My Brother Michael

by Janis Owens

  Which might have been my point exactly, and I didn’t let up till Clayton came back in his jacket, his face alight with excitement, and suddenly the evening was full of promise.

  “Be careful,” she said, walking us to the car. “Drive slow.”

  Then she kissed me again, lightly on the mouth, and suddenly it was a wonderful world: Myra surrounded by puritanical ladies who didn’t approve of sex in general, much less extramarital; me and Clayton out on the town, hitting eighty on the interstate.

  “I never heard of it,” he said when I told him the name of the film, and I assured him it was the best I’d ever seen on Vietnam.

  “Real footage, not that Hollywood crap.”

  Luckily, the Box Office hadn’t moved in fifteen years, and we got there in the nick of time, just as the opening credits were rolling past. Half-way through, I again congratulated myself on the perfect selection, for the film was masterfully debunking all the romantic garbage associated with Vietnam, and Clayton’s face was a puzzle of perplexity as Vietnamese women and children screamed over graves and an old woman described how American troops had destroyed her village.

  Yes, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself when suddenly, with no warning at all, the camera was inside a whorehouse, showing buck-naked American soldiers and Vietnamese whores in the very act, and if Clayton had been mesmerized before, now he was hypnotized, his eyes the size of quarters.

  Well, I knew I had screwed up on a pretty momumental scale and was faced with the split-second option of faking a heart attack or getting up and walking out, but for whatever reason, historical realism or shame at leaving, I stayed put, though the sweat was really beginning to pour as the scene stretched on in all its perverse jocularity, the soldiers making jokes about the girls back home, the whores’ pathetic smiles never wavering.

  Clayton didn’t say a word about it on the way home, and though I considered begging him not to tell his mother, again I remained silent. After all, it was the truth; honest, hard-core Vietnam in the flesh, and if I apologized, it might lessen the impact of the film’s message. I reasoned that if he was old enough for Rombo, he was old enough for reality, but I will admit to a very nervous slide in my stomach the next morning at breakfast when Myra asked him how he liked the movie.

  “It was,” he paused, “interesting.”

  “What didju see?” Simon asked. “Lethal Weapon? Is it still showing?”

  “We went to Tallahassee,” I said quickly, and was mercifully spared further detail by Missy’s cry of outrage.

  “Tallahassee? Clayton got to go to the mall? Mama—”

  “My sweet,” I said, grateful for the diversion, “there is more to Tallahassee than the mall.”

  “But nobody even asked me—”

  So we were sidetracked by a little sibling rivalry, and when they left for school, I edged a little closer to the truth as I dressed for Sanger. “I hope it wasn’t too intense for Clay,” I said as I knotted my tie. “I mean, it was real footage.”

  Myra was unusually understanding. “I doubt it. You ever seen Platoon?” She made a face, and I tried to cover my behind a little more.

  “That was Hollywood; this was real. But anyway,” I added philosophically as I kissed her good-bye, “it was the truth, and I guess a little truth never hurt anyone.”

  A smug little platitude I was made to regret four days later when the real lowdown on Hearts and Minds surfaced via Clayton to Simon; Simon to Keith; Keith to his brother Kemp; Kemp to his mother; his mother to every woman at Welcome, including (but not limited to) Myra, at which time more truthful observations were made on my character than I ever wanted to hear.

  They were made immediately after church in a loud voice in an airtight Mercedes, surrounded by our fellow Baptists, who were still milling around the front steps shaking hands.

  “—can’t believe you’d take a twelve-year-old boy to a pornographic movie, your own son, your own son—”

  “Myra, Myra, listen—” I said, but she wouldn’t pause for a breath, and when the people around the steps began to pause and watch us with looks of light interest, I drove us to the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly and tried to reason with her.

