by Chris Lynch
Dad withdrew, leaving a clear line of vision between his wife and their number one son.
It was obvious this exchange would not be nearly so untroubled.
She looked like she had been mugged. Her body sagged forward and her eyes doubled in size and soupiness as she looked pleadingly, and angrily, at Lloyd.
“Traumatic brain injury is worse, worse in the military,” she said. Her face had that fractured, confused expression people always seem to have at one of those senseless tragedies when they show them on the news. “Have all my words meant that little . . . ?”
The waitress came then and politely cut the discussion right off. All the lovely foods and drinks and condiments were distributed while my mother held her stare on my brother. Then it was just us again.
“It’s all in The File,” she said, sounding exhausted and defeated enough already that this could have been the end of the debate rather than the beginning.
Lloyd had somewhere found the ability to help himself with silence for once. He nodded, understanding, but held his tongue. He began scooping and sharing the various rices and curries and papadams and chutneys in a gentle family way.
“Look at him, Emma,” Dad said, gesturing at the undeniably fit and unclouded version of the boy. He didn’t have to elaborate, because he knew she knew she’d already given in. Lloyd didn’t just have a physique—he had a goal, he had an idea. And he didn’t have those the last time we sat here. “Look at where he’s gotten himself, where he’s seeing himself. There has to be good in that.”
We all looked at her, and finally she gave a slow, reasonable nod.
I wondered if all four of us were thinking the same thing at that exact moment: what other options are there?
I bet we were.
“What would you say to an amaretto sour?” Dad asked, his lips brushing her forehead.
“I’d say take me, amaretto sour, I’m yours.”
Dad gestured for the waiter, ordered Ma’s drink and a solidarity manhattan, and the two of them turned Lloyd’s way. They were kind of linked and twined like a couple of old folks facing a big storm together.
“So,” Dad said, “fill us in on the details. What happens from here?”
Lloyd jumped in eagerly. “Okay, first I have a date to report to—”
“Bup, bup, bup,” said Ma, her fingers doing that shushing thing. “Please don’t answer until the drinks come.”
The drinks appeared, the parents sipped, and Lloyd proceeded.
“I have a date a couple weeks from now, at the MEPS,” he said brightly, clearly expecting to be asked.
I volunteered. “Okay, what’s MEPS, Lloyd?”
“Military, ah, Enlistment . . . dammit,” he said, making both Dad and me laugh as he reached into his shirt pocket for his crib sheet. “Military Entrance Processing Station,” he read irritably. “I worked on this, too. Memorized this stuff, so you could see I knew what I was talking about.”
“Just relax,” Ma said. I sorely wished we could get Lloyd at least a small amaretto sour, just this once, just for this.
“So I report to MEPS in the morning. Then all the evaluation stuff starts. First stage is the ASVAB. . . .”
Oh boy. We all waited as if nothing weird was going on in the empty seconds as Lloyd turned red with the effort and embarrassment of trying to recall this one, too.
“The military is so swamped with acronyms, Lloyd, nobody would expect you to be committing them all to memory this soon.”
I thought that was decent and well played on Dad’s part.
Lloyd glared at him, then growled before reading off his sheet again. “Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. Then is the APFT, which stands for Army Physical Fitness Test,” he went on without even bothering to look up from his sheet, which he then crumpled right up and spiked on the floor at his feet. “Now I’m really pissed off because I know I would have remembered that one without reading it.”
It would have been ideal to record this moment so that someday we could replay it and share a big laugh over the whole thing. What would not be ideal would be to take any note right now of how not funny it was.
“So the vocational thing,” I said, “what’s the deal there?”
That direct question lit him up like a Christmas tree. “It’s multiple choice, takes like three hours—which is kind of scary right off the bat. Two hundred questions. I don’t know when the last time I took one of those things was. But I’ll be fine. They say that no one fails. Then the medical exam and the fitness test, sit-ups and push-ups and a distance run, which thanks to my trainer here I will be able to pass in my sleep. Then they evaluate the whole thing and decide what they’re gonna do with me.”
