There You Are

by Morais, Mathea

  She dropped the albums back into the box with a bang and looked at him. Her gray eyes had taken on the appearance of steel. Her nostrils flared and her cheeks sucked in. “Fuck you, Octavian,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “I fucked up.”

  He could tell she hadn’t expected him to say this, but she didn’t soften. She shook her head and said, “Listen, Tave, let’s just let it go, okay? I thought it was something more, but now I know it was just a thing. We smoked some weed, talked about music, and you hit it a few times, and now it’s done. I understand. I didn’t before, but I do now.”

  “Hold up,” he said. “I’m not saying what I want to say.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Tave,” she said shoving the box closed. “I’m not listening anyway.” She walked to the back and disappeared into the stockroom.

  Octavian heard her moving things around, but he didn’t follow or call to her. Instead he stood in the empty store encased in the beams of scattering dust. He bet Francis never felt like this. And if he did, he knew exactly what to do about it. Octavian tried to remember when it was that he last let himself love Francis and couldn’t. Maybe this time when Francis came back, he would try.

  Octavian heard the sharp sound of Mina dropping something and she cursed. He went behind the DJ booth and turned on the sound system. He lowered the needle on Prince’s “Something in the Water” and the speakers filled with a rapid-fire snare. He thought she’d come out. That she’d fight him some more so they could make up, but she didn’t. Octavian let the song play and walked out the front door.

  Octavian went home from Rahsaan’s and lay on his bed, listening to The Smiths. He felt sure that Morrissey’s sad claim that heaven knew he was miserable would make him forget about Mina. As he considered the peach-colored twilight coming through the slats in the blinds, Octavian heard Francis in the kitchen.

  Cyrus had made a rule. Francis had to be sober for a month before Cyrus would let him move back home. How Cyrus was going to know this, Octavian was never sure, because lies cascaded out of Francis’s mouth like a waterfall, like it was so full of them he could no longer hold them back. But not once since Cyrus made the rule, had Francis lied. Instead, he didn’t come home—at least not to stay. Octavian knew Francis snuck in and took clothes sometimes, came to eat food, but not when Cyrus was there. As if Francis respected the rule or something. He stayed fucked up and he stayed away.

  Octavian wondered at the fact that Francis was there so close to when Cyrus would be getting home. He thought about how he’d wanted to love his brother earlier and if he should go in to the kitchen, too. If Octavian were out there and talking shit with Francis when his dad walked in, Octavian knew there would be relief in his father’s eyes as he closed the door behind him and put down his attaché. But without Octavian in there, it was open to interpretation. Cyrus could see Francis in the kitchen, no way thirty days clean, and tell him to get out. Or he could be glad, because rule or no rule, Francis in the kitchen meant Francis wasn’t locked up, or dying, or already dead.

  Octavian rubbed his eyes, as if even they were tired from thinking about Francis, and tried to think about Mina instead. About her mouth that tasted like honey—the kind that was gold and thick and you had to scoop it out of the jar with a spoon.

  Francis knocked on the door while opening it and walked in. Usually Octavian asked why the fuck he even bothered to knock, but today he simply watched as Francis set a plate with a sandwich on Octavian’s bedside table, and then sat down at the desk where even Octavian hadn’t fit since he was twelve, and began to eat.

  “You know Pop don’t let me eat in here anymore,” Octavian said.

  “If you hadn’t been so nasty, keeping dirty plates up under your bed for months ’til they was covered with hairy little gray monsters, you wouldn’t have this problem.”

  Octavian turned away from the sandwich and his brother. “Still,” he said.

  “Still nothing. Hurry up and eat that before he gets home.”

  Octavian started to argue, but he was hungry, and no one could hook up a sandwich like Francis, so he took a bite.

  “Tave,” Francis said.

  Octavian chewed slowly. He knew what was coming. Another one of Francis’s bullshit apologies.

  But Francis didn’t say sorry, instead he said, “You wanna come with me to see Fishbone tonight?”

