Page 79 of What Boys Learn

“You weren’t ‘a little’ worried.” He shaped the scare quotes with his fingers. Then he reached down for the edge of his plate, looking up to double-check I was still watching, and flipped it violently across the peninsula, missing me by inches.

I shrieked as the plate shattered on the kitchen floor.

He shouted, “You think I’m a murderer!”

I jumped off the stool. Flecks of food and sauce had sprayed onto my feet and lower legs. Broken ceramic everywhere.

He jumped up, too, but he was on the opposite side of the peninsula, clean and spared. His face was beet red, a thick cord of purple pulsing at his neck. “How am I supposed to live with someone who thinks I killed Izzy? Or Sidney?”

I stepped backward, palms up again. “I don’t think you killed them.”

“Or made them kill themselves! You’re sick! You hate me! You shouldn’t be my mother!”

My voice trembled. “Calm down, Benjamin.”

“You just sent me away. To talk to a shrink.”

I kept my voice low. “But you like him.”

“Better thanyou.”

“Benjamin, I love you—”

“Oh yeah? Like the way you still love your brother? The way you were willing to just cut him off and throw him away?”

I whispered, “Because he isn’t a good person. He isn’t safe.”

“Well maybe I’m not good or safe.”

“You’re just parroting me now. This isn’t a conversation.”

“I didn’twantto have a conversation. I don’t forgive you. Not for thinking I’m a terrible person. Not for going through my stuff. Not for cutting me off from family. Not for making my life even worse than it already was.”

He balled up his fists, closed his eyes, and screamed at the top of his lungs. The bass coming from below us stopped.

“Shhhhh . . .” I start to say, but it only set him off again.

“Don’t fucking shush me!”

Someone could call the police. They could pick Benjamin up. They could use this as proof that he was violent. He’d be a suspect all over again. All because we lived in an apartment with a downstairs neighbor and thin walls. We weren’t allowed bad days. We weren’t allowed secrets. We weren’t allowed mistakes.

I took another step back. He took a step forward. “I’m not a baby!”

I moved closer to the front door, tripping sideways over a big plastic jug of laundry detergent we kept against the wall. The doorknob jammed into my hip. I groaned, then cupped a hand over my mouth and thrust the other hand out, trying to keep Benjamin at a safe distance.

Things had been getting better, so I’d thought. But now I was leaning back with the memory of Ewan’s fingers around my throat, lifting me off the ground. My own brother, choking me. Which wasn’t even a major shock at the time. It was just something Ewan did. Something I’d had no choice but to tolerate, because I had no one else.

If anyone came knocking now, I’d need to explain. The shouts were from a movie. I flattened my back against the door, both hands up, ready to protect myself, while my brain turned cartwheels, trying to imagine how I’d protecthimif the police came.

I held my breath until Benjamin stalked off to his bedroom. Even after the door shut, I was still holding it.

27

The week before we moved to Pleasant Park, about one year ago, Benjamin and I spent time driving around the North Shore, checking out apartment listings we’d seen on Craigslist. At one point, we’d taken a wrong turn down a small lane, all the way to its dim, shadowy dead end. The dense oaks overhead, never mind the long driveways leading to hidden, widely spaced houses on both the left and the right were proof that we were in the wrong place.

“Maybe the apartment is in someone’s basement,” Benjamin suggested, helpfully.

“These kinds of people don’t rent out their basements,” I said. “Trust me.”