My Brother Michael

by Janis Owens

  She began to cry, for her brother was the grief of Myra’s life, more so than Clayton, who was a car drive away, being cared for by a loving aunt, while Ira, Ira was lost to us forever.

  I pushed the papers aside, and I lay down beside her. “Poor Ira? What about poor Myra?”

  She wiped her cheeks. “I haven’t got that far yet.”

  “Oh,” I smiled. “Well, save some tears for Myra Sims. She never had a chance either.”

  “She had Michael,” Myra said, very gently.

  I agreed. “Yes. She had Michael.”

  ‘And she has Gabriel.” She smiled.

  I held her face in my hand. “She always has Gabriel.”

  So we were in agreement there, at least until I typed my way through the summer of 74, and I found myself at the mercy of a guilty Baptist conscience.

  “I have never worn a transparent bathing suit in my life! You made it up, Gabriel, you made it up!”

  “It was only transparent when it was wet. I noted that very clearly, see?”

  “But it’s a lie ! I’ve never owned such a thing!”

  “You were loony that summer. You don’t know what you owned.”

  “Well, I know I didn’t wear a see-through bathing suit. Michael wouldn’t have let me, and if I did, I don’t see how it’s necessary. I mean this is for Clayton, not Hustler.”

  We were arguing over it in the servant’s quarters, and I sat her down on the narrow bed that had once been the battlefield for this war and tried to explain.

  “Listen baby, I know it’s not Hustler. I tried to ride the fine line between being needlessly explicit and—”

  ‘And what? she cried. “Just say you got me pregnant. Good Lord, Gabriel, he’ll figure out the rest.”

  “No.”

  “Well, why not? Are you trying to make yourself out as some kind of king stud here?”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” I snapped, then took a calming breath, and tried to explain. “It’s just—I just want him to understand why I did it. I mean it’s easy for you, you can get out of anything. You’re like Ira, mentally incompetent to stand trial, but me—I want him to know it wasn’t something casual, that it was—” I paused, then found the word, “—serious. I want him to know he was conceived in love, that I loved him and you did and Michael did, too. I don’t want him to think it was some kind of hideous accident”

  She softened a little at that and patted my hand, and I thought she was going to give in, but she only said, “Well, then write it like you want to, but listen, I’m gone cut it when it gets—” I tried to interrupt, but she waved me away, “—offensive. And inaccurate, which this part about the see-through bathing suit is.”

  So we were right back at square one, and when I refused to budge, she withdrew her support entirely, calling me many names and analyzing my motives with something less than Christian charity till we came to a reluctant compromise: I could describe the bathing suit in some detail, wet and all, as long as I noted it was relatively modest when dry, and as long as I documented on a page-to-page basis that Myra’s affection toward me never seemed what you might call reciprocal.

  It was a small, not altogether untruthful concession that brought about a truce that lasted about three pages, till she came across the phrase “white and painful.”

  “You’re describing an orgasm! she shouted. “I can’t believe you, Gabriel. Why don’t you call this thing Deep Throat?”

  I assured her the adjectives had come innocently to mind with no pornographic symbolism intended, but she was hysterically firm on this one, wanting to jerk the whole project.

  “I’d rather he didn’t know anything than this.”

  “This,” I said, “is true, and anyway, who cares what it suggests? I mean, this is adultery we’re talking about here, not needlepoint.”

  She really wept at this. “You’re just making a joke out of this. It’s just another game to you. God in heaven, why did you ever come back?”

  I tactfully ignored what had become a common theme around the Catts household, but it was a solid month before we worked this one out, finally agreeing to relative honesty, white and painful and all, but putting the whole narrative away in a safe deposit box for Clay to open on his fortieth birthday.

  “By then,” I told her, “nothing will shock him.”

  She only looked at me. “How can you say that? I hope he cries.”

  Then I remembered the closets and Ira and apologized many times. From there on out, we rolled along with remarkable speed, only having a short breakdown when I went into a little intimate detail about Adele and really found myself in hot water. But after a few tears and a lot of fast explaining, we made it peacefully to the end, with Myra holding steadfastly to two inflexible dictates.

