Ask Him Why (21 page)

“Never mind,” I said. “I think I’ve got it.”

We rode in silence for a minute or two, and he pulled onto the freeway ramp going south. I wondered if he knew where to cut over to Highway 1. I sure didn’t. I wondered how often he’d come here, and by what means, and why I had never known.

“I still can’t get used to the Rogers thing,” he said.

“But you knew about it.”

“Yeah, Hammy told me. Just recently, because I was talking about trying to find you. In general, he’s not much of a conduit of information, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. He doesn’t like to repeat what’s been told to him. He just assumes everything you say to him is in confidence. So I didn’t ask him a lot of questions about the family. But he couldn’t let me go off and try to contact you using the wrong last name.”

“How did it make you feel?”

“Well, let me see. My entire family went to court and changed their names so as not to be associated with me in any way. So I’ll go with . . . joyful?”

“Okay. It was a stupid question. Sorry I asked. And by the way, the whole family didn’t go to court and change their names. Brad went to court and got all of our names changed without even running it by us first. Aubrey and I were pretty shocked.”

I saw a reaction to Aubrey’s name spoken out loud, a kind of flinch—which is hard to explain, because Joseph’s face was still buried in the hat and sunglasses. But I know what I saw. Maybe it was something that happened more in the energy surrounding him. But I know I wasn’t wrong.

“How
is
testy old Brad?” he asked, veering off in a new direction.

“I have no idea. I haven’t seen him or talked to him in years.”

“Well, that’s a neat trick. How do you see Janet and not Brad?”

“Joseph, he’s gone. He’s been gone for five or six years. He left Mom for a twenty-eight-year-old paralegal. Speaking of clichés.”

Silence. For digestion, I suppose.

Then he said, “Yeah, well . . . they’re clichés for a reason, I guess.”

Another couple of miles in silence. I wished he’d take off the hat and glasses so I could really see him. I wanted to look into his face and chart what had changed, what had stayed the same. I wanted to see his face clearly and really absorb into every cell of myself that this was my brother Joseph, whom I hadn’t seen in a decade.

Even more to the point, I wanted to have more to say to him. After ten years apart, there must have been more words, but I couldn’t locate them, and not for lack of trying. Something was dragging on the conversation, like a prisoner with a ball and chain on his ankle, though I regretted that choice of metaphors the moment it came into my head. I could feel a sense of exhaustion caused by the pressure of trying to fight my way through that moment.

He broke the silence.

“I notice you kept the name, though.”

“Rogers?”

“Yes. That.”

“I thought about it when I left home. But all my ID was in that name.”

“Right,” he said. “Right. Got it.”

“Okay, it was more than that, but it wasn’t an insult to you, I swear it wasn’t. Let me think how to say this. The name ‘Rogers’ meant something to me by then. Something positive. It was like a badge of courage. It meant we could get through anything and come out the other side in one piece.”

He didn’t answer.

“I guess maybe it would be better not to stress how hard a time that was for us,” I said.

“Say whatever you need to,” he said quietly, and took the turnoff for the 280 South toward Daly City. “Otherwise it’ll be like it was when we were kids.”

Right, the silences. No one had ever referenced them out loud, as far as I could recall. I guess that was what made them the silences.

“I didn’t blame you for it, though,” I said. “I blamed that incredibly sick media machine. It’s like a monster that serves up all news, all the time—whatever people want to have slapped on their plate so they can judge it and feel superior. I never thought that was your fault.”

“Aubrey did, though,” he said.

“Aubrey was just hurt because you wouldn’t see us. He thought you didn’t love him anymore. You know how he is.”

I watched the side of his face and saw little lines form outside the edges of his sunglasses as he squeezed his eyes shut. Just for a second. Then he looked at the road again.

“The reason I wouldn’t see you is because Brad told me in very clear terms that I was to stay away from both of you indefinitely.”

“Yeah, we thought that might’ve been the case, but I guess Aubrey felt like you’d always disobeyed him before.”

“Duck,” he said. “Think about it. If he’d pulled that attorney out from under me, I could have been in there for life. And I don’t mean ‘life’ as in your first parole hearing is in seven years. I mean ‘life’ as in die in a jail cell an old man. That’s what they wanted for me. That’s what would have happened most likely if I hadn’t had good outside counsel. Brad held all the cards, Duck.”

“Oh,” I said. And then I almost couldn’t finish my thought, because I so wanted to call Aubrey and tell him this immediately. “He actually held that over your head.”

“You don’t think he’s capable?”

