Catching Up

My phone buzzes in my pocket and pulling it out I see it’s Jeff. I hesitate for a one, two, three, seconds before silencing it and putting it back in my pocket.

“Do you need to get that?” Chad says.

“Nah, it’s my brother. I’ll call him back later.”

Chad takes a giant bite of his burger, cheese squishing out the sides of the bun and painting his cheeks orange and ketchup red.

“Dude.”

“What.”

“You’re such a mess.” I say, laughing.

“Well, life’s short. Eat and enjoy.” He says wiping his mouth with a napkin.

I think about Jeff and wonder if he is eating lunch. Is he sitting in his kitchenette in Texas eating alone or does he have Chloe this weekend. Maybe they’re having fun at the park and that’s why he called.

I reach for my pocket to text him back but the waitress arrives to bring us the check.

She’s cute except for the tattoos all over her neck. I offer her my best single smile and reach for the check. You never know.

Chad’s eyes haven’t left the bank of TVs over the bar.

“I really want to catch up with my brother soon,” I say, “before summer is over.”

Chad raises an eyebrow and then gulps his Coke.

“Well then call him back.”

“Nah, I’ll do it later.”

“Ok.” He shrugs. “So are you watching the match tonight? It’s Argentina and Italy. I’m gonna go to the End Zone with the bros if you wanna join. Happy hour is until 7 there.”

===

Back at work, I catch Becky putting on lip gloss as I walk in the door.

Is that for me?

“Hi Mike.” She quickly puts her mirror down. “You got a call from your mom.”

I hustle back to my desk to call her, my gut clenching. I should have answered when Jeff called.

“Hi sweetie.” She says cheerfully.

“What’s up Mom? Everything ok?”

“Yeh, all good here. I just got off the phone with Jeff so I thought I’d call you too. “

“Hmfh. Ok.”

I reach for the mouse and my monitor flickers to life. I glance at the architectural drawings fanned across my drafting table.

“Maybe you can call your brother and check in. I’m sure he’d love to hear from you. He has a cold. Super sore throat, turned into a bad cough. He’s not sleeping well.”

“Probably Covid.”

A long pause ensued. Mom and Dad and Jeff don’t like to talk about Covid, nor will they test for it, or acknowledge it’s a thing.

“Your dad is going to the dermatologist today.”

So that’s it. Fine.

“Ok mom, I gotta get back to work.”

Her voice becomes artificially bright. “Love you. Thanks for calling son.”

I mumbled something, good bye, love you, whatever and hang up.

Jeff. I need to call him. Since his divorce, he’s been a mess. He lost his job, got another one and is depressed, according to Mom.

When he sends photos of his five-year old, curly-haired Chloe, I always “Like” them in our family chat but we never actually talk.

I’ll call him soon.

==

Saturday morning I am up early. I have a lot to do before getting ready to take Abigail out tonight. It’s our fourth date so I’m hoping for sex.

I don my sneakers, pop in my ear buds and run down the driveway towards the shaded sidewalk of the street. I’m lucky to have this place. Good neighborhood, in the city.

Thump thump thump my sneakers hit the ground reverberating through my earpods. I breathe in and out of my nose. Sweat is already forming on my upper lip. Alexa told me it’s a balmy 82 before I left.

The shadows of the ancient oaks that line the road cast uncertainty onto the uneven sidewalk so I focus downward. I run through a litany of to do’s: Make dinner reservations. Does the mower have gas? Where are my condoms? It’s laundry day. Call Jeff.

I skip forward a song. The Strokes. I turn up the volume. The familiar buzz of endorphins hits me and I pick up the pace. My regular route is 3 miles but I’ll do the long route today. The sun is blaring down on my face now as I enter the park. Moms and dads with their kids dot the place. I see a child shriek with joy whizzing down the slide, another sitting in the grass picking dandelions. The moms and dads are drinking coffee and talking.

Jeff and I grew up best friends. We lived at the end of a dirt road without many neighbors and no other kids our age, but we had each other. We built forts, cranked play-doh out of hand-held grinders to make spaghetti or hair for Mr. Potato Head. We dammed up the creek behind our house, standing barefoot in the cold water on orangish and light brown pebbles of the creek bed, the lush moss and tiny white-flowered plants flanking the banks. We built igloos in the winter, stuffed into our snow suits, sled down the hill of our driveway, and watched our dog Pepper give birth to six puppies that we loved and snuggled with in our twin beds.

Since Jeff was younger than me, I bossed him around a bit and when he started to have problems in school, I felt guilty. I stopped bossing him around.

Mom said he had a learning disability. Dad helped him with his homework. He went to a counselor once a week.

In Junior High, we played soccer; we had a lot of the same friends.

Things seemed fine until high school.

Honnnnnnk! I stop short, a few inches from a car bumper in the crosswalk. “Jesus!” I say, pulling my earbuds out, and then looking around guiltily.

“Sorry!” I call to the departing Subaru. Stepping back onto the curb, I bend over, breathing heavily, resting my hands on my thighs. Keeping my eyes on the digital sign, I wait for the OK to cross.

====

A month later Abigail and I had settled into a routine. We saw each other after work a few nights a week and spent the weekends together, mostly at my house because she has a roommate.

“So tell me about your brother,” she asked one night over spaghetti.

“Oh, not much to tell. Jeff is my little brother. He’s divorced. He has a daughter so I’m an uncle.” I grinned at her.

