What's Broken Between Us

by Alexis Bass

  “She wasn’t working today,” he says.

  “You smell like cigarettes.” I tried to insult him about this earlier by hacking loudly when he walked past. He pretended not to notice.

  “Off the wagon. I decided to indulge. But I went for a run, and I’m having salad for dinner.” He throws the tomatoes in with bravado. “It balances.”

  “If you say so.”

  His grin reassures me that he’s joking—he doesn’t really think a salad cancels out a cigarette.

  Thursday evening, there’s a lightness to him. He seems filled with energy in a walking-on-air sort of way. He’s in the den watching television when I get back from Graham’s, where I went after school.

  “Did you have fun with your beau?” he asks. He rolls his eyes.

  Mumsy is in her room, best guess. My father sits at the dining room table with his laptop open in front of him, sipping on tea and holding his forehead.

  “Have you had dinner yet?” I ask Jonathan.

  He shakes his head.

  “Want to get out of here?” I twirl my car keys on my fingers.

  “How can I refuse?”

  We walk to the entry and get our coats.

  “Where are you going?” Standard Dad says. He sounds exhausted by the idea of having to ask us.

  “We’ll be right back,” I say, realizing this might mean nothing coming from me, since I failed to come home on Saturday night and all day Sunday, though no one has confronted me about it. “We’re just going to Hal’s Diner.”

  He stands, and I think he might want us to invite him. But he can’t relax around Jonathan, and Jonathan can’t relax around him. We say good-bye and don’t wait for him to say good-bye back.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-THREE

  Jonathan orders us both chocolate shakes and cheeseburgers. This is the kind of place our parents would never go, which is why Jonathan and I used to come here all the time, starting the second he got his license and we finally had the freedom to go anywhere. Grace once made a March Madness–style score sheet for everything on the one-page laminated menu, pitting the mashed potatoes against the steak fries, the veggie burger against the tuna melt. The big winner was the cheeseburger.

  “I guess today you’ll be giving up cigarettes for grease,” I say. “Balance, right?”

  He winks. “And here I thought you brought me to the diner to harass me about Wren. And my ‘drinking.’” He makes the air quotes symbol with his fingers as he says this.

  “Nope.” I hold my up hands. “Honestly, I don’t want to know.” I mimic him from Sunday night, plugging his ears, closing his eyes. I didn’t bring him here to talk about Wren.

  “Sutton, then?” he asks. He shakes his head at the same time that I do, but for an entirely different reason. “I can see it in your face—you have an agenda.”

  “Me? Never.”

  He drums his fingers on the table, considering, then says, “Actually, I have something to ask you.”

  I let out a big, exasperated sigh, in case he’s going to ask about last weekend.

  He doesn’t react to this. “Are you okay?” he says. He pouts slightly, the way he does unconsciously sometimes when he’s talking to our mom and thinks she needs comforting.

  “Of course,” I tell him. I’m putting everything I have into sounding confident, but still it comes out lacking.

  “Are you sure?” There’s nothing in his voice but sincerity. One hundred percent my brother, just wondering, just checking. The way he used to.

  He asks again, and that’s all it takes to summon my tears. I blink them away, but he reaches across the table and grabs my hand. He can be so sweet sometimes. It makes me feel bad now, for what I’m about to do. But I have to. He has to purge, so he’ll stop bingeing—on Wren, on alcohol, on his own anger. The root of all his issues lies with one person.

  “Tell me about Grace,” I say as the waitress sets the food in front of us. Jonathan smiles at her, and for a moment I think he hasn’t heard me. But then she leaves and he speaks.

  “As if my words could do her justice.” He takes a huge bite of his cheeseburger.

  “Jonathan.”

  “Nothing could do her justice,” he says with his mouth full.

  I wait for him to look at me. He doesn’t want to, and when his eyes finally shift to mine, I see why. He’s about to cry. I’ve never seen him do it before, not since we were very little and crying was inspired only by physical injuries and minor disappointments. In the aftermath of Grace’s death he had bloodshot eyes, leftover sniffles, an unmoving frown. But no tears.