  “It was—would you shut up for one damn minute? It wasn’t pornogra—Myra, for God’s sake, SHUT UP. It wasn’t a pornographic movie. It was two minutes of bare-breasted women—”

  “—why he’s been so quiet. You messed him up, Gabriel. You messed him up—”

  “You couldn’t even see what they were doing—”

  “What they were doing?” she cried. “He’s twelve years old. He gets embarrassed at tampon commmericals—”

  “—toldju it was too intense, but no, you don’t care about death and destruction. Boy, just a little sex has you uptight, you hypocriti—”

  “Oh, shut up—get out of my car. Don’tchu ever even talk to my children again, do you hear me?”

  My reply was prematurely curtailed by the slam of the car door, and there I was, stranded in the parking lot of the Piggy Wiggly

  Fortunately, it was within walking distance of Magnolia Hill, so I retreated to Mama’s house and ate her leftovers in morose silence while my wife and children were being comforted by Knute at the Steakhouse (“For what fellowship hath light with darkness?”).

  I was finishing up, wondering what my next move would be, when Mama came in with the boys, all of them a little white-eyed, as if they knew something heavy was coming down.

  “Where’s Myra?” Mama asked. For Sim and Clayton’s sake, I lied, “Home. Where’s Missy?”

  “Joanna’s,” she said, then told the boys to go see if they could find any clothes in the spare bedroom. When they left, I was prepared for another tongue-lashing at Mama’s hands, as she had obviously heard rumor of my debauchery, but she only leaned against the stove and crossed her arms and asked, very seriously, as if she expected a straight answer: “Gabe, son, do you have good sense?”

  I told her it was certainly a matter open to speculation these days and went to the bedroom to talk to Clay and Sim and try to uncorrupt them as best I could, but found them embarrassed and apologetic.

  “Clayton’s seen naked women before,” Simon said in disgust.

  I was shocked. “Where?”

  “Playboy, HBO,” he said defiantly, ashamed Clayton was making them look like such weenies.

  Clayton tried to defend himself, lying on the bed with this hands behind his head, his eyes on the old tongue-and-groove ceiling. “You didn’t see them, Sim. They weren’t just naked. They were just so pathetic. These men were being so nasty to them, pinching their titties and making fun of them and all they did was sit there and smile. It made me wanna puke.”

  I was surprised he was so removed from the sexuality of it all, that he’d seen past the tits, as it were—something that I couldn’t have done at twelve (hell, I barely did it at thirty-eight)—and I took it as an opportunity to instruct.

  “That’s right, Clay,” I told him. “That’s exactly right. See, Hearts and Minds was virulently anti-interventionalist. It purposefully showed the pathos of the war, the orphaned children, the crying grandmothers, the women having to resort to prostitution to survive. That’s the symbolism, see? Vietnamese women being screwed by American soldiers like America was screwing Vietnam—see?”

  I’d gotten a little excited with my interpretation, standing and pacing, and they looked thoughtful for about ten seconds till Clay seemed to come to some conclusion and lay back on the bed. “It still makes me wanna puke.”

  “Well, good. Good for you,” I said, and catching a glimpse of the old Sims house out of the tail of my eye, the broken back of the roof, the sagging porch, I thought: Take that, you bastard.

  But I said nothing more, only promising to square things with their mother, then went back to the kitchen and asked Mama if I could borrow her car.

  “Why?”

  “To find Myra. She kicked me out at the Piggy Wiggly.”

  Simon and Clay had f
ollowed me to the kitchen, and as Mama handed over her keys, Simon gave me a bit of parting advice.

  “Tell her she looks like she’s losing weight,” he said. “It couldn’t hurt.”

  “And tell her I’ve seen lots of naked women before,” Clayton added, and I knew Mama wouldn’t let that one hit the ground untouched, but left him to handle it as best he could, driving around town, not finding the Mercedes anywhere it should be, not at Candace’s or Lori’s or the Steakhouse, and I was wondering where Knute lived, when I remembered the cemetery.

  She was there, of course, probably outlining to Michael what a disappointment I’d been, but when I found her, she was pulling weeds from the graves, the hem of her dress dirty, her face sad, but no longer furious. I took a seat on Daddy’s tombstone without a word and tried to think of an apology, but I’d told her I was sorry so much lately that the words seemed cheap, and I only rubbed my eyes.

