by Brady Hammes
“It’s not,” Jonah admitted.
“How much longer do you expect to be there?” his dad asked.
“Hard to say. At some point I have to return to the States to work on my dissertation. My advisor thinks I should graduate.”
“And that’s the guy who lives out there with you?” his mother asked.
“Lived,” Jonah said. “Remember I told you, he got sick and went home a couple months ago.”
His mom shook her head. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Pretty sure I did.”
“So now it’s just you?”
Jonah could hear the worry in her voice. “Yeah.”
“What happens if there’s an emergency? If you fall and break your leg?”
“He’ll make a splint out of tree branches,” his father said matter-of-factly. “Which he’s very capable of doing.”
“Exactly,” Jonah said. When the boys were young, their dad had started them in Cub Scouts, which Jonah excelled at, unlike Gavin, who dropped out after attaining the unimpressive rank of Bear Scout. Jonah enjoyed the weekend camping trips and nature walks. He enjoyed the science that went into constructing the Pine Wood Derby cars, calculating force and axle resistance in order to shave a few tenths of a second off his time. He enjoyed long weekends in the woods, where he learned wilderness survival techniques, many of which had served him well in Gabon.
“I don’t like this at all,” his mom said. “Now I have one more thing to worry about.”
“What are the other things?” Jonah asked.
“Well, I just read an article in the Tribune about all the poaching going on over there. Is that happening where you are?”
Jonah shrugged.
“It sounds like a war zone. Apparently, some rangers were killed in Cameroon last week.”
Jonah turned to Sam. “Tell us about this ballet you’re working on.”
“No,” Sam said, refusing to take the bait. “Don’t change the subject.”
“I think you should have a gun out there,” his mom said.
“I have a knife,” Jonah countered.
She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s enough.”
“Then get me a bazooka for Christmas.”
The front door opened and they all turned to discover the final missing family member entering with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
“You made it!” his mom said, standing and moving toward the door. “I didn’t think you’d get here so early.”
“I made good time,” Gavin said, dropping his bag and embracing his mother.
Jonah approached and clapped his brother on the back. “What’s new, Hollywood?” Gavin looked more or less how Jonah remembered him. Ripped denim jeans most likely purchased that way, colorful, presumably Japanese, sneakers, and an expensive-looking haircut.
“Not much,” Gavin said. “You?”
Jonah headed back to the table and took a long pull of his wine. “Enjoying some first-world luxuries,” he said, saluting him with his glass.
“Are you hungry?” their mom asked Gavin. “Make yourself a plate and come sit down.”
Gavin emerged from the kitchen and joined them at the table, where most everyone had finished eating.
“How was the drive?” his dad asked. “Hit any weather?”
“It was fine once I got to Nebraska.”
“So tell us about this play,” his mom said.
“Not sure if it’s actually gonna happen,” Gavin said.
“Why’s that?”
“I had a falling out with the director.”
“That’s too bad. Is he a jerk?”
“She’s very nice, but it doesn’t seem to be working out between us.” Gavin took a drink of his wine. “Mmm, that’s good.”
“It’s a Malbec,” his dad said. “From the northern Maipo region in Chile. Sort of a Bordeaux-style.”
Their father had become a bit of an oenophile in his later years, and Jonah, deep into his second glass, was enjoying the fruits of his dad’s new hobby.
“What’s the play called?” his mom asked. “Anything I’ve heard of?”
“Long Day’s Journey into Night,” Gavin said.
“Isn’t that an old play?”
“Yes.”
“I think I saw it on TV once,” his mom said. “Kind of depressing, right?”
Gavin shrugged. “It’s not The Producers if that’s what you mean.”
“We saw the most depressing play the other night,” his mom continued. “At the Steppenwolf. August something.”
“August: Osage County,” Gavin said.
“That’s right,” his mom said. “Have you seen it?”
“I have.”
“My god, it was depressing. It’s hard to believe anyone’s family is that dysfunctional.”
“You’d be surprised,” Jonah said. He’d been silent throughout the exchange, but now the collective gaze turned toward him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” his mom asked pointedly.
“Just that it’s all relative,” he said. “They only seem dysfunctional because they aren’t your family. They seem like crazy people because you don’t know them. When it’s your mother or brother or sister, you have a way of justifying their craziness, which of course never registers as craziness. It’s just someone going through a rough patch. Challenging times. Isn’t that what people say?” He felt a warmth rising within him, so he stopped to take a drink of wine and compose himself.
His mom made a face. “No need to get so defensive about it. I was just talking about a dumb play.”
GAVIN
SHOPPING ON CHRISTMAS EVE WAS only tolerable under the influence, which was how they ended up at Joey’s, drinking cheap beer with the regulars. They’d made a pact that for every retail store they were forced to fight their way through, they would reward themselves with a stiff drink. It was midafternoon and the bartender was fixing rounds of a gin-based cocktail called Santa Juice. Joey’s was tucked into a quiet stretch of real estate just north of the river, surrounded by steak houses and parking garages. It was the kind of bar a man found himself in after being thrown out of other, more sophisticated establishments.
