Brothers and Bones (9 page)

“Okay,” I said. I had no intention of calling the cop. There was no point. I didn’t get a very good look at any of my assailants, except for Babe Ruth, but that didn’t matter. Things like this happen. I might have been in serious pain, but I wasn’t actually hurt very seriously. Besides, if I remembered correctly, the punks might have been more seriously injured than I was. And anyway, the cops could probably round up a dozen or so of the usual suspects and each one would have an airtight alibi that some friend or coconspirator in either my attack or some other misdeed was willing to lie about. I figured the policeman who visited me did so as a matter of procedure, but that the cops wouldn’t have much interest in pursuing the matter. Quite frankly, neither did I. “So, when can I leave, Doctor?”

“You feel like leaving?”

I blinked. It hurt. I remembered the nausea when I’d tried to sit up moments before, as well as the underwater feeling just a few seconds earlier.

“Not really.”

“I didn’t think you would. The dizziness should go away in a few hours. I’ll check back in on you. If you’re feeling better, you can leave then if you want. If you aren’t, I’ll recommend you spend the night so we can keep an eye on you. How’s that sound?”

I nodded and felt the air swoosh liquidly around my head. The doctor started to leave.

“Doctor?”

He turned back around. I was going to ask him to call Jessica for me, tell her where I was, that I was okay, but my eyelids suddenly weighed a few hundred pounds each. Dr. Henshaw smiled and started to say something, about how I should get some sleep, I think, but I’m not really sure, because I fell asleep as soon as he opened his mouth.

* * *

I awoke a few hours later and, perhaps it was the painkillers coursing through me, working their magic, but I felt remarkably better. No dizziness at all. No nausea. My ribs hurt, but only the six that were badly bruised. The others felt fine. My abdomen was tightly wrapped with bandages, however, which made it difficult to breathe. I sucked in the biggest breath I could, expanding my chest as I did, and almost screamed. The pain was unbelievable. I thanked God for the tight bandages and vowed to take shallow little baby breaths until my bruised ribs were no longer bruised. I couldn’t imagine how badly they’d hurt if they were actually broken.

I turned, very slowly, and dropped my feet over the side of the bed and waited to see if I would throw up. When I didn’t, I rose cautiously to my feet, keeping a firm hand on the bedrail. Again, no vomit. The room cooperated nicely, too, by not spinning or tilting or looking all wavy. I soon felt brave enough to take a few shuffling steps in my bare feet across the floor in my open-backed, ass-baring hospital gown. After successfully navigating my way around my bed, an IV pole, and an armchair, I began to realize that I had, indeed, been lucky. Other than the pain when I breathed even shallowly, and a slight headache, I felt fine. All in all, I was—

Hideously ugly. Good God, I thought, as I caught a look at my reflection in a mirror on the wall. Swollen lips, puffy left cheek, a huge purple bruise covering half my forehead—though, more likely, it was a collection of several smaller bruises, one on top of the other. By far the most attractive of my new features, though, was my left eye, the white of which had filled with blood so that my green iris floated in a pool of crimson. When I was a kid I saw a face like this one in a picture book. It was an ogre’s face and it had scared the hell out of me. I made a mental note not to get too close to any children until I had healed some—or at least until the blood drained from my eye.

Boy, wouldn’t Jessica be proud tomorrow night when I escorted her to the swanky charity dinner where her father, my boss, would be making remarks? I took another look at my creepy, blood-filled eye surrounded by a field of purple-and-black bruises, and reached for the telephone beside my bed.

TEN

My battered 1992 Toyota Corolla pulled up in front of the hospital with Jessica behind the wheel. I got up off the bench where I’d been sitting and feeling sorry for myself and walked over to the passenger door. I got in and turned to Jessica. It felt so good to see her. I wasn’t positive that she felt the same way about me, given the look of horror in her eyes as she stared at my face.

“Holy shit, Charlie.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean, really…holy shit.”

“I know.”

She took in my bruises, my fat lips, my blood-filled eye. “It’s just that, you said you were mugged, beaten, but…I mean…”

“Holy shit?” I offered helpfully.

