Relative Strangers

by Paula Garner

  My ears pricked up when I heard her say, “Oh, this is the first time Luke held you!” I heard her intake of breath, saw her hand go to her mouth, saw Buddy reach for her other hand.

  Luke, who was as adorable at five as he was now, sat in a rocking chair, grinning at me as Mima helped arrange me in his skinny, awkward arms. I, dressed in one-piece pink pajamas, was clearly irritated by the fussing. She doesn’t like it, Mama, little Luke said. He looked crestfallen.

  I chanced a peek over at Luke now and caught his eye. “Do you remember that?” I whispered.

  He nodded slightly, his eyes on the screen.

  Mama, she’s gonna cry! What’s wrong with her?

  My present-day eyes filled as the baby on the screen started to wail, and not just out of compassion for her. It was Luke’s distress that was breaking my heart.

  She doesn’t like me. Take her back, Mama.

  Mima’s arms picking me back up, patting my back, soothing me. And Luke, sitting there in the rocking chair next to us, arms crossed, staring down.

  She’s tired. Mima’s voice assuring him from the recording. She’s going to have to get used to us. Don’t worry, sweetie. She’s going to love you. Just give it time.

  In the video, Luke glanced up doubtfully and rubbed one eye with his fist.

  I glanced over at him. Like mine, his eyes were damp now, too.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I feel so bad!”

  He nodded, laughing softly. “Yeah, you pretty much broke my heart.”

  I wanted to comfort him, to hold him. To be alone with him. It was confusing, all of it. He was my brother, but I knew fuck-all about what it was supposed to feel like to have a brother. I did, however, know something about how it felt to be attracted to a guy.

  This was not good.

  I stared straight ahead at the screen. Several clips in, baby Jules was laughing. Playing. Grinning at Luke. Learning to pick up Cheerios (in the video, they all applauded when I managed to finally get one in my mouth). I looked happy. The transformation over these months on the screen was unmistakable.

  These people had saved my life.

  “I think we’ll have to continue this later,” Buddy said softly to us, standing and nodding toward Mima, whose eyes were drooping. “I’m sorry, Jules.”

  “Of course — that’s okay!” I felt bad, suddenly, like an interloper. Had I overstayed my welcome?

  He leaned over to her, taking her hand. “Come on, Sparky. Let’s get you some rest.”

  She protested. “No, no. We haven’t finished the videos. We haven’t even looked at the photo albums.”

  “We’re not going to get through everything in one sitting,” Luke said, holding up the remote and pressing Pause. “We’ll watch more later. Besides, Jules’ll come back — right, Jules?”

  “Of course,” I said, standing and turning to Mima. “There’s no rush. I’m not going anywhere.”

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I could have kicked myself. I might not be going anywhere, but my timeline wasn’t the problem.

  But Mima reached out her arms and hugged me. “Oh, my sweetie,” she whispered. “I never stopped missing you.”

  When she released me, Buddy slipped his hands under her legs and behind her back.

  “No, I can walk,” she protested. But he ignored her, picking her up. I tried not to cringe — she was such a bag of bones. She turned toward us. “I’ll just rest awhile, and then we’ll have dinner later, okay? So don’t go! You hear me, Luke? Don’t go.”

  He nodded. “We won’t go anywhere.”

  She blew us a kiss as Buddy carried her out.

  I dropped my face into my hands, pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes.

  I heard Luke step over. “Hey,” he said softly. And then his arms were around me.

  I leaned into him. He felt so good, and, God, he smelled so good. I didn’t want him to let go. It was all I could do not to hold on too tight, not to cling too long. I didn’t want it to be weird. I just . . . wanted.

  This was all so fucked. I sniffled, trying to pull myself together.

  “Jeez,” he said. “You still cry when I hold you.”

  I laughed, stepping back and wiping my eyes.

  He smiled at me, those fleck-y green eyes so warm and close. His mouth . . . it looked so soft. What would it feel like to kiss that mouth? I pushed the thought away, trying to get my head on straight. He was a brother to me. A brother was for life. This was everything I’d ever wanted. Family. Connection. Mattering to someone. To have a crush on him would be idiotic. It would ruin everything.

