The Half Brother (17 page)

He walks the six blocks, stands in the longish lunchtime line. In the way of little towns, the Abbottsford PO is still much used. There is no air-conditioning there either. It’s broken, and instead there is a tall old-fashioned fan roaring in the corner, and the big old leaded-glass awning windows propped ajar. He’d described it when he got back. Every detail was charming.

And I can imagine him there, and also May, standing a few people behind. She can’t believe she’s here. She’s been in this room a thousand times. It is so real to her it has reversed itself, feels like a movie set. She both anticipates and dreads being recognized.

She is holding her hair off her neck in the heat—and then she sees a boy, ahead of her in line, thin as a stalk of wheat, dressed like a vagrant, but with a profile that cannot be true. Glamour is thick around him. She knows that when he turns the illusion will be shattered (isn’t that always the way?) and his face will be too round or too long, ordinary after all; and then he gets to the front of the line and he speaks to the woman behind the counter, and the woman laughs, clearly dazzled, and Nick laughs, and then he turns his head slightly, reaching for his wallet, and she sees that it’s not a trick of angle or light, that there’s no
imperfection, and she cannot believe that the boy can be, that he can exist, and that everyone else in the line is not staring too.

And then he reminds her of someone. But that fact is secondary. Is lost, until she remembers it, later, when she sees, as she’s known she will, the man she thought she used to love; and then May-May, though she is just twenty-nine, just before she makes the connection between my brother, Nick, and me, is thinking,
How young I was, back then
.

AND IF I HAPPENED
to spy on one of my brother’s classes?

Worship.

I WAS HEADED
to the parking lot one evening when the headmaster stopped me in my tracks. “Charlie!”

“Hi, Adam.”

“I know I’ve said it before, but I am so glad you brought your brother to us. He is just terrific.”

“Yes, he is.”

“He’s a Pied Piper! Kids trailing around behind him! Have you seen that?”

“Indeed I have.”

Adam was actually rubbing his hands together in delight. “Brilliant guy. These kids are just hungry for the
real world
. You know, you and I are so contented here, right, Charlie, in our little mountain home, and we get the kids here in Happyville and teach them a few things and send them on their way and we forget that maybe once we thought we’d do the things Nick has done. And that maybe these kids want to do those things too. He makes them think of
possibilities
. They are just
riveted
.”

I wanted to get home before sunset. Adam’s feet were firmly planted, though, in preparation for conversation: I knew the signs. “Are you plotting escape, Adam?”

“Ha. Bethie would kill me. But maybe we should rotate in and out, huh, Charlie? Get out there, get some dirt under our fingernails?
Come back and share the story? What do you think?” He relaxed back into his pelvis, got comfy.

“We do that,” I said. “They’re called sabbaticals. But it sounds like getting blown up is going to become part of the requirement.”

“No, no, of course not! Ha!” He stood up straight again. I could see Adam’s headmaster brain clicking through actuarial tables, annual giving reports. “Blown up?”

“It’s rough over there,” I said.

“But Nick’s fine.”

“Of course. Obviously.”

“Do you think Nick’s glamorizing that side of things?”

“No.”

“Well, of course he wouldn’t.”

I took pity on him. “He loves it here,” I said. “Tells me all the time. I mean it. That’s a fact.”

Adam took a step back, suddenly deferential. “Well, Charlie. It’s a good fit. Just like May! About time she came back home! Born teacher like her dad! Another good fit. Love it when we get a good fit.”

“Yes,” I said. “I wouldn’t want him anywhere else.”

NICK HAD INDEED ASKED ME
about May on the evening of the tea. We’d been walking back to his apartment, where I’d left my car. “So?” he said.

“So what?”

“You never told me something had happened with a student, bro,” he said.

“Nothing ever has.”

“What about May Bankhead?”

“That was after she graduated,” I said, automatically. “My God, Nicky, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Not ever?”

“No.”

“Seems kind of hard to avoid. Lotta options.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Of course I’m joking,” he said. “But, whenever it was. You never told me about her.”

“So you could tell.” He nodded, hyperalert. Usually when we talked about girls, they were his. “It didn’t last long. A fling. Under sort of extreme circumstances. I ended it.” I told him a little about Preston. The strange season of love and death. “A mistake, frankly.
In extremis
.”

