Not My Brother's Keeper

by Colette McCormick

  ‘Call it my treat.’

  I made a pretence of insisting that I would pay but to be honest I couldn’t afford to look a gift horse in the mouth so I accepted with a smile.

  ‘Thanks, Tanya,’ I said. ‘See you.’

  I was walking to the door when I heard her call my name.

  ‘Rob,’ she said, ‘I finish at twelve. You could meet me if you like.’

  I did like. Of course I did. But later, as I leaned against the wall waiting for Tanya to come out, I asked myself what the hell I was doing.

  ‘Where’s your car?’ she asked before she’d even closed the café door behind her. I asked her how she knew I had a car and she said, ‘Well you said that you hadn’t slept on a park bench so...’ she didn’t finish her sentence.

  Ten minutes later we were sitting in the kitchen of Tanya’s house. I sat at the table and watched her make sandwiches.

  ‘Cheese all right?’ she asked, and I said that it was. I think she asked the question out of politeness more than anything else because the sandwich had practically already been made before I answered. She brought the food to the table and sat opposite me.

  ‘So,’ she said, as she prepared to take a bite from the sandwich in her hand, ‘are you going to tell me the truth this time?’

  ‘About what?’ I’d already started eating so my words were a bit muffled, but I was sure she’d got the gist of it.

  She swallowed the bite that she’d taken and put the sandwich down on her plate. She dabbed the corner of her mouth and I was surprised by how alluring I found that.

  ‘I asked you a question earlier,’ she said, ‘and I don’t think that you told me the truth.’ We looked at each other and then she asked, ‘What are you running away from?’

  She sat back in the chair but she held my gaze. ‘Tell me to mind my own business if you want, just don’t tell me that I’m wrong.’

  During the next hour I told Tanya about Michelle, the baby, and the life that I wasn’t ready for – the life I didn’t want.

  ‘How did she take it?’ Tanya asked when I’d finally talked myself out.

  I was more embarrassed than I’d thought I would be when I admitted that I didn’t know because I hadn’t spoken to her.

  Tanya set her head to one side, you know, the way people do when they’re asking a question without words.

  ‘I wrote her a note,’ I said reluctantly. I don’t know why I had felt the need to tell Tanya the truth, why I hadn’t just said something like Michelle had cried her eyes out and begged me to stay.

  She nodded her head slowly, still not taking her eyes off me.

  I don’t remember the exact details of what we said, or when we said it, but I can tell you that she didn’t judge me.She didn’t even offer an opinion, as far as I can remember.

  Half an hour later we were lying together in her bed.

  It hadn’t been my intention to end up there, and I don’t think it’d been Tanya’s either. It just happened.

  I never had to sleep in the car again.

  TOM

  Robert had been gone for about a week before Mum even asked how Michelle was.

  I didn’t really know how to answer that one because I wasn’t sure if she would want the truth. Would she want to know that Michelle still hadn’t been back to work? Would she want to know that she had cried almost every waking hour since Robert had left? Would she want to know that Michelle threw up every time she as much as smelled an orange?

  In the end I said, ‘She’s OK.’

  It was two weeks after Robert left that Michelle finally went back to work and two weeks after that she finally stopped crying for him.

  ‘What’s the point?’ she said to me one day. ‘He’s not coming back...’ she paused a second or two before she added, ‘is he?’

  I knew what she wanted me to say but I still couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t give her false hope.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘he’s not.’

  I looked at her and saw sadness all over her face. I felt like I had grabbed her last piece of hope away from her.

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘even if he came back, why would you want him? Why would you want him after what he’s done to you?’

  She faced me but her eyes flitted from side to side. ‘I don’t think I would,’ she said finally, ‘but I think I’d like to have the chance to hurt him as much as he’s hurt me.’

  I remember smiling at her and saying, ‘Good for you.’ I smiled because it seemed that the scales had fallen from her eyes and she was finally seeing my brother for the knobhead that he was. However, although she was making all the right noises, I wasn’t convinced that she actually meant what she was saying. It was how she wanted to feel, I think, I just didn’t believe she was actually feeling it yet.

  I wanted to put my arms around her and tell her that everything would be all right but I didn’t think she’d feel that yet either.

  ‘Thank you for everything, Tom,’ she said, and I told her that she was welcome.

  A day or two after she’d asked me if Robert was coming back we were sitting on opposite ends of the sofa in the living room of her parents’ house. I looked up when something caught my eye and saw that her mother had stopped on her way to wherever she was going. She moved along when Michelle glanced up at her and the pair shared a look. Michelle turned back to me and said, ‘The thing is, Tom,’ she spoke slowly like she was struggling to find the right words, ‘I’ll be all right,’ she paused a second or two before she added, ‘now.’

  I was confused. Come on, I’m a bloke, I don’t do subtlety.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said.

  ‘I mean,’ she gave herself a bit of thinking time, ‘I mean that you have done everything that you need to do, more than I would ever have expected of you and now it’s time to get on with your own life.’

