Kindred

by Stein, Tammar

  “What the—” I start to curse.

  I hear a familiar laugh and snap my head up.

  There he is, lounging against the doorjamb.

  “Hey, sis,” Mo says, spreading his arms out wide. “Guess who’s come over for a visit?”

  XIII.

  MO DOESN’T ANSWER QUESTIONS he doesn’t like, and so, despite my prodding and poking, he doesn’t give me a good answer for why he’s here. Yes, finals are over. Yes, summer jobs are hard to find. He missed me, and aren’t I glad he’s here?

  I feel ashamed that my first reaction to seeing him at my door is suspicious mistrust. My own brother. I am glad to see him. Mo has a way of charging the atmosphere. Everything is funnier, crazier, wilder when he’s around. On impulse, I grab him and hug him. Instinctively he hugs me back, a tight, hard hug that feels great. But then he lets go and skitters sideways, almost dancing away from me. He asks more questions than I do, taking charge like usual. So I still don’t know why he’s here, or for how long. I don’t think the visit is permanent, because there really isn’t much room in the apartment, and I don’t see him finding a job here in Hamilton, but he’s brought enough with him to last the summer.

  “Things will work out,” he says blithely, brushing aside my concerns. I keep thinking about having to share a bathroom. Even if it’s with my own brother, what I have going on is nothing I want to share. “The couch is fine with me. I won’t crash here for long. You’ll just have to tell all those guys you’re shacking up with, all those one-night stands, to wait a bit till I’m gone.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “Like I don’t know you’ve slept with half the city.”

  I punch him in the shoulder. It’s an old tease of his, my promiscuity. Kind of like calling a bald man Curly.

  In the end, there’s nothing I can do. There was never any question of whether I’d let him stay. Of course I would, of course. It’s Mo. I watch as he heads into the kitchen, opens the fridge and helps himself to a pitcher of iced tea.

  Maybe he’s just the thing I need. If there’s anything Mo’s good at, it’s distraction. And maybe I’m just the thing he needs too. With him close to me, how much trouble can he get into?

  Mo talks me into going with him to the park. He’s brought lunch, and we sit on a picnic table, feet resting on the bench, and eat fried chicken legs.

  “This stuff is so gross,” I say, wiping endless quantities of orange grease from my fingers and shredding the thin napkins in the process. According to a Web site I found, I’m not supposed to eat fried food. No spicy food. And easy on the roughage. But I eat the chicken anyway, cramps be damned. Literally.

  “What?” he says through a mouthful of chicken. “These are great.”

  I hold up three used, grease-stained napkins. “Exhibit A.”

  “This is the best damn fried chicken in the state, sis. An old man down at the gas station told me where to buy it. I don’t think you appreciate how lucky, yes, lucky, you are to enjoy this—might I add free—lunch.”

  He’s on his pulpit. I let him ramble and my thoughts wander away.

  The good thing is that Mo doesn’t need or insist on full attention when he steps into his preachy mood; simple presence is enough. So I watch the little kids on the playground and the bigger kids playing touch football on the grass.

  Like much in Hamilton, Greenbrier Park is perfect. The perfect city park. There’s a half-mile gravel path for the power walkers and joggers, and there are two playgrounds, one for the preschool set and one for the elementary school kids. A wide, grassy field is kept religiously mowed so that dandelions barely have a chance to pop their yellow heads up before being whacked off in the name of perfect order.

  No basketball courts with rattling metal nets here. No baseball diamond with a rusty chain-link fence. Just the wholesome goodness of a grassy field that your imagination can turn into anything it wants.

  Greenbrier Park is so orderly, so perfectly planned, that it should feel artificial and cloying. But it doesn’t. It’s like Mayberry come to life. Even knowing about the ruins that lie two miles into the woods from here, I like it.

  Mo is winding down, so I turn to him and make a few “mm-hmm” sounds to keep him happy.

