Halfway Home (5 page)

By inches I open the door into the darkness beyond, barely breathing, craning to hear. And there it is: the deep rolling surf of my brother's breathing, a soft whistle at the end. He sleeps a hundred fathoms deep, he always has. Please—I slept in the twin bed next to him for seventeen years. I step inside and stand there a moment to orient myself. The moonshine is strong, though it throws deep shadows on the clutter of wicker, crazy expressionist angles.

Brian in the bed is lit up clear, the white of the sheets like a luminous ground. He's turned on his side and facing me, one arm under the pillow that cradles his head. Bare to the waist, the top sheet drawn up only to his hips, so I can see the waistband of his briefs. He doesn't even bother with a blanket, for the Irish side is very cold-blooded. Unlike me, who's always shivered in the California nights, shrouded in quilts and comforters.

Yet the cold doesn't bother me now, even in just my underpants, as I move to the wicker armchair by the bed. Though I sit carefully, perching on the edge, still it creaks and rasps under my weight. I scan Brian's face for any stir, but he sleeps right through. Now I am only three feet from him, so close I could reach out and touch him.

But I just watch. His red hair is silver in the moonlight. The arm that's crooked under his head has a biceps as round as a melon. The other arm rests on his side, and now that he's bare I see that his chest and stomach are still in shape, if not so finely chiseled as when he was young. All evening I've been trying to find him battered and soft, but it's not true. He's beautiful still, and even the puffiness in his face has soothed in sleep. If anything, the greater bulk and mass the years have wrought have only made him more of a warrior, king instead of a prince.

Am I still in a rage? Yes, livid. The last thing I need is this mocking reminder that life goes on for straights, mellowing and ripening into an ever-richer manhood. In the glint of the moon Brian's skin fairly radiates with health. The bristling hair on his belly is thick with hormones. He'll be fifty, sixty, seventy, and still be winning trophies. And I'll be dead, dead, dead. Of course I know I can't blame my illness on Brian, but I can still hate him for being so alive. And the deep, deep irrelevance of his shiny life, with the peewee games and the goldens, I can hate that too. The white-bread sitcom cutesiness and the lies of the Nazi church.

I'm leaning forward with gritted teeth, my face contorted with nastiness. I'm like a bad witch, rotten with curses, casting a spell even I can't see to the end of. And maybe Brian picks up the vibes, because at last he stirs. A soft murmur flutters his lips, and he rolls from his side onto his back. His hands are on the pillow on either side of his head, so he lies defenseless. You could plunge a dagger into his heart.

Except I have shifted position now too, the roller coaster of my feelings bringing me up from down. Perhaps it's the Xanax starting to work. But suddenly it's like I'm guarding him, watching over the last of my clan, the only one whose luck has held. Oh, I still want him out of there. Back to his sweet vanilla life, every trace of him expunged, all the torrent of stinging memories he has brought in his glittering train. I wish to be left to die in peace. I don't need a brother—it's far too late in the game. But I stand watch anyway, keeping him free of harm as he sleeps, from curses and daggers.

Tears are pouring down my face, silent and futile, without any reason. Crybaby. Finally I think I will sleep. I stand, creaking the chair again, and I'm superconscious of every broken thing in my body. My eight lesions, my old man's bladder, my nerve-warped knee. I wrap my arms about myself, huddling in my smallness. I take a last long look at Brian, and on impulse I lean above him, hover over his face, and brush my lips against his cheek, just where my own cheek bears the mark. I've never kissed my brother before. He doesn't flinch, he doesn't notice. Then I turn and stumble back to my room, pleading the gods to be rid of him.

S
OME MORNINGS YOU WAKE UP WHOLE. YOU OPEN YOUR
eyes, and the ceiling is swirling with light reflected off the ocean. The bright air pours through the balcony doors like tonic. It's not that you forget even for a moment that you're sick. But if you're not in pain, the sheer ballast of being alive simply astonishes. I fling off the comforter, filling the air with feathers like confetti. I rise and caper across the threadbare carpet in my Jockey shorts. I slip through the french doors, the first sight of the limitless blue never failing to catch my heart. I straddle the stucco balustrade like a pony and drink it all in. The smell of sea pine and eucalyptus wafts around me. I don't want anything else but this.

