Time of Our Lives

by Emily Wibberley

  I understand everything she’s telling me. I understand the profound difficulty of her position, why she would put off revealing this the way she did. A few forms of grief unfold in me. Grief for her, for the unraveling she knows is coming. Grief for myself, for the watching and the waiting. Grief for the visions of the future I’ve entertained the past few days, which have vanished in an instant.

  But there’s one more thing I understand with cutting clarity. This isn’t about me.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I say over the ragged breathing I know she’s trying to stifle. “It’s going to be okay. I promise. We’re going to figure it out.”

  Juniper’s hand finds my knee, reminding me she’s here and she’s definitely heard enough to know what’s happened. I turn from her, from her worried frown, her caring eyes. From every way I’ve let her change me. I want to continue being the emboldened new person she thinks I’ve become. The person I know she’s expecting, even with her comforting hand on my knee.

  I just don’t think I know how. Not anymore. Not when every fear I’ve quieted during the past few days has come raging back.

  Fitz

  WE SKIP THE rest of the day’s itinerary. While I explained the conversation with my mom to Juniper, she said nothing, which was the only thing she could’ve said. I didn’t need to ask her to set aside our plans of museums and monuments and return directly to the hotel instead.

  On the way back, I text Lewis that I have something I need to tell him. He agrees to meet me in the room.

  Juniper leaves me with one final reassuring squeeze of my hand in the hotel. When I reach our room, I start pacing the narrow stretch of floor spanning from the beds to the dresser. I’m really not looking forward to breaking the news to Lewis. He’s irritatingly cavalier when it comes to Mom, but I have a feeling, even for him, this will be a blow.

  I walk the length of the room for five interminable minutes before there’s the clatter of a keycard in the lock and the door beeps. Lewis enters looking confused and disheveled, like he hurried here.

  “Have you talked to Mom?” I ask. I don’t bother flattening the waver from my voice. I don’t care if Lewis thinks I’m overwrought or anxious. Because I was right.

  “I talked to her yesterday. Why?” He unzips his parka and throws his hat on his bed.

  My heart drops. I’d held out hope Mom had called him after she got off the phone with me. The fact she didn’t is its own painful punch. She was evidently too overcome by our conversation to handle having one with her older son. “Okay, there’s no easy way to say this,” I begin. “Mom is sicker than we knew.” Lewis frowns, his expression puzzled. I continue. “She’s been showing symptoms for . . . a while now.”

  Lewis pauses. In the interim, my mind cycles through the hundred ways he could react. I wonder whether this time, he’ll finally be upset.

  “I’m sorry, Fitz,” he says.

  I don’t understand. “Why are you sorry for me? This affects both of us.”

  “I know,” Lewis replies. “I’m just sorry you had to find out this way. During your trip.”

  It takes me a moment to put his words together, to unwind the implications. When I do, I hardly have the presence of mind to put forth the never-ending questions exploding into my head. “How long have you known?” I struggle to ask.

  “Since she made an appointment with her doctor.” Lewis swallows. “Three months ago.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?” My voice is shocked and hurt and uncomprehending and pissed off and and and. I don’t understand how my mom could share this with Lewis and not me. What could Lewis possibly do to help? Why didn’t she trust me?

  I feel fear and frustration, fury and hopelessness coursing through me. I’ve hidden the abandonment I’ve felt from my brother for years, and right now, I can’t. Not for a moment longer.

  “You and Mom—what? Had a conversation and decided you’d keep this from me?” I clench my hand, feeling my fingernails bite into my palm. I don’t recognize this Fitz, whose anger writes in capital letters.

  “It wasn’t my place to,” Lewis replies. I detect a defensive hint in his voice. “She didn’t want you to know yet.”

  “You didn’t think that was fucked up?” I fire back. “You’ve been with me this entire trip. You’ve watched me . . . have fun, think about college, try things.” I don’t say the really important one. Very possibly fall in love.

