Tracy Kelleher - The Company You Keep

Her half-brother, Press, took her rolling suitcase from her without bothering to ask. “I’d already emailed you that I’d be back for Reunions, and the timing worked out. Besides, admit it—you would have given me grief if I hadn’t made the effort.” A year after graduating from Grantham, Press was living in Melbourne, Australia, where he was getting a master’s degree in paleontology. He’d traveled halfway around the world to work with a scientist who was on the forefront of 3-D imaging of bone specimens.

Mimi looked him over. He seemed the same—maybe skinnier and now sporting a fashionably scraggly beard that was a darker blond than his short curls. He wore jeans and a T-shirt—a Hoagie Palace T-shirt. The T-shirt had her thinking. “How about we stop off for some hoagies—my treat. Unless you have other plans, of course?”

Someone bumped Mimi from the back. She tensed. Damn. She’d been doing better these past two months. She willed herself to breathe out slowly and recognize the bump as just a commuter in a rush. Much as she didn’t go in for the touchy-feely stuff, seeing the psychologist recommended by Noreen had helped. Treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder had greatly improved over the years. For Mimi, the sessions had helped her identify frightening memories and replace them with more manageable thoughts. That still didn’t mean she was “cured.”

Again, she felt pressure on her upper arm, and while she steeled herself, at least she didn’t flinch. She glanced to see what it was and saw it was Press touching the sleeve of her leather jacket.

“Sorry, I guess I’m jumpy. Must be the excitement of returning to the old stomping grounds,” she joked lamely. She peered into her brother’s eyes to see if he’d discerned something more, but his gray-blue eyes looked more bloodshot than anything, and his face didn’t show a reaction one way or the other. But then Press had always been good at appearing unemotional under the best of circumstances—or the worst. That was his way of coping, she realized. Hers was to rant and rave and run away.

“So food?” she asked again. Today she wasn’t planning on running—at least, not yet.

“I’m always up for Hoagie Palace. Besides I need to stop in to say hi to Angie and Sal. If they knew I was in town and hadn’t seen them, I’d be in a lot of trouble.” Angie and Sal were the owners of the popular Grantham establishment and had probably been more involved with raising Press than his own parents had been.

He pointed out his car in the parking lot, and they marched down the platform to the stairs. Instead of bouncing her suitcase down the cement risers, he simply picked it up by the handle and carried it down.

“So, how are things in Australia?”

Press fished the car keys out of his pocket and beeped open the doors to the aging BMW. “Good, I guess. I mean, the work is great and my advisor is, too. Now that we’ve got the bugs worked out of the new 3-D equipment—it cost a bomb, I’ll tell you—the measurements I’m getting on the specimens are amazing. Which is a good thing, because I just heard that my proposal for a talk at the big paleontology meeting in September was accepted.”

“That’s fantastic. But what about outside of work? Don’t you like Australia?” Mimi had gone scuba diving in the Barrier Reef after successfully completing a story. And she’d downed more than a few beers with a crew from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in the Rocks section of Sydney. Beyond that, the vast Red Continent was a mystery to her—one of those places she was always telling herself that she needed to explore. The thing was, she never seemed to have time for a vacation.

Press hoisted her suitcase into the trunk and came around to open the passenger door. “No, Australia’s great. Just more different than I anticipated. I don’t know why. Maybe because we speak the same language—or kind of the same language—I expected things to function the same way as in the U.S. My mistake.” He held open the door.

Mimi hesitated. You’re thinking of being pushed into the car in Grozny, but this is your brother and Grantham, she reminded herself. She willed herself to get in and fasten her seat belt. But she kept a death grip on the door handle. Then she forced herself to talk. “It’s not easy, I know, to uproot yourself and live in another country. Everyone thinks it’s so glamorous and exciting, but sometimes it’s just plain lonely. I remember my mother complaining about it.” She looked out the window as they negotiated the traffic out of the crowded parking lot.

“You know, that may be the first time you’ve ever mentioned your mother to me.” Press tapped his thumbs impatiently on the steering wheel.

“I guess that’s true. It just kind of came up.” Mimi looked out the window. The maple and ash trees were thick with leaves. Every time she came back to this part of central New Jersey, she was struck by how green it was, especially in June. “So do you have any roommates?” She turned back, changing the subject.

Press inched the car forward. “Nah, I decided to live alone after years of having roommates at boarding school and college.”

“Maybe that’s one reason why you’re lonely? That can’t be good if you’re trying to fit in.”

“Who said I was lonely? Anyway, you live alone.”

“That’s no recommendation.” Mimi bit her tongue. She hadn’t seen her brother since his graduation last year, and she didn’t want to fight. “So what brings you back to our fair shores now? Don’t think I’m buying your explanation about the siren call of Reunions. You were always as blasé as I was about the whole rah-rah thing.”

He breathed in noisily.

Mimi recognized New Jersey allergies.

“I don’t know,” Press said nonchalantly. “It’s been a year. I figured it was time to take a break. See some people.”

“People?”

“Sure, there’s Matt Brown. We met a ways back when we both worked at Apple Farm Country Club. You remember him, right? He graduated from Yale this year and is home in Grantham for a while.”

Mimi nodded. “I remember him—the kid who interned for Lilah with her organization in Congo. What’s he up to?” Lilah Evans was her old roommate.

“I’m not totally sure. From his Facebook page it looks like he’s going into the Peace Corps, then grad school. I thought I’d get more details, just hang out, you know?”

“Anyone else you just hanging out with?” Matt Brown was a decent enough kid, but Mimi thought there had to be a bigger draw to travel this far.

Press turned on the car radio. Katy Perry music suddenly blasted at megawatt force. “Crap. Someone’s been fooling around with the stations while I was away. I told Noreen she should drive the car to keep the battery from going flat, but she must have let Brigid play with the dials.” Brigid was their eight-year-old half-sister. “I mean, you don’t see me going into her room and mixing up her Barbies.”

Mimi smiled at his frowning face. She remembered the spats she had with him when she’d come home from boarding school and found he had swiped some of her Beanie Babies. Not that as a teenager she still played with them. It was just the principle of the thing.

He continued to fiddle with the buttons, neatly avoiding any further conversation. That was okay with Mimi. They rounded the steep curve by the gardening store, crossed the canal and entered Grantham proper, passing some modest clapboard houses from the early nineteenth century, then the university golf course on the left and some office buildings on the right. They even made the light behind the university theater where Press deftly avoided a throng of students crossing against the light. They must have stuck around after exams to work at Reunions. The hours might be long, but the money was good and the beer was free.