His father turned back to the dishes without answering. Sam noticed a smear of salsa on the back of his pants from their taco dinner and he felt sorry for him, but not sorry enough to tell him. “What about Michael?” He assumed his parents had divided their children and his mother had chosen Michael.
“What about him?”
“Does she have Michael too?”
His father sighed. “That’s a little more complicated. Or a little less, depending upon who you are, I suppose. Michael is over eighteen, so he can choose what time, if any, to spend with your mother.”
“Why didn’t anyone ask me?”
His father sighed again. “I didn’t think you wanted to go to court, Sam.”
Sam slapped his notebook shut. “I need to go out for a little bit, okay? Just for a walk.” What he really needed was to get the homework from Mindy, and he knew his father wouldn’t stop him from going out on a school night. He had been very lenient since his mother left. If Sam let him think he was more upset about his mother than he really was, well, so what? He stood and gathered his books and turned to leave the room.
“Sam?”
“What?”
“I won’t keep you from your mother. However much time you need, you take that? Okay, son?”
“Sure.”
“We both still love you very much.”
“Okay.”
“I’m here if you want to talk. Or you can always call your brother.”
Sam shook his head without speaking and let the back door slam harder than he intended. He immediately regretted the effect it would have on his father.
He stayed at Mindy’s that night until he knew his father would be snoring in his chair in front of the television, a lukewarm cup of tea by his side, just so they wouldn’t have the chance to talk.
When Sam got back to Michael’s apartment, Michael was waiting for him with a beer. “Happy hour, bro,” he said as he handed him a frosty can. “Fucking Friday.”
Sam closed his hand around the beer and Michael tapped his beer against Sam’s and took a long swill. Sam watched the muscles in Michael’s neck constrict as the liquid flowed. This was the most enthusiastic greeting he had gotten from his brother in a long time. Possibly ever.
“Drink up,” Michael commanded. “We have places to go and be seen.”
Sam lifted the can to his lips and drank even through the stabbing pain in his left eye from the shock of the cold beer. He finished about half and then came up for air, squinting over at Michael. His brother laughed and opened the refrigerator, grabbing two more beers and opening one. “Come on, put this in your pocket.” He tossed the unopened beer to Sam and walked out of the kitchen.
Sam ran to catch up. His empty stomach churned from the beer. He would have liked some food, but Michael didn’t seem to be offering. He wondered if their father had told Michael to expect a dinner.
Michael jogged down each flight of stairs and waited briefly on the landings for Sam to catch up. By the time they hit the front door to his building Michael had finished his second beer and Sam had finished his first. “Hey,” Sam said, already beginning to feel a little buzzed from the beer. “You hungry or—?”
“There will be food, Sammy, never fear.”
Sam drained the second beer as they walked up College Hill. Michael walked slightly ahead of him, just far enough that Sam couldn’t ask where they were going. He veered left abruptly in front of a small clapboard house surrounded by an iron fence. Michael’s bike, without the front tire, was chained to the fence.
Michael opened the front door into a dimly lit, cramped hallway that smelled sharply of curry and made Sam’s left nostril begin to run. He followed Michael up a steep staircase to a landing where three open doors were shrouded with tapestries and an even stronger aroma of Indian spices prevailed. Against the walls were canvases of all shapes and sizes, some turned in, exposing the T-bar of stretcher, and others facing out. The paintings looked a lot like those Sam had noticed in Michael’s room.
Michael lifted the corner of the closest tapestry and beckoned Sam inside. The room was decorated with a thousand twinkling white Christmas tree lights. People were everywhere, more people than Sam imagined could fit into the space, along with even more paintings. The mood was festive but mellow.
Sam sniffled and followed Michael deeper into the apartment, where the smell of food intensified. Sam was practically drooling when they reached a table laden with exotic-looking dishes. “Go ahead, grab a plate,” Michael said, pointing to a stack.