  “This isn’t working out so well, is it?” I finally said, but she didn’t answer, only tearing at the bahia grass, and I finally broke down.

  “Listen, Myra, I’m sorry. Hearts and Minds was a stupid choice for a twelve year old. I’d forgotten it was so intense. It shook me up too, and the way he talks, he’s seen more nudity at twelve than I have at thirty-eight.”

  Her eyes were up in a flash. “Where’s he ever seen nudity?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Ask Mama, she’ll probably have the goods on him by the time we get home.”

  She straightened up, slapping the dirt off her hands, then sat beside me. “Well, I’m sorry I screamed. I tell you what, I’m thinking about asking Dr. Williams to put me back on lithium. I just get so crazy anymore—”

  “It’s because you’re in love,” I told her, kissing her little white hand, but she was not so sure.

  “I been in love before, and it wasn’t like this.”

  “Not with me, you haven’t,” I said, and we were happy again, touching in the sun, the air cold but pleasant, the cedar still green, giving the air a sharp scent of summer. With the Sunday morning rush, we hadn’t had a chance to talk all day, and instead of thrashing out the matter at hand, fell to discussing the incidentals—how many children she had in primaries, if the new Creation peepbox I’d made her was up to Catts family standards.

  “The moon’s too low,” she said. “The children thought it was a beach ball.”

  I promised to rectify the matter and asked if I could put together an Evolution peep-box in the interest of balanced teaching.

  “If you can get it past your mother,” she said as she stood.

  I laughed. “Poor Clay. I guess we better go see about him. She made me write John three-sixteen twenty times for inspecting one of Candace’s bras. I can’t imagine what the punishment is for blatant, unashamed voyeurism. She might have stuck him in the microwave or something.”

  “She’ll probably sic Carlym on him,” Myra laughed. “He’s the newest form of punishment at Welcome these days.”

  I was not so pleased by Knute’s intrusion into our intimate little conversation, and when we were almost to the car, I asked her if she really thought I lacked sexual maturity.

  “Gabriel—” she said, trying to sidestep me, but I stopped.

  “No, really. I won’t get mad.”

  For a moment she only stood there looking at me, her head tilted a little to the side, a mannerism she’d picked up from Mama, I think. Then she smiled. “To tell you the truth, honey, I think you lack maturity all the way around—no, don’t get mad—I mean it as a compliment. I think it’s why I love you, why I always loved you, even when we were children, why I came back to find you when I was grown.”

  I could feel her fingers on my arm, her face lifted to the brilliant Florida sun. “I mean, you were so innocent, so sheltered. Your mama and daddy had made you such a happy little world there, with your books and your friends and your church. It was like you were a prince in a castle, enchanted, like nothing could ever touch you.” Her smile faltered a little. “I mean me and Ira, we were never that way. No protection, no enchantment—but you were, and I think just knowing you showed me there was a better life, a salvation out there, if I’d just hold on.”

  Her eyes had grown very distant, but they sharpened. “I had a psychiatrist tell me that once. She said the difference between me and Ira was that he’d accepted cruelty as the norm, but I never had. I’d disassociated before I’d accept it.” She looked at me. ‘And it makes sense to me. I mean, insanity is curable, but inhumanity? I don’t know.”

  We’d begun walking again, and I let her talk, knowing how seldom it was that she could dredge up any part of her childhood in a positive way.

  ‘And I don’t know what you’ve been up to all these years, but the minute I laid eyes on you, I knew you hadn’t changed, you never will. That net Simon and Cissie wove around you is still there, and it kills me when you and Candace talk about war and hate and viciousness—you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re both just so protected; it’s never touched you at all. I’ve tried to make such a world for my children. Every child that’s born should have such a world. That’s why that movie bothered me. I mean, sure it’s true. Nobody has to convince me of the reality of evil, but why not let Clay find out on his own? Why rush it? He’ll see the underbelly soon enough. Let him be a child a little longer. Let’s all be children. It’ll all be over soon enough, anyway.”

