Close Your Eyes. Amanda Eyre Ward

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СКАЧАТЬ sweatpants was nothing I recognized as taxing or taxable – I would likely be curled in bed, asleep, but hope sprang eternal, and romance (I believed) was about faith and expensive groceries.

      Though I had finished squiring around a couple named the Gelthorps by four, dropping them at the Four Seasons for dinner and discussment (Mrs. Gelthorp had assured me she’d call in the morning with an offer on either the Tuscan-style palace in Pemberton Heights or the Provençal villa in Westlake), it was already dark as I wheeled my booty out of Central Market. I angled the cart toward my Dodge Neon. I had hoped for a glamorous convertible, but Gerry had been firm, armed with a stack of old Consumer Reports and Epinion printouts. I unlocked the car, opened the trunk, and screamed when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ said my brother, panting in the cool evening.

      ‘How did you—’

      ‘You had that calm I’m buying foodstuffs tone,’ said Alex. ‘I rode my bike over.’

      ‘From the hospital?’

      Alex nodded. He wiped his forehead. ‘I came to say I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to insult Gerry.’

      ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘He is Mr. Cheapskate, after all.’

      ‘I just think a trip would be fun. The two of us. We need to visit Gramma – and I’ll reserve the campsite, or condo, whatever. We haven’t camped since . . . since we were kids, you know? I’m feeling a bit mortal.’

      My older brother filled me – always – with bafflement, irritation, and gratitude. He had never recovered, not really, from that morning. I had not made it all the way upstairs, so in some sense, I had been spared. By the time I saw my mother, she had been cleaned and made up, slipped into her favorite dress. He had taken care of me ever since. Instead of parents, I had Alex.

      ‘When are you thinking?’ I said.

      ‘How about tomorrow? We can leave first thing in the morning.’

      ‘Tomorrow! Can you help me with these bags?’

      ‘Time’s wasting, sister,’ said Alex, grabbing bags roughly and tossing them into the trunk.

      ‘What does that mean?’ I said. ‘Be careful – that’s wine!’

      Alex placed the paper bag down gently. He turned around and held me by the shoulders. ‘Have you heard of Doctors Without Borders?’ he asked.

      ‘Oh, God,’ I said. ‘I have a feeling I’m not going to like this news.’

      ‘I applied last year,’ said Alex. ‘And I just got my assignment. I’m going to Iraq, to Baghdad.’

      ‘You . . . ’ I said, trailing off. I felt as if I had been sucker-punched. ‘You can’t leave.’

      ‘I’ll go in a few weeks,’ said Alex gently.

      ‘What about me?’ I said.

      ‘Lauren, this has nothing to do with you.’

      In the Central Market parking lot, beneath the citrus frenzy banner, I began to cry. ‘I’ll be all alone,’ I said.

      ‘Lauren, you’re thirty-two,’ said Alex. ‘Get ahold of yourself.’

      ‘Go to hell.’ I threw the last bag in the car, slammed the trunk, and went around the side to the driver door, wiping my nose with my arm. I felt alarmed, woozy. I opened the door and tried to breathe evenly.

      Alex ran to me and grabbed my elbow. ‘I knew you’d freak out,’ he said.

      ‘It’s so sudden,’ I said.

      Alex hugged me, smelling of sweat and fast food. ‘Let me just lock up my bike,’ he said. ‘I’ll come over for dinner.’

      Gerry and I lived in French Place, a historic neighborhood on the wrong side of the interstate. Fault lines made foundations crack and shift; while many houses looked great up top, there were problems under the surface. As opposed to Hyde Park, where professors and rich hippies lived, French Place was for the young and working-class. I loved it. Our landlord had painted the wood siding purple, which would not have been my choice – I preferred sage green – but the trim was a soothing yellow. Some people in our neighborhood went all out, with giant metal roosters or actual chickens in their yards, but we’d splurged on two lemon-colored chairs and a café table from Zinger’s Hardware and called it a day. When we had our fabulous pumpkin-carving party every year, nobody minded sitting on the steps or on one of the blankets we spread across the lawn.

      Our street, Maplewood Avenue, was situated behind an elementary school. In the mornings, I could sit on our sagging front porch and watch kids arrive for school, their hair still mashed from bed, small fists rubbing their eyes. We had a house of bike messengers on one side of us and an elderly couple on the other side. Gerry and I often shared a cold six-pack with the neighbors.

      When I turned onto Maplewood, I could see that the lights in our purple shed, which was now called ‘The Studio,’ were still on. ‘How’s that all going?’ asked Alex. ‘The, uh, podcast or whatever.’

      I shrugged. Gerry had lost his job at Dell six months before, and after a week or so of moping around, he had declared his life’s dream. I thought my boyfriend’s ‘life’s dream’ was finally getting me to marry him (he had been asking for years), but no. In his boxer shorts and a dell bowling T-shirt, Gerry had stood in the living room and announced that he was going to start a blog and begin calling himself ‘Mr. Cheapskate.’ Wild-eyed, he showed me elaborate plans scrawled in a notebook he’d bought at Walgreens in the middle of the night.

      ‘There’s this guy who loves wine, okay?’ Gerry had said the next morning as I edged my way into the kitchen and began spooning coffee into the French press.

      ‘Okay,’ I said. I had to admit that he looked absurdly attractive with his unshaven face, his eyes alight.

      ‘So he makes podcasts, YouTube videos, the whole nine yards. He talks about wine. And now he’s rich! And you know how I always wanted to be a stand-up comedian?’

      ‘I thought you wanted to perfect neural networks,’ I said.

      ‘Before that, before that,’ said Gerry. ‘When I was in high school, I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. I won talent shows, the whole nine yards.’

      ‘You don’t really tell jokes or anything,’ I ventured.

      ‘ANYWAY,’ Gerry snapped, ‘my point is that I have personality.’

      ‘I’ll give you that,’ I said. I put the kettle on to boil.

      ‘So, and I’m cheap,’ said Gerry. He was cheap, of this there was no doubt. Gerry refused to order coffee when we went to a coffee shop, insisting he could sip from my cup. He fished newspapers out of the trash and exited airplanes scanning the seat backs carefully, hoping for free magazines. He had a plastic accordion folder for coupons, he knew every two-for-one night in Austin, and he was happy to buy three cans of a Campbell’s soup flavor he didn’t especially like (broccoli cheese, for example) because the fourth can came for free. Tea bags in his wallet, a favorite free parking place downtown that СКАЧАТЬ