“He won’t, Ma. And even if he did, he wouldn’t let Jon come to the phone.” I’d never told anyone how Jon had vowed to hate us forever.
It was months after he screamed those words at me before I understood why Michael had let me make my choice. Not because I’d earned his respect, as he’d said. No, it was what he’d seen—what we’d both seen—that day he dragged me to the mirror. My coloring and some of my features were indeed like his, but it was Sylvie who looked back at him from my face. Sylvie and all the ways he’d wronged her. Separating Jon and me—and forcing me to choose it—had been a final and devastating strike at my mother.
I began every letter to my brother the same way, attempting to bring him to the place where I was, make him see what I saw:
Dear Jon,
I’m writing from your old bed, looking out on the lilac bush where you used to hide whenever we played hide-and-seek. Do you remember the day Jimmy asked why you always chose the most obvious spot? “Because I like the smell of the flowers,” you said stubbornly.
Since it was November, we all laughed at you. But sometimes when I pass that bush in winter, I swear I catch a whiff of those lilacs myself. It’s all still here, Jonny—the worn spot by the garage where you parked your bike, even our picnic table, though no one has sat there much since you left. But you—sometimes you seem as distant and unreachable as our mother, Sylvie.
I can’t see her face anymore. No matter how hard I try, I can’t, but I still feel how she squeezed me when her friend brought me to visit the hospital the day you were born. We’re going to be so happy, she promised. Just the three of us.
They’re still the saddest words I ever heard.
The first lesson I’d learned as a Moscatelli kid was how to forget. It was how Jimmy and the others survived, and it was what I needed to do, too. So I let go of my mother and erased the smell of sickness and death that permeated the rooms she’d painted sunny colors, filled with music and plants back when she still believed in her own promise. And when Aunt Cille brought me pictures of her when she was young, I stashed them in my drawer. They didn’t look like her anyway. The face I remembered, transfigured by heartbreak and illness—but even more by love for me and Jon—had been much more beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that it hurt to look at her. For seven years I hadn’t.
BUT AFTER JON left, everything changed. “You’re too quiet,” Ma complained, worry grooves forming between her eyes.
Agnes didn’t like it, either. “Why are you always writing in that stupid notebook? Talk to me. Look at me. I’m right here, Zaidie.”
Only Jimmy, who had been tugged away by a mysterious force himself, seemed to understand. One night when Agnes was complaining about all the time I spent alone, he slammed his fist on the table in the way that rattled everyone. “For chrissake, leave Z alone about her damn writing. Maybe she’s gotta do it. Did ya ever think of that?”
It didn’t help that I kept my notebook secret from everyone. Why had I started writing—to explain why I stayed behind? To apologize? To prove something to Michael Finn? Maybe even to win a skirmish in the long war between him and Sylvie? I didn’t know.
Jimmy’s explanation was the only one that felt true. I did it because I had to. I did it because no matter where I looked for Jon in the neighborhood or in the city, the only place I ever got a glimpse of him was on the pages of my notebook. Day after day, I filled them with swirly writing, doodles, and memory. But there was something else there, too: hope.
When Ma looked at me suspiciously and Agnes tried to hide my notebook, I went to the playground and sat in the empty bleachers at the field where Jon had played Little League. After many attempts, I even found my way to our old apartment building, where I sat on the steps and chewed on my pen.
Dear Jon,
I’m sitting on the steps of a place you’d never remember.
That was as far as I got before the woman who lived in our old apartment came out and asked what I was doing there. When I had no answer, she reminded me this was private property. “Go on now. Move along.”
I closed my notebook but stayed put. Then I pointed up at the window: “That was where my mother slept. My brother and me—our rooms were across the hall.”
Maybe she’d heard about us, the fated young woman and her two orphan kids who’d lived there before her, because she closed the screen door gently when she went inside. A minute later she returned with a glass of lemonade. “Just don’t make a habit out of it, okay?”
I nodded and then I began my letter again.
Dear Jon,
There are some places on this earth where no one has a right to chase you away. Places where all you can do is stand your ground. Even if you’re scared.
