Left Drowning(58)

“Who else knew you were fine?” I ask.

He shrugs and wipes his nose. “Just the doctors. I mean, the coach never made me prove that I couldn’t play. I just said there was too much muscle damage and pain for me to get back to anywhere close to what I was.”

I nod, trying to process what he’s told me. I am seething, absolutely filled with rage for what he’s done to me, and yet … I know how easy it is to go crazy when your parents burn to death one floor above you. Underneath my anger is a piece of me that can sympathize with his choice. Chris was right when said that it was easier for James to blame me for everything. If I’d had someone other than myself to blame, I might have taken advantage of it. And my brother was only fifteen; he was just a kid. Fuck, he’s still just a kid in a lot of ways.

I say the one thing that I know to be true. “It must have been hard for you to tell me the truth.” And then I have to ask him, “Why now? Why are you telling me now?”

“Because … because you’ve been so nice to me. I think that before, when you were so messed up, it was easier to trick myself into thinking it was true. That my lie was actually true and that you deserved all the blame because you were so awful to be around. The way you were acting made everything so hard.”

I love James, but I f*cking despise him right now. He used my grief and my depression as an excuse to perpetuate a lie that hugely contributed to my miserable state.

“You’re going to hate me forever,” he says.

“No, James. I don’t hate you.” I move my hand on his back again. As much as I am confused and out-of-my-mind angry, he has still done something brave by telling me this, and I know that both of us have already suffered enough. Screaming at him now will not do any good. And I could never hate him.

“I’m really, really sorry. It was really f*cking dumb of me, and I wasn’t thinking. I was just so mad about everything, and it snowballed, and I didn’t know how to get out of the lie, and …”

I shut my eyes and continue to rub his back. In my head, I am screaming, You son of a bitch! You f*cking little shit! Instead, I think about how Chris managed that Thanksgiving fiasco with Sabin, how he was able to handle his brother so coolly when he probably wanted to throttle him. No good would come from screaming, so I speak calmly. “I understand. I know what it’s like to get stuck.”

I am holding back tears, for him and for me. James is in horrible pain, again, and now so am I, and I’m stuck parenting my brother when I could really use a little f*cking comforting myself. Life is not fair, but it is what we have to deal with. And we are going to deal with it so that we can live. No, so that we can thrive.

“Why does it still hurt so much?” he asks. “Why can’t we just move on and deal?”

“I know. We’ve been grieving for more than four years, but not grieving well. And now, it seems, it’s time.”

There is no set pattern to grief, despite what every stupid psych text has told me. There is no time frame that dictates when and how you’ll feel what you feel. You just get to deal with hell however, and whenever, it hits you.

“We’re going to get through this,” I tell him.

“It’s so hard to be home,” he says. “It’s too hard.”

I picture Chris helping me to breathe.

I stroke my brother’s hair and think for a few minutes. Finally I ask, “Do you want to go back to school a little early? Do you have someone you could stay with?”

He nods and wipes his eyes again.

“I’ll change your plane ticket. It’s not a problem.”

“Are you mad that I want to leave?”

“Of course not. School is where you’re probably the most comfortable, and you should be wherever will help. I know this house doesn’t feel like home. But it will, and it will be here when you’re ready.”

“I’m so sorry,” he tells me again. “I’m going to make this up to you. I don’t deserve how nice you’ve been or now nice you are being now. I ruined everything.”

“It’s all right.” In disbelief over what has just transpired between us, I drop my head back on the couch. “We’re going to be okay, you and me. One day, we’re going to be okay.”

But we are not okay now.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


Him and Everything about Him


The flight back to school feels interminable. I wish the Boston-to-Madison trip could happen in an instant because I just want to be back in my dorm. The weather does miraculously cooperate, though, so at least I am not made to suffer through countless delays that end in a cancellation. By the time I land, I am nearly desperate to get to Matthews. Because I have no one to pick me up, I accept that I’ll have to pay a small fortune for a cab to deposit me back at school.

James left Boston yesterday, the day after our talk, and I took one day to shut down the house before I caught my flight. I didn’t bolt, though. Returning to school is not about running away. Being home in my parents’ house for that long was hard, especially coupled with James’s revelation. It’s going to take time to deal with my brother’s lie and what it did to me. There’s no way to fix things between us overnight, or even in the next few months. I’m going with the assumption that I’ll forgive him when I’m ready. I feel good because I made major progress in more ways than one over break, but it was time to go. Had I stayed any longer, I could have undone the good things, the “successes” that I can add to my mental list. They are hard won and I am not giving them up.