Nothing Read online

  that sometimes I can’t breathe

  when my brother’s around

  because I feel smothered,

  blank and faded

  like an old black-and-white movie

  next to a bright Technicolor one.

  Sitting next to him now,

  in this crowded Starbucks

  with everyone looking at us

  and him making sure I

  have everything I need,

  I feel amazing.

  Today, my postcard would say:

  Dear Parker,

  Big brothers are nice to have.

  Love,

  Danielle

  42 days before

  Parker

  Myrna Katz and Associates are on the telephone when I arrive for my scheduled appointment, but Myrna motions me inside, so I take my usual seat in front of her desk.

  “Tell her to join Habitat for Humanity,” Myrna says into her headset. “Tell her to sign up to help Hurricane Katrina victims in Mississippi.”

  I stare at Myrna’s “98% Track Record” sign and wonder, for the first time, about the other 2 percent. What happens to them?

  “Sorry about that, Parker,” Myrna says, putting down her headset. “Still haven’t tried the sushi platter downstairs? Hey—have you lost weight?”

  “No.”

  She folds her hands on the desk in front of her. “So, how we doin’?”

  How we doin’? Well, Myrna, here’s how we’re doin’ …

  My calc grades are in the toilet (pun intended).

  I’m in danger of losing—or may have already lost—my number-one spot to Amber Weinstein.

  I missed the last few meetings of forensics, Key Club, peer leadership, and Make-A-Wish Foundation.

  I’m dating a shiksa and haven’t told my parents.

  My father has a rare form of male breast cancer.

  I like vomiting.

  So how we doin’?

  The truth is, my carefully constructed life—the one you so meticulously crafted for me in the last four years with a big stack of my parents’ money—is falling apart.

  But, instead, I smile, and I say, “Everything’s fine.”

  41 days before

  Danielle

  I stop Foxy in the hall

  on my way to Western Civ

  and tell him I want to

  write poetry for The Cellar.

  “Okay,” he says.

  “We meet on Tuesdays.”

  Then he asks, “Is Parker okay?

  He’s been acting kinda weird lately.”

  “Why is it always about Parker?”

  I ask

  with an edge in my voice

  that I didn’t mean to be there.

  Foxy’s eyes grow as large as UFOs.

  “Um, okay, later,” he says.

  A part of me feels evil.

  A part of me feels confused.

  A part of me feels sad.

  A part of me feels

  tired.

  40 days before

  Parker

  The problem is that nobody pays attention.

  They see what they want to see. They believe what they want to believe.

  If Aaron Rosenthal let me, this is what I would write about in the new teen section of the New Jersey Jewish Ledger.

  This is how I would start it:

  Rot

  By Parker Rabinowitz

  In Environmental Club last year, a naturalist from the U.S. Forest Service talked to us about rot.

  He said sometimes trees can look healthy on the outside, but actually be dying inside. These trees fall unexpectedly during a storm.

  You see an Ivy-league-bound, athletic, straight-A future physician.

  Trees aren’t the only things that rot.

  39 days before

  Danielle

  I’m in my room writing a poem.

  I’ve always wanted to write a poem.

  I think this poem will be about

  always being in second place.

  There’s a knock on my door.

  “Parker?” I say in shock.

  He stands there for a minute

  without saying anything.

  “Um,” he finally says.

  “I just thought … never mind.”

  He walks away.

  My first instinct is to jump up

  and run after him

  and ask, “Are you okay, Parker?

  What’s wrong?

  What did you want to tell me?

  What’s the matter?

  How can I help you?”

  Instead, I work on my poem again

  about always being in second place.

  I don’t want to be in pom-poms or flags,

  I don’t want to go to medical school,

  I don’t want to see a college consultant,

  I don’t want to be someone’s little sister.

  I want to be me,

  not anybody else.

  Dear Parker,

  Big brothers may be nice to have.

  But being a little sister is hard.

  Love,

  Danielle

  38 days before

  Parker

  Dad schedules our first-ever Family Movie Night in the home-theater room.

  “We’re going to watch Exodus together,” he says.

  “Why Exodus?” Danielle asks.

  “Why not?” Dad replies. “It’s got everything … action, adventure, Jewish history, romance.” He nudges Danielle’s elbow. She giggles.

  “Does anyone want popcorn?” Mom asks. “I just made it. Peanut butter.”

  Everyone eagerly accepts a bowl of Mom’s homemade peanut butter popcorn except me.

  “You’re sure, Parker?” she asks.

