“You weren’t at school today,” my mother said.
“I was at the quarry.”
“Senior Skip Day is tradition, I know, but you’re back in school on Monday. That means homework, papers, final exams. No slacking because the end is near.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She forked a bite of salad, and that, too, was part of the dance. No mention of Robert or Jason or the war. I wasn’t sure where her mind went in the silence between questions, but guessed it was the future or some other bright place.
My father knew the dance as well: keep it simple and light and surface. “Have you thought more about a summer job?”
“They want to hire me at the marina.”
“Again?”
He was disappointed, but I liked the boats, the water, the smell of fuel. His frown deepened, but he couldn’t really argue. I’d be at college in the fall. That meant deferment. He smiled stiffly, and my mother sipped wine.
For me, though, the dance wasn’t working. “Did you know Jason is out of prison?”
The question fell like a bomb. My mother choked on her wine. My father said, “Son…”
“You should have told me.”
The anger came unexpectedly and suddenly, and its cause was unclear. How they managed my life? The things I’d felt as my brother fell? Only the emotion was certain, this unfamiliar anger.
“Who told you?” my mother asked.
“I saw him. We spoke.”
She dabbed a napkin at the corners of her mouth. “About me, I suppose?”
“We might have touched on that.”
She smoothed the napkin in her lap, and looked away.
“You knew, of course. Didn’t you? You knew that he was back.”
“We thought it best to keep the two of you apart.” Her gaze, that time, was direct and unapologetic. She sat calmly and straight, an elegant woman. “Shall we discuss the reasons?”
“Has anything changed since the last time we discussed reasons?”
“Not for me.”
I turned to my father. “Dad?”
“Give us a chance to talk with him first. Okay? After prison. After all this time. Give us a chance to feel him out. We don’t know his plans or why he’s back.”
“And when you know those things?”
“Then we’ll see where we are.”
I looked from one to the other. Nothing had changed. Nothing ever would. “May I be excused?”
My mother lifted her glass. “Do you have plans to see him again?”
“No,” I lied.
“Talk to him by phone?”
“If he has a number, I don’t know it.”
She studied me with eyes that were as cool and bright as my brother’s. “Are you still my good boy?”
“I try to be.”
“Do you love me?”
“Of course.”
“Are you angry?”
“Not anymore.”
Another sip. The same eyes. “Clear your dishes.”
* * *
I carried dishes to the kitchen, and took the back stairs to my room. Inside, I closed the door and tried to see the space as if it were not my own: the posters and old toys and plastic trophies. When my father knocked on the door, it was after nine.
“Come in.”
He opened the door, surprised by the state of my room. The posters were down. Half the stuff I owned was boxed. “What’s all this?”
I shrugged, and kept packing. “Just wanted a change.”
He looked in one box and then another. “You giving this stuff away?”
“I guess.”
“Your comic books?” He lifted a stack from a half-full box. “You’ve collected these since you were eight.” I didn’t respond. He put the comic books down and sat on the edge of the bed. “About your mother…”
“You don’t need to explain.”
“I’m happy to talk about it.”
“She’s afraid Jason will ruin my life. This is hardly news.”
“It won’t be forever, son.”
“It’s been years, Dad. Five years that she won’t let me play sports or date girls. I can’t go camping or hunting. She barely lets me leave the house.”
“She let you have a car.”
“Because I paid for it myself.”
“She still allowed it.”
“She did, yes, and it’s the only thing she’s done that’s fair.”
“None of this is fair, son. It’s not fair that Robert died, or that Jason changed the way he did. It’s not fair for your mother to worry so much, or for any of this to land on you. Just work with me. Stay away from Jason, at least for a little while.”
“He’s my brother.”
“I know he is, but there are things about Jason you don’t know.”
“What? That he did drugs? That he killed people in the war?”
My father frowned and studied the floor, less certain than he used to be. “Three or four days, just a little while.”
“You should have told me he was back.”
“You’re angry. I get it. I still need your promise.”
“I can’t give it to you.”
“Not even for your mother’s sake?”
“Not even for yours.”
I stared at him, and he stared back; and in the end, that’s where he left me: in a silence that spoke of fathers and sons and difficult truths. I couldn’t turn my back on Jason, not after losing Robert.
I thought my father understood.
That maybe he approved.
* * *
French stopped ten feet from the door, and took a moment to remember his sons as they’d been before the war: Robert, with his easy smile and gracious nature, and Jason, who’d been sardonic and brilliant and occasionally cruel. From the beginning, Gibby’s love for Robert had been the most obvious, but he’d been more like Jason than he chose to admit. He had the same insight and self-awareness, the same cutting wit. Gibby’s heart, of course, was immense, and the only reason he’d yielded, for so many years, to his mother’s insane demands. No girls. No sports.
“Damn it, Gabrielle.”
Rationality played no part in her overprotective nature. Robert had been selected in the draft, with Jason being spared only because he’d been born two minutes after midnight, which made them twins with different birthdays. Gabrielle had wept on the day Robert left for Vietnam, and broken entirely at news of his death. He’d been the first and the favorite. Gabrielle would never admit such a truth, but her cries in the dark of that terrible night still haunted his memories.
It should have been Jason!
It should have been him!
He’d tried to stifle the words, but believed, to this day, that they’d carried through the house. How long after that before Jason enlisted?
Two days?
Three?
French sighed deeply, and his face was rough beneath his palms. Pushing away from the wall, he made his way to the master bedroom door and peered inside. Gabrielle was in the bed, on her side. Moving quietly past, he lifted his weapon and shield from the dresser.
“Are you going out?” She rolled over, a rustle in the sheets.