  The first was that Michael never be recorded using offensive profanity (that is: profanity personally offensive to Myra Louise Catts). The second, that the exact nature of the crimes that sent Ira to Raiford never be discussed or alluded to in any form or fashion. I found both exceptions unrealistic and painfully misleading, but Myra stood firm, pointing out that Michael’s language was not the issue here, and that Ira’s crimes were of such a nature that they should never even be spoken of, much less explained away.

  “Michael worked in a factory,” I argued. “He played baseball. He picked up profanity. Who cares? Damn, Myra, don’t paint him as some kind of plaster saint.”

  “I’m not painting him any way. I just never heard him use the word and I’m not so sure he did.”

  “Why would I lie about such a thing?”

  “I don’t know—but listen, honey, it makes him sound trashy, and Michael was never that way.”

  When I pointed out that she’d let me be recorded using that word with no undue concern about how I sounded, she just looked at me.

  “Hey, I let you be recorded doing all kinds of wild and trashy things.”

  I saw we were losing ground here and quickly assented, so Michael’s words of disgust at the Klan and bad football have been downgraded to shit and SOB, and Ira’s crimes left out all together. However, I will give one indication of their magnitude to say that to this day there meets in Duval County a victim support group that spends about six evenings a year crying over their losses and promising Ira Leldon Sims will see the electric chair, no matter how many pissant bleeding-heart liberals try to plead otherwise. But that’s as far as I can go, and I guess I should be grateful that I got by with only two inadmissions, for if Myra’d had her way, Clay would be left with the mystery of another immaculate conception. In the meanwhile, I have quit telling my students that the recording of history belongs to the winners, the revision of that history to the losers. Now I know it belongs to neither, but to their conjugal partners. A small but possibly revolutionary slant on recorded history.

  But enough of that. When it was all typed (the second half by Myra, which went a lot faster) and numbered and ready to lock away till 2015, Myra made an interesting observation that was really quite startling when she asked me why I had never mentioned my hand. Never. Not once, and I was so fascinated by the omission that I lay in bed that night and reread the entire manuscript and found that she was right. Except for one small reference after Daddy’s funeral, I made no hint that since Old Man Sims’ squeeze to my wrist, I have never been able to use my right hand.

  Oh, it’s not withered or unusual in any way. When it first came out of the cast, Doctor Winston downplayed it as a little ligament damage and gave me exercises to strengthen it, but after a year or so, he finally admitted there must be something more, a something we were never able to properly investigate due to the incredible burden of Daddy’s hospital expenses. By the time I was old enough to do something on my own, the muscles had atrophied until it had became what it is today: a normal-looking, but useless, slightly curled hand that I still hold instinctively to my side, though it hasn’t hurt me in twenty-six years.

  “How could I have left it out?” I asked Myra when she woke up briefly a
t six, but she only looked at the clock, then curled back up.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t bother you.”

  “But it was such a wonderful symbol. I’ll have to rewrite the whole damn thing.”

  This woke her up enough to look at me. “Well, I’m not retyping it, I’ll tell you that.”

  “I’ll hire a typist—”

  “You will not. You’ll do it yourself. I don’t want some stranger reading my life.”

  “It’ll take me ten years to type it myself.”

  She burrowed into her pillows. “Make a footnote.”

  “I hate footnotes.”

  She offered one last piece of advice. “Then make an addendum. It won’t make any difference anyway, just explain why you’re so easy to beat up.”

  An odd way of looking at it, I thought, but she fell asleep before I could argue, and the more I sat there and considered it, the more convinced I was that my hand had shaped me into the man I am today. For one thing, it placed me in a special category, that of a cripple, a stigma that has lessened now that I am grown, but was a pretty narrowing thing when I was young. Being a cripple meant I could stay inside and read books. I could not play baseball with any skill, or work a saw at Sanger. It meant I could use verbal gymnastics to get my way, but not resort to physical violence. And when I was fifteen, it meant I was not expected to go to work and make my way, but stay late at libraries and ponder abstractions, which I did, till I was seventeen and had no choice but to leave Magnolia Hill, for I was unable to compete in any market—I didn’t have the skills; I was a cripple.

