The Half Brother (21 page)

“Well, I asked her to stop by,” Divya said. “If she was back in time.”

She was warning me. This consideration, if that was what it was, made me livid.

“Doubt it,” Nick said, his mouth full again. “Think it’s an all-day, all-night deal.” She was the secret he was holding within himself. In the moments when he seemed to be disappearing in front of me, he was thinking of May.

Anil and Ram watched us, eagle-eyed. Something was up, but they didn’t know what. “Hey, Charlie,” Anil said, “could you pass those beans?”

“Sure thing.”

“You made these, right? As usual?”

“It’s my highest culinary accomplishment,” I said.

“Doesn’t it involve, like, cream of mushroom soup? And a can opener?” Ram said.

“Maybe.”

“Well, they taste just like Mom’s,” Nick said.

“I got the recipe from her. Such as it is.”

“She doesn’t cook much either,” Nick said to the boys.

“There’s mixing involved,” I said. “Stirring. Must be done to precise standards.”

“How is your mother, Charlie?” Divya said.

“Doing fine.”

“Do you know her, Divya?” Nick said.

“We’ve never met. Oddly enough. After all these years.”

“She’s coming for Christmas,” Nick said.

“Really! That’s wonderful!”

“She’s going to stay with Charlie.”

Divya looked at me quickly and I gave what I imagine was a rather wan smile. “Time for her to finally see the place,” I said. “Don’t know why it’s never worked out before.”

“Well, now she has two of you here. Now there is no excuse.”

“That’s right,” I said. “None at all.”

“
THIS RIDICULOUS CHINA.
” This was also an annual complaint. It was Win’s mother’s expensive heirloom wedding china that couldn’t go in the dishwasher. She always said the boys expected it. I can’t imagine they would have noticed, but the ritual was in stone and Divya would not admit she’d done the chiseling.

I heard cheering, and looked out the window above the sink. Between shreds of cloud the sky was a watery blue, and the sun was casting long shadows. Nicky, Anil, and Anil’s friends were high-fiving
one another while Ram and his friends looked on in mock glumness; then they all huddled and re-formed. White teeth and handsomeness abounded. “The Kennedys appear to be playing football on your lawn,” I said.

Divya came over next to me and looked out the window. “Some of them are remarkably tan,” she said. She watched for a minute, a hard-won contentment emanating from her. The light shone through the bare branches of the maples at the edge of the yard, and for a moment I was blinded. “Look at the sun,” she said. “So low. Ah, it’ll be dark soon.”

“We’re in the last days of Ordinary Time.”

“That sounds so ominous.”

“Just the inexorable march of the liturgical calendar.”

“That doesn’t help, Charlie.”

“Actually we’re all waiting for the solstice. Deep instinct. Primordial.”

“Maybe you are nothing but a pagan after all,” Divya said.

“Maybe you’re right.”

They re-formed and ran another play, and as we watched Nick went diagonal and then reached up a long arm, casually, almost as though it were not a part of his body and instead controlled itself, and caught the ball. He loped easily to the goal line and there was more rejoicing, and then I saw a new figure walking into the yard, a long-legged girl in jeans and tall brown boots, and as I watched May walked straight up to Nick and kissed him, in front of God and the college kids and everybody. For a second they were together, so tall, complete, and then she stepped back, she was laughing.

“Oh good,” Divya said. “She was able to get away.”

I knew that there were many possible comments to make: That she had escaped in record time. That the traffic must still be light. That it was good she’d gotten home before dark. That I, myself, would rather sleep in thumbscrews than have a long dinner with Laird and Binky. That I had believed it when Nick said she was staying there overnight, if I had thought of it at all, which I must have been because here I was thinking
I thought she was going to stay overnight
. But not saying it. Because nothing bothered me.

“I’m sorry I didn’t warn you before today,” Divya said. “But I doubted she would really come.”

“I didn’t need a warning.”

“I thought Nick would mention it to you.”

“Nothing needed mentioning.”

We washed and dried in a heavy silence. Divya was shaking her head. “I was wrong. Wrong, wrong. I am sorry.” She put a plate down with a
clink
on the stack on the kitchen table. “Charlie, what have you done?”