  “What am I supposed to say?” It comes out as a whisper, though I don’t think he meant it to. His mouth seems thick with saliva, and more tears fill his eyes in a sudden surge.

  “Say anything,” I whisper back. “Say everything.” I’m going to cry, too, any second now.

  He wipes at a drip under his nose and looks away.

  “I don’t deserve to talk about her. Didn’t deserve to know her.” He sniffles. “And she definitely didn’t deserve me.” A single tear snakes out. Jonathan closes his eyes, like that’s going to stop the rest of them. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But you went on that show,” I say.

  “It was a lapse in judgment.”

  “Give me the real reason, Jonathan.”

  He stares dully at me, his expression returning to normal. “Fame. Power. Money.” My heart drops.

  “Just be serious, for a second.”

  “Second’s up.”

  “You should be able to talk to me—I’m your . . . It’s us, Jonathan.” As I’m thinking about the way we used to be, a few tears escape. “Talk to me about her, just let yourself go through whatever you have to go through, this way, the right way, not—”

  “Oh.” And he laughs, but it’s cruel. “So that’s what this is about? This is you playing AA, making me talk about my feelings. You think I need help.”

  “Don’t you? Isn’t that why you’re still drinking, even now, when the consequences are—”

  He laughs again, his eyes rolling slightly. “Don’t talk to me about consequences,” he mumbles.

  “You keep getting worse.” The words are out of my mouth before I can think better of them, but I don’t care.

  “How could I possibly get any worse?” he says, with a taunting chuckle. He takes another enormous bite.

  I’m sitting here in tears; he’s wearing a grin. I’m nauseous, he’s gorging—unaffected and making a point of it. But why? Why?

  “I can’t stand this,” I say.

  Jonathan tilts his head in a mockingly sympathetic way. “There are very few things you can stand, baby sister.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, forget what I said—”

  “No, what did you mean by that, Jonathan? Tell me.”

  “You’re closed off; that’s all I meant.”

  There’s a stinging in my chest as he continues.

  “You’re very selective about who you let in, and once you accept someone, you want them to be a certain way, no matter what. That explains why you’re dating a boring, shallow guy like Graham—even while you’re spending your time . . . elsewhere. And I am messed up, baby sister, look at me. This is what I am now, and there’s no changing it.”

  If honesty is a weapon, Jonathan wields it like a pro. The truth hurts the worst. My tears are resurfacing. My nose wants to run, but I do not want to sniffle right now. I don’t want him to know the effect he has.

  “Don’t use my ‘closed-off’ disposition as the reason why I think you need help.”

  He pulls a napkin out of the dispenser and holds it out to me. “You miss Dawn a lot, huh?”

  Changing the subject is not going to work with me. “Jonathan. Stop it.”

  “You telling me not to be fucked up after what I’ve been through is like me telling you not to miss Dawn.”

  I snatch the napkin from him and mop up the tears that
are escaping. Half of them are tears of anger.

  “I actually love your disposition,” he says, pulling more napkins for me. “I’ll never think anyone’s good enough for you. It’s comforting knowing you aren’t going to let just anybody in.”

  It’s no use. I reach for my own napkins now.

  “I’m not trying to change you, Jonathan; I’m trying to help you. There is such a thing as healing.”

  He brushes off his hands, still seemingly unmoved by anything I’ve said, or by my tears. “You know what people are always telling me?” He crosses his arms, resting his elbows on the edge of the table.

  I shake my head.

  “‘You’re so lucky to be alive.’”

  I lean back into the booth. This is the thought I don’t allow myself to have, ever. How lucky he is—how lucky I am—that he’s alive. This is the part of that night I keep buried the deepest—the part I wish I could forget. Because the moment I found out what happened, I felt relief. My brother was still alive.

