My Brother's Keeper

  I get up, turn the Implosion picture faceup, and head out the front door.

  Eli looks worried. “Where are you going?” he says.

  “I have to go do something,” I say, not having any idea what that something is, just knowing that I can’t sit there anymore watching cartoons and pretending it’s a day off “Who’s taking care of me?”

  I don’t quite know what to say. So I go in the kitchen where Mr. Furry is taking a nap in a patch of sun, pick her up, and carry her out to the couch. Mr. Furry gives me an annoyed look, but Eli seems content.

  “I’ll be back,” I say.

  Tonto’s lying in the front yard, so I grab him and start riding, not knowing exactly where I’m going. I ride around for a while, watching the pavement go by under the front wheel. I ride out of our apartment complex, up to the overpass and down the other side. I keep riding and riding, until I’m practically right in front of Mr. D’s.

  Which is about the last place in the universe I can go now that the Stargell is gone.

  I slam on the brakes, turn around, and peel out. I pump old Tonto like a madman till I get to the end of Mr. D’s block. Then I take a quick look back over my shoulder to see if Mr. D’s standing in the middle of his driveway wondering whose tires were squealing in front of his house.

  Which he’s not.

  Which is a relief, sort of, but which is also, to tell you the truth, more of a letdown.

  After a while, I get back on the bike and ride up to the overpass. I sit there on Tonto, letting the wind from the trucks blow my sweatshirt around for a while, then I start riding again, slowly, like I’m just going to keep riding and riding until I’m somewhere like Ohio or Omaha.

  Or California.

  I put on a burst of speed and head for the Mini Mart. When I get there I’m practically out of breath, but the woman at the counter, who has big hair and big nails, doesn’t even look at me; she just glances up at the security screen TV in front of her, then goes back to her word search. I walk to the back of the store, near the restrooms, to the pay phone.

  I dial the operator and tell her I need the number for Thomas Malone in California.

  “L.A.?” she says.

  “Pardon me?”

  “In Los Angeles?” she says.

  I say I guess so and she gives me another number to call, saying another operator will assist me. But the other operator doesn’t really seem too interested in assisting me,* she sounds like she’s in a room with about 400 other operators who are in too big a hurry taking care of real calls to bother with me.

  “Would you like the Thomas Malone on El Paso?”

  I say okay. I feed about 185 coins into the slot and then get one of those prerecorded answering-machine robot voices, which doesn’t say I’ve reached the home of Tom Malone or anything personal like that. It just says, “Please. Leave. A. Message.”

  I’m not ready when the beep sounds. “Dad?” I clear my throat. “If this is you, could you please call us back? Something bad happened and Jake’s in trouble and Mom needs money.” I know instantly that mentioning money is a mistake. “Not a lot, probably,” I say, swallowing. “Anyhow, that’s it. I, um, hope you’re having a good time, you know, in California.” Then, like he’s somebody who doesn’t even know us, I read off our phone number nice and slow.

  I get back on Tonto and ride up to the overpass. I stop and look at all the cars whooshing by underneath and try not to look like a juvenile delinquent riding a little kid’s bike around in the middle of a school day. Instead, I try to look like it’s no big deal that I’m standing on the overpass in the middle of a school day. Like maybe I’m a kid who’s home-schooled and who’s just hanging out trying to do a word problem in my head, like figuring out how many hours it takes for someone driving a Jeep 65 miles an hour nonstop to get from California to Pittsburgh.

  When I get home Eli’s still on the couch watching cartoons.

  I sit down next to him. “Anybody call?” I ask him.

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Eli. Did anybody call?”

  “For you?” he says.

  “Not just for me,” I say. “Just in general.”

  He shrugs.

  “You know, anybody special?” I say.

  Eli gives me a look. “You mean Stanley?”

  “No, not him,” I say.

  Eli doesn’t answer; he just goes back to watching his show.

  “I’m hungry,” he says.

  “So get some cereal,” I say.

  “There’s no milk.”

  I sigh, then get up, thinking that even a bunch of Food King appetizers would taste good right about now. Except that there aren’t any left. The only thing I can find is a pack of microwave popcorn, which I’m nuking when the phone rings.

  I practically run across the room to get it. Then I stand there and let it ring one more time so it doesn’t sound like I’m all out of breath when I pick up.

  “Is Suzy there?” It’s a man’s voice, a sort of familiar man’s voice, which I figure could be my dad’s new California voice or could be him feeling sort of shy and polite after having not called for so long.

  I decide to also be polite.

  “May I ask who’s calling?” I say.

  “Stanley.”

  It takes me a minute to understand. “The Food King?” I say.

  He chuckles. “My friends call me Stanley.”

  I don’t say anything.

  Finally, he says, “Is your mom there?”

  I could go up and try to wake her up. I could cover the phone with my hand and pretend to call for her. Instead, I say she can’t come to the phone.

  “Oh.” You can hear him sounding kind of concerned, also kind of stumped. He stays on the phone, breathing, for a minute.

  I hold my breath.

  “Is this Toby?” he says.

  I nod.

  “Will you let her know I called, Toby?”

