| [ [_prev chapter<< _] ] | [ [_index_] ] | [ [_>>next chapter_] ] |
Snow falls from a yellow-tinged sky. It drifts in loose flurries before the windshield, clinging to the glass only to be swiped away, moments later, by a creak of a wiper blade.
Chuck hums. “Well, you didn’t want to risk a taxi in this,” he answers, finally, after what’s felt like a minute of silence. He adjusts the temperature knob on the dashboard. “And Mom’s car needed the run.”
In all this? Jimmy thinks. The air from the heater blasts at his face, burning the tips of his ears and nose, his skin still icy from waiting in the pick-up bay outside O’Hare.
Chuck’s brow is set, his eyes fixed on the road. Brake lights some thirty feet ahead of them flash, and Chuck slows—gently, gently. His lips tighten.
“Yeah,” Jimmy says, and then again, “thank you.”
Chuck makes another humming noise.
The stereo in the car is off. It’s just Jimmy and Chuck and the quiet and the wheels over the snowy road—and the creak of the windscreen wipers on the old Volvo, the blades keeping slow time. Soon, they pass a train-yard, the highway curving over the tracks. Rows of rust-orange containers and empty train cars sit between the tangled lines. With their snow-capped tops they look like a model train-set in a department store window, shaken with fake powder.
A car overtakes them in the next lane. It lights up the snowfall in two cones of static, and snow rises from the back wheels, too—swirling plumes, like steam.
The dashboard heater blasts against Jimmy’s cheek, and he moves his head to the other side, facing his brother. He taps his knee then says, “So, how’s Rebecca been?”
Chuck nods. “Happy to be home.” He tightens his grip on the wheel as they brake again. “Even if she had to get on another plane right away and come here.”
Through the driver’s window behind Chuck, oncoming cars rush past, headlights flickering. “Yeah,” Jimmy says.
Approaching now, a gas station. The lights over the forecourt are vivid and blue, kicking off the snow so brightly that the surrounding area seems to glow, other-worldly. A neon-white oasis.
It all reminds Jimmy of the great snowstorms of his childhood, when the city would shut down for days, when the L tracks would freeze and roofs would cave in and Lake Michigan would come close to icing over. He remembers his father clearing snow piles away from the front door, remembers diving into wet banks with Marco, falling onto the packed snow with a bone-shaking shudder that ran down his arms to his fingertips.
Finally, they reach familiar streets, where the close old houses are lit up for Christmas. Fairy lights hang from the gutters, neat outlines of red and green. The fronts of the houses still look like the people who used to live there twenty years ago—the old woman with her square glasses, the bald man with his eaves of red hair.
Chuck pulls into the alley that runs between the backs of the houses, taking it slow over the snow-covered cement. The trees in the backyards here are strung with round golden lights, or twisted up in decorative baubles. They poke over the tall back fences and sheds—glimpses of shining festivity.
Their mother’s backyard is lit up, too. The old ash tree is home to a familiar tangle of silver lights, flashing off and on and flickering.
When the car stops, Jimmy opens the passenger door and hops out, crunching over to the garage door and then pulling it up. He waits as Chuck steers the old Volvo back to its resting place, back to the dusty and dim room it’s lived in for the last few years, nestled among the half-finished children of abandoned hobbies: canvases and paints, wood carvings, an old sewing machine.
Jimmy pulls the garage door back down. The car engine shuts off, and it’s silent and cold in the old place.
His footsteps sound enormous as he walks to the trunk and opens it. Drags out his duffel bag as Chuck exits the driver’s side.
Chuck’s breath comes with mist. “You go in,” he says, “say hi to Mom.” He lifts the white car cover from the top of an old washing machine.
“Yeah?” Jimmy says. He slings his bag over his shoulder with a grunt. “You don’t need a hand?”
Chuck glances over to Jimmy briefly then looks back down to the car. “Back door’s open.”
So Jimmy nods. The side-door out of the garage opens reluctantly. It’s still sticky after all this time, still hanging unevenly on its frame, but he wrenches it wide enough to pass through.
