String Boys, page 36
But not now.
Death was chasing Matty down on a freight train. His hair was gone from chemo, he could barely walk himself to the bathroom, and about the only happiness he had was talking Chloe into letting him a little bit closer, and holding X.
Matty had all the regrets he needed right now. Kelly didn’t want to make anybody unhappier by giving him extra.
“Sure.” Kelly gave him the barf rag automatically and let Matty take him upright, because even though X had trouble with soggy muscles, he did love to look at people’s faces.
“Hey, guy. Giving your uncle Kelly trouble? That’s no good. You gotta suck up to him now, so when you get to the part where you can run around, he thinks you’re cute enough to chase.”
Damn. Matty was charming when he wanted to be. “Don’t listen to him, X-man. You guys are always cute enough to chase, right, Chloe?”
Kelly made himself comfy at the foot of the bed, partly because Matty couldn’t always stay awake and Kelly needed to be there for the baby, but partly, he had to admit, because his brother was actually being… his brother. Kelly had missed him.
So fucking bad.
“Chloe said you were crying,” he said softly, and Matty grimaced.
He held out the tablet, and Chloe took it and hit rewind on Seth’s video again. Kelly’s stomach cramped with grief.
“Turn it down a little, angel. Okay?”
Chloe sighed and took it into the corner of the room, where she could hear it alone—she thought. Every note that hit Kelly’s ear sounded like Kelly’s desertion.
“It’s gorgeous,” Matty said into the sudden silence. “He must really love you.”
Kelly wanted to shrug and say, “He’ll get over it,” like he didn’t care, because he didn’t want his brother to see him bleed.
But he’d been bleeding for five months. God, maybe a sober Matty could see what kind of damage he’d done and give a shit.
“He’ll get over it,” he said, but his voice broke and his throat ached. He looked his brother in the eyes and showed him the extent of his grief.
Matty looked away. “No,” he admitted, turning his gaze to Xavier. “I… I don’t think he’ll ever get over you.”
Kelly grunted. “What do you want me to say to that?”
And Matty lifted his chin and caught Kelly’s eyes again. “I want you to say you’ll call him. You’ll bring him back. Mom said he was just waiting for you to say so.”
“I’m not going to say so while you’re still here!” Kelly wondered if he was insane, or if his brother was just that stupid. In the front room, they could both hear the door open. “That must be Agnes,” Kelly said into the silence. “She was practicing today, but sometimes she can catch the earlier bus.”
Lily was at class tonight, and Lulu was working at a nearby restaurant. Tomorrow they’d switch, except Lily would be working retail.
“Chloe,” Matty said, keeping his voice soft. “Baby, why don’t you go show Seth to your Aunt Agnes.”
Chloe stood and smiled, then ran into the other room with glee. From the living room they both heard Agnes, on a whoosh of breath, like she was picking Chloe up. “Heya, Chloe-monster. How’s things?”
“Seth made the man cry!”
“Yikes! Here—let’s start dinner so we don’t have to listen to that go down!”
Matty chuckled at the ensuing clatter from the kitchen and then cleared his throat. “Why won’t you call him?”
“How many times have you threatened him?” Kelly asked evenly. “Called him a psycho. Told me he was a murderer and you were going to call the cops? Threatened to get your daughter taken away? Just offhand. General. Ballpark. C’mon, Matty, tell me. Because he’s been offering to turn himself in to the police for years, just so it’s not hanging over the family’s head. Think about that. He’s got… he’s got this gift and the world at his feet, and he’s offering to go to jail so we’re okay. So ask the question again!” Maybe his words hadn’t come out so evenly. Maybe his voice was rising and some of the anger he’d been trying to let go of was threatening to cave in his chest.
Maybe he was wondering if he was strong enough to smother his useless fucking brother with a pillow and say, “Hey, he just fucking up and died!”
Matty wasn’t looking away from him, though. Wasn’t lowering his head in shame. Wasn’t glowering defiantly.
He was crying.
