The Half Brother (11 page)

This was different. This was new. I leaned forward, in spite of myself.

“The notion of reinvention will seize you. You will excavate some larval form of yourself, some sixty-year cicada. Some ugly, horny bug! Do you hear me?”

Why couldn’t I give him one last chance, in this addled, unguarded state? To impress me, enlighten me? I’d been waiting for that, expecting it, since I met him.

“You’ll venture forth with wet wings and no baggage. These ideas will destroy your sleep, but you won’t care! The world finally knows who you are, you’re destroyed—rebirth is all you will have left! Be GRATEFUL!” He shook his head, and I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that in his mind he was stepping down from the pulpit, coming
down to the chancel step. “Be grateful,” he whispered. “That’s what they say. Be
grateful
.”

I heard the back door open into the kitchen, but I didn’t turn around. I sent a silent prayer that May wouldn’t call out. I wanted the spell unbroken.

“The days will speed up. You’re in an ecstasy of possibility. You will have unspeakable choices before you—you’ve been expecting enlightenment—you’ve been
bursting
with
hubris
! But no—”

May was behind me now. She touched my shoulder and I covered her hand, pressing her quiet.

“—the brightness begins to fade. The grimy details are reappearing. The Ferris wheel … lowers.” I wanted to laugh but he was so utterly serious, holding us with a fierce whisper. “Everything is rotten. Autumn that year is rainy and the leaves are knocked off the trees before their time and the light is never properly golden and
then one day you wake up and you shit blood
.”

“Oh, Daddy,” May said, her voice catching.

It was done, over. That final, minor performance, capped by that last, grotesque, and ultimately false detail—because, while the cancer had spread to his bones and, clearly, to his brain, I knew it wasn’t in his bowel. Although I was glad beyond measure he had no idea I knew such things.

He was shaking his head, slow and mournful, ignoring us. Lately he’d refused both haircuts and shaves. His eyebrows were gray thickets. I thought of bearded Moses out on some crag, looking down on the Promised Land, forbidden to enter. Perhaps I’d say this to May. Perhaps not. We were both still, waiting for a coda, which made no sense because it seemed like he’d said his piece.

But as we sat in the stretching silence I felt my senses open. Someone had dropped dinner by earlier; I smelled roast chicken. Beside us, the fire crackled. The lamplight in the corners of the room reflected off the thick old woodwork, the creamy walls; Percy was asleep on the sofa; the Christmas tree in the corner glowed. May and I had decorated it a few days before—she insisted. She’d come around now to sit on the floor next to my chair, leaning, just barely, on my leg, and I felt a rising giddiness, a happiness so distilled it was almost painful, which
surely could not be right, could it, with this old man disintegrating in front of me?

“Charlie,” he said, “do you believe life is infinite?”

“Yes,” I said. “Absolutely. Yes.” Oh the abundance.

And he pounced. “Charles, you of all people. Do you think I’m waiting with bated breath for the many mansions? For the streets of gold?”

“No,” I said, willing to believe for another moment that I would like what was coming next. “Not literally.”

“Not
literally
,” he minced. “Oh, but we
do
believe life goes on. And on and on. That we never stop learning, or some other highfalutin’ version of immortality. Like the gods of Olympus! Or perhaps we come
back
! As a king the next time! A movie star! Sheer egotism! That is what I’ve realized. Terror at the thought of the world without one. Without one’s
miraculous uniqueness
! That is the infinity.” He looked down at the board, suddenly aware of it, and moved his bishop out to the middle, foolhardy, a move Ram would make. “Oh, why ask
you
, Charles, my metaphysical friend,” he said. “I think
all
is glorious to you,
right now
.” May moved closer. Preston saw, and smiled—and I felt a rush of relief. Yes, finally. Name it! Tell the world! Truth and love!

I looked at him ready for the warmth I never stopped expecting, and maybe his blessing (oh we’re fools), and met instead a strange, off-kilter glint. “I think you are waist deep in the present right now,” he said. “Or should I say cock deep?”

“Daddy.”
May stood up. Preston gave me a triumphant smirk.