The backyard is white and empty, the path to the house marked by a set of barely visible footsteps—Chuck’s earlier, probably. Jimmy follows them, his own feet coming down above his brother’s.
He climbs the steps to the back porch, duffel bag swinging against the railing, and pauses on the top one. His breath swells before him in glowing steam. He can feel the cold on his lips.
He exhales and pushes open the back door.
The back door swings inward and with it comes the smell of cloves.
Jimmy kicks his boot soles into the coarse-haired doormat, loosing snow. He rattles his head, shaking out his hair, the thick threads whacking his temples. He takes off his coat and rattles that too, buttons and coins jangling inside and snow falling from the shoulders. He hangs it from a hook in the mudroom. Scratches the back of his head and sniffs.
The smell of cloves and weed. He leans in and sniffs his coat closer, then slides his hand into a front pocket, shoving the bag deeper, tucking the ends of the plastic inside.
“Jimmy?”
He runs a hand over his mouth, forefinger and thumb. Gives a small cough and wets his lips. “Yeah, Mom?” he says. “It’s me.”
Silence. He shuffles through the mudroom into the kitchen, flicking on the light, brightening the pale wooden cabinets, the hanging dish towels, the line of patterned wallpaper that runs above the countertops, pears and apples along twisting orange-green vines.
On the kitchen island: a bowl of clove-studded oranges, less than usual. They smell bright and spiced and earthy.
Jimmy opens the fridge. He stares in at the roast beef that’s taking up most of the space inside, a plastic-wrapped monster. Stares at the stacks of ancient jars and sauce bottles that are balanced around it. The dishes of potato salads and lasagnes and casseroles that are still in there, that are spilling from the freezer, too.
He closes the door. His fingers grip the fridge handle. The television is on in the living room, a barely audible hum of old movie stars talking in their nowhere accents. He doesn’t recognise them from here. He wets his lips.
Thirsty. Right. He opens the fridge again. Takes a jug of water from the door and gets a glass from the draining rack beside the sink. Downs the water in icy gulps that make his throat clench.
He fills the glass again then moves through into the living room. It’s empty. He’d thought his mother would be in here with the television, but she’s not. It’s dark, just the black and white and blue light spilling from the old set as Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan face away from each other in a restaurant.
He sees the remote on the coffee table and jams the power button. The image flickers then vanishes.
The room is quiet.
Jimmy looks to the empty armchair in the corner, the one with the big space in the air around it. Runs his finger and thumb over his lips again. Slumps down instead on the sofa closest to the TV.
The set is a dark thing, now. The ghost of old stars in the blackness. The hum of the cathode-ray tubes settling. The invisible static fuzz that clings to the surface like a blanket, like a protective layer. Like snow on a windscreen, waiting to be wiped away.
Somewhere, a door opens and closes.
He sinks into the sofa. Feels a tightening at the back of his skull, like a hand grabbing his head. A deliberate pressure. He sinks even deeper into the sofa. His arms and legs are finished for the day, finished for the year—finished, finished.
The screen is black and glowing and hard to look away from.
He drains the glass of water in his hand, ice cold grips on his throat.
He thinks he’s shrinking. Thinks his whole body is pulling in, becoming smaller, tightening and tightening on itself like a rubber band, forced inward and inward until it’s one thing, one ball of Jimmy about the size of the palm of his hand.
He looks at his hand.
“Jimmy?” a voice says. “Everything okay?”
Jimmy turns his head to face the sound. His brain swims in his skull, shifting through water.
Chuck flicks on the living room light and walks over, a robe belted around his waist. He sniffs. Sniffs again. “Jesus,” he says, “are you high?”
Jimmy grins. “Why, you want some?”
“Christ, Jimmy,” Chuck says. “What’ll Mom think?”
He turns his head again, swimmingly, and closes his eyes. “Mom doesn’t care.”
Chuck exhales, sharp and short through his nose, and then there’s silence.
But Jimmy doesn’t hear footsteps. Just the same dark silence of the living room, the same loud hollowness. And he misses the nowhere-accented arguments of the old movie now, misses the two people in the restaurant pretending not to be in love. He grunts after a while, prying his eyes open. “Where is Mom?”
