The Half Brother (20 page)

She watches us drive away and it is July in Atlanta and the humidity is thick and sweet and the green grass damp, and the trees not yet tired and dusty looking, and the light long.

I love my mother and she loves me, but the feeling between us is quiet, and more and more Nicky has become the conduit between us—Nicky the young and open, the mascot of us all.

At the stadium, there is a home run. The men, miniature even from these seats, run their geometry on the floodlit green. I can scarcely believe this is my life, Nicky beside me my brother: How did we get here? How were we given each other?

When I buy a mini bat, glossy and light, and perch it on the top of
the pile in Nick’s lap, it slides off, but I catch it before it reaches the ground. “Sorry, buddy,” I say, and place it again, more securely, a tiny weapon against the world, Nick watching me all the while, the look on his softly rounded face one of infinite patience.

SEVERAL DAYS LATER,
late in the afternoon when classes were over, I saw Nick walking toward May’s classroom. His face was pale and filled with concentration and a faint exaltation, as though he were processing to the gallows. Dear God, he was doing it. He didn’t see me at first and, suddenly panicked, I looked around for an empty room to duck into, but I wasn’t quick enough and he saw me and his face filled with light, it
glowed
at me. For one dicey moment, I thought he was going to give a thumbs-up.

But I gathered myself and looked back with an expression that was patient, encouraging, and the faintest bit stern, since that was what he always seemed to want. He gave a nod and then stepped to the closed door. His chest rose with a cleansing breath, and that was when I turned away, but as I walked in the other direction I could hear his gentle knock, and May’s muffled voice.

I went straight back up to my own room, my errand to the copier abandoned, and closed the door. I couldn’t decide if I felt like a wounded animal in its den or an expectant father in the waiting room, wreathed in cigarette smoke. Nicky would be standing there, unaware, as usual, of his assets. Was that true? Raking the hair out of his eyes. And maybe May had not yet decided. Maybe she too felt cornered, maybe she’d be as cool with him as she was with me—oh, I could see her, on the road to becoming forbidding, to being the sort of teacher students both feared and secretly pitied—oh, May-May.

Nicky would be looking reflexively at the clock above the door. Had she already politely shut him down? It would be quick. And inevitable—oh, I saw it now. Madness.

But then May, not yet lost, would blurt, “Don’t go.”

The corner of Nicky’s mouth would begin to lift and he’d look just like Hugh. (Hugh who, before he was so thoroughly broken down, could manage to look both serious
and
amused, or wry
and
impatient,
or regretful
and
unyielding. Hugh both complicated and gentle, Hugh who was always on one’s side.) Nicky would say to May, not knowing where the cojones came from, “Calm down.”

And of course she can’t believe it. She can’t believe any of it. How can he say that to her? How can Nick stand there, the blush flaming on his cheeks, and look both tentative and confident at the same time? How does he emanate this
delight
?

Was her face hungry? Incredulous? Outraged? Did her eyes never leave his?

The thing is, she knew what I said was right: that I was irrelevant. She didn’t want to admit I was right, but she certainly didn’t want to admit I was wrong. She didn’t want me, Charlie Garrett, to influence anything she did, and so what would she do if I didn’t exist, and this man were standing in front of her, grinning like an angel?

Sound. The doorknob turning. And there he was. “God,” he said, walking into the room. “This is crazy.” He ran one hand through his hair, for the tenth time in as many minutes, by the looks of it. “I thought she was going to put me in detention or something. I hope it isn’t always this hard.”

“So you didn’t—?”

“Oh no,” he said, meaning
Yes I did
. “This Saturday. Seven o’clock.”

He couldn’t stop smiling.

I knew that what was supposed to happen next was a debriefing, a discussion of local restaurants, and a pep talk. I did my best. I recommended a new place in Northfield, half an hour away. “If you go to the Abbottsford Inn, you might as well put up a billboard. Write a news item for the paper.” I don’t remember what else I said; I do remember that he looked a bit disappointed in me. Maybe I wasn’t enthusiastic, or wise, or jocular enough. Perhaps I seemed cold. I think though, honestly, that by that time we were each too distracted to care.

