The Prettiest Star

by Carter Sickels

  The kettle whistles. I pour boiling water over the teabags, carry two steaming cups over to the table. Brian folds his bony fingers around the cup and blows on it, and the steam rises in a cloud between his face and my own.

  “So, really, what is it for? The video camera.”

  “It’s what I do.”

  “Make movies?”

  “Sort of. I document stuff, like my friends, and just things I see. I’ve made a few videos, like video art. Stuff that’s, like, in progress. I really want to get you on camera.”

  “I told you, I don’t like to see myself on TV.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Brian says.

  Sadie comes up, tags jingling. “I missed you,” Brian says, and kisses her between the ears.

  All of those years, gone. Now, here. When he left, he was moody and handsome and funny, a know-it-all. He slurps the tea, and the intimate noise jolts my memory, nothing specific, but just a deep feeling of knowing—he made the same sounds as a boy. For so many years I recognized his every sigh, movement, flicker of the eyes. Then he left, turned into someone else.

  My body feels like it’s going to crack open. With fear or love, I don’t know. “I’m glad you’re home,” I say.

  “So sweet,” he says. “The tea.”

  “Too much?”

  “No, not too much.” The corners of his mouth turn up into the smile that I know. He’s the same person, he must be. The boy I raised, the baby who grew inside me. “I’m glad I’m here too,” he says.

  We look at each other with anticipation. The phone’s shrill ring shatters the moment. “It’ll be your grandma,” I say. “She’s been calling all morning.”

  “Tell her I’m still sleeping, and let’s go over and surprise her. I can’t wait to see her face.”

  Brian showers in the basement bathroom—designated as his, the one Travis wants him to use—and when he comes back up, he’s changed into jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, his hair damp and shiny. He’s got the movie camera with him.

  “Can you go the long way? I want to see everything in the daylight.”

  He puts on red plastic sunglasses with mirrored lenses. I drive down our road and turn onto High Street, the main road in Chester. As he looks out the passenger window, I try to see the town through his eyes—the junked-up yards and closed-down stores, and a man digging a ditch, his camouflage pants sagging to reveal his crack. Hideous. I feel that same unnerving embarrassment that I did earlier in the kitchen. Brian doesn’t say a word, but I know what he’s thinking: I got away from all this.

  “Probably doesn’t look any different.”

  “Not really,” he says. “The dime store closed.”

  “The drive-in too.”

  Brian mentions teammates and friends and teachers from high school. He wants to know who is still here, who left. “I didn’t stay in touch with anyone,” he says.

  “Most people don’t go anywhere,” I say.

  It’s not entirely true. The town is small—around 1,200 last I heard—but it occasionally fluctuates. People go, people arrive. People die. They divorce. They move to nearby towns or across the county line. A few may go to other states—but never to New York City.

  “I’m sure your grandma can fill you in on the gossip,” I say.

  “Oh, no doubt.”

  I park in front of the mint-green two story. The house is old and worn down, the paint chipping away and the once-bright shutters a dull dirty white. Travis and his brothers are always working on it—fixing the roof, replacing porch boards. Lettie will never leave. Red tulips line the walkway like hearts. Brian walks carefully up the slanted porch steps, not bounding them two at a time like he used to.

  “Should I knock or just go on in?”

  “If you knock she’ll think it’s a salesman or somebody collecting for something. It’ll be more of a surprise that way.”

  “Why don’t you knock, so I can get her reaction on camera?” he says.

  His giddiness moves through me, but just as I raise my hand, the door flings open—she’s heard us. Lettie stands there in her all her jewelry and makeup, her bright blue shirt and plum slacks and big eyeglasses, and looks like a winning contestant on a game show—disbelief, joy, and a kind of terror all working over her face at once.

  “Hi, Mamaw,” Brian says.

  She lets out a whoop. “Is that thing on? My hair’s a fright. For land’s sake, put that down and give me some sugar.”