  “He’s an athlete,” Dad says, popping a handful into his mouth. “He needs to make weight.”

  Mom nods knowingly. As if she understands.

  We take our seats, Dad next to Mom, placing his arm around her. He winces as he does this. The movie rolls.

  I’ve seen Exodus. Every Jewish kid in religious school has to watch it sometime. It’s a good movie, but I could be studying calc, working on the new teen section of the New Jersey Jewish Ledger, or doing any variety of homework.

  “Not too many Jews who look like that,” Dad observes when Paul Newman appears on-screen.

  “Parker does,” Danielle says. “He looks exactly like that.”

  “Well, Parker’s our resident Aryan,” Dad says, slapping my knee. “Right, pardner? That’s why we named him ‘Parker.’ He’s special.”

  I say nothing, but Danielle frowns slightly in my direction.

  Dad goes on, “When I was twelve, my father told me I could change my name if I wanted—shorten it, Anglicize it—but I decided to keep it. It was quite a thing, hearing ‘David Rabinowitz’ called at Princeton.”

  “So why didn’t you give Parker a Jewish name?” Danielle asks.

  “Because Parker’s different,” Dad says.

  “He’s not different,” she says.

  “We’re missing the movie,” I say, not because I care about the movie, but because I want them to shut up about me.

  “Do you have a cold, Parker?” Mom asks. “Your voice is really hoarse.”

  I cough. “Yeah, I do.”

  We don’t speak for the rest of the movie. By the middle of it, Dad’s fast asleep, snoring by my head.

  37 days before

  Danielle

  “Do you think Mom and Dad

  would let me go out with a no
n-Jewish boyfriend?”

  “I don’t know,” Parker answers.

  “When are you going to tell them

  about Julianne?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think you’re special?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think you’re different?”

  “No.”

  “Nobody pays attention to me.

  They only pay attention to you.”

  I’m being mean to Parker again,

  but I shouldn’t be

  because it’s not his fault

  that he’s so beautiful and smart

  and special and different

  and gifted and talented.

  “Sometimes,” he says,

  “it’s better not to have attention.”

  “Are you okay, Parker?” I ask.

  “You seem really tired.

  You can talk to me, you know.

  You can talk to me anytime.”

  I want to help Parker.

  I really do.

  I want to be a good sister.

  Not a mean one.

  He stares at me for so long

  that I feel hypnotized.

  It’s not till he releases me

  that I dare blink.

  “It’s nothing,” he says.

  36 days before

  I binge and purge every day now.

  It seems like just the other day I was doing it only a few times a week and now I can’t miss a single day.

  I can’t stop.

  35 days before

  Danielle

  Dad has a mastectomy.

  Why? Why my dad?

  How is it possible for a man to have breast cancer?

  And why is it my dad who does?

  Why him

  of all the dads in the world?

  Nobody talks about it. Ever.

  The only thing that even reminds me

  that Dad has breast cancer

  are Mom’s trips with him to the cancer center.

  I feel horrible to admit this

  but sometimes I even forget about it.

  And sometimes

  I wish I could forget about it.

  34 days before

  Parker

  Why do I not care as much as I should about Dad’s breast cancer?

  Why?

  Because it’s strange?

  Because I have my own problems?

  Because … he might die?

  Even though no one talks about it, information is not in short supply. There are brochures all around the house, as if to prevent any awkward questions. In 2007, 2,030 new cases of invasive breast cancer were diagnosed among men in the United States. Breast cancer accounts for 0.22 percent (two tenths of a percent) of cancer deaths among men.

  I thought I wanted to be a doctor.

  Why am I not more interested in Dad’s treatments, talking to his doctors, reading about his cancer, learning more, knowing more?

  Why is it that I’ve never gone to the cancer center with him and Mom?

  For the first time, I think back to the warning Myrna Katz and Associates gave me on my first day in her office, about whose goals I was satisfying by wanting to go to med school.

  33 days before

  Danielle

  Somebody pukes in the cafeteria today.

  I can’t blame them.

  They did serve Sloppy Joes in the cafeteria today.

  I watch the janitor clean up the puke.

  First, he swabs it away with paper towels.

  Then he squirts the floor with a detergent

  that smells like lemons.

  Then he wipes the floor with more paper towels.

  Then he squirts the floor with ammonia

  and washes the area with his trusty mop.

  He whistles throughout

  the washing and wiping and squirting and mopping.

  He’s having fun.

  He’s having fun cleaning up puke.

  He’s happy

  because he accomplished something

  important today.

