Brother and Sister (4 page)

Then Bob appeared in the living room doorway, grinning fatuously. “Hi, folks,” he said.

Angie could only stare at him.

Paul got to his feet slowly, glaring at the boy. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “Don’t you have a brain in your head?”

Bob stopped, open-mouthed. “Oh, golly!” he said. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, I forgot! I’m sorry
--
Paul, Angie, I’m really sorry, truly I am. I just completely forgot.”

“You better forget yourself right on out of here,” Paul told him angrily.

“Hey, now, wait a second!”

“Never mind ‘wait a second’,” Paul said. “Just get out.” He strode across the room to Bob. “Go on,” he said. “Take off.”

Bob looked over Paul’s shoulder at Angie, his eyes wide with surprise. “Angie! Tell him to stop this. Tell him it’s okay for me to be here.”

Paul reached out and shoved the other boy, saying, “Just leave Angie alone. She’s had a rough time today. We don’t need idiots like you coming around to make things worse.”

“Angie!”

Angie looked from one to the other. She felt the nerves in her body tightening, coiling harder and harder like the mainspring of a watch. She hung onto the arms of the chair, afraid she was going to burst apart any second now.

Because Bob brought it all back. All the guilt, terror, loneliness and self-pity that had gradually been soothed out of her by the quiet, reassuring presence of Paul was all coming back now. Bob’s presence had brought it crashing in upon her again. The betrayal of her parents, when first she had heard of their deaths, when she had used the knowledge to avoid committing herself with Bob. The second betrayal lay in her happiness at Paul’s having come home. And the third betrayal had occurred today when she hadn’t even accompanied her parents to the cemetery, and had made it impossible for Paul to go to the cemetery, either.

Paul’s strength, his calm presence, had soothed her and made her forget these things, or at least had kept her from dwelling on them. But now Bob was here, bringing the raucous sight and sound of the non-grieving world, bringing with him the strong reminders of guilt.

And. he was calling to
her
for help. He was looking over Paul’s shoulder at her and calling to her to turn against her brother. She couldn’t do it. Even if she’d wanted him to stay, she couldn’t turn against her brother.

And she didn’t want him to stay. She didn’t want him near her at all, not now, not for a long time.

But the old ambivalence was on her again. She couldn’t say yes to Bob, she couldn’t be what he wanted her to be. But at the same time, she couldn’t say no, either. She couldn’t simply end the relationship. She couldn’t tell him definitely that it was all over between them. She didn’t know which she wanted, not really, and until she did it was impossible for her to say anything at all.

“Angie!” he called again. Paul pushed him once more, saying, “Leave Angie alone, damn it! Just leave her alone!”

“Quit shoving me!” shouted Bob, beginning to get angry. “Let Angie talk for herself. You aren’t her father.”

Paul stopped dead and stared at the other boy. At last, he said, softly, “You just keep putting your foot in it this morning, don’t you?”

“If you’d get off my back for a minute
--
” Bob started.

“I’ll get off your back,” Paul interrupted him, “as soon you get the hell out of here.”

“Why?” Bob demanded. “Why should I get out? Angie and I are engaged. We’re going to be married. I
ought
to be here now. Ask her yourself.”

“For Christ’s sake,” said Paul, “Angie’s only seventeen old. What do you mean, she’s going to marry you? She’s got years yet before she has to decide about marrying
anybody.
Right now, you’re just a guy she went steady with in high school, that’s all. And you don’t have any place in this house now.
Nobody
has any place in this house until Angie and I say so.”

“Then
ask
her!” cried Bob.

“I’m not going to ask her anything. You leave her out of this. She’s had a rough time and you’re just making it rougher.”

Bob looked over to Angie again. “Tell him, Angie,” he pleaded. “Tell him it’s okay
--
”

Paul shoved him again, harder this time, so that Bob almost lost his balance, flailing his arms for a second before catching himself against the wall. “I told you,” Paul said angrily, “to leave her alone. I’m not going tell you again.”

