The Universe Is Expanding and So Am I

  I sit on the bench and hug my arms around my middle. There’s a tired-looking woman on the other end of the bench, her lips pressed tight, mascara stains under her eyes. She’s wearing denim shorts, a T-shirt, and sneakers. Upon glancing around, I realize that everyone but us has on whatever they happen to be wearing on this Saturday morning. It’s mostly shorts, tank tops, jeans, and sweatpants. I’m guessing most people don’t have expensive lawyers to instruct them to present the image of a wholesome, linen-garbed family. I guess that’s Mark Levy’s goal, to set Byron apart from the real criminals. Then again, if Byron sexually assaulted Annie Mills, doesn’t that make him a real criminal?

  Stop! I shouldn’t be thinking that. I should be hoping that Judge Harrison is having an awesome and spectacular day and goes easy on my brother.

  “Okay,” Dad says, beckoning to me. “Let’s go.”

  I join them at the door leading to the courtroom. There’s a steel-gray sign saying No photography. Damn. I was planning to get some family shots for our holiday card. Kidding.

  “Where’s Byron?” I ask.

  Mom shoots me a glance. Oh yeah. Seen but not heard.

  “He’s in a cell behind the courtroom with the others who’ve been arrested. He’s been held there since last night.” Mark pauses at the door. “Now put your phones away and don’t take them out. Judge Harrison hates when phones ring in here.”

  I silenced my phone in the car, but I check again just to be sure.

  “People call it the Pen,” Mark adds, “and that’s putting it nicely.”

  Mom sucks in her breath. I shudder in my too-tight blazer and follow her into the courtroom.

  An hour later, we’re still waiting. We’re sitting in the third row—Dad, Mom, and me. Mark Levy is in front of us and on the aisle. Every now and then he walks up and confers with a police officer or a clerk. Then he returns to his row where he whispers something to Dad, who whispers something to Mom, who doesn’t whisper anything to me.

  The lack of information has resulted in me cobbling together random observations.

  RANDOM OBSERVATION #1:

  I thought Judge Harrison would be old and severe, like a mean teacher who yells at you for being loud in the hall. But she’s got long auburn hair and full pink cheeks. She looks like the library assistant at Brewster.

  RANDOM OBSERVATION #2:

  Arraignment court is a traffic jam of police officers and people handing paper to each other. Every so often they bring a person from the Pen, usually a stony-faced guy who is subjected to a retina scan. Then that stony-faced guy has to wait on a bench until he’s called up in front of the judge, who determines whether he will get out on bail or be locked up again.

  RANDOM OBSERVATION #3:

  It sucks, okay? Some of the people are even handcuffed.

  All of a sudden, the door from the Pen opens, and, holy crap, it’s my brother. As a guard guides him to the retina scan, Byron looks as stony-faced as everyone else. He’s not handcuffed, but his arms are clasped behind his back. He’s wearing the same shorts and gray T-shirt he had on yesterday, and his brown hair is matted and greasy.

  After the scan, a police officer guides my brother to the bench, pushing him down with a shove.

  Mom gasps. Dad’s face has gone pale. Mark Levy stands up quickly and walks to the front to confer with a clerk. In that second, Byron makes eye contact with Dad. He raises his eyebrows as if to say help. I can tell he’s two seconds from crying. Which makes me want to cry, seeing my successful, smart, sometimes asshole brother barely holding it together.

  “Excuse me,” I whisper to the woman to my left.

  I squeeze past her on my way to the aisle. I don’t look back at Mom or Dad. I’m getting out of here.

  The rain has stopped, but the steps of the courthouse are still wet. I lean against a metal railing and cry for my brother and for every stony-faced person getting arraigned in there.

  Once I’m done crying, I breathe in the steamy, slightly putrid air. There’s a loud drilling sound, some nearby street getting jackhammered. People are hurrying past, shaking out umbrellas and pushing babies in strollers like it’s any other day, like they have no idea people’s fates are being decided one cement wall away.

  I wipe my nose with my blazer sleeve. I’m combusting with sweat, and the stiff sleeves are binding my arms to my sides. There’s a trash can at the bottom of the stairs. I peel off the blazer and chuck it in.

