Ask Him Why (15 page)

I might be embellishing as a result of the years, but I don’t think so: I really think the breakfast was magic.

It was huge. Three small, perfectly poached eggs all crowded onto a single piece of whole-wheat toast, four strips of bacon, a mountain of crispy fried potatoes and onions. I thought I’d never eat it all, but the more I ate, the more I couldn’t imagine stopping. It felt as though I’d been a dried husk, about to blow away in the wind, and now I was forming an anchor with the earth—and furthermore, I felt like the earth would never hurt me, and I’d be safe.

Hamish MacCallum seemed satisfied to eat in silence if need be, but I was still full of questions, and the walls that normally held my inner thoughts in check were crumbling fast.

“Why didn’t we know about you?”

He shrugged. “I would’ve thought your parents would have told you where he was all summer, but I can’t speak for anybody else. You’ll have to ask
them
about that.”

“What do you think about what happened?”

“You mean over in Baghdad?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t go by what I
think
about things like that. What it was to Joe is what it was. My impression of events is irrelevant. I’ve never even been to the Middle East, and I’ve never fought in a war.”

I remember desperately wishing everybody in the world had taken that attitude, but I couldn’t bring myself to say so. It was too much of a tragedy that they hadn’t, and I wasn’t ready to drag it out onto the table just as I was beginning to feel better.

“So have you talked to him about it?”

“I have, yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He said what he wanted me to hear, and maybe not what he wanted anybody else to hear. And I could be wrong about that, but I always err on the side of not repeating what’s been told to me. You’re his sister. Ask him. He’ll tell you what you need to know.”

“Not really,” I said. “He won’t talk to us now.”

“I’ll be darned,” he said, his eyes coming up to mine. It was the first time I’d seen him look even remotely surprised.

“Aubrey’s been writing to him, but he won’t write back, and we were going to go and visit him, but he said he wouldn’t see any visitors. Not even us.”

“Seems unlike him,” he said. “But still, he was home for a short spell. You must have asked him what happened.”

“I did. He just said it wasn’t anything very cut-and-dried, but that I was about to watch people try to make it that way. To make it very simple.”

“Amen to that,” he said.

“You don’t think it’s simple?”

“Nothing in this life is simple,” he said. “And all the troubles o’ the world come in because people can’t abide that. They have to try to make things black and white, but nothing ever will be. It’s where all the bad stuff gets its start.”

“
All
the bad stuff?”

“Well. Maybe not hurricanes and droughts. There’s the trouble people make by trying to shape the world to suit them and failing, and then everything else I’d say is more weather related.”

Chapter Twelve: Aubrey

“There’s something I want to do while we’re waiting,” I said to Aunt Sheila.

I’d moved to the front seat. Because it was weird after Ruth left. Like Aunt Sheila was my chauffeur. In that car, yet. And because I was sick of Ruth always calling shotgun. Well. Not even calling it. Just getting it. Like it was never up for grabs in the first place.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“Are you willing to drive us back to that last big town we went through?”

“I was already thinking about it. I’m getting hungry.”

She turned the ignition key. That tiny, noisy engine jumped back to life.

“Okay,” I said. “Good. Now we just have to figure out if they have a pet store.”

Aunt Sheila just sat a minute, looking through the windshield.

Then she said, “You don’t even have a pet.”

“I’m about to have pets, though.”

“Pets? Plural? And you think you’re going to try them out at my house? I don’t think so, kiddo.”

“It’s just fish.”

“Oh. Fish. What kind of fish?”

“Not sure. Any kind, I guess. Maybe just goldfish. I don’t want to have to set up the whole tank thing at your house. Just something that can live in a little bowl. You know. Easy. No trouble.”

Aunt Sheila sighed. “Well, they’re quiet, they don’t poop on the floor, and they don’t shed, so let’s go.”

She said, “I really think you should eat the rest of your sandwich before your appointment.”

I said, “I’m not hungry, though.”

I didn’t want to eat. I just wanted to sit there in the front seat and stare at my fish. There were five of them. In a plastic bag full of water. They were goldfish, but not the plain kind. The kind with the fancy long fins and tails.

