The Brother Years

by Shannon Burke

  I watched all of this from the bluff. I was too far away to help. Not that I would have, anyway. A year before I’d have been rooting for Coyle to get his ass kicked, but on that day, watching Coyle fighting all of those snarky kids in Robert’s crowd, it set off a strange, uneasy feeling inside me. I knew Robert’s crowd by then—their underhanded comments, their condescension—but I also knew how overbearing, violent, and intractable Coyle could be. And seeing the skirmish was like lightning in the night clouds of my soul, great forms illuminated for a moment in a flash.

  Coyle never mentioned that scuffle. I never told him I’d seen it. But I knew that Coyle was watching me get closer and closer to Robert Dainty and I knew he didn’t like it.

  * * *

  —

  Three months after I’d started playing in the tennis group Robert, Tom, Liam, and I were in Robert’s car. We were just turning onto Edens Expressway, all of us red-faced and sweaty after our workout, when Robert, who was in the front passenger seat, rolled his window down, reached out the window, and, grabbing the rack overhead, pulled himself onto the roof while the car was going sixty miles an hour. He clambered over our heads and dangled his hand down near me. I rolled my window down and slapped his hand. Then a moment later Robert’s feet appeared again in his open window. He slid back inside the car and fell into his seat and turned to us, grinning, as if nothing had happened.

  “You are insane,” Liam said.

  “Whatever,” Robert said. “Pull over, Griggs.”

  “A please would be nice,” Liam said.

  Liam slowed and pulled over to the side.

  “Get out,” Robert said to me.

  I had no idea what was going on, but it was normal for Robert to order us around. I got out. So did Liam, who went in the backseat where I had been sitting. Robert got in the driver’s seat. The only seat left was the front passenger seat. I walked around and got in. I shut the door and the car jolted to life. Robert, who was now driving, turned to me and said, “Are you ready?”

  “For what?”

  “What do you think?” he said.

  Robert sped up to seventy miles an hour. Tom was grinning in the backseat, waiting to see what would happen. I understood that Robert wanted me to climb out the window and onto the roof of the moving car like he had.

  “I’m not doing that,” I said.

  “Told you,” Tom said from the backseat.

  “It’s stupid,” I said.

  “I think it’s a little stupid, too,” Liam said.

  “Shut up,” Robert said. “He’ll do it.”

  “No, I won’t,” I said.

  “Are you afraid?” Tom said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be afraid? It’s completely insane. You don’t climb on the roof of a car while it’s going sixty miles an hour.”

  “I did it,” Robert said. “And we were going seventy.”

  “Told you he wouldn’t do it,” Tom said again.

  Office buildings and water towers went by in a blur. Robert jerked the car from one lane to another.

  “All the rest of us have done it,” Robert said.

  “Is that true?”

  “Yes,” Tom said.

  “Sort of,” Liam said.

  “What do you mean ‘sort of’?”

  Liam played tennis but was really a football player, and he was the guy in the group who didn’t always give in to Robert.

  “We sat in the window,” Liam said.

  “That’s totally different,” I said. “I’ll sit in the window. I’ll do it right now.”

  “I don’t want you to sit in the window,” Robert said. “If I wanted someone who’d sit in the window I’d have had Tom sit in front. The only person in this car who hasn’t done anything is you. I just went on the roof.”

  “I don’t want to do it,” I said.

  “Fine,” Robert said. “Be a loser.”

  Tom snickered in the backseat.

  “Told you,” he said for the third time.

  Robert kept looking over at me with an exasperated, indignant expression. In his mind he’d brought me into his group, let me play tennis with them, shielded me from their snarky judgment, and the least I could do was go along with his dare.

  “Are you really not doing it?”

  “No.”

  “God, loser,” he said.

  We usually went to Robert’s house and hung out after tennis, but on that day he passed the usual exit. I understood he was taking me home and that if I didn’t do what he wanted that would be the end of us hanging out together. Robert demanded obedience from his friends, particularly friends like me, who he felt owed him.

  I sat looking out the window, understanding the situation. I hated it, but I understood it. After a moment, I rolled my window down.

  “Hold it steady,” I said.

  “I don’t need to hold it steady if you’re not getting out,” Robert said peevishly.

  I looked at him. I unclipped my seatbelt.

  “Just hold it steady,” I said.

  His manner changed instantly. He became helpful and encouraging. That’s the way Robert was. He was a nice guy as long as he got his way.

  “Just reach out and get a grip on the rack, Willie. You’ll be fine. Get to the middle. Knock on the roof. Come back down. That’s all you have to do. Then we’ll both have done it. Only us and no one else.”

  I rolled the window down. It was about forty degrees. I felt for the rack overhead. It was cold and lumpy with rust. I pulled myself up and sat on the windowsill. The wind blasted me. I kept going. I pulled myself up and out of the window so my feet were now on the windowsill. I dragged myself over the rack so I was lying flat on the cold surface of the roof. I swung my feet over and sat up, gripping the front of the rack. I reached back and knocked on the roof like Robert had said to do. I heard him cheering inside. I had done what he’d asked. Robert had proved to the others that he could make me do what he wanted. It was a triumph for him. It was just what Coyle had said would happen. I’d been a suckass.

