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“Do Mom and Dad know?”
“No,” he says simply.
“Are you going to tell them?”
He sighs and looks down.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m not sure what it helps. I’m not sure if it helps. I mostly told you because I needed to share it with someone and talk about what we should do or if there’s anything we can do.”
“I wish you’d told me earlier,” I say.
Bastien just shrugs.
“You’re really busy,” he says. “And you and Caleb seem like you’re really happy and I didn’t want to harsh your buzz, you know?”
“Telling me Javi’s still alive isn’t harshing my buzz,” I say, more forcefully than I mean to. “He’s my brother. I want to know.”
Now he looks young again, lost.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “You’re right.”
I shake my head, trying to clear my brain out.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
I trail off, my words not quite operating at the moment.
“We should tell Mom and Dad.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I was just being a pussy about it because —”
I clear my throat, and Bastien rolls his eyes a little.
“— being a coward about it —"
“Thank you.”
“— because I didn’t want to make things worse between them, but that’s not really my problem, is it?”
“Nope,” I agree.
We’re quiet for another moment, drinking our coffees. People come in and out of the coffee shop, get drinks, sit down. The baristas call names and kids run back and forth and two people hug, laugh, sit down together.
“You find out anything else?”
“That’s all she knew,” he says. “I think a lot of people go through there.”
“They didn’t chat? He didn’t casually tell her that he’s been living in a car in Foggy Bottom or visiting a shelter near VCU or on the streets Downtown or something?”
Bastien just shakes his head again.
“Sorry, Ollie. That’s all I got.”
“It’s good. Thank you.”* * *Me: Buy anything good today?
Caleb: God, no. I went hiking with Levi, June, and Silas, and then when we got back Thomas fell asleep on me for nearly three hours.
Caleb: Daniel said he must find my funk soothing.
Me: You should bottle it as a baby sleep aid.
Caleb: If this teaching thing ever falls through, maybe.I make a face and laugh quietly. I’m sitting on the couch in my parents’ den, feet on the coffee table. The TV is showing some action movie and Bastien is sitting at the other end of the couch, both of us looking at our phones.
When I laugh, he glances over at me, then back.
“Are you talking to your lovahhhh?” he asks, and I snort.
“You can’t call him that.”
“Call him what? Your lovahhhh?”
This time he uses a funny voice, and I start laughing.
“Lov-ahhhh. Looo-vahhhhh.”
I throw a pillow at him, giggling almost too hard to talk.
“Thalia,” he says, still looking at his phone. “Has taken a…”
He looks at me, grinning.
“Don’t,” I say.
“LOVAHHHH,” he stage-whispers, raising his eyebrows and doing jazz hands.
I grab the pillow I threw by a corner and start beating him with it.
“Don’t. Wake. Up. Mom. And. Dad!” I hiss, giggling, punctuating each word with a pillow smack.
“You don’t want them to know about your —”
I shove the pillow over his face.
“Uhhhhwuhhhhh,” he says.* * *Telling my parents that Javier was alive and at a needle exchange in Richmond doesn’t do much for the atmosphere in the house. My mom asks Bastien a million questions that he doesn’t know the answer to — Was he okay? How did he look? Did he have a coat, did he have shoes? — and my father pretty much turns to stone while she cries.
I think he regrets turning Javi out. It can be hard to tell, and to be honest, I’ve never been particularly close with my father. He’s not exactly the warm, fuzzy type.
I’ve suspected more than once that my grandfather, the son of Mexican immigrants and also a military man, was abusive. I’m pretty sure that my grandmother was an alcoholic, possibly as a result of having an abusive spouse and trying to raise six children essentially on her own. They both died before I was born, so I don’t really know. I just know that my father, the eldest, didn’t grow up in a happy household and joined the Navy the second he turned eighteen so he could get out of there.
Not that it excuses anything, but thinking about it helps me to be a little more compassionate.
The rest of the weekend is very, very rough. I try to stick around and be there for my mom, but I don’t know how much I’m helping.
And I can’t stop feeling guilty about my own secret. I can’t stop thinking about how much she’d disapprove, how disappointed she’d be, and she wouldn’t be completely wrong.
Needless to say, I’m pretty relieved when my ride Natalie picks me up, and we head back to Marysburg.