We were back at the bottom of the big hill in front of Hamish MacCallum’s house. And it bothered me a lot that it had been nearly two hours and Ruth still wasn’t coming out. Like she’d found something in there. Which I’d told her she wouldn’t. And it felt important that I be right.

I felt like I was losing.

Aunt Sheila held the open takeout container under my nose, and I smelled the bacon in the BLT. Normally smelling bacon made me hungry. This time, nothing. No reaction. I looked down at the sandwich. Only because I thought I was supposed to. It was only missing three bites.

“Maybe later,” I said.

“You can still go in there, you know.”

“Not you, too!”

“He’s obviously willing to talk to Ruth, or she wouldn’t have been gone so long.”

“It’s almost time for my appointment.”

“You have nearly twenty minutes.”

“I’m not going in. Period. I wish everybody would just get that.”

Aunt Sheila sighed. But that’s all she did. She didn’t add the insult of any words.

I sat on the dirt with my knees at the edge of the cliff, my lower legs hanging over. Not
the
cliff. It wasn’t super-high like up at the house. But it was a bluff over the ocean. Forty or fifty feet, maybe. And there was a horseshoe of beach under my dangling feet.

Only one side had trees, but they stood between me and the sun. If I leaned just right, I could see a starburst of sun in between branches. It radiated. While I dialed, I held the bag of fish up in front of it. To see them in a shinier setting.

“Luanne,” I said when she answered. “You’ll never guess what I’m doing.”

“Okay,” she said. “You’re right; I probably won’t. So go ahead and tell me.”

“I’m sitting on a little cliff over the ocean, and I have fish to look at.”

“You can look at the ocean and see the fish? Are you in Tahiti or something?”

“No. It’s two different things. The fish are not in the ocean. They’re in a plastic bag in my lap.”

“Oh. That kind of fish. I thought you meant live fish.”

“I do mean live fish. They’re in a plastic bag of water. They’re goldfish. I have five of them. Aunt Sheila took me to a pet store to buy them. I thought it would be better to talk to you if I had fish. I remembered all the times I came in to see you. And I always had your fish. And I thought the fish were important. They gave me someplace to look. I think that helps me.”

“That’s a good thing to know about yourself,” she said. “So you’re at your Aunt Sheila’s house?”

“No. I told you. I’m on a bluff looking at the ocean.”

“Right. But your aunt lives near the ocean, doesn’t she?”

“I’m not there, though. We took a little road trip.”

“Where are you?”

I clenched my jaw. Swallowed. I could feel my leg muscles tighten up. I looked up at the old green house. Then I looked at the fish. They didn’t help. Not enough, anyway.

I didn’t want to answer the question. But I’d backed myself into this corner. I couldn’t just stay there for the rest of my life.

“My
stupid
sister . . . had this
stupid
idea. She wanted to meet that guy.”

“What guy?”

“You know.”

“Aubrey,” she said. And my name was a mild warning, the way she said it. And I accepted that warning. “If I ever know the answer to a question already, I won’t ask it.”

“That guy you asked me about. Who Joseph was close to but we didn’t even know about it.”

“That’s where you are? You went to see Hamish MacCallum?”

“Ruth did.”

“And you found him.”

“She did. Yeah.”

“And she’s in his house? Talking to him?”

“Well, she must be. She’s been gone for hours.”

“And you’re sitting outside talking to
me
? Aubrey. Go in. Talk to him. Learn everything you can. I’ll make another space for you at the end of the day.”

I was silent for a time. A longish time. I wanted to say,
Not you, too, Luanne
. But I didn’t talk that way to her.

“Aubrey?” she said after a time.

“I’m here.”

I squinted my eyes and watched sea-gulls circling over the ocean. There were little dots of black birds, too. Hundreds of them. But not circling. They were sitting on the water. Bobbing there. Must have been something good to eat under that gray-green surface.

“Why aren’t you going in?” she asked at last.

“Because I don’t want to.”

“I would think you’d love to talk to someone who knew your brother so well.”