  “That’s exactly why we didn’t tell you,” Lewis argues. “Fitz, your whole world was just waiting for Mom to need you, and you could have more than that. I—we—wanted you to see how much more.”

  “You know why I worry about Mom so much?” I drop my voice, my anger narrowing into raw honesty. “It’s because I’m all she has. You’re certainly not going to change your plans for her. You’re not going to skip a single fraternity event or job interview or date with whichever girl you’ve moved onto.”

  “That’s not fair,” Lewis says.

  “How? How is it not fair, Lewis?” We’re facing each other from opposite ends of the room, and the distance is like an endless expanse separating us. “Because from where I’m standing, you’ve already moved on from this family.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” He flings a hand toward the window, toward the city outside.

  “Only because Mom forced you.” I almost have to laugh. “You drive me down the coast for a week and a half, and you think that undoes years of silence? Of being on my own with Mom? Waiting for things to get worse? Do you know how many nights I’ve spent researching her disease?” I grind out the next words. “Don’t you think I could have used a brother to check in on me? To care?”

  Lewis’s eyes darken. My mind overloads with words. Choler, wroth, irascible, ire. I’ve never seen this side of my brother before, and then it hits me how often over the past few days I’ve seen new sides of Lewis. In an instant, I figure out why. I don’t know the other sides of him because I don’t know him.

  “Like you check in on me?” His voice is bitter. “You show zero interest in anything related to my life.”

  “Because your life is incomprehensible to me!” My hands start to shake, and I clench them, trying to iron out the nerves. “Like I want to hear about your killer ragers, getting blackout drunk, hooking up with your freshmen floor. None of those things are real.”

  “Real?” Lewis repeats. He shakes his head. “Did you ever fucking stop to think that I might have needed a break? The smallest shred of a life to distract me from what’s going on with Mom?”

  Whatever I was going to say next vanishes from my head. I’m stunned for a moment, speechless.

  Lewis continues, his chest rising and falling heavily, like he’s dragging each sentence out of somewhere deep and lonely. “You know nothing about me. You have no idea what it’s like to not have the same skin color as your family. What it’s like to go through college and face the real world while dealing with Mom’s disease. You have no comprehension of anything outside of yourself. You pretend you carry this burden on your own. You enjoy it, the idea you’re this poor, put-upon, long-suffering martyr. But the truth is you’re too selfish to see what others—what I—do for you.”

  This snaps me back into indignation. “What exactly do you do for me? Drag me to parties? Pressure me about girls? You just want me to be more like you.”

  “Oh, and that would be terrible, right? Being like me? Because I’m worthless to you.” He sounds genuinely offended, which gives me pause. “Never mind that I volunteered to take you on this trip, that I’ve been busting my ass to get a job to help support Mom, to help pay for full-time care for her.”

  I blink, honestly not certain if I’ve heard him right. It never occurred to me that Lewis had considered the care Mom’s going to need or how it’s going to be paid for. The idea he’s not only considered it, but planned on paying for it himself, hits me like a wave. The guilt is frigid
, paralyzing.

  “You think I enjoy hours of interviews?” His words come faster now, breathless, like he’s opened something and his feelings have become unstoppable. I understand he’s furious, but his fury no longer provokes the same in me. I feel unsteady, overwhelmed. “You think consulting and finance were my first choice?” he continues. “They weren’t. But this job will help Mom, will help the family. It’ll help you go wherever you want for college.”

  I say nothing. I knew there were things I held back from telling my brother. It makes me feel small and very stupid to recognize there were things he held back from telling me, too.

  “Screw this,” he says, grabbing his jacket and turning to the door. There’s the Lewis I know. The one who leaves the second things get hard, forcing me to pick up the pieces on my own. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he continues. “You don’t know what I’ve done or why. You don’t know me at all.” He throws open the door, and he’s gone without a parting glance.

