Chapter 11
— Chapter 11 —
Coriolanus snores now. He’s ragged and smelly and sounds like a balloon leaking air, but he spent the whole night cuddled into the crook of my arm, and it makes me feel forgiven.
My temples ache. My bladder is full. I move the slightest bit and feel the pulse in my incision again.
It’s still dark out, but upstairs, the shower is running and the pipes thump when it stops. I hear Aubrey padding down the hall. I can tell she still walks on the balls of her feet when she’s barefoot. The door to my old room creaks. I wasn’t paying attention when she went to bed last night and assumed she was in Steena’s room, but it makes sense that if she comes here to get away from her mother, she doesn’t want to be in her mother’s old space. I try not to read anything into her willingness to occupy mine.
The doorbell rings. I feel it like a jolt. Aubrey’s half-footed steps hit the stairs fast, and I can’t tell if she’s panicked or excited.
The seal of the door makes a whooshing sound, then the weather stripping brushes against the entryway tile, and I hear the aching creak of the metal-framed screen. Each sound happens as I expect it to, like a riff to a song I forgot I knew. My heart races the way it always did at any moment of change in this house.
“Why are you here?” Aubrey says.
I hold my breath, certain it’s her dad or Steena.
But then Jam says, “Why are you here?”
“I live here,” Aubrey says, then stammers, “I mean… not really… I don’t, but I…”
“Yeah. Me too.” There’s amusement in Jam’s voice. “I live here, but not really…” He calls out, “Frey?”
“Hey,” I shout. Coriolanus wakes up but won’t budge, keeping me pinned under the comforter. Even though he’s just a scrappy little cat, my side hurts too much to move him.
Jam’s full-footed steps track through the living room, down the hall.
I wipe the sleep from my eyes.
“I thought I lost you again, bro,” he says when he sees me. Then his face goes slack with shock. “—the fuck did you do to your hair?”
Coriolanus hisses at Jam. I pet his back to try to get him to calm down, but he turns and hisses at me. He jumps off the couch, runs past Jam, tearing down the hallway as if he isn’t an old guy.
“You match the cat,” Jam says. “You both look like Garfield.”
From the hallway, Aubrey snort-laughs.
I forgot about the bleach, and now I feel embarrassed. I try to catch a glimpse of my hair without overtly looking.
Jam shouts, “Right, Aubrey?” which makes Aubrey laugh harder, which eggs Jam on. “Is the name of the color on the box Tabby Cat Orange? Tell me how you feel about Mondays, Frey.”
Aubrey inches into the room wearing fuzzy pink socks, plaid pajama pants, and a giant purple sweatshirt with the neckband cut out, which I think means she’s keeping clothes here. Her right eye is ringed with black liner, but she hasn’t done the left yet.
“Why is the butcher from work here?” she says.
“You work with her?” I ask Jam, pulling myself up to sitting. Creamsicle curls fall in my face. It’s so much worse now that my hair is dry.
“Yeah,” Jam says.
“You know my aunt?” Aubrey asks him.
Jam grins. “Way too well.”
“Ew.” The weirded-out face she makes is magnified by her uneven makeup.
I still can’t get used to Aubrey at this age. It feels like time travel to look at her.
“He doesn’t mean it like that,” I say.
“Ew,” Aubrey says again.
“You don’t remember Jam?” It seems bizarre to me that she doesn’t. Sometimes he came for ice cream with us. One time I took her to the Hammond Museum in North Salem to see Jam play a program of Akio Yashiro preludes for a bunch of rich people. He pretended with absolute seriousness that a five-year-old was his road crew. For the entire evening, Aubrey, her face twisted in a concerned frown, carried Jam’s water bottle and handed it to him carefully every time he held out his hand. She wore a burgundy lace dress that was her pride and joy—a hand-me-down from a cousin on Steena’s dad’s side, way more frilly than anything my sister would buy for her. I spent the whole program watching Aubrey. She was fixated on the rapid movement of Jam’s hands. She sat as still as possible from the waist up but kept bouncing her feet against the legs of her chair, like her little body could not contain the energy his music created.
“That’s Ben ,” Aubrey says, shaking her head, as if I just told her that grass is pink and the sky is green. I don’t see how she doesn’t recognize him. But I guess there were many years where they had no cause to see each other. And who would expect a concert pianist to become a butcher at the grocery store?
“Ben-JAM-in,” I say.
Aubrey stares at him hard. Jam stares back, crossing his arms to copy her stance. She rolls her eyes.
“Did you know she’s my niece?” I ask him.
“Of course.”
“And you never said anything about it?” Aubrey says, red-faced in a way that could be anger or embarrassment. “That’s weird. That’s just weird, man.”
