by E. M. Kokie
Like Shauna, and her looks, her stare that can freeze me.
Curtis laughs. “Damn obvious. Hhm-mmm.” He smiles, then wipes at his mouth until it’s gone. “So, I was keeping as far away from him as I could. But there was something there, even then. And when we got our first night of freedom, well . . .” Curtis’s face lights up, then gets serious again.
“Then why didn’t he . . . ?” I shift so I can see his face without twisting my neck. “Did he really think, you know, that I would hate him?”
Curtis lets out a long breath, shaking his head. “No. However . . .” He measures his words. “He worried that you wouldn’t understand right away, and he couldn’t face that he would have to deploy while you were mad or upset and that he wouldn’t be here to fix it.”
“Did — I mean, the letters, the envelopes — did anyone know?”
“The guys in his old unit knew, mostly. And most of them were cool with it. In the unit he deployed with, he wasn’t sure who he could trust, at least not at first. Obviously, he told someone, sometime, because someone knew to call . . .” Curtis presses his knuckles against his mouth, takes a shuddering breath, holds it in for a moment, and then exhales through his fingers, calmed again. “It was hard on Theo. He hated the lying. It tore him up. But he loved the Army.” Curtis’s eyes squint and tense. “Theo felt he was doing what he was meant to do, and he didn’t want to leave anyone shorthanded. Even for me. He went back for the third tour, even though I begged him to get out. We fought about it, about . . .” Curtis swallows the thought, shakes it off, and looks at me again. “He’d never let his unit down. Never.”
I let that sink in, turning it over in my head.
“He couldn’t even be himself, exactly who he was, who we were, but he . . .” Curtis shakes his head. “It wasn’t worth losing him.”
The silence stretches between us. A group paddles by in canoes and someone waves. Curtis waves back, his face softening.
“Someone called you?” I ask.
“Yeah.” His voice is so brittle it almost crackles. “Unofficial, of course. Couldn’t acknowledge anything officially. But . . .” He shakes his head with a nasty look. “I kind of went a little crazy. Destroyed my office. I don’t really remember it all. They said I yelled at him, the guy who called, called him a bastard. Said they could all go to hell.” Curtis shrugs. “Not my finest moment.”
I can only imagine what my father would have done, said, if he weren’t so busy holding it all in. Curtis says something else, but I can’t understand him.
“What?”
He looks at me, clears his throat. “He was going to get out. After this tour, he was going to get out. We were just starting to talk about what came next, whether to stay here or go somewhere new, together, maybe buy a house, but he was going to get out.”
I can hear the pain under the surface of his skin, the tears curdling in his chest.
“It was past time. He’d done his part, more than enough. But I guess I didn’t persuade him fast enough.” He looks down at his hands, twists a silver ring on his finger. “That’s all I could think about. And it felt like they killed him, like all that hiding had robbed him of being free, of being fully him — of letting everyone know how truly amazing he really was. To fight, every day, with everything he had, when . . .”
There’s nothing to say. I am instantly angry, but also sad, for Curtis, for me, even for Dad. Not for T.J. He’s gone; he doesn’t get sad.
“Well and truly outed myself, and destroyed my office — tore it apart. Took two of them to restrain me. After that, the separation from the Army was fast and quiet. I didn’t even fight it. I couldn’t fight it. And I came home.”
“Didn’t you want to come to the funeral?”
He grunts like I hit him.
“I mean . . .” I feel like a jerk for asking, and wish I could suck it back in.
He waves me off with the flick of a wrist. “Later, I was — well, really upset doesn’t quite cover it. Devastated?” His mouth turns up, but it’s not a smile. “I should have been there. But I don’t really remember the first few weeks after. I know Will came and got me. I vaguely remember the car ride. That whole week was really hazy. Missy and Will kept me alive. When I could think enough to ask about funerals and everything, well, we heard it had already happened, and . . . it seemed a little too late to do anything official. We had a memorial, later, for everyone here. There are some pictures.” He waves back toward the house.
There’s nothing to say. It’s all too much. My brain has expanded until it’s pressing on my skull.
