You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon Page B

me sometimes,
he thought, and he wasn’t sure what else to say. He’d thought his watching of Steve had been quite subtle.
    But Steve didn’t seem upset about it. “Hi, Jonah,” he said. “Nice name.”
    “Thanks,” Jonah said, and he gave Steve the grin he had been practicing, before he realized that Steve might recognize it as an imitation. He looked down at the pictures again, at the wife’s expression of wonder as she held the infant—Henry—her face wan and shell-shocked and yet, Jonah thought, quite beautiful. He was embarrassed that he could see her breast, even though the infant’s mouth was covering the nipple. “These are nice, really nice pictures,” he said, holding the photos out for Steve to take back.
    “I’ve been meaning to introduce myself,” Steve said. “I always see you looking over at me, and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, I must be getting on that guy’s nerves!’ You know, coming in here and talking to everybody and kind of like, not talking to you. I must’ve seemed annoying!”
    “Oh,” Jonah said. “No, no. Not at all. I didn’t mean to . . . give the impression that I was annoyed.” He smiled again, and made an effort to look Steve in the eye. “It’s probably something about my face. I think my expressions are weird.” He cleared his throat, wincing inwardly. Why did he feel the urge to draw attention to his face? It was no wonder he didn’t make friends, he thought. He was always making people uncomfortable.
    “Actually,” he said, “I was just noticing you because you look a lot like someone I know.” He didn’t know what he was doing, except that he felt the urge to explain his staring. And then, for no reason he could figure out, he said: “You look almost exactly like my brother.”
    “Oh, really?” Steve said.
    “Well,” Jonah said. “He’s dead now. He was killed in a car accident. But you . . . you look almost exactly like him. I’m sorry for staring.”
    Steve’s eyes widened, and he took the photos Jonah was trying to return to him. “Geez,” Steve said. “Wow! How weird!”
    “Yeah,” Jonah said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”
    ——
    Afterward he was terribly flustered. Why had he said such a thing? He paced his apartment, moving from the kitchen to the bathroom’s medicine cabinet mirror; he stood at the window looking down at the empty street, the traffic light at the end of the block blinking yellow in soft breathing beats. It was a very freakish thing to do, he thought, and he sat down on the fold-out sofa and tapped his forehead with the knuckles of his fist, staring grimly down at the carpet.
You look exactly like my dead brother,
he thought. How ridiculous.
    But the lie had come to him almost supernaturally, like a premonition, that was the thing. Lies often did. He could actually picture the brother who looked like Steve. He experienced the car accident, a slow-motion slide into a semi-truck on a slick interstate, he pictured the way his brother would throw up his arms in front of his face as the seat in front of him loomed and turned into a thundercloud, an onrushing darkness. He heard his brother’s final gasp, which was strangely delicate. “Ah,” his brother breathed, and then everything went dark. The whole thing had burst forth with such vividness that it had almost seemed real. He thought of the fairy tale in which one sister is blessed to cough up diamonds, while the other is cursed to spit out toads—that’s what it felt like.
    Whether this was a diamond or a toad, he wasn’t sure. The truth was, the lie had effected exactly what he wanted it to. It had established a connection between them, a bond, and suddenly Steve was interested in becoming his friend. Steve was pleased in some way, flattered that he looked exactly like the brother who had died.
    Steve told Holiday about Jonah. Jonah was invited to dinner at their house.
    ——
    He had been thinking a lot about relatives lately, that was one thing.