“Sounds like a lot to fit into one day,” Ma said cautiously.
“Could go into a second day. I’m supposed to pack a bag in case they have to put me up.”
She did the slow, reasonable nodding again. “Sounds so . . . real,” she said.
“’Cause it is, Ma. It’s really real.” His odd, funny, really real smile would be enough all by itself to pretty much carry the day with her.
So the dinner finished quietly, warmly. When we left, Dad patted Lloyd’s shoulder from behind and Ma slipped an arm around his waist. My father got sort of caught up in the moment and put an awkward arm across not quite my shoulders, holding it really across my shoulder blades. I think we both realized in that instant how much bigger I was than him, because he was shooting a look up at his hand planted on my back just as I looked down at him.
So I swung my arm around and draped it heavily over his shoulders. It was a nice feeling all around. But not as nice as the feeling that was rapidly sweeping it away: sixteen hours.
Sixteen to Sandrine.
How High Sandy
Plinnngg.
That was definitely it. That was the text message alert. I raised my head from the pillow, adjusting to sudden consciousness. I had given myself the morning to sleep in, and the sleep I was sleeping was deep and happy, with fuzzy unspecific dreams of sweetness coming my way.
In a little while I was going to specify them.
Gym bag. That’s where I left the phone. I stretched as far as I could reach without falling off the bed, and just snagged the canvas handle of the bag with my middle finger. I dragged it across the floor, unzipped it, and rooted around inside. The ghosts of many sweaty summer days rose, and I realized I needed to put the bag and all its contents into the washing machine without delay.
I shoved the toxic bag a safe distance away, fell back onto my bed, and flipped open the phone. A little stomach jump at the sight of Sandy’s name.
Did you get my text?
No. Jeez, no. Arrrgh. I swept that message aside and got to the one hiding behind it, the one that came two hours earlier.
Miserable rain so got early ferry. Dying to see you big ape. Nice if you wanna meet me at mine. Be home at . . .
I looked at my watch.
“Woooohoooo,” I howled, jumping up out of bed and dashing around my room to get myself together and out and Sandy-bound.
“What, you got bedbugs or something?” Lloyd said, leaning casually in my doorway. “I was letting you lie in, but I’m starting to get itchy. So, ready to rock and roll, yes?”
I stopped bopping around the place and paid closer attention to him. He was in regular grunt gear like we were going to have another workout day.
“It’s Sunday, man,” I said. “You’ve earned your day of rest.”
“I don’t want one.”
“The school doesn’t even unlock the facilities on Sundays. Relax, Lloyd.”
A look of real discomfort took over his face, and he stopped the casual leaning. He grabbed the chin-up bar above his head and lifted himself up and down, up and down.
“I don’t want to relax, Arlo. We don’t need the school. We’ll pull something together, and it’ll do us fine for today. We’ll do urban adventuring kinds of things. Like we’re kids again.”
> I gestured toward the window. “It’s Sunday, and it’s raining.”
“That’s no reason to give up your discipline,” he said, letting go of the bar and standing rigidly with his hands on his hips.
I grabbed my phone off the bed, and gestured with it as if this would get him to see reason. “Sandy’s home, man. She sent me a message. She’s back early. She told me to meet her there, and so . . .” I started digging through a couple of drawers for the charcoal T-shirt I knew was going to be just right for this. Got it.
“So what?” he said. “So you can go over there after. She can wait.”
“No,” I said, going on about my business.
I pulled on my nicer sneakers, retrieved my black almost-waterproof windbreaker from my closet, and spun for the door.
His face looked pained as it hung there right in front of mine. Looked like he was trying to pull out his old snarly, intimidating self, but something a lot less sure was failing to get out of the way.
“I need to do our workout,” he insisted. “We need to do our workout.”