“Oh, no. I totally do. I’m just taking this in. It’s kind of . . . a revelation. We tried so hard to think of a good reason why you wouldn’t see us. But we never thought of that. But still, after you were sentenced . . .”

“You think I should have taken his money, taken the lawyer, and then the minute I was through with him, totally flown in the face of the deal? I realize there’s not a person in the whole country who would probably believe this, Duck, but I do have some sense of honor. Brad thought I was a bad influence on you guys. I guess at that point, I wasn’t so sure he was wrong.”

Silence for a time.

Then he added, “If I’d known Brad had ditched you guys five or six years ago, I would’ve tried to contact you the minute he left. But nobody told me. There wasn’t exactly a flow of information going back and forth. It was more like the family walled itself off with me on the outside.”

We rode in silence for a long time. Half an hour. Maybe even forty-five minutes. We wound our way to the coast through some very upscale areas I’d never seen before. I had always come up from the south.

I looked down at the phone in my hand and couldn’t remember having taken it out of my pocket. I was rubbing one thumb over the screen, and I knew it was because I was itching to call Aubrey, to fill him in on these new developments, even though I knew he didn’t want them. Even though I knew he would reject them. But old habits die hard in my family, and I wanted him to see the past in a new light, the way I was doing now.

But I wasn’t going to make that call in front of Joseph, because I knew the rage and hatred would come through to my end of the connection—even if Aubrey kept his voice down, which wasn’t likely.

“I heard you got married,” Joseph said, breaking a whole new brand of modern silence.

“Yeah. Four years ago.”

“Are you happy?”

“We are.”

“Good. Good for you. Who’d you marry?”

“Sean Acheson.”

“Are you kidding me? Isn’t that the guy you kept hoping would ask you out when you were fifteen?”

“One and the same.”

“I guess he finally did.”

“Yeah. It was bumpy for a while there, but we kept in touch. Even after we moved to Bakersfield. We texted and talked on the phone. The funny thing is that we didn’t actually go on a date until we were twenty. After I moved back to Southern California.”

“Hammy says you have a baby.”

I felt my heart fill, just being reminded about her, and at the same time I missed her so much it physically hurt.

“I do. Maya, her name is. She’s amazing.”

“And gorgeous. Hammy showed me a picture of her.”

“If I’d known Ham would be home from the hospital, I’d have brought her.”

“I wish you had. I’m dying to meet her.”

Right around that moment, just as it struck me that we were small-talking like strangers, he got somewhat real again.

“So why isn’t your name Ruth Acheson?”

“Oh. That. I’m too progressive, I guess. I hate that thing where your name disappears and you sort of become your husband. Reminds me of the old days, the fifties—not that I remember them personally—but remember on
I Love Lucy
how they referred to themselves as Mrs. Ricky Ricardo and Mrs. Fred Mertz? And then the children always got their father’s name, like they were all him and no her. And, trust me, Sean’s part of Maya was the easy one. We hyphenated for Maya’s last name.”

I looked up, surprised to see the old dusty-green house up ahead, perched on the bluff. “We’re here already? I thought it was, like, an hour and a half south of the city.”

“It is,” he said. “It’s been, like, an hour and a half.”

I thought it was interesting how the intense awkwardness of our first adult meeting had created a black hole of time. I thought it should have been just the opposite—that every minute would feel like an hour. Instead, it seemed as though whole sections of the experience had just up and disappeared.

“I’m so glad you connected with Hammy while I was gone,” he said, pulling into the long driveway. “It was the only news into that prison that made me genuinely happy. I’d given up thinking I had anything to offer you, but if I could have given you anything I had, it would have been Ham. I love that guy. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.”

“Joseph. He’s better. He’s home.”

“He’s ninety-five, Duck. How old do you think he’ll live to be? A hundred? Maybe. He could pull that off if anybody could. But, Duck . . . that’s only five years.”

Then there was no more time to discuss it, because we were parked just outside the front door. And just as well, I thought, because it was the last thing on the planet I wanted to talk about, anyway.

Chapter Eighteen: Aubrey

My cell phone rang. It was a little after one o’clock in the morning.

It woke me up.

Sounds like more or less a given. But I was not supposed to be asleep. I could’ve lost my job for it.

I was in the computer room in a tiny corner of the observatory, in an old typist’s chair. Asleep with my head dropped back. When I straightened out my neck, I couldn’t help saying “Ow.” Out loud. Necks had never been intended for that position.

The phone sounded farther away than it should have been. I needed to remember where I’d left it. But I couldn’t. Because I couldn’t pull my brain out of sleep.

“Damn it, Jenny,” I said, also out loud. “You know when I’m working, it’s not a good time.”

