Life Between Wars

by Robert Patton

  In the late afternoon a car deposited Brendan Cochran back home. He thanked the Winstons’ groom for the lift and said goodbye to Johnwayne Locke, who sat rather glumly in back. Brendan’s dad had just exited his truck after doing his shooting and other afternoon chores, and was reaching for his pistol when the car arrived. Jerome shut his glove box with the pistol inside, knowing his son would worry to see it. He kissed Brendan on the forehead, his dog lapping the boy’s hand. “Dad,” Brendan said, “I’m gonna get married.”

  “She rich?”

  “She’s rich.”

  “Approved.”

  In the house Jerome switched on a portable stereo. An orchestra played, strings woven with alien voices — an opera CD belonging to Jerome’s artist friend, Matthew Priam. The music made an aural blanket, like standing under a shower. Brendan clumped downstairs in a rainsuit and boots. His dad had peeled to a T-shirt and lay half-asleep on the couch. “We not fishin’ today?” the boy asked.

  “Nope.” Spared from lobstering, Brendan might have stayed a little longer with Araby Munro. But maybe not, for after touring the Winstons’ stables, the gardens and bluff overlooking the beach, Araby had abruptly dismissed him at the back door. “Now you got time to do your homework,” Jerome said. When Brendan said he didn’t have any homework his father snapped, “The fuck kinda school gives no homework? Listen. Chase all the twats you want, but you better perform in class. That’s my one rule.”

  “Her name is Araby. Get used to it.”

  “Araby! What, she’s foreign?”

  “She’s from New York City.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  Brendan hung his rainsuit in the closet. He turned the music down. Opera sounded like people in pain; Matthew said it was meant to. Several times a week the painter would come over and play CDs, stay for dinner and TV and sleep on the sofa. Since Araby was out of his father’s league, Brendan would seek Matthew’s advice on how to woo her. Matthew understood the higher emotions; he could predict the plot twists of TV movies long before they happened. Jerome you had to explain things to during commercials or the day after.

  Wearily Jerome said, “Somethin’ you should know, Bren. Your Uncle Robby killed somebody this morning. He’s in custody now.”

  “Killed? Who?”

  “Some richboy waste. It was an accident almost totally. But the guy died and Robby did it. He’ll get prison.”

  For years after the fact, Brendan’s mother’s drowning had sensitized the boy almost too acutely to tragedy’s swath across the lives of families and friends. No death was anonymous, no reference to it anything but sad. Time had restored a degree of heedlessness. He might picture loved ones bereft somewhere, but tears no longer wet his eyes merely upon hearing distant bad news or seeing it on TV; and though he had no tolerance at all for so-called black humor, death again was what happened to other people, like winning the lottery except in reverse. Brendan didn’t much like his Uncle Robby and he didn’t know the dead guy — he was fourteen now and learning to make distinctions. “That’s pretty bad,” he said.

  “It ain’t good.”

  Brendan looked down at his father reclining on the couch. Sandy hairs curled from between Jerome’s belt buckle and T-shirt hem. His arms, clasping a pillow to his face, were brown and muscular. It was a thing to admire, his father’s physique; but since Brendan already showed signs of inheriting it, there seemed little about his dad he wouldn’t equal and probably better. Jerome had seen to that. He kept few secrets from his son and wore his faults like medals, any last vestige of redoubtable parenting discarded when his wife had died. Yet hitting bottom last summer after three years of free fall, he’d bounced with hollow resilience. Brendan understood how shaky was this new man, this Jerry cum Jerome. The unresolved ache he felt in his father made him dream on his father’s behalf. “Does this mean,” Brendan asked, “that now you can marry Aunt Lois?”

  Jerome bolted upright. “Bite your tongue.”

  “But it’s interesting to think about, huh?”

  Father studied son with loving horror. Brendan was all Eve; his brown hair matched her pubic hair and like hers his skin was summery. Sober by nature, it was always a shock when Brendan acted his age, as now, with his ridiculous suggestion about Lois. “Marry her? I’d sooner marry Matthew.”

  Brendan knew his dad was a hustler at heart, always an angle, keeping hope like a secret because happiness seemed illegal. His Aunt Lois said all men are boys, none more so than Jerome. And she should know.

