When You Were Older (13 page)

‘What’s wrong, Buddy?’

‘I went to a lot of trouble to make you a nice dinner, and it hurts my feelings that you don’t want it.’

‘I want it,’ he said.

‘You said you wanted macaroni and cheese.’

‘No. I don’t. I want what you made. Really.’

‘Good. I’m glad. That makes me feel better.’

He helped me to my feet and we ate in peace and silence.

Note for my manual: Ben prioritizes my sorrow over his own.

I didn’t sleep well that night. I lost most of the night thinking about it.

What does it mean when someone loses the use of most of his brain, and it makes him more kind?

I couldn’t wait till morning, so I could talk it over with Anat, and get her opinion. But I knew what she would say. She’d say it must have returned Ben to his original nature.

But she didn’t know Ben like I did. She hadn’t known him before. This was nothing like Ben’s original nature.

WHEN I WAS
four, my brother Ben told me there was a monster lurking in the drain of our bathroom sink, drinking the water we provided him and living only on toothpaste and hand soap. So far.

‘Listen,’ he said, tilting his head over the sink. He turned on the tap for the count of three, then shut it off again. ‘Hear that? You can hear him swallowing.’

And he was right. I could.

I backed all the way up into the hall, and slammed right into my mom’s legs.

‘Brush. Your. Teeth,’ she said. As if I’d better not make her say it again. Then she walked on.

I took one step closer to the bathroom sink. Just one.

Ben shot me one of those maniacal smiles.

‘How can he just eat toothpaste?’ I asked, hating that my voice was shaking, and that I knew Ben could hear it. ‘And soap?’

‘He can’t,’ Ben said. ‘And that’s just the problem.
Sooner
or later he’s going to have to reach out and try to grab something better. So be extra careful when you first lean over. And right when you turn the water off. Because sooner or later he’ll get hungry. Now brush your teeth, Wussy Boy.’

And he laughed and went off to his room.

Usually I fought back hard at the Wussy Boy insult. But that night I was too scared to open my mouth again.

I sidled up to the sink and stood up on my tiptoes. I didn’t pull the step bench around, the one I was supposed to use at the sink. I figured it would be better if my feet were firmly planted on the bathroom tiles. In case I had to run like hell.

I grabbed my toothbrush, bruising the underneath of my arm on the edge of the porcelain. And pulling my hand back fast. Nothing. But I didn’t dare reach for the toothpaste. This time he’d be tipped off. He’d know to expect me.

I stood in the middle of the bathroom, brushing my teeth with a dry brush.

Then it hit me that I could use the water from the tub.

I ran some tub water on the brush, then stood leaning over the tub, brushing my teeth and hoping neither one of my parents would come in and tell me to cut the crap and do it right.

Just as I was rinsing my mouth and my toothbrush, Ben stuck his head in the bathroom again.

‘Well, I hope you don’t think that’s going to save you,’ he said.

‘It’s not?’

‘It’s all one pipe. Under the house.’

‘How can it be all one?’

Ben sighed, like he just couldn’t tolerate my stupidity. But I was used to that.

‘It all goes into the sewer as one pipe. Right?’

‘I dunno. I guess.’

‘So then it splits off and goes to all the different sinks and tubs. So he came up from the sewer. Right? All monsters come up from the sewer. So he can be in any pipe he wants.’

‘Even in Mom and Dad’s bathroom?’

‘Yup. And don’t forget the kitchen sink. I think the reason he mostly hangs out in here is because you do.’

I said nothing, knowing I couldn’t hide my terror if I did.

‘Because you’re the smallest. You know. The easiest to pull back down the pipe.’

I dropped my toothbrush on the floor and ran to bed, where I waited for my mom to come tuck me in.

Ben walked by my bedroom doorway and stopped suddenly.

‘What was that?’ he asked, sounding startled.

‘What?’

My heart pounded so hard I could hear it and feel it in my ears.

‘Thought I saw something go by the window. Well. Maybe it was nothing. Night, Wussy Boy.’

I pulled the covers over my head and called for my
mom.
A split second later, Ben appeared in the doorway again.

‘Do
not
tell Mom there was something outside the window,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘Because she has a weak heart. Didn’t you know that? You could scare her to death. You don’t want to scare her to death, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Then keep your mouth shut.’