  So I went to college and got an education and eventually a job, but maybe it was my hand that held me to Magnolia Hill. Maybe it was the tie, the small piece of unfinished business that drew me back, time and again, to the woman unintentionally responsible for it all: Myra, who is very protective of my hand, who holds it on her lap in church and kisses it sometimes, one finger at a time, in a way that makes me wonder if she will one day restore it to full use.

  Well, like I say, it was a hell of a good symbol to overlook, and metaphor aside, it also explained more clearly why Michael always wanted me to throw baseballs, since Dr. Winston once (and only once, I might add) mentioned it might be therapeutic. It also explained why he never laid a hand on me, for he knew any fight between us would not be fair, and Michael was, if anything, a very fair man.

  I lay in bed that morning—a Saturday, I think it was; Myra and Missy and Lori were going shopping at the outlets in Graceville for bathing suits—and tried to figure out a way to insert my handicap in a moving way that didn’t require major retyping. When Myra woke up after nine, she was groggy and disoriented, courtesy of the pills, squinting at the clock.

  “What time is it?” she asked. Then, “It’s nine, Michael. You’re late.”

  “It’s Saturday and I’m Gabriel,” I said, not offended, for I’d grown used to this particular side-effect of the meds. At first, it really threw me, her calling me Michael, but she was horribly embarrassed, threatening to pitch all the pills, till I assured her it was all right. So now I answer to Michael or Gabriel, or if she’s really having a bad day, Missy or Cissie or on one inauspicious occasion, Ira.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, sitting up and rubbing her face.

  “My hand’s the reason I yell at the old men,” I told her sagely.

  She looked at me. “What?”

  I held it up. “My hand. It’s why I yell at the old men.”

  She took it and flattened it against her chest the way she does sometimes. “Don’t blame your poor hand. You’d probably yell at people anyway.”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” I said, and offered my startling new revelation that she didn’t seem to grasp the significance of, and after a while, I grew annoyed. “You just don’t want to retype it. You’re just lazy. And practical. I hate it; it’s like I’m married to Mama.”

  She only yawned at what I thought was a bare-faced insult, and I tried to give it my best shot, sitting up so I could look her in the eye. “See, Myra, I’ve never been able to shake hands with other men. And your father did this to me. And listen,” I was really excited about this one, “I used to be afraid I couldn’t perform sexually because of my hand.”

  She looked a little perplexed at this, and I explained quickly, “I mean, the missionary position was the only way I thought you did it, and I couldn’t bear weight—never mind, that’s not the point. The point is, it changed my life. I’ll have to revise, I’m sorry.”

  She just sat there a moment, and I thought I’d won her over. Then she said, “Gabriel,” then, after a small sigh, “have you ever thought that all this fuss over your hand could be nothing more than a try for the sympathy vote? Have you thought of that?”

  You know, sometimes times I really did hate this woman’s guts, and I jerked my hand back. “Go on, Cissie,” I said and she left me alone, calling for Missy to wake up as she dressed.

  “Don’tchu even remember your youngest son anymore?” I asked with more than a touch of sullenness, and she looked at me a moment with narrowed eyes, then went back to brushing her hair in the mirror, her voice light.

  “Ah, yes. I think his name’s Clayton. I’m watching him play baseball tonight.”

  Baseball was a sore subject with me, and I could only resort to sarcasm. “Oh, well, that’s a tight relationship for you. Sitting in your car while he ignores you on the field. Boy, I wish I was that close to my children.”

  But she paid me no mind, only kissing me good-bye, leaving me in a sour-grapes kind of mood, pretending I didn’t care that she and Candace wouldn’t let me go with them to the ballpark on Saturday nights when Clayton took the field as probably the sorriest outfielder in the history of organized baseball.

