“Hey,” she says.
“I’m calling about your availability. I mean, it’s not like you’re exclusive with Victor anymore.”
“Kind of busy right now,” she says.
“I may have something for you.”
“I’m north of the border. About to take some time off.”
“But if I had something for you, could you take it on? It’d be worth your while.”
“What do you mean, if?”
“I have to make the case to my boss. I think he’ll go for it. I’ll know very soon.”
She thinks. She really wants some time off, but then again, she hates to turn down work.
“What’s the job?”
“Some chick works in a bar,” he says. “Piece of cake.”
“Sounds like a job anyone could do,” Nicole says.
“We need some distance on this one, too.”
“Let me know when you’ve talked to your boss.”
She ends the call.
There’s something about his voice. It reminds her, just a little, of her father’s, although she hasn’t actually spoken with him for many years. The miserable son of a bitch.
But he’s always in her head, dear old Dad.
She can still hear him saying, “Jesus Christ, silver? We came all the way to Australia so you could win silver? You know what they say? If you win bronze at the Olympics, you’re just happy to go home with a medal. But when you win silver, when you come within a hair of winning gold, it eats you up for the rest of your life. It’s like being the second guy who walked on the moon. Who remembers him?”
She can still remember the slap she got when she said, “Buzz Aldrin.”
TWENTY-ONE
The following morning, it was as though it had never happened.
Thomas came down for breakfast like it was any other day. Even though I hadn’t stopped feeling guilty about how I’d handled things after the visit from the FBI, Thomas was going about things the way he always did, which is to say, he stayed in his room and traveled the world.
So many things about him puzzled me. I wished I could get inside his head. He’d always been a mystery to me, even when we were kids. There was this bubble around him, something that kept me from getting through, and him from reaching out. I’d always wondered, why him and not me? Why was he the one to be-is afflicted the right word? — with psychiatric problems, and not me? How fair was that? Did God look down at my parents and think, “I’ll give them one with a good head on his shoulders, and the other-I’ll have a bit of fun with him.”
There was no shortage of theories about why Thomas was schizophrenic. When we were kids, bad parenting-or, more specifically, bad mothering-was often blamed, which didn’t go over well with our mom, who was a patient, loving woman. A nurturing woman, she’d have been more likely to mitigate the effects of someone’s mental distress rather than exacerbate it. Over time, other theories came to the fore. It was genetic. Environmental. A chemical imbalance in the brain. Stress. A childhood trauma. Processed foods. A combination of all of those things.
Or maybe something else entirely.
The bottom line was, no one really knew anything. I could no more explain why Thomas was the way he was than I could explain why I was the way I was. And Thomas, while troubled, was also tremendously gifted. His ability to remember all the things he saw while on Whirl360 was beyond my ability to comprehend. I asked him once if he’d be happier without this so-called gift, and he threw it right back at me. Would I be happier if I had no artistic ability? What I judged to be his curse, he saw as his talent. This was what made him different. This was what made him proud. His obsession was his source of pleasure. And when you thought about it, wasn’t that true of all talented people?
I just didn’t know.
What I did know was that my parents did everything they could to help Thomas, and loved him unreservedly. They took him to doctors. They took him to specialists. They met with all his teachers. They never stopped worrying about him. Often, as the older brother, I was drawn into that circle of anxiety. Once-I think I was fifteen at the time-Thomas had been missing for hours. He’d often get on his bike and wander Promise Falls, mapping it, learning every square inch of it. He’d return, his notebook filled with street plans, detailed right down to the placement of the stop signs and fire hydrants.
This particular day, he hadn’t returned home in time for dinner. That wasn’t like Thomas.
“Go see if you can find him,” Mom said.
I hopped on my bike and headed downtown. It struck me that that was where I’d find him. The crisscross of streets was more intricate downtown, and offered more entertainment value for someone with Thomas’s interests. I couldn’t find him.
But I found his bike.
It was tucked in an alley off Saratoga, between a barbershop and the Promise Falls Bakery, which made the best lemon tarts in the history of the universe. I thought maybe Thomas had gone in there for one, but the lady behind the counter had not seen him.
I went up the street and back, checking into every business, asking if anyone had seen my brother. At one point, I stood on the sidewalk out front of a shoe store, overcame my fear of drawing attention to myself, and shouted: “Thomas!”
When I went back to where I’d found his bike, it was gone.
I pedaled home furiously, getting there about ten minutes after he’d returned. Thomas was particularly sullen, never saying a word through dinner. But that night, I heard him in the basement, arguing with our father, or, more accurately, Dad speaking angrily to him. I figured Thomas was getting chewed out for going AWOL, but when I asked him about it later, he said it was nothing.
Whatever he’d been up to that day never came up again.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, pondering these and other weighty issues and watching Thomas eat his cereal, when I said, “Instead of making dinner, I have something else for you to do.”
He looked up from his bowl. “What?” He sounded alarmed.
“The house. It needs a cleaning.”
He scanned the kitchen and out to the living room. “It looks good to me.”
“It needs a vacuuming. A lot of stuff gets walked in here. I’ll clean the bathrooms, you vacuum the house.”
“Dad always did the cleaning,” he said. When I said nothing, he added, “He just always did it. I’ve never used the vacuum.”
“Do you agree that the house needs to be cleaned?” I asked.
Slow to answer. Finally, “I guess.”
“Well, if Dad’s no longer here, how do you think we should solve that problem? It’s the two of us living here, at least for now, and I want to include you in the problem solving around here.”
“I suppose,” he said thoughtfully, “you could do it.”
“I’m already doing the grocery shopping. And I’ve been making the meals. And dealing with the lawyer. And, Thomas, I have a job. I’m either going to have to nip back to Burlington-”
He started to say it, but I held up my finger as a warning and stopped him.
“I’m either going to have to nip back to Burlington, or I’m going to have to work here. Either way, I have things to do.”
“Me, too,” he said.
“That’s true. I figured, if I have to cut into my work time to get errands done, then it’s only fair that you should, too.”
Thomas’s eyes darted about nervously. “I don’t know where the vacuum is.”