  I sat up there on the roof of his car, the wind blasting past, a sickly, poisonous feeling in my gut. After a moment I pulled myself forward until I dangled my feet over the rack, my heels on the windshield. I lifted myself slowly over the front crossbar and slid down the windshield so I was sitting on the hood, gripping the edge near the wipers. I turned back and looked at them through the windshield. I wasn’t laughing or yelling to them. I was concentrating. Robert was watching me through the windshield. He was scared now and I liked that he was scared. I wanted him to be scared.

  You wanted me to do it. Ok. This is what you get, I thought.

  I reached up and held the front part of the rack. Slowly, I pulled my feet up and stood on the hood of the car, but with both hands gripping the roof rack, so I was facing backward. I let go with one hand so I was sideways. Then I let go with the other hand and stood like a surfer, bent really low so I could touch the hood if I needed to. I was riding on the hood of that car and for a moment there was nothing in the world but the cold wind in my face and the cars rushing by and the feel of the engine beneath my feet. I was not fighting with Coyle or picking up balls on the tennis court or pulling up linoleum in some old office. I was right there and only there and no one could touch me.

  I grabbed the rack and pulled myself on top, crawled back to the open window, and slid back inside. Robert was bouncing in his seat.

  “Willie Brennan! High five! What’d I tell you? Total badass!” Robert crowed.

  “Not a big deal,” I said.

  “You stood on the hood. You see that, Corley? Didn’t I tell you he’d do it?”

  I just sat casually, my heart booming inside me, pretending it was nothing, while Robert rubbed it in to the others, particularly to Tom.

  Ten minutes lat
er we pulled up at my house. Robert slapped my shoulder and called me a badass and made sure the others saw how appreciative he could be when he got his way. Then Robert screeched away and I was left standing there in the front yard, trembling. I couldn’t control my hands enough to zip my jacket. It washed through me all at once. I’d stood on the hood of a car on the interstate. If we’d hit a pothole I’d have died. If a car in front had braked I’d have died.

  A kind of delayed spasm of tremors passed through me and only gradually was I able to control the tremors. I walked inside and went up to my room and lay down with the nervy fizzling rising up and then fading bit by bit.

  I knew what I’d done was a kind of triumph, and that I wouldn’t be asked to do something like that again for a long time, if ever. I’d proved myself. But I also knew the other kids hadn’t needed to prove themselves the way I had. I guess I was used to that. We were Brennans. We had to do more than other people. It had been like that all my life.

  I was proud of what I’d done. I also hated that I had to do it. But it was over, and I felt like I’d passed the test.

  For the next month and a half Robert and I played together. We easily beat the other teams. And by mid-March it was settled. Robert and I would be partners during tryouts. We were pretty sure we would beat all the other challengers. It was all set.

  But a week before tryouts a tennis player named Bill McCann dropped out of the junior circuit and joined the high-school team. Bill was ranked about twentieth in the country. He had not planned on playing high-school tennis, but he changed his mind in the last week, which meant the team had another top player. As all the players dropped down one slot, it meant that instead of there being two open spots on the varsity, there was only one. So Robert and I, instead of playing together as the second doubles team, would be competing with each other for the last spot.

  * * *

  —

  On the opening day of tryouts I walked onto the Nielsen tennis courts to see that in the first match of the round-robin I was playing Robert Dainty.

  “Hey, Willie,” Robert said as I walked out. “I wasn’t even sure you’d show up when you heard Bill came back.”

  “I just figured I’d try,” I said. “For practice. But I know you’ll get the spot.”

  “As long as you know it,” he said in a ham-handed way. “Good luck.”

  “Good luck to you, though I’m sure you won’t need it.”

  “I’m the upperclassman so I serve first,” Robert said. “That’s the rule.”

  This was not the rule. It was just something Robert made up on the spot.

  We started playing. Robert had a nice, high, looping, chippy serve that was hard to return. He came into the net after his first serve. He won four points in a row. Then it was my turn. I had a flat, booming serve that I could place in either corner. I won three of the points in the first game without Robert getting the ball in play. It went on like that. For those five games we stayed on serve, so Robert was up 3–2 when we finished, but since he served first it was basically a draw.

  Afterward, as we walked off the court, Robert was less complacent.

  “Didn’t know you were such a pusher when you played singles,” he said. “Your strokes are ok, and you have a good serve, but you’re a pusher. That’s ok for a pro set, but it wouldn’t work in a tournament. Or in doubles. They need a doubles player. You know that. Coach Schneider will see that.”

  Robert went on and reported the score to Schneider.

  “Willie’s a total pusher but I beat him three to two,” he said.

  Schneider said nothing to this but marked down the score.

  “Who do you want me to slaughter next?” Robert said.

  Schneider winced visibly.

  “Go to court six. And cut the commentary, Dainty.” Then, to me, in a different tone, “Court four, Brennan. Good playing. Why’d you let him serve first?”

  “He said that upperclassmen always serve first.”

  Schneider gave me a withering look.

