Brother and Sister (8 page)

McDougall looked shocked and hurt. “I’m not saying that at all, my boy,” he said. “And you won’t want to make that kind of statement in front of a magistrate or you’ll be cited. I’m simply saying that your claims and your uncle’s claims cancel one another out. That leaves only the fact that your uncle is a reputable businessman and you are a young boy. Quite frankly, I would guess that a magistrate would give the house to your uncle, but would acknowledge your claim by requiring your uncle to make a cash settlement with you for, say, half the assessed value of the house.”

“I don’t have to give anybody a penny for that house!” shouted Uncle James. “It’s mine as it stands!”

“I think you will, Jimmy,” McDougall told him gently, “if the magistrate says so.”

Paul got to his feet. “If that’s the offer you brought me here for,” he said, “the answer is no. I don’t want any money at all. All I want is my house. And I’m going to keep it.”

“I assure you, Paul,” said McDougall, “the magistrate
--
”

“You just take it before a magistrate,” Paul told him angrily, “and see what he says.” He gathered up his documents from the lawyer’s desk and held up the deed. “You’re a lawyer,” he said. “You ought to know what this is. And just what the hell kind of claim has my uncle got against this?”

Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Angie who had sat silent and white-faced throughout the interview and said, “Come on, Angie, let’s go home.” He glared at his uncle.
“Our
home,” he said. “Angie’s and mine.” And the two of them marched out of the lawyer’s office.

***

There was mail in the box when they got home. A long business-size envelope, with a Washington return address. The Air Force.

Angie was the one who got it out of the box and brought it to Paul. “Paul!” she cried. “Look at this!”

He took it from her. Noticing the return address he felt himself suddenly start to tremble. It was the answer, he knew it.

And if the answer were no? Then Uncle James would get the house. Then Paul would have to leave home again, this time forever. Because there wouldn’t be any home tor him to come back to.

It couldn’t be no, it just couldn’t.

“Open it!” cried Angie excitedly. “Open it!”

He did so, with trembling fingers, reading the letter while Angie watched his face. Then he looked at her and grinned. “I’ve got it,” he said.

“Oh, Paul!”

“I’ve got it. I’ve
got
it! I have to report to Manhattan Beach Air Force Station in Brooklyn to be discharged. Then I’ll be home for good.”

“Paul! Oh, thank God, Paul!”

She leaped into his arms, crying with happiness. He laughed and patted her back, and then they did a little dance around the living room floor. Paul stopped at last, holding her hands in his, saying, “Chicken, tonight we celebrate! By God, tonight we celebrate! We’re going
into town--
wait, just let me call Danny. I’ll borrow his car. He won’t need it tonight. We’ll go to a big restaurant, have dinner, then go to a movie downtown
--
by golly, we’re going to make a night of it, just the two of us! How about that?”

“How about that?” she cried, laughing.

***

They didn’t get back home till almost three in the morning. It had been a great night on the town, with dinner, a movie, drinks and dancing at a place called Ricky’s. They’d danced together and drunk toasts to one another until Ricky’s closed at two o’clock. Then, exhausted and a little high and so happy they couldn’t believe it, they’d piled into Danny’s old car and driven back out to Thornbridge.

At the house, Paul drove the car into the driveway and stopped. He didn’t have to return it till tomorrow morning. He turned off the lights and the engine, and swung around to look at his sister. He thought then, looking at her in the faint illumination from the street light down the block, that she was probably the prett
iest--
no, the loveliest
--girl he had ever seen in his entire
life.

He grinned at her. “It’s like old times for me. Like taking my best girl home from a date.”

She smiled hack at him, her eyes luminous in the near darkness. “It’s more like we’re married,” she said. “Because you’re coming right on home with me.”

“No,” he said. “It’s like a date. We went out and had a good time and now I’ve driven you home. And, of course, I always kiss my girl friends good night at their door.”

“Do you?”

“Well, sure.” He felt the sudden desire to kiss her; to know what his sister’s lips were like, to know how it would feel to hold her in his arms. Still grinning, still as though it were part of the joke, he said, “I
always
kiss my girl good night,” and he reached out for her, tentatively, waiting for her to make some joking response and push him away, as though she were shy, as though it were their first date or something.

But she didn’t. She moved closer to him in the car, her eyes brighter, her smile gentler. She whispered, “I think that’s a very good rule, Mister Dane, I really do.”

“You can call me Paul,” he said.

“Paul,” she whispered.

Then he kissed her.

It was supposed to be a joke, just a kind of funny gag at the end of the evening, but it wasn’t. She came into his arms. Her lips were soft and warm and exciting against his. Before he knew it, it was a real kiss and she was pressed close to him, her breasts separate pressures against his chest, her waist a lithe slimness to his arm, her mouth electric against his, her lips parted for his tongue.

