“I just kept thinking,” I said, “I could turn back time.”
82
Katie
Ingrid and I sat on the floor of Mikey’s old bedroom, our backs pressed against those same mirrored closet doors. It was a nursery now. Sky blue with white clouds and a maple-colored crib. A plush alligator peeked out of a rattan basket, and the late afternoon sun beamed through the cracked-open window.
I closed my eyes, and a stretch of sepia-toned memories unfurled.
Mikey’s seventh birthday. Hot August air, melting ice cream cake, and everyone singing. Our park. Our grandparents. Mikey disappearing into the end of our street on a brand-new bicycle, Tyler by his side.
A long weekend at the Jersey Shore. My dad’s sister had rented a place, but there weren’t enough rooms for everyone, so the three of us were forced to share. Mikey made me sleep on the closet floor and said if I told my parents, he’d rip off my favorite doll’s head.
A family trip to Cooperstown. Me, smooshed in the back seat between Mikey and Tyler—the two of them about to start high school. Me, trying not to move, trying not to breathe, trying not to let my knee brush Tyler’s, trying to anticipate every sharp turn and speed bump, lest my skin learn his for everyone else to see.
I opened my eyes, let out a short, sharp cry, and stood from the floor. That same speckled carpet, soft and strange beneath my feet. And then, as I walked to the window, put my hand to the glass,and wondered how different my life might be if, when I’d looked outside, I’d seen a driveway instead of Tyler’s bedroom, I suddenly understood. Every single memory I had of Mikey was caught up in anger, in jealousy.
Was it too late to change that now? Could I go back in time and love Mikey now? Could I rifle through the Polaroids of those block parties, bubble baths, and baseball games in my mind and find anything that was only ours? Anything that looked at all like love? Could I find—if I tore this place apart, if I scoured the very top shelf of my mind—something about my brother that was mine to miss?
Could I make peace with the truth? That I might come up empty-handed? That we were never close? That we never got the chance? Could I forgive myself for a stupid crush? For acting my age? For not knowing this would be my only shot at having a brother? For being a little girl hopelessly in love with the boy next door? For cursing every last thing that got in our way?
I was a child.
We were kids.
We were all just kids.
I collapsed against the wall and began to cry. At first, softly. And then, in torrents. Sobs and gasps and heaves and shakes. Oh, this was it. This was grief, unbridled. This was what had hardened my mother, anesthetized my father, and sent Tyler running into anyone else’s arms. And all this time, they’d been alone in it, trying not to drown, and I’d hated them for not building sandcastles with me on the shore.
I’d hated my brother, and I’d hated my parents, and I’d hated their grief because, for me, it was always Tyler. It was always Tyler,and it was always the rest of the world keeping me from him. And now, everyone gone, I understood.
All they’d done was love my brother. They were just humans with too much love to give and nowhere on this planet to put it. And maybe, all these years, I’d been running from that grief too. Running from the fact that, maybe, I didn’t want to say goodbye to my brother because when I did, I’d be forced to admit he was a stranger I never really knew.
I took a deep breath and turned to Ingrid.
“Will you tell me about him?”
“Mikey?” She clutched her fingers into the carpet, and tears streamed down her face.
I nodded.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
83
Tyler
August, Eight Years Ago
Long Island
Mikey died on a Friday. News traveled quickly. This was in part because he was still a teenager—because his mother was still sending care packages to his treatment centers, still showing up unannounced, trying to talk sense into a boy who was actually a man with a disease as real as cancer.
You can’t help but get a tumor. You can’t help but get high. This, at least, was what Arthur would tell me four years later.
It didn’t matter where they found him, how they found him. If I told you, if I set the scene, if I described the motel or the alley or the bathroom, would it change the way this story played out in your mind?
