you do six miles?” Mrs. Robbins asked, standing behind the counter.
“Seven today,” he said.
She handed him a folded towel she had picked up from a cart of books to be reshelved.
Several months after Tim had walked out on Dianne, Alan had stopped by the library after his run. He had been missing Mrs. Robbins. She had always been good to him, accepting him into her family from the very start. He had more in common with her than Tim did – he had practically lived in libraries at Woods Hole and Cambridge, and during Tim and Dianne’s marriage, Alan and Lucinda were always talking books and ideas.
But that day, eleven years ago, he had stood there, noticing the trail of sweat dripping on the brown linoleum floor, feeling the librarian’s wrath. What had he expected? He was a McIntosh, Tim’s brother, and that fact alone was bound to set her off.
The next week he had gone home to shower first. He didn’t want to alienate Mrs. Robbins. He had realized how important she had become to him, and now she wanted nothing to do with him. Taking care of Julia, he felt the family connection more than ever, and he had come to apologize. To his surprise, Mrs. Robbins had greeted him with a striped towel.
“I’m sorry about last week,” she had said. “My evil eye is an occupational hazard.”
“You had every right,” he had said.
“No,” Mrs. Robbins had insisted, vigorously shaking her head. “You come in here sweaty anytime you want. What Tim did isn’t your fault. You do so much for Julia and Dianne.…”
Alan had started to protest, but he’d stopped himself, accepted her offer. His relationship with Dianne was tenuous, and he’d do whatever he could to guard it. He had considered the towel a one-time peace gesture, but Mrs. Robbins continued to bring it in every Wednesday afternoon.
Today he said thanks, took the towel, and found his favorite armchair. The oldest library in the state, its rooms were bright and lofty. The reading room had a stone fireplace large enough to roast an ox, and Alan settled beside it with a stack of journals to read. Clear April light flooded through the arched windows; he lost himself in the latest literature on marine mammals. And then he thought of his own family.
Their oldest brother, Neil, had loved whales. When they were only teenagers, he, Tim, and Alan had run their own whale-watching business, taking people out in their runabout to the feeding grounds off Chatham Shoals. Leaving from the steamship dock in Hyannis, they had charged ten dollars per person. It had been Neil’s idea to give full refunds, no questions asked, if they failed to spot whales or dolphins. That was Neil through and through – generous, good-hearted, and confident enough of their whale-finding abilities to know those refunds would be few and far between.
Neil died of leukemia. The summer they were sixteen and fourteen, Alan and Tim had watched their older brother slip away. Locked in the house, the curtains drawn and no one allowed to make any noise or enter Neil’s room, Neil had suffered horribly. Not just from the pain of his disease, but from isolation. He had missed the sea, the whales, the boat. He had missed his brothers. At eighteen Neil had died of leukemia, but also of a broken heart. Tim had spent the last two nights of Neil’s life sitting on the grass under his window. Alan had snuck inside to be with him.
Alan’s parents had been afraid the cancer was catching. It didn’t matter that Neil’s doctor had told them it wasn’t. They had a primal fear of the blood disease, and they had lived in terror of losing all their sons. They were simple people, a fisherman and his wife. Alan’s dad would go to sea, barely coming home at all. His mother had turned to drink.
Alan and Tim had spent the next few years caring more about fish and whales than about people. Tim had dropped out of school to lobster. Like his father, he would lose himself at sea. Alan had latched on to Malachy Condon at WHOI. The old guy was as crusty as a fisherman, but he had a Ph.D. from Columbia. Tim would steam in from a night off Nantucket, meet Alan on the docks at Woods Hole, and listen to Malachy’s colorful stories about research trips to the North Sea and the Indian Ocean. Both brothers were numb with losing Neil and the attention of their parents, and Malachy had been a steadying force.
In Alan’s senior year at Harvard, he had found himself dreaming every night of Neil. One cold November morning he ripped up his application to Woods Hole and applied to Harvard Medical School instead. Malachy had been disappointed, and Tim had thought he was crazy. Tim had had the idea they could share a boat, him catching fish and Alan studying them. He had confronted Alan on the steps of the Widener Library, wanting to talk some sense into him.
“Stick with fish,” Tim had said. “If they die, who cares?”
“Exactly,” Alan had said. “I’m studying plankton past midnight every night, and I can’t get that worked up about it. I’m going to be a doctor.”
“And do what?”
“Help people,” Alan had said, thinking of their brother, their parents.
“You want to spend your life with sick people?” Tim had shouted. “You think you can make any difference at all?”
“Yeah, I do,” Alan had said.
“Like Dr. Jerkoff did with Neil?”
“He should have talked to us,” Alan had said. “Told Mom and Dad what could happen. Helped them to understand, to prepare us better. He should have helped us help Neil die, Tim. I hate thinking of us all going through that alone.”
“What’s the difference, how it happened?” Tim had asked wildly. “He’s gone. Nothing can change it.”
“But he suffered,” Alan had said. “It didn’t have to be so bad –”
“I know he fucking suffered,” Tim had shouted, shoving Alan. “I was there. You think you have to tell me?”
“Quit acting like an asshole,” Alan had said. “Neil would hate it.”
“He’s dead,” Tim had shot back, hitting Alan’s chest with the heel of his hand.
With Neil gone, Alan was the oldest brother. Tim was tougher, but Alan was big and had never lost one of their fights. He’d stepped away, shaking with rage.
“You sat outside his window,” Alan had said. “You were afraid to go in. I want to help people not be afraid.”
“Fuck you, afraid,” Tim had said. “I’ll shove it down your throat.…”
He hooked a right, and Alan took it in the gut. Their eyes met, wide and surprised. Alan grunted and swung back, driving a left into Tim’s side. Tim moved in, and Alan tried to push him off, but Tim raked his fingers down Alan’s neck, and the brothers were rolling on the sidewalk in the middle of Harvard Yard.
Alan slammed him with a right to the head. Tim had him by the hair, and Alan jerked his arms hard to break the grip. A gash over Tim’s eye was bleeding, and Alan felt the nail marks down his throat. Springing up, he reached down to yank Tim to his feet. Tim wasn’t done fighting. He swung blindly through the blood in his eyes. Alan came to his senses.
“Hey, knock it off,” he’d said, shaking Tim by the shoulders.
Another left hook.
Alan caught it in the air. The brothers
