Not As We Know It

by Tom Avery

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Down there with Leonard. It was amazing.”

  “Ned, did you…?”

  The door opened and Dad returned. “There’s my boy,” he said. “How are we feeling?” He took Ned’s hand.

  “I’ve been better,” Ned said.

  When Mum came back, her hair slick and her dirty clothes bundled under one arm, she grabbed me in a hug. “Well done, Jamie.” Her voice was tiny and just about disappeared as she went on. “I’m so glad you’re both…both…here.”

  I didn’t get to ask Ned any more about down there. Granddad came to get me before lunch. Mum squeezed me in a hug.

  “Can you bring me the Walkman, Jamie?” Ned asked.

  I frowned at my brother.

  “With that tape we were listening to.”

  There was a strange rhythm over the day that followed. Familiar things felt anything but.

  I spent the afternoon with Granddad. Dad came to get me for dinner. I sat in the quiet, in the dark of the garage, watching the still water.

  Sometime in the evening, I fetched my bike. It had been moved off the path and rested on a prickly bush. The front fork was bent, the paint cracked, the metal showing through. When I tried to ride it, I found the wheel had pushed back against the frame. Dad called it a “write-off.”

  In the morning, we returned to the hospital with clothes for Mum and things from home for Ned. I took the Walkman and a determination to get the truth from my brother.

  Mum worried about the food—Ned wasn’t eating enough and there wasn’t enough fresh fruit. She worried that he wasn’t comfortable—“Fetch his duvet from home, Charlie.” She complained that someone had opened Ned’s window in the night—“He has pneumonia, for goodness’ sake.” Mostly she cried.

  As usual no one spoke to me about what was wrong. I caught snippets of whispered conversation.

  “…lungs are not recovering as we would hope.”

  “…not responding to the treatment…”

  “…not looking positive…”

  Half the morning was gone when Dad took Mum to get a coffee and have a break and my moment came to ask my brother what was happening. If this was the end, I wanted to know.

  Ned had other things on his mind. “He couldn’t hear me,” he said as the door shut.

  “What?”

  “Leonard,” Ned said. “He can’t hear it. I’m too far from the sea.”

  “You opened the window?”

  Ned scrunched his face. “Of course. But he can’t hear it. He can’t hear the song. I tried to sing it again. But he can’t hear it.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I did not want to think about what he was doing or why he did it.

  “Jamie,” my brother said, his eyes tugging at mine, “I thought it was time.”

  “Time for what, Ned? I thought Leonard was here for you. I thought…I thought he’d fix…fix everything. Make you better. But he didn’t. He hasn’t.”

  Ned sighed. He looked deep in my eyes. “Jamie,” he said. “In the stories, in Granddad’s stories, no one got better.”

  I stared back with my jaw set, holding in the tears. “Atargatis…her children,” I said. “They looked after people.”

  Ned nodded. “They did. They do. But maybe that looking after isn’t what we think, what we’d guess, what we’d want it to be. Leonard was here for me.”

  It was silent for a moment; then fear crashed over me in a huge wave.

  “In the stories, Jamie—Mathew Trewella, Perla, the Japanese captain—they didn’t get better. The stories ended another way.”

  I shook my head at Ned. I couldn’t hear this. I thought I wanted to know. But I did not want to believe this.

  I simply said, “No…,” and threw Ned’s Walkman down on the bed.

  —

  When they returned, with coffees for them and hot chocolates for us, they brought Granddad with them. He came in holding a battered cardboard box.

  I did not feel like games. I don’t suppose any of us did. But Ned said we should play.

  “This is the day I win,” he said.

  Ned and Dad made one team, me and Mum another. Granddad went alone.

  Granddad and Dad set the questions between them. Ned and Dad made a fearsome combo. Dad knew everything, and Ned attacked like he had nothing to lose.

  After they’d won, it was time to go.

  Mum and Dad and Granddad whispered in the corner again.

  “Jamie,” my brother said. “Come here.”

  I moved in a little closer.

