The Storm

My brother made a promise during my third-grade summer, on the moving day when our father got lost in a rainy rush-hour. Nothing moved fast, not the traffic nor our father, but we could all see what was coming. There's rhythm to a slow-motion disaster, like dark clouds building over the plains before a storm.

We crept down some highway or the other. Big drops tapped the roof. Our mother flipped through a Thomas Brothers more rapidly, more randomly. I slowed my breaths, only through the nose, not the mouth. The gas gauge twiddled down. My father's drumming on the steering wheel increased in both volume and tempo until his thunder cracked across the car.

Moron.

Illiterate.

Stupid fucking bitch.

It wasn't his first storm, or even his worst, but Dale and I remembered what our mother had said that day on the telephone with her sister when she thought we weren't listening. Next time he touches me, I'm leaving. Even if I can’t take the boys.

Dale wound his hand over mine and squeezed. He didn't need to say anything. Brothers know. We committed to always be together. No matter what.

He broke his promise.

###

Dale texted to tell me he’d be late. Traffic. I pulled up a map on my phone. All green, not a slowdown in sight. Ten years apart and now he wasn’t coming. I should have known. His wife didn’t want him to see me. It had taken my every effort to break him down. He could sneak away while she was working, I had suggested, and the kids were at school. I offered to drop by his place. No, he’d rather meet at a coffee shop. He must have thought it would be easier to blow me off here.

I should have expected Dale to lie. Our father was the only honest member of the family, and that was because he didn’t see anything wrong with his storms. The rest of us covered up for him, made his excuses, tricked people into seeing the tranquility they wanted. Lying was a sport for us, with everyone fishing to see who could land the biggest falsehood. My mother lied to her sister, to her parents, to herself. After she left, Dale and I lied to teachers, doctors, and schoolmates. We swore we’d never lie to each other. That was a lie, too.

###

Dale started lying to me after he met Abby. He told me she liked me. I knew it wasn’t true. I’d overheard her gossiping with her friends. All of them liked Dale. None of them, especially not her, liked his creepy, pimply younger brother Jake.

Time passed. Abby graduated from Dale's high school girlfriend to his college girlfriend to his fiancée. They had a destination wedding on Maui. Dale offered me the position of best man because he knew I couldn’t afford the trip. I asked if he could front me for the plane ticket. I didn’t need a hotel, I said, I could find a bench to sleep under. He looked me right in the eye and told me money was too tight. He and Abby were already stretching their budget. They couldn’t afford it.

###

The barista kept looking at me. Their little shop was busy. Too busy for someone taking up a whole table on a small black coffee. I’d fit in better if I had a laptop, like the business-casual haircut in the corner booth. I checked my phone. Nothing. Another sip. The cup was empty. They might expect me to buy something else. I didn’t have the money.

The door jingled. Holy shit, he showed up. Dale looked the same a decade later. Tall, athletic, dark-haired, never quite at a full rest. He reminded me of our father: potential energy, raw and disconnected, waiting for an excuse to turn kinetic. He ordered. They gave him a little flag with a number. I hadn’t gotten a little flag, only a paper cup and a dirty look. I wasn’t sure what to say, not after ten years. Lucky for me, Dale was talking as he sat down.

“You have a lot of fucking nerve, Jake, after what you did.”

I lied to Dale a few times too.

###

It was never about money. Abby didn’t want me at her wedding. Fine. They were going to be an ocean away, their dog was boarded, the rest of the family was at the wedding. So I broke into their house. That wasn’t about money either.

I went in through the back. The suburbs have the nosiest fucking neighbors. Broke a window in their kitchen. I couldn’t see what I was doing and should have realized something was wrong. It didn’t break like anything I’d cracked before. I found out later it was a stained glass window Abby’s grandfather had hand-blown for her engagement. Nothing like the safety glass I was used to. I cut long gashes into both arms and my face crawling through.

I patched myself up with their paper towels and a roll of duct tape I found in the utility drawer. While I was bandaging, I got more and more pissed off. I lived in my car while my brother had a kitchen with a utility drawer and a custom stained glass window. And he wouldn't buy me one lousy ticket. He was the one who had broken our pact from that day in the traffic, not me.

Still, all I took was Abby’s jewelry. I had intended to turn the place over, but blood loss was making me woozy. I needed something to numb the pain. So I went to see Frank. He didn’t like me stopping by unannounced. I had to give him a whole fistful of Abby’s jewelry before he'd open the door. He let me clean up in his bathroom. When I came out, dressed in bandages like the Mummy, he was already cooking. We found a relatively intact vein and I let it carry me away.

I woke up the next morning in the backseat of my car. Frank had turned it over, of course, and taken almost everything. The only thing left was a gold broach that had fallen into the loose door compartment. Some drug lord, Frank. I had smuggled shit for him in there before. I left straight away to pawn the brooch. I might have made it, too, if it hadn’t been rush hour.

Abby had a cousin checking up on the house. They went by that morning. Dale called while I was still on the road and asked if I knew anything about it. I told him I didn’t, so sorry, that’s terrible, how’s the wedding going?

My lie lasted all of an hour. The cousin was the one who had given Abby the brooch and provided the police a complete description. When I went to fence it, still dressed up like the Invisible Man, the guy fingered me. Congratulations to you, the last honest pawnbroker. Dale bailed me out. He caught an early flight home. I knew he had the money for that ticket.

