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Uzi was twelve the year they decided his younger brother was a genius. "They" were a group of teachers, doctors, and his dad, and Ari was gone with them for hours at a time all that summer. Uzi didn't mind at first. He was still working to teach the dog simple tricks like "stay" and "heel," because Sparkplug was pretty but kind of dumb. All dalmatians were. His grandfather had told him that, after Grandma's wedding. "Dalmatians are pretty, but kind of dumb," he'd said. "Like Polish women."
Uzi didn't know any Polish women, or any other dalmatians, so he took Pappy's word for it. Sparkplug was definitely kind of dumb, so maybe the rest of it was true.
He did other stuff that summer, like practice shooting at the BB target out on the balcony, and help Uncle Richie out at the 375th Street Y with his tennis classes, and swim laps at the Y's pool, and play Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots. He'd used to do all that with Ari, before the genius thing started, but it was fine doing it alone. It was nice to win at Robots every time, even if he also lost every time.
Ari was a very specific kind of genius, it turned out. He wasn't a financial whiz, like Dad, or a tennis pro, like Uncle Richie, or any kind of writer, like Aunt Margot ("Thank God," Pappy said, when they called the first family meeting about Ari. "I can only watch thinly-veiled versions of myself onstage so often." Aunt Margot had made the kind of face that she did, the one where you could hardly tell she was making a face at all.) Ari wasn't interested in law or archaeology either, like their grandparents. He didn't even like school, and in fact had been close to failing the fifth grade before they figured out the genius thing.
"He's a fantasy football genius," Dad announced proudly, sitting at the foot of the big table in the dining room at Archer Avenue with Ari beside him.
"A what?" Grandma asked, saying the h sound in what.
"Fantasy football," Dad said again. "You know. Online."
"I don't understand," Grandma said. "I didn't think he played football. You said it was too dangerous."
"It's online, Mom," Dad said again. "You pick players for your teams and compete with other people all over the world throughout the season. It's huge. People get obsessed."
"Is there money in it?" Pappy asked.
"Of course," Dad said. Ari grinned, Dad's hand on his shoulder.
"So it's a made-up sport," Uncle Richie said slowly, standing in the doorway.
"No," Dad said, looking perfectly annoyed. "It's real. It's just online."
So after all the meetings with teachers about why Ari never did his homework and all the meetings with doctors about whether Ari had ADD or OCD or something else with lots of letters in it, they decided he was a fantasy football genius and he got to spend all the time on the computer he wanted. Dad even bought him his own laptop, while Uzi still had to use the old desktop in the kitchen.
It was still OK, that summer. Sometimes they still went go-kart racing with Pappy and they always did their exercises together in the morning and every so often Ari would watch something on TV other than ESPN with him, like Shark Week. If there was a thunderstorm at night Uzi would always wake up with his brother in the bed with him, curled up tight on top of the covers with his butt hanging off the edge. Then school started.
After school started, everyone wanted to know why Ari only went to class half the time, and where he'd been last year. People in Uzi's year started paying more attention to him than they ever had, asking him about his brother and how much money he made and how hard it was to do fantasy football and if Uzi was a genius too. He just shrugged. He shrugged a lot, that fall.
Then there was the New York Post article. And the New York Daily News. And by the time the Times got onto the story, Ari had already had his first press conference. Dad knew what he was doing.
"I know what I'm doing, Mom," Dad said on the phone one night, while Uzi ate his lasagna at the table and Ari ate his hot dog at the computer. Ever since Ari started taking all his meals on the computer Dad had stopped making him eat salad and lasagna and everything else he didn't like, because it was too hard to type and eat at the same time. Uzi picked all the spinach out of his lasagna as he listened to his father.
"No, he's not too young," Dad said. "Well, I don't agree. I don't agree."
Uzi looked out of the dining room to the living room, where Ari lay stretched out on the couch with the laptop on his chest and his head hanging off the edge, eating his hot dog upside down. His other hand kept hitting F5 to refresh the screen. There was a big free agency coming up tonight.
"I know that, and I appreciate that, Mom," Dad said, the volume of his voice going up. He was pulling at his curly hair that looked just like Ari and Uzi's, and it was getting crazy. He used to do that when they were younger, messing up his hair and then saying "I'm going CRAAZEE!" and chasing them around the house until they fell down from laughing too hard. Back when Mom was still there.
"Mom," said Dad. "Mom. Mom. No, please do not put Mr. Sherman on the phone. No. Mom!"
Ari had finished his hot dog and was doing crunches on the couch. His laptop moved a little every time he crunched up, making Uzi nervous. Ari was never careful with things.
"Thank you, Mr. Sherman, will you please put my mother back on the phone now? Yes -- what? Of course we filed the appropriate returns. I have a personal accountant on staff."