“Yeah.” She shook her head. I thought her eyes might have become a little wet. “Sorry. Just a shock, you know?” She reached up and grazed my damaged cheek with her fingertips. It hurt a little but somehow felt terrific at the same time. It was a comforting, caring gesture and I thought briefly what a wonderful mother she’d make to our children someday. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine.”

A horn honked behind us and I remembered we were parked in front of the hospital’s main entrance.

“We should go,” I said.

She hesitated, ignoring a second horn bleat from behind.

“Are you really okay?” she asked.

“I’ll be fine, Jess, really.” I gave her a smile. I shot for reassuring, but couldn’t actually feel my lips. I’m pretty sure my smile was terribly lopsided and not the least bit reassuring. Jessica reached over and took my hand.

“I’m so glad you’re all right,” she said, her voice catching a little.

The horn honked again, longer this time, and Jess finally let go of my hand and put the car into drive. As we pulled away, she grabbed my hand again and squeezed tightly. Her words and her touch made me feel very loved and I began to feel less sorry for myself.

I told her where I wanted to go and she just nodded. We drove for a little while, holding hands and making small talk. Fifteen minutes later we turned down a tree-lined street in Cambridge and pulled over to the curb. We got out of the car and walked toward the cemetery gates. Jessica allowed me to lead her without needing to say a word, just holding my hand. She could be great like that.

* * *

Mount Auburn Cemetery, only a few miles from downtown Boston, straddles the line between the towns of Watertown and Cambridge, so there are places where corpses buried next to each other could be in different zip codes, if such a thing matters to the dead. On the one hundred seventy-five acres of rolling green hills inside the cemetery fence, gravestones, mausoleums, and other various markers we use to remind us where we’ve buried our loved ones sit on beautifully landscaped grounds, shaded by lush trees and surrounded by thick, manicured hedges and sun-dappled ponds. Birds chirp in the branches above and water laps against rocks. It’s a truly beautiful, peaceful setting, and if you have to plant people you care about in the ground, I can’t imagine a better place to do so.

Jessica and I walked hand in hand, in silence, as we always did, following a winding path I could have walked blindfolded. We had the option of driving along the curving roads through the cemetery, roads with names like Wisteria Path and Blueberry Lane, roads whose names I knew by heart, but I always preferred to go on foot. It gave me time to reflect quietly on where I was, what I was there to see.

The path we walked sloped gently uphill, weaving between marble crosses and granite angels. We passed the Doric columns of the Adelman monument, where, as a boy, I used to play Roman soldier after Jake and I visited our parents’ graves. I was too young to know that Doric columns denoted Greek architecture, not Roman. Ahead of us at the top of the hill squatted the Fleetwoods’ gray stone mausoleum. It was open, possessing a roof but only three walls. I spent most of a day in there once, hiding from the world, the day after my parents were buried, after I’d slipped away from the Department of Social Services’ facility, where I stayed until a suitable foster home was found for me. I still can’t believe I convinced a cab driver to take a six-year-old kid wherever he wanted to go…and to a cemetery, no less. Jake found me that day just before the cemetery closed.

As the path wound around the Fleetwoods’ mausoleum, the ground began to slope downhill again. At the bottom of the hill, a little off to our right, was the small pond where I used to hunt for frogs. I never caught one, but I never gave up trying. Even as Jessica and I walked past that day I had one eye on the water’s edge, watching for a flash of glistening green skin and a tiny splash of water.

Then the pond was behind us and there they were, twenty yards ahead. Three gray granite headstones sitting neatly side by side beneath the protective canopy of a giant, thick-trunked tree. Probably a stately elm, or a majestic oak, but I honestly had no idea. I just know it threw cool shade on my loved ones in the summer and allowed warming sun through its naked branches in the winter. We were approaching the headstones from the back, so we circled around until we were standing before them. My mother’s on the left—Amanda Beckham, loving wife and mother, followed by the dates of her birth and death. The center stone was my father’s—Lucas Beckham, devoted husband and father. His birth and death dates were also carved in the stone. On the right was Jake’s headstone. Of course, there was no coffin in the ground beneath it. The stone read, “Jake Daniel Beckham, beloved son and brother.” Below that was his birth date. Then there was a hyphen, just hanging there.