  Brian, grinning, hands the camera to me and tells me to look through the viewfinder. I put my eye against the rubber cup. At first they’re fuzzy, but as I back up, they come into focus. Lettie envelops him in her fleshy arms, her plastic bracelets clicking. “Oh, goodness,” she says, smashing him into her body, holding him there.

  When she lets go, she looks him over, and for a second I think her eyes flash with terrible recognition—she knows—but probably I imagine it, because then she smiles, big and open, just like she held out her arms to him.

  “Look how skinny you are. I’ll take care of that. I’ve already baked a Texas sheet cake.” She touches his face. “Don’t you look handsome though.” Points to the earring. “I bet your dad didn’t like that.”

  “Well, he didn’t say anything.” Brian tilts his head, smiling, still the charmer. “What do you think?”

  “Don’t bother me none. That’s the style, isn’t it? What the rock ’n’ rollers wear?”

  Lettie ushers Brian inside, and he goes straight to the kitchen, commenting on how good it feels to be back in her house, and although I don’t want to leave him, not even for a second, I can already see how it is between the two of them. There is no strangeness, no lost time. Lettie always had a soft spot for Brian, who reminded her of her younger brother killed in World War II. “He was artistic too,” she’d say.

  When Brian was born, I was terrified of turning into my mother—distant, sad, unreachable. So I showered him with affection. Travis did too. He was our bright-eyed boy. Talkative, smart, joyful. He was different from his cousins, I knew that right away—curious about the world in a way that they weren’t. Even at a young age, he loved music, movies, and books. He played dress up. When he put on an apron or a pair of my high heels, I convinced Travis not to worry. He’ll grow out of it, I said.

  And he did—at least that’s what we thought. We hoped. By five years old, he knew how to swing a bat and throw a baseball. All through Little League and high school, he was a wonder to watch—diving to stop a line drive, or sweeping up a grounder. His swing was sharp and clean, and he nearly always rocketed the ball far into the outfield. Travis was proud. Brian didn’t want to go hunting or work on cars, but he and Travis could throw a baseball in the backyard or watch a game on TV together.

  We had planned on having a big family, but after Brian, I had two miscarriages. The first one happened at eight weeks, the second at fourteen. After the second one, I couldn’t let go of the pain, which I carried inside me like another pregnancy. I drifted dismally through the days like I was trapped in a grainy, fuzzy photograph. Travis took me to a doctor who prescribed pills but I didn’t take them. Distant, lost, I was turning into my mother. I don’t know what changed—there wasn’t a single moment. But, slowly, I pushed up through the foggy gray clouds to the place where my son and my husband waited. I told Travis, No more. We had our son, our little prince. He was enough.

  So years later when I found out I was pregnant, Travis watched me anxiously. But I felt her moving inside, and I knew she would be okay. Jess arrived, strong and healthy and perfect, and our family was complete. Brian adored his little sister. He played records for her, made up elaborate games. She was a quiet, observant child, but around him, she danced and dressed up and laughed hysterically. He taught her to swim and how to read. In some ways, she was his child as much as she was mine. For months after Brian left, Jess kept asking when he was coming home. Soon, I’d tell her. Soon, soon, soon. After a while, she stopped asking. Or, maybe I stopped listening.


  We don’t usually pray at meals except for holidays, but Lettie, who invited herself over for supper, wants to say grace. “Lord Jesus, thank you for bringing our family together, thank you, God, for bringing Brian back, we’re just so thankful he’s home and safe and healthy.” My eyes flutter at the word healthy. Lettie finishes with a loud amen. “Let’s eat,” she says.

  We pass and reach for food, and fill our plates. Travis wanted to give Brian a paper plate and plastic utensils. You’ll make him feel like a leper, I said. We compromised. He will not eat off disposable plates, but he’ll have his own special set of silverware and dishes, his own cup.

  “Everyone’s excited to see you,” Lettie says. Travis should have known she wouldn’t stay quiet. “Should we throw a party?”

  “That’s what I said,” Jess says. “Dad doesn’t want to.” She’s wearing the I Love New York T-shirt Brian gave her. Shy at first, Jess is starting to warm to him. It’s different with siblings, maybe. Not as many expectations.

