You Remind Me of Me (24 page)

“Twenty-five.”

“Same difference,” Troy says. “All I’m saying is that you’re not going to want to work as a cook at the Stumble Inn for the rest of your life, right?” Troy pauses, purses his lips. “Don’t you think you could do better for yourself?”

“I don’t know,” Jonah says, and his voice is a little brittle. “I like cooking for the Stumble Inn.” He glances toward the dirty dishes in the sink, toward the black itinerary open on the counter. “Do you think you could do better for
your
self?” he says, softly.

“Ha,” Troy says. “Not anymore, man. Maybe if I was twenty-five again, I would do things differently.”

——

He’s quiet then, embarrassed by his own self-pity. Because, of course, why should it be any harder for Troy to start his life over? Jonah has just lost his pregnant wife, his face is a mess of scars, his parents, according to Crystal, are dead. If anything, Troy thinks, Jonah’s life has been harder than his own, and he feels a guilt settle over him. For some reason he thinks of his mother in her coffin, the way her stiff hands had come undone, his stupid, stoned efforts to put them back into place. He grimaces.

“I’m sorry,” he says, after a moment. “You should do whatever makes you happy. I mean, if cooking at the good old Stumble University is what you want to do, more power to you.”

Jonah looks at him inscrutably. His fingers touch the crust of uneaten sandwich, and Troy is surprised to see that the guy’s hands are trembling.

“I’m looking for someone,” he says.

“Uh-huh,” Troy says, tentatively. “That’s good.” For a second he’s aware of some unplaceable buzz in the air. “That’s what you should be doing, man. You know, I know a lot of women. If you want, I could—”

“I mean,” Jonah says, and he makes a sort of squint. “I mean, someone specific.”

Troy watches Jonah’s expression shift. The unscarred side of his face shudders a little, like the hide of a horse that is trying to shiver away a fly. Jonah tilts his head, leaning forward, and his hands tighten and then resolve themselves.

“I think we’re brothers,” Jonah says.

“Ha,” Troy says. He tries to smile but an uncomfortable stiffness has settled over him. Jonah is shivering. His teeth actually chatter.

“I mean, really,” Jonah breathes. “Your mom. Your biological mom. She’s my mom, too.”

And Troy feels his uneasy smile slip away.

22

October 13, 1996

It was a Sunday when they first met. It was the week before Jonah got up the nerve to go to Troy’s house with the groceries. The weather was beginning to turn, and the wind ran in streams over everything, all day long. Tumbleweeds clogged the fences on the edges of town.

He’d found the street without any problem. Here it was, just a block away from the park.
Foxglove Road.
No doubt it was a pleasant place to live, Jonah thought, a quiet, curving little cul-de-sac with houses made to resemble English cottages, or so he imagined, each with bright-colored trim on the windows and eaves, with neat, yellowing lawns and fading flower beds, small statues of gnomes or fawns or the Virgin Mary. More tumbleweeds.

Jonah was sitting in his car when the boy and his grandmother came out, but they didn’t glance his way. They continued down the sidewalk, the grandmother carrying a book and an unopened umbrella, a heavy woman, moving slowly. The child ran along in front of her, dashing and then, after a while, skipping, though with a thoughtful and even serious look on his face, as if skipping was a means of meditation.

——

There were other children in the park but not many adults. Jonah settled down in the chilly grass near some bare bushes, out of notice, but not enough to seem like he was hiding. He put his hood up and pretended to be bored, pretended that one of the milling children was his, that he was just another dutiful father. No one paid any attention: A pair of mothers talked avidly, sitting on the swings; Loomis’s grandmother sat on a bench and bent her head toward her book.

As for Loomis, he was involved in some game of pretend. The other children held no interest for him, and he walked along the line of the play area, past the slides and bouncy horses and the monkey bars, his hands clasped behind his back, looking at the ground. He would occasionally say something to himself aloud. Jonah glanced over to where the grandmother was sitting. She wasn’t paying attention.

Loomis was small for his age, Jonah thought, not skinny but compact, broad-shouldered, like a miniature adult. His hair was dirty blond and straight, and he had a round, solemn face. Jonah watched as he bent down and picked up something from the wood-chip playground bed—a piece of plastic, a forgotten toy. The child examined it, frowning, mumbled to himself. Then he put it in his pocket. He was about thirty yards from where Jonah was sitting, but drawing closer.

Jonah felt in his own pockets. A throat drop, a crumpled receipt from the pharmacy, a nub of pencil. And then: Here was the little rubber ball he’d picked up in the grass behind Troy’s house, a bright Day-Glo orange superball that was made to bounce hard and high.

