Enjoy!
My brother was dying.
It didn’t get any simpler than that, though that hardly seemed simple at all. I couldn’t wrap my mouth around the words much less my mind around the concept. The concept that soon someone who had always been around and had always been a part of my life, a part of me, was just going to disappear. Not be there anymore. Just like that. All God had to say was poof and Jacob would be gone.
I think part of the problem was the fact that he didn’t look or even act sick. In fact, as I stood lingering in the doorway of our shared bedroom, blatantly staring in, he was sitting up in bed like normal, a book open in his hands. Every few minutes he would shift uncomfortably or blink his eyes like he was fighting to keep them open. But that was the extent of it.
He probably knew I was standing there watching him, puzzling over him for some time. But he only acknowledged me, as always, when it was fairly obvious that I wasn’t going to be the one to start the conversation. I never was, but he always gave me a chance to anyway.
“What’s up, Ike?” This without moving his eyes from the page I had noticed he lingered on for some time.
I was tempted to tell him nothing and leave the room because I couldn’t be entirely sure that there was something. I couldn’t be entirely sure he had really ever been in the hospital for almost three weeks. I couldn’t be entirely sure my parents had announced heart-brokenly to me and the rest of my siblings that Jacob was very sick...probably going to die, even. I couldn’t be entirely sure any of that had really happened.
But there would be no “not entirely sure”’s in a few weeks when he was gone for good. So I had to suck it up and seize the opportunity.
He seemed to sense my trouble, though and spoke before I could.
“You’ve been kind of a stranger, lately,” he said, now looking at me shifting from one foot to the other, not having moved from the doorway. It was a strange thing to notice, but his eyes were a really deep blue then like a cold ocean on a sunny day. I would remember them forever because Taylor had almost the same eyes. They got them from my mom. But neither my mom’s eyes or Taylor’s eyes stared into me like Jacob’s. Jacob always knew what I was going to say before I said it. I was convinced he had x-ray vision.
So what he had said was true. While Taylor and Zac hung onto Jacob like by doing so they could extend his life by giving him some of theirs, I had stayed away. I told myself it was to give them their rare time with him, but really I was just too scared. Scared that if I started talking to him, I would say something wrong and things would end with him mad at me. The thought horrified me.
“Sorry,” I said, the word coming out as a mumble. “I’ve just been...thinking a lot lately.”
He nodded.
“Why are you way over there?” he said. “Come here. I’m not contagious, you know.”
At my stricken look, he was quick to apologize.
“Sorry,” he said sincerely. “But seriously, come here.”
I took a hesitant five steps forward, bringing me to the foot of the bed and no farther. He sighed when he realized I was going to stay where I was, closing his book and laying it on the bed beside him.
“I think you ought to know Taylor’s starting to ask questions about sex,” he said.
The off-handed statement shocked me so much that my lower jaw almost unhinged it dropped so hard and so fast.
“What?” I sputtered.
“He was in here earlier trying to see if some information one of his friends told him was true or not,” he said.
“What did you say?” I asked, remembering my own numerous red-faced encounters with Jacob and sex questions. He wasn’t afraid to laugh in my face, which made it doubly worse. But he never told anyone I asked. I would have been mortified if my father had known some of the questions I was asking my older brother about private parts.
“I told him the truth. In a very delicate, roundabout way,” he said. “Which is what I want you to do when he starts coming to you asking these kinds of questions. Tell him the truth, but say it delicately. Don’t corrupt him or anything.”
“What if I don’t know?” I said. I knew there was still a lot about this subject that I didn’t know and therefore many questions I wouldn’t be able to answer. A lot of what I did know I had a feeling wasn’t exactly fact, either.
“Tell him so,” he said with a shrug. “Don’t try to make anything up. Spare him the embarrassment of being misinformed.”
I smiled. “Okay,” I agreed.
“And make sure Zac doesn’t hear any of it. He’s way too young,” he said.
I started to laugh suddenly at his stern expression. He smiled at the sound.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said. “I just can’t believe I’m having a sex talk with you when you’re...”
I trailed off, my laughter instantly fading. God, I had almost said it. If I said it, it would really happen. I couldn’t say it.
He raised his eyebrows at me to go on, though and his look was entirely too prodding.
“Dying,” I finished. Then, as if I had realized it for the first time, “You’re dying.”
I expected him to yell and kick me out. Not talk to me. He probably didn’t appreciate having what he already knew being pointed out to him.
But he stayed calm. He even looked relieved that I had said it.
“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Why?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“You probably don’t want to think about that,” I murmured, finding my shoelaces suddenly very compelling.
“Isaac, that’s all I’ve been able to think about while I’m stuck in here. That I’m dying. And what it’s going to do to everyone. What it’s going to do to you,” he said. “Just because you’re able to say it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen this instant. I’m not going to break.”
“No, you’re just going to die,” I said, still not looking at him.
He shrugged almost nonchalantly. I wanted to hit him for it.
