My father often quizzed me in the driveway while we washed his Chevy. Soap suds clung to my forearm as I dug my hand into the bucket, then squeezed the big yellow sponge over the truck, the water running down the hood in sheets. My mother knelt in her garden, silver shovel glinting in the sun. I watched the clean water form black rivers on the driveway and flow out into the street.
"You paying attention, boy?" my father asked as I popped the soap bubbles in my hand. I looked up and nodded.
He walked into the garage and eased up the volume on the long silver radio. What sounded like a church choir poured out from the speakers.
"You got it?" he asked.
"I've never heard this song before in my life," I said, wishing my brother was there to give me a hint. The choir sang on; my mind was blank.
"Anthony, could you bring me that bag of topsoil?" my mother asked.
"Yes, you have," my father said. "One second, Kath." My father stood in the doorway of the garage, an unlit Winston clenched in his teeth.
My mother stood up and brushed the dirt from her knees, exhaling in a faint whistle like her tea kettle. Her sighs were her songs, the solos she sang softly in the kitchen, wrenching out the pots and pans jammed in the drawer beneath the stove, searching for that second sock in the wicker laundry basket, writing checks and stuffing them into envelopes on the kitchen table, carefully wrapping each Christmas present and signing each tag, "Love, Santa."
The song played on and I still had no clue. My father walked over to my mother's garden and picked up a stone. He bent his knees, rolled the stone down the driveway, then looked at me with a big grin.
I laughed. "What?"
He did it again. "Come on, boy!"
My mother stretched her back and walked into the garage. She took off her flowered gardening gloves, gripped the twenty-pound bag of top soil, and started to drag it across the driveway. I heard her whisper, "Rolling Stones," and give the bag a sharp tug.
"Rolling Stones?" I asked.
"Yeah! Told ya you knew it."
By the time Mick Jagger went into the chorus of "You Can't Always Get What You Want," my mother had dragged the bag of topsoil across the driveway and into her garden, a tiny stream of dirt betraying her path.
"Oh, Kath, I would have gotten that for you," my father said.
"No, no," she said, stretching, "it's fine."
*
Later on, in middle school, I would become obsessed with our home movies. Holidays, vacations, my old soccer or football games. I was fascinated with the past, the shaky footage my mother had filmed. I sometimes tried to get my brother to watch them with me, but he wasn't interested. Alone, I stayed up late and sat inches from the screen with the volume on low. Rewinding and playing, rewinding and playing. What was I looking for?
I was especially curious about the events occurring just outside the scope of the camera's lens, the elusive footage I could only hear. A conversation between two of my uncles. A neighbor's lawn mower. Someone laughing. I wanted to see beyond the frame.
If there had been footage of the Christmas morning we watched Goodfellas, I would want the camera to pan across our conversation in the living room, down the hallway, and into the kitchen, zoom in on my mother's hands caked with pancake batter, cooking spray smoldering in the hot frying pan. As one batch of pancakes cooks, she mixes more batter, cracking an egg and carefully picking out slivers of brown shell that have dropped into the bowl. Gunshot after gunshot blasts from the living room. The camera's microphone picks up her quiet sigh, and then her loud, unanswered questions about bacon. As if bored, the camera slowly pans back down the hallway, into the living room, past the bright tree and piles of presents, and across the mantel. Each of the stockings that my mother knit hangs full, bursting with candy and little toys, my father's overflowing with shaving cream and razor blades and Old Spice. My mother's stocking is empty.
From there, the camera lifts up through the roof of our house as if connected to a crane or a helicopter, lifting higher, higher. An aerial shot showing the other houses in our small Long Island suburb—each roof, each above-ground pool almost identical. Our street connects to a main road, which connects to another, past the high school, over the train tracks. Parkway bleeds into Long Island Expressway. As the camera pulls back, the docks and charter boats along the north and south shore, the trees and smokestacks, cars and Mack trucks are reduced to Legos. Higher, and the Manhattan skyscrapers crop up like acres of glass and steel, until the asphalt grid blurs to pulsing blue and a child's finger could almost trace on a screen the borders of New York and Connecticut and Massachusetts. Higher. Higher. Stare long enough and the continents move, their jigsaw edges drifting together. Deserts and mountains appear on the surface like scars. The Earth hums within a force field of blues and greens. Fade to a blue and white marble floating in the dark, stars flickering as if a universe of light burns behind an old black cloth. The colors and light are suddenly condensed into a single glowing line across the screen, fading, fading, fading. Beyond the boundaries of the frame, beyond what the camera can capture, the microphone picks up the sound of bubbling bacon and a woman's unanswered song.