I’d never visited my mother’s grave—even on the anniversaries when Aunt Cille begged me to go. But a few months after Jon left, I took the bus to the other side of town and walked to the cemetery. Soon I was visiting the stone marked SYLVIE MENDELSON FINN every week—another secret that separated me from my family.
Sitting with her name, all my letters ended the same way. Has her promise come true, Jon? Are you happy? But those questions would probably sound silly to a boy his age, so I always crossed them out.
By then I was living two lives—my own and the one I re-created for my brother in the stories I wanted him to feel as much as I did. I took care to listen well to Ma and Dad’s conversations—both what they said outright—and everything that lay beneath—so he would catch every inflection. I wanted him to hear Flufferbell’s caterwaul the night she was left out, smell Ma’s pork chops frying on the stove, experience the loneliness and the immense peace of the field of stones where I sat with Sylvie Mendelson Finn. To feel the smoothness of her marker when I pressed my face against it. If he knew every detail of life in Claxton—from the wonder of Gina Lollobrigida’s beehive hairdo to the modern elementary school they were building on High Street—a part of him would still be here.
I told him about Jeffrey’s broken arm, and Jimmy’s various jobs (though I omitted the hope that filled the house whenever he started a new one and the gloom that descended when it didn’t work out). I filled pages with details about my new boyfriend, Charlie Putnam, describing every goal he scored in his soccer game, the plots of every movie we saw at the Claxton Drive-in. Though Jon probably wouldn’t be interested, Charlie had infiltrated my mind so completely, I couldn’t help myself.
Jimmy hates him, I admitted for the first time in a letter. But do you want to know the real reason I fell for Charlie? Because he was the first boy I ever met who was as nice—okay, almost as nice—as the one who called you Shadow. Sure, it doesn’t hurt that he’s cute and smart, “popular” even. I suppose that’s what drew me in. But it wasn’t till I went to his house and saw him playing with his little sister, Abby, who has Down’s syndrome, that I was hooked.
Mostly, though, my letters to Jon were filled with what I didn’t say. I didn’t tell him about the day Jimmy left for Vietnam, or how Dad, haunted by the daily death count on the front page of the Gazette, had stopped reading his newspaper altogether. Nor did I tell him when Princie lost interest in running away—even if the gate was wide open. It wasn’t long before she turned away from her food bowl, too. Nor did I say that on certain days—like this birthday or the day we first came—Ma still took to her bed like she had those weeks after Michael Finn took him away and how we all held our breath until she came back down. How fragile everything had become since he left.
After a while, I wasn’t just writing to Jon anymore. I wrote to see. I wrote to know. But most of all, I wrote because that was who I was. It was my brother’s gift to me. Did it come at the most bitter cost? Yes. Just like the cigar box Agnes had kept in the closet since she was small. And for that reason, I held on to it like she did. Fiercely.
I looked around the room Agnes had made her own when she moved in two years ago. She’d searched every paint store in the city for the perfect summer green color and enlisted Jimmy and m
e to help her paint. Then she’d asked Jools to imagine Buskit’s River without the junk and to draw what he saw. The five sketches she’d framed and hung on the wall were the result. Though it smelled of her—a mixture of chlorine and the rain-scented cologne she wore—though it was filled with her things, Jon was there in every corner.
Dear Jon,
Today you are twelve. Do you still order your pizza with baby fish? Can you hear a train from miles away? Do you still smell lilacs in November?
Chapter Two
Come On, Agnes
AGNES
CLIMBING OUT OF THE POOL, I HEARD THE COACH CALLING MY name: “Agnes Juniper. Meet me by the bleachers after you change out of your suit. I need to talk to you.” I knew things were serious when she used both my names.
“I’m sorry, Coach, but my brother’s waiting, and he’s gotta leave by—” I yanked off my bathing cap and shook out my hair as I turned to face the clock, confirming my suspicion that practice had run extra long that day: 3:31. “He’s due at the factory by four and if he’s late for his shift one more time—”
“Hmm. Sounds like late runs in the family.” She fingered her whistle, as if she might blow it at any time. Attention! “Don’t worry. I already told Jimmy I’d drive you home if he has to leave.”