A huff from Chuck, who’s still in the doorway. “It’s the middle of the night, she ought to be asleep.”
Jimmy narrows his eyes.
“She’s watching Kojak,” Chuck says. He exhales again through his nose.
Jimmy laughs softly. “‘Course she is.” The darkness of the TV seems to rise out of the set now, the perfect black square of no movie stars and no restaurants and no Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan talking about handbags and suitcases and cigarette lighters.
Finally, Chuck moves away, soft footsteps heading back toward the hall.
“Night, Chuck,” Jimmy says quietly.
The footsteps stop. Chuck’s voice comes eventually, gruff and slow: “Night. See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy says. He scratches his cheek, tipping his head back against the top of the sofa. Brushes his hair out of his eyes.
“Lights on or off?” Chuck asks.
Jimmy runs his fingers over his mouth. “Off,” he says, finally. “I’ll come up soon.”
“Good,” Chuck says. He flicks the switch. Darkness.
Darkness and nothing, just breathing, just footsteps heading into the hall and up the stairs and silence.
Jimmy falls further into the sofa. He can feel the warmth of the fabric through his shirt, seeping into the skin of his back, his spine, like warm water.
But the rest of his body is freezing. Like outside, where the cold presses with long fingers against the windows, and the snow falls, like it has for the last three winters, hard and heavy. People died in the storm last winter, people died out in the snow, and still the shelves of the store had to be stocked and the floor had to be swept and if he wasn’t going to get a real job then the least he could do was help out and man the register and do something about his hair—
Jimmy tightens his hand. There’s a dull pain across the base of his thumb, and he tilts his palm to look at the scab there, long and black and puckered in the darkness.
He runs a finger over the textured surface. Still sore. Almost healed.
It hasn’t been long enough for it to have scabbed over. It can’t have been. But there it is: scabbed, flaking, ready to fall away and leave pink new skin. Three weeks, over three weeks. He runs a finger over it again and then drops his hand.
Eventually, Jimmy gets his limbs to listen to him again, and he lifts himself back out of the sofa, climbing up through the air. He picks up his empty glass from the carpet and carries it to the sink, then shuffles upstairs, his hand trailing the bannister. As he climbs, he can hear the TV going in his parents’ room, gruff-voiced policemen with New York accents. They shout to each other as he moves down the hall.
He stops before the next door. The lights from the TV are flashing inside, and he can see the end of the bed. His mother’s slippered feet lie on top of the covers. Old and patchwork with worn circles on the bottom.
When he takes another step, she’s staring out at him. He can’t read the expression on her face. He moves inside the room, turning to look at the tiny television set.
A muscle car is racing down a city street. A loud screech of tires and men shouting. He watches for another minute or two, then says, “What’s happening?”
“Chasing a killer,” Ruth murmurs.
Jimmy nods. He watches the car swerve through the streets in a blur of shapes—the car itself dark and black, past orange-grey roads and past orange-grey buildings and every now and then there’s a glimpse of green, the killer’s car in the distance.
When the chase ends, when the men start talking again, he sees them only as beige spots of color on the dark screen, and he leans against the wall beside the bed, and he slides down it slowly, until his knees are up by his ears and the holes in his old jeans are right there and his fingertips are pressing into the loose old carpet.
The phantom hand on the back of his skull is loosening its grip now. It’s replaced by a real one, his mother’s, her palm light against his hair. She strokes the long threads back from his forehead, soft and tingling trails of pressure that stand his roots on end, that spread down inside him.
It’s like trickling water, like a sponge squeezed and wrung out above him.
Until it’s too much. He jerks his head away and she pulls her hand back. Jimmy pushes himself back to his feet with a groan, pressing a palm against the wall. It’s the one with the cut on the base of his thumb, and he feels the dull almost-pain of the scab. Draws his hand back and stands there, studying it again.
Three weeks and it’s healed already.
“Get some sleep,” his mother says.
Jimmy looks up. Nods.