  Our picnic table is near the preschool playground. A heavy woman wearing a floppy straw hat with a giant plastic sunflower pinning up the brim hovers over a fat three-year-old girl. The woman crouches at the foot of the slide, her arms outstretched like she’s ready to corral a runaway calf. The little girl slides down with no problem and then clambers off, waddling toward the ladder to start again. The mom helps her up the rungs even though the girl seems perfectly capable and is rather annoyed with her mother. Sweaty and wearing a pink shirt that declares I’M A LITTLE PRINCESS, she scowls as her mother flutters here and there, calling out, “Be careful, sweetie. Let Mommy help you, Emily Elizabeth.”

  “Jesus,” Mo says, sotto voce. The “Greatness of Fried Chicken” sermon has ended. “I think that freaking toddler weights as much as I do.”

  “Snack time, Emily Elizabeth. Mommy brought all sorts of yummies.”

  “Deep-fried in lard, every one,” he mutters in my ear.

  I have to stifle a giggle, though his joke is rich, coming from Mr. Fried Chicken Lover. The toddler’s fat cheeks hang low like jowls, and her shirt strains against her tummy. While I understand that little girls love pink, on Emily Elizabeth’s round body the shirt, combined with her currently bright red face, makes her look astonishingly like a plump little piglet.

  As the mom turns to adjust the large gingham diaper bag on her shoulder, her eagle eyes not looking for just a moment, Emily Elizabeth steps back, away from the top of the slide, and her little foot slips.

  “Oh,” I gasp. Disaster is imminent. I stand and half lunge toward the scene as it unfolds. The mom’s head snaps up and turns to her girl at the sound of my gasp.

  “Emily Elizabeth!” she cries, diving forward, but it’s too late. The girl’s thick plastic shoes slip off the narrow metal rung and she falls, hitting her chin on the ladder hard enough to make her head jerk back as she plummets the rest of the way. She lands with a heavy thud and lies terrifyingly still in a crumpled heap before starting to shriek in a piercing wail. The mom drops to her knees and holds her daughter, rocking her and fighting her own tears.

  “Baby, let me see the side of your head,” she pleads, but the girl won’t let her.

  The mom seems near panic, and maybe a cool though medically untrained head might help.

  “She smacked her chin,” I say, coming over and crouching near the pair. “It’ll probably grow into a big knot, but she should be okay.” I speak in what I hope is a calm, soothing tone.

  The mom looks at me for a second before turning her attention back to her girl. “She has a—” but I don’t catch the word. The mom continues, “It means she has a shunt in the side of her head. It drains excess spinal fluid. I don’t think she hit it, but you know …”

  I suddenly feel like an idiot with my platitudes.

  “Oh.” I reassess the toddler, who’s stopped crying by now and is sniffling into her mom’s comfortable bosom. “Do you want me to call 911?”

  I hear Mo cough decisively, but then he hasn’t heard what the woman said over the wails of her daughter.

  “No, she’s fine. This is her first major fall, is all. I’ve got two other kids, boys. They were barely one before they had a big old goose egg or shiner, and she’s three.” The woman strokes the damp curls softly. “I know I can’t keep her in a bubble, but I can’t help trying anyhow.” She caresses the girl’s forehead in a gesture that is as automatic as it is loving.

  “You’re a good mom,” I say gently. “She’s lucky to have you.”

  Emily Elizabeth—who I now see has beautiful blue eyes, brilliant against her reddened skin—looks up at me. She starts sucking her thumb.

  “Thank you,” the mom says. “Some days I really need to hear that.”

  “Are you sure y
ou don’t need me to get you anything?”

  “We’re fine,” she says, patting her daughter’s back. “We’ll be just fine.”

  I rise and walk over to where Mo, who’s given up on me, has joined an impromptu game of soccer. He kicks the ball around for a bit and then returns.

  “Miriam, how in the hell do you find patience for all the wackos out there?”

  “She’s not as bad as she seemed. She had a really interesting story.”

  “You’re a soft touch, Miriam Abbot-Levy,” he says, grinding a knuckle into my hair.

  “Ouch, stop that!”

  “I’m bigger and older.”

  “By three inches and five minutes!”

  He grins at our old taunts.

  “Bet you can’t catch me,” I say.

  “Betcha I can.”

  I take off, dodging soccer players, playground equipment and a couple of trees. He only lets me get away for a few minutes before he decides the fun’s over. I don’t even see him coming, just feel the impact as he tackles me. We fall down on the grass in a heap of legs and arms. My knees scrape the ground and my elbow hits a small rock with a painful jolt.

