Oasis

by Brian Hodge

  “Sure, Wally,” he said, and headed back to his room.

  I began running hot water into the sink to wet down my cloth again, and reached for an SOS pad.

  Sleep could wait. First I had to make things look like normal again. Appearances are half the battle, if nothing else.

  Chapter 24

  Mom came home around eight-thirty the next morning, looking no worse than she had the night before, but still bad enough. As I’d expected, she’d catnapped in her chair in the alcove, waiting to see if Dad might awaken in the morning.

  She came in just after I’d set my Wheaties and toast on the table. Aaron was still sacked out in his room — his last day of freedom before returning to school tomorrow. Mom poured a glass of juice and joined me.

  “I notice somebody’s cleaned up in here.” She slowly gave the kitchen the once-over. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  “What about Dad? Anything?”

  “He came around once, only for a few seconds.” She creased her forehead. “The first thing, well, the only thing, he asked about was you. Not himself, not how he was doing, but if you were all right.”

  I slowly spooned up some cereal. “Seems a little weird. Why should he be worried about me?”

  She shrugged. “He was pretty out of it. Maybe he didn’t know what he was saying.”

  “When can I see him again?”

  “This afternoon. But it’ll be a while before we can really talk to him. Tomorrow night, maybe.” She propped her head on one hand, sipping orange juice with half-mast eyes. “I guess I’ll call the insurance office today, try to get some things rolling. But I honestly don’t think the policy is as up-to-date as it should be. You always think there will be time to take care of these things later. I don’t have any idea what all this will do to our savings.”

  I prodded the last bit of cereal around in my bowl, not hungry anymore. “Look, you know my tuition hasn’t been paid yet, ‘cause it’s not due for another week, and I can still get most of my housing money back.”

  This perked her up, and she stared across the table at me for a moment. “You know, that gets my vote as the worst idea you’ve had since you wanted a Mohawk when you were six.”

  “I was just thinking I could wait a while if I have to.”

  “It’s not going to come to that. Chris. Never.”

  “But I don’t even know what I want to study for.”

  “Is that so important? At your age, your father didn’t, either. If you want to go to school, then you should. That’s the important thing, that’s what we want for you.”

  “Then how about I get a job up there? Help support myself.”

  “Maybe later.” She drained her juice and rolled the glass between her palms. “For now, concentrate on your studies. Get your bearings. It’s a whole new world for you up there.”

  Understatement of the season.

  “And I know it’s going to take some getting used to. Some readjusting. We want you to start off the very best you can. So take it one step at a time. Maybe later you can fit a job in.”

  I nudged at my cereal bowl with the spoon, feeling that I’d sunk about as far into my parents’ debt as I could go. If you’ve got any streak of independence at all, it’s not an especially pleasant feeling.

  The next two trips to the hospital we made that evening and the next morning. Dad slept through both of them. Later that second evening, though, we’d reached the forty-eight-hour point in Dad’s recovery, which was something of a milestone and meant we stood a better chance of establishing some kind of lucid communication with him.

  He was more or less alert when we got there, a great load off my mind. It’s one thing to see your father lying there and hear somebody tell you he should be all right, but it’s infinitely better when he can speak for himself.

  And when I stepped through the door and our eyes met for the first time, I swear that, for at least a moment, he looked one hundred percent better. As if an immense burden had been lifted from his shoulders, apart from the illness. I recalled Mom telling me how I’d been the first thing he’d asked about. But I decided against mentioning it. It was his ball to play.

  “Hi, all,” he said, his voice as weak and flat as a day-old Coke.

  Mom kissed his forehead, and I pulled a chair over so she could sit beside him and hold his hand. “It’s so good just to hear you,” she said, and I think she was closer to tears now than at any time since I’d been home.

  “I was wanting some vacation time, but this isn’t what I had in mind.” He rolled his gaze left, toward the nightstand and flowers and vase, carnations and daisies with a card jammed between the stems. “Look what came from everyone at work.”

