Page 33 of The Legend Next Door
“You’reJelly?” asks Amy, her enthusiasm almost exceeding Luca’s. “Lovely to meet you! Luca talks about you all the time.”
“You’re Amy? Auntie Amy?” He peers into the car and spots Luca’s cousins. “And you’re Rory and Cam? Luca’s cousins? You guys look like triplets.”
The boys pile out of the car, complimented beyond belief by the fact that Jeremiah said they look similar. They waste no time rapid-firing a series of questions at him about things like surprise flowers and ice cream and the aerodynamics of LEGO planes.
What happens next is something that only happens when a group of terribly, terribly excitable people encounter others like them. They talk over and under each other, getting louder and louder until Amy yells an invitation for Jeremiah to come in for a glass of iced tea over the din.
I happen to know Jeremiah thinks that drinking tea, hot or iced, anytime other than right before bed is sacrilegious. Tea, according to him, tastes like brown water if you have it during daylight hours. Despite that, he looks crushed all the same.
“Sorry, I can’t. I have a work thing I need to get ready for. A photography shoot. If it keeps ruining my life like this, I’m going to stop doing photography altogether. Don’t think I won’t.” Amy and I laugh at his theatrics, and the kids act like they think quitting his job to spend time with them is an excellent idea. “Next time though, okay?”
“Next time!” chorus the boys.
“Gosh, he seems nice,” says Amy. She’s sitting on the kitchen stool closest to the wall. It’s her favorite stool because she has a thing about sitting in rooms with her back exposed to hallways. Liz was the same. She’s holding her glass of iced tea in both hands, sipping gingerly. She’s talking about Jeremiah. It’s the second time she’s said it, and she appears to be expecting a reply.
“So nice,” I say again.
“I’m glad the two of you had a good time last night.”
“A little too much of a good time.” I rest my head in my hand and squint an eye at her.
“No such thing. You deserve to have fun,” she says firmly. “And you should be proud, Ben. He looks worse for wear than you do, and you’re quite a bit older than him. That’s one of the things about getting older, isn’t it? Hangovers become incredibly vicious.”
“I’m not that much older than him.”
Seven years, but who’s counting. There’s a point in adulthood where age blurs into nothing except when you’re talking about decades of difference.
Everyone knows that.
Amy tells me her plans for the weekend, and we talk about the hockey camp we’ve signed the boys up for. The longer we talk, the more I suspect we’re really talking about something else. This isn’t a casual drop-in. This is a check-in. An in-depth assessment. Amy’s worried about me, and she’s worried about how I’ll handle going to the game tomorrow.
She’s worried about me going and keeping my shit together, specifically.
That makes two of us.
Thankfully, she doesn’t say so exactly, and I’m grateful for that because, honestly, I’m not sure what there is to say about hockey and my involuntary early retirement that hasn’t already been said.
Before she leaves, she hits me with one of those really intense Amy looks. It’s a big-sister look. An I’m-the-eldest-and-I’m-in-charge look. When she does it, I feel the way I always feel when it happens. Like we’re bonded by blood, even though that blood is no longer with us.
Amy’s eyes are the same color as Luca’s. The same color Liz’s were. Honey brown. Liz’s eyes were flecked with humor, audacity, and sweet things she only ever said when we were alone. Amy’s used to have splashes of mischief too. Now, there’s a hollowness in them that wasn’t there before. A loss that casts purple-blue semicircular shadows under them.
Amy and Liz were close. Crazy close. They talked every day and told each other everything. They loved each other with that off-the-wall, almost insane tenacity that only happens when two girls grow up sharing a bathroom and a ton of DNA and still passionately love doing life together.
I know she feels the gaping wound Liz left every day. Death and loss mean different things to people, even when you lose the same person. Losing a sister hurts differently from losing a wife or a mother or a daughter or a friend, but I know Amy feels the loss like I do. Like her world stopped turning too.
It’s a lot to say with a look, I admit, but Amy says all that and more.
“Thank you, Ben.” She sighs, and when she speaks, it feels like it’s a different day or that a page has turned and a new chapter has begun. “For being here. With us.”
She means thank you for uprooting my life and moving to Seattle to be with Liz’s family instead of with my own, not thanks for choosing to be alive or anything that heavy. Or maybe she does. I’m not sure.
“I know you could’ve stayed in Tampa. You have family and history there. It would’ve been easier for you in some ways. Lots of ways. But I hope you know how glad we are that you’re here. We need you here. Lizzie was my baby sister, and in case you didn’t know, that makes you my brother. Not just my brother. My kid brother.” She points a no-nonsense finger at me. “You’re here now, and you’re getting the big-sister treatment whether you want it or not. That means that ifanythingis a problem for you, you let me know. You don’t fuck around if things are hard. You call me, and I take care of it for you. Got it?”
“Got it,” I say.
Once she’s wrangled Rory and Cam into the car, she gets in the driver’s seat, clicks her seatbelt in, and makes a fist at me that has a vaguely militant air to it. She pairs it with another, possibly even more pointed look and shakes her fist at me with meaning.
I feel a little afraid, mildly bullied, and a lot happy that eight years ago, I married into a certifiably crazy family.
