Brotherly Love - Pete Dexter

by Pete Dexter

  His uncle notices him then, standing in the room whose only light is the television set. "Hey, Petey," he says, "how you doin?"

  Peter nods, shaking life back into his hand.

  "Just like you," his uncle says to his father, "he don’t say nothin’ . . . Hey, what’s wrong with your hand?"

  "Nothing," the boy says.

  His father walks past him and puts the groceries on the dining room table.

  "How come you’re shakin’ it, then?" his uncle says.

  "Went to sleep," he says. He looks around himself at the darkened room, surprised that the day has passed without him.

  His father turns on the lights in the kitchen and dining room, opens the icebox door and comes back with two beers. He gives one to Peter’s uncle.

  "I’ll fix us something to eat later," he says, "but leave me and your uncle talk a minute first."

  He nods and goes up the dark staircase to his room.

  "You ain’t listenin’ to me," his uncle says after the boy closes the door. He hears them as clearly as if they had come up the stairs with him.

  "I heard you," his father says.

  "Then say something back."

  It is quiet a long moment, and then his uncle is talking again.

  "What Constantine said, he don’t mind that the guy’s frightened. He likes him a little nervous, it makes him easier to work with. But he don’t want him nervous enough he moves to Fort Lauderdale."

  "He ain’t going to Fort Lauderdale," his father says.

  "It’s what he told Constantine."

  It is quiet again, a long time. "Wait a minute," his uncle says. "We been through that, right? You told Constantine you ain’t gonna hurt him .... "

  Again it is quiet.

  "You’re fuckin’ crazy, Charley," his uncle says. "I sincerely mean that."

  His father says something back, speaking too quietly for Peter to make out the words.

  "Constantine ain’t going to put up with it," his uncle says. "He’s told the guy it’s forgiven."

  "It ain’t up to him," his father says.

  "And who decides that? You?"

  Peter hears a different tone in his uncle’s voice then, a conciliatory sound, as if he has won the argument and is trying to show his father that he has lost.

  "Constantine forgave him," he says.

  Not long after that, Peter hears his uncle leaving the house. The front door opens and closes.

  Peter finds his father sitting at the kitchen table holding a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer in his hand, tearing a path through the label with his thumb. He works from the top down, and when his thumb breaks through at the bottom the two sides of the label open like the doors on a barn.

  His father rolls the paper under his thumbnail into a ball until it is perfectly round. "Your Uncle Phil," he says, smiling, and shakes his head. He looks at him then, without the smile. "You hear what he said?"

  Peter nods.

  "Always makin’ things big .... "

  Peter sits down at the table and almost at the same time his father gets up. He goes to the refrigerator and finds a fresh beer and then, before he closes the door, he looks at him and says, "You want a beer?"

  Something depends on the answer.

  "Yeah," Peter says, "I’ll drink a beer with you." The way his father says it.

  A smile—the shade of a smile—crosses his father’s face, and then is gone. He reaches into the icebox with the hand holding the beer, and when it comes out, it is holding two. He sets them on the table and then hands Peter the bottle opener.

  "The first thing about drinking beer," he says, sitting down, "don’t ever take the cap off with your teeth."

  Peter stares at his father, wondering what is happening. "It don’t matter if all your friends use their teeth, in the end they’re gonna break one off, wait and see." He looks at him and waits. Peter picks up a bottle and the bottle opener and pries off the top.

  "It’s the same thing as hittin’ walls," his father says. He takes the open beer out of his hand, brings it to his lips and tastes it.

  Peter reaches for the second bottle and stands up to get better leverage on the bottle opener.

  "There’s always going to be some guys hit walls," his father says. "They go to somebody’s wedding, drink the wine, say the wrong thing and the first thing you know they’re punching holes in the reception hall." He looks at Peter again, the smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. "Your Uncle Phil was a great wall puncher."

  Peter nods, picturing it.

  "The thing about that," his father says, "besides it’s stupid, is that you can’t always tell where the studs are, especially you drank enough champagne to want to punch walls in the first place. And it’s one thing to put your fist through drywall, it’s something else when you hit the studs .... "

  His father falls silent a moment, and Peter is afraid the moment is over. That his father has said as much as he can.

  His father shakes his head. "More people broke their hands at weddings than fights," he says. And then he touches the side of his bottle to Peter’s and drinks again.

  Peter lifts his own beer off the table and carefully brings the cool, wet circle at the top against his lips. The smell is different this close, and then he lifts the bottle and the beer is bitter and alive in his mouth. His eyes water and he swallows, feeling his father watching.

  "There’s no excuse, hurting yourself on purpose," his father says. "The Italians know that, the Irish don’t. It’s why they run things."

  And then he seems to go away for a little while, perhaps thinking of Peter’s sister.

  Peter brings the bottle to his mouth again, taking more of the neck into his mouth than he means to, and then taking more of the beer. He coughs, and his eyes water again.

  His father seems lost.

  He takes the bottle out of his mouth, and feels beer on his chin. He wipes at it, and coughs again. His father comes back, looking surprised to find him there.

  "You like it?" he says.