When I came out of the locker room, I was surprised to see him sitting on the bench with Coach Lois. Right away my heart clenched. Ma and Dad were so excited when he got on second shift at Larkin Leather. Had he already—?
As always, his grin was an arrow shot through my anxiety. “Coach here’s been telling me about your pos-si-bi-li-ty.” He opened his arms as if the word was a huge hug. “Not like I didn’t already know.”
He smiled at Coach Lois in a way that would have made me go all red if I was like Zaidie. When he was younger, Jimmy fell in love once a day and three times on Sundays, but since he’d come home from Vietnam, he was different. Normally, I loved seeing signs of his old self, but when the lady he was gawking at was my coach, it was downright embarrassing.
“Great talking to you, Jim,” Coach Lois said, smooth as could be. “Agnes and I will just be a few minutes.”
“Oh. Um, yeah, sure.” Even Coach couldn’t help smiling back at him as he slouched off, patting the pocket where he kept his smokes. “I’ll be right outside, okay, Sky Bar?”
Then he winked at Coach. And me. And at the whole world—the way he used to. Yeah, embarrassing.
“When it comes to brothers, I’d say you got pretty lucky,” Coach Lois said. “Jimmy’s a sweetie.”
The sweetest of the sweet, I thought, imagining the mountain of candy I’d eaten since the day Jimmy renamed me. A year earlier, I’d gotten so sick of Sky Bars I thought I’d gag if I ate one more, but there was no way I could tell him. Especially then.
“Thanks.” I slid onto the bench.
She gave me the kind of appraising stare I was used to getting from Ma. “Just one question, Agnes, and then I’ll let you go. Why are you here?”
“You asked me to meet—”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Um. My mother read somewhere that swimming might be good for my asthma, and—”
“That was four years ago when you started swimming at the Y. Now you’ve outgrown your asthma and you’re on swim team.”
“I know I’m late for practice sometimes, but Jimmy—” I began, anticipating what she was about to say.
“This is your sport, Agnes. Your team. That means you owe us. You. Not Jimmy.”
I looked down at the blue and white tiles. “I know you were disappointed when I lost my last two races, but honestly, Coach, I—”
“No, Agnes. I wasn’t disappointed that you lost. I was disappointed because you could have won. Easily. And you’re right, I don’t like it when you show up late day after day. I’ve been very patient because—”
I took a ragged inhale, certain she was about to kick me off the team. How could I make her understand how much I loved all of it—from joking in the locker room with my teammates to the smell of chlorine in my nostrils—everything connected to that moment when I dove into the pool and felt my body moving through the water. No matter what was on my mind, it disappeared as I gave myself up to its rhythm. It was like the time I made snow angels with Zaidie when I was six, or the first time I stood on my chair and told Jimmy I loved him. But how could I explain that to my coach?
“So okay, you signed up for swimming because of your mother. Or your asthma. Or because you like seeing your brother sit in the bleachers, cheering for you every day—even if it means he’s late for work and risks his job.”
I closed my eyes. “I—I just love to swim. Far back as I can remember, I loved it,” I blurted out. “Isn’t that a good enough reason?”
“Not for you it isn’t, no. And not for this team. You’re the most gifted athlete I’ve ever coached, Agnes. The natural people like me dream about. If you gave it the effort, I wouldn’t be surprised if you made it all the way to the—well, the sky’s the limit.”
“But those girls at the meets have been taking lessons since they were three, and they swim like their lives depend on it. Like it’s the reason they were born.”
“And you?”
“I don’t know; I just swim.” This time I knew better than to ask if that was good enough.
She sat there, whistle in hand, waiting for me to say more. When I didn’t, she nodded. Then she started to gather her things, dismissing me.
