Builder of sandcastles, Elijah his ready First Assistant. No two castles were the same, and in that way no two days were ever the same. One day would bring the Empire State Building, the next a dragon. Danny always sketched it first on the surface of the beach. Then Elijah dug, providing sand and more sand and more and more sand until he hit the water beneath and had to move a little bit over to start again. As Danny created windows out of Popsicle sticks and towers out of turned-over buckets, Elijah would wander wide to collect shells. Sometimes the shells would be decoration and other times they would become the residents of the castle. Extended shell families, each with a name and a story. As Danny dipped his hand in water to pat the walls smooth, Elijah would explain what went on inside, making the shape and the hour more real than Danny could have ever made alone.
There would always be extra shells, and at night Elijah would line them up on the dresser, sometimes according to size, sometimes according to colour. Then he would crawl into his bed and Danny would crawl only two feet away into his own bed. From there, Danny would read Elijah a story. Whatever older-kid books Danny was reading – Narnia being chronicled, time being wrinkled – he would send through the stillness to his brother. This was supposed to put Elijah to sleep, but it never did. He always wanted to find out where his brother would take him next.
CAL DRIVES ELIJAH DOWN FROM PROVIDENCE IN HER BITCHIN’ CAMARO. It was buck-naked white until she and Elijah covered it with the primary-colour handprints of all their friends. It’s a 1979 model, the transmission is crap, and it goes from 0 to 60 in just under four minutes. But, man, once it gets to 60! The Camaro is, joyously, a convertible. Cal and Elijah zoom down I-95, blasting pop from the year of the car’s birth, swerving from lane to lane. When they can hear each other over the wind and the music, they speak Connecticut: I will not Stamford this type of behaviour. What’s Groton into you? What did Danbury his Hartford? New Haven can wait. Darien’t no place I’d rather be.
As they reach the New York state line, Elijah feels the urge to turn back. He can’t pinpoint why. It seems the wrong time to be leaving. He doesn’t want to step out of the present, this present. Because once he does, there will be college applications and college acceptances (just one will do) and the last of everything (last class, last party, last night, last day, last goodbye), and then the world will change forever and he will go to college and eventually become an adult. That is not what he wants. He does not want those complications, that change. Not now.
He tells himself to get a grip. Cal is driving him forward. Cal and everyone else will be here when he returns. It’s like he’s travelling into another dimension. Time here will stop. Because he is entering Family Standard Time. None of it will carry over to Cal, to the Camaro, to the state of Connecticut.
He will go with his brother. He will have a good time. Life will be waiting for him when he gets back. Not a bad deal.
Elijah smiles at Cal. But Cal isn’t looking. Then she turns to him as if she knows. She smiles back and blasts the music louder.
DANNY’S MOTHER DRIVES HIM. HE LIVES IN NEW YORK CITY. Therefore, he doesn’t have a car of his own. When he wants to travel far, he signs out a company car. But this time, his mother won’t hear of it. Those are her exact words – “I won’t hear of it” – as if it’s news of an ignoble death.
“Just be nice to him,” his mother is saying now. He’s heard this before. Just be nice to him. He heard it after he dared Elijah to poke the hanger in the socket. After he put glue in Elijah’s socks, telling him it was foot lotion. After he turned off the hot water while Elijah was in the shower. For the fifth time.
Elijah could have retaliated. But he never even tattled. Elijah has always taken his mother’s words to heart. Elijah can just be nice. Sometimes, Danny thinks this is all Elijah can be.
“I mean it,” his mother stresses. Then her tone shifts and Danny thinks, Yes, she does mean it.
“I worry about you.” She looks straight ahead while turning the radio down. Danny thinks it remarkable that she still doesn’t look old. “Really, I do worry about you. I worry about you both, and that you won’t have each other. There aren’t many times that I wish you were younger. But when I remember the way the two of you would get along – you cared about him so much. When he was a baby, you were always feeling his head and coming to me and saying he had a fever. Or you’d wake us up, worrying he’d been kidnapped. All night, I had to reassure you that he was OK. Staying up with the older son instead of the baby. But it was worth it. In the middle of the night, when you couldn’t sleep, you’d beg me to take you to Eli’s room. And when I did, you would sing to him. He was already asleep, and still you wanted to sing him a lullaby. I would whisper with you. It was so wonderful, even if it was three in the morning. For a few years after, you watched over him. And then something happened. And I wish I knew what it was. Because I’d undo it in a second.”
“But, Mom—”
“Don’t interrupt.” She holds up her hand. “You know it’s important to your father. It’s important to me. It’s also important to you. I don’t think you realise it yet. You both can be so nice and so smart and so generous. I just don’t understand why you can’t be that way with each other.”
Danny wants to say something to assure his mother. He wants to tell her he loves Elijah, but he’s afraid it won’t sound convincing.
So they remain silent. Eventually, Danny turns the radio up a little and Mrs Silver shifts lanes to make the airport turnoff. She asks Danny if he’s remembered his traveller’s checks, his passport, his guidebooks.
“Of course I remembered them,” Danny responds. “I’m your son, after all.”
That gets a smile. And Danny is happy, because even if he can’t do anything else right, at least he can still make his mother smile.
CAL DOESN’T WANT TO STAY FOR THE SILVER FAMILY REUNION. AFTER she speeds away in the bitchin’ Camaro, Elijah waves goodbye for a full minute before entering the airport.
He finds his mother and brother easily enough.
“So where’s your girlfriend?” Danny asks as Mrs Silver hugs Elijah tightly.
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“So where is she?” Danny is wearing a suit. For the airplane.
“She had to go.” Elijah can’t stand still. His sneakers keep squeaking on the linoleum. He doesn’t know whether it’s the suit that makes Danny look old or whether it’s just life. He is filling out, as their mother would say, as if the outline of his adult self was always there, waiting. Elijah thinks this is scary.
“I brought you danish,” Mrs Silver says, handing Elijah a white box tied with bakery string.
“You’re the greatest,” Elijah announces. And he means it. Because he knows the bakery, he can see his mother holding the number in her hand, hoping against hope that they’ll have blueberry, because that’s his favourite.
Mrs Silver blushes. Danny gazes intently at a newsstand.
“I need to buy gum,” he says.
“Oh, I have gum.” Mrs Silver’s purse is opened in a flash.
“Yeah, sugarless. I don’t want sugarless. I’ll just go get some Juicy Fruit, OK?”
“Oh,”
