Summer Brother

by Jaap Robben

  “Oh, woman …”

  “Mum doesn’t like that!” I shouted.

  Dad crushed his beer can and swapped it for a fresh one from his bag.

  “Go and swim with the boy.”

  He turned his head away and looked toward the other side of the quarry. That was his answer.

  “I’m fine, Mum.”

  Dad raised his full can in my direction.

  Lucien was humming and swaying his hips in a kind of dance. With his head thrown all the way back, he looked up at the light that flickered through the pine needles. A dinosaur cry came out of his mouth.

  “He likes it here!” I shouted.

  “Yes,” Mum nodded. “He likes it here.”

  Dad strolled over to the climbing frame with his beer. There, he flattened the second can and let it fall in the sand. He rolled his shoulders a few times, then gripped the highest bar. Slowly he pulled himself up until his chin was jutting over the top. He eased back down and did it two more times. I clapped for him.

  Mum was lying on her towel with her face in the sun. Lucien thrashed and whacked his branch in every direction but he didn’t hurt himself.

  Everything seemed just fine.

  A family appeared and sat themselves down further along. When a second family arrived and the kids charged down to the water with an inflatable dinghy, Mum started gathering our stuff together, keeping one eye on Lucien and another on the intruders. They had noticed my brother and the kids were staring at him. If I imagined Lucien was half-brother, half-dinosaur, I felt less ashamed of what people thought of him. Then it was pretty cool that he was mine.

  “Get out of the water, Brian,” Mum shouted, once she had packed everything away. “I won’t ask you again.”

  Mum wanted to take Lucien back to ours before we took him back to the home. So he wouldn’t forget what our house was like. But Dad said it would only make him want to stay and he wouldn’t understand that from now on he belonged somewhere else.

  On the last part of the drive back, Lucien bumped his head softly against the window. Travelling by car always made him sleepy. He was humming like he couldn’t remember the words to the song in his head.

  “Will you help your dad take Lucien back in?” Mum was on the back seat with the door open. “Will you do that for your mum?”

  “All right.”

  The two of us were done in no time. Dad had the tyres on the wheelchair screeching around the corners. I caught a glimpse of Henkelmann as we dashed past his room. His elbows were all bandaged up, probably to stop him gnawing at his skin until it bled. Down the corridor, Big Camiel stood waiting. “Hello there, sir. Hello there, sir.” He blocked our path with his huge hand hovering in the air. All you had to do was high-five him and he’d let you pass. Dad gave him one too and we left Camiel gazing at his open palm.

  At the time, Lucien shared a room with Lizzy. She had short, black, spiky hair. Her mum was blond, but Lizzy looked like she could have been Chinese. I had never seen her dad. Lizzy could do a bit more than Lucien—clap along to a song, hold her own beaker, and point at a table or a strawberry on a laminated card if she wanted to say table or something red. She was too small for an ordinary wheelchair, so they drove her around in a baby buggy. There were two bright red rims under her eyes where her eyelids drooped, and I was afraid she might cry blood if she was sad. Dad said only statues of Our Lady did that, not spastics like Lizzy. “Watch your mouth,” Mum snapped, and made me promise never to say anything like that around Lizzy’s mother.

  When we wheeled Lucien in, Lizzy’s mother looked up from her magazine. “Isn’t Milou with you?”

  “She stayed in the car,” Dad sighed. “This is the part she doesn’t like.”

  “I understand.” She flicked through a page or two. Dad zipped his leather jacket up to his chin, then half opened it again. “Everything okay? With you, I mean?”

  “Yes, sure,” she smiled. “Lizzy had a good day.”

  Lucien lived in the same bed back then, only parked by a different window. With our photos on the magnet board beside him, and a plastic dinosaur I had given him as a present. His view was a poster of the Ninja Turtles. Not because he liked them, but because we both had Ninja Turtle pyjamas. Crêpe-paper birds dangled from the ceiling, left over from the kid that lived in this bed before him.

