Never Been Kissed (37 page)

It was a good skill to have.

Never more so than on the trip back to Bishop. It helped him get through repacking his bag and boarding a plane bound for Memphis. Like an automaton, he rented a car and crossed the bridge into Arkansas, drove through the late afternoon sunlight, following the smell of the river all the way home.

He took the second Masonville exit and without thought got to the hospital where Linda had given birth to Sean, and where she died years later, wasted and ravaged by cancer.

The visitor parking lot was in the back and he found the spot he liked in the far corner, under the maple. The engine died when he turned the key.

But he couldn’t get out of the car.

Come on,
he told himself,
get out of the car.

His hands were shaking. He turned them over to stare at the backs of them. The palms.

He remembered lying in the Afghanistan dust choking
on blood and blast residue. His hands shook then. It had been shock.

His hands were shaking now.

Calm it down. Calm it down.

But the deeper he breathed, the worse it got. There were shiny disks at the edge of his vision and those deep breaths couldn’t get enough air. He braced his hands against the steering wheel and stared up at the car’s gray fabric ceiling. There was a cigarette burn near the dome light.

He focused on it and fought passing out.

His heart rate was out of control, sweat dripped down his back, his armpits. He was worse than the new recruits on Parris Island.

The knock on his window nearly sent him right into the roof.

Outside his car stood Cora, wincing.
Sorry,
she mouthed.

He gave her what he thought was a smile, but he felt sick.

Carefully, so he wouldn’t fall at her feet, he got himself out of the car. His legs were jelly.

“Hey, Brody,” Cora said, in the subdued sad way of people facing huge grief with grace.

Oh shit,
he thought and his breathing sawed through his chest.
Oh God, he’s dying. Ed is dying.
It was all over Cora’s face, the weary dignity with which she looked at him.

“Brody?” Cora grabbed his arm. “You okay?”

He shook his head, words never one of his strong suits.

“Sean sent me out here to look for you.”

“He’s pissed.” It wasn’t a question. Of course he was pissed.

“He’s sad and scared,” Cora told him, walking with him across the parking lot. It was September and the
wind had a cool edge today. Cora was wearing only a pink cardigan sweater over her T-shirt and Brody slipped out of his coat to put it over her shoulders.

Cora stopped in her tracks, her head down.

“Cora?”

She shook her head, and when she looked up at him, tears filled her eyes. “You’re a good man, Brody. And you need to start acting like it. You hurt Sean any more than he’s already hurting and I swear to God …”

He pulled the coat tighter around her, arranging the hood so the wind didn’t smack it into the side of her face.

“You’re good for him,” he whispered.

“We’re good for each other,” she said.

Oh, how amazing that sounded. How powerful. That two people could be made into better versions of themselves just by virtue of being near the other. Better together than apart.

I had that.
He thought of Ashley’s lists and the feel of her body against his. The way she asked him twenty times a day what he thought.
I had that and I blew it.

“Come on,” Cora said and pulled him back into movement toward the very familiar front doors and the heartache inside.

Ed’s room was on the third floor, the pea green floor. Each floor had a different color. When Linda had Sean she was on the yellow floor. When she was dying of cancer, the blue.

Brody walked down the hallway, Cora’s stride matching his, their footsteps a lonely echo in the quiet hallway. Cora stopped in front of the half-shut door of room 112. Brody could hear Sean’s voice inside the room as he read Ed the sports page.

The ground shifted again, strange how it kept doing
that, and Brody put his hand against the wall so he wouldn’t go face-first into the floor.

“Have you slept since you left?” Cora asked. Inside the room Sean’s voice stopped like it had been cut with a knife.

Brody ignored the question and instead asked his own. The question that had been burning him since Ashley’s phone call.

“If I hadn’t left like that … would he …” He couldn’t say it.
Was this my fault?

Cora’s face folded for a moment, sympathy and grief making her melt, but then she pulled it all together somehow and looked at him with firm eyes and narrowed lips.

“That’s bullshit, Brody. You didn’t cause this heart attack. The doctors said it was only a matter of time—”

“But I—”

Suddenly Sean was there standing behind Cora, his hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t cause it, Brody. Believe it or not, you don’t have that kind of power.”