“I watch you,” she said before I left. “Socializing and laughing right up till the race starts while the other girls are totally focused. That’s the difference, Agnes. In any case, if you ever decide you want to start swimming like your life depended on it, there’s no end to your—”
We both set down our swim bags and opened our arms as we spoke the word together, letting it fill the room like Jimmy had: pos-si-bi-li-ty.
I had reached the door when I turned around. “Thanks, Coach.” More than all the stuff about my gift, I was grateful for what she said about Jimmy and me. As if she saw we were alike. That just because we didn’t look the same or have the same last name, we weren’t a second-rate brother and sister. We were as real as anything.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she yelled back. “Two thirty sharp. Better yet—get here by two twenty. And remember, if you change your mind, I’d love to start working with you individually.”
I smiled. That was Coach for you. Even when she claimed to give up on me, she was still trying to find a sneaky way to make me better. Just like Ma.
Jimmy was on the sidewalk when I came out, staring off the way he did—like he forgot where he was, same as he forgot time. One reason we had always been so close was we both knew how to let things be. I didn’t ask why he wasn’t at work.
“Ran out of gas over on Warren Ave,” he said when he saw me scanning the street for a sign of his beat-up Falcon. “No need to mention it to Dad, okay? Brucie’s takin’ me to the gas station when he gets out of work.”
Brucie? I didn’t like him, but I let that be, too—unlike the rest of the family. Even Ma, who never complained about much of anything when it came to Jimmy, especially after he came home from the war. Not the lost jobs or the rage he went into when he found out we had to put Princie down while he was away, or the even scarier way he sat out on the picnic table smoking half the night for days afterward.
“You killed my fucking dog and you didn’t tell me?” he yelled when Dad tried to coax him inside one night around three in the morning. “Then you got rid of everything. Her bowl and her collar, her stupid bones, everything. It’s like she never fucking existed. That’s how it is around here, isn’t it?”
It was the first time anyone had ever used that word in the house—never mind twice in one spiel—but no one said a thing. The fault line was already there, visible, and everyone was afraid that the wrong move—even the wrong look—might crack him in two.
“No, Jimmy—honey, that’s not how it is,” Ma sa
id, stepping into the yard, her voice low. The lights in the neighbors’ houses were already flickering on. “Listen to your dad and come inside, will you?”
For that night, at least, he had. He was right about how it was, though, and we all knew it. We’d hung on to Jon’s trains and cars, his favorite cowboy bedspread for a while. Then one day I came home from school and they were gone. Gone like the treasures Princie had been collecting from the neighborhood all her life. No one asked where. Pretty soon no one spoke my brother’s name, either, except when Zaidie got her annual Christmas card from Colorado. And even then, we didn’t say it out loud. We just touched the place where he signed beneath his dad.
THE DAY MA spotted Bruce’s gold Mustang outside the picture window, though, her old self returned with a vengeance.
“Is that who I think it is, Jimmy?” Instantly, her arms locked across her chest.
“If I’m old enough to fight in a war, I think I can pick my own friends, Ma.”
“Not if it’s that one, you can’t. Bruce Savery might have a better address than Jools or Duane, but if I had to trust someone with my life, he’d be the last of the three.”
“In case you didn’t know, Duane’s in jail, and Jools sits up at his house drinkin’ all day. So if my life’s in danger, they ain’t available.” Jimmy slammed the door behind him.
“I’d still call them first,” Ma yelled back. By then, though, the only people left to hear were Zaidie and me.
“She’s right,” Zaidie said to the empty picture window, not even caring if she sounded loony as Ma. “Anyone but Bruce Savery.” Then she turned to me. “If Jimmy ever tries to bring him around, make sure you stay away. I mean it.”
THOUGH I WAS tired from school and practice and Jimmy was worn out from all the stuff that went on in his head, we took the long way past the Grainer School that day.
We never talked about the afternoon he led me home back when I was the most lost kid in the whole town. No, we preferred to make believe we always belonged to each other—blood—like Ma and Dad used to pretend before Jon got taken away. But we didn’t have to say it. I knew what was on his mind when we walked that way, and he knew the same about me.
All the Children Are Home Page 16