He looked over again toward the grandmother, at the mothers on the swings. And then, very carefully, he tossed the ball. It curved up, pinged against the trunk of a tree, and fell to the ground a few feet from Loomis.

The child’s head turned, alert. Jonah watched as Loomis’s eyes alit on the ball, watched as he walked cautiously toward it, as if it were a small strange animal that had fallen from a tree, stunned. Loomis stared at it, stroked his chin thoughtfully, then reached down to scoop it up.

“Loomis,” Jonah said, in a short, husky voice. He kept his eye on the grandmother, but she didn’t look up from her book. So he said it again, “Loomis,” and the boy lifted his head sharply. They saw each other: Loomis’s eyes fixed on him, wary and curious, and Jonah lifted his hand. He showed Loomis his palm, five fingers spread out. Then, deliberately, he got up and moved farther along the edge of the bushes, out of sight of the grandmother and the other adults, and the other children. And out of Loomis’s sight as well.

——

After a moment Jonah heard the crunch of leaves. He was sitting in the dirt, half-hidden under the branches of a square-cut evergreen, his head down, his face shadowed. Loomis rounded the corner and peered at him.

“Hello, Loomis,” Jonah said. He was very still, his sweatshirt hood pulled up, his hands resting on his knees—motionless, but prepared to hurry off if someone should notice him.

“How do you know my name?” Loomis said. He stood there, his eyebrows furrowed, nose wrinkled a little, his hands at his side like a cowboy about to draw pistols. Ready to run away.

“I just know.” He spoke as if he didn’t care whether Loomis came closer or not. “What are you doing? Are you solving a mystery?”

“I’m on a quest,” Loomis said. “I’m looking for fossils.”

“That’s interesting,” Jonah said. “Have you found any?”

“Not yet.” Loomis took a step forward, then hesitated. “Are you a friend of my dad’s?”

“Sort of,” Jonah said. He shrugged, holding very still. “I’m sort of on a quest myself, if you want to know the truth.”

Loomis considered this.

“What kind of quest?” Loomis said, angling himself so that he could get a look at Jonah’s face. His mouth grew smaller.

“I’m looking for my brother,” Jonah said at last. Why not? He dipped his hooded face, aware that Loomis was staring hard, uncertainly, at his scars. He brought his hands together, moving them with a slow, gentle, underwater drift, folding his palms together. “My mother had a baby before I was born,” he said softly. “But she had to give him away. And now I’m looking for him.”

Loomis frowned. “Why did she have to give the baby away?”

“She just had to,” Jonah said. “She didn’t have any choice.”

Loomis narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Hmm,” he said, at last, and Jonah took a quick glance to where the grandmother was still reading. “That sounds sort of like Moses,” Loomis said. “His mother put him in a basket and into the river. Doesn’t that sound dangerous?”

“A little,” Jonah said. Loomis was looking at him seriously, an odd, stern little boy, his body still not relaxed. “Everything is dangerous in a certain way. But, well . . .” He was trying to pay attention to all of the elements at once. Here was the grandmother; here were the other adults, the screaming children; the slide and swings and merry-go-round spinning on its turnstile; here were the cars passing on the road in the distance behind him; here were the erratic movements of autumn leaves and branches. He groped in his mind: “But . . .” he said, “sometimes you have to take a risk. She put the baby in the river because she didn’t have any other choice.”

“It just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me,” Loomis said. “Couldn’t you give the baby to a friend? Why would you put it in the river?”

“I don’t know,” Jonah said. He was struck by the image of his mother in the garb of the ancient Israelites, bending over the reedy, red-clay banks of a stream, the current drawing quivering lines in the water. “I guess people do things they regret.” He considered.

“I think your father is my brother,” he said.

He was surprised at how easily he was able to say this. After all the hand-wringing he’d done since he first came to St. Bonaventure, he found that it came out of his mouth without any of the doubts and second-guessing he’d been grappling with. It was just a fact.

“Do you know my dad?” Loomis said.

“Your dad is my brother,” Jonah said. “I’m your uncle.”

He expected, somehow, that this would have a greater impact than it did. Everything in his life had been leading to this moment. He pictured Loomis’s eyes widening, a sudden rush of emotion, but Loomis only blinked, looking at him skeptically.

“Do you know my uncle Ray?”

And Jonah was silent, his heart beating. “I can’t really tell you too much about it right now,” Jonah said. He paused, thoughtfully. “I’m not sure if I can trust you to keep a secret.”

“Oh,” Loomis said. He seemed briefly taken aback by this. Jonah said nothing, just looked, very seriously, into Loomis’s face.

