The Other Brother

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  We knew to keep a spare roll of toilet paper with us at all times, just in case, because it was possible, even in a hotel or restaurant, to find such an amenity lacking.

  I specifically, as a woman, knew not to walk around outside the hotel without Jack unless I wanted to be subjected to constant catcalls or hisses, and I knew to dress conservatively, with no excess of skin showing anywhere. While a hijab, or headscarf, wasn’t required, it wasn’t a bad idea in terms of showing respect or to avoid unwanted attention.

  We also knew it was probably best not to purchase any illicit drugs, but we chose to ignore that one.

  • • •

  We stumbled into the hotel room, laughing, stoned on hashish.

  When we’d initially boarded the plane back in New York, I’d been somewhat nervous, although I hadn’t confessed as much to Jack. What I was nervous about was this: It’d been over ten years since Jack and I had spent much more than just an evening out for dinner without being accompanied first by one and later both of our sons. Who were we without the buffer of the kids? Would we be able to talk to one another about things outside of them? Or would it just be awkward, revealing that without them, all we could do was miss something that was no longer there, like experiencing pain in phantom limbs; that without them, we were nothing anymore, no longer our own thing, a prelude to what life would be like once the boys were fully grown and gone.

  But as it turned out, I needn’t have worried. It wasn’t that we didn’t miss the boys or daily wonder what they were doing, but rather than pining for what lay on the other side of the Atlantic, Jack and I were ourselves, like two kids who’d escaped Sunday School early—free to go or do whatever we wanted because no one was expecting us anywhere.

  And, also, free to buy hashish.

  I slumped on the brocade sofa, and Jack slumped lower beside me, his head on my shoulder, giggling. That’s a strange word to describe the sounds coming out of a grown man, but it’s exactly what he was doing. So was I.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked. My own laughter was dying down, I could no longer remember what had set me off in the first place, and I was hoping that hearing what he was laughing at would get me going again.

  “You still have your hijab on,” he said, practically unable to gasp out the words, “but we’re in our own room, and there’s no one else here!”

  “Well, that is silly of me,” I admitted. I raised my hand to my head and started to push the scarf back, but Jack gripped his own hand around my wrist, stopping me.

  “Leave it,” he said in a husky voice, no longer laughing now. “Do you mind just leaving it?”

  “Why?” I asked.

  For an answer, he kissed me.

  It wasn’t the kind of kiss characteristic of the long married with young children hoping to get in a quickie before being interrupted by the demands of those children. It was the soft but growing in intensity leisurely kiss of a new couple with nothing more in mind than how to extend the current pleasure as long as possible, just barely able to contain the exquisite pain of waiting for the next step to come.

  I could have drowned in that kiss, was drowning in it.

  Abruptly, Jack pulled away. I tried to chase his lips with mine, but he stretched back just out of reach.

  “Wow,” I said. “You got all that from the headscarf?”

  He nodded. Then he stood up, took my hands in his to raise me to my feet, and backed me up toward the bed.

  “I know I shouldn’t,” he said. I felt the edge of the bed against the backs of my knees, causing me reflexively to sit down. “You know I’m not one for the subjugation of women.” He pulled my shirt up over my head, then undid the clasp on my bra. “And I’d never expect you to wear a headscarf in our real life, back home.” He gently pressed my shoulders down until I was flat on the bed, and then he undid my pants, pulled them off, slid down my underwear. “But I can see the appeal.” He lowered himself on top of me, still fully clothed. “And I cannot tell you how sexy it is, seeing you like that when we’re in public here, knowing I’m the only man who knows completely what you look like without that scarf.”

  He lowered his head to my neck, kissing what he knew was for me the sweet spot, the spot that when kissed, would make the rest of my body sigh with longing.

  So, of course, I started laughing hysterically.

  “You’re kidding, right?” he said. “I say this incredibly—or what I think is an incredibly—sexy thing to you, and you laugh?”

  “I can’t help it. It’s just so ridiculous!” I pealed off again.

  “Thank you so very much.” Then: “What is?”

  “You say it’s so sexy to see me out in public like this, but we’re here, no one else is around, so how can that still be sexy?”

  “Huh.” Jack looked stumped. “Dunno. It just is. Although I must say, it’s getting less so by the minute.”

  “Don’t be like that! It’s just that, what if I wanted to subjugate you?”

  “I thought I established, that was not my int—”

  “Maybe I’d like to have a version of you walking around such that the picture the rest of the world got wasn’t the same as what I did?” I teased.

  “Ohhhh.” Jack’s eyes lit up as he rose from the bed. “Now I know what you’re after.”

  “Wait,” I said, rising up on my elbows. “Where are you going?”

  “Won’t be a tick.” He went over to the bags containing our purchases from the day, riffled through with his back to me until he found what he wanted, then, concealing it, he made for the bathroom. “Perhaps two ticks,” he shot over his shoulder before closing the door.

  I scooted up so my back was against the headboard, got partially under the covers, and waited for him to return.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  Had he fallen asleep in there?

  Just when I thought I might drift off myself, I heard the door click open and there was my husband.