  “Lucien’s nappy is full,” I whispered to Dad. Even through his trousers I could see it hanging heavy between his legs. Mostly piss, I reckoned, because I couldn’t smell anything. “Dad?”

  “If it’s full now, it’ll be full when the nurses make their rounds. That’s what they’re paid for.” Once he had lifted Lucien onto his bed and covered him clumsily with the blanket, we stood there for a moment.

  “Have a good week’s sleep.” Lucien was already rocking his head from left to right on the pillow. I knew he would rock away until he fell asleep.

  “Come on.” Dad gently patted the bumps in the blanket. “Let’s tell reception we’ve delivered your brother.” He winked at Lizzy’s mother.

  Mum was still sitting on the back seat. Her hands seemed to be comforting one another. Dad always grumbled about it not being a taxi if Mum sat in the back while he drove. But now he studied her face in the rearview mirror and started the engine before I had fastened my seat belt.

  “Everything go okay?” Mum asked in a feeble voice.

  “The usual,” Dad said.

  “So will Lucien go back to sleep all week?”

  Mum held a crumpled hanky in her fist. I couldn’t tell from her eyes whether she’d been crying or not. “Do you want to stroke my fingers the way you do Lucien’s?” I asked and held out my hand.

  “You can stroke your own fingers,” Mum said under her breath. I tilted toward her when we rounded a sharp bend. Then tipped upright as the car straightened up again.

  I tried to make my fingers as gnarly and crooked as Lucien’s. But I couldn’t keep it up. And when I stroked the skin between them I mainly just noticed it was me doing it.

  I spotted a toy dinosaur under the seat in front of me. He had wings, so that made him a glide-o-saurus. I nudged him toward me with my feet. There was a plastic line running down his belly with tiny words I didn’t understand, though I could read the separate letters. His feet had three crooked toes that were too small to stroke.

  Because he asked me to, I let the dinosaur look out the window and I pointed out the things we saw. Concrete lamppost, concrete lamppost, dented crash barrier. Tin cans in the grass. A bridge over another road. A carpet store. A mountain in the distance that wasn’t a mountain at all but a big pile of rubble that steamed after it rained. A busted car tyre at the side of the road. A truck without a trailer. Bushes. McDonald’s cartons. All this was new to the glide-o-saurus.

  “We’re going fast, aren’t we?” I whispered.

  He nodded.

  “That’s because my dad wants to get home quick.”

  We had just passed the railway crossing. I remember because Mum took my hand, laid it on her thigh, and started stroking the folds between all my fingers.

  -

  16

  “Don’t swat them,” says Dad, though it’s the first thing he does whenever a wasp goes near his mouth. The closer we get to the bottle bank, the more fiercely they zigzag in front of our faces. The broom bushes are full of pods. I pluck one, squeeze the peas out, and stroke the corner of my mouth with the fuzzy shell. It feels good but it doesn’t tingle. We reach the top of the rutted track to our turf. Dad thinks it’s best to wait here for the minibus that’s bringing Lucien, so Jean and Brown Henri can’t strike up a conversation with the driver.

  “Not long now till my boys are back together.” Dad shakes a loose stone from his flip-flop and rubs his hands together.

  “Did you know our tenant can’t have kids?”

  “Huh?” Dad looks at me. “What
are you on about?”

  “Even though he wanted to. And so did she.”

  “What?”

  “He told me.”

  “When?”

  “He dropped by when you were out.”

  “And he tells you stuff like that?”

  “With Louise.”

  “Who the hell’s she?”

  “His wife. But she won’t call him back.”

  “Our cash machine has a wife?”

  It feels good to feed Dad a story for once. Even if there’s not much to it.

  “So why did Louise kick him out?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Our tenant tells you everything by the sound of things.”

  “All I did was ask. And he answered.”

  “You asked?”

  I nod.

  “I asked too and all the guy said was ‘compli-bloody-cated.’”

  “Emile doesn’t like questions.”

  “He doesn’t seem to mind yours.”

  “He likes to know who’s asking.” I want to tell him Emile said Dad’s lucky to have me, but I can’t explain why he said it.