  A single window lighted his room upstairs. Brendan flopped on his bed with his mind a blank, awaiting memory’s telltale scurry to break the hush and be captured. It was a contemplative style he’d developed in the months after his mother’s death, when his father was deep into self-destruction and everything except this room was changed and harrowing. Brendan had got through that time alone. No one, not Lois or Matthew, helped him. They were helping Jerome.

  The dim light out his window and rain on the roof made the time seem later. A nail protruded from a joist overhead. He fixed on it as he often did, at night before sleep, pretending it then to be a secret lever that, pulled, opened a panel in the roof. The view at night was stars, glittering as if alive like herring in a net; the sound was crickets and the smell was salt air. He saw Penscot town through the panel. On its streets laughter mingled with bottles breaking. Old-time jazz like his mother liked rang from a waterfront bar. Down the way was a halfmoon beach, the place where his mother went swimming that night. Brendan would watch her through his panel, his heart going faster as she stripped and went into the water. The ocean was an animal chained to the moon which this night wouldn’t go hungry. Sunrise broke the chain. It turned the lever back into a nail, made the secret panel a secret again and the vision behind it a dream. It didn’t give back his mother.

  Down behind the door another nail once had protruded, since clipped off. When Brendan was three he’d awakened in terror one night. He’d tumbled from bed and in the dark toddled into the wall, into the nail. He remembered no pain. He remembered screams and his fists flailing, the barb tearing his sleepsuit. He remembered electric light flooding his room, and within the light his father huge and his mother naked. Her enfolding white hug and his blood on her skin were Brendan’s earliest memory. He’d told Matthew about it once, but instead of commiserating Matthew had said, “It’s a wonderful thing to be rescued.”

  Brendan unbuttoned his shirt and traced the scar the nail had left, a tough-looking knot below his left nipple. His palm was cool as it grazed the nipple. His stomach went hollow. This was how he’d touch Araby, touch and caress her until she touched him. He removed his shirt and masturbated into it. It was his forty-first orgasm ever. He was surprised the attraction hadn’t worn off yet.

  Guilt occurred then, not for masturbating but because of it, depression after the high. In the few hours since he’d fallen for Araby, Brendan’s thoughts of her had aroused and mingled with thoughts of his mother, flashes and snippets such as he hadn’t had in a long time. He felt bad that it had taken someone else to keep his mom alive, bring her memory back — he felt sorry for his lapse and confessed it in a prayer, to his mother, through tears. The tears, probably hormonal, were nothing to fret about, in fact felt good in the flowing. Araby had told him she liked artists and actors, in other words men who cried. Brendan could cry. Now was good practice in case she ever asked him to prove it.

  Matthew Priam shuffled up the front walk and entered the Cochran house without knocking. From the doorway he asked Jerome what was wrong. “Whaddaya mean? Nothin’s wrong.” Jerome hesitated, never totally sure that Matthew couldn’t read minds. “Well, about Robby an’ all.”

  “Please. The truth.”

  “I was thinkin’ about Eve, okay?”

  “Why now?”

  “Somethin’ Bren said.”

  “About his mother?”

  Jer
ome nodded, his lie doubling like bacteria cells.

  “I’d better talk to him. I hate when he’s down.” Matthew had just got his nerve up to divulge his disease, his most-probable certain death from cancer, to Jerome. Brendan was far more important.

  Jerome hoped his son wouldn’t repeat what he’d said about Lois. The suggestion of her and Jerome together would infuriate Matthew, who’d have a breakdown probably, scold them or curse them or slash his wrists to show them the fault of their ways. That was Matthew. He took everything personal.

  Brendan was asleep on his bed. Matthew stood in the doorway and watched him breathe. Brendan’s shirt lay balled on the floor. His chest was cream-colored in the flat light of the room. Below one nipple was a small pink scar, an arrow wound, healed now, of something shot out of heaven. Matthew whispered, “I’m dying, Bren. I’m sick and I’m going to die.” Silence answered him. He withdrew from the room believing his words more than ever.

  And Brendan slept. His breathing gave a windy sound. In his dream he was flying.