  “He just got here, Mom,” Travis says, talking about Brian in the third person. “Give him time to settle in.”

  Brian reaches for the salt shaker, and his sleeve rises, exposing a bluish-white bony wrist. He ignores his father. “Sure, why not? Let’s have a party.”

  Travis starts to respond, but then just takes another bite, and looks away. I remember how they used to fight at the dinner table, especially those last couple of years. Brian slouching, hair too long. He stayed out late and came home smelling like cigarettes and beer. One time he put on my black eyeliner, imitating the rock singers he listened to, trying to provoke his father. It worked. Travis rarely cursed, but Brian knew how to push his buttons. For God’s sake, get that shit off your face. The fights always ended with Brian stomping downstairs, more at home with his music than with us.

  Lettie asks Brian what he wants to do. There’s the shopping mall in Madison. They could take a day and go to Columbus. What about going to a movie? She carries the conversation easily. Although there is so much I don’t know about the past six years, about his life in New York, I have no idea what to say.

  Instead, I focus on his plate. Brian has only taken a few bites. Goulash used to be one of his favorite meals, but now I realize the canned tomatoes, ground beef, and macaroni are too simple, too Midwestern. “You don’t like it?”

  “I’m just not very hungry.” He smiles. “But it’s really good. It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten anything homemade. I never cooked much. Neither did Annie.”

  He’s told me about her before. They lived together, but she wasn’t his girlfriend. I wished she was—that they were living in sin, but a different kind of sin, a normal sin.

  “That’s why you’re so skinny,” Lettie says. “What in the world did you eat?”

  “Anything and everything. Indian, Chinese, Japanese.”

  “Raw fish?” Jess makes a face. “Gross.”

  “Sushi is delicious. You’d be surprised.”

  “I’m with Jess,” Lettie says. “No sir.”

  Brian continues to talk about the food of the world in his know-it-all way. He’s both the son I remember and someone I’ve never met. His words sound flatter, and he talks faster. City-slicker. But it’s more than that, the way he enunciates and stresses words. Effeminate. The word lands hard in my throat.

  Travis suddenly gets up and offers to take care of the dishes, which he never does. He clears all the plates except for Brian’s—he’ll come back for them later, to wash separately and scour in hot water. Brian looks at me, his blue eyes darkening.

  “Living in New York made me hungry to see the rest of the world, so to speak.” He tries hard to sound casual. “Shawn and I used to talk about traveling. We wanted to go backpacking across Europe. We wanted to go all over the world. Turkey, Thailand, Iceland.”

  His friend. The one in the picture, the one who died of the same disease. Brian holds my gaze, and the sickening thought raises up and catches in my throat. He will never go to Europe. He will never even go back to New York. I cough into my napkin.

  “But you just got here, honey,” Lettie says. “Please don’t be planning any trips around the world, I’m not ready to say goodbye.”

  Brian

  May 14, 1986

  It’s bizarre to be back.

  Nothing has changed, everything has changed.

  The town itself isn’t much different, just more rundown. Businesses closed, and touches of the poor everywhere you look: tacky lawn decorations and sagging underwear pinned to clotheslines. American flags. Old Reagan signs still staked into the ground. The horror!

  Yesterday, I went with my little sister to the old drive-in, to record what was left. The tattered screen, the ticket booth covered in vines. I hid the tears in my eyes. Man, I used to love going there when I was a kid—it didn’t matter what was showing, I just wanted to be swallowed up by the famous faces in the sky.

  Talking to the camera like this is a new thing for me. Back in New York, I was trying to capture everyone and everything else around me. But since there isn’t anything to do in Chester, I thought I might as well set up my tripod and talk to you—whoever you are. I’m going to tell you about who I am, and tell you about my family. Record everything, Shawn said. For posterity. The camera will be my diary, my shrink.

