The Kindness of Strangers (53 page)

There’d been the trial for Jordan’s father. He and all the other adults in the pornography ring were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Jordan didn’t have to testify at the trial. He never went, he never watched, and, as far as Danny knew, he had never read about it. Danny remembered the simple, matter-of-fact way Jordan had nodded when Mom told him the trial was over and that his father was going to prison in Lucasville.

Jordan had nodded in that same matter-of-fact way about five years ago when Mom and Bobby told him that his father had been killed in a prison fight. Jordan didn’t go to his father’s funeral. Danny wondered if anyone had. He knew for a fact—because he’d asked Jordan outright—that Mark Kendrick had never tried to contact Jordan. Ever. There had never been a phone call, a letter, or an e-mail in either direction.

“I’ve got nothing to say to him,” Jordan had said to Danny, when Danny asked if he ever wanted to see his father. “Some things that pass between people . . . you know . . . make words impossible.”

Danny looked at Jordan now. Twenty-three years old and leaning on his elbows, shoulder to shoulder with Mom. He looked so at home.

The back door clacked open, and Deborah Ann entered, the woman who would become Danny’s sister-in-law within the hour. He checked his watch. Within the
half
hour.

“What are you all doing?” she asked. But she wasn’t angry or worried. Only curious. Probably only worried about missing any fun.

“Finishing the cake,” Nate told her.

“The cake isn’t
done
?” She put her hands on her hips in mock disapproval but moved immediately to the kitchen island. She rested one hand on Mom’s back and dipped one finger of the other hand in the frosting, not caring at all about her wedding dress. Danny loved the way Nate smiled at her, loved how happy this woman made his brother. “Oh, my,” she said as she tasted the frosting. “That is amazing.”

“We should have made it yesterday,” Danny said. “That way the preserves could have really invaded the chocolate.”

Mom laughed at this. “Like the cake would have survived overnight, with you all in the house!”

Jordan checked his watch. “Shouldn’t we hurry?” he asked. He alone looked nervous. Danny knew that Jordan despised any kind of conflict or deviation from a plan. They’d talked about it a lot, in all the therapy they’d had together over the years. Danny always teased Jordan that he couldn’t even recommend a movie without feeling guilty if the person didn’t end up liking it.

“Don’t worry,” Deborah told him. “We can be late. I mean, they can’t start without
us
. I just wanted to make sure Nate wasn’t chickening out.”

Everyone laughed, even Jordan. Even if Nate
did
chicken out, which Danny couldn’t imagine, the family would beg Deborah to stay. She was one of them already.

Danny moved to the stove to heat water to thin the frosting, and Deborah Ann took his spot at the island.

Jordan was different with Deborah. Danny liked to watch Jordan and Deborah together, because it was like seeing a new Jordan. Danny believed that Jordan saw himself differently when he was around her. Even from the early days of Nate’s dating her.

Jordan and Danny met Deborah on their first Thanksgiving home from their freshman year of college. Nate had been seeing her for nearly a year by then and was finally bringing her home to meet the family. At one point the four of them ended up in the kitchen without Mom, and Nate had been ruthlessly teasing Danny because Mom had told Nate that she found condoms in Danny’s laundry. It had all been amiable and comfortable. Danny had been pissed at Mom for telling Nate but not at all embarrassed. They’d gotten raunchy, teasing about bedrooms in the house and where everyone would sleep, and Danny remembered feeling like they were grown-ups. And with no hint of a blush, no hesitation, no nothing, Deborah had turned to Jordan and asked, “So are
you
a virgin?”

Silence crashed down on the steamy kitchen. Jordan didn’t blush either. Not anymore. But he did a double take and spread his arms in disbelief. “Hello?” Jordan said. “Are you forgetting something?”

But Deborah only looked confused. She turned to Nate, eyes wide. “What?” she asked.

And Danny watched Jordan realize
she didn’t know.
She knew he was adopted. But Nate told them later he didn’t plan to tell her the whole story until Jordan felt like telling it himself.