“Night, honey,” she says, and she looks back to the television. The pale light of it throws shadows against her face. She looks old. Jimmy hadn’t noticed her getting older. She has deep lines around her mouth now. Beside her eyes. Probably in other subtle places he’s too familiar with to see even now.
He nods again, finally, and starts to shuffle away. Back over the worn carpet and out into the hallway and down to his own room, where he doesn’t turn on the light, where he just sits on the end of his bed with his hands curled against the edge of the bedspread, looking out the window.
Ice curls up the glass, tendrils of frost. The curtains are drawn in the house next door, but he can see the Christmas lights glowing through them, flashing red then green then red again. Hazy through the lace and fabric and glass.
He does it for old time’s sake, he guesses. Old time’s sake or tradition or ‘cause he’s not even really thinking much about it before he’s pulling on shoes and standing in front of the glass and wedging his fingers under the old wooden edge and then forcing the window up. He breathes in sharply, cold air stinging, and then he clambers out, wedging the side of his sneaker against the lip of metal drainpipe running sideways along the outer wall. Clamping the bottom of the window between his knees as he pauses there with his hands on the frame, with his eyes closed and the world spinning. He catches his breath in the cold, in the moments before his fingers freeze, then he twists the other leg around over the window.
He drops with a thump to the ground, landing in the loose way he’s supposed to, rolling onto the side of his hip. He lies in the snow for a moment, catching his breath, and then he stands. His limbs feel alive now, suddenly, feel ready to move, feel like they’re ahead of his brain instead of behind it, and he heads off through the backyard, leaving a trail of footsteps across the unmarked snow to the gate.
Jimmy cuts through a gap in the houses, a little accessway that’s only a bit wider than his shoulders, a dirt path between two tall wooden fences, and then he’s out on his street. He crosses it, the snow cover thick, ready for the plows to come through in the morning.
He didn’t grab a jacket and the cold is pressing tightly against his thin shirt, climbing up his spine and his neck as he moves faster along the sidewalk, from tree to tree, the streetlamps dropping yellow skirts that haze in the dark.
The house at the end of the block is always tidy. Neat lines of decorations hang from the eaves, and the well-mown yard is hidden under the snow but still obvious, still visible in the clean and sharp way the white covers it.
Jimmy leaves a line of footsteps up to the front door. Feels like he’s leaving a trail of steam from his breath behind him, too. He knocks, then folds his arms tightly, rocking on the balls of his feet. The projector is going inside, loud and blaring.
The door opens, and Marco stands in the threshold. He’s wearing matched pajamas, blue and grey checkered flannel. His eyes widen.
“Hey, man,” Jimmy says, grinning.
“Jeez, you okay, buddy?” Marco says, looking down at Jimmy’s jeans, all covered in snow from the fall from the window.
“Snuck out,” Jimmy says, “like old times.” He tightens his arms against his chest, then laughs, shuddering. “So, can I come in or what?”
“Oh—yeah, yeah man, c’mon,” Marco says, stepping back and beckoning Jimmy inside then closing the door. He gestures to the living room, where the 16mm projector flickers and enormous bowls of popcorn and chips are balanced between empty cans of beer. “We’re watchin’ The Mack.”
Marco’s uncle is leant back in a recliner, his glasses glimmering with the reflected light of the TV. As they enter, he glances over, his face barely changing.
“Hey, Uncle Stevie,” Jimmy says, holding up a hand.
Stevie nods his head. After a moment, he leans forward in his chair, groaning, and pulls a can of beer from a six pack, then straightens and holds it out to Jimmy with an oil-stained hand.
Jimmy takes it.
“How’s your mom, kid?” Stevie asks, scratching the side of his head. “She’s not alone, is she?”
Jimmy cracks open the beer before answering, a loud hiss. He shrugs. “Chuck’s with her. She’s okay.” Nods to Stevie’s hands. “Been working on it today, then?”
Stevie chuckles. “Almost got her running earlier, ya know,” he says. “We’ll be driving any week now, just you wait.” He clears his throat and runs a thumb over his moustache, then looks back to the screen. Max Julien is throwing cash in the air and spinning.
