The Book of Joe

who turned me on. ... I don’t know. I was a kid, right?”
    “We were all kids,” I say.
    “Anyway,” Wayne continues in a dull voice, staring at Sammy’s tombstone, “it feels like I’ve spent my entire adult life hating, first Sammy and then myself instead, for having been dumb enough to hate him for something that was so clearly not anyone’s fault. Like the song says, we were just trying to breathe that fire.” Wayne’s voice breaks for a moment, and his eyes fill with tears. “Sammy,” he says, “I’ve decided to forgive myself on your behalf, since you’re not around to do it. I hope that’s okay with you, and if it’s not, tough shit. I guess you should have thought of that before you decided to kill yourself. And while I’m at it, I’ll forgive our friend Joe for you as well. I’m not sure what for, but he seems to think he needs it.”
    Wayne takes another sip of his wine and then looks up at me with a weak grin. “How was that?”
    I can feel my own eyes growing wet. “That was okay,” I say.
    Wayne leaves some flowers at the foot of the grave and we head back to the car. We drive in silence for a while, the car filled with the weight of our thoughts. “Joe.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Did you and Carly have a song?”
    I’m about to say no when I suddenly remember. “We did. I can’t believe I forgot it.”
    “What was it?”
    “ ‘No One Is to Blame.’ Howard Jones.”
    Wayne looks at me and we both smile. “That’s a good song,” he says softly, leaning his head back against the seat.
    “That’s a good fucking song to have.”

Thirty-One
    I get home at around three to find Brad in the study, sitting back in the desk chair, smoking one of my father’s pipes.
    “Hey, Joe,” he says, looking up embarrassedly as I enter. He puts the pipe down on the ashtray and grins at me sheepishly. “Sorry. I just wanted to smell that smell again.”
    “You miss him a lot, huh?”
    Brad nods. “I just can’t believe he’s gone, you know?”
    “Yeah.”
    Brad shakes his head as if to clear it. “I wanted to talk to you about something. You have a minute?”
    “Sure.”
    He looks across the desk at me, not sure how to begin.
    “Dad didn’t have a will. I don’t think he thought he’d ever die.”
    “Okay.”
    “Without a will, you and I are the legal heirs, entitled to an even split of all his assets, which are basically this house, the business, and an investment portfolio worth about two hundred thousand dollars.”
    I can see where he’s going with this, and I’m determined to head him off at the pass. “Brad, I don’t want any of Dad’s money. I don’t need it, and besides, you deserve it. I’m sure he’d want you to have it.”
    Brad nods and purses his lips. “It’s just that we’re struggling a bit, you know. The business is in the toilet, and I’ve got college for Jared to think about.”
    “Brad, really. Don’t say another word.”
    But he’s not done. “Cindy and me,” he says. “We’re having problems.”
    “Money problems?”
    He shrugs. “I used to think that we were just stressed about money. But now I think it goes a lot deeper than that.”
    “Are you talking about getting divorced?”
    “We’re not really talking at all these days.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” I say sympathetically. I wait for him to say more, but he seems stuck, which I completely understand. Brad is confiding in me, and I am suddenly terrified at the prospect of such intimacy even though I know it’s a good thing, a path to better relations. I think we both feel like impostors, posing as the kind of brothers who speak to each other about meaningful things. I wonder if he’ll talk to me about Sheila, how long it’s been going on and whether it’s a cause or an effect of his marital problems. If the conversation is headed that way, then, familial discomfort notwithstanding, I’m in. But Brad seems to have confessed all he’s about to confess to me, and just sits back in the chair and looks miserable. I could ask, I suppose, could come right out and say I saw him through the swinging doors at the Duchess, grabbing her ass like a drowning man grabs a life preserver, but I suspect I’d better not.
    Brad rests his head in his hands and rubs his eyes. “I don’t know how everything got so fucked up. One day it’s all fine, and then, I don’t know. It’s like I look at her, and she’s still in there somewhere, but I can’t get through, you