14
WHEN I WAS in elementary school, Don was in high school. When I was waking up, he was going to sleep. We used to share one room, with bunk beds, and I sometimes thought he might fall on me in the middle of the night. Eventually, we split the bunks into two twin beds. Then my parents moved from their room across the hall to the first floor. Don took apart his bed and carried it over, piece by piece, and set it up in their old room. He screwed a hook and eye lock into the door.
That didn't keep me out. I snooped around his room every chance I could, which was often because he was rarely home. I found a videotape in his closet. The black cassette was painted with swirls and circles and stars in bright psychedelic colors. I peeked out through the dusty blinds, then pushed the tape into the VCR. Our living room flickered on screen—the couch on the ceiling, the fan blades spinning on the floor. Someone whispered, a girl laughed, and the camera flipped right side up.
Something like fear surged up my neck when I saw the pale girl with black hair sitting in the corner; a more animated, more clothed version of the girl that appeared in the photos Don hid in his bookcase. A few guys huddled around our kitchen table, which was littered with little plastic baggies. I didn't know their names but I had seen them before—they were part of the caravan that gathered in front of our house most weekends. Strange, droning music played in the background. Our house looked odd on tape; everything was slightly off. It reminded me of those books where you're shown two similar photographs and have to circle the differences. On the tape, I would have circled the fluid haze beneath the kitchen lights, the block letters of our WELCOME sign on the mantel rearranged to say COME WEL, and each one of those plastic baggies.
Don was filming, so I couldn't see his face until he turned the camera on himself, asked if anyone had a lighter, and then shut it off! A brief burst of static, then our living room flicked on again. Now the room was empty. The radio was off. I heard people whispering. Two guys carried another guy into the living room, his head slumped forward, arms spread across their shoulders. They walked him around in circles, whispering to him while he slowly shook his head. No one was filming; the camera rested on the table. I wondered what Don was doing. Before I could find out, the camera shut off.
I watched that tape many times, trying to figure it out. There was something to learn there but I didn't know what. Or perhaps I just liked the control I had over my brother and his friends. Speed up. Okay, now slow down. Do it again. Stop.
I rewound the tape to the part when my brother leaned over the front of the camera, briefly dipping his head into the frame. It took me a few times to find the right place, to get him into focus. I scooted forward on the rug. When I paused the tape, two white lines of static vibrated at the top and bottom of the screen, and Don's face, each feature, was perfectly clear in the center. Leaning clo
se to the screen, I moved my pointer finger toward him, like the little boy reaching out for E.T., and as my hand neared his face, static electricity snapped at my finger.
*
The sky was bright blue, clouds like cotton ripped from the stomach of my stuffed tiger. My brother watched the man pull the vinyl straps across my waist as my whole body shook "no."
"Lock 'em down," the man yelled, walking along the row of crazy people, some laughing, some crying. Men and women, all ages. Kids, too, even younger than I was. What were they doing here? They seemed so innocent. I worried about them only for a second, then the other man at the end of the row nodded to the man who strapped me in, and the heavy metal bars locked in front of us.
I heard screams in the distance. To my left, a firing squad pumped holes through their targets, one man leaning over the shoulder of a young boy, teaching him how to hold the rifle. To my right, parachute after parachute fell from the sky, the jumpers' sleeves flapping like wings. Something jolted behind me, and I was moving. I closed my eyes. I heard my brother yell my name but I wouldn't look at him. He had brought me here. I held him fully responsible for whatever this place would do to me.