  Octavian swallowed, and in his head he cursed Francis and his uncanny ability to make things right. Sometimes Francis would come in late at night with a joint and a VHS copy of Coming to America, or he’d tell Cyrus that the puke at the foot of the back staircase was his and not Octavian’s. Or it was a sandwich and Fishbone tickets. And every time, those balled strings of anger that Octavian was determined to hold on to would unravel and roll away down the hall. Later, Octavian kicked himself for falling for it like a girl with a bad crush. Deep down, he wondered if he would always be waiting for Francis to show up and be the Francis he loved, the one who snuck him out the back door so he could go see Prince.

  The hard sound of their father’s key in the front door made Francis stand up. Carefully, he wiped his mouth before he walked over to Octavian and kissed him on the forehead. He ran a long finger over the pink sliver scar on Octavian’s cheek and said, “I know. I’m an asshole.”

  “Yeah,” Octavian said. “You are.”

  The front door opened, and they heard Cyrus sigh softly as he took off his shoes.

  Francis opened the window by the fire escape. “You going to meet me at Mississippi Nights or what?”

  “I ain’t meeting you nowhere.”

  Francis pushed his legs through and began to quietly make his way down.

  Octavian waited a second and then rolled over toward the still-open window. “Hey, Frankie,” he whispered. “What time?”

  Francis’s footsteps stopped. “Nine-thirty.”

  Cyrus knocked on Octavian’s door. “Tave,” he said. “You home?”

  Octavian closed the window and grabbed Francis’s plate. He shoved it and his own under the bed. “Yeah,” he said. “Come in.”

  Mina exhaled weed smoke and turned when he called her name, but he could tell by the way her smile fell off her face that she wasn’t expecting to see him. She stood next to Clarissa, who was nearly six feet tall with her afro puffs and platform shoes. Ivy, who was already heavily drunk even though the show hadn’t started yet, gave Octavian a pound.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Octavian saw Mina mouth something to Clarissa and disappear into the crowd. Octavian followed behind her and reached boldly through the chaos to catch her hand. She snatched it away and gave him a look.

  “What, Tave?” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Yeah, you are,” she said and pushed her way back into the crowd. She’d woven her way up by the bathrooms before he stopped her again. “Jesus, what do you want, Octavian?”

  Octavian leaned back against the tatters of posters plastered on the wall. He pushed a combat boot through the grime on the floor and said, “Damn, Mina girl.”

  “Damn, what?”

  “If you knew me, you’d know. I don’t really know how to explain it, but with you…I don’t know. Something’s different.”

  “I do know you, Octavian. And you can stop running game, okay? You don’t like me. Not really. And it’s cool.”

  Octavian’s face twisted a little and he took a long breath and spoke fast. “Listen,” he said, “You know me, but here’s what you don’t know. I am always pretending. I pretend shit doesn’t bother me so my dad doesn’t worry, I pretend to be happy when I’m not, I pretend to not care about Francis. But not with you. For some reason, maybe it’s because of what happened between us when we were little, I don’t pretend with you. And you don’t know how good that feels or how much it scares the shit out of me.”

  Mina kept her eyes on the still-empty stage. Octavian could tell she wasn’t buying it. She want
ed to, but she wasn’t.

  Octavian reached for her hand again, but she moved away. “I didn’t call you,” he said, “because I thought that would make it go away.”

  “According to what you said, you’ve felt that way for a long time.”

  Octavian smiled. “Okay,” he said, “that part was game. But this, this is for real.”

  Mina couldn’t help but laugh and when she did, he pulled her to him, pressed his forehead against hers. “If you knew what I had to do in order to get in here,” he said, “you’d know how serious I am right now.”

  The lights dimmed. Angelo walked shirtless onto the stage and the room around them erupted. Mina leaned closer to Octavian so he could hear her. “Yeah, how did you get in anyway? I thought the show was sold out,” she said.

  Octavian nodded toward the bar. Mina turned, and Francis gave her a careless smile, saluted her with two fingers.

