Marilyn Peake - The Other

Once in my jeep, I waved goodbye to Nat. We were driving separately to the airport in case one of us had to come back early. Shit was always coming up that changed plans.

Just as I got the engine going, my phone lit up. My brother. I did not have time for this. I answered. “Hey, Jed, what’s up?”

“Not much. How’s it going?”

“Good. I’m heading out to the airport, actually. I got a research grant to investigate… human behavior close-up.” I winced. That sounded so lame. I was going to say, “UFO stuff that’s going on in certain cults;” but with our history, mentioning the word cult was like throwing a match into a lake of gasoline.

“Uh-huh. Sounds interesting.”

I don’t know why I ever worried about choosing my words carefully with him. It’s not like he ever listened to anything I said.

Trying to get the conversation going, so that we could end it as soon as possible, I asked, “So, why did you call?”

Jed sounded hurt when he answered, “Can’t I just call my big sister to see how she’s doing?”

Well, that would be a first. I replied, “Sure. I’m doing great. You know how invigorated I get when…”

He interrupted to say, “So, I have a problem.”

Yup. Never listens. Doesn’t care. I was going to say, when I get to go out and do research in the field.

I stifled the sigh building up in my body. “What’s the problem, Jed?”

He answered, “I’m out of a job… temporarily… on administrative leave.”

He was a cop. Out on administrative leave usually meant he’d done something questionable. Or been accused of it, anyway. With Jed, it usually meant he’d actually done it, but the department found there had been extenuating circumstances.

I sucked in my breath, let it out. “So, what happened?”

Jed’s voice got louder. I pulled the phone back from my ear and turned the sound down while he ranted and shouted. I didn’t want to go deaf. He unloaded his version of the story on me: “I pulled over a couple niggers…”

I rolled my eyes. God, why did he have to be that way? We both came from the same rough background. What made him so damned close-minded and bigoted?

As he went on, his voice slurred. He’d been drinking, again. Big surprise there. I’d been wondering lately if he sometimes went into work drunk. He said, “They were all nervous-like…”

Yeah, I’d be nervous, too, if I were them, knowing my brother. I was going to interrupt, realized it would do no good, let him continue. I just wanted to know how bad things were with him, if there was something I needed to fix.

He went on, “So, I’m thinking cocaine, or that cheaper flakka stuff that’s on the street these days. I take a look at their car: an old, beat-up Chevy Impala. I take a look at them . Driver’s wearin’ a torn sweatshirt. The other guy’s wearin’ dirty jeans. Yeah, I’m thinkin’ flakka, gravel—that stuff. These guys aren’t exactly rollin’ in dough.”

I popped my cell phone into the holder on the dashboard, put the jeep in drive, and headed out to the airport. This was obviously going to be a long story while my brother tried to show off his detective skills to his big sister. You know what? I hate being a mother figure. If our own fucking mother hadn’t…

OK, I wasn’t going to let my mind go there. I focused on the road. I tried to focus on what my brother was saying. I want to ask what flakka or gravel were. Two different things or two different words for the same thing? I started diagramming his sentence, trying to figure it out from the grammatical structure. No way I was going to ask him. He’d just go on forever.

As I pulled up to a red light and stopped, he was saying, “I tell them, ‘Let me see your license.’ Mr. Torn Sweatshirt reaches for his back pocket. Then he starts giving me lip. He says, ‘What did I do, Officer?’ I tell him, ‘Never mind that. Just give me your license.’ I’m watching his hand for a gun when, suddenly, there’s a flash of metal coming from the other side of the car. His buddy was pulling a gun out of his jacket! It must have been a gun. What other kind of shiny metal thing do you pull out of your jacket? I reacted. I shot them both.”

My heart started racing out of control. My hands started shaking. Afraid I was going to pass out behind the wheel of my vehicle, I said, “What do you want from me, Jed?”

He said, “Well, I could use some money. Stella don’t work. She stays at home with the kids. Her bein’ a good mom’s the most important thing to us.”

Ya know, if you’re asking me for money, you probably oughtn’t bring that up again. I’d made my life choices. I didn’t want to be a mom right now. Maybe later. I’d spent my twenties earning a Ph.D. and getting a job as a college professor. Building a stable life brick by brick. On the other hand, he’d married his high school sweetheart two days after graduation. She was four months pregnant. He’d managed to stick with training to become a police detective, but his life was a mess. Anger management problems, for sure. I’d started wondering about alcoholism. I would have wondered about drug use as well except he was always so hostile toward anyone who used them. But who knows…

I asked, “Aren’t you on paid administrative leave?”

With a distinct hostile edge to his voice, he said, “Well, yeah, but I’m used to overtime. I’m not sure how we’ll get along without it. I got four kids to feed. And you know Alice needs medicine for the ADHD.”

The ADHD? Did he really know anything at all about his daughter’s condition?

I asked, “Have you thought about getting another job while you’re on leave? Maybe work at a grocery store or paint houses or something?”

He said, “I’m a cop, Cora! I just have to wait until after the hearing; then I can go back to work.”

I didn’t have time to argue.

The image of the two men he’d shot—blood and flesh spraying over the car interior, splashing onto the windshield, embedding itself in the car seats—flashed through my mind. I tried to block it out. I thought of flying saucers and interviewing people in the Roswell compound.

I thought of people drinking poison.

With bad memories resurrecting themselves like ghosts in my brain, I tried to bring the conversation to a close. I said, “How much do you need?”

Jed’s voice got lighter, more cheerful. He said, “Can you send me a thousand for now?”

Jesus. I was a college professor, not a rock star. I thought about my checking account. It would still have a balance if I moved some money over from savings. I said, “Sure. I’ll send it sometime tonight.”

My brother said, “Awesome! Well, it’s been great talking with you.” Then he hung up. The click of him disconnecting was jarring. Not even one word of thanks. That was Jed. Some things never changed.

Before I realized I had started crying, I felt the warmth of tears trickling down my face.

Damn. I wished I could absolve myself of responsibility for him. My baby brother. My goddamn fucking baby brother who could blow the brains out of people who he constantly judged through the lens of bias and discrimination and his own dark sense of self-loathing.

We got to LAX an hour before takeoff. I preferred to arrive two hours early, but that just wasn’t possible this time. We’d gotten the go-ahead from Liam with very little time to spare. He’d been trying to get us into the Roswell compound for months. When one of their leaders finally said yes, he didn’t want to give them a chance to change their mind.

Security was especially tight. Police were walking around with submachine guns. I’d never seen that before. There were also a lot of TSA canine teams. I’d seen the dogs before and always assumed they were brought in to sniff for drugs and explosives.