Maybe in Paris

by Rebecca Christiansen

  “When you go, you should visit Chernobyl,” Levi says. “It’s almost safe there now. You just need a Geiger counter and a guide who knows the terrain.”

  I smile. “That sounds cool.”

  He grunts. In approval, I guess.

  “I saw this thing about how the trees there are bringing radiation out of the ground when they grow up. And their fruit is poisoned and stuff.”

  “Scary.”

  “Yeah.”

  We watch some more Mythbusters until Mom and Josh come back in with coffee.

  “How’s it going, guys?” Mom asks. Her eyes go big and round and doe-like as she pulls up a chair facing me and Levi.

  Josh sits facing the TV. “They’re trying to walk on water?” he says, chuckling.

  “Yeah.” Levi forces the word out like it hurts him, his scowl returning.

  “Dr. Pearson should be stopping in soon, Levi,” Mom says. “Do you want Keira to be here for that? We could have a big family meeting.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  Eventually a nurse comes and we all follow her to a “counselling room.” It looks onto the garden in the courtyard, and we wait about half an hour before Dr. Pearson finally arrives.

  “Hello, hello,” he says as he strides in. He shakes Mom’s hand, then Josh’s, then mine. “You must be the sister?”

  I say yes and “nice to meet you,” then Dr. Pearson sits down. He hasn’t so much as glanced at Levi, who sits next to him at our round table, hands folded over his big belly.

  “So we’re on Praxicet and Trioxate,” Dr. Pearson says, reading off the papers in front of him, “to balance mood and get those depression symptoms under control. Other levels are consistently good, Levi’s in decent physical health, apart from needing to drink more water and eat more veggies, but we’re working on that. How have you found him lately?”

  He directs the question at Mom. She leans forward as she answers, like she’s speaking into a microphone.

  “Fine,” she says. “Sleepy, though.”

  “That’s a typical side effect,” Dr. Pearson drawls, leaning back in his chair. “But I think we’re on a roll at the moment. Behavior is normal. The antipsychotic, Risperdal, seems be having a great effect, but I might want to switch him to Promidal just to see …”

  Antipsychotic? Switching drugs “just to see”? As though Levi’s just a lab experiment, a little white mouse he can do horrible, unnatural things to, “just to see”? Dr. Pearson goes on and on, detailing all his plans to turn my brother into a cocktail of medications. He sounds like a little kid talking about his chemistry set, not a doctor with real control over someone’s life—someone who is sitting right there, big brown eyes cast downward, saying nothing, betraying no emotion. I want to open the cage and scoop that little lab mouse out, cradle him to my chest, protect him.

  My relief at seeing the old Levi disappears, because what if it’s temporary? What if all these drugs drain him away?

  “Well, if nobody has any other questions or concerns …” Dr. Pearson stands up to leave.

  “Um, Doctor,” Mom says. “I actually had a question.”

  He sits back down, sighing, as if this could take all day. I hate him.

  “Um … I’ve wanted to ask … how does the future look for Levi? He’s only sixteen, but when he turns eighteen, nineteen … how do you think he’ll be able to cope in the real world?”

  Levi blinks slowly. There might not be any emotion in his eyes, but there’s curiosity. He’s listening.

  You’d better have something good to say, Dr. Douchebag.

  “Honestly, Mrs. Braidwood, most of the patients I’ve seen at Levi’s age don’t grow into what you and I would consider functioning young adults. Take your daughter, here.” He gestured at me. “What, eighteen years old? Off to college, moving into the sorority house?”

  I fight the urge to gag at the thought of joining a sorority. Dr. Pearson is nowhere near as omniscient as he thinks himself.

  He continues. “From what I’ve seen of Levi here, depending on his ability to cope with his illness moving forward, he may need to remain in your custody as an adult. College may be out of the question, and depending on whether or not he can develop more effective communication skills, he may not ever be capable of living alone.”

  Levi’s face still shows no emotion. That’s okay—I’m full of enough anger for the two of us.

  Mom nods. “Thank you, Dr. Pearson.”

  “You’re welcome,” he says with a debonair smile. He’s already leaving the room. “Nice to meet you, big sister. Go, Tigers!”