###

Dale’s voice hadn’t been loud, somewhere between a whisper and a growl, but everyone in the coffee shop knew shit was going down. I held my hands up.

“I was sick, man. I couldn’t help myself.”

“You were sick.” It didn’t sound so sincere in his voice. “Next you’ll be telling me it’s all mom’s fault.”

“I’m clean now.”

And everything was her fault. If we’d had a mother, maybe I could have stayed clean. Maybe I wouldn’t have turned into such a fuckup. I didn’t add any of this. It wouldn’t help, not right now.

“Let me guess. Ten years clean.”

Well, yeah. I didn’t reply. He scoffed and leaned back in his seat.

“So it wasn’t you. It was the State of California. Nice tattoo.”

I put a hand to my face, feeling along the blue lines there. I did what I had to do to survive.

“I’m sorry—”

I couldn’t even get the words out before he exploded, all that potential energy tipping into kinetic. No, I didn’t get to fucking say that, not after what I did. He only came to the coffee shop because I threatened to knock on his door if he didn’t. Abby had said if she ever saw me again she would shoot me dead in the street and she meant it. She had never been violent before, he said. I’d done this to them.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about the past. The first few years were tough. My face made an attractive target for fists. In between all the blows to the head, I started to see how cutting myself to pieces on broken glass wasn’t the tragedy: breaking a family heirloom was.

I wrote to Dale from prison, over and over again for years, trying to explain these revelations to him. I wrote about how sorry I was. I wrote about how his pain tormented me, about how it was breaking me. Asked him to give my love to Abby and his daughter. I don’t think he ever did. I was changing, I realized, but I’d already changed Dale.

My last hope was an in-person meeting once I got out. I thought I might be better able to explain things. It wasn't going perfect, that chat, not yet, but he was here. He was talking.

After Dale finished his rant, his fists balled like our father in the storm. I closed my eyes. It was easier that way, letting myself be blown with the wind. Beating a passive man wasn’t much fun. Most people won’t do it. Most people. 

There was a time when Frank got in deep with some scary characters and my debts became more urgent. He kicked me until I coughed up blood and told me if I didn’t get his money, he’d kill me.

Long seconds passed in the coffee shop. The sky cleared. I peeked an eye open. Dale’s fist unclenched and he slumped back in his seat. The young barista came with an oversized pink mug and a cheese Danish. The mug was filled with something sweet and steaming. She set them on the table and took the numbered flag away without a word. At the tables around us, conversation returned.

Dale didn’t eat his pastry or sip his drink. He sat across the table from me, spent but not resigned. I wondered whether he had said enough or if more thunder would be required before we could start the apology.

“Is Abby recovering?” I decided to test the waters, see if this was the calm or the eye.

“As much as anyone can.”

I thought of her speech at my sentencing hearing. She had asked the judge to put me away for as long as the law allowed. For what he’s done, she said, there is no forgiveness. Family, like the law, is a bond of trust. Jacob broke that bond. He’ll keep breaking it as long as he is allowed to walk around free.

“And the kids?”

Wrong move. We had been in the eye of the storm. I didn’t see his fist coming, not until it was connecting with my temple. Didn’t have time to close my eyes. I fell. The table came down on top of me. The mug shattered next to my head. Smelled like peppermint.

###

I showed up at Dale and Abby’s house a week before Christmas Eve, many years after my break-in. This time it wasn’t my fault I was bleeding. Frank had given me the beating of my life. Dale answered the door. When he saw it was me, he shooed the kids upstairs. Abby was out of town on business. Even so I wasn’t allowed in the house. I coughed some blood on his doorstep. Fine. He let me in, only tonight, I couldn’t stay. I was to go straight to the hospital in the morning. His kids weren’t allowed to talk to me, although they knew their fuckup Uncle Jake was around. I could hear them whispering behind the guest room door.

The next morning, as I was getting in my car across the street, Frank—or the people he was in with—found me. I had a piece in the secret door compartment. I pulled it out as they closed in. Fired once, didn’t look where. I didn’t think I hit anyone. They shot me six times and left me for dead.

It must have been Dale who called the ambulance.

He didn’t call it for me.

###

Dale gave me a kick, driving the cheese Danish into my chest. People around the coffee shop were shouting. They hadn’t ordered a beating with their frappuccinos.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say—”

He kicked me again.

“No apologies. They won't bring him back. You're a traffic jam of fuckups, Jake, and we’re all stuck in it.”

Someone grabbed Dale and pulled him into an arm lock. He struggled to get back at me. I crawled up on my hands and knees.

“I don’t want a second chance. I don’t want to be in your life. I just want you to know I’m sorry.”

Dale shook off the arm lock and pushed through the crowd. He paused at the door and looked over his shoulder.

“You’re not sorry. Even if you were, I don’t accept. Don’t you understand? You can’t make this right. There’s nothing, nothing you can ever do.” He walked outside, made it two paces, then came back in. “If you come anywhere near our house or our daughter, Abby won’t shoot you. I’ll do it myself.”

Then he was gone. The storm passed. Someone helped me to my feet. Someone else turned the table rightside up. Another person ran outside to snap a picture of Dale’s car. There were always people willing to pick up after the storm, I realized, but nobody wanted to build the shelters, nobody wanted to pay for the levees, nobody wanted to fund the alarms.

I knew my brother was right. I couldn’t make up for what I’ve done.

But I could go see Frank.