The kiss went on, igniting a sudden fire in his loins, and it was with a conscious effort that he brought himself back to the knowledge that this was his sister in his arms, his sister toward whom that fire in the loins was forbidden. With a physical strain he forced himself to end the kiss and pull back away from her.

He forced himself to laugh, as though it had really been the joke he had intended. “There,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice from shaking. “That’s what I call a kiss.”

“Wow, Mister Dane,” she said, her voice shaking, her smile unsteady, “do you kiss all the girls like that?”

“Only my best girl,” he said. It came out much more serious than he had intended.

He turned away suddenly, opening the car door, saying over his shoulder, “Hey, it’s late. We better get to
--
get into the house.”

Which made it the very first time he had ever felt awkward about mentioning bed to his sister.

What the hell is this?
he thought.
What the hell are we doing?

They left the car, walking together around to the front of the house and up the stoop and across the porch and into the house. Paul locked the front door as he did every night.

“Do you want a cup of coffee or something before you go
--
upstairs?” Angie asked self-consciously.

She, too,
he thought, wondering.

He looked at her, knowing he’d better get away from her for a while. “No,” he said. “I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll just go straight on upstairs.”

“Okay,” she said. “I
--
I think I’ll make myself a cup of hot chocolate before I come up.”

“Okay. Uh, good night.”

“Good night,” she said.

They were stiff and uneasy with one another now. Paul hesitated a second longer, then hurried upstairs and into his bedroom, closing the door behind him.

He undressed quickly and crawled into bed. And lay there for a long time staring at the ceiling.

I better grab me something while I’m in New York,
he thought.
It’s been too long. My own sister. Jesus!

But she wanted it, too.

He forced that thought firmly from his mind.

SEVEN

Angie started work on Monday. Paul had left Friday for New York, to be discharged, and didn’t expect to be back before Tuesday at the earliest. He’d promised to call Monday night and let her know when to expect him home. Accordingly, she hurried straight home after her first day of work and waited by the telephone until eight-thirty. When he called, he told her he’d be back late Tuesday night, probably after midnight.

But somebody else showed up Tuesday night, earlier than Paul. Uncle James. He arrived at seven o’clock, just as Angie was washing her dinner dishes.

Angie opened the door, and when she saw who it was she said immediately, “Paul isn’t here. He won’t be back until tomorrow.”

“It isn’t Paul I want to talk to,” he said, pushing his way into the house. “It’s you.”

She felt frightened of Uncle James. She’d always been frightened of him, he was such a gruff, purposeful, angry man. And he had never in his life been as gruff, angry and purposeful as he was now. This was no good.

In the living room, he sat on the sofa and said, “Sit down, Angie. I want to talk to you a little bit.”

“Paul is the one you should talk to, Uncle James,” she said. “I don’t know anything about all this.”

“No. You’re the one I want to talk to. Because if anybody can put some sense into the head of that brother of yours, it’s you.”

“Honestly, Uncle James
--
”

“Just hear me out, if you please. Now, I want to tell you one or two things about your brother, and I don’t want you flying off the handle and getting sore at me. I’m not a tactful man and I’ve never claimed to be. I’m a plain-speaking man and I intend to speak plainly to you.”

She sat down across the room from him, resigned to the inevitable. Only she wished he’d waited until Paul was at home.

“Here’s the thing,” said Uncle James. “I know a bit about what your brother’s been doing since he got home from the Air Force, and it isn’t very good. He’s been spending most of his time boozing with a lot of wastrels
and bar hounds and--
”

“Not any more, Uncle James. He
--
”

“Just let me finish, please. He hasn’t done anything about looking for work. He’s loafed his time away, he’s taken up with a shiftless crowd, and he’s become sullen toward his relatives. Now here’s the thing. If that boy manages to get this house away from me, you know what’s going to happen? He isn’t going to be able to support it. He isn’t going to be able to keep it up properly. The house is going to deteriorate, it’s going to have its value drop steadily downward, and before too long Paul is going to lose it. He’ll lose it to the tax assessor for non-payment, or he’
ll gamble it away--
”

“Paul doesn’t gamble!”

“
--
or,” continued Uncle James, ignoring her interruption, “he’ll sell it for less than it’s worth just to get his hands on some money so he can go on loafing and not have to go to work. I know what I’m talking ab
out--
you can take my word for it. I don’t want to see that happen. I put a lot of good money into this house. So long as your father had it that was one thing, but to leave it in the hands of an irresponsible boy is something else again entirely.”

“I don’t see why you’re talking to me about it,” said Angie. “It’s up to Paul.”