He was practically pleading. It was a moment to savor, except that it was kind of sad, and I didn’t have time anyway. “Excuse me, Lloyd, I have to run. I think you should chill out for today, but if not, have a good session yourself, and I’ll catch up with you later.”
He gave way slowly and stiffly, like a rusted gate, as I passed him by.
“So,” he snapped at my back, “Sandy says jump, and you say how high?”
“Phwaa,” I called, continuing happily toward the front door. “That’s supposed to bother me? Yes, I say how high, Sandy. I say how high, and how far, and what would you like me to wear.”
And as I slammed the door behind me, I broke into such long strong strides I looked like I could have, in fact, been training for the triple jump.
By the time I got there, her family had all already been working together to be getting all their Nantucket gear out of the car and into the house. To transfer operations out of the fun summer and into the serious business of fall. They were like carpenter ants, carrying their lives nugget by nugget from one place to another through the light misty rain without ever breaking the rhythm.
So I just stepped into the rhythm.
“Hello, Arlo,” her Dad said, handing me a box that was labeled Condiments.
“Hello, sir,” I said, pivoting with the box toward the house.
“That’s for the kitchen,” he called after me. Good thing, too, because I was about to head for Sandy’s bedroom with the condiments.
“Ahhhh, you!” Sandy shouted as I walked into the kitchen with the surprisingly heavy condiment box in my hands. I had to raise and defend the condiments as Sandy slammed into my rib cage and squeezed me fantastically, her claws sinking into both of my kidneys. Actually, I just wanted to drop the box.
“I’ll take that,” said Sandy’s mom as she relieved me of the box and freed my hands for more pressing matters.
It was a really nice, vacuum-packed hug as the two of us melded together just the way you should after four hot summer weeks apart.
Then she pushed me away but held on, too. She held me at arm’s length while maintaining a death grip on my biceps. She looked me all over while squeezing the merchandise at the same time. “What have you been up to, boy? You look—and feel—like you’ve been built out of molded plastic.”
I tried to wriggle politely out of her grip. “I’ve been working to make the varsity squad, Sandy, you know that. That’s what this is all about, and in two weeks time we’ll see if I met my goal. Then it’ll all be worth it.”
Sandy’s older sister, Catrine, the one with her own kids, came in with another box. Sandy grabbed it out of her hands.
“Catrine, here,” Sandy said, “feel this,” and she placed Catrine’s hands here and here and there on my physique, just for scientific purposes. “Now, do you think this stud I left at home all summer has done enough to make the varsity?”
Catrine held a firm, polite grip on me for a few seconds, then smiled delightfully right in my face. “You’ve made the varsity, sweetheart,” she said.
Her mom was just making her way toward us when Sandy seized my arm with more strength than I thought she had, and announced to the world, “We’re gonna be in my room.” She yanked me to the stairs and then we were tumbling up, and as I said “We are?” she said “Yes, we certainly are.”
“I thought this wasn’t allowed,” I said as she shut the door behind her and wrapped me in another Greco-Roman hug.
“It wasn’t,” she said. “But I got bored near the end of the trip and decided to give them a good talking-to. Now it is.”
“Good decision,” I said.
“I also decided I like you very, very much. More than I thought I did before I went away.”
She had the right side of her head planted flat on my chest, so pretending that my heart rate didn’t just triple would have been pointless.
But also, I thought I sensed something kind of complicated buried somewhere inside that wonderful statement.
“You’re not saying anything,” she noted.
“I’m not? Oh, sorry. I’m a jock, so, you know how we are—men of few words and all that.”
“Nonsense.”
“Yeah, that was nonsense. I like you, probably twelve or thirteen times as much as you like me.”
“Hmmm,” she said, pondering. “Twelve or thirteen? If we factor body weight into the equation, I guess that sounds about right.”