“Have you kept in touch?”

“Not really.”

“I think she’s still mad at you.”

“Doubt it.”

“And you’re sure—”

“Positive,” I said. “Nothing there.”

“Well, bro, I don’t think I’d want her mad at me.”

“I guess she’s gotten a little frightening,” I said.

“Is it weird?” Nicky said.

Our shoes scraped along the twee brick sidewalk. “No,” I said. “It’s not weird at all.”

AS EVERYONE SETTLED
into the year, Zack Middleton got surlier. I heard he nearly got into a fight in the locker room and was pulled off of Darius Flake just in time; he would have had to be benched, and he was the team’s top scorer. I wondered if there was something going on—maybe steroids? He was so
huge
. I talked about it with Divya and then finally, after a good deal of hesitation, I went to Booker, because, after all, hadn’t we known each other a long time by now, weren’t we colleagues, peers, finally?

And no. There was no way, no possibility whatsoever. “He knows what I’d do if he was taking that crap,” Booker said. “You think I’d let him do that?”

“No, of course not.”

“My pop is the same as him. Huge man. It’s in the genes.”

But Booker did say Zack had gotten a pretty hard knock on the head that summer at football camp. They’d said it could affect his mood for a while. “But of course he’s fine to play. You think I’d let him play otherwise?”

“No, of course not.”

“He giving you any lip?”

“No—”

“Don’t take any crap. I’ll talk to him.”

“He’s not giving me crap.”

“I’ll talk to him anyway.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Then what’s the problem, Charlie?”

“He’s not himself.”

Booker’s nostrils flared a little at me and I waited for the next challenge. Jesus, poor Zack. But then Booker stuck his hands in the pockets of the maintenance-green chinos he wore, rocked back on the heels of his work boots. “He’s all worked up. That girl. College. You know how I know he’s not taking anything? Because he’s applied to the Air Force Academy, and he’s not going to fuck it up.”

“Oh,” I said. “Wow. That’s news. You must be very proud of him.”

“Didn’t get in yet,” Booker said.

“Right. But to make the decision.”

“Keep it under your hat.” It was a command. “Let Zack bring it up. He’ll be asking you for a recommendation any day. Should have already. Decided over the summer. He’s got his letter from the congressman and everything.”

“I’d love to write him a recommendation,” I said. “I really would.”

“He wants it bad and he’s nervous.”

“I understand.”

“So maybe that’s what you’re seeing.” He rocked back on his heels once more. It was a reminder to himself. He had trained himself not to loom over people. Zack did it too—the looming, not the rocking. “I appreciate you keeping an eye out, Charlie.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” I said.

“Yep. Boy wants it bad,” Booker said, and his face relaxed, all at once, into a rare grin, a different person. “Boy wants to fly.”

Thirteen

Late October, and we are hurtling down the brilliant slope: clear Friday morning today, and the light has sweetened and deepened and now, five o’clock, it is rich as honey, we are all rich, drunk on it. The grass glows bluely, I am standing at the edge of the quad, I should move, I should call out, I should answer—
Hi, Mr. G., whatcha doing, are you coming to the game tomorrow?
—but I am fixed in the cement shoes of being, I stand here, I cannot move, it is too beautiful.

The voice will come—
Mr. G.! Come sit with us!
—and I’ll follow it and lower myself to the cool dampish grass and huff and arrange myself and they’ll be amused with me; they’ll want to impress and yet also feel an unthinking superiority; there is no way they’d choose my mysterious, dull adult life over their own, not now, not this afternoon. They are starring in their own epics, they are miserable or ecstatic or enthralled, and they sense I love them for it. That I will indulge them, that I have their backs, that I will protect their idyll while I can—

But today the voice didn’t come. Instead I saw Nick, coming from the direction of the gym, Nick in an old green sweater I recognized, that made his eyes shine. His hair flopping and wet from the shower. Minnie bounced up from Dex’s side where she had been and skipped, literally, over to him, and then Dex followed, and there was Celia, and more and more, and Nicky was the tallest, and he shook his hair from his eyes.