  Okay, so, there’s my little sister Jess. When I left, she was a chubby kid with a loud laugh. She’s still chubby, but no longer a kid. She’s got these pretty, inquisitive, watchful eyes, and you hardly ever see her without her Walkman. Her music of choice is brainless pop—Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Whitney Houston. I mean, I love my divas, too, but I don’t want her to forget the tunes she cut her teeth on. Jess had to be the only seven-year-old in southern Ohio who knew the lyrics to “Space Oddity.” Kid knows everything about whales. She took to them the way some girls take to horses. She dreams of the ocean.

  My mother. I feel her eyes on me all the time—examining me, curious, like a doctor’s, but scared. Her face is the same, older, of course, with more wrinkles, a neck that’s a little looser, but she’s still pretty—the small mouth and nose, the high cheekbones. The face from my childhood. I can’t get used to her short hair though, the tight, severe curls. When I was a kid, she’d sit on the floor in front of me and I’d brush her hair until it shone like glass. I wanted to grow mine long too. She told me, Silly, boys don’t have long hair.

  Dad’s gone silver. He stands back from me, talks about the Reds. Doesn’t know what else to say.

  My grandmother, on the other hand, wants to spend every minute with me. I go over to her house and we watch TV, like the old days. When I was a kid, we used to watch the afternoon movie together. Now, Voyager, National Velvet, Roman Holiday. I was crazy about all of them—Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn. Now it’s all soaps and talk shows.

  Mamaw used to tell me I was like her brother Albert, artistic and sensitive. Code words. From her, I learned all about makeup, which helped when I became friends with drag queens in the city. Not a single gray hair peeks through my grandmother’s midnight-black dye. She smells like Avon perfume, like face powder and hard candy and roses.

  Whenever I record her, she pretends she doesn’t want me to. But she loves the attention. Jess has started to loosen up too. My mother goes stiff whenever she sees the red light, struck with stage fright or maybe just annoyed. I haven’t tried to shoot my dad—he’ll think it’s a waste of time, just more arty fag stuff.

  May 16, 1986

  Hello there.

  Today Mamaw took me shopping with her to the Kroger in Colby, the next town over, since the IGA where I used to work apparently closed down a couple of years ago. My parents don’t want anyone to know I’m back, but Mamaw doesn’t see why she shouldn’t share the news with the entire town. She tells everyone I’m her grandson from New York. A movie-maker, she says.

  While we were in line, this girl I went to high school with, Kelli Carson, was behind us, her cart crammed with frozen dinners, ground
beef, pork chops, giant bags of potato chips, gallon jug of milk. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, and she didn’t have any makeup on. She was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, looked like she’d left her house in a hurry.

  Kelli looked at me with these blank eyes, then recognition, then fear. I forget, sometimes, how I look. Not dreadful, but not good. She recovered quickly though, flashed a smile. Brian Jackson, she says. I heard you were back.

  Already, people are talking. Just like when I left. The only stories I ever heard about people leaving Chester were bad ones—guys who went out into the sinful world and came back broken and repentant, or were never heard from again. Vanished into thin air. Poof.

  Kelli used to sit in front of me in English class. She was a smart girl. A different time or place, she would have gone to college. She dated this kid John Rollins, the third baseman—dumb as rocks, like most of the guys on the team.

  She told me they were married now. He works at a used car lot in Madison and she stays home with their two kids. The usual. Then she goes, So, what brought you back?

  What could I say? I just smiled and told her I guess I missed the place. She said we’d have to get together. I won’t hold my breath, but I said, Sure, I’ll be here.

  And I will.

  Annie wants me to come back to New York. We’ve been talking on the phone here and there, but not too often—I know what my dad will say if I run up my parents’ long-distance bill. Hey, Annie, you watching this? Nothing is private, hon.

  She says she’ll find us a different apartment, that I won’t have to live in her six-floor walk up, where I moved after Shawn died. I was always out of breath, climbing those stairs. Annie helped pay my share of the rent after I lost my job waiting tables because they assumed I had It—that wasn’t the reason they gave me, but I knew. I don’t want her to have to take care of me, even though of course she would. I can’t go back. If Shawn was still alive, then it would be a different story.