Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
CHASE
Mom liked to say it took ten thousand hours of practice to become good at something.
She’d remind me of that when I’d come home from Dad’s, despondent because I wasn’t good at something he’d pushed me into. Like selling real estate, public speaking, or eating the cilantro his third wife put on everything.
When it came to calling my brother, I was approaching one million hours and still no closer to proficiency. Eventually I annoyed him enough to answer and we agreed to meet in the park the following day. I wanted to tell him in person what I had discovered, and he wanted to squeeze a workout in.
“What the hell, Joe?” I demanded when my brother jogged up forty-five minutes after the time we’d agreed to meet.
Joe tossed his backpack on the park bench. “Traffic.”
I looked at his wraparound earbuds and the sheen of sweat on his face, clear signs he’d run here.
“I hate when you’re late.”
Joe put one foot up on the bench and leaned over it, stretching his thick limbs. “Hi Chase, how are you? I’m good, thanks for asking. I’m benching 210 at the moment and might head up to the Berks next week. Oh, Teddy? Yeah, it’s wild she’s back. What’s it been, seven years since she left? I thought she’d never stop running around Europe trying to find herself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I’m not married to her, but she really livens things up.”
I took a deep breath. “Joe, you should sit.”
He shook his head. “Gotta keep my heart rate up.” He began to jog on the spot and his hair, as thick and dark as his mom’s, bounced in its ponytail.
I’d always envied Joe for looking like Dr. Cody. I wished I looked like my mom. Instead, catching sight of myself in a mirror was like looking into one of the frames Dad used to keep on his walls of himself posing with famous clients. He and I had the same hair, the same stubborn jaw, I even had his heterochromia.
Joe was lucky. It was one thing to be haunted by a dead man, and another to feel like the specter lived under your skin.
The best thing to do was just say it. “The woman at the gallery wasn’t Teddy Bircher, Joe. We’re being scammed.”
Joe paused. “Interesting.” Then he resumed jogging as if I’d said we should go for bagels at Zucker’s. Which I might have, if I thought he’d actually come.
“And?” I prompted.
“What do you want, Dr. Holmes, a high five? I can’t believe I came uptown for this.”
“Watson is the doctor.”
He frowned. “What?”
“Sherlock is just Sherlock.”
“Well, maybe Teddy’s just Teddy.”
I sighed. “Joe, can’t you just accept that I have more information about this than you do? Come to Greta’s on Friday since you don’t believe me. Then you’ll see.”
“I might be washing my hair.”
“ Joe . ”
He stopped running. “All right, Fixy, let’s pretend for one second that I believe you. Pretend someone would go to all that effort just to, what? Read me the riot act in an art gallery? Ooh, nefarious. Real Mr. Ripley shit. If she’s not Teddy, then who is she?”
I was annoyed at myself for not doing this better, for not making the most of rare one-on-one time with my brother, and for not getting him to understand that I was protecting him.
My answer was curt. “I don’t know, some Dollar Tree actor with a Bircher chin.”
“But what’s the point? What does she get out of it?”
“The trustees?—”
Joe groaned. “Chase, I’m sick of hearing about the trustees!” He faced me squarely, his hands balled in fists. “Did I tag you in, Fixy? Did I ask for your help? No. You inserted yourself, as always. Apparently, it’s easier for you to detect identity fraud than say, Hey Joe, want to grab a beer? But go on Chase, let’s hear all your reasons my ex is not my ex. I’m sure you’ve thought it through.” He sat on the bench and crossed his arms, waiting.
I knew this wasn’t really what he wanted, this was a trap, but the information might burst out of me if I didn’t share it.
“She’s charismatic for one.” I started listing on my fingers. “I enjoyed talking to her. She doesn’t have the same temper problem, she acts like she’s never been to a catered event in her life—you saw her deepthroat that fucking cucumber at Sonya’s gallery event—and she was mortally offended when I didn’t know who Hedy Lamarr was.”
“Who?”
“An old film star who invented a new way of using radio frequency. She made it possible to have Wi-Fi and GPS.”
“Huh.”
“She’s pretty interesting. I’ll send you a link. But Joe, listen, she flirted with me?—”
“Hedy Lamarr?”