But he was looking Kelly in the eyes. “Remember when we were kids?” he rasped. “Seth would come over and play whatever we wanted. I’d want to play Hot Wheels, and he’d say something like Monopoly, and we’d end up playing Hot Wheels. And he’d just be so happy.”
“I hate you so much right now.” Kelly could hardly get the words out.
“And he’d just… I don’t know… you’d be talking and think he wasn’t listening, and then he’d just turn around and say something—something so important. Like I’d be complaining about grades or a teacher or something, and he’d say, ‘Mr. Bradshaw gave three kids Pop-Tarts this morning. Did you see that?’ And suddenly my B didn’t matter, because this teacher was a person and Seth saw it.”
Kelly was dying. Kelly wished he was dead. “Matty—”
“And he was… he was just such a good friend.” Matty wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Castor Durant—he was so good at the blackmail. Take a hit, church boy, or I’ll hurt your brother and his friend. Take another, or I’ll tell your girlfriend’s father you took the first. It just went on and on and on….”
“You outed us to him,” Kelly snarled. “You made our lives hell—”
“Do you think Castor Durant hadn’t been threatening you all year?” Matty asked, his voice tangling. “And every day, I was getting deeper and deeper. And one day, I was high, and it just slipped out—you and Seth. I… I was hurt, you see? Because I was a dumb kid, and I was high half the time, and I thought you and him meant I lost my brother and my friend. And… and that was it. I couldn’t protect you. I couldn’t protect Isela—their fathers were friends, you see? And then… that night when you were attacked, I was so mad at you. You put me in that position. It’s all I could think. You made me have to give you up to Castor. If you and Seth hadn’t… hadn’t been—”
“In love?” Kelly asked bitterly.
Matty squeezed his eyes shut. “Here, now? With no drugs in my body—I regret it. It… it was so innocent, you two. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it that way then.”
Kelly pulled in a breath, and another, not sure if there was enough oxygen in the world. But his brother wasn’t finished with him. Not yet.
“And then you were attacked. And… and I was part of it. I hated so much—and part of it was hating you because I’d been in hell for months. Every time I went to Isela’s church, Castor was there, and he was giving me drugs, and he was threatening my family, threatening Isela. And I couldn’t tell anybody, and I was so scared. And you… you went through fifteen minutes of hell and the world ground to a halt.”
“Fifteen minutes? Is that all you think it was?” Like it was yesterday. Foul hands, worse smells, violating his skin, his senses, his body—
“No.” Matty was staring into the void, lines of sorrow etched so deeply in his face they might have gone straight to the bone. “No. That’s one of the things you know when you’re looking at the end of things. You know how much hell other people went through, when you were making your own.”
“Matty, I gotta go. I can’t—”
“Call him,” Matty whispered, relentless. “Blame it on me if you want. Get him here. Tell him you’re sorry. Take my daughter, my son….” He looked at Xavier, his father’s namesake, with a look of tenderness that Kelly would have said he wasn’t capable of. “Isela was a victim too, Kelly. I was supposed to take her away from Castor, from the church, from all those things that hurt her. I got sucked into it just like she did. She never had a chance. Take my son and daughter and raise them. Be happy with our—” Finally his voice broke. “—with our friend. Our dreamy, stupid friend, who was always so much smarter than either of us but who loved us anyway.”
Kelly had to breathe. He had spots in front of his eyes, and he had to… he had to….
With a sob he sank to his knees by his brother’s bed, face pressed against the faded flowered comforter, Matty’s hand in his hair.
“I’m so sorry, little brother. So sorry. Be happy. Please? For me?”
But Kelly couldn’t answer. He couldn’t think. He had his brother back, but he was dying, and Kelly was lost in the pain of being reborn.
AGNES CAME in not long after that and took Xavier into the other room, quietly, probably expecting not to be noticed. Kelly hadn’t moved, and Matty’s hand hadn’t moved in his hair either. Matty finally broke the silence.
“Man, this was sweet and all, but I need to pee, and believe me, that’s super exciting for both of us.”