  I say uh-huh, which isn’t the same as saying yes; then the microwave bell rings, and I tell him I have to go.

  The next day, it’s the same. Eli and I sit on the couch pretending it’s another day off and eating cereal out of the box. About lunchtime, the phone rings. I practically vault over Mr. Furry, who’s back to napping in the kitchen.

  “Is this Toby?” The connection is scratchy, but it’s definitely a man’s voice and he’s asking for me.

  I swallow. “Uh-huh,” I say. “This is Toby.”

  “I got your call,” the voice says.

  I get ready to explain everything.

  “By mistake,” he says.

  I don’t understand.

  “Did you leave an answering machine message saying someone named Jake was in trouble?”

  I nod.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “But I think you dialed the wrong number.” He sounds like he actually is sorry.

  “It’s okay,” I say. Even though it’s not okay at all.

  Then we stay on the phone, not saying anything for a while.

  He wishes me good luck.

  “Good-bye, Toby,” he says, like we actually know each other, which makes me wish there were a reason to stay on the phone with him. But I can’t think of one, so I just hang up.

  “Who was that?” says Eli when I come back into the den.

  I shrug. “Just some guy.”

  I go upstairs and, just to make myself feel completely rotten, open my binder and look at the not there-ness of the Stargell. Then I get in bed and pull the covers over my head, even though I’m still dressed, and lie there for about 185 years.

  I wait for it to feel warm and soft and dark like it does under Eli’s blankie. Which doesn’t happen. Then I wait for my mom to wake up and notice that I’m in bed with the covers over my head. Which also doesn’t happen. Then I wait and wait and hope that if I just wait long enough that maybe someday I’ll feel like I used to feel when I looked at the Stargell. Which is never going to happen.

  I finally throw the covers back and get up.
And go outside and get back on Tonto. This time, knowing that where I need to go isn’t Ohio or Omaha.

  Mr. D doesn’t throw me any WarHeads when I walk in or ask me how I’m doing. “I don’t have any jobs for you today,” is all he says.

  “That’s okay,” I say.

  He goes back to looking at his computer screen, which I can see is showing a Milt May rookie card for sale on eBay.

  “There’s a Milt May for sale,” he says. Which is probably just something to say, since I already have a Milt May, which he sold me back in sixth grade. I feel like all of a sudden I’m just another customer and not the one person in the world he gave a mint ‘62 Stargell rookie card.

  I don’t tell him I’m done collecting cards. I don’t tell him there’s no point. “I’ll think about it.”

  Mr. D just looks at me.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” I say.

  He reaches over to log off, and the. computer voice says good-bye.

  Mr. D tugs at the hem of his Mister Rogers sweater. I run my hand through my hair and stare at the toes of my shoes. “The, uh, you know, the Stargell…” I say.

  He nods.

  I’m sweating to death, my mouth is dry, and my heart is pounding. For once in my hypochondriac life, I truly do feel sick. I can’t finish.

  I peek out from under the brim of my baseball cap and look at Mr. D. He looks like maybe he feels sick, too.

  Which makes me feel even worse.

  After a while, Mr. D clears his throat. “You don’t have it anymore, do you?” he says.

  I shake my head no. And wonder how he always knows things without me telling him.

  “I saw it on the Internet,” he says.

  I nod.

  He waits a while. “Is that because you sold it, Toby?’

  I want to explain everything.

  But I just keep my eyes down and say no.

  “I didn’t think so,” he says.

  I look up at him for a minute. “You didn’t?”

  He shakes his head. “But I did wonder why you weren’t coming around.”

  I shrug.

  “Are you mad at me?” I say finally.

  “Mad? No.”

  When you ask grown-ups if they’re mad and they say, no, they’re not mad, they usually say they’re disappointed, which, to tell you the truth, is a lot worse.

  “Are you disappointed?” I say.

  “Why would I be disappointed?”

  I shrug. “Because I lost it?”

  He waits a minute. “Did you?” he says. “Did you lose it?”

  I know this is one of those Yoda-Luke Skywalker situations where he keeps answering my questions with more questions until I finally understand what he’s talking about, but all I say is no.

  “All right, then,” he says. He gets up, goes behind the counter, and then tosses me a pack of WarHeads.

  Which means I have to look right at him. “Thanks,” I say, meaning not just for the WarHeads.

  He nods. “It’s okay,” he says, also, I’m pretty sure, meaning not just about the WarHeads.

  I don’t know what to do after that, so I grab the Windex and walk over to the display case, partly out of habit, partly because it’s at least something to do.

  Mr. D turns his computer back on.

  After a while he says my name.

  “You see the new Jason Kendall in there?” he says. He gets up and comes over with the key to open the case. “Wanna spend a little quality time with it?”

  “No thanks,” I say.

  He studies me a minute. “You finished collecting?”

  “Maybe,” I say. Then I go back to Windexing the display case.

  “Does the Stargell have anything to do with that?” he says.

  “Maybe,” I say again.

  He frowns.

  I want him to understand. Even though I’m not sure I understand myself. I look him in the eye and decide to tell him the best I can.

  “I don’t ever want to have something be that important again.”

