The Gunners

by Rebecca Kauffman

Alice said to Mikey, “You look god-awful.”

  Mikey said, “And yet I feel even worse.”

  Alice accused Sam of snoring like a hog and the entire group of passing gas.

  Mikey rose to stretch out his stiff back, and his muscles screamed.

  Jimmy had brought breakfast supplies with him the night before, and he toasted up some bagels: blueberry, whole wheat, asiago cheese, rye. He laid out an assortment of butter and jam and cream cheese: scallion, strawberry, honey-walnut, garlic and chives. He brewed coffee. He set out a pitcher of orange juice and a basket of bananas.

  They ate together.

  Alice complained about a hangover, and Jimmy offered Advil. Chris said she had enjoyed a marvelous deep sleep and asked what she had missed. Lynn said that she and Issa had talked it over and planned to marry in their hometown in Pennsylvania in about a month, mid-February, if that would suit everyone. Sam said he hoped Justine would join him for the occasion.

  Alice and Chris were the first to depart, heading back to Lacka-wanna to visit Alice’s parents before leaving town. Alice carried Finn, who she had swaddled in a wool blanket like a large child, over her shoulders, and she panted under his weight and waved good-bye to the group with Finn’s paw.

  Lynn and Issa went next, promising they would send details about their wedding in the next few days.

  Mikey, Jimmy, and Sam cleaned up around the house for several hours.

  When it came time for Sam to leave, he required their help to push his rear-wheel-drive Nissan up and out of the driveway.

  Once Sam had gone, Jimmy brushed snow from his knees, looked at his watch, and said to Mikey, “You wanna grab lunch and chat at McDowd’s? I haven’t had their fish sandwich in about a decade, and my mom’s not expecting me till dinner.”

  McDowd’s was the greasy pub located a few miles up the lake, where as teens they liked to go for sandwiches and fries after school and on weekends, as soon as Alice got her driver’s license and could take them.

  Mikey followed Jimmy, who had rented a four-wheel-drive black Suburban for the day. They passed Jackie’s Flower Shop, Yaya’s Donuts, and the Dollar General. They passed the 7-Eleven where Mikey bought cereal and milk when he wasn’t up for a trip to the grocery store.

  At the restaurant, Jimmy chose a table that overlooked the frozen lake. The dining room decor had not changed over the years: walls covered in fiberglass fish mounted on lacquered wood, a row of trucker caps nailed to the wall where it met the ceiling, red and green plaid curtains, bright felt NFL mini-pendants, photos of Buffalo Bills players with autographs in Sharpie, an old-fashioned cash register that ka-chonked noisily as the drawer opened and closed and rattled with change, ’50s music playing through old Marshall speakers mounted high on the wall.

  Jimmy and Mikey ordered fish sandwiches and Labatt Blues from the server, who looked as if she were about fourteen years old. She had green stripes in her hair and a diamond stud in her nostril, which looked to be infected.

  Jimmy ran his finger along the windowsill to his right, collecting a bit of dust, then blew it back into the air. He had pockets under his eyes, the light bruises of insufficient sleep.

  The server returned with their beers. They cheers-ed, and both drank.

  Jimmy cleared his throat and said, “Listen. I mentioned it yesterday before we got interrupted, and there’s something . . . been eating me practically alive, Mikey. I’ve almost called you up to tell you a hundred different times over the years but never could quite get myself there . . .” Jimmy paused and swallowed. “There is something I need to tell you.” Jimmy’s voice was suddenly thin and unsteady, all breath and no muscle.

  Mikey looked at him.

  Jimmy’s eyes were a hundred different shades of blue with the sun directly on them. He ran his palm over his lips and black beard. “Something Sally knew about you,” Jimmy said.

  “That I didn’t know?”

  Jimmy nodded. “Sally swore me to secrecy, and I held it in confidence,” Jimmy explained, “out of respect. It was not my information to share. But now that she’s gone . . .”

  “What is it?” Mikey said, a strange and fearful pulse zooming through him.

  Jimmy sipped his beer once, twice, more, until half his beer was gone and his eyes were watery. He looked directly at Mikey. “Your father is not your father.”

