Free Don't Worry About the Kids by Jay Neugeboren Page A

she could know, without words, how much he loved being near her. But he was frightened that if he began telling her about Julio he wouldn’t know where to stop and that the moment he’d been hoping for would pass and never come again.
    He felt faint. He imagined a twister of frigid air swirling up the staircase, tunneling around him, wrapping him in white. He blinked, looked down, saw nothing but her mouth, her lips.
    â€œWould you like to come in for a few minutes?” she asked. “I have to get up early tomorrow to help my mother bake. Before ten o’clock mass. Then we’re going to my aunt’s house.”
    â€œI’ll be visiting my brother Julio tomorrow,” Tony stated. “He lives in a mental hospital. He’s been there for almost three years. He’s my only brother and he’s a year younger than I am. We were always very affectionate with each other.”
    Lynne cocked her head to one side, and he saw a look of such intense compassion on her face that it made him stiffen.
    â€œThat must be hard for you,” she said.
    What Tony wanted more than anything in the world was simply to hold her and to have her hold him, yet when her fingers touched his cheek, gently, he was too ashamed of himself, and too furious with her, to risk being repulsed again. What right did she have to know about Julio’s life, and why—what he would never be able to take back, he knew, and what she would surely despise him for—had he been so weak as to mention it?
    â€œI’ll see you on Monday,” he said, stepping back. He moved toward the staircase.
    â€œCall me in the morning,” she said. “All right? I’ll be home until at least nine-thirty. Please?”
    Tony slept. When he woke, near dawn, thirty years had passed. He reached over to stroke Julio’s hair, the way he often did, but Julio was not there. Tony sat up. He saw himself taking Lynne by the hand, leading her to this point in his life. They were driving north of Boston, past low rolling hills and endless green fields of gravestones. Tony’s wife was beside him, his two children in the back seat. Tony was a well-known film director, his wife a beautiful movie star who had given up her career to raise a family with him, but who, every few years, appeared in a film he made.
    They drove on, Lynne invisible, yet strapped to the rear of the car, forced to watch and to listen. Why was he so angry with her? he wondered. Even if she found out the way his imagination worked sometimes—how it could contain the craziest, most violent and most beautiful scenes at the same time—why would this scare her away? Did love and friendship have to be opposites, the way sanity and insanity were?
    When they drove past an enormous complex of tall prisonlike buildings, he explained to his children, as he did each time, that this was where their Uncle Julio had lived once upon a time. They cruised along curving tree-lined roads, stopped in front of an elegant colonial home. The front door opened and Julio appeared, smiling radiantly. He walked down the steps. Tony emerged from the car and he and his brother embraced. Julio asked him why it had taken him so long to get there.
    â€œLong?” Tony said. “But it’s only been thirty years—”
    Tony put on a bathrobe, left his room. The apartment was wonderfully still. In a few hours his parents would be eating breakfast, going through the Sunday Glohe , talking about their visit, later in the day, to Julio. It was just past five-thirty. Tony opened the refrigerator. He could eat breakfast, dress, go out and get the paper, take a walk, come home, shower, shave. Time would pass more easily if he kept busy. He didn’t want to telephone Lynne’s home before nine.

Leaving Brooklyn
    I STOOD IN THE DOORWAY of a luncheonette and watched the children playing in the schoolyard. I glanced sideways, aware of eyes. The owner’s head was in the