Secret Brother

“Hey, Clair de Lune,” he said as he came into my bedroom. I was beginning something that I didn’t know whether I could finish or continue. I was writing my first letter to my brother, Willie, in heaven. I think I was terrified of the possibility that I would soon forget him or stop thinking about him. I knew Grandpa didn’t stop thinking about my mother or my grandmother, but he very rarely mentioned their names. That was why I had been so surprised to hear him say that Grandma Arnold had told him to take care of the poisoned boy.

“Hi,” I said. From the way Uncle Bobby was dressed, I knew he was minutes away from leaving. “Going?”

“Yes, but I’ll be calling you and writing to you. I’ll send you a playbill from the show I’m in now. You know what that is, right? I mean, it’s not really a bill, it’s—”

“I know what it is,” I said, smiling. It felt good to smile. I knew it was part of what would bring me back, even though a bigger part of me wanted never to come back. That part wanted to stay with Willie.

“Good. So . . . you’ll return to school on Monday?”

“I guess so. My friend Lila has been helping me keep up with the classwork.”

“Best thing you can do, although I know it won’t be easy, maybe not for a long, long time. Whenever I saw you two together, you were more like a mother to him than an older sister.” He paused and shook his head. “Of course, you would be, having lost your mother, but other girls might have withdrawn completely into themselves. You’re a great kid, Clara Sue.”

I nodded. I knew Uncle Bobby meant it all as a nice thing to say and not to get me crying again. I could see, however, that he had something else on his mind. He had the look of someone debating with himself whether he should speak. He looked away and pressed his lips in and out.

“How’s Grandpa?” I asked, as a way to help get him to talk. “I didn’t see him this morning.”

“He’s Grandpa,” he said, smiling. “He won’t show it, but I know he’s struggling. You have to wonder how I could be his son. There I was when I was your age, bawling like a baby at the sight of a dead butterfly. It still makes my eyes tear to see beautiful things die. Your grandfather is just one of those guys who cry on the inside and not on the outside. He’s also one of those guys who use anger to overcome sorrow.”

“Getting his revenge,” I said, nodding.

“Right.”

“Has he said any more about the poisoned boy?” I could sense that this was really what he was holding back.

He nodded. “Thing is, he received a report from the private detective concerning him.”

“He’s going home?” I asked quickly, hoping this was the end of it.

“No. The detective has apparently run into a dead end.”

“What’s that mean?”

“My father’s exact words were ‘Whoever the man was, he had dropped the boy off like a bag of plague and then hightailed it into the shadows like a ghost.’ There wasn’t even a decent description of him. He wore some kind of hat and kept his collar up. His height and all that were too vague to draw a picture. Not much to go by. The boy had nothing on him that would identify him. Basically, my father’s given up on the private detective for now. Of course, the police are still involved.”

“But he’s still visiting him every day, isn’t he? That’s probably why he leaves so early.”

Uncle Bobby nodded.

I thought about it. “Isn’t there some kind of child protection service that takes over?” I didn’t want to tell him that I had asked Lila to ask her father about it. Her father was a corporate attorney for a company that had something to do with supplying the Navy with things, but I thought an attorney was an attorney and should know something about other legal things. He didn’t know all that much, but he had mentioned a government agency.

“That’s just it. Dad doesn’t want this little boy to get ‘lost in the system,’ as he puts it. I waited to see if he would tell me that my mother had whispered in his ear, just what he had told you, but he didn’t mention it. Shows how he trusts you, cares about what you think, more than he does me.”

“Well, what’s he going to do now?”

“He’s still looking after the boy’s medical needs. He’s even hired a psychiatrist to work with him. The boy remains in serious condition, something to do with his motor skills.”

“Motor skills?”

“His legs, mainly. Your grandpa says he’s improving, but he has a ways to go yet. I’m just telling you all this so that you’ll know he’s still deeply involved,” he added quickly. “As I said, I think it helps him to care about someone that helpless.”

I wanted to say that I was helpless, too, and that Willie was beyond helpless, but I didn’t. I just nodded.

“You know your grandfather,” Uncle Bobby continued. “When he gets on something with any determination . . .”

I nodded again. I remembered my grandmother saying that when Grandpa made his mind up about something, he looked like a bulldozer couldn’t move him. “I swear,” she had told me, “sometimes I believe he has tree roots growing out of his soles.” She would get angry about it and tell him he was as stubborn as a corpse, but I remembered that most of the time, she was proud of how determined he could be whenever he decided to do something he thought was right, especially something good for the family. She said he made her feel safer and more secure than anyone she had ever known, even her own father and mother.

“Whatever strength this family has now,” Grandma Arnold had told me sometime after my parents had died, “comes from those roots coming out of his soles. Don’t tell him I said so,” she’d whispered afterward. “He doesn’t need to have his ego blown up any more, or he’ll be even more impossible to live with.”