  “It’s very pretty,” Mom said.

  “Rather enjoy it at home, though.”

  “Soon. Soon.”

  He slowly lifted his free hand and tugged at the hospital johnny he still wore. “I’d give anything to be rid of this.”

  I stepped closer and lifted a small sack I’d brought from home. “Then how much for these pajamas?”

  He grinned. “Ah, bless you, son. I knew you were good for something.” He pulled the pajamas from the sack and held them as if they were long-lost friends. “When are you going back to school?”

  “I don’t know. If I leave tomorrow morning, I can still catch my afternoon classes. But I’ve only missed a couple days. One more won’t hurt.”

  “Two’s the limit. Your mom can take care of everything, with Aaron’s help.” He winked. “I’ll be around for a while yet.”

  We small-talked a while, and Dad must have mentioned how glad he was we were there three times. He tired visibly before us, eyelids growing heavier, his smiles more strained and less frequent, his voice getting softer. By the end of fifteen minutes he was ready to sleep, and I was sorry to have to go. I knew that this goodbye would be an especially tough one to make.

  We clasped hands and I bent over to kiss his cheek. His other hand came up to pat me on the back.

  “I’ll be seeing you over Labor Day weekend,” I said.

  “I should be home then. Hope so.” He swallowed, with difficulty.

  I straightened up. “I love you, Dad. I guess I’ve never told you that often enough.”

  He squeezed my hand a bit harder. “Same goes for me, too. But I think we knew it all along just the same, didn’t we?”

  I squeezed back, not too hard. “You bet.”

  He looked into my eyes, and his flared with a sudden intensity. For a second I feared he might be having another attack, but it wasn’t a pained look. It was love, at its deepest, most elemental levels. The love of sacrifice. “You be careful going back. You hear?”

  I nodded. “Sure will.” What’s gotten into him?

  Mom and Aaron made their goodbyes, but with less a sense of finality than I’d felt. We rode back home in silence, and as Mom drove, I noticed her chewing at her lower lip. That was usually a clear sign she was mulling something over, and not necessarily something she was looking forward to bringing up. I’d caught onto that trait years back, when I was little. I could always tell when I was going to catch hell when Dad got home, even if she never said a word. Sweating out that curled lip was every bit as bad as the worst punishments they could dish out. Seeing it still made me feel a twinge of residual guilt.

  But I hadn’t done anything wrong. Aaron?

  Time would tell, I decided, and I didn’t have long to wait to discover what it was. Mom brought it up a couple minutes after we got home, and I’d done a quick-step into the bathroom. She only wanted Aaron to keep working at the steak house while she and Dad took stock of their finances after his hospitalization was over. And as they coped with the additional expense of starting me out in college. Besides, she added, it was time he was earning his own spending money. If he expected to drive the car, he should at least help out with part of the expenses. I recalled getting the same basic speech a couple years ago. When she finished, the air felt still, heavy. Thunderstorm a
ir.

  “You can’t be serious.” Aaron’s voice was ice and steel.

  Why, you ungrateful little prick, I thought. Open your eyes.

  “Yes, Aaron. I am. I haven’t been in much of a joking mood the past few days, if that’s escaped your attention.”

  A big sigh from Aaron, followed by shuffling footsteps. Sounded like the kitchen floor. I stayed rooted in the bathroom, towel clenched in my hands, not moving a muscle. Scarcely believing that this angry, uncaring person was my brother.

  “But don’t you know how much I hate that job?” Aaron’s voice was climbing higher, more frantic. “Haven’t you seen that this summer?”

  Hey, didn’t you see Dad twenty minutes ago?

  “You can get another job if you don’t want to stay at Chuck Wagon. Find one you do like.”

  A short, bitter laugh. “What else is there around here? All there is is fast food or being a busboy or sacking groceries. Big choice.”