Brody ignored the hidden message in his brother’s words and just soaked him in for a second. It had been barely three days since he left. Not even. And yet he’d
missed
him.

All this time,
he thought,
all this time I’ve wasted.

Brody took a deep breath and put a hand to his chest as if he could keep his heart from beating right out of his rib cage.

He opened his mouth to say it, to tell his brother that he’d missed him, that he loved him, but the words were so late, he feared they were worthless.

“You look like shit,” Sean said.

Brody nodded. “Can I?” He pointed inside the door and Sean stepped closer to Brody, put his hand on his shoulder as if to hold him up, and maybe that’s what Brody needed. To be held up by his brother. Because it felt good.

“He looks bad,” Sean said. “But he’s okay. It was a small heart attack, but because of how weak he was, the situation with the meds really hurt him. Doctors say if we take care of him, he takes his meds right, he’ll recover. But he’s old, Brody. Weak.”

Brody nodded, unable to speak.

“He’s sleeping off and on, so I don’t know if he’ll wake up,” Sean said. “Don’t … don’t expect him to.”

After a long moment, Sean stepped back into the room and Brody followed.

He looks bad
didn’t cover it. Brody stumbled, his jelly legs unable to hold him up. Ed looked dead. Gray and thin. Ashen. Tubes everywhere. His body … oh God, he was so small. His rib cage barely lifted the sheet.

Sean was suddenly beside him, his arm over his shoulders.

“You need to sit,” Sean said and Brody nodded, slipping sideways into a chair beside the bed. The sports page was leaning against Ed’s legs and there was a dent in the blankets where Sean must have had his feet up.

“I’ll … ah … I’ll let you have a few minutes,” Sean said and gave him an awkward pat on the shoulder. He would have joined Cora lingering in the doorway but Brody grabbed his hand.

“Stay.” The word came out garbled, but he felt Sean tense.

“You want me to stay?”

“I want …” Brody licked his dry lips and forced himself to stay planted in this moment. To open himself up to all the things he couldn’t prevent or control or stop.

Caring or not caring wouldn’t stop his father from dying.

It didn’t stop the pain of Ashley not being there.

All of his efforts to keep the pain away had been for nothing.

He hurt. Everything hurt.

“I’ve wasted so much time,” he said. “I don’t want to waste any more.”

Sean and Cora shared some indecipherable look.

“I’ll go grab us some coffees,” Cora said and Sean kissed her as she left.

But then he walked around to the other side of the bed and sat down in another chair. Brody handed him the sports page and Sean took it, propped his feet up on the bed.

Brody sat there and shook. He just shook.

I want this,
he thought.
I want this and it will go away and it will be awful. It will hurt. But I want it anyway.

The pain he forecasted, the pain that was real and now, slid into him, but the pleasure was there, too. Pleasure that his brother was here. That his father was here and that there were still minutes and hours and days ahead of him to try and make up for all the minutes and hours and days that had been wasted.

Ashley was a burning thought in his head. The time he’d wasted with her, the moments he’d squandered. The love he’d rejected.

I want it. It might hurt, but I want that, too.

“The Saints suck,” Sean said, opening the paper. “That’s what I was reading about. Their sucky defense.”

“I’m sorry, Sean,” Brody said, staring at the frayed edge of his brother’s jeans.

You can do better,
he told himself.
You have to do better.

So he lifted his burning eyes to his brother’s wide ones and said: “I love you. Since you were born I’ve loved you and I never really knew how to do that. How to love someone without them going away. So I just tried to keep you safe. Tried to make sure that nothing happened to you because it would have … it would
have killed me. And then when you were a man and didn’t need me … I guess I didn’t know what to do. How to be a brother to you anymore. So I let it be about money and odd jobs around the bar. And I messed it up. A million times I messed it up. I was mean to you and all you ever wanted was to be my brother and I can’t believe …” He shook his head, his voice a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Sean was silent, his mouth agape. That Brody knew he’d done the right thing, saying the right thing took the sting out of foolishness.