“I can’t change that,” he said. “And neither can you, so stop feeling responsible like you do every time there’s a family crisis.”
Despite his words, his tone was extremely careful and gentle. Like he was afraid I would run out of the door screaming because his frankness was just too much.
I noted that I had my running shoes on, but didn’t move.
“Have Tay and Zac been asking a lot of questions?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “A lot.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Am I scared. Am I sad. What they can do to help. If I think I’m going to Heaven. What I’m going to do when I get there. Could I please say hello to Whiskers while I’m up there.”
That got another surprised laugh out of me.
“Did they really ask that?”
“Zac did,” he said. “You know how devastated he was when Dad accidentally ran over Whiskers with the van that day.”
“I still don’t think he’s talking to Dad,” I said, my smile growing.
“I remember Dad even offered to put on this whole elaborate memorial service for the cat,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Zac was way too attached, I think.”
I laughed. It was true. The cat had been a Christmas present for Taylor, who had been begging for a cat for years, but it was Zac who had been so taken with him. He barely let anyone else touch Whiskers.
“He cried for a week,” I said.
“He still gets teary-eyed,” Jacob laughed, rubbing at the tears of laughter that had formed in his eyes. “You know, Isaac, seventeen years I’ve had here and in my last few days, it’s shit like this that I remember. That I think back on. It’s weird.”
I nodded, I think, because he wanted me to.
“At least it makes you laugh,” I offered.
He smiled. “Yeah, it does,” he said. “I think that’s why I remember it. And all the other memories that make me laugh. And all the ones that make me smile.”
I waited curiously for him to go on.
“I know I had it good here,” he said. “Not to sound like a Hallmark card, but I have a lot of good memories. A lot of good things to look back on and make it seem like it was worthwhile, if a bit short. I have no idea why I got recalled so early, but at least I didn’t have time to give myself any major regrets about what I’d done and where I’d been.”
“But you do have regrets?” I said.
“A few,” he said. “One of which is the fact that I won’t get to see you guys become famous someday like I know you will.”
I felt myself blush slightly, feeling that he was a bit overly confident in the talent Taylor, Zac and I had as a band. A band he had always declined to join despite our begging, saying that it was “our thing” and he didn’t want to intrude. He was more interested in photography. Once he did a really nice black and white picture of me, Taylor and Zac with our instruments. It was on the wall in Taylor and Zac’s room.
“Don’t look like that,” he said. “I have every confidence in you guys and you know it.”
“We’ll be sure to include you in our first Grammy thank you speech,” I said a little sarcastically.
“That’s more like it,” he said. “And I’d like that a lot.”
“Okay,” I agreed, without really realizing at the time what I was agreeing to.
“Good,” he said.
We were silent for a moment and it seemed like the most inappropriate time, while the mood was still fairly light, that the tears started to come.
“I don’t understand this,” I said through them. “You shouldn’t have to go away now.”
He sighed, but said nothing. He had admitted earlier that he didn’t really understand it much either. He wasn’t about to contradict himself. No one seemed to be asking that either of us understand.
“This hurts,” I said accusationally.
“Tell me about it,” he said simply. Then he turned his eyes on me and as I felt them bore into me, I couldn’t help but look up into them. “You’re not going to forget me, right?”
It was surprising how earnest the question was. He looked genuinely worried that I would forget.
“No,” I said. “Of course not. Why?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s stupid. I have this strange feeling like I’m going to be mourned and then forgotten. It’s not that I want it to be dwelled upon...but, well, Mackenzie’s not going to remember me. Avery’s probably going to barely remember me. It’s a weird thing.”
“I’ll tell them about you,” I reassured him with determination. “I’ll tell them that you always wore a ratty old Santa hat on Christmas. And that your favorite book is Shane. And your favorite movie is Labyrinth. And how you always liked to tickle all of us. And how you had a big crush on Libby next door. And how you made brownies once and almost burned down the kitchen. And how you always had your camera ready to take pictures of us...”
The list of all the things I was going to tell my siblings too little to remember Jacob went on for a good ten minutes. I couldn’t seem to find an end to all the things I wanted to make sure they knew about him. If I wasn’t going to forget, I wasn’t going to allow them to either.
When my voice finally trailed off, I looked down at my hands, embarrassed that I had gone on for such a long time.
But he only said, “Thanks, Isaac.”
I shrugged.
“Speaking of Monopoly,” he said, meaning that I had mentioned how he always used to have to be with shoe when he played with me, Taylor, and Zac, “how ‘bout a quick round. Not that there’s such a thing as a quick round of Monopoly.”
“Sure,” I said, already moving to the closet where the game was kept. “Do you want me to get Taylor and Zac?”
“Nah,” he said. “Let this just be us.”
I laid the board down between us on the bed and proceeded to set things up.
“Do you want to be the shoe?” he asked when it came time to pick gamepieces.
“Nope,” I said, getting out the racecar instead. “The shoe is always yours,” I explained.
And I knew it always would be.