“You don’t want to get your dad into trouble, do you?” Jonah said.

“I can keep a secret,” Loomis said, defensively. He paused, and for the first time turned to look over his shoulder, toward his grandmother. “Are you really my uncle?” he said.

“Yes,” Jonah said.

Loomis stared at him dubiously.

“You have a scar on your face,” he said.

“I know,” Jonah said. “A dog bit me. When I was a little boy, about your age.”

“Oh,” Loomis said, and he seemed impressed and curious. He might have even come closer, but then in the distance, the grandmother lifted her head at last and looked around, scanning the playground. Jonah began to step backward, away.

“I’ll talk to you again, maybe,” Jonah said. “But only if you can keep a secret.” He craned his neck, while the leaves disengaged themselves from the branches overhead. “You know, if you tell your grandma you saw me, your dad will get in a lot of trouble.”

“I won’t tell,” Loomis said, softly. His face was pinched, solemn with worry, and he followed Jonah for a few steps as he walked into the shrubs and foliage. A leaf fell, and then another one, and Loomis stood there silently.

“Loomis!” the old woman called, and then, hesitantly, Loomis turned and walked back toward where she was sitting.

23

November 1996

Winter has arrived early this year. Temperatures have fallen abruptly, the little lakes and streams are frozen, there are storms and high winds all over the Midwest. Snow is coming down in Chicago, where Steve and Holiday are asleep, back to back, while their son Henry, now a toddler, sits up and stares at the blinking neon that pulses distantly beyond the closed curtains of his room; flakes melt against the window as Mrs. Orlova folds her hands against her breasts and frowns, waiting for a teakettle to boil in the darkened kitchen of her apartment; snow accumulates over the ditch in Iowa where Nora’s ashes have settled, and on the South Dakota reservation where Jonah’s grandmother’s sister, Leona, lives, and on the yellow house he grew up in, now occupied by an earnest young evangelical couple and their children; on the edge of Little Bow, in the graveyard, fat, wet clumps of snow alight on the simple gravestone of Jonah’s grandfather:
JOSEPH DOYLE
1910–1984.

It is snowing in St. Bonaventure, Nebraska, as well. Ray the stripper is standing barefoot in the living room of a bachelorette party, undoing his shirt to the beat of rap music that blares from his boom box, a chilly sweat trickling down his back; and Junie, the former Stumble Inn cook, opens his eyes briefly and fingers the plastic IV drip that has been inserted into his arm. The boy Jinx sleeps in his trailer with his little brother beside him in the bed, as his mother laughs at something on television in the living room. Police Officer Kevin Onken is cruising sleepily down empty streets, his windshield wipers flapping a slow metronome beat beneath the soft hush of his car’s heater, and he perks up for a moment as the car carrying Jonah drifts by. Onken pays attention, watches the bright red radar numbers tick across the console. But Jonah isn’t speeding. He keeps both hands on the wheel as he drives up Flock Road, along the contour of the park. The roads are slick. Jonah is cautious.

——

Crystal is just prescient enough to wake when she hears Jonah’s old, rattling Festiva pass her house; her mind works in associations, and the distinctive sound of that car has lodged just firmly enough that she thinks
Jonah?
before settling back into the cushion of the couch, where she has fallen asleep.

Still, the ghost of him crosses through her subconscious: the shy slinking of his conversations, the radar of unspoken thoughts he had beamed out, some winking spark she couldn’t quite catch.

She had been surprised at how abruptly he’d quit his job at the Stumble Inn. He’d seemed to be settling in fairly well by her estimation. He seemed to respond to Troy in particular.

But then, for no reason, he didn’t show up for work.

“It just really concerns me,” she said to Troy that afternoon, thinking that he might have some insight. “I honestly thought he was fitting in. Didn’t you?”

But Troy only shrugged, moodily, his face growing unresponsive.

“Did he say anything to you?” she asked. “I didn’t think he seemed unhappy here.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” Troy said, and bent his head down to his crossword.

Crystal looked at him, sharply. “You guys didn’t have an argument or something, did you?” she said, and he was silent, hesitant enough to confirm some event—disagreement? personality clash?—in her mind.

“Oh, Troy,” she said. “He was a nice guy. What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” Troy said, but she could feel the untruthfulness seeping out from him. “I hardly knew the guy.”

“But didn’t you feel bad for him?” Crystal said.

“Sure,” Troy said. “Of course I felt bad for him. I feel bad for a lot of people.” And then he moved off, abruptly, his back tight, out onto the barroom floor to straighten the chairs.

