My Brother Michael

by Janis Owens

  “Why,” I asked them, “did we fight a Civil War?”

  They gave me all the old standards, and I let them fight it out between themselves for most of the class time, saving my opinion for the last sixty seconds.

  “Money.” I grinned, and after an extended pause for breath, we were back in action, but only for thirty seconds, when the bell rang and we had to go back to the sanctuary for church.

  They were furious with me for pulling such a stunt, Brother Sloan most earnestly tortured of all, having to let such blasphemy go unanswered while he sat on the deacon’s bench for two solid hours of hymns and Brother Folger’s drivel before he could catch me at the salad bar and scream:

  “It was slavery, Gabriel Catts. Ain’t you ever heard of the Missouri Compromise?”

  “Slavery was money,” was my patient reply as I stood there and chewed lettuce.

  That night in bed, Myra tried to be helpful. “Gabriel, honey, Dr. Williams would see you for free. You’ll have plenty a time this summer—”

  “I do not need psychiatric treatment because I think the Civil War was nothing more than a business transaction gone awry.”

  “I don’t give a hoot about any war. I just don’t think all this fighting is healthy. Are you sure you weren’t beaten as a child?”

  Her years in therapy had made my wife a healthy cynic where matters of neuroses were concerned, but perhaps she was a bit serious, for passionate confrontation was not her strong suit (it wouldn’t have been mine if I’d lived one house down on Lafayette), and she was honestly perplexed by my love of needling.

  “Not beaten by my parents,” I told her, kissing her neck, “but emotionally scarred by my love for an ambitious red-headed woman who rejected me to marry my less sexually satisfying but infinitely richer brother—”

  “Gabriel—”

  “So I take out my angst on these harmless old men and their blood is on your hands, woman.”

  So I laughed it away, but later, when I couldn’t sleep, I went downstairs for a glass of hot milk and found myself at the French doors, staring into the quiet, hot night. A little brown owl nested in the old yellow pine beyond the fence, and on a hot night it would fly close to the pool looking for prey, snakes and field mice drawn to the cool water. I stood there listening to the low, mournful hooting in the perfect stillness of the night, waiting for that sharp flick against the white of the deck that meant a strike, when my eye caught the pale gleam of a lamp I’d left on upstairs in the servant’s quarters, and after a moment, I sighed.

  Yes, yes, maybe she was right. Maybe I was projecting a little nervous tension here. Not about the war or Reagan or any other Dilemma Facing Modern Fundamentalism, but about Clayton, dear Clayton, who would sneak into the men’s class whenever he got the chance and always side with me, no matter what. I could have championed bestiality, and he would have been there beside me, backing me up a hundred percent, for Clayton was only a storm trooper in that his loyalty was his honor. It wasn’t carved on his knife; it was carved on his heart, and you talk about seeing the writing on the wall. Sooner or later, someone—probably a Sims—was going to let him in on a fascinating little rumor they’d once heard, and poor Clay. Poor Gabriel. Poor Myra. What could we do? Deny it? That’d be the easy way out, a laugh and a look of hilarious disbelief (“Don’t believe everything you hear, son—”), but damn, I wasn’t sure I could do it.

  Not sure at all. It’d be a lie, for one thing, and it would somehow demean us all, even Michael. Especially Michael, for how could I explain how much my brother loved me unless I explained how much he’d forgiven me? It just wasn’t possible, and I wanted to discuss it with Myra, set some plan of action in order, but found it difficult, for the closer we became, the more protective she was of Michael’s memory, and I didn’t want her to think I was trying to claim Clayton out of some petty middleaged need for ownership.