Jordan felt like telling her right then. Danny felt something akin to awe as Jordan stated—quietly, kindly almost—“I was sexually abused as a kid. I haven’t been a virgin since I was like . . . seven?”

Deborah blinked and put a hand to her throat. “Oh, God. I’m sorry.”

Jordan shrugged.

And what happened in the next moment made Danny know
right then
that Deborah was a keeper. She returned to the playful mood of minutes before and said, with a teasing lilt, “So what about
now
? In your new life?”

And Jordan laughed—really, truly laughed, pleasant surprise twinkling in his eyes—and said simply, “I don’t think you get that back.”

“Well, you
should,
” she said. Danny would never forget the way she said it. It was so sincere. But she kept it from being too corny by picking up the chocolate-pecan pie Danny had made and carrying it out to the table.

That was the Thanksgiving they thought Mom was going to tell them she was marrying Bobby. But all she announced was that they were going on vacation together the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Danny thought they’d definitely get married while they were in Hawaii. But so far they hadn’t. Danny wasn’t sure why. They’d waited until Jordan and Danny were in college before they even stayed overnight with each other. Now Bobby lived here in the house. Danny liked that. Bobby was a good guy, and Danny didn’t want Mom to be alone.

Danny thought Deborah was allowed to ask Jordan things other people couldn’t, because she was one of the only people in the family who had no other version of the story. Jordan got to form the story for her.

“Do you know why your mother wanted to be a doctor?” she asked Jordan once.

Danny had flinched. But Jordan looked sad. “I don’t know. I really don’t. Her dad was a doctor.”

“So maybe it’s like Nate wanting to be a doctor because his father was.” Nate was now the orthopedic doctor for the Detroit Red Wings. Deborah was their neurologist. The team called them the carpenter and the electrician.

“Maybe,” Jordan said.

“You both come from doctors,” Deborah said.

And Jordan turned up the corners of his mouth, the way he did when he didn’t really buy something. Danny could almost see the vibes come off him, saying,
I don’t.
Because Jordan sometimes wanted to know everything about his mother, to hang on to her memory, and other times seemed to deliberately choose things that made him seem unlike her. For a while, in high school, he even dyed his hair.

Danny didn’t tell Jordan’s story. Even when he wished he could. The story belonged to Jordan. Danny knew he was a part of it, and it was definitely a part of him, but it wasn’t his place to tell it. Like at college, when Jordan’s girlfriend talked to Danny about him. Jordan and Danny ended up rooming together at college. And Jordan started dating this girl. Danny really liked her. Mom and Nate met her once. Kristi. Really gorgeous, petite girl, shorter than Jordan, even. Smart and funny. Athletic. A dancer. Jordan talked about her constantly. He went to see the same dance recital three nights in a row. Danny went once. And Danny knew that Jordan
must
be crazy about this girl, because the concert was terrible.

Jordan and Kristi watched movies in the lounge, they went jogging on the bike path, they went to dinner. Danny saw them once downtown holding hands and called Nate
right then
to tell him, “You will not believe this.”

But then one day, when Jordan was at his job in the library, Danny left the dorm to go to class, and there was Kristi waiting for him. She talked him into going to a coffeehouse, bought him a mocha, and said, “You have to tell me: What is going on?”

Danny honestly didn’t know. So Kristi told him. She’d dubbed Jordan the “ice prince” to her girlfriends because she couldn’t get him to have sex with her no matter what she did. And she’d tried everything. She was at her wits’ end. “Is something wrong with him? Is he not into me?”

Danny felt so bad, looking at this pretty girl. “Ask
him,
” he told her.

“I
have,
” she said. Tears glittered in her eyes. There was nothing Danny could tell her. He wished he could tell her to go slow, to just wait, to be patient, to be really careful, to back off—but he couldn’t say any of those things without implying a reason, without opening a door that Jordan obviously had kept shut. All those years in therapy had taught Danny that he couldn’t open the door for Jordan.

And Kristi had asked, “Is he gay?”

Danny had wanted to laugh out loud. He thought about telling her, “No, that’s
me,
” but he didn’t tell her that either.