Gavin had been trying to think of a good way to talk to Sam about the drugs, but he still hadn’t decided on the appropriate angle. He’d been debating whether to tell Jonah, who, as far as he could tell, didn’t suspect anything. Jonah was so disengaged when it came to family matters that Gavin worried his involvement would only complicate the situation. Yet there was strength in numbers and Jonah—being the more even-tempered of the two of them—might come across as less confrontational. It would certainly be easier to include Jonah, although the involvement of more than one person might make it seem like a formal intervention, which he hoped to avoid. He wanted it to come about casually, though he had no idea how to design such a discussion.
He looked over to Sam, who was rocking back and forth on her barstool. She’d barely touched her drink, and she had a faraway look in her eyes. She still wore her coat and stocking cap, despite the warmth of the bar. “Are you cold?” he asked.
“Little bit,” she said.
“Do you feel okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. Her phone, which was sitting next to her on the bar, vibrated with an incoming message. Gavin tried to steal a look, but Sam picked it up and began typing a response.
“Who are you texting?” he asked.
She shot him a look that suggested it was none of his business. “I’ll be right back,” she said, sliding off the barstool and walking outside.
Jonah motioned to the bartender for another drink. “You want another one?” he asked Gavin.
Gavin declined, not wanting to cloud his mission with too much alcohol. He was struggling with how to broach the subject, so he decide
d to tell Jonah everything he’d learned about their sister. “You know how I asked earlier if you thought Sam seemed different?”
“Yeah,” Jonah said, his eyes fixed on a basketball game on the television above the bar.
“I got a really strange phone call from her roommate at the dance company. This was a couple days ago, when I was leaving New Mexico.”
“Okay,” Jonah said, immersed in the television.
“Can you look at me, please?” Gavin asked.
Jonah turned to him. “What?”
“She said Sam’s been doing heroin.”
“Really?” Jonah said with more surprise than concern.
“Yeah,” Gavin said.
Jonah had always been unflappable in the face of bad news, but Gavin sometimes found his nonchalance infuriating. He wasn’t sure if this was because Jonah figured there was usually a simple way to resolve the situation or because he just wasn’t that interested.
“Do Mom and Dad know?” Jonah asked.
“I think we would have heard about it if so.”
Jonah took a sip of his drink and exhaled a long sigh. “Well…have you said anything to her?”
“I’ve been trying to figure out a way to broach the subject, but I haven’t come up with much. I thought maybe you could help.”
“You want me to talk to her?”
“I thought we both could.”
Jonah shook his head. “Nothing we say is going to convince her to stop doing drugs. She’s going to have to arrive at that decision on her own.”
“I get that. But I also think it’s our responsibility to push her in that direction.”
“I’m not sure it is.”
“You understand what’s at stake, right?” Gavin asked, annoyed.
“Of course I do. But I don’t see how anything I say is going to change her mind.”
“Maybe not. But we have to try.”
“Then you do it,” Jonah said, turning his attention back to the television, as if to absolve himself of responsibility.
“You’re unreal.”
“Don’t blame this on me. If Sam’s legitimately addicted to drugs, then why the hell are we at a bar? This seems like the worst possible place to be.”
It was a valid point, and one he’d been grappling with all day. As much as Gavin wanted his sister clean, he loathed the idea that they might never again be able to drink together. Most of the best times he’d had with Sam involved alcohol, and he couldn’t picture their relationship without it. He understood the selfishness inherent in his line of reasoning, but he still held out hope that he could work something out.
“Look,” Gavin said. “I could really use your help with this. I’ll do all the talking. I just need you to be there with me.”
“I can’t think of any possible scenario in which that conversation ends well.”
“Neither can I, but we have to try.”
“Fine,” Jonah said. “But I’m blaming everything on you when she freaks out. And she will freak out.”
The door swung open and Sam reappeared, dragging with her a blast of arctic air. She climbed back onto her barstool.
“What’s the plan?” she asked, her spirits seemingly lifted. “I still need to find a gift for Mom.”
Jonah looked to Gavin, waiting for him to say something.
“Sure,” Gavin said. “Where do you want to go?”
Jonah shook his head. “I thought you had something you wanted to talk about.”
“What?” Sam asked.
“We can discuss it later,” Gavin said. Whatever resolve he’d felt was slipping away. Besides, a dive bar probably wasn’t the appropriate place to have the conversation.
“In that case, I need to run an errand before it gets too late,” Jonah said.
“Okay,” Gavin said. “Then I’ll go with Sam.”
“But I need your car,” Jonah said.
“Take the train.”
“The train doesn’t go where I’m headed.”
“Take a cab,” Gavin said.
“That’ll cost a fortune. Why can’t I use your car?”
“Because you’ve been drinking all day,” Gavin said, his voice rising.
“Then you drive me.”
“I don’t want to drive you.”
“You told me earlier I could use your car.”
“That was based on the assumption that you’d be sober enough to drive it.”