“What have
I
done? What are you talking about?”

Divya dried another plate, came back to the drainer. She didn’t look at me. “Charlie. It’s not good.”

I gave up pretending ignorance. “You talk like I have control of the world, Div. Would that it were so.”

“The only conclusion I can come to is that you have lied to him.” I didn’t answer. After a moment she said, stubbornly, “To Nicky.”

I sighed. “About what?”

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

“I told him that May and I were an item, briefly, a long time ago, and that it’s good and over, dead as a doornail, and that is the truth.”

“I never knew why it ended, Charlie.”

“Doesn’t matter. We were too young or too old or too stupid or whatever. Preston was dying. It isn’t even interesting—it seemed terribly profound at the time, but we were just a mismatch.”

“I know you would do anything for him,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you have to.”

“You seem to think I’m very noble, Div.”

“Maybe you are.”

“Ah, no.”

“Charlie—”

“Leave it,” I barked at her, and then was ashamed. “Please.”

“And I am surprised at May too.”

“She has my blessing. I told her so. Not that she needs it.”

She put another plate on the dry stack. “Charlie. You won’t let anyone help you.”

There was a wet plate in my hands, and the only reason I didn’t
raise it up and dash it into soapy pieces on the floor was that I could remember Win in this kitchen, holding what might have been the same plate, a towel tucked into his waistband, humming. “What kind of help, precisely, are you offering?” I said. “To fix what problem? I have a brother who is in love. I have a brother who is happy. I have a brother who is in Abbottsford, Massachusetts, also known as the Yankee fucking Shangri-la, who is not going to get blown up by an IED or some crazy-ass fundamentalist suicide bomber while he’s here, and because he is in love and he is happy, then maybe he’ll stay. If there are other issues you’d like me to take up, let me tell you I am fully occupied at the moment, and I am completely content.” I rinsed the plate under the tap. I put it in the drainer with great care. I kept my back to Divya and my eyes on the sink. From outside I could hear clapping and laughter, ringing in the dying afternoon, the unmistakable sounds of our paradise on earth.

IT WAS TRUE
that Anita was coming for Christmas, and true of course that it had been Nicky’s idea. Not long after his first couple of dates with May, he had said, “What are we doing for the holidays? We have to decide.” Oh,
we
. “I just realized I’ll
be
here for them. I mean in the States.”

“Traveling is a bitch over Thanksgiving.”

“Okay.”

Too easy. He had that sad, hopeful look, and I knew that once again he wouldn’t ask why Anita and I rarely spoke, no matter how hard we pretended for his sake. Instead he would just stand there (okay, right now he was sitting, we were sitting on the patio) with his buoyant longing.

I was braced and thinking that Atlanta wouldn’t be so bad if Nick was actually there. I’d done it plenty of times since Anita and I had fallen out, I’d pretended for a long time. But Nicky said, “I was thinking Mom could come here.”

“Here?”

“And stay with you. You always say you rattle around here. In this house.”

“That’s true.”

“So, I think she would like it.”

“Have you already asked her?”

“No,” he said.

I believed him. He could not dissemble. “I was just wondering. If she’d said anything to you.”

“No. She didn’t. But has she ever been here?”

“No.”

“Why not, Charlie?”

“Because I always went to see you.”

“Oh.” He wanted to trust me. He
did
trust me. He soldiered on. “I think she would like it,” he said again. “We can show her everything. Introduce her to everyone.”

So he wanted her to meet May.

“And she needs to see this,” he said, and gestured out to the mountains, and then for good measure bounced out of the chair, roamed off the flagstones and into the grass. “This is you. She should see this place.”

Oh, his particular genius. Exactly what I did not want her to see. Myself, everything I couldn’t change. But as always the easiest thing to do was to roll over, hum a mindless little tune, admit no complication. “Okay,” I said. “Sure. Christmas here.”

“The beginning of a new tradition.”

“Sure.”

“Maybe there will be snow,” Nick said. “Someone was telling me. There are all these signs. This farmer’s almanac stuff. Like, there were a lot of acorns this year. And the caterpillars were fuzzier than usual. That’s a thing. Meaning snow. Meaning a heavy snowfall.”

