The Half Brother (33 page)

I was so encased in this silent struggle with the will of my mother that I didn’t hear the noise outside at first; then I realized there had been shouting, May’s shouting—and I stood up and went to the door, but before I reached it, it burst open. “The plow came,” she said, her chest heaving.

“Good old Vince,” I said.

“I tried to stop him—I yelled and screamed and waved my arms but he just kept going—what if he has a phone?” She shook her head to clear it. “God. I’m getting my keys. I’m going after him—”

“No. I’ll go. If he got here, that means they’re plowing everywhere. The roads will be clear enough. I’ll go get Nicky.”

“Maybe he’s on his way right now.”

“He can’t get here in that crappy little car.”

“I love that car,” she said.

“I know. I know you do.”

Her eyes were filling. “Charlie.”

She wanted to save him but dreaded his grief—I saw it in her face. “I know,” I said again—me who knew so little.

She went inward, inward, to Nicky. “Yes,” she said. “Please. Please go get him.”

I walked back into the living room and knelt down beside my mother. I touched her waxy forehead. I wanted to say
Wait for me, please don’t leave yet
, but even motionless her strange agitated vitality was so strong that I didn’t.

THE WORLD WAS WHITE
and askew, trees and lines down, no cars anywhere, although there were orange cones around a telephone pole that had fallen half into the road. The glare was blinding; I put on my sunglasses. I stopped at the first convenience store I came to, to see if they had a working phone, but the place was closed and dark.

Only the main streets in town were plowed, just a first pass one car wide. When I got to the turn for Nicky’s street I pulled my car as far to the side as I could in case the plows came by again and began to walk. By now it was almost nine. The world would begin to come alive. Sound, any sound, would be hard to take.

Sure enough, down the street two men were out shoveling. They gave me enthusiastic waves: we had all survived! “What a mess, huh?” one man called.

I had to clear my throat. “You’re doing a yeoman job,” I called back.

“Gotta be careful. This stuff is wicked heavy.” He huffed a huge shovelful off the sidewalk and into his yard. “Heart-attack snow. Sleet on top. Started sleeting, at the end.”

The other man was wearing a Russian-style fur cap and smoking a pipe. He removed the pipe and said, “Wife’ud be pissed if you keeled over.”

I said, “You have power?”

“Not yet. I heard tomorrow.”

“What a fucking mess,” the pipe smoker said.

At Nick’s I raised a fist to the door: nothing. I knew the bell didn’t work. I almost knocked again but I didn’t like the sound. I didn’t want to draw attention. The guys down the street might come to help, ask what was what. I got out my keys and slipped the duplicate that Nick had given me into the lock, but then I realized the door wasn’t locked.

Inside, it was cold and quiet. The place was not quite as messy as usual. I glanced in the open door of the bedroom: bed empty—not made, exactly, but the covers pulled up. What passed for made with Nicky. In the living room, there was a stack of papers and textbooks on the floor. The coffee table was clear. “Nick? Nicky?” I didn’t call loudly; I didn’t keep calling.

On the kitchen table, propped up against a dirty glass, was a manila envelope, addressed to me.

He was going to Congo. There were refugee camps, he had contacts. Anita had told him to go.
It is awful there Charlie its horrible and they need people. Not me I kno that but just peopl and you don’t need me here and I kno that to. No one needs me here. This place was perfect when I got here your kind of place Charlie but I need distratcion that is bad but that is the way I am
.

I do not know from what I need to be distracted from. I do not think about it
.

Mom understands

I am sorry you will have to deal with all this shit Im leaving. Its better thogh. No one will want to see me or talk to me. There is a letter here for May

Im going to write it all down and this is the truth. You can do whatever you want with it. Everyone wanted so much from me and I was giving it to them I didn’t sleep with Celia until after she and zack broke up that IS the TRUTH you should know that. She came over here all the time I didn’t invite her she just showed up but then afterwards she was so sad and I couldnt stand it it seemed right jesus maybe it was. I thout he knew and I thout he would tell you and then he died I don’t fucking know I don’t Charlie. I loved her your going to ask what it was, well her feet, the way she walked so carefuly, delicately like she doesn’t want to leave footprints, I get that. I tried not too
.