And he disappeared again.

About a minute later my mom stuck her head in my door.

‘Why is your toothbrush on the floor?’

‘I dunno. I guess it fell. Could you come here a minute?’

She came to my bed. Sat on the edge of it. Smoothed my hair back off my forehead. ‘What are you all in a tizzy about? You’re shaking. Are you sick?’ She held a warm palm to my forehead. I wished it, and she, would never go away.

‘No.’

‘What’s up, then?’

‘Nothing. Can you send Dad in?’

She sighed deeply. ‘Now, what can your father do that I can’t?’

‘I dunno. Could you just get Dad?’

‘OK. Fine.’

And she left me alone with the monsters again.

My dad appeared in the doorway about a minute later.

‘What? I’m right in the middle of my show.’

‘This is big.’

He sighed, and came and sat on the edge of my bed.

‘Will you go look outside? See if anything’s out there?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like a robber. Or a monster.’

‘No such thing as monsters.’

‘Robber, then.’

‘Why would you think there’s a robber out there?’

‘Ben saw something go by the window.’

‘Ben,’ he said. Like he was saying, ‘The source of all evils in the world.’ ‘If Ben saw somebody out there, why didn’t he come tell me? Or your mom?’

‘He said we can’t tell Mom. That she has a bad heart and it might scare her to death. How come you never told me that?’

He straightened his legs and rose to his feet, towering high over my bed.

‘I’ll be right back. I have to go have a little talk with your brother.’

But it wasn’t really going to be a talk. I thought it was. At first. But then I heard him open the front closet. Instead of going straight to Ben’s room. If he’d gone straight, that would be a talk. Stop at the hall closet, that’s a strapping. That’s where he goes to pick up the strap.

Then I got even more scared, more than I’d been so
far
that entire night. Because monsters and robbers were in a sort of maybe category. But Ben, if I got him strapped … which I guess I did … that was more dangerous than anything.

I heard him yelping. I counted the number of times Ben yelped. Fourteen. Fourteen lashes. Fourteen welts on his butt, or on the backs of his legs. So maybe no more public pool for a few weeks, or maybe he could just wear bigger, longer trunks.

I heard my dad saying things to him, but I couldn’t make out the words.

Then silence.

I wondered if anybody would even remember to come tuck me in.

My dad came in, the strap still hanging from his hand.

‘Your mother does not have a weak heart,’ he said.

‘Oh. Good. Why would Ben say so, then?’

‘Kiddo, I have no idea why Ben does half the things he does. In the future, just figure if Ben says it, it isn’t true.’

‘So you think maybe nothing went by the window?’

‘I can just about guarantee nothing went by the window.’

‘What about the monster in the bathroom sink?’

‘Did he tell you that?’ His voice rose sharply, and he turned back toward my door, like he was going to go strap Ben again.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Please don’t. You already did.’

‘Right.’ He came and sat on my bed with me. ‘If there was a monster in the sink, you’d see it.’

‘No. It’s in the pipe.’

‘Oh. In the pipe. But I told you there’s no such thing as monsters.’

‘But you can hear him drinking.’

‘Rusty. Kiddo. That’s just the sound water makes when it goes down the drain.’

‘Oh. But …’

My dad sighed. ‘Go ahead. But what?’

‘What if Ben’s a big liar
and
there’s a robber outside? Both?’

He sighed again. More deeply this time. ‘Want me to go look?’

‘Yeah. Thanks.’

He wasn’t gone thirty seconds when Ben appeared in my doorway and shut off the light, throwing me into darkness.

‘You are so dead, Wussy Boy,’ he said.

But he knew my father would be back. So he’d have to kill me later. Like the monster in the pipe, he’d just have to lie in wait for the perfect moment.

I’m sure he killed me later, but I don’t specifically remember the incident. He killed me an awful lot of times.

BEN LET OUT
a whoop and jerked the end of his fishing rod high, just like my father was always trying to teach him not to do. But he paid no price for impetuous fishing – this time. A trout landed in the bottom of our canoe, right at my feet. In fact, it landed
on
my feet, then flipped its way off again.

I watched in horror as it began the process of dying.