  “Bastard,” I say, looking up at the clouds and the sky.

  “What does that make you, then?”

  “Bastard’s twin sister.”

  He laughs, and I join in. We lie side by side, watching large, fluffy clouds drift by. Mo reaches for my hand and squeezes it.

  “I missed you,” he says.

  I squeeze his hand back. This is my chance to ask him why he came. I’ve had a second encounter; perhaps he did too. At any rate, he’s definitely keeping something from me. But if he hasn’t had a visit, he’d be hurt and insulted that I assumed it was the only reason he came to see me. As I waffle, trying to find a tactful way to bring the topic up, Mo lets go of my hand and stretches.

  “Come on, Florence Nightingale,” he says, pulling me up to my feet. “Let’s go see what else this center of culture and learning has to offer.”

  Later, while we’re eating dinner in front of the TV, it strikes me why the little girl’s name was so familiar.

  “Clifford!” I exclaim right as a car on the screen flips during a high-speed chase.

  “What?” Mo says, irritated at the interruption.

  “Emily Elizabeth is the little girl from the Clifford books—you know, the big red dog.”

  “I loved those books,” Mo says, giving me his attention now that the car chase has ended. “I always wished I had such a big dog to ride around on. I’d sic him on all the mean kids in the neighborhood. We’d rule the world.”

  I ignore these delusions of grandeur. “Do you remember how Clifford got so big?”

  “He was a freak?”

  “No.” I punch him. “Emily Elizabeth was worried because Clifford was the runt of the litter. Her love made him grow.”

  Mo howls with laughter and ends up almost choking on pepper steak. I slap him on the back, a little too helpfully. “That is freakin’ hilarious,” he says. “That fat-cow mom was really asking for it, wasn’t she?”

  “She’s not that bad.”

  “Come on, Miriam, you saw how she was dressed, how she was pushing food on her fat daughter—one cow raising another.”

  “Her daughter has medical issues!”

  “Sure. Let me guess. ‘Slow metabolism’?”

  “Mo, she told me—”

  He shushes me. “This is where he blows this guy’s face away; you’ve got to see this.” He turns up the volume and my living room is filled with a series of loud pops and the wet sound of bullets hitting flesh. I stop trying to tell him anything and focus on forcing down a few bites of white rice.

  When we clear up the mess and make the couch into a bed later that night, he notices my almost untouched order of Buddha’s Delight.

  “Don’t go all anorexic on me, sis,” he says. “You’ve lost a few pounds. You look good. Quit while you’re ahead.”

  “Bugger off,” I say in Mom’s best British accent.

  He waggles his fingers and winks, and I leave for my bedroom. I close the door behind me and press a hand to my roiling guts. “Bugger you too,” I say to them.

  I’m scared of the colonoscopy. But I’m ready for something to end this already. As I lie in bed, I try different relaxation techniques to help me fall asleep. Visualization of favorite places. Deep breathing. Repetitive mantras. But in the end, there’s only one thing that helps me relax and turn off the continuous loop of Jason, colonoscopy, pain, God, Raphael, angels, failure. As I do sometimes, I picture Emmett: his shaved head, his deep-set dark eyes, the brilliant colors of the tattoos covering his arms. And I pretend that he’s here. Sometimes I imagine that instead of his black leather jacket folded on the corner chair, it’s him sitting there, watching over me. Sometimes I’m more daring.

  Like tonight.

  Tonight Emmett is in bed with me. He’s got his heavy arms wrapped around me, pressing me up against his strong, broad chest. My ear is resting on his warm, solid torso as his heart beats a slow, steady beat. Since I’m trying to get to sleep, not get all excited, all we do is snuggle together. He’s radiating heat like an oven. He lets me tuck my cold feet between his calves.

  I hear Mo in the living room. He turns the TV up and then heads to the kitchen. Cabinets open, close; glasses and dishes clink.

  But I ignore that and focus on Emmett. He murmurs that it’s late, that I need to sleep. He promises to keep an eye on things. I pretend that his heart is thumping gently next to me, and it calms me so that eventually my own heart settles into a similarly calm cadence.

