How to Bury Your Brother

by Lindsey Rogers Cook

  Just two colleagues meeting for dinner, she promised herself. No different from her hundreds of meals with grad students and donors. Alice heard a hmm in her head from her internal Meredith. She shushed it.

  Alice told the hostess she would have a drink at the bar while she waited and was ushered into the room. The tiny space looked like a French courtyard with brick floors, brick walls, and a frosted-glass ceiling. About fifteen small tables lined the sides of the room, and a spiral staircase led to a loft where a group laughed over wine. Drooping plants hung from chains hooked from the ceiling over a small fountain in the middle. Lit by candles on each table and a light over the bar, the restaurant was so dark that Alice’s eyes had to adjust before she could spot a seat at the corner of the bar.

  Seeking some of her courage, Alice ordered Meredith’s drink—a gin martini with a lemon twist. Her fingers fidgeted with her wedding ring. Walker would never think to take her to a place like this. A saxophone player emerged from the corner and started to play love songs. Two people from the loft inched from behind the table and began to dance on the stairs’ small landing. The couples at the tables surrounding the fountain and the bar leaned together over their plates. It smelled heavenly—red wine mixed with seafood and spices.

  Her drink came, and Alice drank half in a few gulps. Why had Jake selected this place? Did he expect something more than just talking? Did she? She pictured the Jake from her college days, mixed with the suited man on his website, and she felt a little dizzy. He would be so different now. She would be so different, different than he expected. He might even be…disappointed.

  What if he got the wrong idea and tried to kiss her? How fast would she pull away? Immediately? After two seconds, maybe just to see what it would be like. She wondered how the affair between Walker and Brittani had started. Maybe just like this, a dinner they both promised themselves was for work.

  She put a twenty-dollar bill on the bar and stood up to leave. Calling Jake was a mistake.

  Her heart raced as she rushed back through the tables with the couples. A man who had been whispering in his date’s ear or licking it, it was difficult to tell, looked up as Alice bumped their table in the haste of her escape. When she reached the hostess stand, she froze.

  “Alice,” Jake said. “Was just looking for you.”

  He approached her, and she found herself still frozen as he took her in from her shoes up, resting on her eyes. She had let her hair air-dry, and it fell to her collarbone in gentle waves, the kind Walker hated. “You’re ready?” he would have asked. She had swiped on mascara, but no other makeup. She hated the feeling of eye shadow and foundation, like a film over her whole face that took three washcloths to remove.

  “You look sensational.” Jake leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. She smiled. The fear of seeing him in his business suit disappeared. He wore a plaid button-down that was wrinkled along the buttons, as if he dried it on the line instead of in the dryer, like he used to do. He wore a pair of khakis, but Alice noticed a dash of mud on the knee and relaxed a little. Jake’s eyes followed hers, and he saw the spot, saying briefly, “Damn.” He reached to brush it off, then met her eyes again and shrugged.

  She laughed. “You look good too.”

  He smiled at her.

  “Shall we?” He held out his hand, and the hostess walked ahead. She led them to a table just under the loft and went around to pull out a chair as Alice sat down, still in a daze. A bottle of wine appeared, and a waitress filled her glass. Did he come here often? Maybe with other girls? The Jake she knew would never make a habit of expensive dinners out with dates (or otherwise).

  She remembered from Athens how much Jake enjoyed food. After growing up in Arizona, he loved Southern food in the way many Southerners loved Jesus. Instead of church on Sunday, he would drive Alice all over the state, visiting little BBQ shacks or diners that allegedly had the best grits in the South. At the time, Alice admired his passion for newness, how he embraced Southern food so deeply. He always saw change as an opportunity for adventure, instead of fearing it, like she did. She admired it until that passion had taken him to Ecuador, until it convinced him to stay.

  “I’m glad you called,” he said, leaning in slightly. “It will be great to catch up.”

  “Well, I’m not in the area often. I saw in the alumni magazine that you lived here. That article on your new business? Sounds fantastic.”

  She lied. She had called the alumni office multiple times, asking them to please not send her any more magazines, because she didn’t read them and they were a waste of paper. She had seen the profile in his Google results, which she’d memorized, and the article struck her as a good excuse. “How is it going?” she finished with a question, glad that her turn to talk had ended.

  “Amazing!” He launched into a discussion of the plant life in the watershed and the resilience of the environment, one that didn’t steer away from the more technical topics, and she smiled. She hadn’t talked about this type of ecology since undergrad. He paused, asking her opinion on the success of different plants in wetland restoration projects and she gave it readily, happy to be in a safe zone, with her business hat on. He asked her about herself, and she returned his formal tone as she told him about the problems with local riverbank erosion and the education she did with the local kids. The day’s appetizer special arrived, fish with “rum-drunk” pineapples and hearts of palm, and they ate, still talking shop.

  The work conversation reached a lull while they waited for their entrees, after a waitress whisked away the appetizer plates and poured another round of wine.

  “So, how are you otherwise? Husband? Kids?”

  She told him about Robbie and his love of puzzles and chess, to which he flashed a sympathetic smile because of the name’s connection. She plowed past it though. She boasted about Caitlin and her scholarship, which he said sounded like a great opportunity.