  He raised his eyebrows at me. “Want to see your old room?”

  My old room. I wanted to see everything, but the pressure of recall was wearing me down. I took a breath and nodded.

  On our way upstairs, he picked up my bag from the foyer. At the top of the stairs, he pointed left to a closed door at the end of the hall and said, “Mom and Dad’s bedroom is that way. Ours are this way.” He guided me down the hallway to the right. “This is my room,” he said, pausing so I could peer in. Unlike his apartment, it was tidy — which made sense, since he mostly didn’t live here anymore.

  Music-related posters plastered his walls. Awards and medals lined the shelves over his desk, but I didn’t have a chance to examine anything because he propelled me farther down the hallway to the room that was, at one time, mine.

  I hesitated in the doorway. The walls were a soft peach, and there was a simple white four-post bed. A floral quilt. A small desk off to the side.

  “It’s different now,” Luke said, stepping in behind me. “Mom uses it as a guest room. But she kept it the same for years, thinking maybe we’d get you back.”

  My hand went to my chest, which felt suddenly full with trying to take in what he was telling me. “How long?”

  He pulled his mouth to one side, thinking. “I must have been thirteen or fourteen when she finally changed it — when my aunt from Arizona was coming for a visit. So, what, six or seven years?”

  Jesus. That was a long time to wait. To hope. For me.

  I stepped into the room and went to the window, looking out.

  “You okay?” Luke asked, moving toward me.

  An ache swelled in my chest as I realized that during those years, people I didn’t even know about were thinking of me, longing for me, hoping for me. I must have missed them terribly for a while — they were the only family I knew. My mom had robbed me of something precious. Even if she did get sober and “win” me back, did she have to erase my past? Cut me off from people I’d grown to love, people who loved me? Maybe I could have stayed in touch with them, like extended family. Was my mom so selfish and insecure that she wouldn’t even consider it?

  “Come here.” Luke gestured with his head. “I want to show you something else.”

  I followed him to the end of the hallway, where there was a tiny white door midway up the wall, with a little white knob.

  I hesitated a moment. Something about it . . . “What is it?” I asked, pulling on the knob.

  “Laundry chute. Goes all the way to the laundry room in the basement. You could barely reach this when you were here. I had to pick you up for you to drop stuff into it. Which you loved to do. Clothes, toys — anything. And then we’d go downstairs to get them.” He laughed. “You never got tired of that.”

  The little door creaked open as I pulled. I stared at the tiny door, examined the chipped paint around the frame, the square metal interior. Was it familiar? Was this a memory? I turned to Luke. “Can we go to the basement?”

  Luke nodded and turned to go, but then stopped. “Wait, we have to put something down it.” He felt his pockets. Neither of us had anything. So he slipped out of his flannel and handed it to me. “Go ahead,” he urged, smiling.

  I didn’t want to put it in the chute. I wanted to bury my face it in and smell it. I wanted to keep it.

  Not helpful. Not normal.

  I obediently pulled open the
creaky door and slipped it in.

  He grabbed my hand, and we flew down the stairs. We circled around on the first floor to a door near the kitchen that led to the basement. “Careful,” Luke warned, flipping on a light switch at the top of the stairs. “The stairs aren’t level.”

  He was right — the steps were wonky, the treads shallow, like they were made for tiny feet. At the bottom, Luke tugged a pull chain, and a single bulb illuminated the unfinished space. Boxes were piled along one wall, as well as stacks of folding chairs, card tables, and an extra refrigerator. It smelled old and musty, like Eli’s basement — a smell I kind of liked. Luke led me to the back, ducking under some pipes midway, and we stepped into the laundry room. A white basket sat on top of the washer, his shirt topping the pile of laundry in it.

  He stepped over by the dryer and patted it. “Sit here.”

  I pushed myself up onto the dryer, confused.