Jimmy lowers himself to the long sofa beside Marco, who smiles over to him. He folds his legs up beneath him and tugs a patterned blanket over his lap. Props his head on his palm, elbow on the arm of the sofa, and watches the movie, lets it wash over him in gunfire and music and laughter.
The cold beer gets warm in his other hand; he keeps forgetting to drink it.
Stevie chortles at the movie, rapid barks of sound, and Jimmy smiles. Marco gets up to make more popcorn, and Jimmy eats it from the bag, warm and buttery and greasy on his fingers and around his lips.
The rush of energy that had hit him outside is gone again in the warmth of the familiar place. He sinks deeper and deeper.
Eventually, the film ends. Stevie lets out a big sigh, then rises to his feet, palms on the arms of his recliner. He looks over to Jimmy and makes a face, a soft and almost nervous-looking thing that Jimmy’s been seeing too much recently, and then he sighs. “I’ll leave you boys alone,” he says.
He picks up a couple of beers then moves through the living room, laying a soft hand on Jimmy’s knee as he passes. It leaves a ghost behind it, a lingering warmth.
“So, what next?” Marco says, sitting forward, eyes glittering. “Stevie got in some new stuff, and we still gotta watch Midnight Express, right?—or, hey man, Marathon Man again?” He holds up his hand like he’s gripping a dental tool. “Is it safe? Is it safe? ”
Jimmy chuckles softly. He closes his eyes. “Yes, it’s safe,” he murmurs after a while. “It’s so safe you wouldn’t believe it.”
The sofa dips beside him, and he opens his eyes to see Marco sitting there with his legs crossed.
Jimmy shakes his head. “No, it’s not safe,” he says slowly, holding his hands up. “It’s very dangerous, be careful.”
But Marco doesn’t laugh or play along anymore. His face is unusually sombre. “Man,” he says, and his brows draw together, “maybe you should go home.” He swallows. “I mean—you can stay here if you want, but, y’know, your mom.”
Jimmy looks away. “She’s fine. She’s got Chuck.”
Marco is quiet. When he speaks again, his voice is fragile sounding. “Yeah, I know, man, but…”
Jimmy curls his hand into a loose fist. Thuds it down against his thigh.
“All right, all right,” Marco says. He stands again now, moving over to his uncle’s enormous 16mm collection. “D’you want, uh…comedy, maybe, Mad, Mad World? ”
Jimmy tightens his fist. He can feel the lightness coming off Marco in waves, now, the fake easy-going voice he’s heard too much over the last three weeks, the one he hates. But he doesn’t know if he prefers the intensely serious voice much either.
He guesses he just wishes Marco would stop talking completely, or finally figure out the right thing to say.
He thuds his fist down again. “Maybe I should call her.”
Marco turns, mouth open. “Who?”
Jimmy shrugs. “Claire.”
And Marco’s mouth slowly closes. He swallows. “Jimmy.”
He shakes his head. “Maybe she’s back home for the holidays, y’know? Maybe she’d wanna talk. It’s not like we didn’t make it official…or officially unofficial, I guess.”
“What about Patty?”
Jimmy sighs. “Nah, that’s done,” he mutters. “She dumped me.”
Marco blinks, tilting his head.
“Yeah, all those years hanging out, good to know we only had a couple weeks of it really in us, I guess,” Jimmy says. “No more questions now, huh?”
And Marco chuckles, back to the light fake-happy thing. “What, you didn’t treat her right?”
“Hey, man, I treated her plenty right,” Jimmy says, but his heart’s not in it. He knows Marco can tell. He tips his head back against the sofa again and imagines himself sinking into the old fabric again, swallowed up by the foam. Clodding his lungs.
Marco moves closer. “I’ll make up the foldout for ya, okay?” he says, and Jimmy squints at him as he bustles off into the laundry, as he comes back with sheets and a comforter.
“Thanks, man,” Jimmy murmurs. He finishes his warm beer and wets his lips, then closes his eyes, tucked up under the familiar-smelling checkered blanket, his cheek hot against his palm, or his palm hot against his cheek, one or the other or both, until he drifts off to sleep there on the sofa, drifts off to sleep to the sound of Marco shaking out sheets and tucking in blankets and the springs in the old foldout creaking and settling.