  What? I glance at Josh. He looks just as baffled as I am.

  “Maybe he meant Tony the Tiger,” Josh considers as we sit in freeway traffic on the drive home. “Maybe you just look like someone who loves Frosted Flakes.”

  Laughing feels good after this stupid day, even if it’s at a painfully unfunny dad joke. I put my feet in their flip-flops up on the dashboard in front of me. Mom would never allow me to fold my body up right in front of the airbag like this. What if we crashed?! Thankfully, Josh is a rational human being.

  “How did Levi seem to you?” Josh asks.

  I can’t get Levi out of my head, how intently he was listening to the people around him talking like he wasn’t there. That fucking Dr. Pearson, basically sentencing him to life in an institution, right in front of him. It can’t be easy to hear your doctor say you’ll never grow up. Never be independent. Never be anything but a child needing constant supervision. Does all of that upset him?

  “I don’t know. Mostly normal, I guess. I was expecting … from the words they kept throwing around …”

  I was expecting a stranger who belongs in an institution. Someone who is better off cloistered from the public. But he was just … himself. He was just the Levi I used to know. He was calm, stable, but he’s locked up in there like he’s a danger to the public. My little brother, the only person on Earth who’s shared my experiences, had my childhood, knows my life.

  Out of nowhere, tears well in my eyes and burn my throat. I try to disguise them with a cough but soon I’m quietly sobbing.

  “Hey,” Josh says softly. He squeezes my shoulder. “It’s okay, Keira, go ahead and cry. This is a scary, confusing time. Crying is allowed.”

  “I just … don’t know what’s happening,” I say, even though that’s not quite what I mean.

  “I know it’s strange, seeing him in a place like that,” he says. “We’re doing the best thing possible for him right now.”

  “What, locking him up?”

  “I mean putting him under the care of professionals. Getting him the medicine he needs.”

  I don’t understand how all those drugs are supposed to help. Don’t psychiatric drugs turn you into a zombie? I think of my silly Levi, noticing ceiling tiles and wanting me to tour Chernobyl, and think of him stripped of everything that makes him unique. I clench my fists. How is a forced emotional flatline supposed to make him better?

  My little brother didn’t want to live anymore.

  I shove the tears out of my eyes.

  “You okay?” Josh asks.

  I nod as we pull up to our house on Evergreen Place. I see everything through the lens Levi must have had. He wanted to leave the cream-and-red craftsman-style house we grew up in. I go to the backyard and sit on the deck. He wanted to leave our fire pit. Our leaf-clogged trampoline. Our ancient, abandoned treehouse. I climb up the rope ladder and peek inside to see my old toy kitchen set and the plastic army guys he left up there years ago. He wanted to leave them, too.

  The living room couch we both laid on during sick days. The dining room table, still full of marks from when we pounded our forks into the soft wood. The pictures on the walls and the plaques we make in memory of each pet that dies. He wanted to leave our current cats, Markie Mark and Snowball.

  I wander into the front hall where, six years ago, we first met Josh. He was a twenty-six-year-old kid, almost scared of us. He gave me a CD o
f a band he thought I’d like (I did). He gave Levi a Stones of Zendar action figure. It’s still in Levi’s old toy bin in the basement, the package unopened.

  He wanted to leave all of that.

  And me. How could he want to leave me?

  I’ve spent the past year working to save up for France, and the rest of my free time memorizing Jacques’s daily schedule and inserting myself into it, determined to endear myself to him.

  This is my wake-up call.

  I go up to my room and sit on my bed, staring at the photos pinned to my wall. Big Ben. St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace. The Eiffel Tower. Notre Dame. Versailles, where Marie Antoinette lived and breathed, where I’ve fantasized about finding a portal to go back in time and save her from the guillotine. Rivers and crowded streets and flags. Places I swear I’m going to find all the missing pieces of myself.

  Levi and I have something in common. We both want to leave this place. The only difference is that I want to come back. I want to shepherd him out into the world, show him how beautiful it is, and come home again carrying sparks inside us. Maybe if he sees the world, sees everything it has to offer in a brand-new corner of it, he’ll want to stay in it.

