Didi
As I make the turn into the parking lot I feel a flurry of butterflies. I hope this is the right thing and that Walker won’t be mad at me. As I spot an empty space and turn into it, I catch sight of someone walking toward us and almost drive straight into the curb in shock. It’s like seeing Walker’s identical twin.
I switch off the engine and get out the car, telling Walker to stay put for a second.
“Hi,” I say, as Isaac, Walker’s brother, walks toward me.
It’s only now he’s right in front of me that I see the differences. He’s thinner than Walker, less built up, with longer, disheveled hair, and he’s an inch or two shorter. But he’s every bit as good-looking.
“You must be Didi,” he says to me, smiling, holding out a hand.
I shake it. They have the same smile. The same dimple. Different-colored eyes, though. “Hi,” I say, still marveling at the similarities.
“Isaac?”
I turn. Walker has gotten himself out of the car and is facing in our direction, frowning in confusion.
I watch Isaac reel back in shock as he takes in Walker, whose gaze is not quite hitting us but landing somewhere over my shoulder. Isaac gathers himself. “Hey, bro,” he says with a forced joviality and walks around the car toward him.
Walker scowls. Is he angry? I watch on tenterhooks. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Walker said the two of them no longer talked, but the fact is I think he needs his brother. He needs someone besides me and the other workers at the center. Though watching the two of them now, I’m wondering if I’ve overstepped the mark. Isaac hesitates for a moment, then walks forward and throws his arms around his brother, pulling him into a hug that makes my throat tighten. For a few seconds Walker’s arms stay rigid at his sides, but then he softens, the frown vanishes, and he hugs his brother back with a fierceness that takes me by surprise and makes me think of all the times he’s held me the same way.
However Walker might appear on the outside—tough, brooding, distant—I know him well enough now to know that he needs this. He needs this contact with people, this connection. Sometimes it feels like he’s holding on to me as if I’m an anchor keeping him from being swept out to sea, and I know, watching him with Isaac now, that bringing them together was absolutely the right thing to do. Maybe between the two of us we can find a way to help him.
When I found Isaac on Facebook and contacted him, all I knew was that he and Walker hadn’t talked in a few years. Walker was vague about the details. I saw from his Facebook page that Isaac lived in Miami, and when I mentioned his name to my mom she said she’d heard of him, that he’s quite a well-known artist.
Looking at the two of them embracing, Isaac holding Walker by the tops of his arms and studying him hard before pulling him back in for a second hug, I see the Walker that could have been if he hadn’t gone into the marines.
Isaac is wearing skinny jeans rolled up at the ankle and a tight-fitting T-shirt. He’s a hipsterish version of Walker; I have to suppress a smile at the thought of Walker strolling through Brooklyn talking artisan beers or indie record labels. We’ve already joked about his beard making him look less like Osama bin Laden and more like a hipster, a joke that made him even more keen for me to shave him every day. Though possibly it wasn’t just the fear of looking that way that motivated him, but what tends to happen after I’ve finished shaving him.
“I don’t get it,” Walker says now, turning his head in roughly my direction.
“We’re taking you out on Grandpa’s boat,” Isaac says.
“His boat?”
“Yeah,” Isaac says. “I bought it a few years ago.”
Walker shakes his head. “You did?”
“Yeah. Just before he died.”
Walker frowns.
“I was going to have someone sail it around to Miami, but never got round to it,” Isaac explains. “Then this girlfriend of yours got in touch with me out of the blue last week and we hatched this plan.”
Walker’s eyebrow shoots up. Was it the word girlfriend? I didn’t call myself that—I just introduced myself to Isaac as Walker’s friend—but when Walker doesn’t say anything to set him straight, I feel a rush.
“I can’t sail,” Walker says, gesturing at his eyes. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m blind.”
“Bullshit. You could sail blindfolded even when we were kids. And besides, Didi and I are going with you. We’ll do all the hard stuff.”
“Um,” I say, raising my hand, “just so you know, I’ve never sailed before.”
Isaac raises his eyebrows at the both of us. “You make me fly all the way out here and then you both make excuses? I don’t think so. I’ve spent the last day getting the boat ready. Let’s go.”
I walk around the car and let Walker take my arm, noticing the little glances Isaac keeps throwing our way. He’s rattled by seeing his brother like this, and I can tell that Walker is uneasy too, thrown by Isaac’s presence and self-conscious about being blind.
“Are you okay?” I ask under my breath as we make our way down the jetty.
He nods, but a muscle by his eye twitches.
I take in the super yachts on either side of us and am relieved when we get to the end of the jetty and find a much more modest, yet no less impressive, wooden-hulled boat. It’s freshly varnished and looks well loved.
“Chiara?” I ask, reading the name written on the glossy painted side.
“Our grandmother’s name,” Isaac explains, jumping on board and holding out a hand for me. I take it and let him pull me onto the narrow deck.
He does the same for Walker, who steps on board carefully, feeling for the railing which Isaac helps him find.
We both sit down, Walker by the steering stick thing, and me trying to stay out of the way of Isaac who’s leaping all over the boat doing stuff with ropes.
“Our grandfather met our grandmother in Italy during the war,” he explains. “He was a GI, stationed over there in ’44. She was a translator for the Allied forces.”
Isaac throws me a life jacket and then passes one to Walker. I fumble with mine, and Walker, even though he’s blind, deftly finds the nylon straps and helps me tighten them.
“He said he fell in love with her the minute he heard her voice, and then he fell in love with her all over again when he saw her.” He laughs. “She was pretty hot stuff, Grandma. But she was also married.”
“Oh,” I say, frowning at him, confused.
“After the war,” Walker carries on, picking up the story where Isaac’s left off, “Grandpa came back home, but he couldn’t get her out of his head. He only had her name—no address—but he went back to Italy on a mission to find her. It took him two months to track her down. She was living in Rome, working for the Red Cross, helping refugees find their families.”
“But what about her husband?” I ask as Isaac unties us from the jetty and gives an instruction to Walker, who takes the rope Isaac tosses into his lap and starts wrapping it around a metal hook.
“He had died at the end of the war, somewhere on the Russian front. She was a widow.”
“Happily for us,” says Walker, “or we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“They got married, moved back to America, and lived happily ever after,” Isaac says with a grin. “He said that she was the only good thing that came out of that war.”
“That’s so romantic,” I say as Isaac jumps down into the boat and starts the engine, steering us expertly out through the rows of boats toward the harbor entrance.
“Didi’s a closet romantic,” Walker laughs. “Actually, not so closet.”
I poke him in the ribs and he grins at me before turning his head toward the breeze and closing his eyes. I smile as I watch him.
“They were married forty years, had five kids, our dad was the youngest,” Isaac goes on. “After Grandma died he gave up the ghost. There was nothing physically wrong with him, but he died in his sleep six months later. Doc said it was a broken heart.”
“That’s so sad.”
“That’s the way it goes. Us Walkers, when we fall, we fall hard.” He winks at me then nods at the rope by my side. “Okay, you ready to sail?” he asks.
“Uh . . .”
“If you’re going to be part of this family, you need to learn to sail. That’s the deal.”
Part of the family? I glance at Walker. His eyes are still closed and he’s still smiling into the sun. I stand up.
“Okay,” I say. “What do I have to do?”