“ No , Joseph. Hedy Lamarr has been dead for over twenty years. The woman pretending to be your childhood sweetheart— she flirted with me. At least twice, maybe three times.”
Finally Joe looked surprised. “But Teddy despises you. At our engagement party she called you anti-lube.”
I let the insult roll off. “Exactly. And here’s the nail in the coffin: she doesn’t know how to play chess.”
“Huh,” he said again.
“I beat her in about six moves. Maybe less.”
I lost count for a while because she was topless.
“When did you play chess?”
“That’s not important.”
Joe studied me. I concentrated on a sparrow hopping along the bench to avoid his eye. My brother pretended to be a brainless mass of muscle but that was a misdirect.
“Are you leering at my leftovers, Fixy?” he asked suddenly.
“I’m not leering. I would never leer. And leftovers is a repulsive thing to call a woman?—”
“Right, right. You would never leer or look or laugh or whatever else it is you think Dad would do.”
We sat in silence for a while, haunted by the same paternal ghost.
The sparrow picked at a knot of wood in the bench, dislodging something small and swallowing it. I envied the simplicity of its existence.
Eventually Joe spoke. “It was the same for me, you know.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“I guess not. But it was similar.”
Whether because he looked different or because, even as a kid, no one could tell him what to do, Joe had largely escaped Dad’s attention. I was the one Austin had tried to mold in his image, to groom as his heir. I’d thought Joe was grateful Dad didn’t think of him as a project in need of constant improvement. But gratitude wasn’t the impression I was getting from my brother now.
“I need to move,” Joe said too loudly, getting up off the bench and tapping the screen on his wrist a few times. “I’m seeing Jemima after this, and she likes it when I’m sweaty. She says I smell better. Isn’t that weird?”
I thought of the woman defrauding my brother and how her eyes had fluttered as she’d inhaled me at Sonya’s gallery.
Would she like me sweaty, maybe as I climb on top of her? Would she ? —
“Chase? You with me?”
“Yeah.”
“Everything OK?”
“Everything is fine.”
A corner of Joe’s mouth curled. “I don’t think it is, my man. I think you’re experiencing emotions you can’t rationalize for the first time in your life. But I’ll leave you to thrash through that mental jungle on your own.” He grabbed his bag. “Let’s walk. I’ll tell you about Jemima.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I met her last week. It’s getting serious. I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
“ What? ”
Joe paused with his runner’s backpack half over his shoulder. Defensiveness covered his face, and I should have shut up. I should have remembered he was skittish, like the sparrow that had also fled at my outburst, and our relationship was fragile.
But I didn’t.
“Joe, that’s the most ridiculous sentence I’ve ever heard. I’m still cleaning up the mess from the last time you proposed to a woman you hardly knew.”
Like clapping and turning off a light, all expression cleared from my brother’s face. “Never mind. Forget I told you. I should have known better.”
“Joe—”
“See you around, Fixy. Try not to find anyone in a moral dilemma between here and your apartment. God knows, you might have to deal with your own shit for once.”
Like that, he was gone .
To borrow terminology from the teenagers that played Dungeons and Dragons at my games shop: that had been a critical hit. I didn’t know what to do now. Joe had been clear he didn’t give a shit about the Teddy impersonator, and after the chess situation—not to mention what I’d done thinking about the chess situation—my integrity was compromised. Still, my mind raced.
Because of her, people would be talking about Joe and I, and watching us at events in the hope our drama would play out in front of them. It was how they used to watch my dad, eternally eager to revel in the drama that usually surrounded him.
Deep in my chest burned a need for people to know that neither Joe nor I had anything in common with our father.
No matter how much I looked like him, I wasn’t him. I was a good man.
Later that night, I sent Joe a text.
Just come to Greta’s. Show people what happened at Sonya’s gallery didn’t bother you. That you’ve changed.
He didn’t reply.
But he’d probably attend. He liked Greta. And at her party, he’d see all the incongruities about ‘Teddy’ with his own eyes, and eventually thank me for looking out for his reputation, like brothers always should.
I jerked off thinking about her again the next night.
Fuck.