The Brother Years

by Shannon Burke

  The doorbell rang. I heard the water turn off at the sink. Mom passed the opening to the living room and was hastily trying to fix her hair. The door creaked open.

  “Hello,” we heard Mom say.

  “Hello, I’m Jack Dainty. Our sons are friends.”

  “Like you’re friends with that suckass,” Fergus whispered.

  Coyle elbowed him to be quiet.

  “Yes. I believe they are,” Mom said in a wavering tone.

  “I heard about your recent trouble. I came to see if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Oh, that is very kind,” Mom said faintly.

  Mom and Dad were so busy that they had few close friends. And Mom was deathly afraid of asking for any help and being a bother. She hadn’t told anyone what had happened.

  “Can I ask how he is?” Mr. Dainty said.

  “He is awake and not in pain, but the doctors have not been able to agree on a diagnosis. They scheduled a bypass but then postponed it. It has not been efficient.”

  “Have you heard of a cardiologist named Dr. Murphy?” Mr. Dainty asked.

  “Of course. He’s where we started,” Mom said.

  Dr. Murphy was the most famous cardiologist in Chicago. He lived in Seneca.

  “Unfortunately, Dr. Murphy is in high demand and was unavailable and we had to go to someone further down the list.”

  “Of course he’s busy,” Mr. Dainty said. “But I know him personally. We play squash together. Would you let me call him for you?”

  “Oh, I don’t want to be a bother,” Mom said.

  “It’s not a bother,” Mr. Dainty said. “He’s a friend and would be glad to help. And it would be a favor to me. My son Robert is not always as gracious as he could be. I’d like to set an example of how we can be of service to others.”

  Mom hated asking for a favor from anyone, but particularly from someone like the Daintys, who she saw as being wealthy, frivolous people. But she had spent three days in limbo in the hospital and Mr. Dainty put it cleverly, making it as if he was asking a favor from her to set an example for Robert.

  After a moment, she said, “Of course you can try. But I don’t want to take up your time. But if you could make that call, when you had the time…”

  “I have the time now,” Mr. Dainty said. “It’s why I’ve come.”

  He stepped inside without being asked. He passed by the opening to the living room, nodding to us.

  “Hello, boys,” he said.

  He went on to the telephone in the kitchen.

  “Hello, boys,” Fergus said to Maddy. “He called you a boy, man-woman.”

  Maddy swatted Fergus, but didn’t put much effort into it. We were all trying to hear what was going on in the kitchen.

  We heard the phone dialing. A moment later Mr. Dainty was talking to a secretary, then a nurse, and then, after a five-minute wait, to Dr. Murphy himself.

  “Hello, Thomas. This is Jack Dainty…”

  Very quickly, Mr. Dainty was giving our father’s name, and his doctor’s name, and the wing he was in at Evanston Hospital.

  Afterward, Mr. Dainty said, “We’re in luck. He has another patient on that floor. He can see Alex tomorrow morning between eight and ten. If you would like to meet him, be there at that time.”

  “Of course I will be there. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Then don’t,” Mr. Dainty said. “Your sons have known my son for years. They have had a good effect on Robert.”

  “Oh, I hardly know about that,” Mom said, flustered.

  “They are an example of hard work, diligence, and honesty. Robert needs a little help in those areas.”

  Something moved inside me. I had always assumed the Daintys looked down on us. I had assumed that, like all of Seneca, they watched our struggles with discomfort and distaste and wished we’d go away. Even when I was friends with Robert, I assumed his father thought our family was ridiculous. My certainty of their dislike was a pillar of my understanding of the world we inhabited.

  Mr. Dainty stepped into the hallway and looked into the small living room with the frayed carpet where the floorboards were visible through holes and the four kids sat on the worn couch that was patched in places with tape. We looked at him silently.

  “I grew up in a house very much like this one,” he said. “How are you, Willie? You keeping up with your schoolwork?”