  “You and your husband must be so proud.”

  “Walker,” she offered, twisting her ring. “Yes, well…I am.”

  Jake raised his eyebrow.

  “He, umm, he prefers her to stay closer to home.”

  “I can certainly understand that. Sounds like mother, like daughter.” He offered a smirk, a reminder of their plans to find Rob, to travel to South America, to settle down out west. The plans that she hadn’t told her parents about because she knew they wouldn’t approve, like they hadn’t approved of Jake.

  “So, what about you? How’s Paula?”

  “Best sister there is. She came to stay with me after”—he gulped a bit—“after my divorce, and she never left.” He met Alice’s eyes with a smile that made her feel pity for him.

  “Sorry, about your divorce.”

  “It was a hard time. We had some obstacles we just weren’t ready for. She moved back to Connecticut afterward, and she has a family up there now, a kid with her new husband.”

  Alice watched the wine he swirled in his glass circle like a cyclone. “She’s happy, she deserves to be happy. I have the new business. I’m happy. Things ended well.”

  Alice wanted to reach across the table and grab his hand, and say, “Tell me about Kellen,” to relieve some of the burden of what she read about, of Jake losing a child so young. But, she forced herself to wait until he brought it up, in case he didn’t want to relive it with her, in case they weren’t as close as she felt they still were, even after all these years, in case closeness was a measure of time instead of a measure of impact. She still wasn’t sure.

  Instead, she said, “Remember Meredith?”

  “Of course. I have a few of her novels.”

  She laughed. “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes! I read them!” He winked at her, just like he did when she first saw him that day on the Quad in Athens. “I thought they were good. Never doubted her for one second, back in college.”

  Alice shook her hea
d, still laughing. She would have to tell Meredith that she had another fan.

  “I wanted to support.” He stole another glance at her. “Nothing like old friends.”

  Their entrees came. After being unable to decide about the menu, Alice had ordered the last special the waitress advertised, and was glad she had. Jake hadn’t ordered but had just said, “Bring me whatever you think I’ll like,” and it looked like he ended up with some sort of crawfish creation. He stirred his food and slurped the concoction from the spoon, smiling with the warmth.

  “Good?” she prompted.

  “Absolutely delicious. Would you like some?” He offered his spoon. She hesitated, but leaned forward and tasted it. It was fantastic.

  Alice noticed the waitress lingering. Jake saw her too.

  “Do you like it?” she said.

  “Love it,” he said. “Thank you.”

  The waitress eyed Alice, who retreated a little from the embarrassingly intimate position the waitress caught her in, eating from Jake’s spoon.

  “Zoe, this is Alice. Alice, Zoe,” Jake said, as if his mother had caught him on a secret date and demanded he introduce the girl to her. The waitress bent down to shake Alice’s hand. “Zoe works at my foundation, part-time, but this is her real passion. She’s an excellent employee though.” Zoe smiled. “I like to come here and see the thing that takes her away from my plants.”

  She offered “Nice to meet you” and then left. So, that explained his comfort at the fancy restaurant.

  They finished their entrees in silence, different from the quiet dinners she shared with Walker; where every pause seemed like an opportunity for him to plot what point he would bring up next; where the silence made her worry what soon would occupy it. With Jake, the silence felt comfortable and relaxing. Although maybe it was the round of drinks that had just been poured, the empty bottle whisked away, and another set down in its place.

  The plates gone, Alice centered her wineglass in front of her and ticked her wedding band on the rim, the one she hadn’t taken off since her hospital stay with Robbie. She watched the reflection of the little diamonds in the clear glass. When would she take it off—when the divorce went through? Before? It felt heavier than ever.

  “Do you remember those nights on the Quad?” Jake said. She looked at him, but he’d already looked down again, rolling up his left sleeve. As he rolled up his right, she saw “Kellen” in cursive letters on his wrist, and she couldn’t help but remember that first tattoo he had written about and been so proud of, that colorful tortoise on his calf. The last letter before their breakup, she remembered with a pang.

  “We were so young.” He looked up and smiled at her. “Happy though.”

  She looked away. Why was he doing this? He had been the one to sign on for years, without her. He had changed their plans and broken promises. But she didn’t want to say that. She had blamed herself at the time, but she had been right about Rob. It was him that day, must have been him. She had been right, and Jake hadn’t believed her, had left her, had continued his life without her, even while claiming he loved her.

  The waitress corked the rest of the wine, and the bill didn’t come.

  “If you have time, I’d love to show you the greenhouse. We’ve got some different varieties in testing, to see which will help stabilize streambanks. I think you would really like it.” She looked at him, considering. “I’ll drive you back to your hotel after,” he finished.

  It would be nice to not have to walk back in the dark, and from an academic perspective, his group’s attempts to counter invasive species interested her.

  Alice nodded, and they stood. He walked in front of her with his hand slightly behind his body, and she struggled not to grab it, not to become the person she used to be, so close now.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  When he let her into his truck and she spied the gearshift, he laughed a bit, and then said, “Difficult to break old habits, I guess.”