  Mikey frowned. “What? Who is he?”

  “He was just a neighbor.”

  “What?” Mikey said. “Whose neighbor? What are you talking about?”

  Jimmy said, “John Callahan, the man who raised you, is not your father.”

  “Then who is? I don’t understand. Is this about my mother? What do you know?”

  Mikey felt a thick and powerful desperation, like mud moving through his organs.

  Jimmy said, “Sally’s father fled to Canada while Corinne was still pregnant with Sally, to get out of paying child support. When Sally was a baby, Corinne became pregnant again. The father of that second baby, a son, is unknown. See, Corinne . . . couldn’t even narrow it down.”

  Mikey stared at Jimmy, this knowledge not yet seeping into him but skittering along the surface of his consciousness.

  “You were the second child,” Jimmy explained, his voice soft and round with sympathy. “Corinne is your mother. They don’t know who your biological father is, but it’s not John.”

  “Oh, God,” Mikey said. “Oh, God.” He felt as if he had been crushed by a wave and was gasping for life. Breathing in pure salt that hurt him and choked him. “How did I end up . . . Why did I end up . . . My dad . . .”

  “At the time John was already living in the house where you grew up. You were living up the street with Corinne and Sally. When you were very small, two years old, you somehow made your way out of Corinne’s home and up the street a short way one afternoon. John looked out on his front lawn, and all the sudden, there was a kid there. No parent in sight. He went to you.”

  Mikey stared at Jimmy with his mouth open, a dry hole.

  Jimmy continued, “John had good enough knowledge of the neighborhood to figure you had come from Corinne’s home. He didn’t know her personally but knew her reputation, and knew she had little ones in the house. He went to return you to her. And when he got to her house . . . Well, apparently whatever he saw in her house that day . . . apparently he couldn’t find it in himself to leave you there.”

  Jimmy’s speech was too rapid and precise. Mikey couldn’t latch on. These words sounded as if they had been thrown into a blender. They came out senseless and unpalatable.

  “So . . .” Mikey said. “Slow down. Corinne just let the neighbor take me? To live with him and raise as his own? And why would he . . . Did Sally . . . I don’t understand.”

  Jimmy’s eyes searched over Mikey’s face, his own expression mirroring Mikey’s despair. “I’m sorry,” Jimmy said, a sharp, painful break in his throat.

  Mikey said, “Tell me.”

  Jimmy took a moment to collect his emotions in order to continue the story. “Some arrangement was made,” he said. “I imagine it might’ve involved threats from Child Services, might’ve involved money . . . They reached some agreement, and it was decided that you would remain under his roof and be raised as his own.”

  “But why . . . Wait, Sally knew that we were half-siblings? When? How?”

  “Sally didn’t find this out until she was about sixteen. She didn’t have any early memories of you; she would have only been about three years old at the time when you left their home. She discovered all of this out just shortly before she cut herself off from us.”

  Messy emotions were bashing up against one another inside Mikey. “How?”

  “She overheard a conversation between Corinne and John. Every now and then Corinne would call John up and cry to him about wanting you back in her home. John always managed to talk her down, but Sally o
verheard Corinne in the middle of one of these conversations. When Corinne got off the phone, Sally confronted her and Corinne confirmed it. Of course, Corinne painted herself in the best possible light—nothing about leaving you to wander the streets as a toddler. Nothing about whatever John saw in their home that made him change his mind about leaving you there.”

  “So how did Sally know that part of the story?”

  “Sally confronted John next. She went to him that evening, when you weren’t home, and told him what she had overheard and what Corinne had told her. John confirmed everything and told his part of the story willingly, except for what it was that he saw that very first day that made him change his mind about leaving you there. He said that that was better left forgotten. And he implored Sally not to tell you any of this. He knew he had no legal right to act as your guardian.”

  Mikey’s thoughts turned to Sam’s recollection the previous night, of Sally leaving Mikey’s home in an emotional state over an interaction for which Mikey was not present. “So,” Mikey said, “why did . . . whatever my dad saw in Corinne’s home, why did he save me from it but leave Sally?”

