“What?”
It’s only then, when Lion is standing stock-still, staring at my mother, that I realize it’s more than him bursting into my room and the rapid talking and the chewed skin around his thumbs. He’s always up before me now, and he always has a million plans to execute before I’ve even finished my coffee. Yesterday, he was gone so long during the day that I started to worry, and he stayed up late once he was back home. The light was blazing in the space under his door when I got up to pee at four a.m.
Mom’s eyes are apologetic as she looks at Lionel. “He’s going to try to make it to the game if he can, sweetie. But we should probably head out now if we want to get there for the first pitch.”
“Why didn’t he call me?” Lionel sounds way too upset about this. He’s not one to let a minor snag in a plan get under his skin, and up until this year—the past couple of weeks, even—I’ve never known him to be into baseball like this.
“He barely had time to talk,” Mom says slowly. She can tell something is off, too. “We’ll make it up to you, Lionel. We’ll pick another day that we can all go, no excuses.”
“This is bullshit,” he mutters and then, without warning, he slams his open palm against the frame of the bathroom door. The smack is loud and angry and scary—something I never expected to see from Lion.
“Sweetie, I’m sorry.” Mom’s voice is measured but her eyes are wide with worry. “Why don’t you take a minute and meet us downstairs when you’re ready, okay?”
“No! This is fucking bullshit! We’re all supposed to be together and this fucking ruins everything.” His voice ricochets off the walls, at the loudest volume I think anyone has ever spoken in our house.
Mom looks at me then, and I realize by the unfamiliar expression on her face that she has no idea what to do. We are not a shouting family and we aren’t a family that really loses control in any way. Problems are discussed rationally, and usually over food. Disagreements are settled by the end of the night. But we get along well, so those times are rare. And this, from Lionel, is unheard of.
He starts pacing then, back and forth from the door of the bathroom to the door of his room. His face is turning redder by the minute as he keeps pushing his hair back and muttering incomplete sentences. He’s getting louder, too, and on the other side of him, standing at the top of the stairs to the first floor, Mom watches wordlessly.
“Lionel, I’m going to call your father, okay?” she says after it’s clear he isn’t going to stop anytime soon.
He doesn’t hear her, or if he does, he doesn’t acknowledge it. Two, three, four more paces and he stalks into his bedroom, slamming the door so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t rock off the hinges.
Mom takes in a breath and doesn’t look away from his door as she says, “Stay right here, baby. I’m going to get my phone.”
I nod, my eyes glued to the door, too. He’s still shouting, something about disrespect and honoring commitments, and I can hear other unidentifiable noises in the background as he moves around. I almost want it to be drugs, because my brother isn’t just acting out of the norm for our family—he’s acting like a completely different person.
My mother doesn’t make it halfway down the stairs before the first crash comes. I shut my eyes, and my shoulders go up to my ears. It sounds like the roof has caved in on this part of the house.
“Lion!” I cry out, and Mom leaps back up the stairs in an instant. I hold my breath as she turns the knob, afraid he’s locked us out, but the door opens at the exact moment an identical crash shakes the house.
She goes in first and I stand in the doorway, mouth open wide at the state of Lion’s room. He hasn’t been in here even thirty seconds, and the place is a complete wreck. He’s swept everything off his desk and ripped his sheets from the mattress and torn posters from the wall. But the loud noises were his books. They’re piled in massive heaps, crushed under the heavy bookcases, which he pushed away from the wall until they crashed to the floor.
“Everything is ruined,” I can hear him saying.
Hear, because I can’t look at him. Not now. I’m too afraid to look up and see that the person acting so erratically is actually my brother.
“Ruined!”
I don’t see him make the fist but I catch him pulling it out of the wall. And then I see him do it again. And again. And I see his hand come back the last time with bloody knuckles.
He’s breathing heavily, his chest heaving as if he’s just run a marathon. He looks at my mother, who is frozen in shock, and my stomach sinks. I wonder if he’ll turn his wrath on her next.
But he just whips his head back and forth as he says, “Why did he have to ruin everything? This is tradition and we’re all supposed to be there and he ruined it. He fucking ruined it, Nadine.”
“Oh, honey. He’s so sorry, okay? So am I.” She walks to him slowly and I stand on guard in case he lunges at the last minute and I have to step in. Step in to defend my mother from my brother. I keep thinking, hoping, that I’ll wake up in my tower, drenched in sweat, but every time I blink, my eyes keep coming back to the incomprehensible scene in front of me.
Lionel doesn’t do anything. He just stands still with his chest heaving and his injured hand curled at his side. When she reaches him she gathers him up quickly in her arms, perhaps too afraid of what will happen if she doesn’t. She guides Lion over to the bare mattress and eases him down to a sitting position and holds him. She rocks him back and forth as he cries, his voice and tears muffled beneath her arms.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” she murmurs to him, the same voice she used when I had bad dreams as a kid. “It’s going to be okay.” She looks over her shoulder then, not quite making eye contact as she says to me, her voice brisk and businesslike, “Suzette, go get your phone and call Saul. Keep calling back until he answers. Tell him we need him here. Now.”
Tears start streaming down my face as soon as Saul answers, and I’m crying so hard he can barely understand me. Even when I manage to hiccup out an explanation, it doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense. But Saul understands enough to know he is needed. He says he’s leaving to come home right now.