  It took a few seconds before the penny finally dropped. ‘Is that what you think I’ve been doing,’ I asked, ‘coming here out of some sort of duty?’ I did that quotation mark thing in the air. ‘Do you think that I’ve been coming here to clear up Robert’s mess?’

  ‘Why else?’ she asked.

  I had asked myself the same question more than once and before I knew it I was saying, ‘At first, I came here because, like you said, I was clearing up my brother’s mess – and let’s be honest, it’s a hell of a mess.’

  Michelle surprised both of us by laughing at that, which was a relief because God knows why I had said it. We looked at each other for a few seconds.

  ‘I will be all right,’ she said again quietly, without much conviction.

  ‘I know you will,’ I said. I hadn’t planned on then saying, ‘ So would it be all right if I carried on coming to see you just because I wanted to?’ But I did.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ she said quickly, and I don’t know if she realised that she took a sly look towards where her mother had been standing.

  Before I left, we agreed to meet a couple of nights later. I said that I would meet her from work. I’ve got to be honest and tell you that as I walked home that night I asked myself why I’d said what I had, why I’d come on to my brother’s ex. Was it weird? I decided it wasn’t really, because I wasn’t thinking of her in those terms. At the end of the day, she was Michelle: a girl that I knew from school. A girl that I’d liked and had asked out. What was wrong with that?

  I’d no sooner rationalised the thought in my head than another problem popped in. Why had she agreed to go out with me? Was it because I reminded her of Robert? I’m not saying that we’re almost identical twins or anything but there is a similarity between us – in looks at least, I would never have done what he had.

  I’m going to be honest and tell you that I spent a fair bit of time wondering about her motives but, in the end, I decided to go with the flow. What was the worst that could happen?

  So I met her from work as promised a couple of nights later and we went to a pizza place to get something to eat. It was a bit awkw
ard at first... well, you know what it’s like when you go on a first date. We were shown to a table and ordered a couple of drinks while we checked out the menu – it wasn’t much of a menu. We decided to share a pizza, pepperoni probably as it’s Michelle’s favourite, and she ordered a salad on the side.

  ‘How’ve you been?’ I asked once the waitress had walked away. It was something to say.

  ‘OK, thanks,’ she said.

  Well, that was the end of that conversation. It was ridiculous how nervous I felt. I’d known her for years and it wasn’t even as if this was the first time we’d eaten together. She’d come to our house for tea, or Sunday lunch, loads of times when she was with Robert.

  But she wasn’t with Robert now was she? She was with me and that made this time different. I wondered if she was feeling as nervous as I was. I thought she probably was.

  ‘Do your mum and dad know you’re here?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Do yours?’

  ‘God, no,’ she said, and we both laughed.

  The food arrived before the laughter faded to an awkward silence, and I thanked God for thin crusts and pizza ovens – in my experience, pizza makes any situation easier.

  The waitress put the large pizza in the middle of the table and two small plates in front of us. She put the salad at Michelle’s elbow. The pizza slicer provided wasn’t really big enough for the slices of pizza but I managed to manoeuvre a piece onto each of our plates without dropping anything. I was pleased to see that Michelle picked hers up to eat it. I don’t understand why anyone would eat pizza with a knife and fork and I was glad to see that she wasn’t one of them. That could have been a deal breaker.

  ‘What do you think they’d say?’ she asked just before she put the pointy end of the pizza into her mouth.

  ‘Can’t imagine my mum would be very happy,’ I said, though I thought I might be underestimating her reaction.

  She threw her head back and laughed out loud and I couldn’t help smiling at her. ‘ Well my mum would go doolally,’ she said.

  We ate in silence for a couple of minutes before I asked, ‘Where have you told her you are?’

  ‘Having pizza with a friend.’ She popped the last bite in her mouth, chewed it, swallowed it and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well I’m not lying, am I?’

  I’m grinning just thinking about when she said that. She made it sound like we were taking part in some sort of conspiracy. In a way I suppose we were. Anyway, I served her another slice and she licked her fingers before picking it up.

  ‘Does it bother you?’ she asked as she took another bite. I was pleased to see that she’d clearly got her appetite back.

  ‘Does what bother me?’ I asked. I knew fine well what she was talking about but I let her spell it out for me anyway.

  ‘Me not telling them that you were the friend I was meeting?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘Why should it? I didn’t tell my parents either...’

  I took her home of course but as we walked along, mainly in companionable silence, I wondered how far I should take her. She hadn’t told her parents that she was meeting me so I guessed that she wouldn’t want them seeing us together.

  She must have been thinking along the same lines because when we got to the end of the street she asked, ‘Do you want to leave me here?’

  I looked along the street and was surprised to see that it was only dimly lit. A few of the lights were out and clearly the council hadn’t got around to fixing them yet. Michelle was looking towards her house which was still a few hundred yards away.

  ‘I could take you further if you like.’ I said. I didn’t want to force anything but I didn’t like the idea of leaving her. If the street lights had been working I could have watched her to her door but... well, they weren’t, and I just didn’t like the idea of leaving her.

  ‘Oh, do you know what,’ she said as she linked her arm through mine, ‘sod it. Come on, I’m not ashamed of being out with you.’