  “Anything else to report? Was there a problem?”

  The word Mum crops up too often in anything else I might say, so I shake my head.

  “So that’s it?”

  I can’t work out if he thinks it was too much or not enough.

  “He was nice, that’s all.”

  “Nice …” Dad repeats.

  A Renault minibus appears out of nowhere, feeling its way around the bend. “Just act casual, like we happen to be standing here, okay?” Dad strides out into the middle of the road, signals to the driver that he’s in the right place and where to turn. Heads at the windows wobble and jolt in time to the bumps and potholes in the road. You can hear the rust groan on the straining suspension. Lucien is right at the back of the bus. A girl with a squashed face gives me the evil eye. I hoped Selma might have come along to see Lucien off. While Dad was sorting things out with the driver, I could have taken her over to our fridge for something to drink. That wouldn’t have been weird, just nice. Everyone’s thirsty when it’s warm. And Lucien would get all excited and wobble like mad in his wheelchair so Dad would think Selma was his girl. Standing by the fridge, little stripes of shadow from the blinds would fall across her face. Rico would make her giggle by licking salt from the back of her knees. I would wait for the right moment and say sorry for being so unkind to her. I’d tell her I didn’t have a choice and that I really wouldn’t mind if we kissed properly. Selma would smile and hand me her empty tumbler because she’d want another drink first. Meanwhile Dad would be over by the minibus filling in form after form. And Selma would be allowed to stay as long as we promised to drive her back later. We’d go for chips at Mandy the Nail’s.

  “Turn first!” Dad shouts to the driver and mimes a semi-circle to show him how. He extends a friendly hand through the driver’s open window and gives Lucien a thumbs-up. Dad and the driver start talking but I can’t hear what they’re saying.

  The minibus reverses and its double flashing lights come on. Dad slaps the dusty back doors and rattles the handle but of course they’re still locked.

  “Chevalier?” The thin, beardy driver gets out and walks to the back of the bus, slow and stiff, like there’s a steel rod up his back.

  “We were expecting you half an hour ago.”

  “I couldn’t see any house numbers.” He flicks his head back to dodge a wasp. “Where exactly is your place?”

  “Down the way,” Dad says and points to the back doors of the bus, which are still locked. “When you didn’t appear we decided to walk up to meet you.”

  “I’m supposed to drop the client off at the front door.”

  “You’ve still got plenty of deliveries to make by the look of it.” And when there’s no answer, Dad says, “The road’s been dug up further down, so you’d struggle getting that bus through.”

  As soon as the back doors open, every head turns to peer around its headrest. Every head except Lucien’s. A linen bag is knotted to the handle of his wheelchair. I help Dad lift out the metal ramp. While the driver clicks Lucien’s wheelchair loose, Dad steps back until he’s standing beside me. “There’s your brother.”

  The minibus waits ages before setting off again. In among the roots of his dark hair, Lucien’s scalp is deathly pale, almost luminous. His calves tense as he tugs impatiently on the straps around the footrests. The sun stings and he tries to wipe it out of his eyes like it’s shampoo. His face turns this way and that, but the blinding light finds him wherever he looks. A truckload of tree trunks thunders past and the minibus finally pulls out onto the road.

  “Right then,” Dad says. We both look at Lucien. It’s only now—in a borrowed wheelchair, in the middle of our rutted track, without his bed around him—that I see how small he really is. His polo shirt is buttoned tight at the neck but hangs loose around his shoulders. His scrawny legs look bent out of shape. “Feffe,” he mumbles.

  In the linen bag I discover a toilet bag, six little tubs of applesauce, and the beaker he drinks from. I hope there might be something from Selma, a note maybe.

  “Let’s get him into the shade,” Dad says.

  Lucien twists as far as his seat belt will allow.

  The smaller front wheels swing sideways at every clump of grass and get stuck in the tyre tracks in the hardened mud. Swearing, Dad spins the wheelchair around, tilts it back and drags Lucien along behind him. All the time he’s got one eye on Jean and Henri’s garage.