  “One of these days,” Missy predicted, “somebody’s gone hit a line drive to right field, and Clayton’s gone be standing there scratching his tail, and it’s gone konk him right on the head and kill him dead.” She shook her head. “I mean, Uncle Gabe, he never hits the ball. Never. I mean, everybody knows he only made the team ‘cause Sanger’s the sponsor, and I tell you what, it embarrasses the crud out of me every time he takes the plate.”

  “Maybe he’ll improve,” I offered.

  She snorted, “Improve, my foot. He don’t give a hoot about baseball. He’s just doing it to suck up to Rachel Cole, who wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole.”

  I didn’t argue, though I knew Clayton wasn’t out there to impress Rachel Cole or anyone else, for that matter. That he didn’t care how humiliated he got. He was playing baseball, he was being Michael’s son, and I loved him so much for his loyalty I would have paid a thousand dollars a night to watch him stand out there and scratch his tail, but once again, Myra and Candace prevailed.

  “No!” they cried in these shocked, horrified voices that would have made you think I’d suggested some unheard of perversity.

  “Well, why not? Myra goes, why can’t I?”

  “Myra is discreet,” Candace said. “She sits in the car—”

  “I can be discreet. I can sit in the car—”

  “No, Gabriel, you’ll ruin everything.” This from Myra, on the bedroom extension, her voice trembling like she was about to cry.

  “Well, my God, Myra, I’m not gonna—”

  I was cut off by Candace, her voice patient and even, like she was informing me I had cancer. “Gabe. Listen. Baseball is the first thing, the only thing Clay has shown interest in.”

  “I’m not disput—”

  “And he wouldn’t even take the plate the first few games; he was so busy looking around, hoping you hadn’t come to make some kind of scene—”

  “I will sit in the car, Candace—”

  “And if you do show up, you’ll show yourself, you know you will. Everybody laughs at him. He’s so sorry—”

  “Who laughs at him?” I shouted. “Do you mean to tell me you and Ed just sit there on your ass and let people laugh at him?”

  “See? Se
e? she shouted in triumph, while Myra actually wept.

  “—ruin everything, everything—”

  So I gave in, slamming down the phone and sulking a record two weeks, though it made not one bit of difference to my wife, who started dressing for these damn baseball games at two thirty in the afternoon and would sometimes even go out and wash the car.

  “So, you think a clean car’ll impress him?” I asked, but she was hot and soapy and determined.

  “Leave me alone.”

  When she’d leave at seven, I’d sit around and fantasize about the other love of my life (Johnny Walker) till she returned home at nine with the bright eyes and flushed cheeks of a thoroughly satisifed woman, but no details of the game at all, unless Clayton happened to do something miraculous, like make a hit. And on the night he actually made a run in, she dashed up the stairs screaming, “Gabriel! Gabriel!”

  I came out of the shower dripping wet, expecting a reconciliation, to say the least, but she only jumped up and down.

  “Clayton made a hit. He ran around the bases. He won the game.”

  It truly seemed nothing short of a miracle, and indeed, when Missy gave her version at breakfast, it was considerably revised. “Well, he got on base because the shortstop was tying his shoe when he saw Clay was up to bat, and when he actually hit this little pop, I think they went into shock.”

  “But he made first? How’d he get in?”

  “Oh, Ricky Vaughn was up next, hit a homer that went about seven miles, cleared the bases—”

  “But it won the game?”

  She made a face. “Good Lord, no. We won eight to two. Their pitcher was out. The relief guy walked four runs.”

  I tell you what, it was enough of a myth-debunking tale to make you forever skeptical of the validity of oral history, but I could not investigate firsthand without causing more of an uproar than I cared to deal with. My only revenge was a true hatred of Saturday nights, a hatred that did not lessen when Myra confided the real source of her excitement that night.

  “When he made that run, everyone in the Sanger crowd stood and cheered, for Michael, I guess, but I was parked way to the side, and when he crossed home, he turned and looked to see if I was there, if I’d seen him, just like he used to do when he was a little boy. It was so sweet. I tell you what, me and Candace cried the rest of the game.”