  “He told Sally he wanted her to come with him, too. Sally was very small, of course, but old enough to understand the question, and old enough to answer it.”

  “And she didn’t want to go with him?”

  Jimmy shook his head.

  “Corinne?”

  “Apparently, Corinne was too far gone to register much of what was happening at the time.”

  Mikey said, “But Sally wouldn’t leave her mother?”

  “That’s right,” Jimmy said.

  “Sally wouldn’t leave her mother,” Mikey repeated, considering this. “And Sally just kept all of this inside? Well, except for sharing it with you, of course.”

  Jimmy nodded. “She swore me to secrecy. John was adamant that none of this come to light. He thought that was the best thing for you.” Jimmy twisted a napkin into a rope, then wove it through his fingers.

  “My dad . . .” Mikey swallowed and felt a hot shivering rise of emotion. Not toward his biological father but toward John Callahan, the man who had found Mikey on his front lawn.

  Then Mikey closed his eyes and pictured Sally’s face. Of course, how could it have been more obvious? The arc of her eyebrows identical to Mikey’s, the straight, narrow nose, the placement of the freckles. Everything corroborated this. Corinne, too. Her appearance had been ravaged by addiction, but Mikey could still recognize the likeness even in what remained of her.

  Mikey stuffed a napkin into his eye sockets and released a heavy exhale.

  Sally, his first friend.

  Mikey drank two-thirds of his beer very quickly and stared out over the frozen lake, which shimmered like a sea of diamonds. The smell of grease and fish was overwhelming as the server passed with food for another table. He felt like he understood nothing.

  Jimmy said, “You okay?”

  Mikey didn’t know what he was.

  Sunlight surged in through the window of the diner. Warm on Mikey’s hands. Reflecting off his silverware.

  Mikey understood, from a logical standpoint, why John had not wanted him to know, why he had felt it best to protect Mikey from this information. But why Sally? Why wouldn’t she want this bond to be known? Why wouldn’t she want him to understand? Why did she want both of them to go through life alone?

  As though having followed Mikey’s thoughts, Jimmy said, “By the time Sally told me all of this, her mind was made up.”

  “But,” Mikey said, “why?”

  Sally still fit into the storm window of Jimmy’s basement even when she was sixteen years old, although it required a sharp bend at the waist and a collapse of the shoulders, which were the widest part of her. It was late March, just a week or so after Sally’s sixteenth birthday. It had been many months since she had paid Jimmy a midnight visit, because her mother spent more and more nights away from home these days, allowing Sally to sleep peacefully in her own bedroom. Sally let herself into Jimmy’s basement and settled herself on the couch where she had spent so many nights before. She didn’t expect that Jimmy would come find her there, but she hoped he would. And eventually he did.

  Jimmy woke in the night to a bright beam of moonlight on his face, as luminous as white silk. It tugged him gently out of sleep, and he rose to use the bathroom. Before returning to his room, Jimmy was struck by the familiar sensation that someone was awake elsewhere in the house. Sally was his first guess, even though she hadn’t spent a night in Jimmy’s basement in months. It was a very particular feeling that accompanied Sally’s presence, a heavy sort of precariousness. Jimmy peered out the hall window and could not tell from two floors up if the grass between his and Sally’s home had been recently trampled or if the basement storm window was propped open, but his intuition whispered that it was Sally, so he went to the basement.

  Sally was on the couch where she always slept, but she was not asleep. Instead, she sat upright, hands folded over her lap, wearing a large gray T-shirt and ankle-length yellow pajama pants with a pink flowered design, and she was staring across the room at the dartboard, its green surface peppered with tiny holes. When Jimmy entered, she turned toward him, and her face was white and long. Jimmy suddenly felt cold. He went to the couch and sat next to her.

  Sally said, “Do you remember anything that happened when you were three?”

  “Years old?”

  Sally nodded.

  Jimmy thought. “My earliest memory, I think, is around school starting. Vaguely. Not much before, really. Not anything before, maybe.”