Ari had started doing twisting crunches now, which was the next step in their exercises, except he normally didn't do them with a laptop on his chest. After three crunches it slid right off and onto the glass coffee table, which shattered into a thousand little squares of safety glass.
"ARI!" Dad bellowed, hanging up on Mr. Sherman. Ari sat up, looking a little guilty but not really.
Dad sprinted over to the living room, crunching on the pile of safety glass. He picked Ari right up off the couch like he was a little kid, then set him down on the tile of the kitchen and pulled out his hands, checking them.
"Are you OK, son?" Dad asked. "You hurt? Did you get cut?"
Ari shook his head.
"Good," Dad said. "Good." He pulled Ari close and hugged him, then kissed the top of his head.
"Sorry," Ari said, his voice muffled against Dad's tracksuit.
"Don't be," Dad said. He caught Uzi's eye. "What were you doing, Uzi, just sitting there watching?"
Uzi shrugged.
"You have to pay attention to him," Dad said. "He's your little brother. You have to take care of him."
Uzi ducked his head and nodded, but not before he said Ari turn his head to face him. It looked like Ari had his tongue out.
After the press conference, and after the coffee table, things got worse. Ari couldn't go to school, because he had to spend all his time reading up on draft picks, so Uzi had to go to Ari's teacher and get all his homework so the tutor could do it with Ari in the afternoons. Dad didn't want Ari doing anything that could hurt his hands, so Uzi did his own chores and a new housekeeper came in to do the rest. The stuff they'd started doing with Pappy, like riding horses or garbage trucks, was totally out, and it seemed like Pappy didn't call as often. Maybe he'd only liked it when there was two of them. Or maybe he'd only liked Ari. That had happened a lot in their lives.
Pappy came over for Hannukah, though. That was something they'd skipped since Mom had gone away, even though Dad was half-Jewish. This year Dad took down the heavy steel menorah that Nonny and Grandpa Evans had given Dad and Mom for their wedding, and even though they missed a couple of evenings because of draft picks or Dad being late at the office, on the last night they had noodle kugel and latkes and Pappy brought them eight presents each, to make up for the rest of the week. Most of the presents were small, because Pappy didn't make much as an elevator operator, and Uzi was pretty sure that the bottles of YooHoo had been shoplifted from the bodega down the street, but he said thank-you anyhow and meant it.
After dinner, Ari got up to go back to his computer. Pappy pulled at the tail of Ari's shirt that was sticking out.
"Whoa there," Pappy said. "Where you running off to?"
"Trade deadline," Ari said, in that brushed-off way that always worked with grown-ups.
"How 'bout you sit here with your old grandpa and play a game or something?"
"Can't," Ari said. "Trade deadline."
"Well, it can't be that important," Pappy said. "It's just the computer."
"It is," Ari said, and twisted out of Pappy's grasp.
"Hey," Dad said, and Uzi thought he was going to say something about respecting elders, but he was talking to Pappy. "It's important. Let him go."
Ari didn't say anything, just ran up the two steps to the hallway and disappeared in his bedroom.
"Well, when I was a boy -- " Pappy started.
"Your dad would've walloped you, I know," Dad said, that hard note in his voice like from before it turned out Pappy wasn't dying.
Uzi spun the cheap little wooden dreidel Pappy had brought, its point digging into the soft wood of the new coffee table, and didn't look at anyone.
Pappy shrugged, lifting his big hands. "He's your son. Hey, Uzi, wanna play some checkers?"
They had Christmas at Archer Avenue. Uncle Richie had a new girlfriend and Aunt Margot had a new boyfriend, and Uncle Raleigh was there with a new girlfriend too. It was all very weird and polite and it made Uzi feel young and confused, even though he'd been thinking all year about whether maybe he should ask Hannah Goldberg at school to be his girlfriend at the spring dance. He probably wouldn't.
Grandma didn't let Ari have his laptop at the table. He pouted all through dinner, no other word for it, with his lip stuck out. Pappy said, "Hey, is that a birdie on your lip? A big fat birdie?" and reached for it, but Ari just scowled harder.
Aunt Margot's new boyfriend was nice. His name was Arnold and he worked at the theater where her new play was going to be produced. "It's genius," Arnold said, pulling at his bow tie. He had long brown wavy hair that he kept pushing behind his ears.
"Maybe not genius," Aunt Margot said. She'd been holding the same glass of red wine all night but hadn't had drunk any of it, Uzi had noticed. "I think that word gets used too a little often, don't you, Uzi?"
"Uh," said Uzi.
"I mean, what is genius?" she asked.