  She watched his right hand as he drove, the stick moving as if it had a life of its own. She remembered the rides in college, when Jake’s hand would find hers, if only for a second, before the engine groaned and begged for his attention.

  All at once, Alice’s head swirled from the wine. As they pulled into his office, she wondered how she had gotten so tipsy and couldn’t remember the last time she had let her guard down, always with the wordless expectation that she would stay mostly sober in order to deal with Walker later.

  In Jake’s company, she had let herself uncurl, but still so many secrets lay between them. She would tell him, she promised herself, the real reason why she had come to New Orleans.

  He walked across the stacks, pointing out different genetic varieties of plant species, and she bent down to examine the leaves and the measurements on the clipboards that detailed the experiment. The operation was impressive, and normally, she would have been glad to study them and take notes for Grace, but not now.

  “Jake.” She heard herself call his name, before she realized she would.

  He turned, surprised, then seeing her face, he came over and stood in front of her. The words were so close, but as Jake approached her and brushed a hair off her face—tucking it behind her ear as he used to do, a small gesture of intimacy that Walker never did—they no longer seemed important. He waited. He would stand there, mere inches away from her, and stare until she gave him an awkward smile and averted her eyes.

  She didn’t break the moment though. She still stared, seeing the other life she could have lived deep inside his dark eyes; the other Alice she could have been, or maybe still remained, somewhere.

  She inched her face a little closer.

  Alice didn’t think about Walker. Instead, her daughter on the video entered her mind, with the strangers clapping, performing her deepest secrets. Alice’s choices had led to that, her children, the Rob-like passion, but now, she needed to remember the lesson her daughter had never had to learn—that the secrets she kept weren’t actually hidden. Remembering, her chest clenched again. She felt wetness on her face and realized she was crying, but Jake didn’t look away. Maybe he saw a vision of a forgotten part of himself.

  “I should have remembered that red wine makes you sad.” He chuckled and leaned over to wipe a tear from her cheek. “Do you want me to take you back to your hotel?”

  She remembered all the nights they spent just like this, where he would kiss the wetness off her cheeks and they would fall asleep, wet and happy and intertwined.

  “Jake, the reason I came here… It wasn’t actually to meet with a donor.”

  He waited, perhaps expecting something else, maybe something about her marriage, she realized.

  “It… I…” As she searched for words, the sound of her phone rang out, bouncing off the walls, and they both jumped. As she reached into her pocket, Jake stepped back, the closeness no longer. She looked at the number. Dylan, calling back, like he’d promised. She thought about not answering it, but she didn’t want to wonder all night about what he had discovered about the cross Rob drew for Christopher Smith and, maybe, what he’d found out about Rob in the process.

  She answered, mouthing One sec to Jake. She cleared her throat before bringing the phone up to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Alice! I’m in the car, driving back from Atlanta, and I’ve got some news,” Dylan said, talking fast with excitement. “So, I went to Atlanta and talked to a couple of people who worked with Rob and Christopher when they knew each other.”

  With the phone to her ear, Alice walked a little farther from Jake, who busied himself with the soil samples and tried to look nonchalant.

  “Everyone I talked to seemed to say the same thing—that Rob wasn’t doing well after he left Athens and came to Atlanta. He met Chris there. Chris OD’d, and it hit Rob hard. He was practically on the street, couldn’t hold down any type of work a
nd was stealing to get the money he needed. Then one day, he just disappeared.”

  She glanced back at Jake, before arching her body over the phone to respond, “Disappeared how? Did anyone know why?”

  “The only thing I could find out… Bear with me because this is pretty out there, and keep in mind that this guy was high as shit when this happened, according to him even. But, I’m telling you anyway because I think—”

  “Dylan!” she said too loudly.

  Jake’s head snapped to look at her with a confused expression. Alice and Jake’s eyes met, and he bent down to pick up a spot of soil on the floor.

  “It isn’t a good time. Can you just tell me what you need to tell me?”

  “Yes, sorry. Well, I talked to a guy who said he was in an old apartment where a bunch of them hung out. Late at night, someone starts rapping on the door saying ‘Hello? Is anyone in there?’ They thought it might be some kind of police officer or something, because everyone normally just came in, so a bunch of the guys left. Some just stuck around, though, too messed up to know what to do. Anyway, the guy comes in, and get this, he had a flashlight and went around the room, shining the light in their faces, saying, ‘Rob Tate? Rob Tate? I’m looking for Rob Tate.’ Eventually he finds him, and he picks him up and just carries him out of there over his shoulder. And none of the guys ever saw Rob again.”

  Alice’s mind filled with possibilities: her brother had been kidnapped!

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “The only other thing the guy I talked to said was that he was sitting on the floor, where the guy’s leg was eye level, and he remembers the guy having a huge tattoo on his calf that was a turtle? I think he said ‘colored turtle,’ or something like that. I wrote his number down if you really want—”

  Alice’s eyes moved down Jake’s back, hunched over his soil samples, until she reached his calf. Even through his pants, she could almost see that stupid tortoise tattoo from the Galapagos, the one he’d sent her a picture of in that letter. It had to be.