  That makes me smile.

  32 days before

  Parker

  Mom is the chairperson of the New Jersey Jewish Music Festival. Their opening event is a recreated 1930s radio program, It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Yiddish Swing, at the Bickford Theater in the Morris Museum. She’s been planning it for two years.

  A hundred people mill around the museum lobby holding champagne flutes, while waiters walk around offering trays of finger food. Some of the women are in gowns and some of the men are in tuxedos. Everyone’s talking and laughing and eating and drinking.

  All of us are there except Dad. He’s still in the hospital.

  Mom was there for his surgery, and we’re going there tomorrow, but it feels wrong for us to be partying it up here while he’s there.

  I wonder if, in the 1930s, people’s priorities were this screwed up.

  “How does it look up there?” Mom asks me, nodding at the stage and wringing her hands. She spent months working on the stage design. She spent even more time working on her outfit.

  “It’s nice,” I say distractedly. “Shouldn’t we be at the hospital?”

  Mom stiffens. “Like I said, we’ll go tomorrow.” She looks down at her fancy shoes. “Your dad wanted us to be here.”

  “Why?” Danielle asks with her mouth furrowed into a deep scowl.

  Mom blinks furiously. “To keep up appearances,” she whispers. She looks away. “Excuse me for a minute.”

  She flees into the ladies’ room. Danielle runs after her.

  I end up watching the show by myself.

  31 days before

  Danielle

  I hate hospitals.

  I hate the smell

  I hate the people.

  I know they try to make it friendly-like

  with the nurses wearing green-and-purple paisley

  and the plush sea-foam carpeting

  and the paintings of grapes on the walls

  and the shiny glass sculptures in the waiting room

  and the fountains in the lobby.

  But it’s not friendly.

  Dad’s doing well.

  That’s what his doctors say.

  He doesn’t look well to me.

  He looks pale and skinny.

  He looks like

  I could knock him over

  just by blowing on him.

  His eyes are closed.

  He doesn’t talk.

  I don’t even think he knows we’re here.

  Mom’s in a chair by Dad’s bed

  in an ugly sweat suit,

  not her sparkly periwinkle suit

  with matching freshwater pearls

  that she wore to the Yiddish show

  even though she spent the whole three hours

  in the handicapped stall

  crying

  while I sat on the cold floor

  next to her.

  She looked nice then

  even though she was sad.

  Now she looks ugly and sad.

  Parker’s sitting in a chair in the corner

  staring at his sneakers

  so intently

  it’s as if the secrets of the universe

  are imprinted on them.

  He’s as pale and skinny

  as Dad.

  I could knock him over too

  just by blowing on him.

  I look past Dad

  out the windo
w

  at a gray sky,

  a black-tar roof,

  and an ugly parking lot.

  I wanted to come.

  Now I wish I could leave.

  Everything is

  sick,

  sad,

  and

  ugly.

  30 days before

  Parker

  My alarm rings at 5:00 a.m., but I don’t get up till 7:00 a.m. It’s the first time I can remember not beating my alarm.

  Dad asked me at the hospital yesterday to keep going to minyan without him, but I’ve missed it by oversleeping.

  I pick up Julianne at her house. She slides into my car and instead of giving me a huge kiss like she usually does, she says, “Oh, Parker, you don’t look so good. Your face is almost … yellow. Are you okay?”

  “It’s nothing!” I snap. “I’m fine, okay?”

  I’m instantly sorry, when all she did was ask me if I was okay, but I don’t apologize.

  We drive to school in silence. Before it was renovated in 1999, Livingstone High School was nothing special, but today it has a green-trimmed brick façade and glass atrium like the Short Hills Mall does. The digital sign out front brags about it being named one of the best schools in the United States by Newsweek magazine.

  I want to run away from this place. Right now, as far as I can get, with Julianne, and never come back. But instead, like a pre-programmed good-kid robot, I pull into the parking lot. When I finally turn to look at Julianne, I see she’s crying quietly.

  She opens her door and races away. I chase her and shout, even though it rips my throat apart, “Julianne! Julianne! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  She stops. She looks up at me, crying, and says, “You’re so moody all the time, Parker, and you never tell me anything. I … I don’t think you really like me.”

  “No. No,” I say. “I love you. I need you.”

  She sniffles loudly. “I love you too, Parker, but … you’re so hard to get along with.” She gives me a pleading look. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

  I think about it. I think about telling her everything.

  I reply, “Nothing’s wrong. Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

  29 days before