Everything Changes

were hard on him.”
    “He lied to us.”
    She looks up at me, shaking her head. “You know, Zack, even when someone is deserving of your anger, they’re still deserving of compassion. It’s hard to pull off, believe me—no one knows that more than me. And if you’re only going to pull it off a handful of times in your life, why not for family?”
    “He’s not your family,” I say.
    “You and your brothers make him my family.”
    I head down the stairs to the basement, where Norm is asleep on the pullout couch, still wearing his shirt, his belly rising and falling with his loud snores. Without the benefit of its usual, exaggerated animation, I can, for the first time, actually study his face, the lines of his jaw beneath his retreating jowls, the droop of his nose, the humorless set of his thin lips, almost a grimace. His face in repose is the face of a stranger. Holding my breath, I sit down at the edge of the bed, wincing as the springs groan and pop under my added weight. When the bed has settled, I stare at his face in the weak light from the upstairs hall, trying to feel some kind of connection to this unfathomable man. I lie down on my back, my head just inches from his heaving middle, looking at the speckled, water-stained drop ceiling. Matt, Pete, and I used to take the cushions off the couch down here and line them up, performing flips and somersaults while Norm sat at his desk in the far corner, scribbling a numeric score on his pad after each leap, then holding it up solemnly for us to see. He dubbed it the Basement Olympics, and in between scoring, he was also the announcer, assigning ridiculous names to our stunts, like the Triple Toilet Spin, or the Reverse Headbanger. Over time, we figured out that he scored higher for relative risk, regardless of execution, and Matt and I would try anything outrageous in our quest for second place. Pete always came in first.
    “Remember the Basement Olympics, Dad?” I say. He doesn’t respond. “I haven’t thought about that in forever.” I talk to his sleeping form for a while, recalling events from my childhood, telling him secrets I could never tell him if he were awake, until I feel my eyes growing heavy, my breath hollow and coming from far away. “We’ll talk in the morning, Dad,” I say. “We’ll work it out.”
    But we won’t. Because in the morning, Norm is gone with all of his stuff, and I find a note taped to the bathroom mirror.
Please take care of him. His birthday is February 19, and he loves soft ice cream (chocolate) and the Justice League of America. I’m sorry. If all it took was the love in my heart, I’d be father of the year.
I study my reaction aggressively in the mirror above the note. Under no circumstances should I be surprised. Then, leaving the note where it is, like a valuable clue that shouldn’t be touched, I head upstairs, figuring I’ll give him a few hours to change his mind before I call Matt.

Chapter 40
    “I knew there had to be a hidden agenda,” Matt says. He’s sitting on the couch, leaning forward on his knees, fidgeting agitatedly with the zipper on the pocket of his worn cargo pants. “Son of a bitch,” he says. “If there was ever someone not qualified to have another kid . . .” His voice trails off. It’s about three in the afternoon. It took me the better part of the day to track Matt down, as his cell phone service was recently suspended for lack of payment. Ultimately, I located Otto and enlisted him to go out on foot and find him, implying a dire family emergency.
    “He’s our brother,” Pete informs Matt solemnly, for approximately the fifth time. “Our half brother. We all have the same father.”
    “I get it, Pete,” Matt says testily, then quickly shakes Pete’s knee on the couch beside him. “I’m sorry. I’m just a little shocked.”
    The three of us are sitting in the living room in the waning hours of the afternoon, discussing the situation, while Lela noisily stores fresh groceries in the kitchen. She made it clear that this was strictly a brothers’ meeting and, having thus ousted herself, strains to eavesdrop effectively from behind the swinging door.
    “Any idea where Norm went?” Matt says.
    “Nope,” I say. “A while back he mentioned some business in Florida, which might have been true, or might have been another lie.”
    “Part of the whole grand scheme,” Matt says, nodding thoughtfully. I’d expected anger and recrimination, furious rants against