“What does he do?”

“For a living?”

“Yeh.”

“Oh, well I’m not sure right now. He lost his job back in the spring. He was in IT.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“Yeah well, I haven’t talked to him lately. My mom talks to him every day.”

She stopped mid-swirl – the spaghetti hanging off her fork.

“What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you talk to him?”

“I do, I just haven’t.”

“Hmph.” She looked at her spaghetti thoughtfully and shifted her eyes back to me, before saying almost to herself, “That’s interesting.”

“Not really.” I replied. Shifting in my kitchen chair, I said, “Actually I’m planning on calling him tomorrow. I’ve been meaning to do that all summer. I just get busy.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, what do you wanna watch tonight?” I got up and turned my back on her while I grabbed the bottle of wine for a refill.

Abigail has long brown hair, shiny and soft. It brushes against the sides of my face when she’s on top when we make love. I just lied to her. Kinda of. I will call Jeff tomorrow. I have been meaning to. I’ll do it tomorrow.

===

Another month goes by and it’s August. Summer is almost over.

It’s morning and I’m sitting outside the emergency vet clinic where I just dropped off Abigail and Nancy, her sick cat. I reach for my phone and pause.

What is wrong with me? I’m not usually a procrastinator. Jeff is like a lead blanket on my being.

I dial Jeff, remembering as it rings that he’s an hour behind me. Oops.

“Hello.” He sounds sleepy.

Hey, it’s me. Is it too early?

“No, no, I’m glad you called. Are Mom and Dad ok?”

Yeh.

Oh, that’s good.

So what’s up?

I take a deep breath remembering Abigail’s words last night. We were up almost all night with Nancy who was listless with shallow breathing.

In the near darkness of her bedroom she said, “So what happened with your brother?”

Maybe it was the cat. Maybe it was exhaustion. Either way, I started talking.

“When we got to high school, I tried out for the football team and made it. That was a surprise but suddenly I was in the popular crowd. I had a cheerleader girlfriend, started going to parties. I was that guy.” I smirked in the darkness, turning on my side to look Abigail full in the face, the cat on the bed between us.

“Go on.” she said.

“Well it was good time in my life. But not for Jeff. His grades sucked. My parents got him a tutor. He never even had a girlfriend. He spent most of his time playing Dungeons and Dragons with his friends. He just..”

“What?”

“I was at a party once with Dana. That was my girlfriend. And I brought Jeff because Mom made me. I could tell he was nervous. I could see him in the rearview mirror, fixing his hair in the backseat. I wasn’t really thinking about anything except how to get beer for the party. I had a Monte Carlo SS. Bad ass.” I chuckled.

Abigail softly stroked Nancy’s fur.

“When we got there, I kinda forgot about him.”

I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling.

“It wasn’t a huge deal. Really. But it haunts me still I guess.”

“What happened?” Abigail prompted.

“Well I guess some guys from another high school were picking on him out by the pool in the backyard. I don’t know why. He had a knack for irritating people. He was probably skulking around being weird. I don’t know. Anyway, by the time I got out there, they’d pushed him into the pool. Fully clothed. Everyone was dying laughing.”

“I’ll never forget it – I still can see it. He was swimming to the edge and he looked up at me, his eyes.. and I just turned around and walked back in the house.”

“Oh my God. You did not.”

“I was a kid.”

“Then what?”

“I met him at the car, drove him home. I was pissed. I gave him the silent treatment all the way home.”

“What about your girlfriend?”

“Dana? She stayed at the party.”

“What did your parents say?”

“Nothing. They were asleep. We never talked about it again.I graduated that spring, went off to school. When I came home, he’d moved to Texas with this girl. Some goth chick he met online. What a mistake. He never went to college. He’s stuck there in Texas now with his daughter.”

“Wow.”

Abigail got out of bed carefully so as not to disturb Nancy and walked around to my side. She perched on the edge of the mattress next to me in the dark and stroked my forehead and ran her fingers through my hair like I was a child.

“Do you think your brother is still mad at you?”

“I don’t know.”

Her eyes looked deep into mine.

“Probably not.” I admitted.

“Do you think it’s time to let go of your guilt?”

“Probably.”

“So do it. Call him tomorrow.”

“Ok.”

She leaned down and kissed my forehead.

“Why are you so wise, Woman?”

I grabbed her boob playfully. She wriggled and batted my hand away.

“We women are just wise, born that way.” She raised an eyebrow and walked back to her side of the bed and slipped into the sheets, gently pulling the coverlet up and laying her hand alongside Nancy’s back.

“Love you.”

“Love you too.”

===

“You still there?” Jeff says across the long-distance line.

“Yeh. Sorry I was just thinking about something. Spaced out. I’ve been up all night with Nancy.”

“Nancy?”

I laugh and open the door eyeing the coffee shop across the street. “Yeh, Nancy is Abigail’s cat.”

I slam the door shut and lock it. The sun is blazing down and I forgot my sunglasses but I don’t care.

“Abigail is my girlfriend. You’d like her.”

“Really? The big man is settling down.”

“Ha – yeh, maybe. You’ll see why when you meet her. Of course she’s not very happy today with Nancy being sick.”

Jeff laughs and coughs and clears his throat.

I picture him sitting up in bed, his skinny chest, his disheveled hair. My little brother, just older.

I cross the street to the café.

“Well catch me up,” he says.

And I do.

THE END