“Am I wrong?” he said, turning to her. “Are not you and young Mr. Garrett here buried deep in the glorious mud of the mundane? Wallowing in the
peccata mundi
? The exquisite flight of young love, etcetera, et cetera? And you think that it will always last? That you will live forever? Making the beast with two backs?” He wheeled back to me and raised his arm, pointing a long finger. “Charles Satterthwaite Garrett. You shoeless piece of trash.
Do you think I do not know what goes on in my house?
”

It was like a fairy tale, a myth, where the name is the locus of power, the true name, and the good guy literally disarms the bad guy by calling it out—or vice versa. But I, of course, had gamed the system.

I started to speak, but May was ahead of me. “That’s not even his name,” she snarled. “You don’t even have his name right.”

He looked at me, caught off guard. “It’s true,” I said mildly. “I’m Charles Spooner Garrett.” I shrugged:
It’s all right, old man
. “Not Satterthwaite. That’s my stepfather.”

“You said … stepfather?” He looked from May to me. “Spooner?”

“After my mother. Anita Spooner. It’s a family tradition.” I glanced at May, saw the tears standing in her eyes, and stood up. How was I actually happy, just moments ago? “Come here, sweetheart,” and she came inside my arm, close to my side.

“May-May.” He looked back and forth, between us. His face was oddly askew. Out of the corner of his mouth, a thin string of drool. Back to me. “You said. You said you said.”

“Maybe we should get you to bed, Preston,” I said.

And then his arm comes down on the board; the pieces fly. “Do not patronize me!” he roars, or at least I think that’s what he wants to say, to bellow; but it’s gibberish, and all the words that come next are gibberish too except for
May-May, May-May
. She goes to him but his arms are still stretched past her. For a moment, I even think he is reaching for me. One hand is a claw, his mouth drooping, and as May sinks to her knees, her arms around him, I go for the phone. “Daddy, it’s okay. It’s okay,” she croons, but over her shoulder, his still-wild eyes on me, he is shaking his head.

THE IDYLL WAS OVER;
the family descended in earnest. Preston, who could no longer speak, became agitated whenever he saw me, and so I began to keep my distance. May came more often to my place, but even though she said she was glad for a break, she was distracted, and I was distracted in turn, for my job was to hide the euphoria that persisted, even though I knew a man was truly dying. Isn’t a man always, somewhere, dying?

I was lurking around at the Bankheads’, trying to see May, trying to stay out of the way, and one afternoon I walked into the study, which I’d thought was empty. But on the loveseat Florence was sitting sideways, knee to knee, with Laird, who I now knew was her
favorite. She was crying, moaning really, “I’m not a
bitch
,” in a way that I knew was not a response to anything Laird had said. Her eyes were squeezed shut, but as I began to back away, she opened them and saw me.

Florence and I didn’t meet each other’s gaze for some time after that; but then, I’m not sure we ever did.

BY NOW I KNEW
the Bankhead house better than my own. Odd to think May and I had had only six weeks, beginning to end, but in that time I’d absorbed her as mine, and also the house; I knew every knickknack, knew it all as a museum of May. But now the house belonged to the brothers again, and any gesture of familiarity on my part—opening the correct kitchen cabinet for a plate, finessing the tricky deadbolt on the door to the cellar—rattled them, readied them for a battle they were primed to fight. Their incipient grief had to go somewhere. So the house they hardly visited was
theirs
, along with Preston and May, and these lowest members (as May would have it) nevertheless could be claimed by no one else, least of all me.

One day I went by after classes and found the tension in a new phase: Preston had been unconscious since the night before. May took me in to see him. His mouth was open, his brow clenched with insentient effort. I touched his waxy hand. He was May’s father, and I was sorry, and sorry too he hadn’t ever been what I’d wanted—but that was an old thought, one I was used to, and without any real grief. Why had I ever wanted anything from him anyway?

I wished that I felt more; but I had so much. I reached for May, for her hand, beside mine. I ached only for her.

We said good-bye in the mudroom. It was crowded with coats and snowy boots, fully alive again, but it also felt, in that moment, anonymous and private, a way station. “I want you to stay,” May said.

“You should be with your family.”

“I am.”

“I’ll come back whenever you want. But right now you all need to be together. They want you to themselves.”