  Ten

  Later Robby Cochran got an audience for his guitar playing in Marcus “Johnwayne” Locke. Robby had been consoling himself with tunes recalled from Sunday School, “Jesus Loves Me” and such, when Johnwayne, dropped off at the police station after work by the Winstons’ groom, heard singing and strumming down the corridor and pursued it straightaway. He made a request.

  “Run that by me again?” Robby said.

  “Doofa Hazza!”

  “One more time.”

  “Dukes of Hazzard,” Del Locke, following, translated. “The theme song to the TV show. He watches the reruns all the time.”

  Robby laughed. “I know it. I like it.” He played it. “I’m a good ol’ boy / Never meanin’ no harm . . . ”

  Johnwayne crowed harmony, a fan.

  After dinner Johnwayne returned with goodies smuggled from home. The officer on duty inspected the shopping bag: fruit, fried chicken, and a felt cowboy hat similar to the one Johnwayne himself was wearing. He jammed the stuff through the bars. Robby donned the hat and gobbled the food. “’Kay,” the boy said. “Doofa Hazza!”

  “I’m a good ol’ boy / Never meanin’ no harm . . . ”

  Johnwayne clapped furiously. “’Kay.”

  Robby began “Jesus Loves Me.”

  “Doofa Hazza!”

  “Now hold on. I’ll play your damn song some of the time, other songs the rest of the time. I say that’s fair. Is that fair?”

  Johnwayne nodded.

  “Speak up, buddy!”

  “F-fair.”

  “All right.” Robby glanced around self-consciously. He whispered, “This one I wrote. ‘Needle In My Eye.’ That’s the chorus: Your love is a needle in my eye / Make me blind, make me cry. Sing along if you want.”

  Johnwayne did, in his fashion, and genuine friendship was born.

  Eleven

  Anna got to the point. “Lois? Do you believe in God?”

  “I believe God will take care of me no matter what I do.”

  “Gosh.” They were doing dishes after what had been an uncomfortable dinner. Lois had hoped to have the men in her life as a buffer between her and her sister, but the men had claimed prior engagements. “Do you feel you’re a good Catholic?”

  “I was born Catholic,” Lois said. “I don’t feel anything.”

  “Technically you’re not. I saw your diaphragm in the cabinet. I’m curious how you resolve — ”

  “That thing, I hated it! The pill messes my head but I like the spontaneity, and no goop. What do you use?”

  “I count days. My cycle’s perfect.”

  “So was mine till I got pregnant.” And because she’d got pregnant Lois got married, marriage less frightening to her at the time than abortion or single motherhood. In the end God took care of it.

  “Maybe your body wanted a child.” The statement was mean. Anna believed Lois had had an abortion, a choice for which she pitied her sister, looked down on her, and, Anna fancied, generously bore her guilt while Lois carried on like a carnal primitive. But Lois had always been intentionally vague about how her baby was lost. That way, Anna’s righteous digs couldn’t hurt and in fact made Anna appear amusingly small-minded and silly — the sisters weren’t close, in short. “With Robby gone you can quit the pill.”

  “I may get my tubes tied. I’m too immature to have a child.”

  “Having a child might make you more mature.”

  Lois smiled. In their slightest talks Anna claimed and Lois accorded her the last word, an old pattern with a new twist: Lois didn’t care anymore. Each condescension she endured from Anna, each unkind inference, was another wave goodbye. She asked her sister, “If you’re counting days, must be a reason. What’s his name?”

  “You don’t seem to get it, Lois. Very soon I will formally apply to become a Benedictine nun.”

  “Rhythm’s for fucking. Nuns don’t fuck. Supposedly.”

  “Nuns are women, no more or less than any woman — it defines what we are in relation to man and God. Our cycle is essential to that understanding. It has nothing to do with fucking.”

  “Personally, I come best during my period.”

  “It’s when a woman is supremely a woman.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. I just like the way it slides.”

  “Are you trying to shock me, or is this the real you?”

  “The real me would’ve told you to stay the hell out of my medicine cabinet, that what I use for birth control is none of your goddamn business. But I thought you wanted girl talk.”

  “I want honesty. It’s our last chance.”

  “Gee, then we’ve got a lot to cover. Let’s see, first time for me was by my ninth grade math teacher. First time I gave head was twenty minutes later. Your turn.”

