“Yeah.” He pauses. “Listen, don’t get your hopes up. I’ll let you know how that goes, okay?”
“Yeah. Please do. I’ll come and speak for you and?—”
“So, you meet my buddy Jake? He stop by to see you?”
My mouth stays open, mid-word. “Um… Uh, yeah.”
Frank’s low chuckle comes through the phone. “Yeah? That’s all you got to say? What, you didn’t like him?”
“He’s, um, cooking here, actually. While he’s in town.”
Silence.
“Cooking, huh? For you?”
“Well, not for me. For the restaurant. But, yeah. He’s good at it.”
“Don’t doubt it.” He sniffs. I push the phone to my ear and concentrate through the music and rattle of flatware on the prison background noises I’ve grown used to. The murmur of voices, the occasional yell. Something banging with a hollow thud. As it has every time I’ve talked to my brother in the last fourteen years, my throat closes up and tears try to press their way out. “So, does that mean he’s planning on sticking around?”
The question sends an unexpected wave of something through me, some uncomfortable emotion that I can’t quite look at head-on.
“Oh. No. He’s going to the North Sea, I think.”
“Hm. Okay. That’s too bad.”
“Is it?”
“Rather have him there with you.”
“I can look out for myself, you know, Frank.”
“D’you know he does underwater welding on those platforms he works at?”
“Oh. No, I didn’t.”
“It’s the most lethal job in the world. Literally, more people die doing that than any other work.”
“What? Why does he do it, then?”
Frank lets out this condescending half-laugh that’s always annoyed me—as I know it’s meant to. “’Cause he doesn’t give a shit. ’Cause he’s got nothing to go home to. Might as well take the big risks and rake in the big bucks.”
I can think of nothing to say to that, nothing to feel but a sort of low, thumping shame that’s like a second pulse in my throat. After a few moments of silence, I ask, “You, um, you okay, Frank?”
“I’m good. Great,” he says in that over-the-top way that makes me think life in prison can’t be anything but miserable.
“I wish…” I start and then stop myself. There’s not much to say really about what I wish for at this point. I can’t turn back the clocks and make Frank not take it upon himself to punish that man.
If I could do that, I’d wish that the man hadn’t hurt Evie to begin with. I’d wish Frank hadn’t had to find out his friend had been sexually assaulted by the minister from her youth group. I’d wish, at the very least, that the police had put the pastor away for it so my righteous-minded brother hadn’t decided to go off and do something about it on his own.
I’d wish a lot of things. For me and Frank. For Toni and his sibling Raf, kids who don’t deserve to be kicked out for how they feel in their skin. I’d wish Jake hadn’t done prison time, too.
“Don’t bother wishing, Sis. It’s a waste of time.”
I don’t tell him again that I wish he was home. It only makes him feel bad.
“You get those cookies I sent?”
“Sure did. Thank you.” I can never tell if he’s lying, but I figured out a while ago that the best thing I can do is pretend I believe what he says. He gets comfort from that, I think.