  I agonized over it a few weeks there at the beginning of the summer, but in the end, simply kept my mouth shut, which was stupid, inexcusably stupid, for if anyone knew how denial could heat normal reaction to explosion point, it was me. But that’s what I did, all right, plain old-fashioned denial, the kind I am very gifted in, while I surreptitiously tried to improve my odds by spoiling Clay rotten, laughing at his jokes (which were funny), encouraging him to be as sarcastic as his mother would allow, hoping I could ease him over any shocking revelations with a tight relationship. So it was much later, July Fourth—or, no, it was Labor Day, at the end of the summer, when the blow finally fell, by Mama’s hand, of all people, who would have put a gun to her head before she’d have touched a hair on Clayton’s head.

  It happened around the dinner table on Magnolia Hill, the same table where Ira had once made the shocking little announcement that had changed our lives forever. We had gathered there for the holiday, eating something festive, ribs or steak, all of us a little nervous over the new school year, painfully conscious that this was the last day of an era. After today, Simon would become an official employee of Sanger Manufacturing for one year, then an official freshman at FSU, a plan he’d made long ago with Michael’s blessing. Tomorrow would also mark the first year Missy could drive to school alone, in a restored ‘64 Mustang I’d found her in Montgomery and liked so much that we were negotiating a trade with the Volvo, for, with all the genetically engineered pragmatism of her nature, she valued air-conditioning above style.

  As for Clay, Tuesday would be his first day of high school in town, a landmark he was not at all concerned with, though Missy was dedicated to urbaning him up for the experience, lest he do something publicly humiliating and shame her good name. All summer long she’d been on his back, going so far as to supervise his selection of school clothes and now, with time growing short, she went into overtime, using this last meal to try and humiliate him into better table manners, telling him, at one point, he chewed like a pig.

  “Don’t you even think about talking to me in the cafeteria,” she said, and Mama, always Clayton’s ally, took it upon herself to give him a few tips on good manners.

  “You never talk with your mouth full,” she said sagely, “and when one hand is on the table, the other one ain’t.”

  “Where is it?” Sim asked mildly.

  Clayton cracked, “On your crotch. That’s the polite place to rest your hand while you eat.”

  Simon laughed, and Missy was saying something about him doing her a favor and never speaking to her again, when Mama stood to get the dessert.

  “He’s a-getting more like his daddy every day,” she said, passing me on the way to the kitchen and giving me a little slap to the back of the head. “Now you’ll see what I went through a-raising you, Gabriel Catts.”

  She didn’t even realize what she’d said, going to the kitchen for the dessert, leaving the rest of us paralyzed, Myra’s face suddenly very white, Simon and Missy talking quickly, trying to cover the silence (I hadn’t realized till then they knew), Clayton and I staring at each other across the table for about five strained seconds before dropping our eyes and finishing in silence.

  Mama came back with the ice cream and ladled it out without a sign of unease, allowing the meal to regain a normal pitch, but when I chanced little glances at Clay, his face was averted and oddly squinted, as if he were trying to remember a date on a test. I knew well enough what he was thinking, remembering Myra’s words from his project (“I came back to see Gabriel, he was the brother I remembered”), plus bits and pieces of other things, how everyone commented on our likeness, how I’d told him the maps on the walls of the servant’s quarters were exactly as old as he was, that I’d put them up the summer before he was born when I was down here working on my book.

  (“Why’d you leave them?” he’d asked, and I’d been vague. “Well, I left in kind of a hurry—”)

  But not a word was spoken, not a word, for repression creates a false little parallel world of its own, and once the conversation picked back up, there was a hint of enormous relief in the room, a
s if everyone (except Mama, who still hadn’t realized her slip) was thinking, “Well,” sigh, “at least that’s over.”

  But I knew better, and when Curtis came by to pick Clayton up for one last run to the river, I followed him to the truck and took him aside, my voice trying for normalcy. “I need to talk to you tonight.”

  He wouldn’t look at me, but Curtis assured me they wouldn’t be late. “We’re only going gigging. We’ll be back by nine.”