  Good-bye, Horrible Thing.

  I cross the street and wander into a park where old Chinese women are dancing to music from a battered boom box. Across the park I can see the yellow awning for Tasty Dumpling. Alyssa’s grandmother usually makes her dumplings from scratch, but when she doesn’t have time she buys them by the frozen bagful here. Not only are they delicious, they are also cheap, which is good because I only have five or six dollars in my wallet.

  I curl my toes in Mom’s too-small heels and limp toward Tasty Dumpling.

  Ten minutes later, I’m consuming a plate of fried pork dumplings, dousing them with soy sauce. My phone is on the table next to me, and I’m texting with Shannon, filling her in on the Byron stuff. I’m also texting a little with Alyssa. Apparently she hung out with Froggy and Hudson at the Brooklyn Public Library all day, and the three of them are walking to the subway now.

  Hey you, Froggy writes. Are you feeling better?

  I have no idea what he’s talking about. It’s not like I told him about what’s happening with Byron.

  Better? I ask.

  Your sore throat, he writes.

  Oh, right. That.

  Yeah, I say. All better.

  Froggy texts me a row of thumbs-ups and then adds, I need to go home and sleep, but want to hang out tomorrow?

  Sure, I say. Maybe it’ll be good to see Froggy, to do something normal to get my mind off Byron.

  Central Park at noon? Froggy asks. The regular spot?

  The regular spot is Belvedere Castle, where we first kissed in public. Froggy lives on the East Side and I’m on the West Side, so it’s our midway point. Back when we were madly in like, meeting at the castle was cheesy in a cute way. Maybe it still could be.

  Great, I write to him. Regular spot at noon.

  On the walk back to the courthouse, I watch the old Chinese dancers. The women have paired off, and they’re ballroom dancing, spinning and stepping and clutching their partners’ outstretched hands. The late-afternoon sun has come out, and I notice that my blazer has already been plucked from the trash. Right at this moment, someone could be excited about their new beige blazer, oblivious as to why I was forced to wear it today.

  I turn the corner onto Centre Street and spot Mom, Dad, Byron, and Mark Levy in front of the courthouse. Mom is nodding, and Dad’s arm is touching Byron’s back.

  So Byron is free. The judge must have set bail, and my parents must have paid it.

  Mom looks over at me. She doesn’t comment on my courtroom escape or my missing blazer. I guess Mom’s tendency to sweep things under the rug can work to my advantage sometimes.

  An SUV pulls up to the curb. Mark waves good-bye and walks away. Dad opens the door and climbs in. Byron gets in after him. They both go into the way back. Mom slides in next. I walk over, step in after her, and the car takes off.

  “I forgot my umbrella,” Mom says after a minute.

  “Want to go back?” Dad asks.

  “Hell, no.”

  No one says anything else on the drive home. Byron’s eyes are closed, and he reeks like sweat and pee and maybe even vomit. I press my fingers over my nose and focus on breathing through my mouth.

  “Want an Altoids?” Mom says as the car pulls into our neighborhood. She offers the red-and-white tin over the back of the seat.

  “Thanks,” Dad says, pinching up a few.

  I take an Altoids, too. Byron, who is staring flatly out the window, shakes his head.

  “I hadn’t remembered that Mark was so short,” Mom says to Dad. “And doesn’t it look l
ike he’s gained weight?”

  Dad nods. “He should watch it or he’s headed for a triple bypass.”

  “He was already doughy when we met him last fall,” Mom says.

  Dad laughs for the first time all day. “That’s putting it nicely.”

  I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. I know I come from a family of fat-shamers, but I would have thought at a time like this, when my brother could wind up in jail and Mark Levy is the guy who could save him, they would put their judgments on hold.

  “He’s good, though, right?” Byron asks, suddenly tuned in.

  Though. As if body type has anything to do with ability.

  “Of course,” Dad says. “He’s the best.”

  As the car pulls up in front of our building, Mom adds, “Anyway, most of this is over the phone. No one will even see him.”

  I push the door open, jump onto the curb, and storm into our lobby.

