I told him about the guys on the track team who had given me trouble, and even about how Connor had gone after them.
I told him about Libby Weller, though I didn’t state the exact reasons for our breakup. I just told him I learned pretty suddenly that she wasn’t a very nice person.
I was purposely leaving out any mention of Zoe Dinsmore, because if it turned out he didn’t approve of her either, well . . . that just felt like more than I could take.
I talked until I felt weird about doing so much talking. About filling the air of the mostly deserted bus with so many words. Especially since he was saying nothing in return.
I watched him look out at the passing houses. His eyes were turned away from me, but I could see a perfect reflection of them in the bus window. He seemed to be focusing intently, but I had no idea on what. Maybe what I was saying. Maybe something else entirely. I got the sense that he was either listening carefully or not at all.
I stopped talking. I think I’d run out of things to say.
I got that feeling again—like I was looking at my brother but he wasn’t really my brother. Close, but not quite. I thought maybe when his foot was healed and he didn’t have to take the pain meds anymore, I would get him back.
Maybe that’s why I’d gotten so wrapped up in the idea of his recovery.
He turned and looked right into my face. Possibly for the first time since he’d gotten home.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this?” he asked.
“When?”
“In your letters.”
“Because it wasn’t important.”
“Who says it wasn’t?”
“How could it matter? You were seeing horrible things, and you had bullets whizzing by your ears. What difference did it make if I got a place on the track team or not? It’s stupid. It’s nothing. It wasn’t even worth wasting your time with stuff like that.”
“But that’s the stuff I wanted to hear about. You know. Regular stuff. From home. Normal stuff, like my life was before.”
“Oh,” I said. And then I felt absolutely horrible. “I didn’t think of that. I’m sorry.”
He turned away and looked out the window again.
“Whatever,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. You didn’t know.”
I sat on the curb outside the meeting room door, watching the sun go down. The more it went down, the more I could stare at it without burning out my eyes and going blind.
I couldn’t hear what was being said inside the meeting room, with one exception. When a person said his name, or her name, the whole group said hi back to them. I couldn’t hear the first part. I couldn’t hear anybody named Joe say his name, but I could hear the group say, “Hi, Joe.” And three or four minutes later, “Hi, Evelyn.” And five minutes after that, “Hi, Carlo.”
Once, at what I thought was getting near the end, I heard everybody say, “Hi, Roy.”
But if my brother was sharing, I never heard what he said.
Maybe five minutes later the door flew open behind me. Light spilled out, followed by the sound of voices, followed by people. I got up and dusted off the seat of my jeans.
Roy came limping out on his crutches and we walked off toward the bus stop together. Slowly.
“Did you talk?” I asked him.
“No.”
“Oh. I heard them say hi to you.”
“Yeah. That guy Joe called on me to share. But I didn’t want to. But he said, ‘Well, anyway, who are you?’”
“Oh.” I tried not to let on that I was disappointed. I was guessing I failed. “Well, at least you said your name was Roy and you’re an addict. That’s something.”
“I didn’t say that. I just said my name was Roy.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”
We traveled the rest of the way home in complete silence.
“That guy Joe” was leading the meeting on Friday. The one where I got to come in and listen again.
He was a compact little guy with neatly combed hair and wire-rimmed glasses. Sort of the opposite of the tattooed motorcycle guys. Joe looked like more of a college man or a bookworm. Somebody you wouldn’t expect to see at an NA meeting, except for the fact that I was already learning not to cling too much to types. Addicts were more different kinds of people than I might’ve imagined.
“My name is Joe and I’m an addict,” he said, when it was time for him to lead the sharing.
Everyone in the room said, “Hi, Joe.” Even me.
That is, everybody except Roy.
“I don’t usually tell my whole story,” Joe began. “Because it’s a small town and I figure you guys have heard it, like, a gazillion times. But we have a newcomer, so . . .”
His eyes flickered up to my brother Roy. Roy’s eyes did not flicker back. They remained glued to the table in front of us.
“I never touched drugs ’til I was nineteen,” Joe said. “Never wanted to touch them, and never thought I would. And then I was in Nam. Sixty-five and sixty-six.”
At that, Roy’s eyes flickered. They darted up and met Joe’s for just a fraction of a second, and then both guys looked away again. Quickly. Like the way you recoil after touching a hot stove.
“You hear a lot about the drugs guys do over there, and everybody always figures you’re talking street drugs. Well, there was plenty of that, and I’ll get to it. But it didn’t start with that. It started with the drugs the army gave me.
“I probably should’ve mentioned that I was never drafted. I joined up and volunteered to go. I thought there was something going on over there that was worth getting behind. I thought my government knew exactly what