Jessica squeezed my hand. I knew what she was thinking but was too kind to say. Was I ever going to let them carve a second date on Jake’s stone? The date of his death?

“I don’t believe he’s gone,” I said, as if that would answer her unspoken question.

“I know,” she said. “It’s hard to believe.”

She misunderstood, I knew. I didn’t mean that it was hard to believe Jake was dead. I meant that I did
not
believe it. I doubted what others took to be the truth, what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had declared as fact. And because of that, I would not let them carve his death in stone. To her credit, Jessica never pushed me on it. As much as she wanted me to move on, she knew I had to take that step when I was ready.

“I wish I knew him,” she said. “He must have been special.”

“He was.”

“And your parents. I’d like to have known them, too.”

“Join the club.”

We stood there in silence for a few more minutes, Jessica waiting patiently while I talked in my head to the dead and the missing. Finally, I gave her hand a gentle tug and we walked past my parents’ plots and my brother’s empty grave, past the pond and its hiding frogs, back up the hill and around the Fleetwoods, past the Adelmans, and finally between the gray stone columns at the gate and back to my car. I ignored the voice whispering in my ear that someone could be watching me from one of the other cars parked on the street, or from the window of one of the shops down the block. I simply wasn’t in the mood to indulge my paranoia.

* * *

Jessica’s building was on Beacon Street in the Back Bay. A very ritzy part of Boston, one she could afford to live in because her law firm paid her three times what the government paid me. The apartment itself was tastefully decorated and spacious. It could have swallowed three apartments the size of mine and still have my living room for dessert. Jess ordered a pizza, and after we’d eaten it she sat on one end of her suede couch and pulled my head onto her lap. She stroked my hair and I drifted in and out of sleep. At one point I looked up to see that the light had changed. It was dark outside the windows and there was a single lamp lit on the table at the end of the couch. Jessica was looking down at me. That feeling of being really loved returned, covering me like a warm blanket. I smiled, hoping it didn’t look as grotesque as it felt. She smiled back.

“You could have taken me home, you know,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“I know.”

I lay there for another moment, enjoying the feel of her cool hand on my forehead.

“Jess, about the charity dinner…”

“You don’t have to go, Charlie. I want you there with me, of course, but not if you don’t feel up to it. And Daddy’s speaking, remember, so he’d rather you attend too, but under the circumstances, I’m sure he’ll understand if you don’t.”

“It’s not that I don’t
want
to go, but, well, have you seen my face lately?”

“Hard to miss it.”

“That’s my point.”

“When did you become so vain?” Her voice was teasing.

“I’m not vain, I just don’t want to embarrass you.”

“Do you plan on wearing a sequined tuxedo, maybe doing a few armpit farts during Daddy’s speech?”

I smiled crookedly. “No, it’s just that right now my appearance is more suited to a Halloween party than a charity event. I could be a distraction, you know? Everyone wondering what happened to my face instead of focusing on what they should be focusing on, like the speeches, the arts, giving money.”

Jessica smiled. “While I appreciate what you’re saying, I’d like you there, Charlie. If you don’t feel well enough, seeing as you had your brains beaten in last night, that’s fine. But if you’re doing it for me, don’t.”

I closed my eyes. It could be a long, uncomfortable night dodging stares and questions. I opened my eyes again and there was Jessica smiling down at me. I said, “Is it too late to ask them to change it to a charity costume party? You know, no entrance without a costume? I’ll go as a mugging victim. Your father can go as Fred Flintstone. You can dress as a French maid.”

Jessica laughed. “You’re always trying to get me to dress as a French maid.”

“Yeah, but this time I’d be willing to let you leave the apartment dressed that way.”

“So you’ll come with me tomorrow night?”

“I will.”

I closed my eyes and fell asleep with Jessica’s soothing palm resting lightly on my forehead.

* * *

A few hours later I awoke stifling a scream. I was lying on my side on the couch with my arm draped over Jessica, who lay snuggled against me, and who had just shifted, bumping her elbow against my bruised ribs. I caught my breath and checked my watch. Almost one thirty in the morning. I thought about staying where I was, but knew that my bruises would be happier if I slept in my own bed, alone.