Kelly stood and stretched and wiped his face on his shoulder. His brother’s organs were shutting down—his kidneys were at 50 percent. “You had to be fucking dying?” he asked, shifting his brother’s swollen legs and ankles over the side of the bed.
“Yeah. I know. What an asshole.”
“I’m saying.” It took an effort—Kelly had to help Matty to his mother’s toilet and back, even had to help wash his hands. They got him back in bed, and Matty sighed.
“So. You gonna call him?”
Kelly sighed. “I left him in the hospital, Matty. He could barely turn his head. Talk about dick moves.”
“Sorry. My timing was pretty shitty. I know that now.”
There was something facetious in his voice, something of the brother Kelly had loved, that made Kelly smile. “Now you know that? You couldn’t have figured that out when Seth was kissing me in the woods?”
Matty reached across the bed and grabbed his hand. “Call him.”
“He’s still in danger from the police. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but every year, Carlton Durant puts that police sketch all over the local news, makes Castor a celebrity cold case and all this shit. I can’t call him. Even if….” He trailed off. There was no if. There never had been.
Matty nodded, looking troubled. “Yeah.” He sighed. “Yeah.” He leaned his head back against the bed. “Do you think he did it?”
“I don’t care,” Kelly said, adamant. He’d had eight years to think about this. “I used to think that made me a bad person, but now I don’t care about that either. Did you see him before he left for Bridgford?”
“No,” Matty said, his expression dark and faraway. “Or if I did, I was too high to care.”
“I did. He’d been beat the fuck up. He had choke marks around his throat, same as me. His eye was brick red, his face swollen. Whatever happened that night, it didn’t come easy. He didn’t walk up to Castor Durant and shoot him in the back. I mean… I love him. I love him more than anyone on the planet, but I helped him get his passport. I know he still can’t plan far enough to plan a murder. If he did it, it was self-defense. If he didn’t, someone did the world a favor.” Kelly hadn’t forgotten his brother’s broken confession of being dragged into addiction, into pain. “I’m just sorry it didn’t happen sooner.”
Matty let out a fractured laugh. “Me too. Hey, could you lend me your laptop? It’s connected to the printer, right?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“And lend me Agnes too.”
Kelly couldn’t help the hurt. “I finally don’t hate you, and you’re kicking me out of the room?”
To his surprise, Matty’s eyes darkened with more pain. “You don’t know what that means,” he rasped. “That you don’t hate me right now. This is me, paying you back. Trust me, little brother. I’ve got some shit to sort.”
Kelly stood, and found himself leaning over the bed to kiss Matty on the forehead. “Sleep soon,” he murmured, knowing Matty was in constant pain, every moment of every day.
“I’ll be sleeping forever soon enough,” he said. “Sleep is overrated.”
Well, he hadn’t been missing Seth like Kelly had. Sleep was Kelly’s only refuge these days.
“In that case, don’t sleep yet,” Kelly told him. “Let me not hate you for a week. That would be fucking awesome.”
Matty smiled, and some peace stole across his battered features. “I won’t die until you send for him. That’s the deal, Kelly. I gotta make that shit right.”
“I’ll think about it,” Kelly said. In his heart he knew—he had to. God. Seth deserved to not hate Matty too.
“Good. Now send Agnes in, okay?”
Kelly left, taking over dinner and childcare. Linda came up, Craig at her heels, both of them with groceries, which meant fresh salad for dinner and ice cream for dessert, and Kelly felt a measure of contentment steal into his soul.
Craig put away groceries while Kelly’s mom went into the front room and started talking to Chloe and playing with Xavier. Kelly looked at Craig, his chest swelling with the memory of the day Seth had left.
Kelly had been downstairs, sitting on Craig’s worn and broken denim couch, not even pretending not to cry. Seth’s father had walked in, surprising him. So soon? Seth was gone so soon? Kelly scrambled off the couch, wiping his face with his arm.
“Sorry. Sorry. Habit. You probably don’t even want to see me anymore. Just, you know, this was my safe place for so long and—”
“Kelly—Kelly, wait.” Craig closed the door behind him and held out his arms. “Kelly, what makes you think that’s how love works?”