I was brought to the top of a steel mountain, machinery ticking beneath me. At the summit, a row of colored flags slapped in the wind. As if to tease us, the machinery moved us closer, closer to the edge, then hung us there for a moment. "It won't be so bad," was the last thing I heard my brother say.
I dropped into a black cave, falling, falling, falling, everyone around me screaming, begging for their lives. I hoped it was true that the fright of a fall kills you before impact, but I fell deeper and deeper and was still alive. Right before we crashed into the asphalt, we shot back up again into the sky, flipped around once, twice, then dove straight down, but veered away at the last second. I imagined my brother holding a joystick, controlling my fate. Murderer, I thought. My brother is a murderer.
We screeched to a halt. A man vomited. A child gasped for air. The man freed me, unstrapped me, and raised the bar over my head. I stepped woozily onto the platform. My brother slapped me on the back. "I knew you'd like it."
*
One day in my brother's room, I slipped my bare feet into his black Doc Martens. The worn leather rode high on my leg, consuming the cuffs of my jeans. Sunlight cut across the rug like a golden guillotine. It was noon. The house was empty. I was supposed to be sick.
I walked like Frankenstein. I was alone, but I was being watched: The blood-shot, glow-in-the-dark eye Don had painted on the closet door; the melting face of Pink Floyd's The Wall locked into a silent scream; black and white World War II photographs of hollow-eyed bodies bulldozed into mass graves. Dust sparkled at the window—a final warning. I put on Don's favorite shirt.
It was a long-sleeved, brown-and-white-striped shirt with thumb holes cut into the cuffs. It was these minor alterations I envied most: the flannel patches stitched onto the knees of his jeans; paint speckles on his second-hand tweed blazer; stickers of bands I'd never heard of covering his wallet. Once I stole a sticker from the top drawer of his dresser, but when I stuck it on my wallet, it was crooked, and the glossy image buckled.
I watched myself, too, turning side to side, studying my reflection. Before I stepped in front of the mirror, I half-expected not to see any image at all. The mirror knew me, knew these clothes did not fit me, did not belong on my skin. You're back again? Why? The mirror was bored, sick of my feeble attempts to transform myself, so it accentuated my chubby features, squished and stretched me, cast shadows on my face. The mirror wouldn't let me pretend.
Patchouli, jasmine, stale pot, acrylic paint. If I couldn't look like him, I could at least breathe like him. I stomped my way to his dresser, taking him into my lungs, and opened the top drawer. Though the mish-mash of ticket stubs, rolling papers, lighters, incense, matches, coins, pencils, receipts, and paintbrushes gave me no new insight into his life, his drawer would contain answers. I was sure of it.
I stood over the drawer, waiting for the objects to move: ticket stubs could tremble, twitch like moths, spread into a loud concert; Zippos might spark, illuminate a trap door in the room, shed light on a secret; rolling papers would twist into night, with teenagers in an open field gazing at a sky of falling stars. But nothing moved. I had to reach into the junk, pull something out and hold it up to the light like an archaeologist.
In the back of the drawer, I found his gun. I took my thumb out of the sleeve of his shirt and grabbed the long silver barrel. The metal was cold against my hip. I walked like John Wayne back to the mirror.
My image was powerless. The real weapon was in my waistband; the mirror held only a reflection, a copy. I slipped my thumbs back into the sleeves. We paced in front of each other, my hand hovering over my right hip, the image over his left. I squinted my eyes. The image narrowed his gaze. I licked my lips. He licked his. We held our breath. The music swelled.
I reached and the gun fell down my pant leg, into my brother's boot, clacked against my ankle bone. We dropped to the rug, cursing, still struggling for the first shot. I took off the boot and the butt of the gun stuck up like a prosthetic ankle. Breathing heavily, I stared at the weapon. The image in the mirror. The weapon. Our bullets collided, the mirror shattered. One image became a million, shards of eyes and fingers, denim and leather, long-sleeved striped shirts and bulldozed bodies, glow-in-the-dark eyes, Pink Floyd's The Wall, and the air dense with falling stars.
Take a bow. Remove your costume. Return your prop.
Exit.