  I want to take him there, and more importantly, bring him back.

  And I have six thousand dollars to do it with.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  For the past few years, I’ve had trouble with “balance” in my life. That’s how the guidance counselor put it. Most people my age don’t know the meaning of the word moderation—we binge-watch TV shows, stay up all night studying before exams, eat whole cartons of ice cream in one sitting—but I like to think I’m particularly good at over-doing stuff. When something feels good, I go at it full throttle. When something feels the slightest bit bad, I completely wipe it from my mind.

  I first saw Jacques St-Pierre in my Global Stewardship club, on his first day in America. He looked like an elite European soccer player. He wore a button-down shirt tucked into gray trousers, with mahogany leather pointed dress shoes. His sleeves were rolled up to show off sculpted forearms. His hair blew upwards from his forehead, tousled but carefully engineered. Whenever anyone spoke to him, his eyebrow would slowly lift, as though evaluating every word they said. His evaluations ended, most often, in a smirk.

  He was beautiful. He spoke French, the language I’d spent years teaching myself. He was from freaking Versailles. When he introduced himself to the Global Stewardship club, he said he was interested in art and philosophy. I was a puddle on the classroom floor from the moment he opened his mouth and said “bonjour.” I was sure the custodians would have to come mop me up.

  Jacques was … problematic. He would roll his eyes whenever most girls spoke to him. He would complain prodigiously about the school’s food. He even complained about it when I organized a French Food Festival with the Culinary Arts class, entirely for his benefit. Our school had a daycare on campus, and he would snigger anytime he saw a student dropping off or picking up her baby, slinging a diaper bag alongside her backpack.

  Oh, and he strung me along, using me for my car and my willingness to stroke his ego. I would’ve stroked more than that, too, and I wondered why he never asked me to. Until, of course, he told me I was “trop grosse.”

  It took me months to realize just how much of a douche he was. But my point is, for a long time, he felt good. I felt important, being at his side, being his own personal ambassador. Special, chosen. It’s a cliché, but he was a drug and I was a junkie. I used him for the rush, and to escape.

  Levi, the malevolent spirit haunting our house, did not feel good. I disengaged. I stayed disengaged right up until today, seeing him in the treatment center. Right up until now, I had been sure disengaging was best—I was protecting myself from all the bad shit. Protecting myself was good, wasn’t it?

  I wasn’t protecting myself; I was blinding myself. I’m ready to fix that now.

  When I first asked to sit down and talk with Mom and Josh, Mom had a million excuses. I have to be with Levi, another doctor is coming. I promised I’d smuggle him McDonald’s for dinner. He needs me to bring him fresh clothes. I want to turn every word she’s ever used on me around. Who’s holding her emotions at arm’s length now?

  When she eventually finds a shred of time, Josh shuts off Stones of Zendar, and we all sit down at the dining room table in the dying sunlight.

  “What’s up, honey?” Mom asks. “What’s that?”

  I have a piece of paper in front of me, covered in my own scribbles, estimates, and calculations.

  “I’ll get to it.” I tuck my hair behind my ear. My hand shakes so badly, my thumbnail scratches my cheek. “Um, so—”

  “Is this about Levi?” Mom cuts me off. “Because you had the opportunity to ask Dr. Pearson lots of questions. Josh and I can try to answer them, but he’s the expert. Why don’t you come with me tomorrow and—”

  “This isn’t about Levi,” I interrupt. “Well, it is. But not about medical stuff, or any of that.”

  “What’s it about, Keira?” Josh asks. He tilts his head gently forward, nudging me to speak. I take a deep breath.

  “You guys know how badly I want to go to Europe.” I fold, unfold, and refold one corner of my paper. “And how I have the money to go, and all that stuff, right? Well, I was kind of wondering … if …”

  God, this all sounds awful in my head right now. Can I please kidnap your son and whisk him off across international waters?

  “I was wondering if I could ask Levi if he wants to come. If he doesn’t want to, that’s totally fine. But if he does … well, it might be really good for him. I have enough money, and he already has a passport, so …”

  Josh nods slowly, like he’s considering it fairly and rationally.

