When the tire on Jeremy’s car blew, I’d half convinced myself it was wish fulfillment. Thirty freezing minutes later, I was rethinking that conclusion. Jeremy clearly had no idea how to change a tire, and I wasn’t much help. It was a skill I’d planned on learning, but hadn’t gotten around to. Jeremy obviously had a similar plan.
“Dammit, Adam! If you don’t stop moving that light around, I swear—”
“You’ll what? Move slower?”
Jeremy lunged to his feet. “You want me to knock you out right now?”
“I want you to fix the tire so we can go. Where was I not clear about that?”
The socket wrench—I think it was a socket wrench, it was pathetic that I wasn’t sure—clanked against the asphalt as Jeremy threw it down. “Do it yourself then.”
However little Jeremy knew about changing a flat tire—and it was a very little—it was still light-years beyond what I knew. I stared at the socket wrench. Then I stared at my brother. I repeated this process several times before he made a sound of disgust and squatted down in front of the tire again.
“You’re worthless, you know that?”
I did kind of know that. I didn’t bother with a response. Instead I watched my brother struggle to change a tire for probably the first time in his life. There was nothing especially heartwarming about the sight. Squatted down, his jeans dipped low in the back, revealing plenty of butt crack. He was also grunting and swearing under his breath as he wrestled with one of the lug nuts—a term I was mostly confident I had right. But I felt angry heat sear through me.
“Why didn’t Dad teach us this? Why didn’t he make sure you knew something this basic before you got your license?”
Jeremy shook his head and forced a laugh. “You don’t know when to quit, do you?” He looked up at me, and the pissed-off smile left his lips. I wasn’t ragging on him that time, and he knew it. “I don’t know. Maybe he forgot. Or maybe he didn’t have time. It’s not like we were having a party when I turned sixteen.”
All our holidays and birthdays since Greg died had been somber affairs. Without him, celebrating was the last thing any of us had felt like doing.
“Did you see Mom before we left?” I asked.
Jeremy’s hands stilled on the lug nut he’d gone back to loosening. He said nothing.
“Did you?”
“Yeah, I saw her.” He made a grunting noise as he continued forcing the bolts free.
“And?”
“And what?” Jeremy got to his feet and kicked the tire. “Damn thing’s rusted tight.”
I lowered the flashlight to my side. “Did you say anything to her?”
“Of course I did.”
“What did you say?”
Jeremy turned, first his head and then the rest of him, to face me. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, Mom, please don’t spend the weekend wrapping Christmas presents for your dead son like you did last year’?”
I swung the flashlight beam up to his face and then dropped it when he didn’t bother to shield his eyes.
Jeremy finished changing the tire. Not once did he have to remind me about the light.
Without asking, Jeremy blasted the heater when we got back in the car. Stopping at the next light, Jeremy flexed his hands on the steering wheel, the red glow of the traffic light illuminating a streak of grease running across his knuckles. When a cursory search for something to wipe them with turned up nothing, he dragged the back of his hand on his jeans.
“We should be with Mom.”
“We were,” Jeremy said. “And now we’ll be with Dad tonight.”
I shook my head. “That’s wrong and you know it.”
“What’s wrong is the way you’re treating Dad. When are you going to grow up?”
“The wayI’mtreating Dad? Me? What the hell is wrong with you? Mom is in that house all alone right now, and Dad—”