Except I don't really know if that fits Gray's plans. When he offered the place to me—
Why don't you stay at the beach for a while
—I don't think he figured to have me all winter. We weren't such very close friends to begin with. He was a regular patron angel of AGORA, five hundred bucks a year, and a big fan of Miss Jesus. We'd known each other in passing for years, plastic cups of Almaden at everybody's opening, but Gray was so buttoned-up and -down, so WASP-geeky, we never seemed to get very far.

Then it was funerals we'd see each other at. Gradually he began to seem like an angel for real, taking care of mortuary etiquette, comforting mothers and lovers. He'd always provided for artists to sojourn at the beach house, three- or four-week stints, a sort of one-man colony. But here I am two months later, my welcome long overstayed, not budging an inch.

I catch sight of a pair of birds sailing the updraft at the lip of the bluff. They're white like herons but fat as wild geese, with bands of gray at the head and neck. One of them lights on the post at the top of the beach stairs, and the other cavorts in circles, dipping close to
the swords of the cactus. I can't say what they are. I don't know the names in nature, except what Gray has pointed out, patient as a ranger. I never learned anything growing up, the leaves and feathers of life, because I was too busy running from micks. The beach house is my second chance at a little natural history. Whatever they're called, the white birds are gorgeous. Alighting here as they migrate north, a moment for me and no one else. Whatever time is left, I have had these birds.

And then they explode in flight, flapping away in tandem as if somebody fired a gun. I reach out to them as they disappear north, wishing them well, wishing to fly in their wake, so buoyant am I. Then Brian appears at the top of the steps, coming up from the beach. Now I know why the birds fled. He is wearing a Speedo of mine, green and black stripes, and toweling dry his hair. Of course he looks extraordinary, sleek as a sea god. It's
his
desert island right now, no question about it. He is a man to match the vibrancy, the aliveness of the morning and the place. He turns his warrior's head to look down the coast. He hasn't seen me yet.

It's not that I'd forgotten he was here. But none of that had started churning yet, and in my mind he was still asleep. I was staking the day for myself. I didn't think he would slip so easily out and find the secret places. I call from my perch: "The blue hump's Catalina."

Brian turns with a grin. "Good morning! Jesus, is that water
cold!"

"It's winter."

He strides across the grass, squinting up at me. "I didn't swim far, I'll tell you that. My nuts shriveled up like raisins. I think we have time for breakfast."

"We've got to get you down to the Chevron station."

Brian laughs. "I've been there already. The car's all charged. You just put on some pants and get down here."

He stretches a shoulder muscle as he speaks, turning it in a circle, like he's warming up for a game. I see him for one more moment nearly naked in the morning sun, almost gleaming, before he ducks through the arch below me and into the house. I retreat to the bedroom, rattled, glancing at the clock—9:40. I'm exhausted by Brian's energy. A two-mile jog to Chevron, and still he wanted a swim in the ocean. Myself, I haven't been in the water once since I got here, not including my toes. Sullenly I grab my jeans, dogged again by the gap between what Brian can do and I can't.

When I get downstairs he's dressed, tie and the whole bit. The dining room table is set for breakfast, melon and bowls of Cheerios and the muffins Gray brought last night. Brian ducks his head in from the kitchen. "Coffee or tea?"

"Tea." I sit down quietly at my place. Something I haven't thought about in sixteen years: my brother used to put breakfast out for all of us every morning. Half a grapefruit and oatmeal, milk for us and coffee for them. He might torture me all the rest of the day, till I was black and blue and curled in a fetal crouch, but he served me breakfast fair and square. The old man would usually be hung and bleary, my mother making birdtalk to cover his silence.

Brian appears with a pair of mugs and sets one down in front of me. "I would've made you some french toast—that's what I make for Daniel—but you didn't have any eggs."

