I looked at Jeremy and saw a tiny trickle of blood on his mouth. I must have elbowed him when we went down. We were both breathing hard, and he wouldn’t meet my eye. When I refused to answer, Dad turned to Jeremy.
“Somebody start talking.”
“It was nothing. We were messing around.” Jeremy shrugged.
I couldn’t see Dad’s face, but I doubted he bought that story. I wouldn’t have. So I was surprised when he dropped his arms and the line of questioning.
“This isn’t a great situation, for any of us. I know you guys are caught in the middle, but if you can just hang in there, we will get through it.”
“Get through it?” I asked, slowly shaking my head. “You left Mom. How exactly do you want us to get through that?”
Dad lowered his gaze, and my brother, still dabbing the bloody lip I’d given him, spoke to me in a tone that was the complete opposite of the hostile one he’d used with me earlier. “C’mon, Adam. We just got here. Can’t we just...” He trailed off, realizing, I hoped, that we couldn’t just anything. At least, I couldn’t.
“I don’t have a plan here. This isn’t what I wanted—it’s not what your mom wanted either,” Dad added when I started to rise from the bed. “It’s just the way it is for now. I’m...I’m working on it, okay?” He made a point of meeting and holding both Jeremy’s and my gazes, and I wanted to pretend that I didn’t notice the moisture in his eyes. “In the meantime, can we agree not to go no-holds-barred in the apartment anymore?”
“Sure, Dad. Sorry.” Jeremy clapped a hand on Dad’s arm in a gesture I was sure he thought made him seem grown-up.
“Adam?”
I was too busy staring at my pansy of a brother to answer. Before—before everything, Jeremy had been the one who clashed with Dad. He’d never rolled over, not even when it would have been the smart thing to do. It was like he’d enjoyed the tension, the way Dad would get riled up. But then everything went wrong. Dad eventually moved out, Mom broke almost worse than before, and Jeremy decided to stand with the wrong parent. He sided with the coward. Unlike my brother, I wasn’t going to smile and nod at Dad like I was fine with him abandoning Mom. She’d cried all morning, even as she was telling us how glad she was that we were going to see Dad. She was probably still crying, and my brother was apologizing to Dad. I felt the urge to bloody Jeremy’s mouth again.
“I’m going to take that as a yes.” Dad clapped both of us on the shoulder, then headed out of the room. “Dinner’s getting cold.”
Jeremy and I made the briefest eye contact before he followed Dad, and when I was alone, I let my stomach make the call and I joined them.
Dinner turned out to be takeout, some local place I’d never heard of, but it was hard to wreck a cheesesteak in Philly. I think between the three of us, we ate about eight of them. Even better, talking wasn’t an option until all that was left on the breakfast bar that we were crowded around was crumpled foil and empty bags.
Jeremy was the first to talk, complimenting Dad on finding a good take-out place already. I clenched my fist so I wouldn’t deck him.
Dad launched into a story about how he’d found the place and thought they were even better than our old place in Redding. Some good-natured arguing commenced, and every word caused the food in my stomach to turn into stone.
“We’ll let Adam be the tie vote,” Dad said. “Who makes the better cheesesteak? Mike’s, or are you with me and Sonny’s?”
I looked at Dad with his overly eager expression. He was desperate for this “normal” moment with his sons. A sign, I guessed, that the three of us could get through this. It didn’t even matter which place I picked. He just wanted us to be talking again. He wasn’t delusional enough to think that everything would be perfect from then on, or that his run-down apartment was where any of us would choose to be, but it was like our future hinged on this moment.
While Mom was more alone than she should ever have to be.
“I think they both taste like crap.” Then I jumped off my stool and disappeared into the room I’d be sleeping in every other weekend for the foreseeable future. After a minute, I pulled out my phone and listened to the two-year-old voice mail I’d saved, the last one my oldest brother, Greg, ever sent me.
“Adam, Adam, Adam.” His half-teasing voice filled my ear and made me smile, even as my chest tightened. “Why do you even have a phone? So, listen, I’m bringing another dog home and I haven’t found a home for Baloo, so obviously Mom and Dad can’t know. I need you to move Baloo to the other cage in the barn, the one with the blue dog bed. But watch his leg, because he’ll bite you if you pull his stitches. Maybe get Jeremy to help—” His voice grew quieter like he’d moved his mouth away from the phone. “You can? Thanks, man.” The volume returned to normal. “Never mind. Daniel’s gonna swing by and take care of Baloo. Tell Mom, okay? About Daniel, not the dog. Maybe if she’s fussing over him she won’t notice the chunk this new guy took out of my leg.” He laughed at something Daniel said. “Are you telling me you wouldn’t bite if a couple guys were trying to remove some barbwire that was embedded in your neck?” A low growl sounded, and Greg’s laugher faded. “All right, I gotta go, but I owe you, little bro.”
I had it memorized, but I replayed it two more times until my vision grew too blurry to read my phone.
The last thing I did was send a text to Mom: Heading to bed. Will call tomorrow. Love you.
Jolene
Shelly made a show of covering her mouth and nose when I reemerged from my bedroom. I didn’t bother pointing out that I’d showered. I thought my wet hair was enough of an indicator, but then again, this was the woman who, the day she’d moved in with my dad, had told me—with a straight face—that she wanted me to think of her like a sister. I’m sure I peed a little laughing, which hadn’t gone over well with my wannabe sis.
I decided not to bring up the fact that she’d opened my mail. I figured that one was on me for having something important sent here in the first place. But if I’d had the film program info sent to Mom’s house and she’d found it, she’d have assumed Dad and I were conspiring to lower her alimony by sending me away for the summer. I’d have suffered a lot more from that than I had on the balcony with Shelly. Mom would have cared too much, and I figured Dad wouldn’t care at all. That was my life in a nutshell.
Anyway, I had the info now, and there was at least a semi-decent chance that Shelly wouldn’t bring it up again. Besides, if I exhausted all my other options—and I would—and still had to go to Dad for the tuition, I’d be the one to do it, not Shelly. I’d sooner sleep with a rat in my bed.