  But Mom leans forward and covers her face with her hands. “I can’t believe this,” she says. “Your brother’s life is in danger and you’re asking if you can take him to Europe? The best place for him to be is here, Keira. No, Josh, no, I’m not going to hear any different.” She swats Josh’s hand away. “Keira, I’m sorry we’ve inconvenienced you, but I really don’t think Europe is a good idea for anybody right now.”

  “Inconvenienced me?” I repeat. “Do you think I just want to take him so I can go on my trip after all? How selfish do you think I am?”

  “Okay, guys, calm down,” Josh says. “Amanda, take a deep breath. That’s not what Keira was implying.”

  “At all,” I confirm.

  “Keira.” He gives me a look. “Think about this from your mom’s perspective. She almost lost her son. Do you think she’s going to be keen for him to leave right now?”

  I blurt out, “Going to Europe isn’t the same as dying.”

  I instantly regret it. Mom bursts into tears, her face folding and puckering and quivering, glaring at me like look what you’ve done.

  “Keira,” Josh tries again. “Why don’t we talk about this later, when we all have level heads?”

  I stand. “Don’t bother. If you’re not even going to try to listen, don’t fucking bother.”

  I walk out, up the stairs, and to my room. My whole body quakes like a volcano threatening to erupt. I close my bedroom door and lean against it. Classic Mom. Jumping to conclusions and admitting what she really thinks of me. Uncaring. Selfish. Irresponsible. That’s me, in Mom’s eyes.

  She almost lost a son, but I almost lost a brother. And that means nothing to her. She’s blind to everyone’s emotions but her own. She’ll carry on about her disappointment but not even apologize for calling me a slut.

  When they come, I almost choke on my tears. Classic Keira. Mini-breakdown alone in my room and then I’ll cave and do everything Mom wants. Postpone the trip indefinitely so I can stew in the suburban hellhole that drove my brother crazy. The Eiffel Tower and the glittering gold of Versailles fade into nothingness in my mind. More tears bubble out and then I get mad.

  I should be allowed to get mad. I want this so bad. I think about Levi in a hospita
l, cloistered and bored, and then I imagine him at my side in Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, seeing the things he always reads about in books and making me laugh until I pee like he used to when we were little. Mom used to worry that I had bladder problems because of how frequently Levi made me have accidents. God, it’s been so long since he made me laugh like that.

  I have to fight for that.

  I’m about to go back downstairs to plead my case, grovel on my hands and knees if I have to, when there’s a soft knock on my door.

  “Keira?” It’s Josh. “Want to come downstairs and we’ll talk this over more civilly?”

  “Can Mom agree to that?”

  “She already has.”

  I open the door to his gentle smile. He leads me to the living room, where Mom has mopped up her face and sits with her favorite Stones of Zendar throw pillow in her lap.

  “We still need to talk to Dr. Pearson of course,” Josh says. “We can’t say yes without permission from Levi’s medical team. But we want to hear your side of this first.”

  “It’s no secret that I’ve wanted to go for ages,” I start. “But when I saw Levi today, I realized how far away I’ve gotten from him. I know you guys don’t want me to go on the trip alone, so—”

  “Do you think sending Levi off alone makes me feel better?” Mom asks.

  “He wouldn’t be alone, he’d be with me.” I add don’t you trust me? in my head but I don’t dare say it.

  “You heard Dr. Pearson today,” Mom says. “Levi’s not going to be able to drive, or live alone, or take care of himself without help. He’s not like you. He’s not going to college or—”

  “Dr. Pearson doesn’t know anything,” I counter. “He talks about Levi like he’s an inanimate object. And he sure as hell doesn’t know me. Neither do you, Mom, remember?”

  She glares daggers at me. “Don’t you bring that up.”

  “What? The fact that you called me a slut this morning?”

  “Keira!” Josh shouts.

  “It’s true, Josh, she literally said that.”

  “It’s not my fault that you don’t tell me anything.” Mom crosses her arms over her chest. “How am I supposed to know every detail of your life if you don’t tell me?”