“How long has it been?” Jeremy met my gaze in the rearview mirror and held it.
“Five months.” My stomach sank saying those words out loud. It had been five months since Dad moved out and nearly as long since we’d started shuffling back and forth between them. Nothing had changed. Not a damn thing.
“Five months. You’ve been off with your girlfriend over there, and I’m the one who’s been around watching him. It’s not getting better for either of them, and it sure as hell isn’t getting better for me. You wander around at Dad’s like a zombie, only coming to life to mouth off, and then over here, you’re on eggshells trying to make sure Mom doesn’t feel anything that might upset her. You’re too busy pissing off Dad and protecting Mom to realize you’re doing it wrong!” Jeremy slammed his hand against the steering wheel.
My blood rushed and my fist clenched beside my thigh. “And what are you doing that’s so brilliant besides making her cry and keeping Dad complacent?”
“Dad’s already mad all the time. He doesn’t need any help from you to stay that way. And Mom—”
“Is sad all the time,” I said. “She doesn’t need your help either.”
“Yeah, she is, but she’s not letting go. Maybe if you let her think about what her sadness is doing, that she isn’t the only one who’s sad, maybe she’ll realize she doesn’t have to be sad all the time. That all of us together could help.” Jeremy shook his head. “Five months, Adam.Five months.I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want them to live like this.” His gaze slipped away when he added, “You either.”
There wasn’t much I could say after that. It was one thing to know that my brother loved me. Of course he did; he had to, just like I had to love him. I didn’t always like him. In fact, I rarely liked him, but I did love him.
Greg had been easy to like, and Jeremy had idolized him. We’d all suffered when Greg died. But it had been easier to focus on Mom’s suffering, and my own, than consider that Jeremy was suffering, too. I was beginning to realize that just because he didn’t show it the same way didn’t mean he didn’t feel as deeply. It was totally foreign for me to think of Jeremy that way, to know that he not only had those feelings but that maybe all along, he’d been considering mine, too.
It was a mind trip, and it messed with my brain, making me feel like I needed to apologize and hug him. I couldn’t remember the last time Jeremy and I had hugged. I felt like I needed to apologize for that, too. The words formed in my mouth, but I couldn’t give them breath. Instead I focused on the problem we shared.
“So what do we do?”
“For starters, we don’t take any family trips without the whole family. I don’t want her getting used to the idea of us without Dad.”
That made sense. We were fragmented, but that didn’t mean we needed to form potentially good memories that way. But even though I agreed with Jeremy—a fact that astounded me—I didn’t see that we had a lot of options. “We are literally packed and in the car. Little late to get out of this one.”
Jeremy was thinking. His face tended to scrunch up when he was concentrating hard on something, like the effort was painful. Brotherly breakthrough notwithstanding, I fell into my old habit and laughed. Jeremy reacted just as predictably by turning around and drilling me in the arm.
It was going to take more than one conversation to turn Jeremy and me into the kind of brothers who liked each other as well as loved each other. I didn’t need the throb in my arm to tell me that.
When Mom came back, her makeup was completely redone, which told me she’d cried the first application off. I wondered if Jeremy noticed. Maybe. His face wasn’t contorted, so I assumed he’d abandoned any deep thought as to how to get this road trip canceled, but I hadn’t. I wasn’t going to be able to communicate with him in front of her, but as I rubbed my arm, an idea formed...the barest fragment of one.
“I think that’s everything,” Mom said. Jeremy only grunted. “Grandma and Grandpa are really looking forward to seeing you two. You’ll be fine for a couple days without your electronics.”
I didn’t have any more time to think once Jeremy started the car. “Fine,” I said, deliberately letting my annoyance seep through.
“Ignore him,” Jeremy said. “He’s crying because he won’t be able to call his girlfriend for two days and the world is going to end as a result.”
What a predictable ass. I tried not to smile. “Careful. Forty-eight hours might be long enough for Erica to realize she’d rather not date a guy who has to shop at Baby Gap.”
We didn’t end up visiting my grandparents. We did, however, back Mom’s Geo into a tree, because Jeremy, short though he was, could still twist around and try to beat the crap out of me all without removing his foot from the gas pedal. Not at all like I’d planned.
We also didn’t get our phones back, nor were we allowed to go anywhere apart from school. That didn’t end up sucking as much as I thought it would, because for the first time in a long time, my brother and I actually talked.
Jolene
Ibarely remembered driving to the apartment, much less climbing the stairs to Dad’s floor, but when my toes stopped inches from his door, reality jolted back.
He was there. He had to be. I’d barely seen him in months, and he was going to open the door and see me, talk to me.
And it was my birthday.
He’d gotten me a car.
With a card. Or a note.
Maybe it had said things.
Maybe it had said a lot of things.