"Do you want to debate the nature of genius?" Arnold said. He was smiling, and a little flushed. He'd had three glasses of red wine.
"No, I think it's ineffable," Aunt Margot said.
"So how can the word be used too often if there are no set definitions or limitations?" Arnold asked. He smiled bigger.
Aunt Margot didn't smile. Her eyes were half-closed, and she looked very serious as she leaned across the couch towards Uzi. "Trust me," she said. "Not everyone they call a genius really is one."
They both looked to Uzi's left. Ari was slumped down on the couch, pressing refresh again and again. Uzi looked back at Aunt Margot.
She tilted her head to the side. "Genius is a word that weighs things down," she said. "I think it's better to make your way without it."
"Easy for you to say," Arnold laughed. "You're a genius!"
Aunt Margot finally smiled at him, but it was one of her smiles that only looked like a smile. "Excuse me," she said, and got up to follow Uncle Richie into the kitchen. They were probably getting more snacks.
Uzi thought about being a genius all winter long, when he wasn't thinking about Hannah Goldberg. He laid on his bed and thought about what he could be a genius of. He was OK at go-kart racing and better at shooting BB guns. He had finally taught Sparkplug a few tricks, even if the dog was as pretty and stupid as a Polish woman. He was better at Metal Gear Solid than Ari was, but Ari always beat him at Call of Duty. He was the third-best basketball player in his class, and the second-best runner. He liked social studies but not math. He decided he could be really good at comic books, if you could be a genius of remembering all the different people who'd been on the different X-Men teams over the years.
By spring, he knew he was not going to be a genius of anything, and that Hannah Goldberg was not going to the dance with him. He knew that because she was going with Luke Ahrens instead, Luke had said so.
That summer two things happened: Dad started planning a party for Ari's one-year genius celebration, and Pappy died.
Pappy died first. Only Dad was in the ambulance with him, and at the funeral Uzi could tell Uncle Richie was upset about that. Aunt Margot wasn't, because she was never upset about anything. She had a new boyfriend then, another play-writer who had been in a workshop she taught, but she didn't seem to like him much better than she'd liked Arnold because they never saw him. Uncle Richie didn't have a girlfriend anymore. Neither did Uncle Raleigh.
After the funeral, Dad handed out invitations to Ari's party. Everyone just tucked them into their overcoat pockets (it was a dark, rainy day, weird for June, but it seemed right for a funeral), but Grandma had gotten mad.
"Enough with this stuff, Charles!" she'd said, and thrown her invitation on the muddy grass. "I don't understand where you're going with this. And after your father's funeral!"
Uzi didn't hear the rest of the argument, just the sounds the voices made as they carried across the graveyard. He was sitting by his mother's grave, putting little stones on top like Pappy had taught him to. Pappy had apologized for forgetting the last time they'd been there, back when he was dying-but-not-really. Uzi didn't know why Jewish people put stones on top of graves instead of flowers, and Pappy didn't know either, but before he'd left the house today he'd taken a handful of little rocks out of his turtle's tank and put them in the pocket of his tracksuit. He was stacking them up, pretending not to hear his father and grandmother, when Ari shuffled up.
"Hey," Ari said.
Uzi tipped his head up in a quick nod.
"Are you, like, mad at me?"
Uzi shook his head.
"You haven't said anything to me all day."
Uzi cleared his throat. "It's a funeral. I'm sad."
"Yeah." Ari was quiet for a moment. "You never say anything to me anymore."
Uzi shrugged.
"Are you jealous?"
Uzi shook his head. It only half-felt like lying.
"Well," Ari said. "You shouldn't be. There's another fantasy prodigy out there. He's only six."
Uzi turned to look at his brother. "Really?"
"Yeah. I read about him online last week."
"Does Dad know?"
Ari looked over his shoulder to where Dad and Grandma were still yelling at each other. Grandma's hair kept blowing into her mouth and getting stuck to her lipstick, and she kept having to pull it away.
"No," Ari said.
"You should probably tell him."
"He'd just be mad."
"Not at you."
"Maybe at me." Ari dug his hands deep in his pockets and leaned against Mom's gravestone. "I think he's disappointed I haven't made a lot of money."
"How much money could you have made?"
Ari rolled his head back and forth on his shoulders. "I don't know. Not that much. I was never trying to make money anyhow."
"I didn't think so," Uzi said. "I thought you just liked fantasy football."
"I used to," Ari said. "Now I'm kinda more into videogames."
"You should do that instead."
"Yeah," Ari said. "Hey, what are those rocks for?"
"They're what Jewish people are supposed to put on graves. Pappy showed me."
"Huh," Ari said. "Can I put a couple on?"
"Sure," Uzi said, and handed his brother the last of his stones. "You do it like this."