All that time. All the time we were dealing with the funeral and letters and people and so many freaking offers of help that we changed our telephone number to get away, and Curtis was here, with nothing. And later, when he could think, wouldn’t he have wondered about the letters? T.J.’s stuff? Maybe he knows where the blanket came from, and why T.J. had that medallion, or the compass.
“Hey,” Curtis finally says, sitting up again, folding his long legs to form sharp angles on the steps. “I have some stuff for you. Come on in and I’ll show you.”
I hesitate for just a step, then follow him through the door, pushing down the wave of sick-feeling nerves that rise at the thought of going into his place, their place. I can do this. It’s fine.
I expected a replica of next door, but when I follow him in, it’s hard to believe that this place fits into roughly the same space as Celia and Will’s place.
The walls are sleekly white and smooth, but nearly bare. Everything feels sharp and clean. Dark leather furniture. Silver, gray, and black bits here and there. The room is laid out with a sitting area in the front near the windows and a large table at the other end of the room, where a cutout in the wall shows the kitchen. Deep-red walls and black accents peeking through, like the Chinese restaurant Shauna’s sister took us to that time we went to Philadelphia.
A wave of dizziness nearly floors me. This is the room that box in T.J.’s stuff was meant for.
“Yeah, I know, a little much, but be it ever so humble . . .” Curtis waves, walking over to the large leather couch dominating the space facing the front windows.
Between the dining-room table and the rest of the room, there’s a long, narrow table covered in picture frames, just like at Celia’s, except I don’t have to look hard at all to find T.J. here. He’s everywhere. Curtis and T.J. at different places. One with Curtis’s arms draped around T.J.’s shoulders, T.J.’s hand covering Curtis’s on his chest. One of T.J. holding a paddle on a dock, barefoot and sunburned. One of T.J. lying on a beach. One of Curtis in a suit, standing between an older couple, his parents. T.J. and Curtis and Zoe out front. T.J. and Zoe in a pool. T.J. and Curtis sitting on the steps out front, Curtis’s legs extended out from behind T.J., who is sitting on the step in front of him, leaning back, his hands on Curtis’s knees. They’re both smiling at the camera, but it also looks like they were caught midlaugh, like whoever took the picture was laughing with them. T.J. looks so happy. More than that. He looks at home.
“Our friend Alex took that one,” Curtis says behind me. “We had just gotten back from a long weekend in Chicago.”
“Where was this one taken?” I ask, pointing to a picture of T.J., Curtis, and a bleary-eyed Will, all three holding huge empty glass mugs.
Curtis laughs, maybe the first real laugh I’ve ever heard from him. “The end of a long night of drinking to celebrate Will’s graduation from law school. Will puked three times during the graduation ceremony the next day.”
I pick up one of T.J. lying on the ground with Zoe, both of them absorbed in whatever they were doing, not even looking at the camera.
“She was crazy about him.” Curtis moves down the table and picks up another one, one I’ve seen before — Zoe facing the camera, her lips pursed. “This one is from the last time he was home. He was trying to teach her to spit for distance, much to Missy’s irritation.”
“I remember, from the letters.”
Curtis carefu
lly places the picture back on the table.
“Everyone keeps telling me to put these away. That it’s time to move on. Like it’s the pictures that are the problem.” He turns one of the photos a little more toward him. “It hasn’t even been seven months,” he says, like he’s talking to someone else.
“At least you have them to put away,” I say, before I can stop myself. “I mean, we’ve never been real into photo ops, you know?” And Dad got rid of the few we had. “There were just a few of him in his stuff.”
“Well, let’s see what we can do about that.” Curtis sinks down into the couch, his arms and legs neatly arranged, like he’s posing for a portrait. He waits for me to sit down, then pulls a small box onto his lap and places its lid on the table in front of him.
“It’s not a lot. You probably have much better things, more personal, at home — but there were a few things I thought you might like. Including”— he sifts through the box until he pulls out a small envelope, turning it to slide a small stack of photographs into his hand —“these.”