  I wasn’t ashamed either so I walked her all the way to the front door.

  When her key was in the lock she turned to me and said, ‘I’ve had a lovely time Tom. I’m pleased that you suggested it.’

  ‘I had a good time too,’ I said, which was the truth.

  She opened the door and prepared to go inside. ‘Maybe we could do it again,’ she said and as she spoke she gave me that flirty little look that girls do. You know the one, where their head is lowered a bit and they sort lift their eyes up to you. That was when I first dared to hope that Michelle might be feeling the same way I was.

  I told her that I’d like that. And I could hardly wait.

  ‘I didn’t hear you come in last night,’ Mum said over breakfast the following morning.

  ‘Good,’ I started buttering a piece of toast, ‘I must be getting better at creeping in.’ I made a joke of it, but I really was glad that she hadn’t heard me because it meant that she must be sleeping again and that was a good sign. During those first few nights after Robert had left I’d heard her tossing and turning in the bedroom next to mine before going downstairs in the wee small hours. I looked at her as she pottered around the kitchen and noticed that she actually looked a little better.

  I took another piece of toast and buttered it while I decided whether I should tell them where I had been the evening before. Well not so much where I’d been, but rather who I was with. I remembered Michelle saying ‘sod it’ just before she put her arm through mine, and I decided to take the same attitude.

  ‘Me and Michelle went out for a pizza,’ I said casually.

  Mum was half way through swallowing her tea when she started to choke and cough. She recovered enough to splutter out the words, ‘Robert’s Michelle?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, leaning back in my chair, ‘I think she stopped being Robert’s Michelle when he walked out on her, don’t you?’

  She didn’t answer me. She just gave me a look that said she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  ‘Where did you take her?’ she asked as she started to noisily clear away the dishes.

  ‘I didn’t take her anywhere,’ I said, making sure that I emphasised the word. ‘ We’ – I emphasised that word too – ‘went for a pizza.’

  Up to that point my father hadn’t said a word as we ate breakfast but then he asked, ‘How’s she keeping?’ without looking up from his paper. I don’t think he was reading it as much as using it to hide behind.

  ‘She’s all right,’ I told him. ‘She still gets sick when she smells oranges, but apart from that she seems fine.’

  We went to the pictures the following week. I can’t remember what we were going to see but I remember that we had to queue up to get in. As we waited I couldn’t help noticing that Michelle seemed a bit... I’m still not sure what it was exactly, but I just sensed that there was something wrong with her. I asked her what it was.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said but I could tell she was lying: you know, she said it in that way that people have of saying nothing when they really mean something. She paused and looked straight ahead and I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  ‘This might not be such a good idea,’ she said.

  I was quickly trying to come up with a cool response to being binned off when she said, ‘I mean, look at this queue. We’re not going to get in.’

  I can’t tell you how relieved I was when I realised she was talking about the film.

  ‘Anyway,’ she looked at me, ‘I think we need to talk.’ I wondered if my relief had been premature.

  We stepped out of the queue and everyone behind us shuffled forward.

  There was hardly a soul in the Black Horse but that didn’t stop Michelle from finding the table furthest from the bar and the few people that were there. She sat down while I went to get the drinks. As I stood waiting to be served my mind fizzed with thoughts of what Michelle wanted to talk about. Maybe she was going to give me the elbow after all. Oh well, I thought, won’t be the first time.

&nb
sp; I put Michelle’s drink on the table and sat on the stool opposite her. I took a swig of my pint and put it carefully onto the beer mat.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘Who says that there’s anything wrong?’ she asked without taking her eyes off her drink. She waited a moment or two before asking ‘What’s happening here, Tom?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, though I was thinking here it comes.

  She took a sip of her drink, taking much longer than was necessary, allowing herself time to think. ‘Mum came into my room tonight as I was getting ready,’ she said, ‘and asked me what I was doing.’ She paused to take a couple of deep breaths. ‘I told her not to worry but she said how could she not?’ She finally looked up at me.

  ‘What’s she worried about?’ I asked.

  ‘Us.’ She made it sound like I’d asked a stupid question.

  ‘And why’s she worried about us?’ I tried to sound casual.

  ‘She’s worried,’ Michelle said slowly, like she was trying to explain something to a small child, ‘because you’re Robert’s brother.’

  ‘You shouldn’t hold that against me,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t,’ she whispered.

  I took a gulp of beer and, as I set the glass down, I told her, ‘If it’s any consolation my mother’s not wild about me seeing you either.’

  She gave a little laugh. ‘I shouldn’t imagine she is.’

  I gave it a couple of seconds before I told her, ‘ She calls you “Robert’s Michelle”.’

  ‘I am not Robert’s anything,’ she said defiantly, squinting her eyes to emphasise the point.

  I smiled at her and said, ‘I know you’re not.’ I reached across the table and put my hand on her arm. ‘And while I can’t deny that I am Robert’s brother, I am not him. You know that.’

  She touched my hand. ‘I know you’re not, Tom. And that’s what scares me.’

  ‘You have nothing to be scared of, Michelle,’ I assured her.