After he left I spent several minutes gathering papers and putting them in a pile—the neatest, most squared-off pile that had ever been or would be. I realized I was waiting for May to walk through the door. I thought of calling Anita. She’d be surprised I was calling her. Still, though, she’d ask what she usually did, both of us understanding
that Nicky was our main, our only link now, and I would say,
He’s good. He’s really good
. The satisfaction of it! Of telling the truth! Of the yawning wound, the wholehearted sacrifice! What more could I do now? I’d done everything.

Books in the briefcase. Papers in a pile. I was going. Here I went. Going, going, gone.

Fifteen

Zack Middleton was back, Celia at his side again. But the ease he’d had when she was near him had evaporated. I had always assumed the intensity around and between them came from infatuation and sexual frustration (or not: surely they’d found hiding places; there had to be some), but now the agitation seemed different, more urgent. Sometimes, also, Celia was bolder. I’d see her alone, or with her friends—but then she’d be folded into his side again.

One day, Zack waited till everyone else had gone after class and then sauntered up to my desk. Celia wasn’t waiting for him. “Mr. Garrett,” he said. “I need an extension on the paper. I’m still … catching up. I guess.”

“We had some great discussions while you were gone,” I said. “I missed you. We talked about erasure. Presence and absence. Origins. Exactly what you brought up.” He looked blank. “On the first day of class.”

“Oh.”

“Hey, why don’t you and I get a cup of coffee, and I’ll get you up to speed?” Students usually loved it when you asked them to meet for coffee. It sounded so adult and urban.

“I’m pretty busy. Practice and all that. I’m sorry.” There was a quick, hooded shame in his eyes. “I’ll get the paper done, I promise. Just a couple more days.”

“No rush,” I said. “I think you’re supposed to be taking it easy. Right? Maybe we could just skip this paper.”

“I can’t have incompletes.”

“Well, then you won’t.”

“Our first game is next weekend.”

“I’ll be there.”

“I have to be able to play. In good academic standing and all that bullshit.”

“You need to stay healthy.”

“I am healthy. That’s the point.” He blinked.

I sighed. “One more thing,” I said. “It’s probably too late—but your dad mentioned the Air Force Academy, and I had the impression I needed to write a recommendation.”

“I got Ms. Hawkins to do it,” he said. “It could be your junior or senior English teacher. I had an A in her class,” he said, and he shrugged, and I couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed or accusatory. In my class, he kept dipping to a B minus. “So. You know. Sorry. And,” he said, his voice getting louder, “she hasn’t always
known
me. I’m not the fucking janitor’s kid. The fucking diversity dream.”

“Jesus, Zack—”

“Just a little black. Not black enough for some people but black enough for them.”

“Come on. Really? You think that’s how I think of you?” He glared at me. His face was white, and fine beads of sweat stood at his hairline. “Zack, is your head hurting right now?”

“No. It isn’t.”

“Zack—”

“It’s not. Thanks, Charlie.” And he was gone.

THOSE LAST DAYS OF NOVEMBER.
Leaves gone. Sky cold indigo. Chill sliver of moon, chill spark of Venus. If I timed it right, I could get home when there was still a line of burnished light along the horizon, behind the house. On the grandest nights, great columns of purple cloud made operatic strokes over the mountains. Five minutes too late, though, and the sky would be gray black. As if nothing had ever happened.

NICK AND MAY’S FIRST DATE
was successful. I discovered this, however, only when I found out they had gone out again, and then again. Nick was cagey. “Nicky,” I said. “I don’t want details. I don’t care. It’s really fine.”

“No details. Okay.” And I knew he was trying not to grin. That there were details.

The Saturday morning came when I called him about our plans for a hike that day, and he wasn’t home. I hung up the phone and looked at the clock: 8:00 a.m. I had done it to myself. Done it to myself.

I had never seen the inside of May’s place, a narrow blue town house a few blocks from Nicky’s.

The kids sniffed it all out, inevitably, although I never saw the two of them closer than several feet together at school, although Nick still ate with students, and at chapel he and May were never in the same pew. I was a little surprised at the total restraint, attributed it to May. But then one evening I was walking past the gym to my car and there they were, pressed against a wall, sheer Hollywood. It was the route they would have taken to walk to either of their houses, and so what had happened was that they
just couldn’t wait
.

