Free The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens

calm, level, my eyes twitching with anger. How could I take care of Jeremy? When I left him alone for a couple hours, he needed to be rescued by Lila. I had gone to college to get away from all this crap. Now here she was pulling me back, forcing me to choose between my college education and my brother. I wanted to reach through that reinforced glass and choke her.
    â€œI can't believe how selfish you are,” she said. “I told you I'd pay you back.”
    I pulled my checkbook out of my back pocket and started writing the check as a current of rage passed through me. I smiled slightly as I imagined filling out the entire check then holding it up to the thick glass that separated us and tearing it to shreds. But deep down, I knew the truth: I needed her—not as a son needs a mother, but as a sinner needs the devil. I needed a scapegoat, someone I could point at and say, “You're responsible for this, not me.” I needed to feed my delusion that I was not my brother's keeper, that such a duty fell to our mother. I needed a place where I could store Jeremy's life, his care, a box that I could shut tight and tell myself it was where Jeremy belonged—even if I knew, deep down, that it was all a lie. I needed that thin plausibility to ease my conscience. That would be the only way I could leave Austin.
    I tore the check out and showed it to my mother. She smiled an empty smile and said, “Thank you, sweetie. You're an angel.”

I stopped at Hillview on my drive back from Austin, hoping to make some progress on my paper and have Carl sign the release that would allow me to get his file from the public defender's office. I had hoped that a visit with him might distract me from the burn in my chest left there by my mother. I trudged into Hillview, my guilty conscience weighing me down. I felt as if some vacuous force, some inexplicable gravity was sucking me backward, pulling me to the south, to Austin. I thought that running away to college would get me out of my mother's reach, but I was still too close, too easily plucked from the low branch I had chosen. What would it take to wash my hands of my mother—my brother? What price would I need to pay to leave them behind? At least for today, I thought to myself, the price was three thousand dollars in bail money.
    Janet smiled at me from her station behind the reception desk as I passed. I walked to the lounge where residents, most of whom were in wheelchairs, gathered in small clusters like chess pieces in a half-finished game. Carl sat in his usual place, his wheelchair facing the picture window, looking out at the laundry hanging from the balcony rails of the apartment building outside. I stopped short of Carl when I noticed that he had a visitor, a man who looked to be in his mid-sixties, with short, peppery hair that spiked and leaned toward the back of his head like pond reeds tipping in a breeze. The man's hand rested on Carl's forearm, and he, too, faced toward the window as they talked.
    I walked back to the reception desk, found Janet hovering over some paperwork, and asked her about the visitor. “Oh, that's Virgil,” she said. “I can't remember his last name. He's the only visitor Carl's ever had…except for you.”
    â€œAre they related?”
    â€œI don't think so. I think they're just friends. Maybe they met in prison. Maybe they were…you know…special friends.”
    â€œI didn't get the impression Carl swung that way,” I said.
    â€œHe was in prison for thirty years. That might've been the only swinging he could get.” Janet put her hand to her lips and giggled at the guilty pleasure that had escaped them.
    I smiled back at her, more in an attempt to stay on her good side than to join in her joke. “Do you think I should go back? I don't want to disturb them if they're…” I trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence.
    â€œI say go for it,” she said. “If