him the question caught in our throats: Well? Are you going to tell them?
Jackson and I were to leave for college in the fall. We’d both been accepted at a small liberal arts school in the bland, ever-sunny southern part of the state, which had offered both of us a great deal of financial aid we’d have been foolish to turn down. A stay in jail, needless to say, would have put Jackson’s plan for higher education on hold.
At his hearing, James was dignified and solemn. He smirked at us as he was led into the courtroom and sat up straight as he was questioned. When that famous question was asked of him, he ran his right hand over his still immaculately groomed hair and looked right at his brother.
Jackson’s grip on my hand tightened so ferociously I winced and blinked in pain so that I heard, but did not see, “Guilty.”
That three-second look, delivered with stolid, terrifying purpose, was to be the last communication between the brothers for almost seven years, until Jackson would accompany me into the lobby of an entirely different kind of institution where we carefully wrote our identities on sticky name tags and leafed through pamphlets about depression and suicide while we waited to be buzzed in to our James.
T he hiss of my father’s oxygen tank: I have not been listening for quite some time. Dear heart? He asks. I wish you two would talk, he tells me. You feel like you have a whole lifetime, but—He pauses. The hiss of his oxygen tank. My father has never stopped loving my mother, and I worry I may have inherited his capacity of never forgetting. Can it be called worrying when you already know?
A fter wandering away and back to each other so many times to the dark amusement of our parents and friends, Jackson and I finally called it even and settled our bets, began looking for an apartment that would house our history. We wandered through the vacant rooms holding hands like curious tourists, opened every door and stood rapt by every window. We had few requirements, felt shocked and grateful that any of these spaces would even accept us. We took the first apartment offered to us. The landlord, an aging hippie who seemed to wear all pieces of her wardrobe at once, rolled her eyes in near fondness when we kissed after committing our signatures.
We giggled with every discovery: two of the century-old doorknobs came loose with any turn slightly more than gentle; someone named Tobias had carved his name into the leftmost kitchen drawer; the shower supplied hot water for, almost infallibly, nine minutes and twenty seconds. In the days without furniture, we stretched out on the warpedhardwood and imagined the rest of our lives, later drinking whiskey in thick socks under Jackson’s childhood quilt.
We tacked a map of San Francisco to the wall and consulted it daily, quizzing each other on bus routes and growing pleased at the way urbanity received us. We discovered the concrete slides built for adult-sized bodies in the crests of hilly affluent neighborhoods and flew down them on the pieces of cardboard left behind; the bars you went to when you wanted to be seen and when you wanted to hide; the hotel with a pool under a glass ceiling that required only finesse to sneak into. The little-known public roof gardens in the financial district brought to life by a statute dictating a certain ratio of public to private space: there, we let our lives leak out over the robin’s egg blue of the oxidized copper that topped the oldest buildings, then the sparkling bay beyond, and took comfort in the plentitude of available air.
Julia helped pay for a foam mattress that adjusted to our bodies and held our shapes gladly; my father donated my mother’s favorite coffee cup, a wooden dish rack, a coat hanger made of found driftwood, and an outdated standing globe featuring nonexistent countries that spun at a wobble. Jackson sewed three panels of curtains for the bay windows around our bed, each four thick strips
Jackson and I were to leave for college in the fall. We’d both been accepted at a small liberal arts school in the bland, ever-sunny southern part of the state, which had offered both of us a great deal of financial aid we’d have been foolish to turn down. A stay in jail, needless to say, would have put Jackson’s plan for higher education on hold.
At his hearing, James was dignified and solemn. He smirked at us as he was led into the courtroom and sat up straight as he was questioned. When that famous question was asked of him, he ran his right hand over his still immaculately groomed hair and looked right at his brother.
Jackson’s grip on my hand tightened so ferociously I winced and blinked in pain so that I heard, but did not see, “Guilty.”
That three-second look, delivered with stolid, terrifying purpose, was to be the last communication between the brothers for almost seven years, until Jackson would accompany me into the lobby of an entirely different kind of institution where we carefully wrote our identities on sticky name tags and leafed through pamphlets about depression and suicide while we waited to be buzzed in to our James.
T he hiss of my father’s oxygen tank: I have not been listening for quite some time. Dear heart? He asks. I wish you two would talk, he tells me. You feel like you have a whole lifetime, but—He pauses. The hiss of his oxygen tank. My father has never stopped loving my mother, and I worry I may have inherited his capacity of never forgetting. Can it be called worrying when you already know?
A fter wandering away and back to each other so many times to the dark amusement of our parents and friends, Jackson and I finally called it even and settled our bets, began looking for an apartment that would house our history. We wandered through the vacant rooms holding hands like curious tourists, opened every door and stood rapt by every window. We had few requirements, felt shocked and grateful that any of these spaces would even accept us. We took the first apartment offered to us. The landlord, an aging hippie who seemed to wear all pieces of her wardrobe at once, rolled her eyes in near fondness when we kissed after committing our signatures.
We giggled with every discovery: two of the century-old doorknobs came loose with any turn slightly more than gentle; someone named Tobias had carved his name into the leftmost kitchen drawer; the shower supplied hot water for, almost infallibly, nine minutes and twenty seconds. In the days without furniture, we stretched out on the warpedhardwood and imagined the rest of our lives, later drinking whiskey in thick socks under Jackson’s childhood quilt.
We tacked a map of San Francisco to the wall and consulted it daily, quizzing each other on bus routes and growing pleased at the way urbanity received us. We discovered the concrete slides built for adult-sized bodies in the crests of hilly affluent neighborhoods and flew down them on the pieces of cardboard left behind; the bars you went to when you wanted to be seen and when you wanted to hide; the hotel with a pool under a glass ceiling that required only finesse to sneak into. The little-known public roof gardens in the financial district brought to life by a statute dictating a certain ratio of public to private space: there, we let our lives leak out over the robin’s egg blue of the oxidized copper that topped the oldest buildings, then the sparkling bay beyond, and took comfort in the plentitude of available air.
Julia helped pay for a foam mattress that adjusted to our bodies and held our shapes gladly; my father donated my mother’s favorite coffee cup, a wooden dish rack, a coat hanger made of found driftwood, and an outdated standing globe featuring nonexistent countries that spun at a wobble. Jackson sewed three panels of curtains for the bay windows around our bed, each four thick strips
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