Jimmy steps in through the front door the next morning, kicking snow off his soles. The house smells like roast beef, warm and comforting, like always. Cary Grant is talking in the living room, like always—I’ll be with you in a minute, I’ll be with you in a minute! Jimmy slides off his sneakers. He walks on socked feet toward the sound of the television, scratching a stubbled cheek and yawning.
Chuck is sitting in the living room, his blond hair shining and perfectly parted, the newspaper in his hand and a black tea on the coffee table before him. He looks up at Jimmy and is still.
“Morning,” Jimmy says, walking inside.
Chuck stiffens, rising from the sofa and meeting Jimmy halfway. “Where were you?”
Jimmy shrugs. “Marco’s.”
Chuck inches closer, eyes deathly cold. “Mom was worried half to death.”
And Jimmy laughs. “No, she wasn’t.”
Chuck’s expression flickers. “For Christ’s sake, it’s Christmas.”
“So?” Jimmy says. He shrugs, arms loose and almost manic. “What does that matter?”
Chuck huffs, straightening the sleeves of one of his nice new shirts, one of the ones Jimmy knows he bought when he got his clerkship last year. The ones that hang on him perfectly like a second skin.
And Jimmy brushes past him, striding into the living room. Cary Grant is still shouting on the television, and Jimmy wants to turn off the damn classic movies channel for once , wants to find something different to watch, wants to see something that he doesn’t know backward and forward and over and over, always the same.
He stands there breathing, hands at his sides, fingernails pressing against the scab on his palm. He can hear the shattering of the glass.
And then his energy leaves him again, like water running down a drain, turning and twisting over on itself in black ribbons. He feels his limbs fall, and he sits on the close sofa again, his hands pressed tight into his pockets. Looks over to the armchair in the corner. Finds his lighter in his pocket and runs his thumb over the sparkwheel, textured surface brushing against his skin.
Ruth comes into the living room a little later. She doesn’t say anything—she just sits in her usual spot and watches the movie. Chuck carries his tea over to the dining table and perches at the end closest to them, marking up the newspaper with his pen. Making little humming noises every so often.
The tree in the corner of the living room flickers with lights, tucked in the corner beside the television. The old winking angel is perched on the top, her halo lopsided. Presents shine beneath the branches.
Jimmy closes his eyes.
“Oh, this is the good bit,” his mother says softly, after a time.
He opens them again, and she’s looking at him. He gives her a small smile.
“Come on, honey, watch the movie with me,” she says, turning to the TV, eyes sparkling with it.
He shrugs. “Not much of a Christmas movie, you know.”
“Well, it’s The Bishop’s Wife up next,” she says. “Just wait.”
He huffs, but he turns back to the television. Katharine Hepburn starts singing. “So d’you bribe them to get all these Cary Grant picks every year, or what?”
“Oh, honey, I think they just have good taste,” his mother says mildly.
Jimmy laughs now, quiet and raspy. He draws his feet up beneath him, cross legged, and watches the black and white stars flicker on the screen.
“Anyway, how's it all going, honey?” Ruth asks later, around the table. She hands a dish of lasagne to Jimmy and then turns back to Chuck, her eyebrows turned down. “I hope they’re treating you well.”
Chuck nods. “Well, it is tough. They always pick someone out of Georgetown and they expect the best, of course. But the Chancery experience is just invaluable.”
Jimmy serves himself some lasagne, then sets down the dish.
“…and I’ve spoken with some graduates who went right into practice and, well.” Chuck widens his eyes. “Some of them still barely know their heads from a hole in the ground when it comes to corporate litigation. I have to wonder what their firm partners are teaching them.”
Ruth makes a faint sound of agreement, then holds her hand out to accept the dish of potato salad. Jimmy forks a load of roast beef onto his plate, layering the slices of meat over everything else
“It’s not forever though, of course,” Chuck says.
Jimmy forks up a mouthful of lasagne. Chews slowly. Pokes at it on the plate. It’s hard to tell what’s in it. It looks like meat but it doesn’t taste like it. “Who gave us this one?” he asks, glancing at his mother.