“Those are the most words you’ve ever said to me,” Sean finally said. Brody shrugged, tried to smile, but he thought he might cry.

“I’m sorry, too,” Sean said. “All I’ve ever wanted was to have you around. To know where you were and if you were okay. I don’t need you to live here, but … I need to have you in my life. I deserve that.”

Brody nodded. He tried to swallow, but his throat was thick.

“I love you, Brody,” Sean said and Brody closed his eyes against the bitter sting of tears.

Ed’s fingers twitched on the yellow cotton blanket pulled up over his chest. There was a heart-rate monitor and an IV; it was awkward getting his own hand around Ed’s much smaller one. But Brody did it.

It’s okay to want more,
his father had said just a few weeks ago.

“I want everything you had,” Brody whispered to his father. The job that was satisfying. A wife he loved. Children. Community. He was tired of living cold and alone in an exile of his own making. “I want it all.”

“What are you doing?” Sean asked.

“Telling the old man he has to get better so I can go get Ashley.”

Sean blinked and then smiled, the spark coming back in his eyes. “What about the subpoena?”

“I haven’t gotten it yet. If I do … I guess we’ll handle it. Together.”

“Well, then we better get you out of here.” He snapped open the paper and winked at Brody. “Listen up, Dad. The Saints have traded Drew Brees—”

“We don’t need to give him another heart attack,” Brody said, stretching out in the chair, his hand still wrapped around his father’s.

“Good point,” Sean said. “You want to sing or something?”

“Sing? No … what … Who sings?”

“They do that in movies.”

“This isn’t a movie.”

“Clearly. What do you want to do?”

“I could teach you to play chess.”

“I’d rather eat my hat.”

“Fine. Tell me about Cora.”

“Not in front of Dad, Brody.”

“You’re a pervert.”

“I’m dating her to get to her coffee supplier.”

“I knew it,” Cora said, walking into the room, a tray of coffees in her hand. “I never should have trusted you.” She twisted one paper cup out and handed it to Sean with a kiss.

“I told you.” Dad’s rough voice turned all the heads his way.

“You’re awake.” Sean came to his feet. “How you feeling?”

“Better.” Ed’s eyes were wet and so, in fact, were Brody’s as his father squeezed his hand. “Told you it would work.”

“What would work?” Sean asked.

“Telling him I had a heart attack.”

Sean flopped back in his chair and Cora started laughing.

Beneath his hand, Brody felt his father laugh and he felt his own body grow—his capacity for pain, for pleasure, for happiness and grief expanded.

Now I just need Ashley.

“You look pale,” Patty said, assessing Ashley’s reflection in the mirror as hair and make-up did their best to turn the prodigal daughter into a Montgomery.

“Perhaps a little more blush,” Ashley said to the make-up artist with a smile.

“Are you feeling all right?” Patty asked, running a finger over her own eyebrows as if any stray hair had the audacity to stick out.

Her mother was not interested in all the ways she felt bad and there were far larger problems in the Montgomery family than her broken heart.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me Harrison was married?”

She was still in shock from the news. Her brother. Married. In some shotgun ceremony to a former model of all things.

Mother turned away, her lips pressed tight. Obviously Harrison’s marriage was a sore subject for her.

And I thought my life was dramatic!

“We thought he would have told you when he went to get you out of Arkansas.”

“Well, he didn’t. Who is she? Where did they meet? Does he love her?”

Mother lifted her hand, an old signal to be quiet.

“Those are all questions only your brother can answer.”

Patty sniffed and then sat down in the club chair next to the bar, her attention studiously out the window. Atlanta
was a city of lights out there. A kingdom for her brother.

And his wife?! She felt like she’d left Bishop and slipped down a rabbit hole.

“You’ve seen the speech?” Patty asked.

“Of course. Harrison’s staff is very thorough.” Ashley was not sure if she was reading the cues right, but Mom seemed—affronted. “Have you seen the speech?”

“I have not,” she said, picking a stray piece of fluff from the hem of her red suit. “Apparently, my input is no longer necessary.”