Jordan and Kristi broke up about a week later. Jordan was blue, he moped around the room, and Danny took him out for beers, but they didn’t really talk about it. Danny and Jordan didn’t have long talks like Jordan did with Nate and Mom. But he and Jordan could hang out for hours, sitting on the Front Room wall, watching people, and Jordan would say something like, “This time was better. I got closer.” And Danny would know exactly what he meant. It was like they’d been talking for hours.

Every now and then there’d be some comment, some weird thing that came up and made something pass between them. And Danny and Jordan just looked at each other, like they did in that gym class all that time ago. This look that said,
I know.

Like this time a bunch of the guys were drinking and Jordan was kind of tipsy—which didn’t happen very often; he told a therapist that he didn’t like to lose control of himself, which was funny, because then for a while he got drunk a lot and always joked, “This is part of my therapy,” to rationalize it. When he was drunk, he spelled a lot. For no reason, just bizarre words. Like, he and Danny would be walking down Court Street and he’d narrate stuff they saw, saying, “That tall girl is wearing chartreuse stockings. C-h-a-r-t-r-e-u-s-e.” It got to where the guys would just ask him to spell stuff because it was funny. Anyway, the guys were bragging about how many women they’d slept with. There was some poster in the bar bathroom about how when you slept with someone, you were sleeping with all of their partners, too. Danny wasn’t even thinking about Jordan, but the whole time Jordan just sort of fidgeted with the quarters on the table, until Charlie turned to him and said, “Okay, shy one. Fess up. How many?” Everyone laughed, and someone said, “I bet zero.”

Danny remembered how Jordan raised his eyebrows in this funny way that said, “Oh, you think so?” And everyone kept teasing him, trying to guess. And he got this faraway look in his eye and moved his mouth like he was counting, and finally said, “Thirteen . . . I think. Maybe twelve, but I’m pretty sure it’s thirteen.” And everyone hooted and hollered and then got quiet. They wanted to think he was kidding, but Jordan wasn’t like that. And when they pestered him, he stuck by it, even turning to Danny to back him up. Jordan had this little glint in his eye, and Danny didn’t know how to take it. It kind of bonded them, but it was also weird. Jordan told the absolute truth without revealing a hint of the reality.

And once, only once, Jordan got plastered. Really plastered. He vowed never again, and Danny believed he meant it. But that one time he was really plastered, he told everyone on their hall that he’d been a child porn star.

Danny even had to tell Mom that later. Sometimes just among their family, someone would bring that up. When they did, Jordan would cover his face and groan. They’d all laugh.

“A
child
porn star?” the guys had asked. “You can’t do that. Isn’t it against the law?”

“Yes,” Jordan said solemnly. “It is. My parents went to jail.”

And everyone looked at Danny and said, “B-but I thought you were . . . ?”

Danny nodded. “He’s adopted,” Danny said apologetically.

“But . . .”

There was a year where Jordan told everyone a different story about his parents. Sometimes he made up utter bullshit, but sometimes he touched on parts of the truth. His “family of origin,” he called them, had been “mentally ill and unable to care for him.” Sometimes he ventured into, “They were abusive, and I was removed from them.” Sometimes he was flippant—“They were crazy”—and sometimes he shrugged and said, “I never knew them.”

When he wanted to change the subject, he’d say, “I was raised by freaks—and aren’t we all, really?”

And Danny thought,
Yeah, sure they were.
Everyone thinks their parents are freaky, but Danny’s were safe, kind freaks, and for that he was eternally grateful.

And he was always really happy when Jordan called Courtney Kendrick his “first mother,” because he liked what it said about Mom. Jordan usually didn’t call Danny’s mom “Mom” to her face, although Danny had seen him write it in cards and e-mails (yes, okay, he sometimes read Jordan’s e-mails when they were roomies. He was sure Jordan read his, too). But Jordan would tell the guys on the hall, “Our mom sent some cookies,” or “Our mom is coming this weekend. Can you get us a table at Seven Sauces?”