  I nodded and smiled and told them to be careful, then went inside and suffered through another one of those horrific afternoons of waiting. I tried to keep everything low-key and harmless, going down to Sanger with Sim to see his rabbit-hole of an office, finalizing the car swap with Missy, teasing her on her preference for a Volvo, predicting she’d vote the Democratic ticket on the next presidential election, but beneath the smiles, my head was pounding, and Myra’s blank, introspective face was scaring the hell out of me.

  Finally, around dark, she said we must go, that the children had to get to bed, and as we said good-bye to Mama on the porch, the jagged windows of the house next door seemed to grin at me in triumph, and I mused aloud, “One of these days I’m gone burn that son of a bitch down.”

  “Gabriel Catts,” Mama cried (at my language, not my intent), but I would not apologize, and when Sim and Missy came home later, just after nine, Myra sent them straight to bed.

  “It’s nine o’clock,” Missy cried, but Myra was firm—pale and firm, her small hands clenched behind her back.

  “It’s the first day of school. You need your rest.”

  Simon, who at eighteen had plenty of reason to balk, didn’t argue though, and as he started up the stairs, he paused as if to speak, then turned and left us with a good-night, and I knew Michael was the reason for his silence. He must have spoken to him, given him the authorized version, somehow made it right, and God in heaven, I wished he would have put it on tape because Myra and I were scared to death.

  We sat at the kitchen table and looked at each other a few minutes, then made our only plan. It was: “You talk first.”

  This was spoken by Myra to me, and I nodded. Then we sat there a little longer, our hands on the table in front of us, till I broke the silence.

  “Myra,” then hesitated, “does Clayton know—” then paused again. What I wanted to know was if he knew of the lithium, of Dr. Williams, and all that went before it, but the way I asked it was: “Does he know about your father?”

  She didn’t answer, but only shook her head, slowly, and after a moment, a tear rolled silently down her cheek untouched. One single tear, and I stood and went to her, holding her against my chest.

  “I don’t want him to know,” she whispered fiercely. “I told Missy and Sim, but not him, and I don’t want to, Gabriel, none of it. I can’t—”

  “It’s all right,” I kept murmuring, then stood her up. “Here, baby, you go on to bed, get some sleep. This’ll be better, one on one—”

  “No, I have to tell him—”

  “No—listen, baby, Curtis said they’d be late,” I lied. “You go on, I’ll take care of it. You saw how he took it. He loves me. He’ll be fine—”

  She was so desperate to believe me that she let me take her upstairs and talk her into a pill—not lithium, she couldn’t take that without a blood test, something else, a synthetic, she called it, with a name about twenty letters long. Then I went downstairs and waited on the couch. The clock ticked, the locusts shook in the trees, the little owl watched for its prey, and I tried to remain calm, listening for the door, denying the passing hours till suddenly, I stood, going to the kitchen, telling myself it must be past eleven, that Curtis knew better than to keep him out this late on a school night.

  The clock on the stove read two fifteen.

  I jerked the phone off the hook and dialed Curtis and Lori’s, and on about the fifteenth ring, a sleepy voice finally answered.

  “Curtis?” I said. “This is Gabe. Listen, where the hell is Clay? I got up and he’s not—”

  “I dropped him off at eight.” He yawned, and I immediately backed off.

  “Oh. Well, listen, he must be downstairs—no, no problem, y’all get anything?”

  “Too many snakes,” he said, and when we hung up and I dialed the sheriff’s office, I agreed: too many snakes.

  The deputy on duty was sympathetic, but unable to file a report until twenty-four hours had passed, so I got in the car and drove around town, to the bus station, the church, along the highway, the cemetery, anywhere I thought he might be hiding. But I found nothing; nothing but a still summer night, one so damn reminiscent of the night he was conceived, in a seedy motel room during a festival, the hot lights of the midway making it happy and harmless, nothing more than a child’s game as I pitched the condoms and decided it was time to play hardball with my brother Michael.

  When early light began to cast a rose glow along the pines to the east, I swung back by the house to see if he’d shown up, and was half way across the deck when I remembered the servant’s quarters and wondered if he’d sneaked up there last night, afraid to face me.