——

Vivian heard through the grapevine that Jonah had been hired as a cook by The Gold Coin. “That little shit,” Vivian said, and Crystal lowered her eyes. “If he wanted more money he could have asked for it,” Vivian said. “I don’t appreciate that kind of behavior. Being left in the lurch like that. I guess he thought he was too good for us.”

“I don’t know,” Crystal said, neutrally.

“I have half a mind to drive out to that banty-assed trailer of his and give him a piece of my mind,” Vivian said. “I did him a favor, hiring him on the spot like that. I’ll tell you, it goes to show what people are like in the world these days.”

“Well,” Crystal said, gently, “who knows what really happened?”

But Vivian wasn’t a very forgiving person. She liked loyalty, and that was nearly all she liked about people. She had managed, over the years, to secure Crystal and Troy; and old Junie, the now-dying cook she had hoped Jonah would replace. There had been others, of course, workers who had stayed on for months or even years, but she resented them all, just as she resented Jonah, the little liar. That first day that he hadn’t shown up for work, she had called him, and he’d feigned being sick.

“Oh,” he’d said, when he recognized her voice. “Vivian. I was just about to call you. I’ve got a fever.” And she was aware of the way he suddenly tried to make his voice sound frail. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. . . . It was just, it really knocked me out. I’ve been practically delirious. I lost track of the time.”

“This puts me in a bad situation,” she said. “I’ve got a menu posted. What am I supposed to do with it?”

“I know,” Jonah said hoarsely. “I’m . . . really sorry.”

The next day, he called to say that he quit. He didn’t even have the decency to come by. He just left a message on the bar’s answering machine.

“This is Jonah Doyle,” he said. His voice came out, boxy and full of static. “I’m just calling because . . . I wanted to let you know. I don’t think I’ll be able to come to work anymore. I . . . well.” And then there was a long pause. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Thank you for the opportunity to work at the Stumble Inn. I really appreciate it.”

Vivian pressed the button marked “erase,” very hard. But after a few weeks had passed, she didn’t think too much about him, though she’d still look forward to catching him in the supermarket or someplace and telling him off.

——

Quitting his job at the Stumble Inn was a show of faith, Jonah thought. A sacrifice. To quit like that, so abruptly; to cut himself off from the people, like Crystal and Vivian, that he and Troy had in common. He hoped that Troy appreciated the gesture.

But it was necessary. Even as he struggled to tell Troy the facts of the story, he realized that they would need to put some distance between them for a while. He said as much.

“Look,” he said, “I know that . . . maybe I didn’t exactly go about this in the right way, and it’s a little hard to . . . get your mind around. I mean, I want to give you some space, just to . . . think things over.”

And Troy had stared at him.

“I don’t want you in my workplace,” Troy said at last. “I just . . . don’t want people gossiping about this adoption shit. It’s like the kind of thing they’d put in the fucking newspaper . . . for human interest or something. It’s just too weird for me, you know?”

“I agree completely,” Jonah said. He nodded earnestly, using the same grim frown that Troy was wearing. “That seems best,” he said. “I mean, I realize that my taking the job there in the first place was, uh, probably not the smartest idea, but . . .”

“I’m serious,” Troy said. “I want you to quit. Tomorrow.”

“I understand,” Jonah said.

“And I don’t want you to tell them either. About this . . . this . . . adoption stuff.” He paused, heavily. “The last thing I need is to have Vivian and Crystal all
titillated
.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Jonah said.

——

Jonah thinks of this again as he drives along the edge of the park, and he can feel the blush rising in his cheeks. He can picture Troy’s pained, flinching look. “Jesus,” Troy had said. “Why didn’t you just tell me? This is— It’s kind of a creepy feeling. I mean, it’s like being stalked or something.”

“Well,” Jonah said, “that’s not what I meant.” And Troy had put his palms over his face.

“Jesus,” he said. “This is not something I need to deal with right now.”

“I know,” Jonah whispered. “I realize that. I’m . . . sorry.”

Beyond his windshield, the snow is a powdery mist. It turns the trees and houses and signs into the grainy, blurry grays of television static. The sky seems to be pressing down, collapsing, settling over ground.

Jonah slows. The heat coming from the defroster smells vaguely of carbon monoxide, and fits over his mind like a stocking cap. He presses his foot against the brake and squeezes his eyes shut for a moment.

——

At first Troy didn’t seem to believe what Jonah was saying.

“Look,” Troy said, “I’m not into this whole adoption thing. As far as I’m concerned, once the woman signs the papers, that’s the end of it. I mean, I had a mom and dad that I was happy with. That’s it.”