“Well, you would be wrong, Luanne. I don’t want to talk about Joseph. I don’t want to hear about Joseph. I don’t want to think about Joseph. I wish he didn’t exist. So in my head, he just doesn’t. I hate Joseph.”

“Okay,” she said. “I obviously missed something. So fill me in.”

“He got all three of my letters. He just didn’t bother to write back. And we can’t go see him. Because he won’t see us. Aunt Sheila asked. And he said no. No visitors. Not even me.”

A pause. Maybe she was taking that in. Maybe she was shocked and hurt and appalled, too. Or maybe she was just waiting to see if I was done.

“I can understand how that would upset you. But he may have a good reason.”

“Wrong!” I said, and I was raising my voice now. Raising my voice to Luanne, and I didn’t stop. And I didn’t care. “Wrong! He
doesn’t
have a good reason, because there
is
no good reason!”

“He might be ashamed to be seen that way. In custody.”

“Not a good reason. I’m his brother. He should see me.”

“You said your dad forbade you to get in touch with him. Maybe he insisted Joseph not see you or contact you.”

“Don’t care,” I said. “He’s done a million things my dad didn’t want him to do. I’m his brother. I thought he loved me. There’s no excuse.”

“I still think you should go into this MacCallum guy’s house. See what he has to say.”

“I don’t care what he has to say.”

“But it might help you settle some of these feelings. It might make you feel better.”

“I don’t
want
to feel better!” I shouted. “I want to be
mad
!”

Another long silence on the line. I thought maybe it was over for me and Luanne. Maybe she’d just stamp my record with a big red “rejected.” Tell my parents she tried, but there’s no hope for me.

I held the goldfish up into a flicker of sunlight. Watched them swim circles around each other in that tiny space.

Then I wondered why I was doing that. If I didn’t want to feel better.

“Here’s the thing,” she said. “All the work we’re doing relies on the assumption that you want to feel better. On the other hand, I talked to you right before you left, and you didn’t know any of these things about Joseph. You thought you were on your way to see him. So I know all this garbage got dumped on you pretty recently. And sometimes we need time to process things. Sometimes we need to sit in them for a while before we’re ready to get up and get out. So I’m going to just let that statement of yours ride for now. But in the long run, you’re seeing me because you want to help yourself. Otherwise it’s not a very good use of time for either one of us. Are we agreed on that?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said. “I’m staring at the goldfish. And that’s what I do to feel better. So I must want to feel better. Some part of me must. I think I want to feel better without talking about Joseph, though. I don’t want any more Joseph in my life. I don’t even want to hear Joseph’s name. I hate Joseph.”

“Hmm,” she said.

“‘Hmm’ what? Are you, like, analyzing everything?”

“Aubrey, I think ‘analyzing everything’ is why your parents pay me the big bucks. I couldn’t help noticing that you said his name four times. At almost exactly the same time you told me you never want to hear his name again.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “Not everything means something.”

“I have a handicap,” she said, “in the way I look at the world. I’m a psychologist. So I’m cursed with thinking everything means something.”

A big wind came up and blew through the trees. The branches swayed. And the sunlight on the bag of fish sparkled on and off. Like a disco ball, but natural. One of the fish I already knew apart from the others. He was bigger and fatter. He had some silvery-white on him. A patch of it to offset the orange.

Just for a split second, I was going to name him Joseph. Then I erased the thought. Vehemently. If it had been a word on a piece of paper, I would have scratched through it so violently I would have shredded the page.

I was definitely not going to tell Luanne about that. She’d only think it meant something.

Hell, I barely told myself.

“Here’s the problem with trying to solve this situation by hating your brother,” she said. “Well, there are a number of them. It’s really nothing
but
problems. First of all, you think you’re taking back all the love you felt. But you’re really just flipping it over. You cared a great deal about him in a positive way. Now you care a great deal about him in a negative way. It’s not as different as you think. It still makes him a very important person in your world. It still puts a huge amount of your life energy into him, only in a destructive mode. The other problem is that I think you’re trying to punish him for hurting you. I think you’re trying to hurt him back by hating him. But he’s in a cell in Texas, and he doesn’t even know.”

“I’ll write him a letter and tell him I hate him.”