  I have no argument to that. Every moment of half friendship on this trip, every tentative truce, has been engulfed by the insurmountable resentment between us, by the reality of Lewis’s and my relationship. We’re brothers in name only. The connection is hollow.

  I drop onto the bed, broken by the weight of everything this means. I was right from the very beginning. No matter what Lewis says about supporting our mom, he only means financial support. I won’t leave her, not when I’m the only one who can remind her who she is.

  I have no choice in my future. I never have. The past few days have been a fairy tale, a fantasy not meant for me. Lewis will move to New York, and I’ll return to where I’ve always been. Where I’ll always be.

  Home.

  Juniper

  I WALKED DOWN the hallway to my room and then found I couldn’t go in. I couldn’t plan college visits, couldn’t text my parents or mindlessly scroll through my phone when I knew what Fitz was wrestling with. When I could imagine the conversation he and his brother were having. The thought drove me back into the elevator, into the hallway to Fitz’s room, and to his door, where I’ve waited for the past few minutes, pacing.

  I feel useless. I know I can’t help.

  Not that I won’t try. While I wait, I furiously Google information on Alzheimer’s and compile my findings into three different speeches in my head, one of which I’ll deliver when I feel I’ve given him time to deal on his own. I’ll decide which depending on the mood I find him in. I find positive data on recovery trends, new treatments, experimental programs.

  I’m telling myself it’ll help. In the unpleasant depths of my heart, though, I’m not convinced. This isn’t a problem, a tragedy. It’s his tragedy. Unfortunately, not much comes out when you google “how to help Fitzgerald Holton, of Tilton, New Hampshire, when his worst fear comes crashing down upon him.”

  When I think it’s time, I take a breath and lift my hand to knock.

  Before I have the chance, the door bursts inward and Lewis barrels into the hallway. He’s blinking furiously—I glimpse tears in his eyes.

  It freezes me. The door falls shut, and Lewis continues down the hall, not even registering my presence. He’s not heading in the direction of the elevators, and I can’t tell whether he knows this or just doesn’t have a destination in mind at all.

  I glance at the door. Fitz is in there. All I have to do is knock.

  I turn and follow Lewis.

  I have no speeches prepared for Fitz’s brother. I hardly even know him, and he definitely hasn’t asked for my help. But I’ve seen enough of Lewis to suspect he’s the type who won’t wave for help when he’s drowning. He’ll wait for the water to cover him, hoping nobody onshore will notice the spray of the whitecaps pummeling him.

  Fitz can wait. Lewis . . . I don’t know.

  “Are you okay?” I ask when I reach him. I hate the inadequacy of the question. Of course he’s not okay. He pauses when he hears my voice, facing me and looking like he doesn’t entirely know where he is or doesn’t care.

  “I’m not sure I remember what okay feels like.” His voice, like his expression, is stripped bare. I want to help. I want to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, to give him a hug, even. But everything feels insufficient. I stay silent, and he continues. “I try so hard to keep it together. To be the role model Fitz needs.”

  Role model? I genuinely like Lewis, but I never exactly thought of him as trying to be some shining exemplar to his brother. Fitz told me how he had to carry Lewis home from the Brown party. I must frown involuntarily, because Lewis lets a self-conscious smile crack through his distress.

  “Not a role model for school or responsibility,” he says. “But, like—an example on living.”

  “How?” I want him to keep talking, to keep bringing the emotions wearing him down into the open where I can shoulder them with him.

  Some of the sadness fades from his eyes, replaced with something like conviction. “Living despite whatever else may be going on. If I didn’t have my fraternity, if I didn’t have Prisha—” He stops suddenly, like her name is a lump in his throat threatening a sea of tears. “I just mean,” he continues, his face paler, “if I were constantly thinking about Mom the way Fitz is, I’d be a wreck. I wanted to show him how to search for fun, for happiness, because he deserves those things. Sometimes I can’t sleep because I’m worrying what his life will look like when everything with Mom is . . . done.”