  “Lois — ”

  “Don’t tell me. You’re a virgin.”

  “Of course not.” Anna gave a defiant look. “Which I think is unfortunate, frankly. I wish I was. I feel I am.”

  “How long’s it been?”

  “That’s none of your business.” The evasion satisfied neither combatant. “I’ve had plenty of friendships, okay? And more, if I wanted. And certainly that’s not the only way to be affectionate with someone.”

  “Thank God. But it’s it, it’s the thing. Come on. How long?”

  “A few years.”

  “A few years?” Lois suppressed a laugh. “I’ve gotta know, how does a girl pull that off? You’re what, thirty-six?”

  “Seven.” Anna gave a sheepish smile. “Time passes. You set a few standards, unrealistic perhaps. You say no a few times, you learn a few tricks. And time passes.”

  Lois kissed her in gratitude for the clue Anna had tossed like a playing card onto the table between them, something true to be seized and held and perhaps deployed in some future dispute. Patronizing and gleeful, the kiss saddened Anna with its hint of petty triumph. “Sis,” Lois said, “let’s go get us a drink.”

  Wearily Anna, expecting the worst, said that sounded fun.

  Ollie Newberry strode into Mantra’s Cafe at the top of Main Street feeling much older than sixteen. He felt on a high, razor sharp. His adventure in the sea this morning had endowed him past his years. He was here to collect his reward.

  Mantra’s was the island’s hangout for vacationing young professionals. Though he’d been carded here in the past, Ollie stepped to the bar with confidence. The bartender nearest him was a stacked thirtyish woman whose dark hair fanned over her face as she leaned on the bar conversing with another woman whose behind, its perch on the barstool, reminded Ollie of old photos of women stiffly riding horses sidesaddle. Ollie came from wealth and lived in fear that this would be found out by violent and envious people. He’d supported himself as a dishwasher this summer, only once using his mother’s Gold C
ard — on a date with a waitress from work, but even that had not got him sex.

  He took a stool between the sidesaddled woman and, on the other side, a man’s slim-shouldered, white-shirted back. Ollie called for a screwdriver. Behind the bar, Lois Cochran told him, “I’m not working tonight, talk to — ” then did a double take when she saw who it was. The way Lois said, “What was that again, sailor?” put Anna on edge at once.

  “A screwdriver. Hi.”

  Anna looked from her sister to the kid and back to see her sister say, “And hi to you.” Slowly, too, the white-shirted guy to Ollie’s left turned at this new tenor of talk. Lois said to Ollie, in apology it sounded, “Got ID?”

  “Not on me, no. I’m older than I look.”

  “Me too. Del, how about it? Do we let the man drink?” Ollie recognized the young policeman from the station earlier today, out of uniform now.

  “You shouldn’t be here.” Del spoke this looking at Lois.

  Ollie leaned close to him. “I know,” he confided. “But I’m in bad shape. Flashbacks. I keep seeing the boat attacking and my friend trying to get away. I thought a drink would help me sleep. I’m the one — ”

  “I know who you are. Okay, one screwdriver. Weak.”

  Lois mixed the drink. Del paid. “Such a nice man you are, treating minors.” She suddenly felt irritated at Del and Anna’s being here, his job and her rectitude cramping the sport Lois might have with this boy, whom she knew from seeing him after visiting Robby was the witness to Robby’s crime. And the sport she had in mind? Not sexual actually, its language surely would be. That was Lois’s way, the facile capacity for self-diversion developed when, after quitting college, she’d traded down her gifts of brightness and beauty for the lazy life on Penscot, lazy not easy, at times hard but not challenging, through which even messed up on sex, pot, or marriage, even carrying that extra twenty pounds she’d never lost after the baby, she could glide free as a queen, unfazed, brazen, detached. What sport then with Ollie wasn’t specified yet; but in any case it would beat the strain of making nice with her sister, whom Lois by now had confirmed to be irredeemably strange. To cement that strangeness — mutual, certainly — Lois as she poured Ollie’s drink poured herself a slug also. Her sense of things quickly tilted and fractured, a child alone at mischievous play amid expensive, breakable toys.