by Liam Durcan
There was no talk between them—which felt oddly natural and logical for brothers who had shared their early years in the same twelve-by-sixteeen-foot bedroom in Highland Park. Brendan never explained why he would simply appear in his brother’s life. And Martin never asked, instead choosing to pass the time tilting his head at the gently buckling vista of mountain foliage and schist. There was no talk of family between them as they sat on the veranda with the other wheelchaired and stretchered inhabitants of the Dunes. No reminiscences or hearty reunion chatter, no small talk even, all of which was an enormous relief to Martin. They were brothers; that was all they needed to know. This was their default bond, and the dividend was not having to explain anything to anyone. In truth, no explanation was necessary, at least to others; fellow clients’ families and staff freely commented on the similarity of their looks: hair the color of steel wool retreating in identical patterns, bricklayer-thick hands they inherited from their father and were forever trying to hide in pockets, a jaw that cantilevered prominently enough that it gave the impression of being set against some fresh insult.
It fell to Brendan to explain, over and over, what had happened to Martin. The details of how Martin had gotten to the Dunes, a montage of images and sensations assembled into something that seemed real enough to pass for memory. The early hours of a February morning. A highway hidden under snow and through it all, through the darkness and the whiteness, the blade of a snowplow scything toward him, pointing him toward the Dunes. The collision—predictably high-velocity, high-impact—launched him into the darkness and ditches that straddled Highway 108 in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.
He must have been going up to the cottage in the Townships. He had no recollection of the journey, and it made little sense for him to have gone to the cottage in February. He was found by the local police. Oddly, he could visualize this part very clearly: Countless trips up to the cottage had been slowed by detours around accident scenes—images of roadside flares, yellow tape, and siren wail pounced on him, as well as a Sûreté officer scrambling down the slopes of the ditch. Of course, all this was a reconstructed midsummer scene, not occurring, as it had in reality, in the dark heart of February. A rescue crew extricated him from the crumpled accordion version of his BMW. Emergency neurosurgery followed, this fact ably confirmed by Martin’s own right hand searching through the stubble of his hair to find the smooth worm of a scar punctuated at each end by an indentation that he learned were burr holes. Fractures of both legs and his pelvis. (Just the mention of this injury made Martin wince, but in truth a fractured pelvis sounded far worse than he remembered its having felt). Four weeks of coma, another six weeks on the traumatic brain injury unit at Hôpital Sacre-Coeur passed before he was transferred to the Dunes. Later, Brendan admitted the circumstances around having him transferred, that he’d contacted both of Martin’s ex-wives—Agnetha back in Montreal and Sharon, predictably, engaged in something heroic in some village near Khartoum—for permission to transfer him to the Dunes, choosing to save his younger brother from the potential indignity of knowing that he had faced no opposition whatsoever from either woman in taking charge of Martin Fallon.
And for a time, while Martin was emerging from the haze of those first weeks at the Dunes, Brendan’s voice was indistinguishable from his own, his brother’s words providing the moment-by-moment narrative of who he was and why he was there. At some point, Martin had regained this ability for himself, a seamless transition, acknowledged only in retrospect. Suddenly, he had his own voice again, his own thoughts and desires. It was as though he had taken control of the wheel that had momentarily been in the hands of another.
Martin steadied himself as they pulled out of the Dunes parking lot, his brother’s car already cradling him in a series of gentle luxury-sedan tugs, micro g-forces of push and pull, all mediated through the most extraordinary seats with calf leather the color of a suntan that God would have longed for. Had he not known that Brendan was this wealthy, he would have wondered again how a veterinarian could afford a car like this, much less the tab for a couple of months at the Dunes. Perhaps he’d been pet-free for too long—the last a poodle-something mix they’d had when Susan and Norah were children. Back then, vets seemed happy to aspire to that hippie/Saint Francis of Assisi persona that made him forever associate a professional interest in animal welfare with a vow of poverty. But then again, Sharon was always the one to take the dog to the vet.
Martin tried to sit forward, but the seat belt engaged and restrained him. He looked outside and followed the world rapidly becoming a blur, shapes disorganizing into tumbling, indecipherable arrays of roadside color, relieved only once they reached the constancies of scorched earth that always borders interstates. Then Brendan said something, and the sounds of words startled Martin. It surprised him that anyone else was beside him, and he thought at first he must have believed he had awakened in his room, that he was still at the Dunes. Yes, it was the car, the simple unfamiliarity of the car. He wanted to say something to Brendan, just to hear the voice again, falling on him like it came from the Dunes PA system, some understandable sound to remind him he wasn’t alone.