Indecision in her eyes. She said, “You shouldn’t mind them.”

“I don’t.” I stroked her hair, pressed her gently back against the coats—felt her body known against mine, her mouth, her tongue—oh, it was laughable that anyone else claimed any importance, even Preston himself. And now here was the euphoria, which grew every day—our bodies together were a single artifact, iron, no, gold, durable and shining; I wanted to pour myself into her, make a new self, together we were entirely new—

“Jesus Christ.” It was Laird. May held me tighter, but I looked up and saw him standing in the doorway. Unlike me in the study, he let his gaze fall fully on us, with undisguised hostility, before he turned away. And all at once May and I were separate.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

I kissed her cheek, her temple. Touches. Her skin living and moving. “I’m going to go.”

“They said it could be in the next twenty-four hours. At least in the next two days.”

“Call me. Call me in an hour. Whatever’s happening.”

“They don’t know, though.”

“No, they don’t.” Her hair. So smooth. She leaned in to my hand. “It’s time, though, sweetheart.”

Her eyes began to fill. “I don’t think he’s ready.”

All I could do was murmur platitudes, clichés:
Yes he’s ready, no more pain, is anyone ever really ready?
I wouldn’t say he was going to a better place; but how useful the streets of gold would be right now! “He’s going to find what he wants,” I said. “He won’t want anymore.” The tears fell. “Oh, baby. Do you want me to stay?” Through the tears, she shook her head.

Is that what she did? Why don’t I remember each second, each portion of a second? Or was there more, more yes-ing and no-ing, more
go
and
stay
, the dance of touch and withdrawing touch, hating the nakedness of being alone—was there? Were we there five minutes or an hour? We were there among the coats and Laird came in, and in spite of him I should have stayed, God knows, should never have left.

But the door opened and the air was cold and then I was in my car on the way home, exiled.

It was early twilight—it was, I realized, the solstice. Christmas
lights were on the houses, Christmas music on the radio. Outside the liquor store a mile from my house, a life-size Santa turned slowly back and forth, waving, and at the turn to my road the neighbors had a sleigh with reindeer on the roof. Rudolph’s nose lit up, on-off, on-off, and I laughed aloud. Sometimes the holidays were sadness itself but here, just here, I could be happy, I could isolate it, hold it quickly to me. May was miserable, and so I shouldn’t have been happy; yet I knew she’d understand.
On the plane I was glad
, she’d said,
because of you
.

I turned into my long driveway, drove down through the trees, emerged around the bend and there was my house, silhouetted in the last of the light, the bare branches of the trees, my trees, black against the last blue edge of sky. I regretted my lack of decorations and thought that maybe I would wind some lights around the columns of the porch. Inside I had a tree, though, in my bare-ish living room, a tree May insisted I get,
ours
. That was a precious afternoon stolen: we bought the lights and cheap ornaments, we made paper chains and a ridiculous star with glitter. It was all May’s idea, a joyous regression and progression of playing house, and I pretended to indulge her, but now whenever I saw that tree with its kindergarten trimmings it filled me with that same euphoria.
This is what you have now, and what is coming
. I saw a life.

But the tree, the lights, reminded me. Christmas was also coming, and I too had a family, and I needed to call my mother. If Preston really went soon I might not make it home, even though my ticket was already bought; I believed, though, that she would understand. It was Nicky who would be disappointed.

I talked to my mother fairly often, if briefly. Neither of us were phone people much, but I liked it when she first picked up and I heard her voice. I suspected she felt the same. That was all we needed. We didn’t really share news. I hadn’t told her, for instance, about Preston’s illness. Possibly I’d never even mentioned him. Nor had I mentioned May. I hadn’t told anyone about May. I’d been holding my news of her, of us, like a prize, waiting to bestow it on the right person at the right time. It seemed like now was the right time.

First, though, I told my mother about Preston Bankhead. I tried
to leave out my disappointments, his pettinesses; I thought instead of May and her grief, and realized that the man might become legendary anyway, and that that would be fine, that was as it should be. To my surprise I was crying. Then I told her about May. The order of things seemed clear and profound. If my mother asked about these strange laughing tears I would say no, they weren’t confusing at all, because an old man was dying, but I was a young man full of joy.