  I curl on my side, hugging a pillow, and drift off to sleep.

  I sleep fitfully—first I’m hot, then cold, waking up chilled or in a sweat. The covers tangle around me and I can’t settle down. My dreams are restless, uncomfortable. I wake up for what must be the fifth time of the night and nearly shriek in fright.

  It takes my sluggish brain a second to realize the dark shape of a man in the corner is Mo. Headlights from a passing car momentarily illuminate the room and catch the whites of his eyes, lighting them silver.

  “You scared me,” I say, pressing a hand to my chest, as if to still my leaping heart. My hands are shaking from the adrenaline rush and I feel slightly nauseous.

  “Sorry,” he says, his voice low and quiet. As if there is someone left to be careful of, as if there is someone still sleeping.

  “Are you okay?” How long had he been there, watching me sleep?

  “I’m fine,” he says, not moving from his low slouch in the chair. “Go back to sleep, everything’s fine.”

  “Mo,” I say, pushing away sleep-crazy hair, trying to see his features in the dim room. “What’s going on? Why are you sitting there?”

  “I had a bad dream,” he says. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. I wanted to make sure you were breathing.”

  When we were little, we used to have nightmares about each other. And when we woke up, we’d creep into the other’s bed to make sure everything was okay, that he and I were still alive.

  “You’re too old to come into bed with me,” I say, profoundly uneasy. For some reason, my heart rate kicks back up. “It was just a bad dream.”

  “I know.” He sounds so sad. “I know.”

  “Go back to sleep,” I insist. “It’s late.”

  He sits there for a moment longer, so still that I’m not sure he’s breathing. Then, with a sigh, he rises slowly. Something about the way he’s holding himself, so carefully, worries me.

  “Are you okay?” I ask again.

  He doesn’t answer.

  Then, in the dark, sleep-heavy room, I ask what I’ve been scared to ask all day. “Mo,” I say softly. “Did he come back? Does he want more from you?” I don’t say the name. I’m scared to at night. I’m scared to when Mo is acting so strangely.

  But he doesn’t answer, shuffling out of my bedroom as if he’s sapped of all his strength, like someone at the end of
his rope.

  I’m wide-awake now and worried, though not about myself this time. It doesn’t add up—this visit from Mo, his odd behavior. Maybe he didn’t hear my question. Maybe he doesn’t want to answer. I fret in bed, annoyed by the hot pillow, the smothering blankets, my aching joints. I try to pretend Emmett is here, but this time the image doesn’t come. Maybe he’s confused by all this too.

  No sounds come from the living room. I wonder if Mo fell back asleep or if he’s lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling like me.

  With Mo, you have to give him the space to come to you on his own. He knows I care, that I love him. That must be why he’s here in my apartment in the first place. He needs my help.

  Decision reached, I feel a warm peace slip its way into my chest and glide down, warming and relaxing all my limbs. I quickly fall asleep.

  XIV.

  IN THE MORNING, I wonder if I dreamt the whole encounter. Mo is jumpy with excess energy, pulling my hair, pinching my arm and dancing away from my flung-out smacks.

  “Did you sleep okay?” I ask.

  “Like the dead.” His eyes roll to the back of his head and he makes a horrid face at me, tongue hanging out. Then he turns to fix a bowl of cereal.

  It’s hard to talk to him when he’s in this mood, and with his back to me, I can’t tell what he’s thinking. But I try again. “I mean, after we talked, you slept okay?”

  As if he has read my mind, he turns to me and rolls his eyes, face slack. There’s no point asking him anything right now.

  He barely eats breakfast before heading out, leaving a nearly full bowl of cereal in the sink and mumbling something about setting up job interviews and making contacts.

  I linger over my cup of tea. At ten, I walk to Emmett’s shop. It’s time to end the nightly fantasies and see the man in person again. I have the built-in excuse of bringing his jacket back, and as I carry it folded over my arm, I resist the temptation to smell it. It’s hard to believe it was cold enough for me to wear this a few weeks ago. It’s hot and muggy now, more like summer than spring. The unseasonable heat is continuing, and the sun feels hard and heavy. I break out in an unfortunate sweat and sneak sniffs at my armpits, but I can’t tell how well my deodorant is holding up.