“Is this an interview? Who sent you?”
“Come on,” said Steven. “What's the deal?”
He was irritated by his brother's rudeness, his assumption of Steven's disloyalty, especially since it was justified. Jack always made him choose sides.
Jack shrugged. “I don't want breakfast, that's the deal.” He sipped his coffee listlessly. “So, what's up with you?”
“I'm leaving Seattle. Left it,” Steven said.
“Yeah? How come?”
Steven shook his head. “It's just finished,” he said, “what I wanted to do there.”
“D'jou save the trees?” Jack's tone was nearly mocking.
Steven shook his head again. “No,” he said. “The trees came down.” He looked at his brother, waiting for sarcasm.
“Too bad.” Jack's eyes were opaque.
“So I'm coming back East. I'm thinking of law school.”
“Law school,” Jack said.
“Yeah,” Steven said. “I don't know if they'll buy it.” “What if they don't?”
“I'll do it anyway, on my own. Student loans.”
Jack raised his eyebrows again. “Long-term loans,” he said. “Big-time debt. Big-time.” He shook his head. “Might as well do drugs.” He grinned: the idea seemed to cheer him.
Steven drank from his mug, looking at him. “Oh?”
Jack shrugged and glanced around the restaurant. He drummed a syncopated rhythm on the table with his dirty fingers. At the next table the girls hummed and buzzed like silvery bees.
“So,” Steven said, “what are you doing?”
Jack looked at him, his eyes hooded. “Me! Nothing. What do you mean?”
“How're you paying the rent? How're you eating?”
Jack shook his head and rubbed his index finger on the tabletop, as though erasing something. “This and that,” he said. “Got some things cooking.”
“Like what?” Steven asked.
“My friend Mario is starting a record company.” Jack looked at Steven. “It's gonna be big.”
“What are you doing in it?”
“Different things,” Jack said. “Producer, maybe. There are a lot of options. Plus the band's starting to cook.” He leaned against the red plastic of the seat. His Adam's apple protruded: his neck was very thin.
Steven stared at him, Jack looked back, then away.
“So, you coming up to Maine?”
“Nah, don't think so,” Jack said. “The band,” he explained. He scratched suddenly, hard and fast, at the side of his neck. The skin reddened under the assault. The grimy cuff of his shirt fell back from his wrist; the inside of the cuff was spotted with dark blood.
Behind them the dark-haired girl spoke steadily and rapidly. Her voice rose and fell, waves of words.
“Jack,” Steven said, “are you okay?”
Jack raised his eyebrows. “What,” he said. “I'm okay. I'm okay. Might get a job in a video store,” he added. “Need the cash.”
Jack and Steven had sat in silence then, looking at each other, each waiting for the other to speak.
Steven, two years older, had always felt responsible for his brother. He couldn't remember a time when Jack hadn't been beside him, struggling to keep up, breathless, intrepid, making trouble. Once, when they were eight or nine, Steven had found Jack in their bedroom, crouched over the scrap basket in the corner.
“Look.” Jack had a book of matches. He was lighting them and dropping them one by one into crumpled paper in the bottom of the scrap basket. The fire—oddly pallid in the daylight—had begun to creep along the edges of the paper, turning them brown, then black.
“Put it out,” Steven said. Alarm pulsed through him.
“It's metal,” Jack said, “it won't burn.”
Steven reached for the scrap basket. The flames were spreading briskly, he wasn't sure he could blow it out. Jack turned his back and shoulder against his brother, holding on to the basket, and they wrestled. Steven, heavier, stronger, weighted by the responsibility, was furious, grappling with his little brother.
“You stupid damn jerk,” he whispered. “If you don't give me that, I'm telling.”
It was the ultimate threat, the worst thing you could do. Loyalty was at the core of everything; telling their parents anything was forbidden. But then—often—Steven had wanted to tell on Jack. Either tell on him or kill him. Jack always went too far. His exploits were too perilous, the risks always too great. He tortured Steven, making him choose.
His little brother had always been Steven's responsibility. The time Jack fell out of the tree in Central Park: Steven had told him he was going too high. When he brought Jack back to the apartment, his arm dangling, Steven had felt as though he himself would be beaten, should be beaten, for failing to protect his brother, keep him safe. Come down! he had yelled at Jack, but Jack ignored him, clambering quickly from branch to branch. Steven had seen him fall, he had been right there. He heard the awful sound of body meeting earth. Now you've done it, he'd thought, now it's happened.
Steven looked out the window of the bus. He had not decided what to tell his mother about his younger brother. He didn't know, himself, whether the blaze was important, dangerous, whether it would extinguish itself, or whether they needed outside help: the fire department, men in boots, giant hoses. The siren of alarm.
“I think I'll walk down to the cove,” Edward announced.
They had finished lunch and were watching the afternoon light slant across the meadow. Edward stood, though he could not completely straighten. He was bent slightly at the hip, the joint stalled.
“Are you sure?” Julia asked. The path to the cove was uneven, the shoreline studded with sinkholes. Her father seemed both fragile and reckless.
“Yes.” Edward took a step toward the edge of the porch, his legs apart for balance, his arms wide like outriggers.
“I'll come with you.” Julia took his arm.
Edward shook off her hand. “I don't need help,” he said. “This isn't Mount Everest.” Did he look so fragile?
“Maybe I'll come, too,” Katharine said.
“Mother, I don't think this is a good idea for you,” Julia said.
“Maybe not, but it'll be fun,” Katharine said cheerily.
Julia turned: her mother was up, too, smiling, leaning on her cane.
“I wish you wouldn't, either of you,” Julia said, anxious.
Edward tottered toward the steps without answering.
“It's slippery and uneven, Daddy,” Julia said. “I can't help both of you at once.”
“I don't need help,” Edward repeated. He turned sideways to go down the steps, and at the bottom he started jerkily down the slope.
“I haven't been in a meadow for years,” Katharine said happily. She started forward, her hip rising and twisting.
“I really don't want you both to go down,” Julia said helplessly.
As she spoke she felt the words dissolve into