  “Is this what you had in mind?” he asked, hand on naked, cocked hip.

  He was entirely naked, except for his head, on which he’d arranged a vivid red scarf I’d bought at the market earlier in the day. The scarf was tied in a little bow under his chin.

  I stifled a giggle as he made his way over to me, watched as he peeled back the covers. Then he straddled me, kissing his way down my body. As he approached the cleft between my legs, the stifled giggle burst into full-out laughter.

  “You think this is funny?” he said. “Here I am, obviously willing to subjugate myself for you, and all you can do is laugh some more?”

  “It’s just that…it’s just that…it’s like being gone down on by Little Red Riding Hood!”

  “Well, I never,” Jack mock harrumphed. At least I hoped it was mock. “I’ll show you Little Red Riding Hood.”

  He jackknifed my legs apart and got on with showing me.

  I wouldn’t have believed before that moment that it was possible to laugh all the way through an orgasm, but that’s what happened that night.

  • • •

  Later, we lay side by side, gazing at one another. I didn’t say then, but I was thinking, how lucky I was. When I’d laughed at Jack earlier, he could have gotten seriously offended, and then he might have acted hurt or even angry to mask the hurt, from both himself and me. But instead, being Jack, he’d gone with it, turning the moment into one of pure joy, which was happily followed by incredibly energetic sex.

  Jack’s scarf was still tied under his chin, but our exertions had knocked it off his head, so now he looked more like a cowboy; a tired, naked cowboy.

  “You know,” he said, “no matter how many years it’s been, sometimes there are still moments I can’t believe I’m here, with you. I feel that way when I wake up in the morning and when I go to sleep at night.”

  I said I felt the same.

  But as Jack drifted off to sleep, I couldn’t help but think of his brother, nearly a
world away now. I wondered if there were times, still, when he awoke in the morning and, for a moment, he forgot who he was. And then he would remember. He’d remember who he was and what he’d accomplished. He’d remember anew that, more than most people, he wasn’t like anyone else in the world.

  I thought that, yes, it must be like that.

  William

  Even though Denny had given me his mobile phone so I could call Westport to check in whenever I liked, I’d been determinedly not doing that. After all, Jack and I were supposed to be on our second honeymoon, right? After all, Denny had Denny’s number—obviously—so, surely he’d call if anything were amiss, right? And if we weren’t calling them, it meant we were enjoying ourselves, like we were supposed to, and if they weren’t calling us, it didn’t mean the boys didn’t miss us, but rather that everyone was just happy and healthy—right?

  “Just call,” Jack said on the eighth day. “You know you want to.”

  “And you want me to too.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  It was eleven p.m. Morocco time, making it seven p.m. back in Westport, the perfect time to call since that’s when the boys always ate dinner.

  But just because it’s a perfect time for something, theoretically, doesn’t mean things will work out as you planned.

  “That’s funny,” I said. “No one’s answering.”

  “Perhaps they went out?” Jack said.

  “Your brother?” I snorted. “You know he’s been staying close to the house. I wonder if something could be wrong…”

  “Or perhaps they went out.”

  An hour later—midnight us, eight p.m. them—it was the same thing.

  “I really think there might be something wrong,” I said.

  “Or else they went out,” Jack said.

  Easy for him to say.

  At one a.m. us, nine p.m. them, Jack suggested we go to bed.

  “You could try again tomorrow.” He yawned. “I’m sure everything is fine.”

  “Or else,” I said, “something’s really wrong.”

  It was nearly two a.m. us and ten p.m. them when someone finally answered the phone.

  “Mummy!” Harry said.

  It was so good to hear his voice.

  And then of course I couldn’t stop myself from immediately demanding, “Is something the matter there?”

  “What? No!” And then, in that non sequitur way children have, he added, “We had chicken fingers for lunch! Well, they weren’t really fingers—that’s just what they’re called—but it was real chicken, organic, and so were the bread crumbs they were dredged in, and do you know what?”

  “No, what?”

  “It was even better than McDonald’s!”

  “That’s great. Where’d you get those?”

  “Right here! In our own kitchen! Super Mario made them!”

  “Super Who?”

  “Didn’t you hear me the first time? I said, ‘Super Mario’!”

  “Who’s he when he’s at home?”

  “Uncle Denny’s chef, but here too.”

  Denny was “Uncle Denny” now? When we left, Denny was still just “him.”

  “After you and Dad left,” Harry continued, “almost immediately, Uncle Denny rang Super Mario and told him to come straightaway on the next flight. Then he, Uncle Denny, explained to us that he didn’t know how to cook anything himself except for the birthday cake he’d seen you make, and he said that didn’t count as proper food, not three meals a day. Uncle Denny’s big on proper foods—it has to all be organic—and he said it wouldn’t be wholesome for us to be eating out or getting takeaway all the time. Uncle Denny said once Super Mario was here, he’d make whatever we liked—anything at all—only healthy, so today we asked for chicken fingers, and there they were! And do you know what else?”

  “No, tell me. What else?”

  “Super Mario is really big and he always wears a chef’s outfit. He’s super! Like a real chef!”

