

  “I can talk about sex. I can even have sex if I want to.”

  Somehow, this thought had never occurred to me. Thomas? Have sex?

  Nonononono.

  “But you haven’t, have you?” I asked with a nervous chuckle. “I mean, you haven’t.”

  Thomas gave me a knowing little smile. “Maybe I have.”

  “Wha—? Bu—you—when? Where? With who?”

  He let me hang there for a long, breathless second, then elbowed me in the ribs again. “I haven’t,” he said, the words just a little too casual and light. “I can’t anyway, can I?”

  Despite the fact that talking about sex with my younger brother was perhaps just a little above having all my teeth pulled out with a rusty fork on my list of things I never wanted to experience, I nevertheless found myself saying, “You can. I mean, people do. As long as you...” Oh, Lord. “As long as you...you know…use protection. As long as you’re careful…”

  “There’s still a chance, though. Even with protection, there’s still a chance that I might... And I’d never do that to someone,” he said, deadly serious. “Never.”

  He meant it. And it hit me all over again, how unfair this all was, and how no one—especially Thomas—deserved to have to deal with crap like this.

  “Well, you know, there’s more to sex than just intercourse. There are still things you can do that won’t put your partner in any danger. And if you find someone you want to be with, she’ll love you for you, not for what you can do with her.”

  Thomas was quiet for a moment. “I guess.”

  I cleared my throat with some difficulty. “Is there someone like that? Someone you want to...”

  A silly little smile I’d never seen before came to his lips, and he said, “Maybe.”

  My first instinct, naturally, was to celebrate this historic event via a brotherly headlock, but I managed to restrain myself somehow. “Oh, yeah? What’s her name?” I paused, an intriguing thought striking me. “Or...his?”

  “Her,” Thomas said, giving me an amused look. “Her name’s Daphne.”

  “Good name. Does she like you?”

  “I think.” His face reddened a little, and his voice sank to an embarrassed little mumble. “I think she does. She asked me to the Halloween dance.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah. And she keeps...sitting next to me at lunch, and touching my hand and stuff, and today before I got on the bus, she...”

  I leaned closer. “Yeah?”

  The smile he’d been fighting came blazing back, one hundred
watts of adolescent euphoria. “She kissed me.”

  “Ahaha!” I burst out, and couldn’t help wrapping my arm around his neck and tugging him into a loving headlock. “She must really like you.”

  “I guess.” There was a moment’s pause, during which time I heard Thomas draw in a deep breath. “I’m thinking about telling her. You know. About me.”

  I let go of him abruptly. “Thomas...”

  “I can’t just hide it from her, Jessie. If we get serious…”

  “But you’re not serious yet. Yeah, you should tell her eventually, but not now.”

  Thomas shook his head, and for all that his expression was a little sad, there was a stone-like determination there that surprised me. “If I wait, what happens if we get serious and really like each other, but then I tell her and…she…”

  He didn’t have to finish the thought, because of course we both already knew how something like that could end.

  “I know,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean you have to tell her right away. I mean, there’s a reason you don’t walk around with a nametag on your chest that says, ‘Hi, my name is Thomas, I’m HIV positive.’”

  The words were barely out of my mouth when a flicker of motion caught my eye, and I turned to see David standing in the living room doorway, his eyes wide in shock.

  Time seemed to freeze for a moment.

  I opened my mouth, feeling like I should say something, but nothing seemed inclined to come out. While I was struggling, Thomas turned around and followed my gaze, and there was a moment when I felt his body tense next to mine, and I knew he was feeling the same sudden fear that I was. David was a nice guy. A good guy. But people were weird when it came to things like this. It was a gut reaction, sometimes, the way they jerked away before Thomas could touch them, or the way they swore that they were totally okay with his condition but then made excuses not to see him, or just stopped answering calls and e-mails until the silence clued him in that they were no longer a part of his life.

  I’d been so sure about David, but I also knew that this was the one point where there could be no compromising. If he wasn’t okay with Thomas, then we couldn’t be together. It was that simple.