He hands me the stack. I see right away, on top, a copy of the picture that started all of this. The one of Celia, Zoe, T.J., and Curtis. It’s a little smaller than Celia’s framed copy, but bigger than the one T.J. cut up.
“I thought you might like a whole one.”
The next one down is of T.J. in uniform, but not at attention. Relaxed. His shit-eating grin on full display, hand extended toward the camera.
“That one was taken at a charity event. He was so proud in that uniform.” Curtis’s smile makes my stomach flip, like when I read the sexy parts of the letters. “He strutted and preened like a damn peacock. God, I miss that. His confident strut into a room, knowing everyone’s eyes were going to be on him. And they were. Everyone’s.”
I can’t look at it long, but I think, later, I might like it. The next is one of T.J. on some mountain, smiling, a valley spreading out below him.
“I figured,” Curtis says, “that with how much you all shared in the hiking, you probably never lugged a camera along. I thought, well, it was the closest one I had to how you must remember him best.”
I can’t answer. I nod, I think. My fingers touch the edge of the picture. This is the one — this is who he was, to me. I slip it under the others.
A few more shots of T.J. with various people, doing various things. Curtis tells stories I’ll never remember. But the pictures are nice, even if they are of times and places I don’t know.
The last two are smaller than the rest, and the surface and paper feel different. When I shuffle them to the top of the stack and turn the larger one right-side up, I almost recognize it. Almost.
Curtis sits quietly next to me while I study it. Without even knowing the people, you’d know it was old, older than the others. But I can look at my face, T.J.’s Little League uniform, Mom’s flattened-out smile and hollow eyes, and know this was taken right before the end. Nine or ten months, at most, before Mom left. Dad looks the same, really. In my head, I can see him like he is today, a little older, hair a little more flecked with silver, eyes surrounded by crevices instead of lines. But the hard, steady look, giving nothing away, is the same. His body, strong and steel-straight, the same. His clothes are even nondescript enough not to stand out, not like the rest of us.
“T.J. said this was the last picture he could find of all four of you,” Curtis says quietly. “He kept it close, and when he deployed, he put it in the box with some other stuff he didn’t want to lose.”
I’m only half listening, already turning to the last photo. This one I don’t recognize at all. Well, I recognize Dad, younger than in the other, thinner, his hair even shorter, and in uniform. It’s hard to look away from that alone. But I force my eyes to slide to the left, to the woman who is clearly Mom, but not like I’ve ever seen her. She’s smiling, her eyes are alive, and her hair is all done up. She’s wearing a dress and gloves. She’s really pretty. I’d never thought of her as pretty before. Dad’s holding T.J. He’s missing his two front teeth. Dad’s holding him so proudly, and his arm is around Mom, and T.J.’s arm is around Dad’s neck. They’re all smiling. Happy. What, three years before me? Maybe four? And they’re all happy.
“Theo said this was taken the day your dad got promoted to staff sergeant,” Curtis says beside me.
“I don’t even know where this was taken.” The cinder-block wall screams base housing, somewhere, and I could probably figure it out if I could think.
“North Carolina. Theo said your family lived on base until he was almost ten.”
I shake my head, mouth suddenly dry. I can’t stop staring at Mom. “I’ve never seen her look like this. She was really beautiful.”
“I know,” Curtis says. “Theo said she used to set her hair on rollers, and sometimes she would let him play with the curls before she brushed them out.” His eyelids flutter at the thought. “I can picture it, you know? Little Theo, one thing when your dad was away, another when he was home. . . . Must have been hell to have to pull it all in every time he came home.”
I try to remember, to see it. But I can’t. “I don’t remember Mom in rollers or T.J. any different or . . .”
“You wouldn’t,” Curtis says, his voice firm but not harsh. “You were a baby when your dad got out and moved you all to Pennsylvania. And by the time you were older, well, I’m sure Theo had learned to be what your dad needed him to be. He’d have had to. And your mom . . .”
“Was a fucking mess. Nothing like this.” I barely resist the urge to crumple the picture in my hand. “Toward the end, most days we were lucky if she showered. Funny, Dad washes out of the Army, and Mom stops washing at all.”