  “Of course,” I murmured, and berated myself for not having thought of it before, taking the stairs to the rooms two at a time, but stopping at the door, my hand on the old brass knob, hit by a premonition of evil so strong it almost sent me over backwards. After all, this was where it all began, right up here in this small room, given to me out of kindness by my brother, a kindness I repaid as I repaid all his gifts, and I had a primeval, heart-pounding certainty that this was where the dues would be paid; that Clayton was here all right, but he wasn’t hiding; he was hanging from a light fixture or lying in a pool of blood in the old porcelain tub, a pathetic last message scrawled above his head.

  The impact of the image was so strong that I was paralyzed there at the top of the stairs, one hand still gripping the cold metal knob, aware of a movement somewhere below, the click of a French door, then a woman’s voice. It broke my paralysis, and I jerked the door open, hoping, praying, I could save him, but when I burst in the room, it was just as I’d left it fourteen years before, hardly changed at all. Even the sheets on that narrow bed probably the same, and I was so relieved I went to the window and leaned on it for support, my forehead on the glass. I rested there a moment, then realized the sound I’d heard was Myra, down on the deck, calling my name. I tapped on the glass to get her attention and saw the tip of her nightgown as she went around the corner to the stairs.

  Softly she came, up, up, and when she opened the door, her face was bloodless but even.

  “He’s at Candace’s,” she said in a light, dry voice. “She’s on the phone. She says he’s very upset. She made me promise I wouldn’t call.” It was as if she’d memorized the words on Candace’s urging, and she finished in that same light, paced voice: “She said, Gabriel, that if you call him or try to see him, you will lose him. She said for me to tell you that.”

  After the horror of my vision of ropes and blood and death, this calm, level-headed advice was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard in my life, and I was speechless with relief, assenting wordlessly with a nod, then resting my forehead back against the cold glass while Myra went downstairs to the phone. I watched her pass below and saw she walked with an odd stiffness, possibly a side-effect from the medication, and thought I’d better go see about her, comfort her, tell her Clayton would understand. That he was thirteen, but he was old for his age, he wasn’t like me—

  And suddenly I realized what I’d done: how in maintaining my own protracted innocence, I’d sacrificed my son’s. It was so searing, so bitter, that I closed my eyes at the impact, then lifted my face with deadly deliberation and slammed my forehead against the heavy sash of the old window, making it crack, then shatter. On the deck below, Myra turned, and after a second of wide-eyed horror, started for the stairs, calling my name, but I ignored her, drawing back and hitting my forehead, one blow after another, in senseless, thoughtless punishment, trying to produ
ce a greater pain, but not quite able, consumed by the hopeless, futile cry of the king: Would God I had died for thee, my son, my son.

  Chapter

  19

  I thought he’d be gone for two days, tops. Then Candace would call, and I’d go over there and tell him my side of the matter and maybe he’d call me a few names, bastard and SOB and the like; then he’d break down and both of us would cry and that’d be the end of that. He’d come back home, and we’d begin again, this time on a firm foundation of truth, older and wiser and conscious of the imperfectability of man.

  That’s what I thought.

  Hoped. Told myself over and over again those first few days as I went about my first-of-the-year routine, introducing my classes to the theory of history, eating supper with Missy and Sim, trying to smile and make the best of it while every second my ear was straining for that damn phone to ring.

  But it didn’t.

  Not once, and on Wednesday afternoon, I said to hell with it and left school early to pick up Myra and go over to Candace’s and straighten this thing out once and for all. But when I pulled in the back drive, I saw Ed’s truck was already there and ran inside in a backwash of relief, prepared for battle, truce, surrender, whatever I had to do.

  What I found was Candace, sitting primly on the sunroom couch, surrounded by suitcases and boxes and bags full of clothes, and for a moment, it didn’t connect. Then I saw the edge of Clayton’s skate-board sticking out of one of the bags and began shaking my head.