The Wire Hanger

Chapter Twenty-one

“Let go of him,” I said furiously, but David didn’t release his tight grip on Esau’s arm until the Professor gave him a nod. Esau rubbed his arm with his other hand, making it clear that he’d been hurt. The side of his mouth was beginning to swell where I’d assumed he had been hit. “What did you do to him?”

            “You know him?” Jethro asked.

            “He’s my brother!”

            An uncomfortable silence fell. The older generation still had siblings, some of them, but it was nearly unheard of in ours, and as such we were used to being viewed as little more than circus freaks at times. There was something uncanny about us – of course we weren’t identical, but the shape of our faces, our mannerisms, even our cowlicks – all of these were unnervingly similar. Noah kept looking from Esau to me as though he hadn’t quite believed I’d been telling the truth about having a brother in the first place.

            “Twins?” said Jethro, at last. His gaze never flickered away from Esau’s face.

            “Of course,” I said.

            “Doesn’t mean he’s trustworthy,” said David. Esau and I made indignant noises at the same time. My arms were beginning to ache with the wish to hug him, but it was as though we were all suspended, waiting for the axe to fall and time to resume its normal pace.

            “Perhaps,” said the Professor, “we should ask how he found us.”

            A pause followed while Esau gathered himself. I was so used to seeing him as a protective brother, the one who spoke for both of us when I could not, that it was strange seeing him so ill at ease. Somehow it was my world he had stumbled into.

            “I found a notebook,” he said finally, and my stomach dropped. “In Coby’s room. She disappeared, and I – I was so worried.” Indignation that he’d gone through my things tempered the terrible feeling in my chest at the thought of Esau worried, like all the air had gone out of my lungs.

            “But I took the page with me,” I said. “With the, well, not directions, exactly. With the Professor’s name.”

            “I traced over it,” he said, a hint of pride flashing over his face. “I guess you wrote really hard. It pressed into the page.”

            “It wasn’t me,” I said. “It was Mom. Her notebook.” Then I went mute. David shuffled from foot to foot, uncomfortably.

            The Professor said, gently, “How were you able to interpret it?”

            “I overheard my dad talking,” said Esau, sheepishly. “Well, I was eavesdropping. He got a promotion or something, and they were telling him they’d be able to find Coby, that she’d gone into the city on a train and it would be only a matter of time, that they’d absolutely find her, no question.”

            A chill went through me. Noah wouldn’t meet my eyes.

            “But I couldn’t sit around doing nothing. So I took the train too. I didn’t really understand the directions, not until I saw the street sign, but it took me a long time to get here.” His hands were shaking and I realized, suddenly, that he was thinner than the last time I’d seen him. I wondered when he’d last eaten. Hannah seemed to have the same thought, and she went wordlessly to the refrigerator and pulled out some leftover soup. 

            “But how did you get here,” David asked impatiently. “It’s not like there are signposts.”

            “But there are,” said Esau, his face brightening just a little. “Kind of. The graffiti. There was an imprint of it – you know, the coat hanger – in Coby’s notebook, and I saw it from the train, and a couple other places…in alleyways, scratched into trees.”

            I nodded. I had seen a few of the same, though not so many as Esau seemed to have. Perhaps I hadn’t been looking properly, having been blindly following Noah through the streets.

            “And I started to notice they were all facing the same direction,” said Esau. “Like blazes, when you’re trail hiking. So I just went that way. And I got close. And then I saw Coby, and tried to follow the rest of the way, but it was hard. I didn’t know you were so fast,” he said, directing the last comment towards me.

            Jethro, his arms folded, said, “It’s plausible.”

            David scoffed, but the Professor held up his hand. “More than one person has found her way here under similar circumstances. When the rest of us arrive, perhaps they can tell us more.”

            “Soup’s warm,” said Hannah, setting the bowl in front of Esau. “You look half-starved.”

            Esau looked around hesitantly before picking up the spoon, but ascertaining that nobody was about to put him back in a headlock, he began to eat. It was clear, at least to me, that he was holding back out of politeness but would have preferred to eat like a wild animal. David, Jethro, and the Professor held a murmured conference in the corner of the room, and I pulled up a chair next to Esau and watched him eat, trying to absorb the fact of his presence. It still seemed unreal, incongruous, that he should be here, in this kitchen, with me.

            And with Noah, who had slipped out of the room without my noticing.

           

            Over the next few hours, everyone made their way to the kitchen, and I grew weary of explaining who Esau was and why he was eating (a third bowl of) soup. Adah didn’t appear to recognize him, much as she hadn’t recognized me, and Esau didn’t either. I would have to remember to fill him in when I got the chance. Jezebel was the most unconcerned, saying only, “I was wondering when he was going to show up.” She glanced at me with what I thought might be a flicker of pride, but then she dropped her backpack on the floor and started cracking every joint in her body, and the moment passed.

            David hadn’t left the kitchen, and was still glowering at Esau from the corner. He couldn’t quite get over having been followed, I figured, even if he had managed to, as he explained to Jezebel, “apprehend the suspect.” All of this meant that Esau and I hadn’t had a moment alone together, and I was loath to discuss what was going on with David listening in, so Esau and I exchanged a number of loaded glances, trying to communicate telepathically. When we were younger we were almost convinced that we could. But it would have been easier to get through to him, now, with a wall between us. I could have knocked on it. Four short raps, then two together: are you okay?

            One knock for yes. Two knocks for no.

            But that was one question I already knew the answer to.