  My mom has always been supremely even-tempered. It takes a lot to get her ruffled, and in our case, she could let us know we’d gone too far with a simple, withering gaze. More than once I’d seen those warm brown eyes suddenly go hard, making me look for the nearest rock to crawl under. She rarely needed to raise her voice, no doubt a carryover from her counselor training. So when her voice began to match decibels with Aaron, I knew she was getting upset.

  “Aaron, right now I don’t care if you find a job you like or not! The point is, I told you to work, and that’s what you’re going to do. When this came up with your brother when he was your age, he didn’t argue. He did it willingly. So why can’t you be as mature as he was about it? Why can’t you act like a man?”

  “Oh yeah, my brother, the big college man now.” His voice had chilled into an ugly sneer, and I could’ve popped him for it. “What’s he doing to help? Is he getting a job?”

  “He doesn’t have to, not yet. Because he got up to go to work at seven o’clock every day this summer. And his situation is completely different from yours, Aaron.”

  “How so? I don’t see it. Why this double standard? One for him, one for me. You care more about how he does than you do me!” Aaron was close to shouting by this point.

  And you only care about yourself. Just as badly as I hated hearing the two of them go at it, I hated being caught in the middle.

  “Aaron, how can you think that? How can you say we care less about you?”

  “Hey, I’ve got eyes. I’ve got ears. Give me a little credit.”

  “I just thought we could count on you to be mature enough to help out this family when we need you,” Mom said, her voice prickly with hurt and anger. “Apparently I was wrong. Maybe you still need to be babied.”

  A brief pause, when neither of them said a word. So I’ll never know what Aaron did, what gesture he made. But whatever it was, it warranted a slap. Her hand cracked across his cheek with a loud smack. He cried out and I winced.

  Footsteps, quick and fading, then the slamming of the front door. Aaron, going off to sulk for a while. Be back when he gets hungry, I thought.

  Although I longed to, I couldn’t hide in the toilet forever. I found Mom at the kitchen table, chin propped on her fists, eyes shut. She opened them when she realized I was standing in the doorway.

  “I guess you heard all that,” she said.

  “Yeah.” A cold knot filled my insides. I started for the front door. I hadn’t heard a car start up, so he’d be walking.

  “Just let him go,” Mom said. Age had crept into her face again. “Just leave him alone.”

  I turned back to her. “He can’t get away with that.”

  She laced her fingers together so tightly that her knuckles whitened. “I’m supposed to be so good at handling strangers’ problems. It always seems so clear to me then.” One corner of her mouth ticked upward in a humorless grin. “But I can’t even figure out a way to deal with my own son. I can’t … can’t get objective enough, I can’t…” She shook her head. “Can’t even really care what he does right now.”

  “I can,” I said, and left, running from the front door across the yard, down to the sidewalk. Aaron was walking along the sidewalk about thirty yards up the street, his hands stuffed into his pockets. I ran after him, grabbing him by the shoulder and spinning him around.

  Aaron’s mouth was set in a thin, hard line, his eyes burning at me with bitterness and resentment. And maybe, way back, a trace of pain.

  “What the fuck was all that about back there?” I asked, my hand clamped onto his shoulder.

  He tried to shake me off and couldn’t, because I dug in harder. He winced, tried to cover it. “Piss off, Chris. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  “Then how about giving listening a shot.” I took a deep breath, wondering what to say next.

  I didn’t get the chance. For the first time in our lives, Aaron took a swing at me. And the little shit connected. Granted, Wendell from Harden had packed more of a punch, but the fact that it was coming from Aaron this time more than made up the difference in shock value.

  “You fucking prick!” I cried, and tackled him. We tumbled into the front lawn of our neighbor two doors down, grunting, rolling, halfheartedly poking our fists at each other, grass staining our knees and elbows and shoulders. An older woman from up the street cruised by in her Lincoln, and her face loomed in the window, gaping and aghast.

  We finally broke when I gut-punched him and knocked the wind out of him. He rolled away, gasping for air like a fish out of water, and as I watched I suddenly felt defused. And ashamed. This was the absolute worst time for us to be at each other’s throats. I leaned on one elbow, waiting for him to stabilize.