We’d been fighting when I’d left the apartment earlier that night. I figured she’d thought of another name to call me.

I looked around. Tried to pinpoint the sound.

Just to be honest about my circumstances here, this job was maybe not what anyone will be picturing. It’s romantic and comforting to think of an astronomer alone in the night with a massive telescope. Puffing on a pipe. Narrowing his brow thoughtfully at what he sees in the heavens. Maybe saying “Hmm” now and then.

I was not allowed into the main area that housed the telescope. Very few people were. The guys responsible for its settings were not astronomers at all, but highly trained engineers.

Tiny me, I worked in a tiny room with a bank of eleven computer monitors. I took readings at intervals all night and transmitted them to actual astronomers who had actually completed their education.

Most of the readings had to do with the weather.

I guess to be honest, I’d have to say part of me was grateful for the work and part of me resented it. I didn’t want to be a weatherman. I wanted to develop my own theories about dwarf galaxies and failed stars. But first I had to finish graduate school.

I found the phone on a counter by the outside door. By then the call had long since gone to voice mail.

I poured myself a cup of coffee from the big double-pot machine on the counter. Even though the smell told me it was bitter and old.

There was a window that composed the whole top half of the door. Through it I saw the night sky.

I opened it and stepped out.

I’ll say this for the job: I might not have had anything to do with the telescope, but I got to share the mountaintop with it. And it sat up here for a reason. And so did I. Because this is where you go to see the stars.

I was told the job came with the option to monitor from a remote location. I chose the drive up the mountain.

I dropped my head back, massaging my sore neck. Stared at the band formed by the edge of the Milky Way. It was the night of a new moon, which left the scene on the ground blankly dark. Just the way I liked it.

“Save me from Jenny, great vast universe,” I said.

Then I looked back down to my phone. Rang up my voice mail.

It wasn’t Jenny. It was my sister.

I got a bad feeling, right off. I called Ruth three or four times a month. She called me . . . well, rarely. Usually when there was something going on that I needed to know. Or that
she
thought I needed to know. The actual need was most often debatable.

I pressed “1” to play the message.

“Aubrey,” she said. “You’ll never guess who I ran into completely by surprise. Joseph is out of prison.”

I won’t say she sounded merry. Or as though I should be happy about this new development. Her voice seemed to grasp the subtext of the situation. Still, here she was telling me about it. Which seemed like an offense all in itself. The world is full of ugly, corrosive things. But that doesn’t mean you should drag any of them onto my welcome mat.

“Aubrey, I found out something that you absolutely need to—”

That was the end of the message. For me.

I clicked “Delete.”

Jenny was gone to work when I got back to the apartment.

I scarfed down the fast-food breakfast I’d brought home with me, and then it was past time for my weekly Skype session with Luanne. Just a couple minutes past, but still.

I opened the lid on my MacBook, which was awake and turned on. I wondered if that meant Jenny had been on my computer. And, if so, looking for what?

My Skype icon bounced and rang. Which is odd. Because normally I called in to her. I hit the “Answer” button, and Luanne’s face filled the small video window.

“I thought you might have fallen asleep,” she said. “I thought if I called you, it might wake you up.”

“No, I’m awake. I just got in.”

I watched one of her eyebrows move slightly. Up.

My shift ended at 4:00 a.m. It was a fifty-minute drive. And it was now 9:04 a.m.

Sometimes when I’m upset, I like to drive around on my motorcycle.

She knew that. After ten years, she knew me so well.

“So what happened?” she asked.

“I got into a fight with Jenny.”

“I mean, what happened that doesn’t happen every day?”

“I can’t see the fish,” I said, ignoring her little dig. “Can you move your laptop back and kind of angle it so I can see at least one of the tanks?”

“You want any of me on the monitor at all?”

It was not a genuine question. It was sarcasm. But I answered it like a genuine question.

“Yeah. Of course. You’re good, too.”

“Aubrey.”

“What?”

“You’re surrounded by your own fish.”

I looked around the bedroom.

It’s not that I hadn’t known. But I still looked. I felt a bit defensive. Also a bit apologetic toward my own fish, for feeling as though they didn’t count. Didn’t measure up. They were fulfilling their role, after all. They were being fish. What more could they do?

I had only four tanks to Luanne’s eight. She’d added one more about two years earlier.

“Your fish are better,” I said.

“How so?”

“Well, they’re your fish. And besides, I’m tired of mine.”

She sighed deeply. “Aubrey. How about you tell me what you’re putting off telling me?”

“My sister called.”

“Okay.”

“Joseph’s out of prison.”

“Okay.”

