The Things a Brother Knows Read Online Free

cheerfully calls out,
Boaz? Honey? Bo?
    He shouts back,
I’m sleeping
.
    Not that I’ve never wanted to shout at Mom like that. Sure I have. In the days before I had a phone with an alarm feature, Mom used to have to wake me for school. She’d pull the shades and sing a little song.
    Wake-ee-up-ee-oo-my-little-Levi
 …
    I wanted to grab something and hurl it at her.
    But I didn’t. And Boaz does. This is just what he’s doing when he uses that voice with Mom. He’s hurling something her way, something heavy enough to hurt her.
    He never used to use that voice with her. He used to be affectionate. He’d hug her or hold her hand in public long after I’d be caught dead doing either. He called her “Ma.”
    I can see how it hurts now as she walks down the hall, but then she’ll perk up, because after all, he’s home. And home holed up in his room all day not talking or eating beats being thousands and thousands of miles away, in danger’s path. Not writing or calling.
    Abba’s about to blow. He’s not as patient or understanding as Mom. Or maybe the operative word is
clueless
.
    This morning, he slammed his fist on the breakfast table.
    “Benzona!”
    I love it when he swears in Hebrew. It never sounds like anything all that bad. For example, to my ear,
benzona
sounds like an Italian pastry. But then I’ll go look it up online.
    What he’d just said, in the presence of my mother, was “Son of a whore.” And he said this while he was looking up at the ceiling, at Boaz’s room. So … he’d just called Mom someone who has sex for money. Which was kind of uncalledfor. I mean, the woman just made him an egg-white omelet, for Christ’s sake.
    Fortunately, I don’t think she ever bothers to translate.
    Abba ran his hands through his thinning hair. “When is he going to come down? He can’t stay up there forever.”
    “He just needs a little rest, Reuben. That’s all.”
    Sometimes I forget he’s home. I’ll be in class staring at the back of Rebecca Walsh’s silky hair, or in line at the cafeteria, or home watching TV, or in bed, or out on the roof, and I’ll forget.
    Then I’ll remember. Boaz is home.
    And I feel like a shitty brother for the forgetting.
    It’s Friday night. Shabbat.
    I hear the buzz of his electric clippers and then the shower in our bathroom.
    Dov’s coming for dinner and Boaz must finally be planning on coming downstairs. I think he knows if he didn’t, Dov would break down his door and seriously kick his ass.
    Dinner is something we were never allowed to skip back when the normal rules applied. We always came home in time for dinner.
    It’s Abba’s thing, dinner is, even if he never does the cooking. He believes in it as much as he believes in anything. He grew up on a kibbutz, and while he claims to have enjoyed the communal life—the freedom, the constant stream of barefoot children chasing after balls that belonged to the lot of them—he missed sitting down to a family dinner. Most often he ate in the dining hall with his friends, and while thissounds like heaven to me, it left Abba with some sort of hole in him it’s our job to fix.
    Tonight the house is full of the smell of Mom’s roasting chicken.
    Dov never arrives empty-handed. He’s brought some food from the Armenian. That’s what he calls the little deli in his neighborhood. The owner, Mr. Kurjian, is the closest thing Dov’s got to a friend.
    “Give me whatever’s good,” he says and hands Mr. Kurjian his empty basket.
    Today it’s stuffed grape leaves, some pizzalike flat bread with spices, and a white cheese that’s too runny to cut with a knife.
    “Try this,” Dov says as I help him lay his goods out on the table. “It’s nice and salty.”
    Abba walks in and they launch into Hebrew.
    I pour myself a root beer. Take my time collecting ice cubes, lingering in front of the open freezer door. I try to pick out a word, a phrase, anything familiar. All those Sundays trapped in Hebrew school. Did I