Shelter in Place Read Free

as reliable barman, my fresh degree. I was an autonomous, self-sufficient adult. I am a man, Claire. Here is my diploma, here is where I work. But she looked around that place as if she’d been tricked into being there.
    She shrugged and studied me the way she always did—with tender indulgence—and raised her glass. “To the graduate,” she said, mocking my mother.
    â€œWhy can’t you leave her be?” I said.
    She shook her head and looked past me to the bar. “I’ll leave her be when she stops making fools of us.”
    â€œShe doesn’t make a fool of me.”
    â€œDid you see what she was wearing? The way she drank?”
    â€œA few glasses of champagne, Claire.”
    â€œEnough to show you her bra.”
    I changed the subject.
    â€œSean Penn, too,” I said. “He’s a nice guy. Tips well.”
    Claire ignored me. “So now what, Joey?”
    In a few weeks I’d drive up the coast, camp with some friends in Big Sur, go back to Seattle, find a job somewhere. I had no other ambition, no further plan. Save for those three mean days, I’d always been happy. Was never restless the way Claire was. I’d never wanted other things the way she did.
    â€œAnd then what?”
    â€œRoam free.” I laughed.
    â€œYou’re a moron.”
    â€œMaybe I’ll come visit you.”
    â€œYou should,” she said. And then, leaning in, “Hey Joe, I met someone. We might get married.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    â€œHe’s very, very rich.”
    â€œSo what?”
    â€œYou should see our life.”
    â€œHow old is he?”
    â€œThirty-eight.”
    â€œAnd I’m the moron?”
    â€œDon’t tell Mom and Dad.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œJust don’t, okay?”
    â€œThirty-eight, Claire?”
    â€œWho cares? Come visit. You’ll see.”
    â€œMaybe I will,” I said. “And maybe I’ll put a bullet in his head.”
    She smiled and looked so far away and so much older than I would ever be.
    Driving back I wanted to tell her about the tar. I wanted to ask if it was in her, or even if she knew what it was, but I couldn’t muster the courage.
    She hated being delivered to her expensive hotel in my truck, so I made sure to pull in slow, rev the engine, tap the horn.
    It was the only power any of us ever had over my sister: our ability to humiliate her. The valets, irritated by the honking, waved me forward, but I stopped in the middle of the drive, made us a spectacle, got out and walked around to her side.
    â€œYou’re such an asshole,” she said. “My sweet bartending graduate.”
    I wrapped my arms around her and said, “I’ll see you in London, you little snob.”
    But I never saw Claire again.

8.
    A few weeks later I loaded my truck, drove west along Sunset Boulevard to the ocean, and turned north. Then it was as if I’d never lived in that city at all.
    Cut and run. Just like Claire. Just like my mother.
    The cardboard boxes were fitted neatly into the bed of the truck. My father’s old Army duffel. A blue plastic tarp covering it all, strapped down with a crisscross of orange bungee cords.
    I’m in the empty apartment, all evidence of my former life erased.
    â€œThe past is dead,” my mother once loved to say. “Sink or swim, kids. Fight or die.”
    I drove up PCH toward the future. My mother again. “Toward the future, Claire. Toward the future, Joey.” Another way of keeping her children moving, never, not for an instant, glancing back.
    â€œJoey” from a song her long-dead father once loved to sing. Not Joseph, not Joe. “Joey, Joey, Joe,” she said and sang to me for so many years. “You’ve been too long in one place.” Whispered as a lullaby and sung at great volume on so many car trips to the coast. Said it like some kind of prophecy.
    â€œJoey, Joey, Joe.