“That’s all? Just ‘okay’? That’s all you’ve got?”

“You knew he would be. Pretty soon now.”

“I know. But I thought I had a few weeks. It’s not that, though. I feel like Ruth blindsided me. I feel like she’s playing head games.”

“That doesn’t sound like Ruth,” she said.

I didn’t speak for a long time. She didn’t push me.

My eyes locked onto a school of silver hatchet fish in one of my own tanks. After a minute, Luanne took pity on me and angled her computer so her built-in camera showed not only her but the clown-fish tank.

I wondered if they were the same clown fish she’d had when I’d first walked into her office all those years ago. But then I knew they probably couldn’t be. Those tiny fish couldn’t live ten years, right? Still, I hoped I was wrong somehow. It felt like a comfort, to think they’d listened to my troubles since I was thirteen. And never breathed a word to anyone.

That’s the lovely thing about fish. They never do. They also never call you and tell you your brother’s out of prison.

I still wasn’t talking. She got bored after a time. Pushed harder.

“Sell me on the fact that Ruth is playing mind games.”

“Well, like trying to tell me she ran into him by accident. How is that even possible?”

“She said it was an accident?”

“I think she said it was a surprise. But still. She was walking down the street and bumped into him? She expects me to believe that?”

“You could ask her how it happened. What else?”

“Oh, crap. I don’t know, Luanne. She made it sound like she had this big piece of information.”

“But she wouldn’t tell you? That
is
a little odd. When did she say she’d tell you?”

“Well, it was just a voice mail.”

“Tell me everything she said in the voice mail, then. Because there’s something here that’s still missing for me.”

“Just that she’d run into him unexpectedly. And that he was out. And that she’d found out something I needed to know.”

“And then she asked you to call her back? That doesn’t sound too diabolical.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if she asked me to call or if she went ahead and told me the big info.”

“You didn’t listen to the whole message.”

“No.”

A freighted silence. During which I felt guilt. Because I knew it was a side of me that exasperated her. Even though she never said.

“Why don’t you listen to it now, then?”

“Because I deleted it.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Just for a brief second. Then she opened them, and I could see her try to clear her facial expression. Bring it back to blank.

“I realize this is a radical thought,” she said, “but you could always return her call.”

“What am I supposed to do if he tries to contact me?”

“What are you afraid of?” she asked in reply.

Answering a question with another question. Not my favorite quality in a person. I had a flash of a thought that if I bombed out of graduate school, I could get a job as a park ranger. The ones who sit up on the tops of mountains in fire-watch towers. For months on end. Alone with the stars.

Nobody around who answers questions with other questions.

Nobody around at all.

And Joseph would never find me.

“How did the concept of fear even get into this, Luanne?”

“I added it. Because it’s a question that doesn’t make sense at face value. It only makes sense if you add that subtext.”

“It makes perfect sense at face value.”

“Really? Aubrey, you’re an educated man. You’re a scientist. You’re in graduate school studying astronomy, and you just asked me a question a grade-school student could answer. What do you do if he contacts you? Well, it’s not complicated. If he writes to you, you write back or don’t. If he comes to the door, you let him in or don’t. If he calls you, you hang up or don’t. That can’t be what you’re asking. You have to be asking how you’ll live through it emotionally if it happens. So again, I ask: What are you afraid of?”

I was suddenly aware of my own breathing. It felt like it wasn’t happening automatically. Suddenly I was breathing manually. And it felt unnatural. Like it was not the way I’d always breathed before. And like I was trying to go back to the old way, but I couldn’t remember how that used to go.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What do
you
think it is?”

“Isn’t it more important what you think? You’re you. I’m not.”

“But I’m trying to tell you I literally, actually don’t know. So it would help me to hear your guesses.”

“Okay,” she said. “I can think of two things. One, you’re afraid you were right about him. That all your worst fears will be borne out. He’s a monster and he doesn’t care about you at all. But that’s not a very likely scenario, because if he were somehow less than human—some uncaring, unfeeling monster—you would have known that about him. And you wouldn’t have adored him so much.”

“I never adored him.”

“Aubrey. Please. I was there. Remember?”

A silence. She filled it.

“Besides, if he didn’t care about you, he wouldn’t try to contact you. Then there’s the more likely scenario. The one where you find out you were wrong about him. That he’s not a monster, and he does care about you. And that you hurt somebody who didn’t deserve it as much as you thought he did.”

“Sometimes I wonder why I pay you money to have this stuff shoved in my face,” I said.

I watched an ironic half smile form at the corner of her mouth.

“If it helps to be reminded, Aubrey, you don’t pay me much.”