  “Don’t be a pushover, Willie.”

  I went on and played another five-game pro set against another player. So did Robert. At the end of the day Robert had won eighteen games and I had won sixteen. A few other kids had won eight or nine games. So I was in second place and Robert was in first.

  The round-robin went on all week. I never really thought I’d win. I guess I put it out of my mind because I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I beat out Robert Dainty for that last spot. I knew the rules of our friendship did not include my competing with him. I could hang out with Robert and tag along with his group, but I also had to make sure to always acknowledge that he was older and more accomplished and that I was lucky to know him, and it didn’t hurt if I added in derisive commentary about Coyle. But the number-one rule was that he absolutely be the dominant one in any group. I knew that if I beat him out for the last spot on varsity tennis, it would ruin our friendship and annihilate my social life in the high school, or at least my social life with the crowd that Robert had introduced me to.

  The way the round-robin worked was that everyone played one another. There were about twenty kids trying out, and after four days, Robert and I were tied for first place with seventy-two games apiece. Schneider scheduled a full match between Robert and me for the next day. That afternoon as I went to my bike Robert walked along with me.

  “You know I had the seventh spot last year,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “So it’s actually fair that I’d be the one to move up this year. I mean, it’s awesome that you’re this close as a freshman, Willie. Just like I was. You’ll definitely make the varsity next year. But I’m a sophomore. It’s just fair that I make it this year. I mean, I paid my dues. I deserve to move up. You could tell Schneider that.”

  “And not play?”

  “Just tell him that you think I should have the spot,” Robert said.

  “But we’re playing for the spot,” I said.

  “Like I don’t know that, Willie. And I know I’m going to win. But I shouldn’t even have to play for it. I’m a sophomore and you’re a freshman. It’s just not that cool. You agree, right?”

  “Uhm. I know you’ll probably win,” I said.

  “And you admit that it’s fair that I get that spot, right? I mean, I’m owed it. You could tell Schneider you think I’m right for the spot. Or, even better—because he’s probably going to make us play anyway, as stupid as it is—you could just do the right thing when we play.”

  “Like let you win?”

  “Yeah,” he said, smiling nervously. “I mean, I’m older. I should have had that spot last year, and after all the ways I’ve helped you, I mean, letting you hang out and play on the court with us and never making you pay for the court, which I could have, you know, but I didn’t, so you should just be cool about it. I mean, it’s pretty greedy, Willie. You owe me like five hundred dollars for that court time.”

  “You never asked for money,” I said.

  “Cause I’m generous!” he shouted. “You could be grateful.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll win,” I said.

  He let out an indignant puff of air.

  “I know I’ll win. I just don’t want to leave anything to chance. There’s no one more fair than me. But in this case it’s just obvious that I should be given the spot. And particularly if I’m playing you, you should just not be uncool about it.”

  He walked off and I rode home and I told my father that I was playing Robert Dainty the next day for the last spot on the varsity and that news set off all kinds of conflicting emotions inside him. Dad wanted me to be friends with the children of successful people. In some magical way Dad thought that meant we were going to be successful ourselves, and also, it meant he was getting something for the misery he went through for us to live the
re. But he also knew Robert Dainty, and thought he was a weasel, and Dad wanted his kids to dominate in everything.

  “Try your hardest and be a good sport. And no matter what, when it’s over, shake his hand and tell him he played a good match.”

  “He won’t be saying that to me if I win,” I said.

  “If Robert Dainty can’t stand fair competition, too bad for him,” Mom said from the sink. She had never liked the Daintys. She thought they led extravagant, frivolous lives. “Robert has always had an extra helping of self-esteem,” she said.

  “Just do your best,” Dad said. “Be fair. Don’t cheat. This is where you move up. Your brother has done very well. Now it’s your turn.”

  I wasn’t so sure that anything good would come of it, but I liked that Dad said it.

  I walked out. Coyle was waiting in the hallway.

  “Don’t let him win,” he said.

  “Do you think I would?”

  “It’s been Toady Hall from you all year.”

  “It’s not been Toady Hall.”

  “Good,” Coyle said. “Don’t be a suckass.”

  I got ready for bed. But no way could I sleep. The more I thought of the match, the more I knew I was in an impossible position. Robert would hold it against me if I won and Coyle would hold it against me if I lost. And the thing is, I didn’t even care that much about sports. I wasn’t like Coyle. I had gotten to a certain level in tennis by working diligently, but I was never going to be a great player. At best, I was going to be on the lower end of the team. I almost agreed with Robert that it was right that he got that spot. Who cares? I thought. Let him win and we can stay friends.

  So there was that feeling, and then there was something else, too, some deeper order that I instinctively acknowledged. The whole current of the social world we lived in was in Robert’s favor. It’s something hard to define, but I had been told since I was born that the kids of the rich families would always have more than we did and that we just had to accept that, but that we’d be paid back in the end. That was our understanding of the world—that we had to put up with inconveniences that other people didn’t have to put up with some magical deferred compensation. I had gotten in the habit of giving in to kids like Robert and there seemed to be something dangerous and essentially wrong in going against Robert. It felt unnatural.