  I couldn’t help it. Harry’s enthusiasm was so infectious, I was laughing.

  “I would expect so,” I said. “I’m glad you’re all eating well. Was that where you were before, by any chance? Because I called earlier, several times, and no one answered. Perhaps you were all having a late picnic outside and didn’t hear the phone?”

  “No, we were at the hospital, as they say around here, with William.”

  “You were—”

  “You’ll want to talk to him, I know.” There came the sound of the phone being dropped, but even without Harry’s mouth being close to the mouthpiece, I could still hear his foghorn shout of, “Wil-lie!”

  Willie? Did Harry just call his brother Willie? And what was all this about being at the hospital?

  “Mum!” William’s voice came on the line. “It’s so good to hear from you!”

  “And it’s great to talk to you too. But did I just hear your brother call you Willie?”

  “Oh, that. It’s my new name. Roberta says it makes me sound older, more mature, and when I told Uncle Denny”—there was that ‘Uncle Denny’ again—“he said he had to agree. He said there’d be less confusion between Harry and me and the Royal Family.”

  “I suppose…” Really? Willie sounded more mature to them than William?

  “So you and Dad’ll have to get used to it too.”

  “We’ll try but we may need some time. You’ve always been William to me. But never mind that now. What was that nonsense your brother was saying, about you being in hospital?”

  “I wasn’t in hospital. I was at the hospital. But, oh yeah, I broke my arm!”

  He what?

  “You’re kidding, right?” Surely, he wouldn’t sound so gleeful, not if he’d broken his arm and been at the hospital that very night.

  “Not in the slightest!” Still, he sounded gleeful. “I broke it while out riding my bike. Harry wasn’t on it with me or he might’ve gotten hurt too, so that part was good.”

  It was so like William to think of Harry.

  “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there,” I said. My heart was beating faster in my chest. I couldn’t believe that William had been hurt and I hadn’t been there to do anything about it. If possible, I would have clicked my heels together if it would’ve put me instantly by William’s side.

  “S’OK, Mum, because Uncle Denny was—there, I mean. He took me to the hospital. Well, Jeeves did the driving, but everyone went, including Super Mario. Did Harry tell you about him? And when we got there, to the emergency room, and the doctor saw us, I hadn’t cried up to that point—I was trying to be brave—but when the doctor said the arm was broken, which I hadn’t really thought it was before, not completely, something about it made me start to cry, which I know isn’t a very double-digits thing to do.”

  “It’s OK,” I said. “It’s not bad to cry when you need to.”

  “That’s what Uncle Denny said too. He went into the examination room with me. I think the nurses wanted to make a fuss over him, the doctor too, but he just paid attention to me. When the doctor said he was going to set my arm in the cast, for some reason that made me cry harder, and Uncle Denny asked what it was—you know, was I scared? And I told him, of course I was crying because I was scared! And you know what?”

  “No, William. Tell me: what?”

  “Uncle Denny was amazing!”

  “What did he do?” I asked. “Sing?”

  William laughed. “That’s a good one, Mum. Did he sing? No, he didn’t sing! He told me stories. The whole time the doctor was working on me, Uncle Denny told me story after story. Did you know he could do that?”

  Well, he did write lyrics quickly—everyone who read the mags knew that—but I sensed that wasn’t the sort of storytelling William was getting at.

  “No,” I said. “No, I didn’t. What kind of stories did he tell you?”

  I pictured Denny regaling William with stories of his time spent in Malaysia. Perhaps he’d share some st
ories about doing drugs? Oh, wait. It was only the mags that said Denny did drugs, but Denny had told me he didn’t, and everything in his behavior since he’d come to stay had borne that out.

  “He told me stories of all the times that he’s been scared! He said he’s scared of flying even though he has to do it practically all the time. And on a day when he’s giving a performance? Even after all these years? That’s all there is, all day long, the not knowing until it’s done if it’s everything you’d planned and hoped and dreamed it would be. Oh, and big hairy spiders. Did you know that there are places he refuses to tour, like the American Southwest, just in case he might see one there? Anyway, he told me so many stories about him being scared that I stopped crying and stopped noticing anything the doctor was doing, and before I knew it, I was done and we were going. The cast is so cool! Everyone here at the house has signed it, and I’m going to get my friends to sign it tomorrow too. I’ll bet Roberta will sign it To Willie. You’ll remember that’s my name now, right, Mum?”

  “I’m still working on it.”

  “OK, good, because I’ve got to go, Mum! We’re teaching Uncle Denny to play Monopoly. Can you believe he’s never played before? He said he’d only do it if we let him be the Hat, so of course, we did.”

  “May I speak with him?” I hurried to ask before William could hang up the phone.

  “Sure thing. Love you, Mum! See you…whenever!”

  Clank went the phone.

  As I waited for Denny to come on the line, I was mostly just astonished—that William had broken his arm when I wasn’t there, but also at what William had sounded like. Harry had always been my bold talker, while William had lacked confidence. But the boy I’d just spoken with on the phone, the double-digits boy, had plenty of confidence and was talkative to spare. More than that, he sounded genuinely happy.