Bob ignored him. “Angie
--
”

Paul slapped him across the face with an open hand. “Leave her
alone!
”

Bob, stunned into silence, raised his hand to a cheek made red by Paul’s slap. “You better be careful, Paul,” he said. “You better be damn good and careful.”

“Out you go, you stupid little twerp,” Paul said and grabbed his arm.

Bob twisted away and pushed Paul to the side. “Cut it out.” He started toward Angie, saying, “You haven’t said a word, Angie. Do
you
want me to leave, or do you want me to stay?”

Angie looked up at him, her mouth working. She didn’t know what to answer. She couldn’t say a word.

Paul leaped after Bob and spun him around. “Now. Goddamn you
--
”

Then the two of them started a strange, slow, grotesque dance in the living room. Neither one really wanted an open fight, so no punches were exchanged. They merely pushed and shoved at one another, Paul trying to maneuver Bob toward the front door, and Bob trying to work back toward Angie.

Angie watched them, hearing the labored sound of their breathing and the scuff of their feet against the rug, seeing the tense, angry expressions on their faces, watching them move around one another, pushing and being pushed, and she wanted to scream. But any sound, any word she might utter, would be a commitment in one direction or the other. And she couldn’t do it. All she could do was sit there, her face pale and terror-stricken, watching her brother and the boy she was supposed to marry build themselves up slowly to a real fight.

The first punch was thrown by Paul, a hard, short chop to Bob’s chest, still more of a shove than a punch, and Bob replied immediately with a fist to Paul’s ribs. Then the fight began in earnest.

Paul was taller, heavier and older than the other boy, and in somewhat better condition, but Bob was just as sullenly enraged as he was, and it was a nearly even fight. They stood toe to toe at first, slogging each other in the chest, ribs, stomach and arms, neither of them hitting for the face, neither of them giving an inch.

It was the gradual development of the fight that was the most terrifying part for Angie. She knew that neither one of them really wanted to fight, and that all it would take at any moment was one word from her to make them stop. First, they had just been pushing one another, harder and harder, and now they were punching one another, but not aiming for the face yet, as though that would have been a step farther, as though they were still trying to hold back, still waiting for Angie to speak.

Gradually, Bob was forced backward, Paul circling him, driving him slowly but steadily toward the door. Neither of them said a word
--
they only moved grimly toward one another, their faces set and hard.

Then Paul caught Bob with a hard left to the side, just above the belt, and Angie saw Bob’s face twist with pain. Bob backed away, trying to protect himself, and Paul pressed in on him till Bob lashed out and hit Paul high on the right cheek, just below the eye. Paul stepped back but Bob moved in on him again. Paul stood him off with a fast left jab to the ribs and came driving across with a right that caught Bob on the side of the jaw and sent him reeling back against the wall.

Angie thought for a second that Bob was unconscious, knocked out but still upright only because of the wall. Bob’s legs were buckling, his arms were dropping to his sides. Then he bowed his head forward, shaking it, suddenly pushing himself away from the wall and lunging after Paul again. He ducked away from a whistling right hand and bowled into Paul. They crashed over an armchair and fell heavily to the floor, Bob on top.

But Paul threw Bob off and scrambled to his feet in one smooth-flowing motion. He turned, came wading back in and reached Bob before he was completely
standing again. Paul’s arms pinwheeled, left and right
savagely clubbing Bob back across the room, until Bob stumbled backwards, throwing his arms out to the sides for balance, and Paul smashed his right fist into Bob’s unprotected face.

Bob fell like a tree, this time not trying to get up again. Paul stood over him a minute, breathing heavily, then reached down and dragged Bob upright. Bob was only half-conscious. Paul half-carried and half-pulled him to the door, then shoved him out onto the porch. Angie, looking terrified through the window, saw Bob save himself from falling down the stoop by grabbing desperately at the porch post. Paul shouted something at him, Angie couldn’t hear what, and Bob went down the steps unsteadily and out to the sidewalk. Without looking back, he turned right and walked out of sight.