  “Here,” he said, putting his arms out.

  I leaned toward him and put my arms around his tiny frame. He was smaller than ever, all bones. His little limbs wrapped around me.

  “This might be it,” Ned whispered into my ear. “I can feel it coming now.”

  Tears filled my eyes and dropped onto Ned’s thin hospital gown. I wanted to say something more, but all I managed was “Ned…”

  “Thanks for being my big brother,” he said.

  I squeezed out another “Ned…”

  “Come on, then,” Granddad called from the door.

  Ned let me go with a grin and wink. “This is the day I win,” he whispered.

  Over the years, Ned had spent a long time in hospitals, under the eye of doctors. When he was gone overnight, I always felt his empty space above me.

  Our room was colder. I was colder.

  Every time before, though, I’d known he’d be coming home. I’d known he’d fill the house again. That night was different.

  In the evening, the storm came. I imagined Ned watching the same lightning I did, watching it crack across the sky. He loved the way it stained your eyeballs, its imprint still there long after its death.

  “Rough out there,” Dad said.

  We hadn’t talked much. He’d collected me from Granddad with a tight grin and red swollen eyes. We’d eaten our frankfurters in buns silently.

  Like Ned, we both knew the storm was coming.

  “What’s gonna happen, Dad?” I said, not taking my eyes from the rain and stormy sea. I never asked. I was never told. But if there was ever a time for asking, this was it.

  I heard Dad cough. I heard his silence. Then, “It’s…it’s…it’ll be all right.”

  “OK, Dad,” I said.

  I knew he was lying. I’m sure he knew I was too.

  The TV went on behind me with a crackle and fizz. I recognized the voice of the host of A Question of Sport.

  I didn’t really like sport. Ned had always been the physical one, as much as he could be. He watched A Question of Sport with Dad, while I read. If the Risk questions had been about sports, Ned would have always won.

  David Coleman, the host, was asking Daley Thompson, “Who won the silver medal in the fifteen hundred meters at the Moscow Olympics in 1980?”

  Daley couldn’t remember “for the life of him.”

  Dad was making a “hmm” noise.

  “Was it Allan Wells?” I said.

  “He’s a sprinter,” Dad said. “Fifteen hundred is middle distance. I think it was the German…er…Straub.”

  “The fifteen hundred meters silver medal was won by Jürgen Straub,” David Coleman said.

  “One–nil to me,” Dad said.

  I turned to him with a grin.

  “Come here,” he said.

  I pulled myself away from the window and sat with Dad where Ned usually did. Dad put his arm around me.

  By the end of the show, the score was eighteen–three. Dad said it was a good effort. He kissed me on the top of the head and said, “Bed, I reckon.”

  —

  The bedroom was filled with Ned’s absence. I replayed Ned’s words again and again. “The stories ended another way.” My mind was filled with those stories of mermaids. I tried to see what Ned saw.

  And still the storm raged outside.

  The phone was ringing.

  It just kept ringing.

  The w
ind blew. The rain drummed. The phone rang.

  I listened as Dad crunched down the stairs. There was a click. It rang out over the storm.

  Dad coughed, then, “Hello.” The word crackled with sleep. “What?” There was alarm in his voice.

  I stared straight up at the emptiness above where Ned was not.

  “What do you mean?”

  I knew it was Mum on the end of the line and I thought I knew what she was saying. I thought I knew what Ned felt was coming. I thought I knew until…

  “Where’s he gone? Why’s he not in his bed?”

  I pushed myself up and rubbed my eyes on the duvet.

  “I’m coming,” Dad shouted, then the phone clunked down. I was out of my room when Dad called, “Jamie!”

  “Ned’s gone?” I asked.

  Dad coughed again as if to fill the silence Ned left. “We’ve got to go.”

  We stayed in our pajamas, coats over the top, flapping cuffs tucked into socks.

  “Where would he go, Jamie?” Dad said as he laced up his work boots.

  A hundred places flashed through my mind. Hills and fields. Beaches and hidden coves.

