Chapter 9. Cait #2
“Seriously, Topher. No word from you in—what? A year? And you show up here now? Like this?”
“Hey!” He raised his hands in defense. “I sent postcards. Did you get the one from—”
“Mom can’t even keep track of you.”
The last time Cait spoke to their mother about Topher was when they’d learned he was going to Maine to work on the lobster boat in the middle of winter.
Over lunch at Captain’s Diner in Port Haven, Nora cried and told Cait she was worried that he’d taken a turn for the worse.
Cait wasn’t sure why—Topher was always making stupid decisions—but she suggested her mother tell him that.
Nora didn’t, of course. She never said anything to Topher that might be taken as criticism.
Not when he dropped out of college and pretended to still be enrolled for months until the official withdrawal notice arrived and he couldn’t deny it anymore.
Or rode a motorcycle through rural South America without a map.
Or applied to become a helicopter firefighter in Montana and lied on his medical form about his asthma.
This had always been the case with Topher.
Sometimes Cait was jealous of his free pass, and other times she saw how it just gave him permission to be an asshole.
Topher smiled and raised his hands in an aw shucks kind of way. “Well, here I am,” he said. “Tracked.”
“You reek.” More than the booze, it was layers of tobacco and sweat and weed, the hint of something briny and decayed. Maybe even gasoline.
“I’m sure I do. I came straight off the boat—”
“Why?”
“Just got into town for Alice’s wedding.” He crossed his legs and entwined his hands on his lap.
Alice’s wedding was a week away, but last Cait heard, Topher hadn’t responded to their mother’s panicked inquiries about whether he’d be attending.
Cait wasn’t sure she believed him anyway.
He could have ditched the boat for any reason.
He got fired. He quit. He was off to Siberia.
It had been years since she’d understood him in any real way.
Every time she saw him, he was less recognizable to her, less accessible.
He even looked different. Born eleven months before her, they were Irish twins, but standing there now, he seemed much older, his hair thinning in the front, face puffy, shoulders hunched.
“What is she doing getting married anyway?” he continued. “Who is this guy?”
“Kyle’s all right.”
Cait liked Kyle, even if he was a bit rigid.
“She’s too young,” Topher said.
The idea of Topher judging anyone for how they lived their life floored Cait, but she also agreed with him, and so she didn’t say anything as he scanned her one-room studio, nodding at the books stacked near the radiator and the plants covering the windowsill.
“Your timing is shit,” she said. “I’m taking the bar in the morning.”
“Dude.” He slapped his forehead. “I’m so sorry.”
He shook off his Carhartt jacket, and beneath his flannel, the Saint Christopher cross their mother had given him for confirmation hung around his neck. It surprised her that he still wore it, and she found herself softening.
“It’s fine,” she said.
He picked up the textbook from the floor and flicked through the pages. “Why are you doing this?” He asked it like they’d had the conversation before. “What good do lawyers do?”
Whatever small amount of sympathy she’d had for him was waning.
She understood where his disapproval of lawyers stemmed from, but what right did he have to barge into her apartment in the middle of the night and interrogate her like this?
More irritating was the younger-sibling part of her that still wanted to impress him, even longed for his approval.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Little things like advocating for equal rights and making sure people are treated justly.”
Topher tossed the book onto her bed and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “And that’s the kind of lawyer you’re going to be?”
She smirked. “I’m going into corporate law.”
“True justice indeed.” His laugh had an edge. “But you still haven’t explained why.”
Cait bristled. She knew he was waiting for her to say it was for the money, so he could give her one of his anti-capitalist rants, but she refused.
“I happen to find it interesting,” she said. “And challenging, intellectually. Remember that?”
For a moment he seemed to actually be remembering something.
Then he said, “Sure,” and his half shrug infuriated her.
He had always been the smart one. The one who didn’t need to study to get the best grades and the highest test scores.
The one their mother assumed would become a doctor, though Cait never once heard him talk about medicine.
“Well,” she said, “maybe it’s not as rewarding as being a deckhand on a lobster boat—”
“Sternman.” He winked.