  “I don’t really know what to do with that, you know?” He picks up what’s left of his cheeseburger. “On one hand, it’s like, here’s the perfect second chance to live right, be healthy. Eat well, exercise—use my legs because I’m so lucky to have use of them.” He keeps a straight face as he says this. I don’t know how.

  “Get a good job. Find a respectable girl. Be honorable.” He shrugs. “But is that really living at all?”

  I watch as he polishes off his cheeseburger and licks his fingers clean. “What would Grace say?” I ask.

  “We’ll never know, will we?” he says, still impassive.

  My jaw drops open.

  “Whatever is wrong with you—whatever you think you’ve become—it doesn’t justify how selfish and reckless and nasty you’re being.” I rush out of the restaurant, leaving behind an untouched milk shake and a full plate. I jump in the car, start the engine, and pinch my eyes shut, imagining what it would be like to take off down the road, leaving him stranded at the diner the way I want to. I think of Henry, and all my caged feelings break free. I start to cry.

  Jonathan takes his time before he comes back to the car. “It’s going to be okay, Amanda.”

  I turn up the radio so it’s too loud for me to hear if he says anything else on our way home.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The memories I have of Grace are small.

  I remember the cartwheel races we used to have at Stony Day Elementary—upside-down memories of her focused eyes, her hand against the grass, her legs soaring through the air. When she was part of my group for the eighth-grade egg-drop contest, it was her idea to draw a face on the egg complete with long lashes, red lips, and a mole like Marilyn Monroe’s. The last year she was alive, she used to spin around to look at me whenever our world history teacher made jokes about there being a lot of knights during the Dark Ages, because she knew it was exactly the type of thing that I’d find amusing.

  I remember her ringtone. Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.” And that her favorite movie when we were little was The Wizard of Oz. She had a pair of ruby slippers. I remember the way she used to touch things when she walked by them—her fingers beating against chain-link fences, her hand running over closed lockers, her knuckles rapping on the hoods of cars. Like seeing the world was just not enough.

  It’s important she was happy before she left us. I want to know what she and Jonathan had been laughing about at graduation, what she’d been scolding him about at Sylvia’s party. I still think of her here sometimes, witnessing all of this. Twisted, I know, but ironic also, because she might be the only person who could get him through this.

  She’d bridge the gap between him and Sutton; she’d tell him to stay far away from Wren; chastise him for drinking while on probation. She’d tell him to give Gary a chance, and he would. She’d tell him that AA couldn’t hurt and wouldn’t encourage him to do any more speaking engagements, and he’d listen to her. There was something about Grace, for him—I can’t pretend to know what it was. But maybe if he remembers it, her magic can still work on him.

  That’s my wish. That’s the only thing I want that doesn’t feel like it might be a long shot.

  I want him to remember.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-FIVE

  This is what a Friday night should be. Graham with his arm around me. The vocal stylings of a band from Indiana ringing through the air, which smells entirely of coffee. I so need this—fun—after that awful fight yesterday with Jonathan. I haven’t seen him since slamming the door to my room after we got home from the diner. I’m rolling on two mochas; enough caffeine that my foot is tapping faster than the music. I try for a twirl, and Graham laughs.

  “Nice moves,” he says, pulling me closer.

  Jonathan’s wrong about us. So we’re not like Sutton and him? They were a mess of feelings, a concoction of uncontrollable urges, complicated even more by the fact that Sutton’s anger was easily sparked, and Jonathan’s talent for igniting it was directly proportional to his flair for flirting with other girls. We’re the anti-Jonathan-and-Sutton. Graham is a “lightweight” and I hate anything that tastes like Pine-Sol.

  Even if I’m wrapped up in denial about everything I’ve done to ruin what I have with Graham, I don’t care. It’s hard to forget the events of last weekend, and I’ve been so overly nice to Graham, I wonder if he is suspicious. But as far as he knows, I barely talk to anyone else, so even if he suspects something, there’s nothing for him to pin his doubt on.

  I put my arms around Graham’s neck as we dance in the crowd, and when the applause erupts, he leans down and kisses me, quickly. But perfectly.