  We’d reached the car, but her eyes were back on the row of cedars that marked the family plot, her voice suddenly grieving. “I mean, look at my poor Michael. Forty-three years old. Worked every day of his life, worried and struggled, and why? So his widow could drive a fifty-thousand-dollar car, and his daughter could wear ninety-dollar shoes. While there he lies, dead and turned to clay.”

  The abruptness of her descent startled me, and I took her face in my hand and lifted her chin. “What? Dead and turned to clay? Woman, I’m gone have to make you a new Resurrection peep-box, you keep talking like that.”

  She smiled at me, her eyes, as always, down-tilted and patient and kind as the sun. “See? It hasn’t touched you yet. It never will.”

  Chapter

  17

  In two short weeks, the lines were drawn, and I understood and accepted that I could say or do almost anything, work or not work, spend what I wanted, in short, carry on in whatever manner I pleased, as long as I abided by the absolutes: leave the children to Myra and attend Welcome Baptist without undo sarcasm or complaint. They were not such rigorous guidelines when you consider that I had not only inherited a beautiful wife and three lovely children, but a checking account that could handle outlays for ninety-six-dollar shoes without showing any strain at all. And anyway, I pride myself on my ability to adjust and overcame my unease and utter boredom at Welcome by taking over the men’s Sunday school class and whiling away the sermons playing war on the back of the bulletin with Simon or Clay. At first, I beat them roundly, but after a while, both of them, especially Sim, would occasionally blindside me, and we’d tape their victories to the refrigerator, a practice which annoyed my wife.

  “What if Carlym drops by and sees them?”

  “He can take a hint and go back to the NFL.”

  “Gabriel—”

  “—or take off a few Sundays and watch Jimmy Swaggart. I swear to God he’s the sorriest preacher I’ve ever heard in my life.”

  “You’re just jealous.”

  “I am not. Besides, he doesn’t like me. He won’t come to my Sunday school class.”

  “Nobody with good sense would go to your Sunday school class.”

  Well, that was gratitude for you. I’d only taken the stupid class in a futile attempt to kiss up after the Hearts and Minds debacle, and my first official act as teacher was to pitch the Quarterly and rename the class Current Dilemmas Facing Modern Fundamentalism, which meant: Running Our Mouths for Thirty Minutes Every Sunday on Issues at Home and Abroad. One week it’d be national politics; another, FSU football; but mostly it
was a mix, the discussion moving along according to whatever hit a nerve. I’d estimate that no one in the class was under seventy, for the younger men attended Brother Kinnard’s married class with their wives, or were more successful than I in getting out of it altogether, leaving the men’s class to the husbands of the old ladies out in the Sunday school wing who taught children alongside Mama and Myra. Poor, cantankerous, and hard of hearing to a man, they’d been shuttled off to a tiny room behind the baptistry to be babysat till they died, and I like to think I breathed life into them, giving them something to look forward to on Sunday between breakfast and Championship Wrestling from Florida.

  And I must say, I grew to enjoy it, finding them a surprisingly diverse bunch, from Brother Yonke, Russian by birth (before Communism, as he liked to say) to Jack Kin, a tall, red-faced old man who was rumored to have organized the county’s most notorious lynchings. I never found out if this was mere speculation or truth, but he was a prejudiced old son of a bitch, and whenever our arguments touched on race, I’d reduce him to rubble with a few well-aimed scriptures and simple volume.

  We had so many screamers in there that Brother Sloan, who traditionally meditated in his office during Sunday School (read the paper, I suspected) grew curious enough to join in the fray. He was the best in the bunch when it came to logic and would usually lead the charge against me. In time, they too, might have blindsided me, if not for their congestive hearts that would give in to angina and palpitations if I cared to withstand them, leaving me to carry the day.

  One Sunday after I’d really played the devil’s advocate, proclaiming the disciples to be rank charismatics (ever read the second chapter of Acts?), Brother Sloan had actually edged on to a heart attack, having to stretch out on the floor with a nitroglycerin pill, but still not backing down, just lying there amidst the flurry of damp washcloths, whispering, “You’re wrong, Gabe. You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong”—which I have come to understand is the final Baptist argument when they’ve been right and soundly beaten.