Sam’s stomach was growling and he set about following the crowd around the table, piling his plate with rice and naan and curried vegetables. He couldn’t find a place to sit, so he leaned against the wall and started shoveling food into his mouth. Once he had cleaned the plate and pacified his stomach, Sam took a breath and looked around. His brother was across the room wedged into a corner talking intently to a dark-haired girl. Every once in a while he reached out and touched her: her shoulder, her cheek, or her hair. She smiled when he did that and bit her bottom lip, as if Michael’s hand on her arm was worth the wait.
Sam was about to make his way over to them but something in the way they leaned toward each other stopped him. They didn’t look like they wanted company. Sam returned to the food, devouring another full plate, and then went in search of a beer, then, beer in hand, went out and sat on the front stoop and studied Michael’s bike chained to the fence. He wondered where Carrie was, if this was her place.
He’d been out there only a few minutes when he heard footsteps. “Hey, Sam, there you are.” Michael came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. “Where did you go?”
He shrugged. “Nowhere. I couldn’t find you so I came out here.”
“Chill, dude. Are you mad? I thought you’d just hang, have a beer, eat some good food.”
“I’m not mad. I just don’t know anyone, you know?” Sam said, feeling like the high school kid that he was. He had just been a little bit afraid that someone was going to ask him what he was doing eating their food and drinking their beer.
“Everything’s cool.” Michael shrugged. “It’s weird only if you make it weird.” He stared at him until Sam nodded back. “You ready to go?”
Sam stood, tucked his empty bottle behind a planter on the stoop, and followed Michael down the path. “You taking your bike?”
“Huh?”
“Your bike?” Sam pointed to the fence.
“That’s not mine,” Michael lied.
“Seriously, dude? That’s your bike. You came home with a tire last night and this bike, your bike, is missing a tire.”
“Okay, detective, it’s my bike.” Michael’s voice was flat. “Come on.” He shoved his hands into his front pockets and leaned forward as he walked, as if he were trudging through snow. In that moment Sam saw what else Michael and his mother shared. Each of them had a life that was entirely separate from the one they lived day to day with Hunt and Sam. Sam knew only the side of Michael that Michael wanted him to see, while their dad and Sam put everything out there.
“So who is she?” Michael stopped walking and looked over his shoulder at Sam. “That girl back there?” As soon as Sam said the words he flinched.
Michael shrugged. “Vera is my lab partner. We studied really late last night, and I left my bike at her house because there is something wrong with the gearshift and I didn’t feel like dealing with it.” He raised an eyebrow at Sam but offered nothing else.
“It looks like she’s into you.”
Michael shrugged and started walking again. “Possibly, but . . .” He shrugged again, as if Vera’s liking him wasn’t important. “She’s just like that. Flirty. Vera likes everybody and nobody. I told her I would stop by tonight for some food, that’s all.” Michael smirked, as if explaining things to Sam about the opposite sex was funny. “So, you talk to anyone?”
“Huh?”
“Girls? Back there? You talk to anyone? What’s your type?”
&nbs
p; Frantically Sam searched his brain for his type, something to offer up to Michael. But the only type Sam could come up with was Suzie. And he didn’t want to bring her name into this; he didn’t want Michael to connect the dots between his old desire for Suzie Epstein and whatever their mother had been doing with Mr. Epstein.
“Don’t sweat the answer, Sam. The best thing about college, or being anywhere away from where you grew up, is that you can be who you want to be and no one can tell you that you can’t.” A corner of his mouth turned up in a shadow of a grin.
Sam was silenced by this brotherly advice. But he did walk faster to catch up to him. Maybe he needed to give Michael more credit.
They went back down the hill to a section of town he had never been to before. Michael had said earlier that they had places, plural, to be seen, so he guessed this was another stop. This party was noisier, spilling out onto the sidewalk.
Michael circumvented the crowd and wove around to the back of the house. On the packed back porch Sam saw Carrie, perched on the railing with a joint poised before her lips. Their eyes met and she waved the joint. “Hey, it’s the Turner brothers.”
Michael shot Sam a look that he couldn’t read. Carrie popped off the railing and came over to them. “Did you read your folder of material?” Her words were slightly slurred, but Sam didn’t think she was messy drunk. She offered Sam and Michael the joint, then, when neither of them made a move to take it, handed it off to some guy walking past.