  He scooted the basket over and jumped up onto the washing machine next to me. He turned me around to face the laundry chute. “Remember anything?”

  I closed my eyes. I smelled fabric softener and a whiff of bleach. I searched and struggled and waited and thought. What was I supposed to be remembering?

  After a moment, I turned to him and shook my head, sorrier than I could possibly express.

  “It’s okay.” He smiled gently, but I could tell he was disappointed. “So, I’d sit up here with you, and Mom would send treats down the chute. You thought it was magic. Your face would light up each time a Hershey’s Kiss came tumbling down — you’d turn to me, all amazed and excited.”

  I didn’t know if it was just the suggestion, but I could almost see a video in my head, suspended in the middle of nowhere, no context, no tethers to place or time. Like something I saw in a movie. Was I remembering scraping those wrappers off the chocolate with my eager little fingers, the delicious, melty chocolate in my mouth? Or was I imagining it? Was I confusing it with memories of other chocolates from later years? Our old neighbor, Mrs. Borski, had a dish of candy in her living room. Was that what I was remembering?

  “Do you remember at all?” he asked. His expression was so full of hope.

  I hesitated. I couldn’t bear to disappoint him.

  “It just . . .” He shook his head. “It seems unfair if you don’t remember. To you, I mean. You had so much love . . . I wish you had the memory of how much we loved you.”

  My chest flooded with warmth. “I don’t have to remember it to know it,” I told him. “I feel it.”

  And I did feel it, the love this family had for me. I gazed into eyes the color I loved more than any other, and I thought, If only that’s all I was feeling.

  When the sun started to peek out from the vast swaths of gray, Luke took me outside. We wandered around in the wet grass in our unzipped coats, looking for clues, bits that might spark something buried in the far depths of my mind. I felt like I almost had a memory of the birdbath, where apparently I used to slap at the water with my hands, but it could easily have been anything — a different time, a scene from a movie, the power of imagination fortified by longing. I didn’t at all remember the rose garden. Or a swing set that was no longer there. Or the crib in the garage, which had been Luke’s before it was mine.

  Back inside, he showed me pictures of my old bedroom. Pictures from holidays. Pictures filled with things I didn’t remember.

  It was exhausting, the tax on my mind, on my memory. The expectations, the silent pressure to recognize something, anything. It was too much for one day. What I wanted was a long nap, but we had a dinner and evening to get through. By 5:00 the sun sat on the verge of the horizon. Mima was still resting, and I hadn’t seen any sign of Buddy, either. Maybe he stayed with her when she rested. He seemed totally devoted to her. A more opposite upbringing I could not have had.

  I made Luke play piano for me. I sat next to him on the bench. Occasionally his upper arm would skim past my breasts as he reached for the lower keys, shaming me with confused feelings of pleasure and yearning. I should have leaned back, more out of his way. But I didn’t want to. I wanted that contact. Everything he did felt so good.

  I forced myself to focus on his playing. I was mesmerized by his command, by the movements of his hands, the invisible intricate matrix of nerves and impulses that resulted in such beautiful sounds. Already my thoughts were turning toward the countdown, the bits of time we had together before I would return to Maplebrook and he would return to Appleton, three hours away from me. I tried to enjoy being near him in the moment rather than obsessing about being apart, but it was there now, hovering around the edges and coming into focus. But we still had a night ahead. I would gladly stay awake all night to have every possible moment with him. I hoped he’d also want to stay up late. Just us.

  After a while, Buddy came down and found Luke and me in the breakfast nook with the photos I’d brought — two slender volumes whose contents petered out almost completely by the time I was eleven or twelve.

  “Can I see?” Buddy said.

  I nodded, and Luke and I scooted over so Buddy could sit on my other side. I was a sad excuse for a narrator. Most of the pictures were of just me, and there wasn’t a lot of story to them. I guess that’s one of the casualties of growing up in a family of two: one person is the subject, the other the photographer. There was only one picture of me with my mom. She was holding me in front of a Christmas tree in an apartment I couldn’t remember. I must have been almost two. She had a stiff smile on her face, and I just stared blankly.