They’d cried together.
And now, seeing Seth’s father looking tired, a little sad, Kelly felt like… what? Like it was time? His brother said it was time, so it just—
Who was he kidding.
“Is he coming back for the holidays?” Kelly asked, voice squeaking on the first two words.
“Christmas—the week before,” Craig said, giving him an overcasual look. “Why?”
Kelly took a deep breath. “How’s… how’s he doing?”
“Shitty.”
Kelly let out a bark of laughter. “He sounds okay when he calls.” Of course, Kelly fled the room—hell, fled the apartment—when that happened.
“Yeah. He forgets to eat. Amara texted me last month and asked if there was some sort of religious vow he’d taken to wear crappy T-shirts. I bought him a fuckton of clothes on Amazon and had them delivered. She says he got them, but she was the one who put them in his drawers.”
Kelly let out a little moan. “I… he was supposed to do okay,” he said, his throat raw.
“Well, she came home this week, and she said she’s been texting him daily to remind him to eat. They’ve got some other roommate there periodically. She thinks he’s got a crush on Seth, but she told him to sleep on the couch as often as he could just to make sure Seth did human things. He’s not… not here on Earth, Kelly. His music is gorgeous—I know you’ve heard it. But that’s the only part of him that’s working.”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. “He… it’s been six months. He was supposed to do okay.”
“Well, yeah. But you guys are supposed to be together.”
Kelly shook his head. “My brother’s….” And he couldn’t say it. Matty had maybe a week, maybe a month. But Kelly couldn’t say the word now. Not after how Matty was today, being human, being sorry.
Being real.
“Yeah. Do you really want to wait until then?” Craig’s smile—his face was lined, maybe a little more than a man’s should be at forty-five, and his hair was silvering. But his smile was Seth’s. There was so much hope, so much gratitude in that smile, for the things he had, the things that had not yet been taken away.
Kelly was suddenly exhausted. “I….” Well, he needed to work, but Matty had his computer. Goddammit.
“Your mom’s calling the hospice nurse,” Craig said softly. “We decided on the way home. It’s time to get help with him. You can sleep downstairs tonight. I think she wants to be here.”
Kelly nodded, suddenly just fucking done. “Can I use your computer?” At least to check email. His tablet had stuff in the cloud, but Craig’s laptop didn’t have Kelly’s art programs.
“Yeah. Sure. Who’s got your computer?”
At that moment the shared printer started spitting stuff out in the home office corner of the tiny living room. Agnes hurried out and grabbed a bubble mailer and the pages, turned them away, and folded them like she was resisting the impulse to look.
“You can have your tablet back in a minute, Kelly,” she said over her shoulder as she hurried back into the sickroom.
“Sure.” Kelly looked at Craig and nodded. It was seven o’clock, and he needed some peace and some quiet and a chance to get his heart clear. And he needed to get his computer back from Matty. And he needed a change of clothes for tomorrow, and a drawing pad, and his phone.
And he needed Seth.
He’d always needed Seth.
It had been madness to try to live his life without him.
He was sitting on Craig’s couch, the television muted in front of him, when he finally texted.
He’s got maybe a week. Please, Seth, for Matty. Please come home.
It took Seth less than a minute to reply.
Not for Matty. For you, Kelly. All you had to do was ask.
Good.
The TV droned on, performing a marionette dance for all Kelly knew. He had his tablet back—what he should be doing was work. The firm that had hired him and agreed to let him work from home was generous, but he still had deadlines.
Only he couldn’t think. Not now. Couldn’t concentrate, not on his tablet, not on TV.
And his brain was a fucking hamster wheel, like his life had been, the whole of it, running as fast as he could to be with the boy he loved and always ending up right back here, in the same exact place.
In desperation, he grabbed a pad of paper from Craig’s office and a pencil, and then pulled up Seth’s YouTube channel and set it to play.
And then he pretended that they were kids again, and Seth was standing behind the couch, practicing with that weird intensity that he brought to his music, brought to his lovemaking, and to nothing else in the world.