Ruth frowns. “I think that was Judy from down the road.” She has a mouthful of hers, then shrugs. “Why?”
“Bit weird,” Jimmy mutters.
She chuckles, eyes flashing just a little. “I’ll let her know, shall I?”
Jimmy smiles. “Yeah, okay,” he says. He moves his fork again, then lowers it. “Roast beef’s good though, thanks, Mom.”
“Of course,” she says. “It was nothing.”
“Delicious,” Chuck murmurs.
They eat in silence for a while, or at least the others do, and Jimmy pushes his food around on his plate. He shifts the lasagne and potato salad back and forth, like if he moves it enough it’ll eventually taste normal again.
The stereo is going in the other room, old Bing Crosby, but at least he’s not singing about Christmas.
Jimmy stands with his hands in the kitchen sink, the water hot and soapy against his skin. He holds them there for a minute, then reaches for another dish, dunking it under the water, the food-stained interior flooding with bubbles. He scrubs at it slowly, around and around.
Sets the last dish in the rack. The water runs down the drain.
In the living room, the television is going again. Jimmy lingers at the edge of the kitchen, just out of sight. The fridge is humming beside him. The phone hangs on the wall nearby, its cord looped and tangled. The television seems to get even louder.
And Jimmy turns and goes to the mudroom instead, snagging his coat from the hook and then heading through and around to the staircase, walking upstairs on careful socked feet. He passes his parents’s room, passes his own room. Pushes through into the bathroom and sits on the closed toilet. Fishes in his coat pocket for the bag of weed and papers, hands quaking. The bathroom feels cold, the tiles freezing up through his socks.
His fingers shake as he tries to roll the joint, the paper trembling and fluttering, and he grits his teeth. Forces himself to be still. Keeps his hands steady. The cold from the tiles presses against his soles. He closes his eyes and tries to feel it grounding him, pulling him into the little ball.
The bathroom door swings inward, and he opens his eyes again.
Chuck’s there, his palm on the wood, his nice new shirt tucked in and his hair parted.
And Jimmy smiles, half-hearted. “Want in?”
Chuck steps into the bathroom. He holds out his hand. “Give me that.”
“What?” Jimmy says, and he laughs again. “Are you kidding?”
“No,” Chuck says, and he moves closer. “Give it to me.”
Jimmy turns his body away, dropping the half-rolled joint back into the bag, hands still shaking. But he stands and shoves the plastic bag into the pocket of his jeans. Brushes past Chuck and back out into the hallway, his footfalls heavy.
Chuck trails him. “Honestly, Jimmy, running off, getting high—”
“Yeah, so I’m gonna head to Marco’s, I’ll be back later—”
“You are not,” Chuck spits, and he grips Jimmy’s arm and tugs him into the nearest room—Chuck’s room. Chuck closes the door and lets go. “You’re going to stay here.”
Jimmy breathes heavily. The room is perfect—the bed’s made, even. Chuck woke up early on damn Christmas Day and made his bed. The shelves along the walls are filled with old textbooks and golden debating trophies.
Chuck stands amongst them, just as towering, just as statuesque as the sculpted figures.
So Jimmy backs up, his palms out. “Okay, man, I’ll stay,” he says. He turns now, running his fingertip over the top of a line of trophies. “I’ll stay here…” Touches the top of a little golden head.
“You need to step up, for once,” Chuck says after a while, his arms folded now. “You need to take care of her.”
Jimmy looks up. “Take care of her?”
Chuck breathes through his nose.
And Jimmy chills, ice running down from his stomach to the floor. He inhales, trying to catch his breath, because it’s somehow gone. He feels like he’s shrinking again, getting smaller and smaller, or maybe the room’s getting bigger, one or the other or both.
Chuck’s talking: “Jimmy, you need to actually listen—”
Jimmy shakes his head, and grits his teeth, and spits, “Stop it, Chuck.” He exhales, then shakes his head again. “Stop trying to be him.”
Chuck quietens finally, his mouth hanging open. His eyes are pale and shining.