  I register the pause, the euphemism. When everything is done. I’m seven years old for a moment, in my family’s apartment in New York, overhearing my parents discussing my abuela’s health and why we needed to return to Massachusetts.

  Lewis goes on. “I guess I take it too far sometimes,” he says ruefully. “Go out too often, flirt too much, get too drunk. But it’s . . . an escape.” His chest heaves.

  I run through the things I could say. I could offer blanket sympathies, empty encouragements to keep talking. Or I could push him to face this head-on, even if it’s harder. “I think Fitz feels you don’t care about him because of all the fun you’re having,” I say. “Because you have this other life. This perfect job.”

  Lewis looks up, raw with wounded incredulity. “I know he thinks that,” he says. “He just told me.”

  I open and then close my mouth. I thought Lewis stormed from Fitz’s room because he was overwhelmed with the news of their mom’s symptoms. It never occurred to me it was because they’d fought.

  “I fucked up,” Lewis chokes out. “I thought he’d imitate me, not resent me. I didn’t want to put my stress on top of his. So I hid it. I hid how desperate I’ve been to get the kind of job that can support our whole family—regardless of whether it’s something I care about or not. I hid where I really want to be next year. Because if it were up to me, I wouldn’t be moving to New York, not when I could be in San Francisco with my girlfriend. I’m only staying on the East Coast for my mom.” His voice is gathering volume now. “I hid my sacrifices because I hoped I could help Fitz have a normal life. Now he hates me. My mom’s sick, my brother despises me, and the girl who made everything bearable is moving to the other side of the country. I’m going to be alone.”

  Tears tumble from his eyes. He raises his hand to his face, his grief garishly out of place in the hotel hallway.

  His words touch bruises in me I’ve tried to ignore for too long. I’ve fought loneliness on this trip. I’ve wrestled with the lurking suspicion nobody in my family really supports the future I want. I’ve come out of those fights more hurt than I knew.

  I reach for Lewis, putting my hand on his shoulder. “Lewis, you’re not alone.” I’m not expecting my own conviction. “Not even close.”

  He doesn’t contradict me.

  I gesture toward his and Fitz’s room. “Fitz is in there,” I say. “I think you have to tell him what you told me. Tell him everything. He needs you, and you need him.
”

  I wonder if it’s the kind of thing only a close friend could say, or only a complete stranger. While I don’t have faith in predetermined paths or destiny or mystic workings of the universe, I wonder if, in some improbable way, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. Maybe the fact of our joining up into this instantaneous, unlikely group will be important for Lewis and his brother. Maybe it will for me too.

  Lewis looks up, and he’s worked whatever magic he uses to hide his wounds. His expression is stony, and determination is starting to flicker into his reddened eyes. He nods.

  “Go,” I say.

  He hesitates. I wonder if he’ll try to put this off, if he’s too proud to bring this emotion to his brother.

  “I’m really glad Fitz met you, Juniper,” he finally says.

  “Yeah,” I say, holding Lewis’s gaze. “I’m really glad I met him too.”

  I walk with Lewis to his hotel room. He takes a breath, and then he opens the door. Inside, I glimpse Fitz gazing out the window from the foot of the bed. Lewis enters, and while the door inches closed, I watch him walk up to his brother.

  Without words, Lewis sits next to Fitz and wraps him in a hug. I don’t know what it is, but something in Fitz seems to loosen. It’s the slightest shift in his shoulders, the gentlest release of exhaled breath. It’s ice thawing in the first rays of daylight. The relief of having his brother is nearly imperceptible on Fitz, and yet impossible not to see.

  I let the door close, wanting to give them time on their own, and head for the elevator.

  In the empty hallway, I hear my dad’s voice, the echo of our phone call returning in pitch-perfect detail. It’s okay to need your family sometimes. I weigh the idea against one fundamental of my life for years now, the feeling I need freedom from my family. I’ll never not want room to become my own person, to lead my own life. But watching Fitz and Lewis, I know my dad isn’t wrong.