Jam looks at me. “She bums cigarettes all the time.”
“I pay them back,” Aubrey mumbles.
He raises one eyebrow and shakes his head. She laughs, and it reminds me of how he used to make her laugh when she was a kid. He’s kind of like an embarrassing uncle, but he’s also still a big child, and something about their rapport makes me jealous and a little uneasy.
“You gave my niece cigarettes?”
Jam shrugs. “If I didn’t, someone else would.”
“Why do you care?” Aubrey asks me, voice sharp.
“I just do,” I say, feeling helplessly tangled. She’s never going to forgive me for leaving her, and I can’t undo it.
“Nice clothes, by the way,” Jam says, pointing to the sleeve of his shirt on my arm. He’s making an effort to change the subject.
“Sorry,” I say.
“She definitely owes you a shirt.” Aubrey tells Jam how she found me bleeding on the doorstep.
“Give it back when you’re done, Frey,” Jam says. “I’ll tell people someone shanked me.”
“I’ll wash it first.”
“Don’t. That ruins my story.”
Aubrey looks at me and then Jam and back to me. She can’t tell if he’s joking, and I’m not sure either.
“Do you want a ride to school?” Jam asks.
“Yeah.” Aubrey points to her face. “Do I have time to…?”
“Suit yourself,” Jam says.
“I’ll hurry.” She bounds down the hall.
We listen to her run up the stairs, half-footed, taking two at a time.
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew Aubrey now?” I ask.
“You didn’t seem like you wanted to talk about her.”
“Why didn’t you tell her you knew me?”
“I wasn’t sure how she’d feel about it,” he says. “It’s not like Aubrey and I are friends. Just smokers. But sometimes when we hang behind the store, I get the feeling she’s…” Jam stares at his shoes, nods his head like he does when he’s getting revved up to play piano. “I think she has a rough go at home, so I wanted her to have an adult she trusted.”
There’s a sharp twinge in my nose. I blink hard, trying to get the pain to dissipate. “Did you know she was hanging out here?”
“I give her a ride sometimes. Usually to here, but that’s flawed data, because it’s probably easier for her to get a ride home. The few times I’ve driven her to your sister’s house, she tells me she’s sleeping over at a friend’s. And the whole ride, she looks like you when I drove you home in high school.” Jam mimes her expression, and I feel that fear like electricity in my stomach. “She’s so much like you.”
“Stop giving her cigarettes,” I say. I want to make sure he remembers that she is not me, and he is not seventeen again.
Jam scrunches his eyebrows together, like what he’s about to say is the result of careful consideration. “I think cigarettes are the only thing keeping her from imploding. Like if she doesn’t burn something, she’ll burn.”
My heart adds extra beats. “Okay.”
“Okay, what?” he says.
“I need to figure this out.” I picture my sister as I last saw her—standing in her driveway in leggings and a long cashmere sweater, her face red, eyes black with rage as she screamed my name like a curse. “Steena will fucking kill me if I keep letting Aubrey hang out here.”
“True. But that’ll happen anyway. Steena is definitely going to murder someone someday, and she hates you the most,” Jam says, but he’s only talking in generalities about how my sister never liked me. He doesn’t know the half of it.
“I should call a lawyer so I can leave Aubrey the house when her mom murders me,” I say, trying to keep the joke going, even though it doesn’t feel like a joke to me.
“My dad’s got a guy,” Jam says, and I know he’s just doing his severe deadpan thing, but it gives me goose bumps.
Aubrey bounds down the stairs again. “You ready, Ben-JAM-in?” She yells from the living room.
Jam loud-mumbles gibberish.
“What?” Aubrey shouts.
“Hmmunghabugh,” Jam says.
“Huh?” We hear Aubrey stomp down the hall to join us in the den. Both her eyes are lined with black now. She’s wearing a thick black hoodie big enough to fit three of her, and black leggings under jeans ripped so severely they might be more blank space than cotton. “What are you talking about?”
“Absolute nonsense,” Jam says. “I wanted to see if I could make you come in here.”
Aubrey rolls her eyes. “You ready?”
“Yeah. See you later, Frey!” Then to Aubrey he says, “I can drive you back here after work.”
Aubrey gives me this lost little kid look, like she can’t tell if she’s allowed.
“Would you mind?” I ask, trying my hardest to sound casual. If she comes back, maybe I can get a good picture of what’s going on. And at least I’ll know she’s okay for one more night. “I probably shouldn’t stay here by myself until I’m a little better.”
“You’ll be fine as long as you don’t belly flop on the bathtub again,” Jam says, and ignores my dirty look.