“Stop trying to be him,” Jimmy says again, almost whispering now. His chest rises and falls quickly. “You’re nothing like him.”
The silence fills the room, thick and heavy. “Jimmy…” Chuck says, his hand reaching out.
And Jimmy takes a step back. “No—just stop,” he says, holding up his hands again. “Just stop, stop pretending, stop—” He inhales shakily, then looks away.
Chuck makes an impatient little noise. “Honestly, Jimmy,” he says, and his affected accent seems even stronger than usual, even less like the suburb he grew up in. “Mom doesn’t need this right now—”
Jimmy closes his eyes again, feeling the carpet through his feet—
“—deserves more than this, after everything she’s gone through, and the least you could do—”
Jimmy flicks his eyes open, and it’s enough to silence his brother. He swallows. “You want me to be here for her?” he says, finally, throwing the words into the space between them. “Right?”
Chuck is still, just waiting.
“Right,” Jimmy says brightly, waving his hands. “So where were you? Where were you, Chuck?” And he moves to the door now, shoving past his brother then turning back. He jabs a finger. “‘Cause I’ve been here the whole time, man. I was there in the hospital, I was there when he was awake, when he wasn’t, I was there, I was there, I was fucking there”—gasping, harsh—“so where were you?”
His brother stands, almost frozen to the spot, still looking at the place where Jimmy used to be.
“Oh right, you were at some fucking Chauncey Gardner—”
“Court of Chancery.”
And Jimmy throws out his hands. “Court of motherfucking Chancery. Congratulations.” He opens the door, then pauses with his palm on the handle. “You go down and talk to Mom,” he says softly. “You go down and take care of her like some animal that can’t look after itself. You go do that, Chuck, and I’m gonna go to Marco’s.” He breathes out. “I’ll come back when you’re fuckin’ gone again.”
And he throws the door open, slamming it against the wall. He strides through and out into the hallway, where he stops. Looks back through the open threshold. His brother stands inside, frozen with stiff shoulders, surrounded by old textbooks and golden debating trophies. Strung yellow lights droop from the gutter, curving along the top of the window, a hanging arch of gold that glimmers behind his brother’s head. There’s a stray hair at the nape of his neck, come loose from the neatly-combed rest of it.
The lights shine and dim and glow.
And Chuck just stands there like some eternal figure cast in bronze or marble, some fleeting god come to cast his eye over Jimmy and pass judgement, and Jimmy burns with it. Burns and burns and turns away, thudding down the stairs and throwing open the back door and standing out in the snow and the cold and the neon white.
He stops out there on the back porch, breathing hard. His heart quickens, thudding inside his chest, and it feels like panic. It feels like panic and he doesn’t know what to do about it. Doesn’t know how to stop it, doesn’t know how to make his body understand. He doesn’t understand. He’s still waiting for it all to change back.
He rests his hand on the cold weatherboard. The panic moves, a physical beat of the sensation, sliding beneath his skin.
He doesn’t understand how it’s possible. How something can just happen one day. How this can be the way of the world, and he just has to get over it.
He doesn’t understand what power can do that, what power can change things like this, can lift people from the places they’ve always been and never ever give them back.
The smoke scratches at the back of his throat.
Jimmy leans against the side of the house, his windbreaker zipped up tight. He coughs, pressing his fist to his mouth.
Last night brought more snow, and his and Chuck’s footsteps over the backyard are covered up again now. A pure sheet of white, like paper, ready to be written on again.
He takes another drag. He bought the smokes in the airport, a brand that tastes like afternoons and dark parking garages.
Inside, he can hear the muffled voices of his family, talking again now. He can hear Rebecca’s tentative laughter. Or maybe it’s Katharine Hepburn. Maybe it’s a Cary Grant movie on the television.
Because it’s always a Cary Grant movie on the television. The same old stars on the same old sets, telling the same old stories and poking at the same old wounds.
He drops the cigarette, snubbing it out in the snow.
Exhales in ghostly breath.
Then, like he always does, he turns around, and he goes back inside.
| [ [_prev chapter<< _] ] | [ [_index_] ] | [ [_>>next chapter_] ] |