Lionel has been quiet lately. Too quiet.
He hasn’t talked much the past few weeks—to anyone, really. Not since his doctor appointments started. We used to hang out after dinner sometimes, even if we were just doing our homework in the tree house. But now he disappears immediately after we finish washing the dishes, straight up to his room with the door closed.
Tonight, I follow him. He doesn’t invite me into his room but he doesn’t close the door, either, so I step in, wordlessly. He sits on the edge of his bed, next to his newest issue of the New Yorker, but he doesn’t look at it or me as he speaks.
“What’s up?”
“I… I don’t know. I wanted to make sure you’re okay, I guess.”
“That I’m okay?” He shrugs. “I’m fine.”
I close his door and sit on the floor in front of him, leaning against his bookcase of nonfiction. “No, you’re not. You can… You know you can still talk to me?”
He looks at me with blank eyes. Nods as he fingers the edge of the magazine cover. “I know. There’s not much to talk about, I guess. I feel like shit all the time and everything sucks.”
“Is it because of Grayson?” I’ve never dated anyone, so I don’t know what it’s like when that person moves all the way across the country. But I know how much he liked her. And I know how much he tried to hide the fact that he’d been crying about her after she left.
He shrugs. “Not really. I don’t know. I wonder… Sometimes I think it might be the meds they have me on.”
After the incident with the Dodgers game, Mom and Saul took him to our pediatrician, Dr. Carver, who referred him to another doctor. That doctor prescribed him meds for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and Lionel takes them every day but I know he hates them.
“Have you talked to Saul about it?” I ask, because I don’t know any other solution. I’ve never been on meds. And I don’t know how they’re supposed to make you react, but I don’t think his listlessness is one of the desired results.
He shrugs. “Kind of. He says I need time to adjust to them.”
“I’m sorry.” And when he doesn’t say anything, I ask, “Do you want to take a walk?”
And for the first time ever, he says no. I think he’ll give me an excuse, like there’s a New Yorker story he’s dying to start, but he just sits here. And the longer I sit here with him, the more I’m sure he’s right. Whatever that doctor prescribed isn’t working for him. This isn’t Lionel. But neither was the one who trashed his room.
“Do you ever think…” He looks toward the door, as if double-checking to make sure I closed it. “Do you ever think about what will happen to your stuff when you’re dead?”
I gasp. I don’t mean to. It’s not the strangest or even most morbid thing we’ve ever talked about. But the way he said it, as if he’d been considering this for a while now, is what scares me.
I stand and slide the magazine to the side so I can sit next to him. He doesn’t move, doesn’t look at me, just keeps staring at the floor.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” I ask in the calmest voice I can manage. Freaking out about this won’t do either of us any good.
“I’m not going to kill myself or anything,” he says, finally meeting my eyes. “I don’t want to die. But… I hate that I feel like nothing good is ever going to happen to me again. And that sometimes I don’t really feel anything at all. Like I’m just watching some dude who looks like me and it’s really fucking boring to spy on him because all he wants to do is stay in bed.”
I want to believe him when he says he doesn’t want to kill himself, but I’m still scared.
“I think you need to talk to somebody—”
“I’m trying to talk to you.” His eyes are pink and wet but no tears spill over. And they are… not clear, but I feel like he sees me. Like he needs me.
Lion isn’t big on physical affection, so we’re not the sort of siblings who greet each other every day with a hug and kiss on the cheek. Even during Shabbat dinner, when it’s just the four of us, he always seems uncomfortable after the kiddush, when he knows we’re all going to hug. But now, I take his hand and I wrap mine around it and he startles but doesn’t move away.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess all the stuff goes to relatives or Goodwill or something.”
“Would you take care of my books? If something happened to me?”
“Lionel—”
“You wouldn’t have to keep them all. Just the ones you want, and then you can make sure the rest go to good homes or bookstores.”
I’ve never really thought much about dying, outside the context of grandparents—and my father. He died when I was three, from sudden cardiac arrest. He had a heart condition. I don’t like knowing that Lionel has thought about what my life would be like without him around, too.
I squeeze his hand and swallow hard. “I don’t like this. I want you to talk to Mom and Saul. Or we can call one of those hotlines. But I can’t sit here and—”
His hand pulses against mine. Not a squeeze, but a reminder that he’s alive.
“I swear to you, I’m not going to do anything, okay? I’m going to sit here and read the New Yorker and go to bed. Sometimes I just need to say things to you that I can’t say to anyone else.”
I don’t take my eyes off him. “I’m sleeping in here tonight.”
If that was a serious cry for help, I think he’d appear more grateful, more relieved by my response. But all he does is shrug and say whatever.
I change into my pajamas and carry a book and a blanket down to his room. He’s under the covers reading the magazine when I come back, and I lie on the other side, on top of the comforter, my head even with his feet, and pretend to read.
But I don’t sleep once he turns off the light. And even after I hear him snoring lightly, I don’t relax. Every time he rustles, I move. He coughs a couple of times and I sit up straight, staring at him until the snores resume.
And in the morning, I realize why I’m here, why I stayed in his room all night without sleeping. It wasn’t the talk about dying. It was his apathy. Lionel not caring, not having an opinion about everything, isn’t right. In a way, it’s scarier to me than how he acted the day of the Dodgers game, because at least that Lionel cared about something.
The sun is still blurry, still making its way into the sky, but I hear Mom and Saul’s door open across the hall.
I slip out of bed quietly, so Lionel won’t wake, and tiptoe out into the hallway, where I see the back of my mother going down the stairs. I stumble down after her and she smiles when she sees me in the doorway to the kitchen.
“Well, you’re up early,” she says. “I have to finish my draft today. What’s your excuse?”
“I…” This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to say. Lionel didn’t tell me not to repeat our conversation, but it was implied. That’s always implied with us when we talk about serious things. “I think you guys need to take Lionel back to the doctor.”