  “I always wondered what she looked like,” Buddy said quietly. He shook his head. “Boy, you look just like her, don’t you?”

  A rhetorical question if ever I heard one.

  Dinner was pizza, ordered in. Mima didn’t eat anything. She sat next to me on the sofa, bundled under two blankets, while we watched more videos. I finally saw the footage of me learning to walk. I was thirteen months old. Mima and Luke sat on the floor of my bedroom, Buddy videotaping as they widened the gap between them foot by foot and propelled me back and forth. Finally I had managed about eight lurching steps on my own. That feat was met with many hugs and applause from Mima and Luke. To my embarrassment, baby Jules responded to the praise by grinning at Mima, turning her hands palms up, and asking, “Tookies?” Cookies. They all laughed in the video, as they did now.

  There was even brief footage of Luke and me running around at a cousin’s bat mitzvah. Apparently Gab’s wasn’t my first. I wore a beautiful green velvet dress and white tights. Boys in yarmulkes, a klezmer band . . . I looked comfortable, happy. It was surreal.

  We looked at photo albums. A picture that especially tugged at me was one of me asleep in Luke’s arms. Luke gazed at the camera, his shy smile revealing his pleasure and pride.

  Mima didn’t say much as I paged through the photos I brought, nestled beside her. I didn’t know if it was because she was disappointed by the life I’d ended up with, or because she was too exhausted to react. I had the feeling the day had taken a lot out of her. But I also wondered if she’d had higher hopes for my fate when they lost me. Was she disappointed in how I’d turned out? The thought hurt unbearably.

  She made it to 9:00. She kissed me good night and said that knowing I’d be there when she woke up, just like the old days, was the best gift she could ever receive. She laid a hand on my cheek and told me, “I love you, Jules. I never stopped.”

  When she hugged me, I thought maybe something about her did feel familiar. Maybe I did remember her. She was the most loving, reassuring presence. And at that moment, I really, truly, wholeheartedly wished my mother hadn’t taken me away from these people.

  Luke asked if I wanted to watch a movie. He held up a DVD. Cinema Paradiso — one of his favorites, he said.

  “Will it make me cry?”

  “Oh, for sure.” He grinned.

  I heaved a sigh.

  “But I think you’ll really like it.”

  As if I could say no.

  We wen
t into the kitchen to get something to drink. Luke offered me a beer and I said okay, glad to somehow have made the leap to adult beverages. He gave me a bottle of Two-Hearted Ale, which bore no resemblance to any of the cheap, pissy beers I’d ever tasted. It was darker — rich and a little bitter. Naturally, I liked it.

  I took another sip and smacked my lips. “Chewy!”

  Luke laughed. “Exactly. It’s one of my favorites. Don’t tell my parents I gave you a beer. They think you’re still a baby.”

  I spotted a popcorn popper, so I made us some buttery popcorn with Parmesan. We shared a bowl of it while we watched one of the most beautiful movies I’d ever seen, pausing it to get more beer at one point. I don’t know why I didn’t see it coming, the way the movie ended, but Luke was right. I was undone. I wondered if he knew how it would hit me, that whole idea of never being forgotten, even when you had no idea someone still thought about you, still cared about you. I cried like a slobbering jackass.

  Luke reached for a box of tissues on an end table and handed it to me. “See?” he said. “You love it!”

  I laughed as I wiped my eyes and nose.

  He smiled gently. “I always wished you could know that I was still thinking about you. That I never forgot you.”

  I wanted to hug him, but I never quite felt like I could reach out and do it. I wished he’d do it more so I wouldn’t have to work it out. I said, “Thanks for never forgetting me.”

  “Thanks for coming back.”

  When he didn’t make any movement to hug me, I gave up and asked, “Can I have a hug?”

  “Of course.” He held out his arms and I leaned in, spilling cheesy popcorn into his lap.

  We both laughed and pulled back. Luke started picking the popcorn off his pants, glancing up at me and smiling. “It’s just like old times. You and a big mess of food.”