I loved May too more it was more real maybe. more adult I know that is the point charlie. I meant it please tell her I told you that. Maybe I could have stayed w/ her and I loved her and Charlie you know I don’t say it if i don’t mean it. This is not the place for me. I knew but i tried and you should have known but it was beautiful wasn’t it charlie? In the snow. That night at Divya’s after christmas with mom I will always remember it was perfect it was the peek the top of the mountain thank you charlie there are not many nights like that thats all i wanted. It was too much though too much and so i say thank you and i am sorry

I had never known before how he did it. How he pulled himself away, bit by bit, his beautiful face shining all the while, until before you knew it all you could see was his waving hand, the cloud of dust.

AFTER I PUT MY LETTER
back in the manila envelope with May’s, unopened, I became efficient.

I went through every room. I found bottles in the trash and in the closets. In the bathroom I found four empty prescription painkiller bottles with my mother’s name on them. I put them in my pocket.

I called Salter’s house and talked briefly to Bethie. Everything was fine, the generators were working in the gym, and they thought the power would be back within the hour. I told her my mother wasn’t good and I wouldn’t be in, nor would May. I let her assume Nick was with me. “I’ll tell Adam,” she said. “And there’s nothing we can—”

“Nothing right now. Nothing at all.”

I closed the door to Nick’s apartment and locked it behind me.

I strode purposefully down the street, waving but not speaking to
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. I got to my car and drove to the nearest open gas station, where I bought gas for my generator, two coffees, and two enormous cardboardish blueberry muffins. It was not until I was back on the road to the house that I let myself think that Anita could be dead by now. And that May was waiting not for me, but for Nick.

The road had been plowed again and was easily passable. My street had room for one car to go down it; Vince had done a decent job on my driveway. The sun by now was bright, almost celebratory.

May was at the door almost instantly when I walked through. “Charlie. She’s still here.” And I was surprised at the rush of relief. It frightened me, how glad I was. “But she’s bad again. Where’s Nick?”

“He’s not here,” I said. “I can’t find him.” The manila envelope was folded fat inside my coat.

She looked at me and I expected her eyes to be frantic and lost, little-girl eyes worrying over little-boy Nick. But they were resigned, unsurprised. “Did he tell you he was going anywhere?” I said.

“No,” she said. “He didn’t.” The question seemed to mildly annoy her, a mere distraction. “Charlie, you have to talk to her.”

I followed her back into the living room. The peacefulness was gone, and the look of gentle surprise; my mother was gray, her mouth roundly open. There was silence, and then finally a breath—or rather a rasping, barely human, the sound of a body reduced to failing machine, running on the engine of the reptile brain. I sat down next to her and smoothed her forehead. “Oh, Mama,” I whispered.

“Do you think she’s waiting for Nicky?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

May sat down on the floor, at my feet, looking up at my mother. “Then you have to tell her it’s all right to go,” she murmured. “Daddy did this. She’s hanging on. She’s hanging on for something.”

“You’re so stubborn,” I whispered.

Another rasp, cheeks sunken in, her mouth a lipless gape.

“Mama,” I said. “Please listen. I’m going to tell her. Listen, Mama, listen,” crooning now,
It’s all right. Hush little baby
. “I’m telling her everything.”

Her lungs were dry as cliffs, her throat full of stones.

I turned to May. “Nicky is gone. He’s going to Africa, probably. Anita told him to go.”

Her mouth opened a little. And closed.

“I don’t know much. I’ll tell you everything I know. But there’s something else. Please listen. I need to tell you about my father. Anita didn’t tell you, because I wouldn’t let her.”

That gentle little furrow of her eyebrows. “He was a priest,” I said. “Or, rather, a deacon. He was in St. Annes, Georgia, for a summer posting. It was good for him because his fiancée was in Savannah that summer. With her family. She was from Savannah. But he fell in love with my mother, and she got pregnant.”

“Charlie.”

I was in a trance. I was holding it away from myself. I was dismantling the house piece by piece. “But he went back to the fiancée anyway. He went back to Virginia. To seminary. Where his fiancée’s father was a bishop. And then eventually he became a chaplain. At a school.”