We eat. I am sorry now I didn't wear a shirt. Not because I'm cold but because I did it to show off my lesions. Pure spite, to get back at him for the little Olympian swim show he just put on. I can feel him looking at the nasty one on my shoulder. The casement window behind his head is open, the wet Speedo hanging from the latch and dripping into the courtyard.

"I wrote down our address and phone number on the pad in the kitchen," says Brian, buttering his muffin. "In case—"

"—I die. Don't worry, I'll have somebody get hold of you."

"That's not what I meant. We should stay in touch."

"Okay." It's not worth the ugliness to tell him that this is the end, right here. I eat my Cheerios stolidly, vowing neither to be unpleasant nor to lose my temper. It's just another half hour.

"So what kind of plays do you do? Your own? I always thought you'd end up being a writer instead of an actor."

"We don't exactly do plays," I reply with infinite precision. Brian is recalling my thespian days at UConn, where I ran with a crowd of earnest misfits, putting on Shaw and, Albee. Then summer stock in Williamstown, doing walk-ons and touching the hems of minor stars, and sucking them off late at night. I don't remember Brian ever coming to see me in a play, those being the years when he first recoiled from the horror of my gayness. Yet he seems to know I was a lousy actor, all too true. So over-the-top I practically ate the scenery.

"Yeah, what I saw yesterday, it was more like stand-up." He says this tentatively, taking a slurp of tea. If it was stand-up, he seems to wonder, then how come it wasn't funny?

"Performance is kind of a hybrid," I reply, and then I can't bear the PBS professorial bullshit in my voice. I can't be nice a moment longer or I'll scream. "Actually, I was pretty notorious there for a while. I used to do a thing called 'Miss Jesus.' " He looks at me blankly. "You know, Christ as a raging queen. Getting it on with Peter and Judas. Kind of a pain junkie." I'm amazed how proud I sound, and how confrontational. Of course it was the nature of the piece to stick it in people's faces.

Brian stares abstractedly at the hollow rind of his cantaloupe. "I don't get it."

"Well, it started with a chubby little pederast priest, Father O'Hanion, who liked his bottle and dicking twelve-year-olds. But that was too easy. Then I did the Pope in this silk organza gown, 'cause he was going to the Vatican prom. That was very interesting, but after a while it seemed like one big Polack joke. See, I wasn't trying to be
funny."
I deliver this truncated resume with maximum cool. Brian's discomfort is visible. He neither eats nor drinks, and his hands grip the edge of the table as if he will lift it off the floor. "Then I thought, go for the big boy. It took a while to evolve, and it's always changing. Plus I adjust for the season—a Christmas pageant, and an Easter piece that's all in leather."

Ravenous now, I spoon a great dollop of jam on my muffin, eating as if I've just come in from swimming the Catalina Channel. Brian is slowly shaking his head. "How do you live like that, so pissed off all the time? What does it get you?"

I shrug. "It's a job. Somebody's gotta do it."

"Can't you stop being flip for just one minute? So you had a shitty childhood. So the church isn't perfect. So let it go."

"You were right the first time, Brian—you don't get it." We're locked eye to glittering eye now. It's a little like arm wrestling. "I'm glad I came from a fucked dysfunctional family. And growing up Catholic was perfect, like an advanced degree in ruined lives. 'Cause it's helped me a lot with my work. Otherwise I might be just another middle-class troll, dead from the neck up and eating lies like peanuts."

"They had hard lives," he hisses back in my face. "They did the best they could."

"For
you.
And your life turned out perfect. So you keep the shrine, okay?"

He explodes. "My life is not perfect!" It's almost a scream, so violent it backs me against my chair. He raises a hand as if to cuff me, then slams it down on the table, rattling the dishes like a 4.5. "I'm sorry you're dying, kiddo, but everyone has it hard. Nobody has it easy." The bitterness in his voice takes my breath away. His face is beet-red with the violence he can't unleash on a sick boy. He hasn't called me "kiddo" in twenty years either. It used to be half a taunt, half a sneer, accompanied by a body check.