They drove north on the 89 out of Burlington. It was a route Martin had taken many times before, but now the surroundings streamed by in an unfamiliar way, broken down into source colors of green and brown and gray. The journey to Montreal, as Brendan explained it, was straightforward. Drive north on the 89, take the bridge over Lake Champlain into the most northeast corner of New York State before crossing into Quebec. Then a straight run north to Montreal. Martin’s right hand explored the area of the car door, running fingers over upholstery, brushing up against the knobs and buttons before burrowing into the side pocket of the door and retrieving a map whose folds immediately sprang open. This was his brother, he realized, even with a GPS and a simple trip, he was always the one with a plan B. But a map—now recoiling in his hands like an accordion—he hadn’t used a map for travel in years. Martin put his face close to the paper and smelled it, then put a finger and thumb on either side of the folds and pinched it tight. He understood that he still needed the feel of paper, and took what he knew was an inordinate pleasure in sharpness of folds of a freshly bought map. There was a pang for the way a blueprint placed upon a table would reveal itself under his spreading hands. He tried to read the map but could not find a way out of Vermont. What he could distinguish were lines of red marker that had defaced the map, marking intervals. Martin guessed these marks must be prospective rest stops—pee breaks—and it angered him, made him feel like someone enfeebled, that his escape wasn’t an audacious prison break at all, but a process that required planning and considered effort on Brendan’s part. Leaving the Dunes was a staged ascent, he thought, and getting him home was like hauling a dilettante climber up Everest. He was a man who needed Sherpa care and good weather and the permission of his brother.
“Do you have a cell phone?” Martin asked.
“Whom do you need to call?”
“I asked you if you had a phone. It’s a yes or no question.”
“Whom do you need to call?”
“Susan.”
“Look, I’ll be with you. You don’t have to call Susan.”
“No, it’s about work.”
“Work can wait.”
“Could you please just give me your phone? Please?”
Brendan squirmed in his seat and produced a phone and handed it to Martin, who spent a good minute with it before returning it, asking him to dial Susan’s work number. He followed Martin’s directions and waited. Then Brendan held the phone to his chest.
“I’ve got her voice mail. Do you want to leave her a message?”
“No. Forget it. I need to speak to her in person.”
Several weeks before, Martin had been visited by his two partners—they’d made the trip down from Montreal to spend an awkward half hour that had had all the personal engagement of a royal visit to the outer colonies; flourish of arrival, distanc
ed chitchat, a smile and a hope that it could all be put behind them with a departing wave. As he lay in bed that night, Martin could imagine Jean-Sebastien and Catherine leaving, too excited to talk as they made their way back to the parking lot, trying not to break into a run as they contemplated the redistricting of authority and resources. The fact that his daughter Susan was a recently hired associate in the firm wasn’t an obstacle to a coup they were obviously planning. When it came to administrative maneuverings, associates like Susan were little more than pylons. And apparently, Susan hadn’t done anything to challenge his view of office politics. All that was left was the shuffling of names on the business cards and letterhead. But imagining the glee that must have been shared between them as they drove back to Montreal had infuriated him, made him want to ask Feingold if a person could rehab out of pure spite. Yes, he should have been the one to send flowers to Jean-Sebastien and Catherine. Seeing them was the alarm bell that he needed, a reassertion of the connection to his life that the pastorale of the Dunes had almost severed.
Martin suspected neither Jean-Sebastien nor Catherine was prepared for how far he’d progressed. Yes, he thought, that’s what made them uneasy during the visit. They’d written him off and then found him awkwardly alive, a fish still wriggling on the floor of their boat, still something they’d have to contend with. He wanted to tell them that he was going to return to the office sooner rather than later, and that he expected to be briefed on ongoing projects.
And then there was the consulate. He wanted to ask them about the consulate. It was an urge, oddly translated into a deep, seemingly abdominal ache with a small spasm of panic, which up to that moment he had associated with hunger or the need to use the toilet. The consulate. He could not picture the small plaza that fronted it or any of the details of the north elevation; his memory of it was incomplete, and at some point in their conversation Martin felt the fingers of his hands extend involuntarily, a gesture that Catherine noticed, a gesture that was mysterious to him until he realized he was reaching out for the model, for the form of the building in another sense. He refrained from asking them about the consulate.
And so he asked about Susan: Why wasn’t she down here? This caught Jean-Sebastien and Catherine off guard and drew a collective, almost principled silence (he could understand the pause from Jean-Sebastien, who even as a senior partner was prone to paroxysms of muteness and flop sweat anytime a presentation got derailed by a left-field query from a client, but Catherine, Catherine was always so good on her feet, able to bob and weave out of the stickiest situations).
Catherine spoke first, God love her—he imagined the drops of perspiration trailblazing down the slopes of Jean-Sebastien’s forehead at the mere thought of response—and said that Susan was swamped at the office, that he should be proud of his daughter, for even if she was still only an associate, she was keeping the Fallon name front and center in his absence. Besides, Catherine said, Susan visited weeks ago—a fact Martin couldn’t dispute, a visit he convinced himself he could faintly recall, along with the other flashes from the Paleozoic era of his recovery.
He listened to Catherine, appreciating her reassurances until he realized that now he was the asshole client, sensing the tug of being led by the hand back behind the roped-off area of situationally appropriate questioning. The mammoth fruit basket that Jean-Sebastien and Catherine brought him sat on the windowsill, and in the lull of conversation their attention seemed to focus on that, the cellophane rippling in the reflected sunlight, as if a welder’s torch lay hidden there among the fruit, shards and spokes of light drawing his eyes down into a squint.
