Strawberry Jam

By afternoon the kitchen had become its own weather. The windows over the sink were open, but the air refused to move. My mum had potpourri simmering on the stove, cinnamon and cloves trying their best to compete with the cigarette smoke that had settled into the walls years before. Along the windowsill sat a row of cobalt blue bottles she had collected from garage sales and thrift stores. Every summer afternoon the sun poured through them, casting blue across the maple floor, climbing the antique red cupboards, and catching whoever happened to be standing at the sink.

School was out for the summer. My dad was away at work and my mum had wandered over to a neighbour's house. I had been reading outside until the heat finally drove me in for a glass of water. I was standing at the sink when the screen door slammed so hard it rattled the frame.

"Andie!"

I smiled before I even turned around. My brother only yelled my name like that when he couldn't wait another second.

He came charging into the kitchen barefoot and shirtless, breathing hard from running. Sweat had flattened his thick dark hair against his forehead. Tucked against his chest with both hands was a mason jar with a strip of masking tape for a label. In careful blue handwriting someone had written Strawberry Jam.

He held it out toward me, then pulled it back with a grin.

"Open it."

He was ten years old. I was fifteen. Five years should have been enough to keep us apart, but it never seemed to matter. We rode our bikes until dusk. We disappeared into the woods for entire afternoons. He came home with scraped knees, pockets full of rocks, and questions about everything. He was smart, endlessly curious, and incapable of keeping a surprise to himself. If he had a birthday present for you, he'd tell you what it was before you had the chance to unwrap it. If he had a joke, he'd start laughing before he reached the punchline.

"Just open it," he said.

I twisted the lid.

The smell reached me first.

He folded over laughing before I had time to understand what I was smelling. Earlier that day he had somehow managed to fart into a mason jar, get the lid back on before it escaped, label it like homemade preserves, and run all the way home because he couldn't wait to watch me open it.

I slid down the cupboards until I was sitting on the floor. He landed beside me, his back against the antique red cabinets, laughing so hard he could barely breathe. The jar sat on the counter between us. Every time we settled down, one of us would look at it, the other would catch our eye, and we'd both lose it again.

Outside, the birds carried on as though it were any other summer afternoon.

Inside, my brother laughed from somewhere deep in his belly, the kind of laugh that takes over your whole body until your stomach hurts and your face aches and you can't catch your breath. I can still hear it.

My mum never knew. By the time she came home the jar was gone, the kitchen looked exactly as she'd left it, and the afternoon folded quietly into the rest of our childhood.

I don't remember what I had been reading before he interrupted me. I don't remember what we had for dinner that night. I don't remember whether we climbed back on our bikes or wandered into the woods before the sun went down. What stayed was the blue light from those bottles, the smell of cinnamon and cloves trying to outrun cigarette smoke, and my brother standing in the middle of the kitchen trying so hard not to laugh that his whole body shook.

Years later I was standing in a grocery store when I reached for a jar of strawberry jam. Before my hand touched the shelf, I heard the screen door slam. I heard my name echo through the house. I saw the blue light stretching across the floor. There he was again, still out of breath from running, holding that mason jar against his chest because he couldn't wait another minute to make his big sister laugh.

Memory has its own logic. It lets birthdays disappear and conversations fade, yet holds on to a summer afternoon that seemed, at the time, no different from any other.

My brother is still alive, and sometimes I'll remember something so small that my first instinct is to call him. It only lasts a second. Then I remember there isn't anyone else left who was standing in that kitchen with me. There are stories no one else can tell because no one else was there. Whole rooms from my childhood exist in only two minds now.

The little boy with scraped knees who ran all the way home carrying a mason jar because he thought he'd invented the funniest joke in the world was real. So was the way he looked up to me. So was the afternoon we laughed until our stomachs hurt.

I don't know what happened to the cobalt blue bottles. I don't know what happened to the mason jar. I don't know whether he remembers any of it.

I hope he remembers the blue light.

I hope he remembers sitting on the kitchen floor with his back against those antique red cupboards while the jar sat on the counter between us, and neither of us could look at it without starting all over again.

When I think of him now, I don't think of the years that came afterward.

I think of a hot summer afternoon, a screen door slamming, and a ten-year-old boy standing in a kitchen washed blue by the sun, holding a mason jar against his chest and trying with everything he had not to laugh before I took the lid off.