  “He got tickets?”

  “Frankie doesn’t need tickets,” Octavian said.

  “Right,” she said.

  Her crooked-tooth smile pulled hard at his insides and he took her hand and brought it gently behind his back. He cupped his other hand under her jaw and kissed her.

  TRACK 9

  Self-Portrait in

  Three Colours

  IT WAS JUST THE beginning of December, but Cyrus came home from the library with his head down, guarding his face from the cold, and his arms full of books. He walked up the back staircase thinking about the final exam he was going to give the next week, and found Francis at the back door, the box containing Jackson’s pearl-handled letter opener tucked inside his jacket.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going with that?” Cyrus asked.

  Francis pulled the box to his chest. “I’m going to show it to a friend of mine,” he said. “He does appraisals. I thought…”

  “Give it to me,” Cyrus said and he backed Francis into the kitchen, pressing at him with his armload of books. Inside, he put the books down on the table and said again, “Give it to me.” He could hear the rage tremble in his voice.

  Francis handed him the box and Cyrus opened it. There the letter-opener lay unharmed on its bed of dark-green velvet. Cyrus snapped it shut and Francis jumped.

  “Get out of here,” Cyrus said, barely able to make his words into a whisper.

  “That’s cool,” Francis said and, as he moved around Cyrus, he gave him a shove—a small one, but unmistakably a shove, and under his breath he said something along the lines of, “Fuck you, old man.”

  Cyrus turned quickly to face him. “Don’t come back, Francis,” he said. He put the letter-opener down next to the books. “Don’t come back even if you’re clean.”

  Francis, who was already four steps towards the back door, came back and stood towering over Cyrus. “Here’s the thing, Pop,” he said. “I can’t be clean. I love getting high too damn much. Always have. No threats you make are going to change that.”

  “If your mother was alive,” Cyrus started to say, but Francis only laughed.

  “But she’s not, is she? And you think you’re the only one that wishes she was still here. You don’t know how much I want her back. And you definitely don’t understand that the only time I don’t feel the pain of not having her is when I’m high. So no matter how much you sit wishing into your glass of port wine that she’ll come back, she won’t, and no matter how much you wish I would stop, that’s not happening either.”

  Cyrus felt himself crumbling, and he grabbed ahold of the table.

  “Fuck this,” Francis said and he pushed out the back door and ran down the stairs.

  “You can look for your stuff out on the street,” Cyrus yelled after him. “I’m putting it out tonight so you better come get it quick before your other crackhead friends show up and take it.”

  But Cyrus didn’t put it out. Francis’s clothes were still folded neatly, right where he left them.

  A week later, Cyrus sat next to Octavian in the St. Louis County Courthouse and wondered if there was anything he could have done to save them from the angry, disappointed look on the judge’s face when she asked Francis to explain why he tried to rob the plaintiff as he entered his house.

  Francis kept his head down and said quietly, “Because I needed to get high, ma’am.”

  The plaintiff, a tall, thin black man in a pinstriped suit named George Davidson, whispered something to his lawyer before standing up and asking if he could make a request. The judge, took her glaring eyes from Francis and agreed.

  “I’d like to ask that Mr. Munroe not be sent to jail, your honor,” he said.

  Cyrus held his breath.

  “I have a niece and, well, she’s addicted to drugs. I cannot even fathom the pain that my sister goes through. They tried a lot of things, but nothing seemed to work until last year, through their church, they got her into a treatment program and she seems to be making it. I realize this is a little out of order, but I’m wondering, since I was the one Mr. Munroe tried to rob, if I could request that you sentence him to a treatment center instead of a prison?”

  Francis leaned over to his lawyer and said, “Is this cat for real?”

  Cyrus grabbed hold of Octavian’s hand.

  The judge’s fierceness folded into worry as she turned back to Francis. “Mr. Munroe,” she said, “you know that you and I have been here before. And both of those times you asked me for a second chance. So, technically, this would be the third time you got a second chance.”

  Francis hung his exhausted head. “Yes ma’am.”

