This must be how I sound when I call to check up on her, which I don’t do often enough. “I’m good, I promise. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“Oh!” she says in a loud burst. “I saw the premiere last night! Gavin, you were brilliant. I mean it. It was a subtle performance but also frenetic, if that makes any sense. I couldn’t take my eyes off you. And not just because you’re my brother.”
“Thanks,” I say, relieved to be talking about the fictional me versus the real me. “You really liked it?”
“I loved it.”
I didn’t remember that last night was the premiere until I checked my phone this morning. Apparently it drew the biggest audience The Long Arm has ever had. The media credited the boost in numbers to what they called the “Gavin Winters fire stunt.” It’s true our ratings have never been stellar, which is frustrating because The Long Arm is a smart and gripping crime drama positioned prominently on a respected cable network, and Officer Beau Kendricks is by far the best character I’ve ever gotten to play. I just wish the show were succeeding on its own merits and not due to some scandal that will be forgotten in a week.
“There’s one thing I don’t get,” Veronica says. “Are they trying to turn you into a bad guy? It feels like it’s going in that direction. Would they do that?”
“That’s actually—”
“No, don’t tell me.”
“—my evil twin brother.”
“Shut up.”
Syd was the same way. He forbade me to share anything about where the story was heading. He wanted to wait like everyone else. We watched the entire first season together, Syd rewinding all my scenes with goofy pride in his eyes. Now he’ll never know how the story ends.
“Even Mom gave it two thumbs up,” Veronica says. “And you know she never pretends to like something if she doesn’t.”
“You spoke to her?”
“She called me, like, literally five seconds after it ended and proceeded to give her twenty-minute review. She even had her friends over to watch it.”
I picture my mother, just an hour south of here, the lone holdout in that ancient house, sharing space with her own phantom love for the past thirty years. Veronica and I, meanwhile, got out as soon as we could.
“Are you going to visit her soon?” she asks.
“I’ll get down there eventually.”
There’s a knock at my door.
“Hold on, V.”
It’s Joan, her hands behind her back, one Converse crushing the other. I’ve seen the same tossed-together wardrobe on hipsters in Silver Lake, though Joan’s version seems far less intentional. Her hairstyle, if you can even call it a style, also appears to be an afterthought; her hair is uncombed and casually tucked behind her ears. But her overall chaos is grounded by the directness of her eyes. There’s something confident and unflinching in them.
“Veronica, can I give you a ring later in the week?”
“Whenever. Just do me a favor and stay out of trouble.”
Coming from her, the wilder child. “I will.”
I toss the phone onto my bed and give Joan my full attention.
“Who was that?” Joan asks.
“My sister.”
“Oh.”
She brings her hands forward to reveal her journal, the one her doctor advised her to keep. It must be scary to have a child with a rare condition like Joan’s. At the clinic, when Syd and I were planning for a child of our own, we provided our full medical histories. I knew Syd’s father had died of heart problems but that was the first time I realized how far back the Brennett men had been suffering similar fates. My worry, upon learning this, was for my future child. I never considered worrying about the man sitting right next to me.
Joan is gazing down. “You know what? The hair on your legs looks like the kind of string that goes on a fishing pole.”
“Thank you,” I say.
I wait for more, but she’s fallen into some sort of trance. I wave my hands at her. “Joan? You okay?”
She focuses. “I was just thinking about the time Grandpa took me fishing, which was Sunday, June fifth, 2011.”
“That’s amazing.”
“What is?”
“How you do that. How you know what day of the week it was two years ago. I can’t imagine.”
She looks down at her journal as if hiding her face. I wonder if I’ve embarrassed her. “Do you like fishing?” I ask.
“No, because it’s mean. Grandpa says fish don’t feel pain like we do because they have small brains, but what if one of them has a brain that’s different from all the other fish? How do you know you’re not catching the one fish that feels a lot of pain?”
“I see your point.” It dawns on me that I still haven’t found out why she knocked on my door. “Can I help you with something, Joan?”
“Yes, you can, Gavin.”
She hugs the journal to her chest and turns down the hall. I’m not entirely sure, but I think I’m meant to follow.
9
Gavin sits on the couch and I play my new song. I sing the four lines I wrote about Dr. M and I’m feeling proud but also embarrassed, because I hate the sound of my own voice.
“I’m done,” I say so he knows he can clap.
He opens his eyes, which are bright but not wet. He stares at me and he says in a not-so-excited way, “Very nice.”
“Did you cry?”
Gavin looks left and right and then straight at me. “Did I cry?”
“Yes.”
“No. I didn’t cry.”
I make a low rumbling noise in my mouth so Gavin will know that he’s supposed to ask me what’s wrong, but he doesn’t ask me, so I just tell him.
“I’m writing a song for the Next Great Songwriter Contest because I think it might be a good way to make sure I’m never forgotten.”
“What do you mean? Why would you be forgotten?”
“Because everyone forgets everything. They forget the name of the second person they ever kissed and they forget about what happened to those twins who were taken apart as babies and they even forget their own grandchildren. And it’s not fair because I would never do that.”
“I believe you.”
“But then I realized, it’s not people’s fault that they have crappy brains. That’s what reminders are for. Mom never forgets to pay the bills because she has a reminder on her calendar. And Dad remembers to put new batteries in our smoke alarm only because it starts beeping. And no one forgets Martin Luther King because he has his own holiday every year. It works the same way with songs. Everyone remembers John Lennon, even Grandma, because his songs are reminders. My song is going to be a reminder to everyone that they should keep me in their brainboxes, and I have less than two weeks to finish it.”
Gavin is frozen like a computer. It takes him a few seconds to get going again. “You’ve obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this.”
“Yes, I have.”
“But what does crying have to do with it?”