It was frustrating to see that Jonah hadn’t matured much over the years. Gavin was reminded of his junior year, when his date with Megan Moore—the exalted beauty of Palatine High—was canceled because their mother insisted that he retrieve Jonah from the Junior Geology Expo at the convention center. Apparently, Jonah had been separated from his group of fellow rock hounds and found himself calling home from a pay phone in some foreign neighborhood. At sixteen Gavin had been blessed with the keys to his parents’ Pontiac, but it was a conditional arrangement that stipulated that he was also responsible for ferrying his siblings to their extracurricular activities. It took him an hour to get downtown, where he found his brother standing in an empty parking lot, surrounded by four shoeboxes filled with small rocks. That was a long, uncomfortable ride back to the burbs, Gavin driving in a steely silence while Jonah babbled on about the crystallization patterns of igneous rocks.
“It’s fine,” Sam finally said to Gavin. “You go with Jonah and I’ll meet you back at the house before church.”
“What time is church?” Jonah asked.
“Six,” Sam said, “but we’re supposed to be there early.”
“Because it might sell out?”
“Something like that,” Sam said, making for the door.
“You handled that well,” Jonah said to his brother once she was gone.
Gavin’s phone buzzed. He fished it from his pocket and saw Mariana’s name. He hadn’t expected to hear from her, so he walked to a relatively quiet corner of the bar to take the call. “Hey there,” he said.
“Gavin, it’s Jesse.”
“Oh, hi.”
“I found your number in Mariana’s phone, and just wanted to call and thank you.”
“For what?”
“You exposed some strains in our relationship,” Jesse said. “I wasn’t a very attentive fiancé, and I can see why Mariana was attracted to you. I wasn’t giving her what she needed, and I accept the blame for that.”
“She told you?” Gavin couldn’t believe it. She’d assured him there was no reason for Jesse to know what had transpired between them.
“She did. And the interesting thing is that despite whatever passed between you two, Mariana still wants to marry me. I’m sure that must be difficult for you to accept. It was obviously just a passing thing, and I’m glad it’s done with. I guess what I’m trying to say is that you don’t need to call here any more, okay?”
The line went dead and Gavin stood staring at a framed Bud Light poster.
“You ready?” Jonah asked. He had borrowed a sweatshirt from Gavin and a fleece jacket from their father, both of which he’d shed during their time in the bar. He was now awkwardly reassembling the layers.
“Yeah,” Gavin said, still spinning from the news. He put on his hat and followed his brother toward the door. “I don’t understand why you didn’t bring a coat.”
“Because I’ve been living at the equator for the past four months,” Jonah said, pushing open the door.
“So where exactly are we going?”
“South Side,” Jonah said. “A quick trip to the South Side.”
JONAH
THE ONLY TIME JONAH HAD ever ventured this far south was when his fourth-grade teacher took his class on a field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry in Hyde Park. It was a two-hour bus ride from Palatine, and he was amazed at
the city’s reach, how it stretched forever along the lake, the buildings becoming shorter, like stairs descending southward. But now, sitting in the passenger seat of his brother’s fancy European car, transporting a trunk full of massacred elephant parts, he was thinking only about how to offload his cargo and still make it back in time for church.
“Thanks for doing this,” Jonah said.
“I don’t actually know what we’re doing,” Gavin replied.
“I’m dropping off some equipment with a colleague.”
“I would ask what a colleague from Vanderbilt is doing in Chicago, but I already know you’re lying so I won’t bother.”
“What makes you think I’m lying?”
“Because you’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“Sure you are.” Gavin nodded toward Jonah’s leg, which was hammering away.
“I do that when I drink,” Jonah said.
“Maybe. But you also do it when you’re nervous.”
They stopped at a red light, and Jonah watched a man push a wheelbarrow filled with stuffed animals across the street.
“So,” Gavin said, “who are you meeting down here?”
“I told you. A colleague.”
“From Nashville?”
“He’s from Chicago originally. Just like us. Just like lots of people who happen to be home visiting their families during the holidays. It’s not unprecedented.”
“What’s his name?” Gavin asked.
“Andre.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a research assistant. He works in the lab. What’s with all the questions?”
“Just curious.”
Jonah glanced down at his phone. “Take the next right.”
Gavin turned into a strip mall on the corner of Fifty-Third and Harper. Andre’s store—Elegant Impressions—was wedged between a tanning salon and a Baskin-Robbins.
“So your colleague has a part-time job at Baskin-Robbins?” Gavin asked.
“It’s actually the jewelry store.”
“Better yet,” Gavin said, pulling the car to a stop.
“Pop the trunk,” Jonah said. “This won’t take long.” He stepped out of the car and hauled the case of ivory out of the trunk. As he wheeled it to the entrance, he waved back to his brother in a half-hearted attempt at reassurance. The alcohol had dulled his nerves, and he felt brave enough to pull this off without incident. A CLOSED sign hung in the window, though the lights were on. He knocked loudly and a moment later, a very attractive woman opened the door. She appeared to be roughly Jonah’s age, wearing a leopard-print top and a denim skirt. “Yes?”