  Peter thinks a moment, not wanting to lose him.

  "No," he says.

  "Then don’t drink it."

  * * *

  On Easter Sunday, the city holds its egg hunt in the park.

  Two months have passed now since the accident; the only evidence of it left outside the house is a bare spot in the front lawn where Victor Kopec’s convertible tore the tree out of the ground and the For Sale sign that sits off center and bent in the yard next door.

  Inside, the damage is everywhere.

  The days bleed into nights, and into each other, becoming weeks; nothing starts or ends. A coma. In the morning, light comes through the drawn shades and turns the walls a quiet orange, and at night the lighting seems always to come from other rooms. There is a slowness to everything inside the house, a heaviness that Peter notices most when he steps outside, and is no longer heavy and slow himself.

  The hunt for Easter eggs begins late in the afternoon, after the Broad Street parade. Peter’s father is somewhere with his uncle, doing their work for the unions. His car is gone, but even with the hundreds of people who have brought their children to the park, no one has taken the space where he parks.

  He sits on his knees on the davenport, his chin resting on the back cushion. The children are gathered at the far end of the park, standing behind a ribbon that is held on one side by the mayor and on the other by someone in a rabbit suit.

  A man Peter has seen on television, on the show Bandstand, is next to the rabbit. His name is Larry Tock; Peter says it out loud, listening to the sound. Larry Tock, the king of Rock. He is not a dancer, but the one who introduces the music. For that reason, and perhaps for his clothes, he is the star of Bandstand. Larry Tock picks up a microphone and begins talking to the crowd. The speakers are mounted on the white Cadillac which brought him into the park. Peter hears the words once as they are spoken, and again as they echo off the houses across the way.

  Larry Tock starts to count. "One, t
wo, three . . ."

  On "three," the mayor and the rabbit drop the ribbon and a wave of children with Easter baskets breaks over the opening between them, the bigger ones pushing the smaller ones out of the way, pushing two of them down.

  As Peter watches, the wave spreads and slows; some of the children trail their older brothers and sisters, some move off in their own directions, searching the grass and shrubs, stopping now and then to pick up one of the eggs. The parents come behind them, taking pictures, and in the background, Peter hears the voice of Larry Tock over the speakers, calling, "Happy Easter."

  The children cross the park. A few of them are Peter’s size, but mostly they are smaller, three and four years old. A few are as small as his sister.

  He picks out one of the smallest and follows her, watches her run in circles in the grass, lost in her own purposes, dropping the eggs out of her basket as she bends to pick others up. The wind blows her hair and the collar of her coat into her face and she stops, tossing pieces of hair and material behind her, as if she were unattached.

  She runs a few steps and another egg rolls out of her basket, a silver egg that lies in the grass—she doesn’t know that she has lost it—sparkling in the sun. And for a moment he thinks of putting on his jacket and shoes and going into the park too, of picking up the silver egg and putting it back in her basket.

  He sees himself doing that, and also sees himself sitting here in the window. One thing as real as the other.

  And then he hears the music. Polka music. He walks into the yard and looks at the house next door. Victor Kopec’s windows are open, the curtains blowing in, and the music that Peter has not heard since before the accident is loose in the neighborhood; it sounds like drunk men laughing.

  He walks back inside thinking of his father, afraid that he will hear the music from Victor Kopec’s house too, afraid of what he will do.

  He walks into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of milk.

  Too full, all the way to the brim. He carries it back to the living room, sipping at it as he goes to keep it from spilling, and then, just as he and the milk are settled in their places at the window, his father’s long black Lincoln stops in front of the parking place across the street.

  His father turns in the front seat and begins to back in. Peter’s uncle sits in the front seat with him, talking.

  The car moves backward, then forward, then back again. His father straightens the wheels and then climbs out—his uncle is still talking—closes the door without bothering to lock it, and crosses the yard toward the house.

  He does not seem to notice the polka music spilling out of Victor Kopec’s windows.

  Peter’s uncle comes out of the car after him, still talking, and follows him.

  "You want, me and Theresa could take Petey for you a while . . ."

  Hearing those words, Peter understands his mother isn’t coming back to the house.

  His father opens the door and walks inside, his uncle a step behind. Peter is still facing the window and doesn’t look at them as they come in. He stares out at the park, watching the little girl collect Easter eggs, coming back now almost to the silver egg itself, then turning, distracted by her mother and father—she is in a straw hat, he is wearing a suit and tie—who want to take her picture.

  "Petey," his uncle says, "how you doin’?"

  In the silence that follows, his uncle laughs, and then turns to Peter’s father. "He’s more like you all the time," he says.

  Peter’s father sits heavily on the davenport and closes his eyes. Peter watches him a moment, over his shoulder, then turns away from the park and the hunt for Easter eggs and drops down next to him. He feels the heat of his father’s body. His uncle stands in the middle of the room, smiling, suddenly out of words.

  "I gotta go," he says finally, "let you talk things over with Petey."

  His father nods.

  His uncle says, "Be nice, Charles. Don’t do nothing until you’ve had a chance to think it over."

  His father doesn’t answer.

  "Promise me," his uncle says.