It grew in him there. The germ of irritation, fostered and fed. He wasn’t a client. He was their partner. They owed him more than evasiveness, more than a visit and a basket of fruit.
He asked what project Susan was working on, and Jean-Sebastien surprised him by taking over, each response a nonanswer about wanting her to get exposed to a variety of projects, giving her latitude to develop something about whatever. He smiled and tried to find Jean-Sebastien again, this time a different Jean-Sebastien, surprisingly confident, almost impudent, needing only the leveling effects of brain trauma for it to be a fair fight.
Tell me about the consulate, he wanted to say. How had Melnikov’s house and the consulate occurred to him when he hadn’t yet relearned how to walk or toilet himself or tie his own shoes? Amid the frustration and the growing sense of panic—Had they lost the commission because he’d been injured? Were they trying to spare him the disappointment?—he’d come to understand that memory was not random, that it must be at service to obsession, that it fed the truest needs of the animal. He wanted to stand up, to get out of the chair, but he didn’t trust his legs. Catherine touched the fruit basket and it crackled back and the light showered off it as though she were arc-welding the window shut. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Where does the consulate stand?”
“Everything’s looking fine. Schedule, budget,” Catherine replied. “Don’t worry about any of that, Martin. It’s all being taken care of.”
“I need to go to the office.”
“It’s not a great time for you,” Catherine said. He almost opened his eyes just to see her facial expression.
“I need to get back to work.”
“You need to get better, buddy,” Jean-Sebastien said.
I am better, he wanted to say. He felt something at that moment, something understandable only later, the feeling as enlivening as anger except that, even flat on his back, it made him feel unique and potent and full of righteous potential. In the car, a few weeks later, the only way he could describe it was that it felt majestic. He would prevail. Martin felt certain of it. But at the time, he said nothing to Catherine and Jean-Sebastien. It wasn’t a conversation between equals. It never is when only one of the parties is wearing pajamas.
They crossed into New York State and then into Canada at Hemmingford, a smaller crossing to avoid the lines of semitrailers and the hydrocarbon fug of diesel smoke. Brendan showed both their papers and explained the situation to the Canadian border officials. Smiles all around. Service-industry banter. Martin listened closely and was thoroughly impressed. He reasoned that an American repatriating an invalid Canadian at the sort of back-roads border crossing likely favored by traffickers of all stripes was enough to provoke a free-for-all interrogation (a strip search and a thorough snouting from their dope-sniffing beagle wouldn’t be out of the question). But the guards simply waved them through. You have a good day, too. Brendan dealt with it effortlessly, completely at ease with these people he didn’t know and wouldn’t see again. This was not at all like his brother, not the Brendan Fallon he remembered, and for a moment Martin panicked at the fact he hadn’t really looked at his brother, that he’d accepted this man for who he said he was, accepted the plausibilities of his brother simply appearing at his bedside, ready to care for him. The Brendan he remembered was not at ease with anyone, not with the counselors who saw him through the first difficult years after his return from Vietnam, not with their parents—in telephone conversations Martin’s mother would only hint at the eruptions Brendan suffered after he got home, the drinking and the fallout of a precipitous marriage that failed before it saw a second anniversary.
Maybe his concept of Brendan had been fixed at a certain point, now only preserved under the intervening years of their estrangement. He’d half-expected him to show up at the Dunes in army fatigues. But of course Brendan had changed, and the changes seemed to be almost an insult to admit—not in its particulars but in a larger sense, that the world, so firmly entrenched, so richly registered, should have the nerve to reassert itself and demand reevaluation.
The banter at the border crossing shouldn’t have surprised him, he reasoned. Brendan had become a different man; with counseling and AA and maybe just time, he had turned his life around years ago. Their father had been the one to convince Brendan to go back to school on the GI Bi
ll, and Brendan ended up spending four years at veterinary school in Madison—an ideal vocation in Martin’s estimation: The simple moral mechanics of helping a blameless animal seemed to be ideal for someone who had been through Brendan’s traumas.
With a monthly telephone call—always done with his father out of the house—Martin’s mother kept him up-to-date on Brendan’s progress, and yet this new life never fleshed itself out, so to speak, never seeming anything more than theoretical. The veterinary clinic Brendan started in Westchester prospered, acquiring a satellite and evolving into the more lucrative cosmology of a chain of clinics (at times, especially when his own career was stalled in gas station retrofittings and designing outdoor decks, Martin imagined Brendan’s clinics as the rusty anchor of every wretched strip mall). While watching television coming from stations in New York State, Martin would occasionally see his brother’s smiling face beaming back at him from advertisements for his clinics. Even then, watching the slick ads—smiling actors, lustrous dogs, and, he had to admit, well-designed clinic interiors—the scale of Brendan’s success seemed separate from the man Martin had known. For him, his brother was forever cloistered at home, still skulking in fatigues, shaking a fist at imagined Vietcong somewhere in the darkness of their house.