“I lost it,” Sam said, swallowing hard, wishing for a beer.
“Bad boy,” Carrie teased, but she was looking at Michael. “What’s up with you not telling me your brother was coming to see the school?”
“I signed him up for your group, didn’t I?”
Carrie rolled her eyes but she was smiling. “Busy, busy Michael. Such a busy boy.” She said it like she was joking but her face looked anything but. “Kate’s in the kitchen, I think. Trying to make nachos the last I saw.”
Sam glanced over at Michael at the mention of Kate, but Michael’s face didn’t change. Was this Kate really his girlfriend? Why was Michael acting so weird and secretive?
They picked up beers out of a cooler on the porch and Sam followed Michael into the kitchen, where a girl with a high blond ponytail was shredding cheese into a bowl. She was wearing a sleeveless top despite the weather and her biceps flexed slightly each time she ran the cheese over the grater. Her jeans were low on her hips and revealed a smooth lower back and the hint of something lacy peeking out. She looked like one of those girls whose attractiveness came without trying. Sam shuffled his feet and coughed and she turned around, saw Michael, and gave him a wide, easy smile. “Hey, you. Study break?”
Michael leaned over and pressed his lips in the vicinity of her lips. His hand rested proprietarily on her hip. The girl craned her head around his shoulder and smiled at Sam. “Is this your baby brother?”
Sam felt his cheeks redden. “Hey, I’m Sam.”
“Sam I am,” she joked. “I’m Kate. Nice to finally meet you, mystery brother.”
“Huh?”
Michael twisted around and gave Sam a look that seemed to say, please, don’t embarrass me.
Sam shrugged. “I’m not that mysterious, but thanks, I guess.” He smiled at Kate and she grinned back at Sam as if he had just said the most brilliant thing. At least she seemed nice.
Michael’s shoulders relaxed as he looked at Kate. “What are you making?” He nodded toward the clump of cheese.
“Carrie was starving and I was bored, so I decided to make her something to eat.” She picked up a bag of chips and dumped them onto a tray and then sprinkled the cheese over the top. “There,” she said. “Let me just put this in the microwave.”
“You forgot the salsa,” Sam said, pointing to the bottle on the counter.
“Oh!” She turned quickly and plopped the tray back on the counter so hard the chips and cheese bounced.
“Let me,” Sam offered, taking the jar of salsa from her hands and pouring it over the chips.
“I have an idea, Julia Child, why don’t you nuke this and take it out to Carrie?” Michael was already leading Kate out of the kitchen as he said this over his shoulder.
Kate yelled, “Thanks, Sam I am,” and then they were gone. Sam looked down at the smear of cheese and bloody, chunky salsa. His brother had certainly perfected the disappearing act.
Sam stood in front of the microwave watching the nachos twirl around as if he were a guard at Buckingham Palace. When the cheese melted he held the plate aloft and went in search of Carrie. She hadn’t moved from the back porch and she squealed when she saw what he had in his hands. They sat on the steps and rested the plate on their knees and ate all of it, pretty much in silence. When they were finished Michael and Kate reappeared.
“Let’s roll, Sam.” Michael tapped him on the shoulder as he squeezed past.
Sam looked at Carrie, who shrugged, and back at Kate, who was smiling at Michael.
“Brunch tomorrow, the usual?” Kate called. Michael nodded. She turned to Sam. “Don’t let him stay up all night studying.”
“I’ll try,” Sam said as he stood and followed Michael.
“Goodbye, Turner brothers,” Carrie called after them.
Sam caught up with Michael on the sidewalk. “That was fast.”
Michael shrugged.
“You really have to study?”
“Yes, Sam, I really have to study.” He paused. “I’m going to the library. You can have my bed again, okay?” He added the last bit softly and Sam wondered if Michael was asking his permission.
“Kate seems nice.”
“She is.”
“How long have you known her?”
“A while.”
“Is she your type?”