It was the most realistic gun I had ever seen. Heavy and cold, the way movies tell you it's supposed to be. My BB gun—the long black barrel dented and chipped from many leaps off the deck, the tinny click when I pulled the trigger—was no match for Don's pistol. I needed two fingers to pull the trigger.
In a shoebox beneath his bed, I found a series of black and white photographs. In one, Don stood naked behind a bed sheet, holding the gun. In another, he aimed at the camera. To the left. To the right. At the ceiling. At the floor. There were several copies of the last image: head down, gun up, barrel pressed against his forehead.
My brother was armed. We handled him like dynamite, tried our best not to set him off. My father had brief conversations with him in the dark kitchen; the beginning of my father's day was the end of Don's night. My mother tip-toed to his bedroom door each morning before school and knocked lightly. She answered his muffled reply through the locked door. Are you getting ready for school? Sometimes, when she got tired of standing in the quiet hallway, she'd come into my room and ask me if, when I was done getting ready, I could wake my brother. I sat on the edge of my bed, slowly tying my shoes, and listened to my mother's footsteps echo down the stairs.
There was a mirror in the hallway where I tried to project the image of a boy who had the guts to wake up his brother. I started across the hall, but returned to the mirror, making sure the boy was still there. Why did she always make me do this? I wondered. I heard him breathing. His lips stuck together; each breath forcing them apart in a faint pfft. I pressed my ear to the door. Maybe my sheer presence would wake him. Maybe I wouldn't even have to touch the handle. Maybe he would just suddenly appear in the hallway, dressed and ready. I waited, but nothing happened. I whispered his name once and backed away from the door.
*
When I was ten, my brother took me to see Edward Scissorhands. He was sixteen. These hang outs were sporadic. One day he'd threaten to beat my ass for wearing his clothes, the next he'd ask me if I wanted to go see a movie. His friends scared the crap out of me. But that made it fun, in a way. They were all huge and hairy and loud, even the girls. They sat me on their parked cars like a hood ornament, and I listened to their plans for the night. Wherever they decided to go, I was coming along for the ride.
I was a whiney little red-cheeked bitchy pain in the ass who watched my brother from a distance. Watched and listened. Watched him pile his friends ("clowns," my father called them) into
his 1978 Volare. Watched the car spit sand onto the front lawn. Watched it zoom down our street and take a right just before the dead end. Listened to the front door creak as I was falling asleep. Listened to the Volare back-fire in the street. Listened to my brother in the CDs I snuck from his room: Pink Floyd, The Doors, Nirvana. He appeared and spoke like a character in a foreign film, a singer vocalizing in a smoky bar.
Don and I stood outside his Volare, waiting for the rest of his friends to show up. Several cars pulled into 7-Eleven. A dread-locked blonde hopped out of her El Camino.
"Aww. Are you little Donny?" she said to me. I nodded. She wore a flannel shirt and ripped jeans. She leaned over and gave me a hug. She smelled like my father's ashtray.
Don elbowed my ribs and grinned. When the rest of his crew arrived, Don pushed me into the Volare. He gripped the plastic penis he'd slid over the shifter, jerked it into drive, and we were off.
The theater on Main Street only charged a dollar, and that attracted a lot of high school kids on the weekends. Up until then, I had only glimpsed the theater from the backseat of Mom's car, as we drove around town looking for my brother. I wondered if she knew my brother's secret hiding places, back roads I'd never heard of or parking lots for stores like Odd Lot that had gone out of business. Though she drove fast, her hands tight on the wheel, our path felt haphazard. When we gave up, we weren't at a dead end or approaching the last exit on the parkway; we were often in the middle of a road she drove on every day. She eased her foot off the gas and we turned around and headed home. On those nights, she would sleep on the couch, and when my brother arrived, she'd roll over and glance at the clock on the stove. After she heard him close his bedroom door, she would gather her pillow and blanket and join my sleeping father in their bedroom.
Don dug a dollar from his ripped jeans and pressed it in my hands. I whispered to him, asking him if he could just buy the ticket for me.
The Language of Men Page 10