Paul came back in after a minute, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands. He looked at Angie. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I tried to make him go. I didn’t want anything like that.”

“I know,” said Angie.

Paul looked around the room as though embarrassed and said, “I’ll make you some more tea.” He left the room, heading for the kitchen.

Angie remained seated in the chair. She hadn’t acted, she hadn’t spoken, she hadn’t made a choice. But non-action had turned out to be action after all; silence had turned out to be louder than any words could have been. In making no choice, she had still chosen.

Bob was gone. The decision had been taken out of her hands. Paul had made the decision for her and she hadn’t had to do a thing.

It didn’t matter whether it was the right decision or not. She hadn’t had to make it, that was the important thing, and she was more grateful to Paul than she could have said.

FOUR

Danny McCann was a happy drunk. “I tell you, Paul,” he said happily, “the beer ads are right. Enjoy life
--
every golden minute of it. Drink booze
--
every golden drop of it.” He suited the action to the words by chugalugging a glass of the foamy brew.

It was Saturday afternoon, three days after the funeral. Paul had stayed at home with Angie until today, but gradually the oppressive emptiness of the house had gotten to him. This afternoon he’d called Danny McCann, a high school buddy of his, back in circulation now after being given an undesirable discharge from the Army six months ago.

They had met here, in Joe King’s Happi-Tyme Tavern, at two o’clock. Danny had arrived first, had gone to work immediately, and now, a little past five, he had a healthy glow on. Danny McCann had always been a ne’er-do-well, had always cheerfully admitted it, had never suffered pangs of guilt or shame or inferiority at being tossed out of school or fired from jobs or found undesirable by the Army.
“I
found the Army undesirable, too,” was his standard comment.

“I’d like to enjoy life,” Paul told him in answer to his remark. “I really would. But all I’ve got is a thirty-day leave, and five days of that are gone already.”

“I tell you the way it is, Paul,” said Danny. He was a short, chubby, round-faced type. Though only twenty- one, his rather bulbous nose was beginning to show the redness that would flower into alcoholic scarlet before he was forty. “I’ll tell you the way it is,” he repeated. “In the Army, I was what they call a guardhouse lawyer. That’s exactly what I was. I took the UCMJ and I read it the way other guys read
Confidential.
I read that thing backwards and forwards, and if there was an angle around, I knew about it. And do you know what? There’s an angle around for you.”

Paul looked at him with renewed interest. “There is? Such as what?”

“Such as the thing they call the hardship discharge,” Danny told him.

“Don’t be silly. What hardship?”

“Don’t tell me ‘don’t be silly’
--
I know what I’m talking about. How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Okay then, you’re legally an adult, right?”

Paul grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “Legally,” he said. “I guess so.”

“Right,” said Danny. “And Angie, how old is she? Sixteen?”

“No. Seventeen.”

“Just as good. Legally, she’s a child, right? What they call a minor.”

“Yeah,” said Paul. “I suppose so. If you say so.”

“I say so. Now, there isn’t anybody else in the immediate family, is there? There’s just you two. I don’t mean uncles or aunts or anybody like that. I mean
immediate
family.”

Paul nodded. “Just Angie and me.”

“Right,” said Danny. “And Angie isn’t married or anything. You are Angie’s only adult in the immediate family.”

“So what?”

“So she needs your protection, that’s what. That’s one of the gizmoes in the hardship discharge. If you are the only remaining adult in the immediate family, and there are minors in the immediate family who need you near them for protection and support
--
to be like a guardian
--
then you can apply for a hardship discharge.”

“Sure,” said Paul. “You can apply for the moon, too.”

Danny shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “Don’t take the chance
--
don’t try it. Go on back to Germany when your leave’s up.”

“Wait a second,” said Paul. “How does this work? How would I go about applying? I mean, if I wanted to.”

“You go to the Red Cross,” Danny said. “And right now, you go to the bar. It’s your round.”