  “Yes,” I said, though it wasn’t true.

  “The doctors will take care of your father. You keep on with your work.” He turned to Coyle. “Congratulations on all of your accomplishments.”

  “Thanks,” Coyle said.

  Mr. Dainty turned to Mom.

  “I’ll have Gretchen bring some food. Good luck.”

  He walked out and Mom stood there, stunned. She had bad-mouthed the Daintys many times. Now they were the first people who’d helped.

  The next morning Dr. Murphy examined my father and reviewed everything that had been done up till that point. He canceled the bypass and scheduled a stress test. The EKG was found to have been abnormal beforehand, and so was not necessarily caused by a cardiac event. The enlarged heart was a sign of high blood pressure, but also a sign of physical conditioning. Dr. Murphy wanted to do an angiogram, and an angioplasty, if necessary, and said he’d go from there. All that was scheduled for the following day, when we were let out of school so we could see my father before his procedure.

  * * *

  —

  I was lying out in the cold sand along the winter beach a few hours before my father’s surgery. I was listening to the crisp tearing of the icy waves and looking up at the tree branches overhead. There was a very clear awareness of what was at stake. I knew that Dr. Murphy might find something terrible in Dad’s heart. I knew it was possible he would die during the procedure. And lying there, on the frozen beach, I realized I desperately wanted our father to live. There were times growing up when I had wished if not that he would die, at least that he wasn’t around, times when I just wanted to be a normal kid with summer camp and video games and not have all the extra work and extra sports and be involved every day in his self-improvement schemes and his menial drudgery. But at that moment I didn’t care about our struggles. I was proud of my father, who was attempting to remake his life, and had gone through all sorts of humiliations for us. He had not done it without his periods of anger, but he had done it with boisterousness and swagger and usually with good humor, and I knew that despite the insane regimen Dad had put us through, despite his nitpicking, perfectionist personality and his impracticality about money, our lives would be much worse without him. I lay there listening to the surf and hoping, praying, that he would be ok, and at the same time there was the physical, sensory pleasure of being out there in the crisp, winter morning. Lassitude weighed me down—it had taken a long time to build up and there’s no way it would dissipate instantly—but there, on the beach, I was aware for the first time in months of the beauty of the expanse of water and the curve of the shore and of the soft hiss of waves tumbling in, and it was like those waves were cleaning my insides moment by moment. Dad’s collapse had pierced through the fog of my lassitude and I could feel that fog dissipating. I took deep breaths of cold air, fearful about my father’s surgery, but also alert and awake and feeling alive for the first time in months, lying there on the frozen beach, looking up through dark, tangled branches.

  * * *

  —

  “You’re the one who tweaked his piece,” Coyle said.

  “You’re the one who boxed with him,” I said.

  The four of us were sitting outside the SICU. We were supposed to go in and talk to our father, but we’d been waiting fifteen minutes and Mom hadn’t come out yet. We thought maybe we’d missed it.

  “Don’t argue in front of Mom,” Maddy said. She was sniffling. “Mom actually
cares that Dad could die.”

  “I care, too,” Fergus said. “If Dad doesn’t die it means he’s coming back home.”

  “Quiet,” Maddy said. “Here she comes.”

  Mom was hurrying from the surgical rooms, glassy-eyed. She stood in front of the brown plastic couch where we all sat. Maddy got up to hug her.

  “The nurses were shilly-shallying, so we only have a few minutes,” Mom said. “Fergus, you go in first. Maddy, you go second. Coyle and Willie, stay here.”

  “Why do I have to go in first?” Fergus said.

  “It’s sort of like eating your vegetables first,” Coyle said.

  Mom turned on Fergus.

  “Do not argue with me. Go in there. Be nice to your father. Do you hear me?”

  “Be hard not to,” Fergus said, which made Coyle bite his lip.

  Fergus walked in. Maddy looked like she might cry.