There he stood, happy, and alive, pulling them all in, their center. They thought he was their leader and guide, but I knew he was burying himself in their energy. And instead of seeing my brother they saw what they wanted to see, they saw their own dreams.

And there was May. A silk scarf draped around her blazer in her new style and I thought of her in Paris. Where I was not. She tucked her hair behind one ear and I missed again its length; it now stopped above her shoulders. Thick and straight, shining. She laughed. She was happy, there was no reason for her not to be. The circle opened for her.

And football must have just ended because here came that little army, burdened with their muscle, curving arms and thick necks. All a game, their bodies responding at a whisper,
grow!
Tomorrow they were playing Essex, here at home. They were puffed with prebattle importance.

And last was Zack. Who went to Celia and encircled her with his arm and they stood apart, just barely, and I saw how she held him up, that tiny girl. How much he believed he needed her. Zack who wanted to fly.

I must move, I must move.

And then, too late:
Mr. Garrett! Are you coming to dinner? Sorry, chickadees, headed home. It’s taco night! Ah. Tempting. Are you coming to the game tomorrow? Wouldn’t miss it
.

Wouldn’t miss it
.

Oh, the light slants away.
Son, we are in Ordinary Time
, Hugh would say.
Isn’t it marvelous?
Nicky brushes his hair back and I raise a hand to him, only him. May watches me, unmoving.

At the bend in the walk I look back and they are all still there, my lovelies, my beauties, standing together.

BY THE NEXT DAY
the weather had turned, one of those abrupt New England rotations with the power to erase all sensory memory of the day before. Now it was an entirely new world, gray, barely fifty degrees and felt like thirty, and we huddled in our anoraks in a raw drizzle. But Essex had driven fifty miles for this, and they wouldn’t call
the game unless it turned into a monsoon. Or if there was lightning. Because lightning was dangerous.

Next to me, barely visible under her down hood, Divya announced, “Everyone is invited to my house after. For toddies.”

“How imperial of you,” I said.

“There aren’t that many forms of hot alcohol.”

On my other side, Nicky watched the game with unusual attention. He was dressed semi-effectively, in an old bomber jacket, cracked and soft, with a balding sheepskin collar. But he was the only one of us who was hatless, and a sheen of droplets clung to his hair, like mist on a spiderweb. “You’re getting soaked,” May said to him, on his other side. “You’ll catch cold.”

He ran his hand through his hair, slicking it back, and then looked at his dripping hand with mild surprise. “Huh. It’s not so bad.”

“Charlie,” May said.

Nick’s wet head had been bothering me, but May noticing was worse. “Hey, Nicky.”

“Yes, Charlie.”

“Put on a hat.”

“Will do,” he said, his gaze back on the field. May humphed, but this exchange seemed to please her. She herself was nicely bundled: neat belted jacket, scarf and hood, fuzzy green gloves. Years away in the lazy Texas heat had not made her less practical.

May knew I’d first seen her by a misty field. The one next to us now. I could have turned my head and seen the spot. That
mist
would now have a fucking
connotation
. Mist, by God! I hoped she’d forgotten. When we were first together, there had been that exhilarating period of confession,
The first time I knew, I felt it when, I knew I knew you
. All that talk that says
Fate, fate, synchronicity!
And it seems one is the very instrument of God. Ha!

But I was better today. Better than yesterday, that is. The clouds helped.

“Did you see there are recruiters here? Looking at Zack?” May said.

“Isn’t it a little late for that?” I said.

“I guess not if you’re not getting money. Maybe
recruiter
is the wrong word. But look, down there. With Booker.”

I was beginning to think the Air Force Academy application was a myth, but I held my tongue.

People went for coffee; others joined us; we rearranged ourselves, huddling for warmth. Around us the students were rowdy, oblivious to the cold. I saw Celia near the front, in a clutch of girls. We scored— Zack scored—and then in short order Scooter Lewis, the quarterback, was at the thirty again and was nearly sacked, but his arm with the ball flashed up just in time; and Zack was there, suddenly arcing away separate, the ball too an arcing missile, then caught two-handed somewhere in the air and for a moment cradled to his chest like his heart had flown away and returned, and then it was crooked in one arm, small and safe, and a path created itself in front of him and we scored again.