  Soon he rolled over to face me, slowly, warily, and lifted a protective arm before his face.

  “Put your stupid arm down,” I said. “I’m too tired to go through that again.”

  He coughed, wheezed a deep breath. Spat.

  “Level with me, Aaron. Okay? Before we do another Cain and Abel number. What’s gotten into you lately?”

  “I don’t know,” he almost whined. “I mean, everybody’s expecting so much of me all at once. I don’t know if I can give it to them anymore.” He ripped at a tuft of grass, green tatters sticking to his fingers. “You seem to have a pretty good handle on it.”

  “Well, I’m sure not perfect, so don’t hang on to that idea. Nobody expects that out of you, either. Including Mom and Dad.”

  He sighed and lay back on the neighbor’s lawn, staring up at the sky, the deepening blue as night fell. Finally, he groaned and said, “I sure blew it in there. Didn’t I?”

  “You just won the gold medal for blowing it.”

  He shook his head slowly back and forth, and for a moment I thought we must look like two guys enjoying a summer night in a Norman Rockwell painting. “Things were going so great before this summer, weren’t they?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “Makes you wonder what happened.”

  Something I couldn’t really explain. So I brushed dirt and grass from my clothes, pushed up to my feet again. Extended my arm to help Aaron up. “Go back in now?”

  He didn’t look so sure. “I don’t think I can face Mom yet.”

  “It won’t get any easier later.”

  He plucked a few weeds from the lawn, then flipped them into the wind. Hunched his shoulders. “Okay.”

  We headed for home, side by side, and I hoped Mom would be ready to accept him back into the fold. I had a feeling she would be.

  “I’m sorry, Chris. I really am.”

  I hugged him with one arm. “Forget it. It’s been a crazy few days.”

  And I felt so tired, so emptied out. Like I could use a week just to catch my breath.

  Chapter 25

  Letter from my mother, dated Sunday, August 24:

  Dear Chris,

  Do you realize that this is my first letter to you, ever? I promise I won’t wait another eighteen years for the next one.

  You
r father continues to improve, but you know that from our phone calls. Tomorrow they plan on moving him out of intensive care. He says to thank you again for bringing the PJs. He says they’ve saved him from a few potentially embarrassing situations. He wouldn’t go any further, so what that means is anybody’s guess. He’s also after me to smuggle in some BBQ from Duke’s Ribs. The man is incorrigible. Now I know where you get it from.

  Things here at home are almost back to normal. It took a few days. For a while I was feeling so on edge the whole time. Like there was something I was always forgetting to do. But I’m better now. And please, please believe me, it was such a help having you here those days.

  Things with Aaron are better. We’re getting along OK. No more scenes like Thursday. That hurt me more than you’ll ever know, Chris, but I’m trying to forget about it. Of course I haven’t told Dad about it. It’s our secret, OK? I think Aaron might be one of the reasons I’ve been feeling so edgy lately. He’s being more cooperative and all, but I’m afraid I might do or say something to set him off again. I know he’s unhappy about having to keep working, but now he bottles it up inside. That’s almost worse than if he lets it out.

  Some counselor I am, huh? Physician, heal thyself.

  Our fight made me do some hard thinking. Aaron has the idea that we favor you over him. Of course I can’t speak for Dad, but in my case I don’t know if that’s completely untrue, after all. It isn’t something I’ve meant to do, and please, never breathe a word of this to Aaron or your father. But Chris, you were my first child and nothing can change that, ever. I’ve told you before how you were born with a pointed head and how your little fingernails had scratched your face up, and how I was so scared you would stay like that forever. But soon all that was gone, and I knew you were the most beautiful child in the world. No mother was any prouder of her baby than I was of you. I wanted to show you to everyone I saw, whether I knew them or not. You were the first to make me feel that way, to bring that kind of joy into my life. There’s something so special about the first one, something I won’t try to deny.