“Stop. Please stop.” She was whispering.

My mother’s terrible breaths. One. Then the next. “There was a man named Jimmie Garrett. He died in Vietnam. But he wasn’t my father. My father didn’t die in Vietnam. He didn’t even go there. His name wasn’t Jimmie Garrett. But Anita didn’t tell me. She didn’t tell me until it was too late. Until he was about to die. And until I had fallen in love with his daughter.”

One more breath. “Don’t tell it like a story,” May whispered.

“I’m sorry.”

“If it’s not a story.”

“It’s not a story.”

“Charlie. Charlie.” I didn’t reach for her. I couldn’t. Instead I kept my hand on my mother’s arm. Not moving or stroking. Just a connection. I felt her there. I felt her receding.

May could not get her breath. Sound wouldn’t come. Then, finally, “I don’t believe you,” she said.

Silence. For a long time. And then we both realized: silence.

I FOLDED ANITA’S HANDS
on her chest. I wanted ancient gestures. Where were pennies for her eyes? Who would pay the ferryman? May stood up, looking down at her, not at me, and then walked out of the room. I heard the back door open and close—she had gone out to the patio. I let her be.

The body of my mother didn’t make sense: Was it presence and absence together? How was the absence so large? The body itself seemed to call for action. So I went down to the cellar with the gas, started the generator, and turned the water back on. I went and got more wood from the pile on the porch, brought it in, stacked it in the brass wood box. I found my charger and plugged in my phone; maybe I’d get a signal.

I stood next to my desk and made a list of people to call: the funeral home. Adam, Divya, various Satterthwaites. At the plugged-in phone, there was one bar, appearing and then disappearing. I called Nicky again, got patchy voice mail, didn’t leave a message.

Then I remembered the breakfast I had bought what seemed like days ago, although it had been only a bit more than an hour. I got the bag of muffins and May’s coffee from the car—I had drunk mine on the way—and, back inside, heated hers up in the now-functioning microwave. Then I got my coat and boots and went out the kitchen door.

She was sitting in the middle of the snow-covered patio, in one of the Adirondack chairs. The snow was a foot and a half deep, at least. Only the top of the chair and its arms showed. She was cradled in snow. Her red coat pooled around her like a train. It was early enough that the sun hadn’t yet risen over the peak of the roof, but the shadows and light on the mountains in front of us were stark, and I had to shield my eyes against the glare.

It was ridiculous, comical, the way the chair was barely visible, the way she looked like she was floating in the white. Absurd.

I began to slog toward her, using the deep prints she had made. She didn’t look at me when I came close. I set the coffee cup and the bag on the wide arm of the chair, at a level with the snow. Something about her stillness made me think I should stay, that she wanted me to stay, but the other chair was completely consumed, so I backed up and
then just stood, the drifted snow past my knees. After another long minute she took the coffee and wrapped her gloved hands around it. She drank. She took the white bag onto her lap, peered into it, and brought out a piece of muffin, which she ate without comment; then she rolled the top of the bag closed again as though she’d just had a full meal.

I felt giddy. I realized a weight had been lifted. I thought about how this was Anita’s gift to me. Somehow my horror and mortification had dissipated, for good, as I had spoken inside; the reality, out loud, somehow seemed smaller than my years of florid shame. I wanted to say these things to May, but I knew I was far, far ahead of her. The reality was still enormous. And there was the matter of Nick—all that she didn’t even know yet. The envelope was still pressing against my chest. But suddenly I thought that maybe we could find him, bring him back, that now that the worst was over we could all be sensible, that he would be able to survive Anita’s death as I was, already, splendidly—see, I was fine! And he would be too. It would be the three of us again. Somehow it was all right. I wanted them together. Yes, that was what I wanted! Now that the truth was out, how marvelous that there was this second act possible at all, that Nick and May could be together with my blessing, a real blessing. I had to figure out how to say all this to her. “May-May—”

She held up a hand, as though I had interrupted her listening to something far away. I waited. Her hand drifted back down and she said, “Did I tell you I went to Savannah this summer?”