Of course, Ben laughed at me.

‘Don’t look so horrified, Wussy Boy,’ he said.

But it’s horrifying. I’m sorry, it just is. I’ve never been a vegetarian, and I don’t have a moral issue with killing an animal for food, but nothing could be worse than fishing. Because you just sit there and watch the fish die. Watch it flop around, desperate for air, until it’s too weak to flop any more. At least hunters try for a clean kill. They try to end the animal’s suffering on the first shot. They don’t hold the deer’s head underwater and watch while it drowns.

I’ve been told that many fishermen hit the fish once in the head, hard, to minimize its suffering. Needless to say, my brother Ben was not one of them.

‘Hold it up, Ben,’ my father called over from his canoe, paddling closer.

Ben held the fish up and smiled widely, and my father raised and aimed a disposable camera. I smiled, too. But later, when the picture was developed, I found out I wasn’t in it.

I popped the end of my fishing rod up and down, like I was trying to interest a trout in my worm. But I had no worm. As always, I’d snuck my hook into the water baitless, careful to work while Ben wasn’t looking.

Later, when I reeled it in, he would laugh at me and say something like, ‘Ha, ha, your bait got stolen and you didn’t even know it, and you’ve been fishing without bait this whole time, Wussy.’

‘Reel in,’ my father yelled at us. ‘We’re going to paddle over to that bank.’

My father was about twenty feet away, in his own canoe. He pointed to a brushy/reedy area on the shore of the lake.

My father drank a lot of beer while we fished. A lot. Much more than he would drink later in camp. Though it never occurred to me at the time, I now think his love of fishing was closely wrapped around his love of beer, and our mother’s hatred of watching him drink it.

I noticed something just now. I said ‘
my
father’ and ‘
our
mother’. So maybe Ben’s insecurities, which I’ll get
to
soon enough, were not so far off track. But now
I’m
getting off track.

When my father said he was paddling ashore, he meant he needed to pee. Again. Granted, it’s not impossible for a man to pee over the side of a canoe. But every time my father peed he also needed to offload an armful of beer bottles, usually behind some vegetation. And we needed to paddle along with him, so we weren’t too far out on the lake by ourselves. After all, we were only six and twelve. Too young to be out in a canoe alone. Or with a drunken father. But of course I’m stacking on that last observation after the fact.

I reeled in, and Ben and I watched as my bare hook broke the waterline.

He said something new this time. He said, ‘You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t know you always cast it in there with no worm?’

I said nothing. Just felt my face grow hot and – probably – red. I looked down at Ben’s trout, which now lay perfectly still. I wondered if it was dead, or just accepting the inevitability of its fate.

Ben shook his head and began to paddle.

We watched my father land his canoe on the muddy bank and step out, his rubber boots sinking into the mud up to his mid-calves. He cursed loudly, embarrassing me. I looked around to see if anyone could hear, but saw no one on the shore, no one within sight on the lake.

‘Scared of the worms, Wussy Boy?’ Ben asked.

‘No.’ A little grossed out, maybe. ‘I just don’t want to kill them.’

‘The fish? Or the worms?’

‘Both, I guess.’

I could hear the sucking sound my father’s boots made as he pulled them up out of the mud, step after step. He struggled for balance, his arms loaded with empty brown-glass bottles.

I looked up at Ben, and his face was dark. ‘So I’m a killer? Is that it? You’re saying I’m a killer?’

Of course it’s easy to look back and know what I should have said. But everything just happened so fast. I looked at the blank, open eye of the trout, lying in the bottom of the canoe. And I nodded. It just seemed so obvious.

I realized my mistake quickly enough, but too late. My father had disappeared behind the vegetation, where he couldn’t save me. I felt myself lifted by the back of my shirt and propelled up and through the air. I broke the water and swirled down into the greenish lake for a frightening space of time, increasingly desperate for oxygen. If I had known Ben was about to throw me in, I’d have taken a deep breath and made it last. But I’d had no such preparation.

I thought of the trout. I thought, I know now. Just how you felt.

I began to push for the surface, and it wasn’t until my face broke out into the air, and I gasped for breath, that I looked at my hands and saw they were empty.
I
no longer had my dad’s ultra-light rod and reel.