  I could do this all day and all night—kissing, dancing, laughing. The only reason I stop is because my phone starts to ring. The name on the screen makes my head swirl. Standard Dad’s cell. I haven’t seen him since last night either.

  Graham sees the screen and nods toward the front door, telling me to take it outside where it’s probably quieter. But the sidewalk outside the coffee shop looks just as crowded as the inside—and just as loud. I move toward the back, down the hallway, thinking the bathroom will be a better solution, but of course there’s a line. The door at the end of the hallway is marked EXIT, so I push through it.

  By the time I’m in the back lot, next to the Dumpsters, my phone is no longer ringing. I’m about to call him back when my phone beeps, signaling a new voice message.

  I pace back and forth as I listen to my dad’s voice, intelligible but still muffled by background noise on his end. “Hey, Amanda, it’s Dad. I was hoping you could swing by and pick me up from Newton’s. I just think . . . it’s a better idea for me to get a ride. The cab company said it’d be an hour wait. That’s insane, right? Anyway, sorry to interrupt your night, sweetheart. I don’t mind waiting for a cab, if you’re busy.”

  It’s unlike any message I’ve ever received. From anyone. But especially my dad. I’ve never heard his voice trying so hard to be upbeat, and failing so miserably. I never know what my dad is up to on a Friday night, but I never assumed it was drinking alone at Newton’s, a dive bar by the overpass. I cover my mouth, frozen and staring at my phone like any second there’ll be another message: “Just kidding! Everything is fine.”

  I look up because I hear footsteps. Henry appears from behind the Dumpster.

  “What are you—” I don’t finish because Henry’s buttoning his pants, refastening his belt.

  “I’m not proud of it, but have you seen the line for the bathroom?”

  “And coffee is a natural diuretic.” I’m relieved to see him; relieved to be speaking to him. But I feel like I’m going to burst out laughing—crazed, manic laughter—because here he is, smiling, and looking just as relieved to see me. A mere five minutes ago I had convinced myself that I could forget my feelings for him, but now that he’s here in front of me, they’ve detonated and are exploding all over the place.

  “Is that the reason you’re back here, t
oo?” he says.

  Some of the bottled-up laughter escapes, and we stand there for a second, laughing together like we really are crazy. Before I can wrap my head around it, before I can even pose the question, What are we doing?, my phone starts ringing again. I answer it with a trembling hand.

  “Hi, Dad,” I say, pressing my phone against my ear and turning away from Henry. “I can come get you.”

  “Okay, thanks.” He sounds like himself, though the background is noisy. “Do you know where to go?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be there soon.” I hang up before he thanks me again. “Shit,” I say, running my hand over my eyes as if this will make it easier to focus. This is such a mess. What am I supposed to say to Graham? I don’t want him to know; I don’t want to watch his expression turn sympathetic, don’t want to hear him tell me it’s okay when it’s not, it’s so obviously not. He’ll rest his hands on my shoulders, and I’ll be able to see in his eyes that he’s thinking about my brother—this is what Jonathan should have done.

  It should be so easy to think of an excuse for why I need to be taken home right this second—but I can’t concentrate. My thoughts keep coming back to the image of my father in his starched and creased button-down shirt, with his clean-shaven face and graying eyebrows, sitting alone, throwing back so much whiskey he has to call his seventeen-year-old daughter to pick him up. Standard Dad wrecked. I don’t want to see him like that.

  “Amanda?” Amander.

  “Can you—I need—” It feels like so much effort to ask this, to admit to this. Henry steps closer. I focus on his foot. The way his shoe makes a crunching noise as it hits the dirty pavement.

  “I need a ride home,” I manage.

  “Let’s go,” is all he says.

  I follow him around the side of the building to his car.

  I mean to say thank you, but my mind is a frenzy of worry over what I’m going to find at Newton’s, and how I’m going to explain my disappearance to Graham.

  As soon as we’re on the road, Henry asks, “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”