“Maybe this is a dream too,” he whispered. “Maybe everything is. Maybe it’s not even me dreaming.”
2 3 0
F o r t u n a t e S o n
With these thoughts he fell into a light doze.
As he slept he tumbled down mountainsides, was attacked by feral dogs, and was raped unmercifully by boys from the desert facility whose names he had forgotten. But none of this pained him. His mother died, but she came back to console him. His brother got lost in a wilderness but still made it home in time for dinner. He found himself adrift on a tiny raft in the middle of the ocean, floating in circles and being laughed at by cruel dolphins. In this last ordeal Thomas thought that it might be time to fall over the side, allowing himself to sink under the waves. He wanted to die and be with his mother and Alicia, Chilly, Bruno, and Pedro. He could look for Eric’s wife.
Eric.
When he opened his eyes again he was still sitting upright.
The sun through the window had moved a good six feet across the wall. The door was open, and a moment later Eric was standing there.
“Are you a dream, Eric?” he asked.
The blue-eyed Titan came up to the bed and cupped his brother’s face with both hands.
“I’m sorry I let them take you, Tommy. And for making Mama Branwyn sick.”
“Ahn said that she thought you would hurt me,” Thomas replied. “But I told her that you always saved me.”
Eric pulled up the visitor’s chair, and the brothers talked for hours. In a haphazard, rambling manner, Thomas told his story. He started out with drug dealing and Monique and Lily. Then he talked about his alley and his father’s arrests.
“He isn’t really a bad guy,” Thomas said. “But he was just mad all the time because people were always trying to take things from him.”
2 3 1
Wa l t e r M o s l e y
When Eric told his story, it started with the beached green fish that he caught with his hands and unfolded event by event until Raela came to his house and said that they were meant to be.
In the middle of his story, a nurse popped her head in to tell Eric that visiting hours were over.
“This is my brother,” he said. “We haven’t seen each other since we were six. I can’t leave him.”
The nurse, a middle-aged Chicano woman, smiled and nodded, then quietly closed the door.
Eric confessed his crimes against the people he should have loved. He killed his mother and Branwyn and Drew and Christie. He won every game he ever played that was important. He failed to bring happiness into his father’s life.
“But Dad doesn’t think that,” Thomas stated with certainty. “All that stuff is just in your head.”
Eric thought about his self-portrait and the worried look on his art teacher’s face. Something fell together for him. He wasn’t complaining or distraught — just feeling empty.
Thomas took Eric’s hand and asked, “What about that girl?
Do you love her?”
“No. I mean, she’s the only one other than you or Mama Branwyn that ever made me feel something. But it’s a little like I’m afraid of her, the way I used to feel about Ahn, but more.”
“Because why?” Thomas asked.
Eric smiled, remembering those words from their childhood,
“I guess I don’t want anyone to know what I’m like on the inside. I feel ugly, you know? Except when I think about you or Mama Branwyn.”
*
*
*
2 3 2
F o r t u n a t e S o n
Th ey tal ke d w i th out holding anything back. It had been more than a dozen years and the boys hadn’t had one thing in common since the day they were separated, but still it was as if they’d been apart for only a day. They giggled and awed each other; they played and vowed never to be parted again.
“I will never let them take you away, Tommy.”
“And I won’t go nowhere.”
E ri c d i dn ’t leave the hospital until Thomas was asleep, and he was back the next morning with his father, Ahn, and Mona.
“I’m so sorry,” Minas told Branwyn’s son. “I should have done something to keep you. Or at least to find you once we knew that you were lost.”
“That’s okay,” Thomas said. “It’s really not all that bad. I mean, it’s kinda like a dream. I’m not mad at you. And I don’t care about what happened to me. I mean, even when you get shot it only hurts for a while. And if you don’t get all upset about it and nobody shoots at you again, then it’s okay. Or if you’re hungry it’s like that too. Because sooner or later you’re gonna eat, and then you’re not hungry no more. Right?”
Thomas liked being with the whole family, but it wasn’t the same as his time alone with Eric. With Eric he could