  “Is Dad ok?”

  “He is prepared for whatever happens,” Mom said. “You can come with me. Coyle and Willie, I’ll call for you.”

  Mom walked Maddy to the SICU. Coyle and I were left alone in the hallway, both of us slumped, acting overly casual. Coyle tossed a tennis ball against the far wall and caught it as it bounced back.

  “Do you know what he’s going to say?” I said.

  “He’s probably going to tell us we’re grounded for life. And to outline the next five years of study and workouts.”

  A doctor passed us, shaking a finger at Coyle for his ball tossing. After he passed, Coyle tossed the ball to me. I caught it.

  “If he dies maybe they’ll let you write your sophomore theme in summer school,” Coyle said. “Student hardship and all that.”

  “Something to hope for,” I said.

  “Did you write any more of it?” Coyle asked.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Didn’t feel like it,” I said.

  Coyle just shook his head at me. Idiot, he was thinking. It was due in three days.

  “You better hope Dad dies,” he said. “If not, he’s going to kill you.”

  “If he doesn’t kill you first,” I said.

  The SICU doors whooshed open and Mom stood there.

  “Coyle,” she called.

  He stood jauntily and walked off to the SICU and I was left out there alone in the hallway, holding that tennis ball. I set the ball on a windowsill. It rolled a little. I decided if it fell off that Dad would die, but if it stayed up he would live. It drifted a little but stayed on top. I thought that was a good sign. But then I thought that was stupid. I had no idea what would happen. And whatever happened, I’d just have to deal with it. A minute passed. Then the door clicked open.

  “Willie. Come on. You have a minute.”

  I walked into the SICU and saw Fergus standing behind Mom, eating a chocolate pudding. He waved a plastic spoon.

  “Free pudding,” he said. “Thanks, Dad. You should have a surgery every day.”

  “You’re doing your best to make that possible,” I heard Dad say, then laugh loudly at his own joke. I could tell by his laugh that he was scared.

  I walked around the corner and found our father on a stretcher, in a hospital gown, holding on to a bar on the wall to stop the transporter from wheeling him away.

  “He’s right here,” Dad said, pointing at me.

  “You have one minute,” the transporter said. “They’re already waiting.”

  “Shut the door,” Dad said after the transporter walked out.

  I shut the door and was suddenly alone with my father. He already had the IV in his left arm. He was grinning openly in a way that was not normal for him. They had given him a relaxant of some sort.

  “Just wanted to talk to you before I go in,” he said in a forced, ham-handed tone. “I’ll be fine. So don’t worry about me.”

  “I’m not,” I said.

  It was supposed to be a joke, but it came out sounding like I meant it.

  “Good,” Dad said. “I don’t want you kids to think about me at all. I’ve had a good life, and whatever happens to me, you have to go on with what you’re doing, which is more important. Your lives are all going to be better than mine. You’ll do great things. Your mom and I are both very proud of you.”

  This was not how I had expected the conversation to go at all. I thought he would talk about not moping around and writing my sophomore theme.

  “I’m not doing that great,” I said. “I know that.”

  “You’re getting A’s in the 4 levels. You made the varsity tennis team.”

  “I’m not getting A’s now. And I’ve hardly played for months.”

  “You will make the team when you start to play again. You may have a speed bump here or there, but you are moving beyond what I ever did. Your mother and I are both very proud of you.”

  I thought he must be loopy from the drugs to be complimenting me so extravagantly. In our family we bickered and criticized one another. Compliments were considered bad form.

  The transporter appeared again and tapped his wrist. Then shut the door.

  “I’ve been hard on you kids. I know that. I thought it was for the best so you would be prepared to compete in that tough school. I was never great in school or anything, so I thought what I could teach you was to work hard. I thought that was what I could give you. But I want you to know that both your mother and I love you kids like nothing else and we see that you’ll do great things. And you, in particular, Willie, you have a bright future. You’re smart and everyone likes you. Not a grunt like me. Whatever happens, you should know you’re the good part of my life.”