“Okay,” Jonah said. “But listen, let’s just settle it once and for all. I’ve got the papers in my car. Don’t you at least want to look at them? I mean, they could be wrong.”

And Troy was silent for a long time. He knitted his hands together, hardening his mouth.

“Okay,” he sighed. “Okay, let’s see what you’ve got.”

Now, as the snow comes down, Troy can’t help but look again at the materials that Jonah has given him. The original birth certificate:
Baby Boy Doyle,
it says, and he blanches again as he traces through the columns. Mother: Nora Doyle. Occupation: High school student. Father: Unknown. Occupation: Unknown. He feels his chest tighten, despite himself. This is not what he wants, he thinks. At first he’d really thought that he wanted this sneak, Jonah, and his adoption search nonsense out of his life forever. But now he’s not so sure. A heaviness fills his diaphragm, and he draws breath, lets it out in a long stream.

Nora Doyle,
he thinks. He doesn’t much like her, this woman who had given him away, but now that she’s in his mind he can’t get rid of her. In his imagination, Nora Doyle vaguely resembles Carla—one of those unpleasant psychological tricks that a person doesn’t want to think about too hard. He’d like to see a picture of the woman, if only to erase this creepy association from his brain.

And, well, he
does
have questions. She has been only the vaguest outline in his head up until now, a generic silhouette, like the picture on a bathroom door that meant “women.” He might have been happy for things to stay that way. But now, without his even wanting it, this person, this mother, has begun to develop weight and contours, materializing into something that’s almost solid. As angry as he was with Jonah at first, he knows that he’s going to break down and call him after all.

He leans his forehead against the glass of the window, taps his cigarette against the rim of an ashtray. He’s sitting there, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, a prisoner, and after a moment he reaches down and digs his fingers into the skin around the belt of his parole anklet. It itches, and he scrapes his nails back and forth, distractedly.

——

It’s not long after eleven at night, and Jonah parks a few blocks away from the house. A blast of wind hits his face when he gets out of the car, and he keeps his head down, pulling up the collar of his coat, aware of the snowflakes settling over his hair in a thin layer.

By now he has gotten used to Foxglove Road. He knows, in general, when people go to sleep, he knows who has barking dogs, who has garage lights with motion detectors, he knows the yards with the best trees and bushes to cover him, though in this storm it’s doubtful that even someone watching out a window could see him as he moves quickly down the sidewalk and up the driveway that leads to the backyard. He is a dappled shadow, passing through the swirl of snow, his hands balled up in the pockets of his jacket, his shoulders hunched, soundless. But even on a clear night, he would be invisible, he thinks. He knows the puddles of shade, the easiest way to beat a quick retreat, the places where he can stand still and blend into the background.

He knows the circumference of Judy Keene’s house. In front, the large window is the living room, and the other, smaller, is Judy’s bedroom. Another window into Judy’s bedroom faces the driveway. At the back of the house, there is the kitchen, and then the back door, and then Loomis’s room.

He has been thinking about Troy’s letter to Mrs. Keene.
I realize that there are many good reasons why you have been reluctant to allow Loomis to have contact with me,
Troy had written, and Jonah recalls that precise blockletter handwriting, like the calligraphy in the voice bubbles of a cartoon. It was an earnest, heartbreakingly careful script, Jonah thought, neatly aligned on a page from a legal pad.
Although I know I have made mistakes I only want what is best for him,
Troy had written, and Jonah thought of Troy bent over his crossword puzzle at the bar, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth as he filled in the squares; he thought of Troy hunched down, washing beer glasses, his eyes far away. Now he understands what Troy was feeling.

He has found himself looking at the letter over and over. He took it without thinking really—he had noticed it sitting on the kitchen table the evening he’d brought the groceries to Troy’s house, had noticed it was addressed to Judy Keene. He had picked it up curiously when Troy was in the bathroom, and then, when Troy came out, he crumpled it into his pocket—all he needed was for Troy to catch him snooping! He had almost forgotten about it, as events had unfolded that night, and in fact it wasn’t until the next day that he’d remembered, when he discovered the envelope balled up in the front pocket of his pants.

He had been feeling a lot of despair that morning, as he unfolded the letter and spread it out on the coffee table in front of him. He’d made a mess of their first real meeting—
I think we’re brothers:
God! How stupid!—and even after he had shown Troy the PeopleSearch information, even after Troy seemed to believe him, there was a chilliness that Jonah was afraid they’d never get over.
This is not something I need to deal with right now,
Troy had said, and Jonah had felt his heart contracting.