  9

  As soon as we walk into the apartment, Byron disappears into the bathroom and the shower starts up. Dad pours himself a glass of red wine and one for Mom, too. He downs the entire glass like it’s water and fills another. Mom orders Thai food, which seems like a weird choice, as if they’re re-creating last night just without the arrest. When Dad is on his third glass of wine and Mom is on her second, I decide that things are bad, maybe even worse than I thought.

  I’m on my bed working on a draft of my Humanities essay. It’s not due until Thursday, but it counts for 40 percent of our grade. I’ve told myself that if I can finish three pages of the essay I’ll allot myself thirty minutes of Fates and Furies. Things are falling apart with Lotto. It’s hard to see. But fictional hard is better than real-life hard. As I’m struggling to come up with a thesis sentence, I can hear Dad on the phone in his room. When he drinks his voice gets louder than usual. I can hear him talking with his financial advisor, and I can even hear him saying the number they paid to make Byron’s bail. It’s a crazy high number, the cost of a year of college.

  I gnaw at my thumbnail until it bleeds, push aside my laptop, and go to the bathroom for a Band-Aid. I haven’t chewed my nails much since I was in sixth grade and Byron joked that chubby girls chew their nails because they have oral fixations.

  On my way back from the bathroom, I can see Mom sitting at her desk. Mom uses my sister’s old room as her office. On her laptop, there’s an image of the Eiffel Tower. Mom’s glass of wine, now empty, is positioned next to her.

  “Why are you looking up Paris?” I ask.

  Mom quickly closes that screen. Now I just see her wallpaper, which is a photo of the five of us, back when I was ten and we were on a family vacation in Nantucket. Mom had me on a gluten-free diet that summer, and I remember being frustrated that I couldn’t eat lobster rolls with everyone else. That was the summer before Anaïs left for Brown, before Byron started high school. On Mom’s desk, I notice a copy of her book proposal. The cover page says “Purple Hair and Piercings: Embracing Your Teen’s Rebellions” by Dr. Phyllis Shreves. I touch my eyebrow ring. Since I switched rings a few days ago, it’s feeling a little sore. On the cover of the proposal, Mom’s agent has inserted a picture of a skinny teenage girl with purple hair and an eyebrow ring.

  Mom sighs heavily. “I may as well tell you because you’ll find out soon enough. Mark says that Byron can’t go to Paris. I was just contacting the study-abroad program to ask about a refund.”

  “Why can’t he go to Paris?”

  “It’s complicated,” she says quickly. That’s when I notice that her new peach manicure is chipped off her thumbs. Mom never picks at her nail polish. She routinely swats my fingers when I scratch at mine.

  “Did they take his passport away?” I ask, hugging my hands over my stomach. When I googled details about arrests earlier, it said that you can get your passport taken away.

  “No.” Mom pauses. “But Mark says that Byron needs to stick to intrastate travel while we figure this out. If he tries to leave the country it could appear like he’s a flight risk, like he might not come back.”

  My knees feel watery. I clutch the door frame to support myself.

  “What’s going to happen to Byron?” I ask. “Like from here on out?”

  Mom reaches for her wineglass even though there’s nothing left. I know from what I’ve overheard so far that if the prosecuting lawyer can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Byron is guilty, he could get jail time. He could get that sex offender registry that Mom was worried about. Those are some worst-case scenarios. But it also sounds like the lawyers could agree on a deal, like for Byron to plead guilty to a reduced charge, and then he wouldn’t have to go to jail.

  “There’s no set outcome,” Mom says after a moment. Then she closes her laptop, strides over to Anaïs’s old bed, and starts stripping the sheets. She’s yanking them hard with her fists and chucking them onto the floor.

  Later, when the Thai food arrives, Dad answers the front door. Mom sets out plates and napkins and I carry in the seltzer glasses, but Byron doesn’t come to the table. As Dad knocks on his door, Mom and I go quiet.

  “I’m not hungry,” Byron says through the closed door.

  “At least come sit with us,” Dad says. “We ordered your favorite. Shrimp Pad Thai and spring rolls.”

  No response. Dad stands there for a moment, his arms crossed over his chest, then sighs and comes to the table.

  “He hasn’t eaten all day,” Dad says to Mom. “Mark says he brought him a nut bar this morning and he refused that, too.”