“Yeah, whatever.” Aubrey shrugs like she doesn’t care at all, but I can tell she’s relieved.
Jam salutes me. “Try to keep your blood in your body, Frey.”
Aubrey snorts. She pulls her hood up like she needs the added protection, her face disappearing into the shadow it creates.
“Do you have to go find the rest of your pants?” Jam asks as they walk down the hall.
“You’re not supposed to comment on my appearance,” Aubrey says.
“Well, it looks like you got your pants stuck in a lawn mower, so I was concerned.”
“Well, you look like…” Aubrey trails off. “You…”
Jam laughs. I can picture him pointing at her, shaking his index finger, the way he always did with me when I failed at banter.
“You’re so mean,” she whines.
“Definitely,” Jam says. “I am excellent at being mean!”
Aubrey laughs. “ Excellent! ” she says in a high sweeping voice.
“ Excellent! ” Jam repeats, laughing too.
I am on the outside of their joke, and I feel like grown up Wendy, left behind while Peter Pan sets off with Jane on a new adventure. But I’m not sure how much Aubrey would talk to me without Jam as a mediator. And while he has always been prone to binges of self-destruction, even at his worst, he held me dear, kept me safe and separate from his demons. I know the core of him hasn’t changed. I also know that there are plenty of worse things than a true heart and a chaotic mind.
“Was that jazz?” Aubrey asked Jam after his Yashiro program at the Hammond Museum was over and he’d done the required schmoozing with patrons.
Jam still had the shiny aura of performance—the toothy smile and crinkles around his eyes that I only ever saw when he played well for people who appreciated his talent. It was intoxicating to be around him when he felt that way. Aubrey kept wrapping the satin sash from her dress around her thumb, like she needed to split her attention, because now that she knew about the special thing Jam could do, talking to him was almost too much to handle.
“It isn’t jazz,” Jam said. “But it has similarities.” He sat at the piano again and patted the bench for Aubrey to sit next to him. “Where did you learn about jazz?”
Aubrey shook her head and pushed her hair out of her face. “I just heard it somewhere. It’s a good word. Jah-Zzzuh.” She climbed on the bench next to Jam and sat up straight with her hands in her lap, even though I could tell she desperately wanted to touch the piano keys.
“It is a good word,” Jam said, taking her very seriously. In another version of his life, with a different set of circumstances and brain chemicals, he would have been an amazing teacher. “This part here…,” he keyed a bit of one of the preludes, “we could easily turn into jazz if we did it like this.” He played the same riff, adding extra bass notes to the chords, turning the notes as he moved down the keyboard. “This part…,” he played another section, “could sound like this.” He added some flourish and walked the bassline. Then he started swinging the notes. “If you play it like this , you’ve got the blues.”
Aubrey stared at him, wide-eyed.
“The blues are where you get to sing out all your feelings,” Jam said. “Tell me something you hate.”
“My brother,” Aubrey said.
“Why do you hate him?”
“He cries all the time, and he poops his pants.”
“Perfect,” Jam said. He played a blues riff and jumped in, singing, “I told you I hate my brother. I told you! I told you! Even though you’re my mother. He’s so loud and smelly! It makes me sick in my belly! I’ve got the loud and smelly brother blues!”
Aubrey giggled, but she had tears in her eyes in the way that always made me want to scoop her up and save her from the world.
“You try,” Jam said, playing the riff again.
“He’s so smelly!” Aubrey whispered.
“You gotta get loud with it, Aubs!” Jam said.
“My brother is smelly,” she sang, in her sweet little kid voice.
“Louder!” Jam shouted.
“Austin’s so stinky!” Aubrey bellowed. “He makes the world smell like diapers!”
The caterer met my eyes from across the room and grinned.
“Yes!” Jam said, still playing. “I’m gonna count to three, and then we’re both going to sing ‘I’ve got the smelly little brother blues!’?”
Aubrey giggled.
“Okay, here we go. One, two, three…”
Jam and Aubrey sang “I’ve got the smelly little brother blues!” and then looked at each other and laughed so hard it filled the room. The event planner and the caterer and the museum docent all applauded, and Aubrey started clapping too. Jam clapped for Aubrey, standing, and bowing as he did, and she stood on the piano bench to curtsey. I remember wishing that we could just live in that museum. That I didn’t have to bring Aubrey home. We’d stay forever and play piano and eat finger sandwiches for every meal.
I wonder if Aubrey remembers any of it. If she remembers that burgundy dress and those patent leather shoes. How she fell asleep in the car and woke up while I was carrying her into Steena’s house.
“I don’t want to,” she sobbed into my shoulder when she saw where we were.
“I don’t want to either,” I said, and kissed her sweaty cheek.