She grabbed her laptop off the dressing table, ran, and launched herself into a flying sit, up by the pillows of the bed. She opened the laptop and patted the spot next to her for me to sit, too.
“Umm, Sandy, I would think that after all this time apart, you’d be a little more interested in interacting with the actual physical me rather than—”
“Here he is,” she said to somebody, right over my protest. Then she quickly turned the computer screen toward me. There, a girl with a lava mountain of black hair was waving. I waved back. Then the computer and the girl were gone again.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Sandy said.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“That is Sasha, my island friend and one of my training partners.”
“Ah,” I said, “I noticed right away you are more buff.” She still seemed to be ignoring me. I might as well just have been a screen grab. She waved at the computer again. “Wait, one of your training partners? Who else—?”
She turned the screen my way again, and I returned a wave, again.
“So now do you believe me?” she laughed to her friend, a guy. Who looked like an Olympic rower. Silver medalist. And I only withheld the gold out of spite.
“Right,” I said, “I’m going home.”
Sandy slapped the laptop shut and fell over sideways with laughter, restraining me.
“Wow, that was easier than I thought it would be,” she said, hanging on tight to my arm while I pouted in a manly way.
“Right, fine. I’m a fool,” I said, turning and seeing her laughing face, which changed my mood by quite a bit. “Now, who was he?”
“That’s just Gordon,” she said. “He was kind of a personal trainer to Sasha and me while we were on the island.”
Personal trainer. I stood up.
“Oh, stop that, will you?” she said, yanking me back down and holding me securely in place.
“Tell Gordon he did a great job. You’re really strong. Your arms are like bridge suspension cables.”
“Why don’t I feel complimented by that?”
“Because maybe I don’t feel like talking anymore about how you got so ripped on Nantucket with Gordon.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “Instead, let’s talk about how you got so ripped on only one normal-person workout a day.”
Genius, Arlo. Just throw yourself under the bus, why don’t you.
“What’s the most impressive about your program,” I said, gripping her biceps and admiring
them closely, “is that you got serious muscle density without putting on too much mass.” I kissed that muscle, and she kindly allowed it. And then went right back to what she was saying. “Talk. Now.”
I gave in. It’s not like she would believe me anyway if I told her I’d been working out with some tramp. “Lloyd. It was Lloyd, the tramp I was spending every minute with. He’s getting in shape . . . to join the army.”
“Oh,” she said after a fat pause. “Wow.”
“Yeah, that’s the standard response. I’m hopeful it’s going to be good for him. It has been so far, because he’s clean and sober as well as working himself into pretty stellar shape.”
“Well, okay, that’s promising. Fingers crossed, I guess, huh?”
“Yup. The only problem we seem to have so far is I think now he sees you as a rival.”
“What? Jesus, no, Arlo.”
She was leaning way into me now, and I had my arm around her. Made me want to scare her more often.
“He didn’t want me to come here today. Resents you competing for my time and attention.”
“Great, that’s great,” she said. “The last thing I need is to become part of the world’s freakiest love triangle. If he starts following us around and stuff, I will go crazy. When does he leave?”
“Two weeks. And I’ll keep a close eye on him till then.”
“Yeah, you do that. And get him a hamster or something to keep him company. You also have my blessing to spend all the time you like with him, working out. Because I’m certainly going to increase my weight training and boxercise during that time.”
I knew this was going to be a great day, but it was exceeding all expectations.
We nestled down lower into the comfy safety of the bed, protecting each other from all those dangers out there, like Lloyd.
Dinos Descends
So the Brothers Brodie went back into the gym. I’d see Sandy in the evenings, although Lloyd continued to be territorial about it.
We just trained our brains out, and the universe was pleased.
“So you’re feeling good about where you’re at?” I said as we geared down on our run and started walking down Baker Street to the school. It was the last Monday of the summer. Five days before preseason football workouts and tryouts began, seven days before classes began, eight days before my brother’s MEPS date.
