“Oh, I’m great. Rebecca and the kids say hello. Connor and Jeff miss having you babysit them.”
Soon after Dad left, Rebecca became the center of our interacting universes. Dad quickly took on the role of stepfather to her two young boys. Tommy and I always wondered if he was redoing the last six years, putting place holders for son he’d lost.
“I have a job, Dad. I don’t live here anymore. I’m twenty-eight years old.” I pushed open the door to the bedroom.
Crocket was on his navy blue bed, the one Jacob had saved up his paper routine money to order from L.L. Bean the second Christmas after he had him, along with the embroidered stocking to match the rest of ours that hung in on the fireplace every December. I wondered if we would hang Crocket’s next winter next to Jacob’s or if she’d would use it to dust the windows like she did with dad’s stocking.
I crouched down next to him, running my hand along the tumor that had grown twice the size since the last time I’d come home to see him. His tail thudded gently against the wood floor and his eyes squinted open. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d come home for the weekend to walk him or slept at home to let him curl up on the end of my bed. He was dying, and I hadn’t been there for him at all. I’d gotten swept up in my own life, and I’d forgotten about Jacob’s dog. Now, it was too late.
***
“I think I hit a cat on my drive here.”
“Shut up, Tom. No, you didn’t.”
Tommy and I were sitting on the front porch of the bungalow with matching turquoise cups of coffee balanced on the sides of the old wooden swing. Mom always told us they’d bought the house twenty-eight years ago because she’d fallen in love with the porch swing. She’d hoped it would be a peaceful perch to watch the sun peak above the pines with her warm coffee in the morning and dad’s bare feet against the deck. Growing up, before catching the bus, I always found mom out there, in her light pink and yellow terrycloth robe and coffee, swaying slowing with the wind, sometimes humming with her eyes closed, a paperback and pen next to her on the swing. After Dad left, she started taking a glass of wine out there at night and listening to Amos Lee on CD through the open kitchen window.
“No, really. I am pretty sure I felt a thud under my tiers, and I’m guessing it was a cat. Or maybe a Shih Tzu or something. I checked my tires when I got here, but no guts, so maybe a bunny.”
“That’s really inappropriate, Tommy, especially because of why we’re all here.”
“You’re inappropriate.”
“Are you twelve?”
Tommy shrugged his shoulders and took another sip of his coffee. Since Jacob had died, Tommy had become extra inappropriate, making crazy comments whenever things got a little uncomfortable. Mom said he couldn’t handle his grief well, said he took after Dad, except instead of booze, it was inappropriate comments and misdirected humor.
Tommy got up from the swing, his burnt toes peeking out from beneath his ripped jeans and flip-flops. His hair had grown long, dark brown with streaks of blonde from the sun and freckles dotting the bridge of his nose. He had moved to California two years after Jacob died, when he graduated college. He started working for a startup company outside of Carmel and was living with a woman named Katie. I’d been to visit him once since he moved there and sat in their small one-bedroom apartment a mile from the beach. It was cozy, filled with fake driftwood painted baby blue and covered in beach quotes. There were pictures of her family on the walls, frames on tables. I’d looked around to find one of our family, maybe of Tommy and me at his graduation, or one of the three of us when we were kids, Jacob’s small frame in between ours. But we weren’t there, no familiar faces, just Tommy and Katie or Tommy and his college friends. We’d been left back on the East Coast.
I thought of my apartment, my studio in Beacon Hill, filled with photographs, most of them taken before 2009, when there were three kids to photograph, before the accident. But there was one, placed on bookcase, a picture from Tommy’s graduation, the two of us smiling, my head leaning against his chest, his arm wrapped around me and mine around him. I could remember that moment when Mom was taking our picture. Jacob’s absence was so shocking that I’d held onto Tommy for dear life, listening to the pounding of his heart, the smell of his aftershave, the melody of his laugh. It was one of my favorite pictures. It reminded me that we were still there, the two of us still breathing. I wished he’d placed it somewhere in his apartment, wished he’d thought it was important too.
He pulled his hand through his hair and then pulled a pack of Camels out of his back pocket, tapped the box once, flicked it open, and pulled a cigarette out with his front teeth. Years ago, I’d watched this same ritual and pitied my little brother, thought he was stupid for smoking, but now I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to lose him, too; he was so quick to anger now.