“I haven’t thought about it in years,” I say, sounding too defensive. T.J. hasn’t told me much about his past either, but I don’t bring that up. It’s nice having the three of us get along like this. Still, it feels a little like we’re balancing on a seesaw. One shift could send the whole thing crashing down.
“Dad and I love going into Cleveland for Indians games,” T.J. says. “We’ve made it to the home opener every year for as long as I can remember.”
“My dad’s never taken me to a major-league game,” Chase admits, picking up his sandwich and slapping on more peanut butter. “He keeps promising to, but he never does. He and Mom used to fight all the time about Dad’s promises. They fought about a lot of things. I guess they fought over me a lot. Never for me, just over me.”
I’m not sure what to say. Even though I knew his parents were divorced, I’ve always pictured Chase Wells as having the perfect life, in Boston or in Grain.
“Voila!” he says, lifting his four-inch-thick peanut butter masterpiece like it’s a baseball trophy.
T.J. applauds. “I want his sandwich.”
“Don’t worry. I made you two.” I pull the stepping stool up to the table and sit on it. Although I made myself a sandwich too, I’m not hungry. I let it sit in front of me while Chase and T.J. eat.
T.J. wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, smudging peanut butter to his chin. Then he nods at Chase. “Go ahead and ask her.”
Chase almost chokes on his sandwich.
I glance from one to the other. “What? Ask me what?”
Chase shakes his head and won’t look at me.
T.J. takes over. “Chase wanted to know what’s really wrong with Jeremy. I told him I didn’t know anything he didn’t and he should ask you.”
Chase’s cheeks have turned pink. “You don’t need to answer that if you don’t want to. I wasn’t being nosy, but I didn’t understand much of the expert testimony in court. And I wondered, when you said it would be a terrible thing if they put Jeremy in a mental hospital, why you said that. Why would it be so hard on him if he has something wrong with him that they could fix, or help? You’d be able to visit him, right?” He stops. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. I didn’t mean to bother you with it, Hope. I just thought T.J. could help me understand.”
T.J. and I never talk about Jeremy. Usually, I hate it when people ask me what’s wrong with my brother. But I don’t know now. I want Chase to understand, and T.J. too. I don’t want to be the only one who understands Jeremy well enough to believe he didn’t do what they say he did.
“Jeremy was born with a neurological disorder. Probably Asperger’s syndrome, although he’s had all the standard labels pasted on him at one time or another: learning disabled, ADHD, autistic. One counselor at a school in Chicago was sure Jer had epilepsy because of his tantrum fits. And, yeah, selective mutism, which is a no-brainer since we know Jeremy selected to be mute.”
“So he’s been tested before all this, like in a hospital?” Chase sets down his sandwich and leans in, catching every word.
“Jeremy’s been tested and retested. Every time he got a new teacher, they’d call Rita in and ask her about him. Then they’d send him to the school psychologist-those people have some big problems of their own, if you ask me. Then they’d give up and send Jer on to some doctor, or hospital, or specialist.”
“And nobody knows why he won’t talk?” Chase asks, almost like he can’t quite believe this.
I understand where he’s coming from. “At first, Rita thought he was just being stubborn. She’d get so mad at Jeremy.” I stop talking because I’m remembering times when I had to get between Rita and my brother. I remember one time when I shoved a drunk Rita out of the way so Jeremy could escape to the bathroom and lock himself in until she got over it, or fell asleep.
But if I’m honest, there are other pictures stored inside my mind too. Rita sitting on the floor with Jeremy, holding up word cards the speech therapist gave her. Rita all excited over a new “herbologist” or “naturalist” she heard about, who could cure what didn’t come out of Jeremy’s mouth by being more picky about what went into his mouth.
I get up and run myself a glass of water. It tastes as cloudy as it looks and smells like iron. Then I sit back down.
“I don’t remember any of that stuff going on when you and Jeremy moved to Grain,” T.J. says.
“By the time we moved here, Rita was so tired of the whole rigmarole that she’d started telling new schools Jeremy had been in an accident and couldn’t talk. She just didn’t want to go through all those tests again. I guess Jer’s language arts teacher, Ms. Graham, tried to teach him sign language our first year here. It didn’t take, though. Jeremy likes to write notes. You should see his handwriting.”
“So that’s it?” Chase asks. He hasn’t taken another bite of his sandwich since we’ve been talking about Jeremy. T.J. has finished both of his. “There’s really nothing else wrong with him?”
“Nope. Not with Jer,” I answer. “Nothing except the fact that people have a hard time understanding unique.”
“Unique.” Chase mutters this, so I can’t tell if it’s a question or not.
I know he doesn’t get what I’m saying, and I’m not sure how to say it any better. I want him-them-to get Jeremy. I struggle for a minute over how to explain the Jeremy I love, what makes him who he is. And then I know.
Leaving our dirty dishes, I get up from the table. “Come with me.”
14
Standing outside Jeremy’s bedroom, my hand wrapped around the doorknob, I know one thing. Chase and T.J. are about to get a true glimpse of Jeremy Long. What I don’t know is how they’ll react. Slowly, I turn the knob and open the door.
This time, it’s T.J. who hangs back and Chase who goes in first. He stares up and around, in a full circle, as if awed by a starry sky. His gaze passes over the baseball bedspread I found at Goodwill in Oklahoma. My brother loves that spread. Most days since he’s been gone, I’ve come in and smoothed out the wrinkles. The only piece of furniture in the room besides this single bed is an old dresser I painted blue to match the bedspread. Above the dresser hangs one of Jeremy’s drawings-a circle divided into sixteen pie pieces, each meticulously colored in with a different color. This is Jeremy’s art. My brother has made me dozens, maybe hundreds, of these pictures, each with a different color scheme, but all the exact same design. I’ve saved every one of them.
But Chase isn’t looking at the dresser or the color wheel. He’s staring at Jeremy’s glass jars. Three walls are lined with shelves. The last owner or renter must have filled these shelves with books-most people would.
But not Jeremy.
“These are the jars you talked about in court,” Chase whispers, as if afraid of disturbing the row after row of emptiness. His eyes widen as his gaze shifts from one wall to the next. “How many does he have?”
“I’ve never counted them.”
“It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?” He says this like he’s able to admire the collection, to respect my brother. “It must have taken him a long time to do this.”
“He’d have more if a box of the jars hadn’t been left back in Chicago one time. Not a pleasant experience for any of us,” I admit. An image flashes through my mind-Jeremy throwing glasses and plates in our new kitchen, Rita the one hiding under the table for once.
T.J. clears his throat. It startles me, and I turn to see him still standing in the doorway, his arms straight out from his sides, like he’s holding on to the doorframe. He nods at the baseball curtains I got when I found the spread. “He really loves baseball, huh?”
I sit on the edge of the bed. “At least that’s something you guys can understand. You’ve probably been baseball-crazy since you were little boys.”
“Got that right,” T.J. agrees. “Dad took me to my first Wooster-Grain game when I was six weeks old.”
I wait for Chase to say something like that, but he doesn’t. “I don’t know. I like to play, but I can’t say I’ve ever been crazy about baseball.”