  His father moves his head as if it weighed a hundred pounds and slowly fixes his look on the boy’s uncle. "I don’t want to go through this promise-me shit right now," he says. "It’s the wrong time."

  "I got to hear it, I know you."

  His father shakes his head.

  His uncle begins to say something else, but his father interrupts him. "Nothing’s changed," he says. "You want me to promise something, this don’t change a thing."

  "Maybe," his uncle says, "it was the best thing she left. Think about it that way .... "

  And Peter’s father stands up, takes his uncle to the door and opens it for him.

  "I’m just sayin’ it might be for the best," his uncle says. "They get like that, they ain’t the same afterwards. It’s like a scar . . ."

  He makes a cutting motion across his cheek. "It’s there where you see it all the time .... "

  His uncle stumbles down the steps as if he had been pushed. His father stands in the doorway.

  Across the street in the park, Larry Tock takes over the loud-speakers and begins singing. "In your Easter bonnet . . ."

  Peter’s father closes the door.

  * * *

  His father stands at the door a long time after it’s closed, until the Easter song is finished and all the music that’s left outside is a polka.

  "What would you say," he says finally, "you go stay for a while with your uncle?"

  Peter doesn’t look at his father; he shakes his head no. "Your Aunt Theresa, she thinks you’re her kid already." He smiles, making a joke.

  Peter looks straight ahead, and watches his uncle walk up the street toward his own car.

  His father moves away from the door and sits in a chair, holding his face. He stands up, he sits down, unable to make up his mind.

  "Your mother ain’t going to be around now," he says finally, and the boy nods; he already knows that. "She decided she don’t want to live here anymore."

  "Where is she going to live?" he says, feeling himself beginning to cry.

  His father looks around the room, and then at the ceiling, and finally back at him.

  "It might be better, you was to stay for a while with your Aunt Theresa," he says again. And Peter shakes his head; the tears drop off his cheeks onto the davenport cushion. He feels his father watching and turns his face away.

  "I don’t know what to tell you," his father says quietly, "things ain’t going to be the same." And then he stands up and walks upstairs and down the hallway.

  He wipes at his eyes and looks into the park, trying to find the little girl. He stays in that same position for half an hour, listening to the sounds his father is making in the bedroom upstairs. She is gone.

  He stays here until the children begin to leave the park, holding on to their baskets and their parents’ hands; until the mayor and Larry Tock and the man dressed as a rabbit get into the white Cadillac and drive off to their offices in center city.

  Peter envisions these offices, quiet, dark places full of servants and secret drawers. There are reports in the drawers, and one of them is his.

  He saw the policeman write down his name after the accident.

  When there is nothing left to watch outside, he backs slowly off the davenport, climbs the stairs and walks to the end of the hall. He does not enter the bedroom, but stands just outside. All his mother’s dresses from the closet are lying on the bed. He stares at the pile, recognizing the dresses, the sleeves he has touched while her arms were inside them.

  He takes a single step, entering the room. All over the floor are drawers that have been pulled from the dresser and emptied into boxes. What is left of the dresser is like a skeleton.

  Her shoes are in another box, sitting on a chair near the window, thrown carelessly inside. He thinks of tangled feet. Of accidents.

  The bathroom door is open and his father’s shadow lies across the bedroom floor. Peter steps fa
rther into the room until he can see his back. He is standing in front of the medicine cabinet, its doors wide open, emptying the things inside into a wastebasket that sits in the sink.

  He sees a toothbrush, a pair of tweezers, combs that she used to hold up her hair. A razor for her legs. Perfume, mascara, lipstick. His father picks each thing off its shelf, looks at it, and then drops it into the wastebasket. He is in no hurry, and gradually the sounds that her things make falling into the basket change as they no longer hit the metal bottom, but fall onto each other.

  Glass against glass, it is almost music.

  He thinks of the music next door. He wonders if his father noticed it, with his uncle following him across the yard, talking. Yes, he noticed.

  There are three shelves inside the medicine cabinet, and when they are emptied his father shuts the door. Peter and his father find each other in the mirror.

  He comes out of the bathroom, carrying the basket. "Things ain’t the same," he says again, sounding not so unsure of himself now, almost angry.

  Peter sits on the bed. The movement in the room has filled it with the smell of his mother. He holds himself still as his father begins carrying the boxes through the open door and down the stairs. He remembers that she had been afraid to leave this room, to move even a finger; he remembers the feeling as he stood in her closet and quieted himself and then stopped breathing.

  He remembers these things, trying to glimpse her, but even with her smell in the room and her things on the bed, he can’t find her in the way he wants. Not for even a moment.

  His father is back on the stairs when Peter notices a small, round compact lying on top of the things in the wastebasket. He stands up and moves to the basket, and puts it in his front pocket. He feels it there against his leg as his father reaches past him for the dresses on the bed.

  * * *

  He wakes up early in the morning. The sky outside the window is dark, and he cocks his head, following the almost soundless steps of his father as they pass his room and then descend the stairs.

  The front door opens and closes, and Peter puts his feet on the cold wood floor and feels for his sneakers.