  In the strip of shade by the caravan, Rico and Rita are lying with their mouths wide open, heads rising and falling to the rhythm of their panting. They see us coming but they’re too lazy to get up and take a sniff at Lucien.

  Dad parks the wheelchair next to the bed, with its back to the caravan. “Let him take in the view.” Lucien rubs his cheek on his shoulder. “Give him a chance to acclimatize.”

  “Feffe, feffe.” It sounds like a message the nurses have told him to pass on to us. For days I imagined Lucien being here, but I always pictured him in bed, sleeping. He never really did much else.

  “Shouldn’t there be a letter somewhere?”

  Dad shakes his head like he doesn’t understand. “A letter?”

  “To tell us what to do.” I have another grabble around in Lucien’s bag. Nope, nothing from Selma. “Should I look in that file they gave us?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  I’m glad of the chance to do something, hopeful that someone has written down what’s supposed to happen next. The file is on the cupboard by the TV.

  “Got it!” I shout from inside. Through the window I can see the back of Lucien’s head and that tuft of hair sticking up. Dad drums his fingers against his pursed lips, wrinkles his nose. Suddenly a wasp is hovering in front of Lucien’s face. “Look out,” I warn, but Dad has already chased it away.

  “Maybe it’s best if he just sits for a while,” Dad says to me. “Or has a drink of something.”

  “Yeah,” I say, looking at the table that lists Lucien’s medicines. “There’s something about that in the file.”

  “Feffe, feffe, feffe.”

  A gummy, grey nest is tucked beneath the roof edge. We’ve lifted Lucien onto the bed. He rocks from side to side, rubs his eyes with the inside of his forearm. A pair of swallows swoop around us, taking turns to dive for home. But with Lucien here, they keep veering off at the last minute.

  Dad’s busy moving things, dragging them from one place to another. Dark patches of earth appear in the grass in front of the caravan, along with ants’ nests full of little shiny white eggs. I’m ordered to pour a kettle of boiling water over them. As Dad stands there taking a breather, he glances over at the garage and then back at Lucien. A little smile appears on his face when he realizes I
’ve clocked him.

  I can’t take my eyes off Lucien. The way he lies there rocking endlessly in his bed while a strange new life goes on around him.

  When Rico and Rita yawn, Lucien hears them. He works his way up onto his elbows and sticks his chin over the side of the bed to take a look. “Moo-wah-wah.”

  “Meet Rico and Rita. They’re yours too, now. Kind of.”

  “Moo-wah-wah.”

  “Rita’s the one without a tail.” Now that Lucien is distracted, I try to give him something to drink. But he clamps his lips together and twists his mouth away without taking his eyes off the dogs.

  Sitting on the doorstep of the caravan, I flick through Lucien’s instruction manual and stop again at the table of medicines. I try to mouth their impossible names, work out how many pills he has to take and when. The boxes and bottles in the bag contain five different kinds. The table says nothing about why he has to take them, just sums up their side effects. Drowsiness tops every list. I count two mentions of reduced muscle strength. And a warning that Lucien is not allowed to drive a motor vehicle. There’s a chance of one in a hundred thousand that three of the five medicines could kill you. The phone number of the home is on the front page. Did Selma have a phone in her room? I can’t remember. We never had to call Lucien. There’s probably a group phone in every section.

  “Come here!” Dad calls from behind the caravan. I help him carry two pallets that still look halfway decent round the front. My bed is going to be Lucien’s indoor bed and Dad wants to knock something together to stop him falling out. For as long as my brother’s here, I’m relegated to a mattress on the floor.

  “What do the instructions say?” Dad asks, nodding at the file.

  “There’s a list of medicines we have to give him. Some of them can kill you.”

  Dad tries to read it upside down. “It’s all poison in the end.”

  “Poison?”

  “One pill cures your earache but gives you a pain in your knee. So they give you a powder for your knee but that makes you dizzy and gives you blisters on your tongue, so you need another two pills to sort that out.”