  He looks like he understands. “Because it might disappear on you?”

  I nod.

  “So from now on you’re going to avoid caring about things,” he says. “That way you’re never disappointed, right?” he says.

  “I guess so,” I say.

  “Well, that” he says. “ That would disappoint me.”

  When I get home, Eli’s still sitting there watching TV, which is either some kind of Guinness World Record or which means he’s getting that psychological disease when people are afraid to go outside and end up spending the rest of their lives sitting on their couch.

  He hardly even looks away from the screen when I come in. “I’m hungry,” he says.

  I go in the kitchen and look around. I come back with a jar of peanut butter and two spoons, since that’s all that’s left. And even though I’m pretty hungry on account of having not eaten anything all day except WarHeads, I let him have more than me.

  We’re sitting there with the empty jar between us when my mom comes down wearing her bathrobe. Her eyes are puffy, and she looks really tired even though she’s been asleep for two days.

  She doesn’t say anything right away. She just looks around the den at the empty cereal boxes and the empty bag of popcorn and the empty box of PopTarts.

  I jump off the couch and start cleaning up.

  “Is that what you had for dinner?” She points to the peanut butter jar.

  Eli nods.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I say.

  She puts her hand on my shoulder and I sit back down.

  “No.” She shakes her head like she’s privately agreeing with herself about something. “It’s not okay.”

  She gets up and goes into the kitchen and makes us a meal out of a whole bunch of canned things and frozen things, which don’t really go together but are at least cooked things, and Eli and I eat like people who just got off a starvation diet. She doesn’t eat any of the food, though; she just looks out the window.

  After dinner, while Eli’s gone off to play Nintendo and I’m telling her how great dinner was for the 185th time, she starts flipping through the mail. She holds up a copy of Sports Illustrated with a banner across the front thanking me for my new subscription.

  “You can forget about baseball cards for a while, Toby,” she says. “Until you pay for this.”

  I just say okay.

  Then she holds up a copy of Cooking Lite. “I assume you ordered this, too.”

  I nod.

  “Why?” she says.

  “I dunno,” I say.

  “Answer me, Toby,” she says.

  I look down at my feet, then up at the cover of Cooking Lite, which has a picture of homemade apple pie on the cover and a headline that says, Surprise your family tonight!

  “I did it so we could win the million dollars,” I say.

  She sighs.

  And I just stand there waiting for her to start crying.

  Except that she doesn’t. Not only does she not start crying, she starts laughing. Not in the usual way, but in a way that you can tell she doesn’t think this is one bit funny. Which, to tell, you the truth, is way worse than her looking like she has a rare, incurable disease.

  She puts her hands on her hips and stares at me.

  “Do you want to tell me what’s been going on around here?”

  I can tell from the way she’s saying it, that she expects me to shrug or say I don’t know. Or maybe come up with another one of my bogus stories.

  But I say yes.

  “Yes,” I say again. “I do.”

  At which point, I realize it’s the first truly true thing I’ve said to her in a long time.

  She pulls a cigarette out of her robe pocket, looks at it, then puts it back. She gestures for me to sit down at the kitchen table.

  She waits for me to say something.

  I also wait for me to say something.

  “Jake, uh …” I swallow. “Jake’s not on th
e baseball team.”

  She waits for me to say more.

  I wait for me to say more, too, but I can’t.

  She squints at me. She takes out a cigarette and lights it this time. She looks sideways at me as she’s blowing out the match.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” she says.

  I shrug the kind of shrug where you say yes without technically saying yes.

  “And you covered up for him?”

  I pick up a coupon that fell out of the copy of Cooking Lite and fold it in half. I nod.

  “Why?” she says.

  I fold the coupon in half again. “I was just trying to help.”

  “You were trying to help?” she says, blowing out a plume of smoke.

  I nod.

  She just waits.

  “I thought you’d get upset.” I fold the coupon in half again, then again, then again. Finally, I look up at her. “I didn’t think you could handle it.”

  She gets up and goes over to the sink to flick the ashes off her cigarette.

  “Besides,” I say to her back, “you were always on the phone with him”

  She turns around and I point to the Food King box sticking out of the trash can.

  “Stanley?”

  “Whatever.”

  She takes a long inhale, then crushes her cigarette in the sink. She paces around the kitchen a little, reties the belt of her robe, wipes down the counter. Then she grabs the carton of cigarettes, dumps them in the trash, and comes back and sits down at the table.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  I don’t understand. I’m the one who’s supposed to be sorry. “About him?” I gesture toward the Food King box.

  “No,” she says. “About the whole thing.”

  I wonder exactly what she means by this.

  “A person only sees what they want to see,” she says.

  I still don’t understand. I only know that she’s starting to sound like Mr. D.

  She takes my chin in her hand. “I thought something was going on. I just didn’t want it to be true.”

  I think about this for a minute. It occurs to me that I didn’t want it to be true either, that I thought that maybe if I sprayed enough Citrus Magic around the house, it wouldn’t technically, actually be true.

  She reaches over and messes my hair. Then she stops and looks at me.

  “Are you still pulling out your gray hair?”

  “Not exactly,” I say. “I rearrange it.”