Invincible Summer(54)

I keep my head up. “Fine. You know how it is. . . .”

“I don’t.” He’s quiet for a minute, and I hear him twisting the chain of the swing around his fingers. He mumbles, “Because I’m not fine.”

“I’m . . . sorry.” God, I sound like a jerk, and a part of me wants to. A part of me wants to shut Noah out and make him feel like he’s the only one who feels like shit. What’s wrong with me? Why do I want him to feel alone?

“Can you sit down or something?” he says.

“Noah . . .” I walk a few steps away from him, tugging at the ends of my hair. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t even know why the f*ck we came back here.”

“We didn’t have any other choice. We had nowhere else

to go.“

“God, we could have stayed home.”

“We needed to be here.”

“What the f*ck does that mean?” I turn around and stare at him. “What the f*ck do we need from here? What the f*ck is left of this place that we haven’t sucked dry? The f*cking stores we’ve visited a million times? The restaurants where we’ve tried the whole menu? The ocean?” “To be together.”

“We’re not together!”

He’s quiet while he closes his hands into fists. “You know what? God, Chase, f*ck you. This is the closest we’re f*cking going to get to together.”

“Shut up.”

“And you’re supposed to be my f*cking brother, and you haven’t given me the f*cking time of day since we’ve been here, and I’m just trying—”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’m just a shitty brother.”

“Maybe you are.”

I force a laugh. “Well, who would know better than you?”

He puts his head in his hands.

Eventually, he speaks, his voice very even. “I made one mistake. One horrible f*cking mistake that I would do anything in the world to undo, but that does not define what I’ve been for all of you.”

He’s practiced this speech. This was the speech he wanted to use when he was stealing my toothbrush.

He says, “I was the first advocate for this family. Always.

I made you a f*cking guitar strap, I . . . I was going to switch my major for him.”

“Yeah, you talked a big f*cking game about how important we were while you were running out the f*cking door! Some f*cking older brother. Some f*cking Noah, letting your baby brother drown.”

This isn’t fair. I don’t blame Noah. But I want to, I want to hate him because it’s so much easier than loving him and hugging him and crying with him and feeling and losing.

I say, “You want to talk about turning into our parents?

Shitdamn! I hope you never grow up, you *! I hope you never have kids of your own to f*ck up!”

“I did already!” he screams.

I just can’t talk about this. I can’t be here doing this. We had our time. We grieved. It’s over now. We’re supposed to be on to acceptance now. We have to accept this. We can’t keep dredging this up like the wounds are fresh just because we’re here. Just because we’re together. Just because we’ll never be together again.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

He lets out a laugh from the back of his throat. “Yeah.

Everyone’s sorry.”

In other news, we’re playing house again. I’m still the father, but now Claude’s our rebellious yet loveable teenager, Luce is our baby, and Noah, who’s taken over the cooking, is playing Mom. He’s good at it. About as distant and ineffectual as our real thing. “Eat more,” he tells me.

“Um, backatcha.”

“You look like an old man.”

“God,” I say. “Don’t say that. Never say that again.”

Noah and I aren’t fighting, but this is about as meaningful a conversation as we seem able to have.

He makes steak and green beans and cuts them up into

little pieces on Lucy’s plate. “I wanna do it myself,” she says.

“Big sharp knife,” Noah says. “Not for kids.” We have this bad habit of speaking to Lucy in ASL speaking patterns, which is especially strange when you consider that Noah never really learned how to sign. He switched his major to engineering.

Claudia’s picking at the steak. She’s made this recent fuss about turning vegetarian, but can’t stick with it, so mostly she just eats meat and looks morose.

“I’ve been thinking. . . .” she says.

We look at her.

“Once you go to college.” She gathers her hair back in her hand. “Maybe I ask Dad if we could move up here. It’d be nice to see the place in the off-season. Get a taste of summer all year.”

Noah and I stare at her.

I guess I figured over the past week that she was just as uncomfortable here as we are. But maybe we’re the thing making her uncomfortable.

I take a sip of lemonade. “He’d never go for it.”

“I know,” she says. “But it couldn’t hurt to ask, right?”

It could hurt him. I look at Noah, and we say this with our eyes. “You know what it will make him think,” I say. “That you don’t care. That it’s not still hurting you.”