The driver jumped out and came around to the curbside rear door. The way a gentleman will open the door for a lady. But it wasn’t a lady I saw climb out of the back seat. It was Darren Weller.
He handed his crutches out to the driver, then carefully positioned himself so his one good leg was out of the cab, shoe sole down on the sidewalk. The driver reached a hand out to help him up, and handed him back his crutches one by one, until Darren was standing steady.
I watched Darren slip the driver some kind of bill and then make his way, slowly, obviously painfully, up our walk.
He looked different than last time I’d seen him. His hair was freshly combed, slicked back with some kind of men’s hair product that left wet-looking comb marks along his scalp. He was wearing neatly pressed chinos and a white long-sleeved shirt. The partly empty leg of his slacks had been carefully folded up and pinned.
I was pretty sure my mom wasn’t home, so I went downstairs to let him in. I respected him too much not to go let him in. Though, truthfully, I was also afraid of him now. Or still. But more so now, because I thought he might punch me for not being nicer to his sister.
I opened the door, and we looked at each other for a minute. Well, a few seconds. It felt long. He didn’t look angry. He looked more sad than anything.
“He taking visitors?”
“He might be kind of doped up on pain meds. I could go see.” Another awkward few seconds. “Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. Come in.”
He did, easing along on his crutches. I could tell how much it hurt him. I could see it in his face. Every time he rested his weight on them, I saw the wince. I remembered what Libby had told me about shrapnel in the muscles of his chest.
“Maybe you could go up and see what’s what,” he said. He was looking up the stairs as if the second floor was the summit of a mountain he was only half sure he could climb.
“Sure,” I said. “I will.” But then I stuck where I was for a moment. “Are you mad at me?” I asked him.
His face looked completely blank.
“About what?”
So that was obviously a good sign.
“Things didn’t exactly work out between me and your sister.”
“Aw, hell,” he said. “I know what a pain in the ass she can be. I know it better than anybody.”
The logistics were tricky, to put it mildly. But here’s how we worked it out: Roy came down. He came down the stairs with one hand on the banister, the other on my shoulder. I walked a couple of steps ahead of him and below him, careful to stop if he seemed wobbly.
When we got to the bottom of the stairs, Darren swung over on his crutches and offered my brother what I can only call an embrace. The word “hug” would not be expansive enough to cover it. I could hear them speaking quiet, almost reverent words into each other’s ears, but I couldn’t hear what words they were.
Then Darren clapped Roy on the back a couple of times, and they broke apart.
“Hey, buddy,” Roy said, turning his attention on me. “Run upstairs and bring me down my crutches, okay?”
I did as I’d been asked.
Then I watched my brother and my ex-girlfriend’s brother disappear—slowly—into my father’s den.
I wanted to follow, but I didn’t. I wanted to rate, but I didn’t. I ached to be a member of the authorized personnel—figuratively speaking—who could walk through that door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.” But I wasn’t.
You had to have survived a war. Watched parts of yourself separate away. Actual parts, and maybe invisible parts as well.
You had to know things I couldn’t possibly know.
Darren came out about an hour and a half later. By himself. I tried not to think about everything he had likely been told, and how much I wanted to know it. At least, I think I wanted to know it. Sometimes it’s hard to be sure until it’s too late.
He came over slowly on his crutches. It was clear he was tired from so much moving around. He put a hand on my shoulder. He never had before.
“Where’s Roy?” I asked.
“On the couch in the den. He’s not feeling good about getting back up the stairs. When your dad gets home, you can tag-team the thing.”
“Okay.”
If he ever got home. You never knew in those days.
“Now do me a favor, okay, Lucas?”
“Sure,” I said.
He led me farther away from the den door. He leaned in as if to say something important. Then he seemed to go an entirely different direction in his brain.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me call my cab first.”
I sat on the living room couch with my heart pounding and my fingers woven together, fidgeting.
He came out a couple of minutes later. When he eased down on the couch next to me, he made a long noise. A cross between a sigh and a grunt. It reminded me of my grandmother before she died—of the noise she made every time she sat down. But Darren was only twenty.
“I need you to do something to help your brother,” he said. His face was leaned in close, his voice quiet.
“Anything. What?”
“Find out where there are some meetings in town. Or in Blaine. Or wherever the hell you have to go. If AA is all you’ve got, it’ll do. But try to find NA if you possibly can. Try to find what they call an open meeting. That way you can go, too. And then get ’im there. And sit with ’im so he doesn’t walk