  Mom scratches a fleck of polish off her fingernail. I watch it flutter onto the floor.

  Enter: Another glass of wine per parent.

  They are getting soused. Dad is repeating a golf story that he told two days ago, and Mom’s eyelids are drooping. They don’t notice I’m sneaking miniservings of Pad Thai and texting with Shannon in my lap. She’s sending me the address of various stops along the PCT where I can mail her packages, places called Tuolumne Meadows and Red Moose Inn.

  Near the end of the meal, Mom leans toward me and says, “We’ve decided not to tell your sister about the arrest.” She folds her napkin once, then twice, and runs her finger back and forth along the crease. “Just in case Anaïs calls, please don’t say anything.”

  “But she already knows about Byron,” I say. “About what he did.”

  Mom shakes her head. “We don’t want to upset her. She’ll find out when she gets home in two weeks. Let her have fun in London.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Sure.”

  “That’s my girl,” Mom says, draining her glass of wine.

  I don’t wake up until ten. I pull on a bra, a pink camisole, and loose cutoff overalls. I check out a blog with braid and ponytail ideas and then fix my hair into pigtails. When I come out to the kitchen, I can see that my parents have stepped up their efforts to get Byron to eat. Instead of going to Whole Fitness aka Whole Fakeness like they usually do, they took a run in Riverside Park so they could veer over to Absolute and get Byron his favorite poppy seed bagels. Then they jogged down to Zabar’s to buy him lox and scallion cream cheese and raspberry Danishes.

  Absolute Bagels. That blond-haired artist boy who likes A Wrinkle in Time and girls who say “homage.” Sigh.

  “I’m not hungry,” Byron says. He’s hunched over the counter sipping black coffee. “Besides, my head is killing.”

  “You have a headache because your body needs food.” Mom reaches over to touch his hair, but he bristles. “At least have a few bites.”

  “Byron, you need to keep your energy up,” Dad says.

  “For what?” Byron sets down his coffee cup hard. “For Paris? For Columbia next semester? For rugby team and law internships? Forget all that. My life is over.”

  And then—seriously, for real, holy crap—Byron starts to cry. He slumps his head down, and he’s gasping and hiccuping. I haven’t seen my brother cry in a decade. And then it was probably because Mom snatched his game player away so he’d finish his homewo
rk.

  My parents swarm in and hug him and pat his back.

  I’m leaning against the fridge, trying to stay as motionless as possible. I am not meant to be witnessing this. If they remember I’m here I will be exiled to the far reaches of the apartment.

  “Honey,” Mom says as Byron’s crying winds down to a sputter. “We will figure this out. Remember what Dad said? Mark Levy is a fantastic defense lawyer, the best in the city. He’s going to be in constant conversation with the district attorney, and they’ll work out a plea bargain or maybe even throw it out.”

  “But we accepted my punishment at Columbia fall semester,” Byron says. “The dean of students suspended me, and we didn’t challenge it. Mark says that’s going to work against me. It’s going to make it look like we admitted guilt.”

  Even though I should be feeling sorry for Byron, I’m annoyed at how he’s saying “we.” It’s not like my parents did anything wrong. Mom looks at Dad like help me out here, but he’s crossing his arms over his chest, his cheeks flushed with anger. I wonder if Dad’s going to tell Byron that this isn’t a “we” situation. Yes, we are here for you, and, yes, we will do our best to make sure you don’t go to jail, but you are the one who got drunk and forced a girl to have sex. You. Not us.

  “And what about SORA?” Byron says. “Even if I avoid jail time, what if I have to register as a sex offender? Do you realize that, if that happens, I won’t be able to go near schools or children? Columbia will expel me if I’m found guilty. And forget law school. You think I’ll ever be accepted to a law school, even a shitty one, after this?”

  Byron starts crying again. As Mom rests her hand on his shoulder, she says, “We will figure this out.”

  “Mom!” my brother says, lurching away. “Do you even understand what last semester was like for me? Do you know that people wrote my name in Sharpie on bathroom stalls all over campus next to the word ‘rapist’? Don’t you get it? You can’t gloss this over like you do everything else in your life.”