  Dad pulled the door open. A wind blew in. The rain still drummed, fingers on the roof and windows. The sea roared. And through it all I heard a woven note, a song.

  I knew then, without a doubt, where my brother was. I knew whose voices were carried on the wind. I understood then, Leonard and mermaids and everything. I knew what happened at the end of all those stories.

  Ned was right. No one got better. Not Mathew. Not Perla. Not the Japanese captain.

  I was right too. In the stories, when the mermaids came, they did take the sickness. But they took the people too. The waves swallowed them. The sea washed them away and left just a song, just a shadow, just an imprint in your eyes.

  I ran. The rain swallowed me. The emptiness left and the song filled me.

  The song filled me and lifted me. I swam through the rain. I didn’t bother with Ned’s bike. I followed the song and Dad followed me, calling.

  He didn’t know the path like I did. He had not sped down it in the rain just a few days before.

  Thunder rumbled.

  Dad called, “Jamie!”

  I ran and Dad chased.

  As I grew closer, the song grew louder. The rain’s pitter-patter became its beat, and the roar of the sea melted into those notes. Those voices sung together. Thunder was their crashing cymbal.

  I slipped and skidded down the path.

  Dad called, “Jamie.”

  I called, “Ned.”

  Our voices clashed with the song. We had no part in that melody.

  I did not miss the turn this time. I was off the path and on the rocks, calling behind me, “This way, Dad.”

  As I skipped across the wet slabs, the clouds broke. A splinter of moonlight shone down and its beams bounced off the water and reflected off two slick bodies, two tiny frames, crouched on the edge of the platform, where my world ended and the sea began.

  Déjà vu. That’s French for “already seen”—a moment you’ve already experienced.

  I shouted, “No!” As I called, the thunder pealed and my voice was lost.

  That was the final crash. The cymbals rang out. The sea’s roar died. The rain became a hiss. Tiny limbs stretched out. Together they dived. Ned and Leonard, Leonard and Ned hit the sea as one.

  There was silence.

  There was silence.

  There was silence. Then a ringing. Then a shout—my name again and again. A low rumble began in my chest. It rose to pounding drums. The sea roared and I roared back.

  “No! Ned!”

  One step. Two step. I threw myself off the edge of the world and into the black. I was swallowed whole by frozen jaws.

  The water swam around me. I looked down on myself floundering, or I remembered looking down on the policeman in this same sea. I looked up at my face shining down—or was that a single star, lonely above?

  A wave hit me and turned me. I held my breath and flailed one way, another. I called noiselessly into the deep, “Ned!”

  I saw black and black, and as the sea turned me again and again, that lonesome star. No brother. No merman. They were gone.

  The sea had swallowed them. Now it would swallow me.

  Granddad nearly drowned once. At the end, he said, you felt something close to sleep. That floaty feeling where the world is lost and it’s just you and a tingle in your toes and a whispered word running round and round your head.

  I heard Ned then. “Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit,” he whispered.

  I smiled at the end. Icy water filled my mouth and I surrendered to the waves.

  Then something grabbed me. A thick eel of an arm wrapped around my chest. It pulled me. It dragged me. For the first time since I’d left the world, I resurfaced, choking and coughing.

  Dad heaved us both up and out of the sea onto the rocks. My head fell back not against the hard rock but onto something soft.

  “What the hell are you doing, Jamie?” My dad was crying.

  I looked up at him. I didn’t speak but reached back, beneath my head to the clothes bundled on a pair of scuffed plimsolls.

  Dad scrabbled for my brother’s belongings. “Where’s Ned? Where is he?” Dad scanned the sea, left and right and out toward the horizon. He wrenched at his boots.

  Ned’s words came to me—“this is the day I win.”

  “Don’t, Dad. He’s gone,” I shouted. Then in a whisper, “It was what he wanted. This is how he wanted it.”

  I knew it was true. Ned had felt it coming, while I’d fooled myself that it would be any other way. A child of Atargatis had come; the sea had called and Ned had answered.