  Octavian leaned into Cyrus and said, “I’m late for work. You want me to call Bones so I can stay?”

  “No,” Cyrus said. “I’ll see this one through.”

  Octavian rubbed his father’s shoulder and said, “This could be good, Pop. I don’t think Frankie would handle prison well.” He stood up and looked long at the back of his brother’s head before he walked out of the courtroom. His footsteps echoed and Francis turned to watch as Octavian pushed out of the swinging doors.

  Cyrus studied his son. Francis didn’t look good. His skin was ashy and dirty. He had an angry cut above his ear that was crusted and yellow. His nails were bitten to the quick and the cuticles, which he now chewed on, were bloody. Cyrus could no longer philosophize it away as Octavian had once accused him of doing. If he didn’t do something real, something other than think on it, Francis was going to die. Francis would never agree to go to treatment on his own, but the judge could make it so he had no choice. In the back of his mind, Cyrus felt himself return to hope—that elusive emotion he’d spent less and less time with lately. Maybe in treatment they could get Francis to hit the mat hard with those demons of his, lock them up in a good full-nelson.

  “Mr. Munroe,” the judge said, “I want to be quite clear. This is your last chance. If I find you in front of my bench again, I will send you to jail. Do you understand?”

  Francis seemed to take a moment to think, or maybe only to sigh, before he nodded and said again, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Cyrus used his own felt-tip pen to sign the papers that said he would deliver Francis to St. Augustine’s Treatment Center in O’Fallon, Illinois, the following Wednesday. He and Francis drove home in silence. When they got to the apartment, Francis stopped before walking up the stairs and asked Cyrus if he wanted him to stay someplace else.

  Cyrus didn’t tell Francis that he had no intention of letting him out of his sight until Wednesday. But he did open the door wider and said, “Why don’t you go on in and take a shower? I’ll make you something to eat. After that, we can talk about what happens next.”

  Francis nodded and ducked inside. Cyrus could hear him in his bedroom, opening drawers and closets. He wondered if Francis was surprised to find that his clothes were still there. Cyrus heard the shower turn on and he went into the kitchen. He placed a Charles Mingus CD in the player and pulled out the foil-covered plates of leftover food he’d cooked
that weekend.

  Cooking on Saturday was the way things had been done in Cordelia’s house growing up and when she was alive, Saturdays had been magical. Cordelia in her bright red-and-orange apron, flour coating her fingers as she made cornbread and catfish. Cyrus’s specialties were collard greens and braised pork chops, mashed potatoes and barbeque. Octavian’s task had been to play his mother’s favorite records—Luther Vandross, Minnie Ripperton, Sam Cooke. Francis was in charge of the table, meticulously ironing the tablecloth and polishing each piece of silverware until he saw his own reflection bent sideways in the spoons.

  After Cordelia died, Cyrus thought about giving up the cooking. But then, when Saturdays came, he got down the mixing bowls, the cast-iron pans. He pulled out the boxes of macaroni and began to grate the cheese and when he did, he felt her over his shoulder, shaking her head because she preferred to slice the cheese thinly, because he never did cut the garlic right. Now, nearly ten years after she died, Cyrus still cooked with Cordelia on Saturdays. He still put on Luther and could hear her singing along, begging to hold someone tight, if only for one night, as he soaked the black-eyed peas and measured the cornmeal.

  Cyrus put a plate down at the small kitchen table and motioned for Francis to sit. Francis gathered his long body into the chair and delicately placed the cloth napkin across his lap. He picked up the fried catfish and gingerly put it on a slice of white bread followed by some onion and two slices of pickle. But when Francis reached for the hot sauce, his shaking hand knocked it over. Cyrus took the bottle and poured the hot sauce for him.

  Once Francis had some food down, his hands stopped trembling and he picked up the glass of cider and emptied it. Cyrus could see more of Francis’s golden-brown color begin to come out from under the gray pall, more light in the hazel eyes that watched Cyrus clear his plate and run it under the hot water.