Michael stopped walking and turned around and glared at him. Sam shrugged and held his hands up in front of his face. “Hey, I’m just trying to figure this out. You asked me what my type was, I’m asking you.”
Michael didn’t answer, but he didn’t move either.
“Do you think Mom was Dad’s type? Do you think Dad was hers and then she changed her mind?”
The muscles in Michael’s jaw twitched. “You’ll figure that out for yourself.”
“Did you?”
“Sure, yeah, I figured it out.”
Sam shook his head. “That’s not what I was asking. I meant, did you ever change your mind after you thought you’d figured it out?”
Michael turned and started walking again. At the entrance to his building he handed Sam the keys. “I’m going to get my bike.” He paused. “I’ll just take the couch when I get home. Don’t worry about it.”
“I thought you said you were studying.” Sam called after Michael as he walked away. Sam watched him for two blocks, and just as he was about to turn the corner and start the climb back up College Hill, Sam realized Michael didn’t have his books.
“Michael! Hey—” Sam took a step forward. “Michael!” His voice echoed in his ears, and the strain made something behind his eyes throb.
Michael slowed down at the crest of the hill and kicked at the crumbling curb. Randomly, Sam recalled a day with their mother. She had taken them to the quarry to look for flagstones for the front walkway. While she debated the merits of veining and thickness and color, Sam stood close to the edge to watch the prehistoric jaws of the earthmovers lift gigantic chunks, sediment spilling over the sides, confetti-like, to reveal a bedrock of uneven slate below the surface. Beneath his Converse the combination of dust and gravel was even as glass, and as he leaned out to get a better look he slipped. Before he could panic—before he even realized what was happening—Michael tugged on the neck of his T-shirt, yanking him back from the edge.
All the way home their mother drove slowly, as if the stones weighed her down. Sam waited for Michael to brag that he had saved his life, but he never did. They unloaded the stones from the car, the shapes reminding Sam of the puzzle pieces in his map o
f the United States. Their mother paid them in Popsicles, and they sat on top of the rocks and licked them quickly and quietly before they melted. The pile of stone remained at the end of the driveway for so long that it began to look like an impromptu wall, and no one complained when Sam eventually used the stones to support a piece of plywood for a bike ramp at the end of the drive.
“Michael,” Sam yelled again. “I leave tomorrow. Dad gave me money for food, for us. So I can pay for brunch, if you want.”
Michael held up three fingers palm out and touched his temple in the Boy Scout salute, and it was then that Sam finally accepted that what he wanted Michael to do and what he was going to do were two entirely different things.
FOUR
If Only I Told You One Thing It Would Be This
Bella—2000
Bella’s mother had a thick leather diary in which she had kept track of social engagements, dinners, menus, meetings, and appointments for herself, her new husband, and eventually her children. It was swollen from the years, creased with age, its pages yellowed on the way to fragile. Every year she had carefully added more pages to the book, and it was so thick that she’d had to replace the leather tie that kept it all together. As Bella well knew, her mother had purchased the book her junior year of college on her first trip abroad, a semester in Barcelona, where her rudimentary Spanish grew adequate. She told Bella that when she held it in her hands she imagined the diary as something she would have her entire life, the leather growing soft with age.
Whenever Bella’s mother spoke of Barcelona her entire demeanor changed. She admitted to Bella she had been terrified to go. She still left Vassar on the weekends to see her parents. Her father put gas in her car, kicked the tires for air, and changed the oil. Her mother took her shopping for new clothes, monogrammed her cashmere, noticed when she needed a haircut or a teeth cleaning, and made her appointments.
It had been her art history professor, an enigmatic man not much older than his students, bearded, corduroy wearing, who convinced her to go. His lectures were full of romantic tirades about Gaudí, the people of Barcelona, the beauty of the nights, and the heady indulgences of food and wine, unlike anything their pedestrian American palates had ever experienced. The class was mostly young women like Bella’s mother, and that year nearly twenty of them signed up for the semester abroad. The plane ticket was purchased, and the passport ink dry, by the time Bella’s mother realized what she was about to do.
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