“You’re a sensible girl, Angie,” said Uncle James earnestly. “You’ve always been level-headed, and I thought you might be able to talk some sense into your brother, if you saw the way things were. This isn’t any kind of a life for you two kids. You’ve got a job down in the city now, I hear, and that means you’ll be wanting to move to an apartment in the city. Besides, Paul is going to have to strike out on his own sooner or later. Neither of you kids needs this house. Believe me, it’s a millstone around your necks.”

“I’m not going to move into an apartment,” she said. “I’m going to stay right here. And so is Paul.”

Uncle James was visibly trying to control his temper. “But don’t you s
ee--? What the hell do yo
u
want
with a big place like this, for God’s sake?”

“It’s our home,” she said simply.

“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “I just don’t know. I thought I could talk sensibly to you, but apparently your brother’s filled your head with the same kind of nonsense
--
”

“My brother,” she said, her fear of her uncle fading before anger, “hasn’t filled my head with any sort of nonsense. This is our home. It’s
my
home. I don’t want to move away from it and neither does Paul. And if you want to talk about it, you should talk to Paul. I don’t know anything about it. All I know is that this is my home, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself, trying to take it away from me.”

“Goddamn it!” cried Uncle James, leaping to his feet. “What do you mean,
your
home? I paid for every brick, every stick of lumber that went into this house. What do you mean, your home?”

“You stop that!” cried Angie, getting panicky at the rage in her uncle’s face. “Leave me alone, or I’ll call the police!”

“We’ll see who’ll call the police,” he snarled. “We’ll just see what happens when I take you and that smart aleck punk of a brother of yours to court.”

“Do what you want,” she wailed, despairing. “Just leave me alone,
please!
It’s Paul you want to talk to, not me.” All at once she was crying, not having known that she was going to cry, not wanting to cry, not wanting Uncle James to see her so weak and defenseless. “Talk to Paul,” she wailed. “Talk to Paul and leave me alone!”

But her tears, unplanned and unwanted though they might have been, finally turned the trick. Uncle James hesitated, glared around at the living room and retreated. “I’ll come back tomorrow,” he said, less loudly and less belligerently. “I’ll come back tomorrow and see your brother.”

“Do what you want,” she sobbed. She turned away from him, burying her head in her arms. “Do what you want. I don’t care. Just leave me alone.”

“I thought you were the one with sense,” he said. “I th
ought we could talk together. I--
I’II come back tomorrow.”

He slammed his hat on his head and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

She remained where she was for a long while after he’d gone. Her crying subsided and she stretched out on the sofa, her head buried in her arms, too exhausted
--
both
physically and emotionally--
to move.

Why did Uncle James have to be like this? There wouldn’t be any problem at all if he would just leave them alone. She and Paul, the two of them together
here--
they got along so well.

Maybe they just ought to give him the house. The lawyer, Mr. McDougall, had said something about Uncle James making a settlement for maybe half of the value of the house. Maybe they just ought to take it and move to an apartment in the city some place. That way, they wouldn’t always have him snapping at their heels.

But she knew she would never be able to suggest such a thing to Paul. She understood that the house was the most important thing in Paul’s life, that he would do anything to keep it, and that he would never forgive her if she so much as mentioned the idea of giving it up and living somewhere else.

She couldn’t understand the depth and intensity of his feeling about the house, but she did acknowledge that the depth and intensity were there. And she had no desire to test them by disagreeing with him on the subject.

Thinking of Paul, she remembered the other night when they had gone out together to celebrate his discharge. She remembered their good-night kiss.

It was not the way a brother kisses a sister. He had kissed her the way Bob kissed her, the way a man kisses
a woman. But better than Bob--
far, far better and much more exciting. She had felt the same stirring within her that had made itself known the night she had almost gone to bed with Bob. This time, however, the stirring was stronger, and she had been afraid to go upstairs with him, afraid that she wouldn’t be able to control herself, that she would have made a fool of herself with him.

Except that he had felt the same kind of stirring. She was sure of that. She had sensed it in him then, and it had only served to make her own desire all the more intense.

And that night, in her imagination, her brother’s face had loomed over her again, her brother’s body had, in make-believe, lain atop hers. She hadn’t been able to stop that make-believe. She hadn’t
wanted
to stop it.

But nothing had happened since, either in reality or in imagination. Since that night, they had acted as though nothing at all had happened between them.

But something
had
happened. They had both felt it. They had both been aware of it. And in a strange kind of way, though she was frightened of what had grown between them that night and was repelled by it, still she was fascinated and glad that it had happened. She couldn’t completely rid herself of the hope that it would happen again.

During the hours after James left, while she was waiting for Paul, she thought of Uncle James, the house and her parents and she thought of Paul.

Not once did she think of Bob.