  Sally was quiet for a bit. She said, “Anything that we have no memory of, it’s like it never even happened. Right? It doesn’t matter. It’s like it doesn’t even exist.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  Sally said, “Think about it, though. If you don’t remember something, it might as well have never happened. It wouldn’t make any difference to you.”

  Jimmy and Sally had never had this sort of conversation. Usually, Sally’s concerns were immediate and straightforward, her afflictions easy to trace.

  Jimmy said, “I don’t understand.”

  “Can you promise not to tell something if I tell you?”

  “Of course.” Jimmy and Sally had shared many, many hard secrets between them before, but they had never sworn one another to secrecy; it was unspoken that the trust between them would never be broken. It hurt Jimmy a little bit that she felt the need to ask. “I promise,” he said.

  Sally said, “Mikey is my brother.”

  Jimmy stared at her. “He’s who? How?”

  Sally explained to Jimmy how she had come upon this knowledge. She explained that John had begged her not to tell Mikey, fearing that Mikey would feel betrayed and deceived by John, and abandoned by Corinne and his biological father. John told Sally that he didn’t want Mikey to feel alone.

  Sally told Jimmy, “I told John I don’t want that either.”

  Jimmy said, “But Mikey’s not alone. He has his dad, even if he’s not his dad. He has us. And if he knew . . . he could have a sister, too.”

  Sally was quiet for a bit.

  Jimmy felt desperation brimming within himself. He said, “But what you were just saying . . . If Mikey never knows, if this just dies in your heart . . . It’s like you were saying, right? It’s like it never existed, and it doesn’t matter. But that can’t be what you want. Is that what you want?”

  Sally’s brow was furrowed, her thin, sharp jaw working. “I promised John.”

  Jimmy’s throat was becoming tight and hard. A memory reached him from many years earlier, the time Mikey had given him his best baseball card because Jimmy’s parents were fighting and Jimmy was sad. He thought of Mikey’s constancy, his goodness, and the solemn heavy sorrow that Mikey always seemed to carry but of which he never spoke.


  Jimmy tried to reason with Sally. “I think Mikey should know, even if John doesn’t think so. I think it would be better for him. And I think it would be better for you, too.” Jimmy hesitated, knowing how this next part would sound, coming from someone whose own parents didn’t know he was gay. He said, “I don’t think it’s good for a heart to get so full of such big secrets.”

  Sally was quiet for a long while. Eventually, Jimmy lifted his eyes to study her face, and her hard expression contradicted the light gloss of tears now trailing down both cheeks.

  She said, “You promised, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy said, “I know.”

  “I’m serious,” she said. “You promised.”

  “I know.”

  Jimmy peeled at the foil label on his beer with his fingernail. He said to Mikey, “Sally wasn’t one to reverse herself or to break a promise. She’d rather die with something hidden in her heart.”

  Mikey said, “Or die because something was hidden in her heart.”

  Jimmy’s hands went to his own face, and he uttered a soft but aching and sustained sob. “Can you forgive me, Mikey?” he murmured through his fingers, which were damp with tears. “Can you forgive her? And John? We all . . .” Jimmy wiped his eyes with the back of his wrists and looked directly at Mikey. “You deserved to know,” he said.

  Mikey didn’t hesitate before reaching across the table to reassure his friend. “Of course,” he said, gripping Jimmy’s forearm warmly. “Forgive? It’s so easy. Of course.”

  Jimmy nodded and sniffed. “But you deserved to know.”

  “And now I know,” Mikey said.

  It was quiet for a bit.

  Jimmy sipped his beer, then released a heavy sigh. “The one thing I wish . . . Whoever Sally was by the end, whatever all she kept hidden in her heart and however much those things tortured her, I hope she knew that she was loved. It hurts when you can’t tell a person that. When they’re too far away to hear it, or it’s just too late.”

  Mikey had a sudden and uncomfortable flashback to his conversation with Alice on the beach the previous night. The alcohol and pot had muddied the conversation in his memory, but he had hurt her, refusing to acknowledge that he loved her, or was loved by her. He was too far away to hear it.