  Dad stood on the edge and stared. There was nothing to see but the waves, throwing themselves against the rock.

  Dad put his hands up against his face and screamed, “Ned!” He went to dive, but I threw myself at him. I clung to him.

  We looked at one another through the rain and the sea’s spray and our tears. I knew my brother was gone as certain as the night, as certain as the storm.

  Dad did not. He pushed me away with two words—“Stay here”—then turned and dived into the freezing sea, into the dark. He was gone for a long minute while the rain poured and the heavens thundered.

  When he appeared again, on the surface, ten meters from the rock, he called above the waves, “Where, Jamie? Where did you see him go?”

  I pointed to the spot and Dad dived again.

  I did not move but for the shivers that shook my body. I stayed that way, peering out to sea, as Dad dived, again and again and again.

  Each time he rose, he called to the deep, deep sea, “Ned!”

  I didn’t know how many times Dad dived. I could have stood a year on that rock with Ned’s empty clothes beside me and the loneliest star looking down from between the clouds.

  Eventually Dad hauled himself from the waves. We did not speak as he gathered up Ned’s wet bundle. He took my hand and we ran home, our pajamas dripping with sea and rain.

  The front door was still open, spilling out light. Dad threw Ned’s things on the sofa.

  I stripped and dried and fetched clean clothes, while Dad phoned the coast guard.

  Then he phoned the hospital. He talked to a nurse and another nurse before he got through to Mum. Dad held onto his tears. He told Mum. And a wail sounded down the phone.

  He told Mum the coast guard were out looking. He said we’d go to get her.

  Every word sounded hollow.

  He left me on the sofa and went to dry and change.

  Beside me, Ned’s clothes sat, filling the room with the salty scent of the sea. There among them was the glimpse of something shiny. Something plastic. I pushed his T-shirt and jeans aside. Wedged in his shoe was the Walkman. I pulled it out and shook it.

  It was mostly dry.

  I made sure the volume was low and clicked play.

  There was a familiar hacking cough. I heard
the thunder and the sea and rain. Then Ned spoke.

  “This is the end, Jamie. I know it’s not what you wanted, not what you expected. If I could have stayed, I would have. But this was the only way to win, Jamie. I had to risk it all. I had to boldly go. These are your adventures now. Your continuing mission.”

  He didn’t do his Captain Kirk voice. It was just Ned, alive as ever. I could see his lips twitching in a smile.

  “You’ve got to continue. Explore strange new places. Seek out new life and junk on the beach.”

  He stopped then. The thunder sounded.

  “Most of all, Jamie, do the same…,” my brother said, with his last message for me. “Boldly go.”

  Salty tears ran down my cheek and into my mouth. I picked up the Walkman to hurl it against the wall but found myself pulling it to my chest.

  Ned told me then to press stop. He had messages for Mum and Dad and Granddad—he said they were too soppy for my ears. I pressed stop as Dad returned.

  Dad looked at my eyes, then down at the Walkman in my hands.

  “Ned?” he said.

  I nodded.

  Outside, the storm still rumbled.

  The coast guard had not found anything after a day and a night of searching. I didn’t expect them to.

  Mum did. She wailed and screamed, and her face grew ever more red from her eyes outward.

  Dad had frozen. His jaw was locked. He didn’t look at anything. Not the coast guard or Mum or me or Mr. Taylor, who stood with his helmet under one arm.

  “He was seen entering the sea.” One of the coast guard glanced at me as he said this, eyebrows raised.

  I nodded.

  “We’d normally have found a body by now.” He paused here.

  Mum’s hands were clenched, her knuckles white.

  “Of course, we will continue searching for…well, for as long as…as is necessary. But…”

  The coast guard man looked at the policeman. Mr. Taylor nodded.

  “There can be little doubt that your son is…is gone.”

  Then screaming. Dad showed the coast guard out. Mr. Taylor made tea which nobody drank.

  —

  There can be little doubt. Little doubt.