Her hands on the back of his head, pressing; he was wearing the bomber jacket and between his legs I saw hers, moving; I saw his hips, saw them wanting.

Anyone could have seen them and I realized how she needed him, how she wanted someone to help her break the rules.

I needed to not think of any time ever when I had pressed against her like that and it had been a long time ago and never should have happened and no, I could not remember, I could not remember a thing, no scents or sounds or whispers, and it was the next day at lunch that we were all sitting together and May across and down the table from Nick and her wall up and so cool
Ah May you look so cool
and then I looked down at her hands on the table and saw them lying there, so still, still, I realized, with effort. Was she thinking she would never be twenty again? That she might as well? That this was her last
chance to be carried away in this fast-moving current? Or was she not thinking at all?

Her hands trembled to reach across, to cradle his face. To once again confirm his reality. To keep him.

NICK AND I SPENT THANKSGIVING
at Divya’s, with her boys, home from college and law school, and a few of their friends, assorted vagabonds and castaways who lived across the country, too far to go for a holiday weekend, plus a guy who Divya whispered was Anil’s new crush. Divya often had other teachers or foreign students from Abbott, but this year it was just us. I wondered, had things been different, if May would have come; she was the classic example of the Abbott teacher who might want to avoid family, might claim hardship traveling when, really, the truth was that her colleagues felt more like family, in the end. But her family was too close for excuses. I assumed she was at Binky’s, in Providence.

The usual script, in matters large and small, was followed. “Ram,” Divya said, “I don’t mind if the football is on the TV, but turn it down. You aren’t even
watching
it.”

“It’s part of America, Ma. It’s aural wallpaper.”

“Those poor boys who don’t get to have their Thanksgiving dinner,” Divya said, of the college players.

“Those poor boys who can’t
read
,” Anil said.

“I like having the game on,” I said. “Ram is right. And if you were southerners, you’d know those boys are gods. They’ll get their turkey.”

“Oh, God,
turkey
,” Divya said, as she also did at some point every year, “this huge ridiculous bird that no one really likes—”

“Ma!”

“—someone come help me carve.”

She had first cooked a turkey when she and Win had been a young couple. He brought it up, every year. He always said it had been wooden on the outside and bloody on the inside.

“It was an act of love,” Divya would retort. “I cooked it so you could have your Norman Rockwell fantasy.”
Fahnt-a-zee
. Looking at
Win purse-lipped. And there he’d sit in his bow tie, and he’d look at me and wink.

She was still cooking that turkey for Win, every year. When it came out, golden brown and, indeed, Rockwellian, it was a sanctified bird.

Ram sat at the head of the table—the tide had been pushing me that way, but I felt it wasn’t right and I’d sidestepped at the last minute. However, I ended up carving. Ram claimed he’d wreck it. Anil said he was better at scooping, as in mashed potatoes. “Oh, Charlie, just go ahead,” Divya said. “Everyone is hungry.” I wore my bow tie in honor of Win. I touched it when I made a toast to him. Ram and Anil looked indulgent but secretly pleased and Nick looked entranced and said, “Hear, hear,” when I was done.

Nick seemed to be taking the place of a long-lost relative, familiar and yet with a veneer of the strange, who had this year dropped back in on a family and on rituals he had forgotten but found irresistible. At the table he was a bit bashful and listened intently to everyone else talking, with a slightly distracted, almost anthropological air.

“Nick,” Divya said, “where is May today? I forget what she told me.”

His mouth was full. “New Hampshire,” he said, muffled. He swallowed. “I forget which brother it is. A lake house. It’s about an hour and a half away.”

“Binky lives in Providence,” I said, before I could stop myself. “He must be doing well. Buying a lake house.”

“No, I think it’s Laird,” Nick said. He didn’t even hesitate on the name.

“It’s on Lake Winnipesaukee,” Divya said. “Now I remember.”

“That means ‘place of drunken waterskiing’ in Wampanoag,” Ram said.

“Not in November it doesn’t,” Anil said.