  He reached out and for a moment his big arms surrounded me, not to thrash me but to hug me. A warmth flowed into me, but a strangeness, too. It felt unnatural to be hugged by my father, particularly at that moment. I thought he was going to yell at me or tell me to do my work, but he was saying nice things, things I’d never heard him say before. After a moment he pulled away and said, “Be nice to your brother, ok?”

  I knew he meant Coyle.

  “I am nice to him,” I said.

  “Then keep being nice,” he said. “He really cares for you.”

  I started to make some sarcastic comment about that, but the door opened.

  “Gotta go,” Dad said.

  Dad was wheeled out and I just stood there in the room by myself. My eyes were glassy and I was embarrassed. Crying was for babies. I stood there for at least a minute, getting ahold of myself, feeling a strange, soft glimmering inside.

  When I walked out, Coyle was in the hallway.

  “Did you talk to him?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’d he say to you?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “What’d he say to you?”

  “Nothing, really,” Coyle said, and by the way he said it, I knew Dad had said the same sort of thing to Coyle.

  “Maddy and Fergus are with Mom. We’re supposed to go home and wait.”

  “Wait for what?” I said.

  “To hear what happens.”

  “Oh,” I said. “All right. Are you ready?”

  We walked back out past where I’d put the tennis ball. I thought I needed to leave it there on the ledge for good luck.

  Coyle and I drove home in silence. As soon as we were home Coyle went into the den to watch basketball. I went upstairs to the bedroom and lay looking at the ceiling and thinking about what Dad had said. For half my childhood I had dreamed about what it would be like without the exercises, without having to work adult jobs on the weekend, and without having to be constantly afraid Dad would lose his temper, but now that it was really possible that he wouldn’t be around I saw the other side of it.
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  I lay in bed for an hour. Then I went downstairs and made a bologna sandwich, and while I was in the kitchen the phone rang. Coyle answered it in the den.

  “Uh-huh. Uh-huh,” I heard him saying. “All right.”

  He hung up. I walked into the den. Coyle was looking at the TV. He didn’t turn from the screen when he spoke.

  “That was Mom. Dad’s fine. They didn’t even do the angioplasty. There’s nothing wrong with his heart. He had an arrhythmia. From stress.”

  “Stress from you beating on him,” I said.

  “And you tweaking his piece,” he said.

  Neither of us said anything more for a while. Coyle was glad. So was I. But we weren’t going to show that, particularly to each other. The TV flickered basketball.

  “Anyway, he’s fine,” Coyle said.

  “Good,” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s good,” he said.

  I was embarrassed about being happy, so I left Coyle and went outside and walked around the neighborhood for a while. When I got home Mom was at the sink doing dishes. She came out and hugged me and told me what I already knew. That Dad was ok and he’d be home in a few days. I walked upstairs and found my notebook still resting on the little desk between the beds where I’d left it days before. I shut the door behind me and without thinking about it I started writing my sophomore theme. Something had sprung loose inside me. It was because of the crisis with our father, and also because of what had happened with Mr. Dainty. I had thought the attitude in Seneca toward us was entirely disapproving, but I was wrong. I wrote all that night. I slept for a few hours and wrote for another twenty hours the next day. I did it straight, without stopping or even rereading.

  My sophomore theme was supposedly on the Berlin Airlift, but in my version of the assignment it was not really about the political event at all, but about the effect on the residents of being cut off from the rest of the country. It was about solitude and perseverance. It was about hunger and hardships. It was about the problems of the world played out in a single isolated population and how they coped with it. It was about endurance. I filled the paper with anecdotes from those who had lived through the crisis. I finished at five in the morning on the day it needed to be turned in. I didn’t proofread, so I got a D on grammar, but I got an A on content, which came out to a B- on the total paper, which I accepted as a minor miracle.