“He didn’t wash out, Matt. Your mom couldn’t handle it.”
My stomach drops. “Handle what?”
“Any of it. Life on base. The long absences. Taking care of herself, much less you and your brother. She was falling apart. Theo said she’d always been a little . . . up and down. But after her father died, she never seemed to get back on track. Just before Theo’s tenth birthday, she had a little breakdown at one of those wives’ events. There was a meeting. Your dad didn’t really have a choice. So, he got out and moved you all to Pennsylvania, where he could have a regular job, and he thought your grandmother could help keep it together.”
“Then Grandma died. I don’t remember, but I know that’s what happened.”
And then Mom fucked it all up anyway. What, three, three and a half years later? She took off. And before she left, in that house on Mulberry, she was always such a mess. And he was always so angry. My memories of the fights shift in my head. Maybe when he was yelling about none of it being worth it, he didn’t mean me, or us, so much as her, or the move, or getting out.
I look at the two pictures again. Mom was so beautiful once, but Dad’s always been pretty much the same, and maybe that’s all he could be. And T.J., then, didn’t seem scared of him, but Curtis said T.J. was different when it was just T.J. and Mom. Maybe when Dad was around all the time, T.J. stopped getting along with him?
T.J. must have taken these with him from home, but I wouldn’t even know where to look for more. Does Dad have boxes of stuff somewhere? Or did he chuck them all at some point after T.J. took these? What else don’t I know?
“Anyway,” Curtis says, bringing me back to the present, “he had some stuff here, some clothes and things. I’ve kept them . . . you can look through them if you want, now or . . . but there are some things I think you should have now, some stuff he had on his desk here that I think he’d want you to have. His favorite hiking gadgets — his compass, fire starter, pocketknife. Some papers. I’ve pulled them together so you can take them with you now. You can look through them later. Along with these. These are from me.”
I turn to look at Curtis, who’s picked up a stack of stuff and is holding it to his chest, a small smile on his face. He holds the pose for just a few seconds and then swings his arms out, pushing a stack of envelopes into my hands. My
fingers fumble around the shifting papers, trying not to drop them all. Once I’ve gathered them in, I turn them until one rises to the surface, faceup. An envelope. Everything slows down. Hot and cold. Something pounds in my ears. T.J.’s handwriting. Celia’s address. I look up for confirmation.
“It’s just a few, I know, but I thought you might like some of his letters. I picked a few that seemed . . . I don’t know . . . most Theo-like, if that makes any sense, and more, huh-hhmm, brother friendly, if you get my drift,” he says, tucking his chin into his chest and raising his eyebrows. “Didn’t want to scar you for life or anything.” He flutters his eyes, long lashes over a slanted-chin pose. My face gets hot.
I can’t speak. I can’t move. He has just handed me a piece of my brother back. Curtis, who yesterday I wished didn’t exist.
“I . . .” I swallow, try again. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Thank you will do just fine.” Another pointed smile.
“Thank you,” I say as enthusiastically as I can. “Seriously, oh, man, this means . . . this means so much to me. Just . . . thank you.”
“You’re very welcome,” he says, pleased. Not happy. He’s not happy. Neither am I. But I think maybe we both are as close to it as we have been in a very long time.
I carefully shuffle the letters into an orderly stack. Curtis didn’t have to do this. Later, I’ll read them, and it will help. I know it will. God, T.J.’s letters.
“I didn’t even say good-bye,” I say, surprising myself.
“When?”
“The last time he was home.” I can see it. That last night, before heading to bed, we grabbed right hands and T.J. pulled me into a sort of rough hug, but it wasn’t really good-bye — at least, not a good-bye that you say to your brother when he’s walking into danger, when you might never see him again. He came by my door early in the morning, and I pretended to be asleep because I didn’t trust myself not to spaz or something. I was being selfish: I didn’t want to ruin the high of the trip or look like a wuss. Now sometimes it’s all I can think about. “I didn’t even say good-bye. Not really.”