When new friends came over and saw all of it, when they asked how long we’d been together, we had several answers.
“Since somewhere between simple addition,” I’d start, “and multiplication tables,” Jackson would finish.
“Since before cursive.”
“Hell, probably since before we knew the alphabet.”
Some of them wanted to know: And do you fight? And we would say: Yes. Of course. Doesn’t every family?
~ ~ ~
Paul couldn’t explain how it happened, but given the circumstances, it was the one blunder of the evening I forgave him for. Somewhere between Jackson’s frenetic outburst at Caroline and her subsequent breakdown, I asked you nicely the first time went missing. Though we both remembered Jackson leaving the space empty-handed, we both figured he had something to do with it. It was too obvious a symbol. He had asked us nicely the first time, hadn’t he? He had asked me not to provide him with the materials in his sleep. Not to let him take buses and wander into art stores. Not to show anyone, and certainly not to exhibit the pieces. He had asked nicely the first, second, and third times, but I had insisted, as always, on knowing that surely this would do some good and instead unleashed, once again, that which was diseased and clawing.
Three weeks later the piece appeared for sale on the Internet. Ridiculous, many-pronged threads ensued about how Jackson was a hack or Jackson was the biggest talent to emerge in years or Jackson was rumored to abuse women. A bidding war actualized, and the seller, whoever it was, let it rise. Paul called and asked if I wanted to pursue legal action, to find the thief, but I didn’t respond. Jackson had brought about explosions on several fronts, and it seemed only logical to me that there would be more.
What didn’t seem natural was the money that appeared in Paul’s mailbox with a handwritten note in neat capitals requesting he forward it to the artist. As Paul didn’t have any better idea of where Jackson had gone, I accepted it, but only to spite Jackson, to prove to him that I’d been right: what he did in his sleep, whether or not they were “his,” were gut-wrenching and compelling and other people loved them so fiercely they were willing to pay upward of a thousand dollars. That someone would steal the piece only to return the money would have to mean something to him, I thought.
I begged and manipulated James for his brother’s address. He refused and spoke in thick condescension.
“I really have to say here, Ida, I still agree with Jackson that it’s better if you two don’t talk. I am sorry, but no. No can do. Nope.”
On my second try, he was just as short but slightly more kind, had forgotten how much he was supposed to hate me as per his brother’s instructions, and I played it for everything it was worth.
“How you doing tonight, kid?” he asked, and I let him call me kid; being the needy versus the needed was essential.
“Oh, you know,” I said and composed a self-aware titter, “it goes up and down. But I’m trying to think of other things? And let myself feel but not sit in it?”
“That’s good. That’s real good.”
“Yeah! And I even started a little garden on the fire escape today.”
I was lying through my teeth. There was absolutely no happy-go-lucky gardening going on, no brightening at the thought of readily available fresh rosemary.
“All good things,” he said.
I hedged my bets and let him talk about himself for a while, resolved to let it wait.
On the third try, I embarrassed even myself with insipid, upbeat blather that filled the telephone lines until they could barely stand it, and without taking a breath posed the question again. I used my very best manipulative lilt, stressed that he really could probably use the money, considering he was starting his life over, that this wasn’t at all about making contact with him.
“You know,” I posed, tried to imbue my voice with all the begrudged wisdom I could, “despite everything, I still care about him. He did what he felt he had to do.”
It was an evil game I was playing, outsmarting James, taking advantage of someone who couldn’t help but bow to our history. Despite years, despite so many divergences, I was still the older girl from down the street who held his head while he vomited after too many popsicles and so couldn’t tell his mother he was ill, still the girl who slept in her underwear on the floor five feet from him for years after society deemed it permissible because I was, after all, essentially his sister. Still the owner of the first pair of breasts he ever saw in person, when Jackson and I broke into the high school pool and swam naked and kissed naked and did other things naked while James sat on the bleachers silent and sullen and clothed.
We were family, and though the person who mattered most was far away in another city and had forgotten, I had won. James agreed to give me his brother’s address as long as I promised to send the check and only the check.
~ ~ ~
Jackson returned the check and I sent it back and he returned it and I sent it back and it went on for nearly a month. It felt nearly like flirting, the interval between its return becoming shorter and shorter until the fourth week, when I waited to spring with my supply of stamps and envelopes and it never came. It was supposed to feel like winning, but didn’t, and though I’d searched each envelope he’d returned for any sign of him and never found anything, when they stopped appearing through the brass slot and falling onto the crooked floors that had been ours, I wished I had searched harder, was sure I had missed something. When my father called and I told him with a pathetic giggle of our exchange, he danced deftly around the topic.
~ ~ ~
The plus or minus sign is supposed to appear within two minutes, but on all three the former appeared immediately.
There was absolutely no question of “keeping it”—as if it were something found — but still, I mentally drew Punnett squares like in high school biology class, remembered that blue eyes like mine are a recessive trait, as is my widow’s peak. The nausea not just in the mornings. The constant glances into mirrors and the windows of trains, begging they forgive my vanity, silently explaining it’s not just me I’m looking at or for, that I should have paid for three tickets.
I wanted to tell everyone, wanted to tell no one. I saw pregnant women and wanted to say I’m seven weeks, wanted to glow with them and not disclose that seven would not turn to eight. The dreaminess, the pernicious hunger. My hand wandering onto my abdomen without my permission, every gesture an apology.