“But not anymore?”
“We’ll see,” he said. “Think I might head to South Korea to teach English.”
“That almost sounds civilized.”
“I also have a buddy with a logging outfit in Durango, so—”
Cait snorted. He always “had a buddy.”
Topher watched her. “Anyway,” he said after a moment. “Can I crash for the night? I haven’t slept in over a day, and I’m beat. I can sleep on the floor. I’ll get out of here first thing in the morning.”
“Where will you go?”
“Home,” he said.
“Is Mom expecting you?”
He whistled. “What are you? Her gatekeeper?”
Cait didn’t want him there. He stank. She’d had a whole plan for her morning—a run, coffee, shower, then off to her test. But he was her brother, and she loved him and worried about him, so she said, “You can stay one night.”
Topher pressed his palms together in prayer, a gesture he’d acquired after living on a communal farm in India a few years ago when he was still in his early twenties. Then he lowered his head in a slight bow, annoying Cait to no end—this former altar boy acting all holy—and said, “Thanks, kid.”
Cait stepped into her slippers. “I need to grab the blow-up mattress from the basement. I’ll be back in five.”
Downstairs, she flipped on the lights and clapped her hands to scare away the mice as she walked toward her locker.
The only time she’d ever been down there was three years ago when she first moved in, and her landlord showed her the storage space.
The basement was spooky and cold, and she was grateful she remembered the code for the lock.
She grabbed the bag and ran upstairs two steps at a time, but when she made it back to her apartment, the door, which locked automatically, wouldn’t open. She knocked.
“Topher,” she whispered loudly.
She pounded harder.
“Topher!” she yelled. “Open the fucking door!”
After a few minutes, she slid down and collapsed onto the blow-up mattress bag, her back against the door.
The hallway was freezing, her throat raw, and she still hadn’t gone to the bathroom.
Now and then she pummeled the door, no longer caring if she woke her landlord—at least she could use their bathroom—but Topher didn’t hear a thing, because he was passed out on their grandmother’s old chair, where Cait had left him in her warm apartment.
When he opened the door hours later, dawn flooding the hallway where Cait dozed, he was mostly sober and spouting apologies and rubbing his bloodshot eyes.
“How long were you—”
“Just shut up!” She leapt to her feet. She was so furious she wanted to hit him, but she desperately needed to relieve her bladder before anything else.
When she emerged from the bathroom, her fingers stiff with cold, she found him drinking a glass of water in her tiny kitchen nook.
It was cloudy outside, but in the early morning light, he looked even worse than he had last night, the bags under his eyes swollen, as though he was the one who’d slept in the hallway.
She opened the window to let in fresh air and get rid of the day-old smell of his booze and sweat. Bleecker Street was quiet, nearly empty aside from a man walking his dog. The sidewalks and trees were all drenched from rain.
He placed the glass in the sink with a shaky hand and turned to her. “I don’t totally remember what happened,” he said, his voice gravelly.
Cait stormed past him, grabbed his backpack, and thrust it at him. “You have to leave.”
He blinked. “You’re pissed. I get it.”
Cait handed him his jacket. “No, you don’t get it,” she said. “If you got it, you’d grow the fuck up.”
She’d never spoken to her brother like that—she’d followed along with their mother and pretended like all was fine and normal even when it wasn’t. Topher stared at her hard, but she refused to be the one to break eye contact.
Finally, he nodded and said, “Okay,” then put on his jacket and tossed the backpack over his shoulder.
But his composure enraged her more. She’d buried it for years—the horror of his pain, his lostness a constant reminder of her gnawing guilt—and now she couldn’t contain herself.
“And I’m not Mom’s gatekeeper , but I am so tired of her having to worry about you all the fucking time.
Do you know what that’s done to her? To all of us?
I don’t give a shit anymore. Mom’s right.
All you’re doing is trying to kill yourself on these stupid jobs, and now—what?
—you’re going to go climb hundred-foot trees? I’m done trying to stop you.”
These were not the last words she’d said to her brother, but they might as well have been, for the way she would regret them. For years and years, they would settle within her like rot.