“Signs and portents.”

“
Yes
, Charlie.”

Oh, how he was stymied by his dour older brother. Oh, I saw it all, what he wanted: sleigh bells, perfection. Perfection and harmony weren’t usually his gig, though—it was like he wanted it for me, for Anita, as though he knew our chances were dwindling, that maybe this was as close as the stars would ever align. “Sure,” I said. “A white Christmas. Chances are good. Chances are always good.”

Sixteen

Going back down the stairs I passed Celia and Zack on the landing, oblivious to anyone else going by, in tense conversation as usual; but even though they might have been on the verge of breakup, I envied them. Then was quickly ashamed. That pain: of course I remembered it. But oh, how it
mattered
.

CHRISTMAS PARTY AT DIVYA’S.
One of the things that could be counted on, and wasn’t I fortunate to have so many of them? These rituals that stood alone, that couldn’t be altered or ruined?

Faculty, spouses, little girls in hair bows, little boys in knitted vests. Sprinkling of garish Christmas sweaters. This year Divya wore a green sari shot through with gold threads. Her bun was complicated. Her jewelry was so abundant that I thought she might clink when she moved—but it was too loud in the house to tell.

Seniors in good standing were invited, by long tradition: Win’s idea, years before. He thought they should be treated like responsible adults. The joke was that they would stand by the bar and try to mix themselves drinks, waiting to get caught by Bethie Salter, who long ago had appointed herself overseer. By now the exchanges were as stylized as kabuki. The only student who had ever succeeded in spiking the punch was Henry Bankhead.

The tree stood in the foyer and was twelve feet tall, blanketed with the ornaments that people brought every year. (Tonight Dex Pentecost had triumphantly produced a tiny toilet with “Plumbers’ Local 1” painted on it in red and green, provided by his brother, Amos, ’00, who knew the drill and had been on the lookout.) All was illuminated with big, blinking colored bulbs. Otherwise the only light, throughout the house, was dozens of candles. Around every door were paper chains and evergreens and mistletoe, and in the dining room enough food for a multitude of parties. The fires in all the fireplaces—dining room, living room, library, front hall—were lit. In the kitchen it was nearly impossible to move, and seated around the table were a dozen people of varying ages, playing penny poker.

I made a polite circuit and ended up in the front hall next to the tree. Through the wide doorway into the dining room, I watched as May and Nick stood next to the table, examining the food. They made no move to pick up plates. May was in a navy velvet dress that was nearly off the shoulder. Her collarbones begged for a finger to run along them and admire their fearful symmetry; with luck Nick would think of this.

I edged a little closer to the doors, staying half hidden. Sip of eggnog: high-octane. You’ve got raw eggs here, Win said. You need the bourbon, you see, to kill the bacteria. Health precaution, he said, and
glug-glug-glug
went the amber into the punch bowl. The merest of twinkle in his eye.

That doorway: nestled in it were the pocket doors. Since Win had restored them, they’d glide on their tracks with a touch of a finger. He’d showed me, proud as a child with a tower of blocks.

Now May and Nick were holding hands. A bold move! I noticed students noticing. Minnie Zheng, on the other side of the table, loading up on Divya’s samosas, swept her gaze over the two of them like she was reading a flowchart, and then whispered something to Marina Hirschfeld. Darius Flake and Will Bolling cut their eyes over and then nodded in admiration. These kids assumed they were looking at their own bright futures. No matter their current state, someday they too would be good-looking and in love. Singlehandedly, Nick and May made adulthood appealing.

With an air of great purpose, I turned and went up the stairs. On the second floor the electric lights in the hallway made the house ordinary again and the party noise from below, muted and equalized, became the essence of nostalgia, the sound of every good party that had ever been, every wonderful life: every night where you flirted with someone and were flirted with in return; where you felt her eyes on you and knew finally that you weren’t imagining things, that the person you’d come to the party hoping to see had thought the same of you, and you were about to enter into that mutual understanding that, being tacit, still had enough edge of uncertainty to make it excruciating and delicious.
Hi, Mr. Garrett. Miss Bankhead. You’re home. Yes. Are you drinking the
adult
eggnog, Miss Bankhead? Certainly not
.