Page 100 of Full Tilt
Theo’s muscled shoulders hunched, and he took a slow, deliberate pull from his beer bottle.
“I’m merely stating a fact,” Henry continued. “The arts isn’t an easy sector to make a living in. One has to direct one’s talents appropriately.”
“And not squander them working at a tattoo parlor,” Theo said.
Like a stick wedged into a gear, the levity of the room came to a screeching halt. Henry and Theo exchanged long, hard glances.
“Who wants to help me set the table?” Beverly asked, her voice taking on a shrill edge. She reached into a cabinet and lifted down a stack of plates.
“I got it.” Theo took them from her hands and shouldered out the door toward the patio.
“I’ll help too,” I said, taking napkins and silverware and following.
Mrs. Fletcher beamed, and the night was rolling again.
“Wonderful!”
The outdoor dining table sat beneath a pergola, clusters of glass globes hanging down like elegant fruit. Here we ate lasagna,bread, and a green salad. Solid, homecooked food. The kind of meal my mother made when I was a kid. But dinnertime at my house was a sullen, cold event where I was always talking too loud, even when I wasn’t speaking. My father’s stony, oppressive presence turned the good food to dust in my mouth.
The Fletchers’ table was full of laughter, nonstop talking and bickering. A bit of silent tension lingered between Theo and Henry, but Beverly defused it with stories of her sons’ youth that had me choking on my bread.
“I swear,” she said, pouring herself a glass of cabernet. Her third, I noticed. “Lake Tahoe has an enormous beach.Plentyof sand for everyone. Millions of grains, and these two fought over one bucketful.”
I nudged Jonah on my right. “You fought oversandat thebeach?”
“So speaketh an only child,” Jonah said. “Sand appropriation is critical to four and six year olds.” He glanced at Theo with a sly smile. “So are imaginary butterflies.”
Theo jabbed his fork in Jonah’s direction. “Don’t even.”
Jonah ignored him. “Once, Theo got pissed at me because he caught an imaginary butterfly and I let it get away.”
Theo reached across the table to poke his brother with the fork. “Shut. Up.”
“I love this story,” Beverly sighed.
“That makes one of us,” Theo said.
Jonah brushed off the fork, and rested his elbows on the table, regarding his brother with affection. “Theo cupped his hands over thin air and told me he’d caught a butterfly. I asked to see it, but he was afraid it would fly off.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“Last week,” Jonah said.
“Try twenty years ago, asshole,” Theo muttered.
“Language, please,” Henry said.
Jonah’s voice grew low, the teasing ebbing out of it. “Finally, he said I could hold it. He put his hands in mine, all the whiledescribing the butterfly’s wings—bright blue, rimmed in black. How it opened and closed them, as if it were breathing. He even told me how its legs looked like black hairs against my skin. Remember, Theo?”
I glanced at the tough, built, tattooed man sitting across from me, glaring daggers at his brother. Yet I could easily see the sweet little boy he’d been, describing this nonexistent but precious butterfly.
“But I wasn’t careful enough,” Jonah said. “I opened my hands too much and Theo said the butterfly flew away. He cried and cried.”
“Are you fucking done?” Theo said.
“Language,” Henry murmured.
All the teasing was gone from Jonah’s face now. “I never apologized for letting it go,” he said. “I tried to give him another one—a monarch in orange and black, but it was the blue butterfly he wanted. And it was gone forever. I’m sorry about that, bro.”
