Hidden

by Catherine McKenzie

  Sad-postured bodies in dark clothes pass me by while I stare fixedly ahead at the large, stained-glass window behind the altar depicting some biblical scene I could identify if I could focus. No one sits next to me, the stranger, the outsider, so I’m alone in my pew, a collection of worn hymnals available for my perusal if I thought a bombastic song would fix what ails me.

  An organ starts, the family is ushered in. Claire looking shell-shocked and stoic. A woman who, from the looks of her, must be her sister. Seth, who, if he knew how much his father loved him, might be able to forgive him anything. Two older couples, then another face I recognize, Jeff after forty if he lived in the sun and on a larger scale. His brother.

  The minister asks us to stand, to sing, to sit, to bow our heads. Jeff’s friends speak, telling stories I’d heard from Jeff, as I knew they would. When he told me about it, I thought the pre-funeral was brilliant and only wished I’d had the opportunity to do one with my own childhood friends before we’d grown up and drifted apart.

  When the projection of Jeff’s smiling face is looming over us, I feel a sense of relief. Surely we must be almost done. A few more solemn words and I’ll have succeeded in my impossible task of not causing any more harm than I already have.

  But then Seth rises, pale, terrified, his head shaped like his father’s, the slight diphthong in his voice one I thought I’d never hear again, and he says something totally unexpected.

  “I don’t need my heart anymore/you can have it …”

  The words crash down around me, the threads that have been holding me together snap, and there’s nothing I can do to save myself but head for the exit.

  An hour later, I’m sitting huddled against a tree. It’s half in leaf. When the wind blows, the loose buds plunk down around me like fat drops of rain.

  I watched them lower Jeff’s coffin into the hard ground, but I couldn’t get close enough to hear the words. I couldn’t make myself do this, even if it would’ve been a good idea. The act of watching was enough to drive the Ativan from my system, and my brain feels clear as a bell. Ringing out a warning.

  Now they’ve all started to disburse, to walk solemnly back to their cars, their lives. I know from the program still clutched in my hand that there’s a reception at the house, but right now the most likely option seems like I’ll be staying here overnight.

  A shadow crosses above me.

  “Are you all right?” a man asks.

  I look up; it’s Tim. It must be. His hands are stuffed in the pockets of his suit. He looks like he hasn’t slept well in days. I ought to know.

  I run a hand across my cheek to wipe the tears I cannot hide away and edge myself to a standing position. “I’ll survive.”

  “Were … were you a friend of Jeff’s?”

  “We worked together. I’m the company representative, I guess, here to show the flag.”

  I wave my hand like I’m holding a flag, looking to surrender, hoping for clemency.

  “How do you know Jeff?” I ask, playing along.

  “I’m his brother. Sorry, I should’ve started with that.”

  “It’s all right. I’m so sorry for your loss. So very sorry.”

  “Thank you. I didn’t get your name?”

  “Patricia, but everybody calls me Tish.”

  “Tim.” We shake hands. In the awkward silence that follows, we turn and start to walk away from the gravesite.

  “There’s a reception at the house now, right?” I say, trying to fill the silence, something I always do when I’m nervous.

  “Yes. Are you going?”

  “I should. That’s why I’m here, after all.”

  We’ve reached the parking lot. The only car that remains is a bright red Ford sedan, the kind you always get from rental companies at the airport.

  “Is your car near here?” Tim asks.

  “I walked.”

  “How about I give you a lift to the house?”

  No, no, no, no, no.

  “Okay.”

  He pulls the key from his pocket and unlocks the doors, the chipper tweet of the automatic unlocker a bright sound in the quiet world. It’s as if the whole town slipped into silence out of respect.

  I open the door and slide into the passenger seat as Tim starts the engine. He drives carefully, like he’s not entirely sure where he’s going, though he must be. We stay silent for a few streets as I watch the centre of town flash by, a smalltown Main Street that’s survived better than most.

  “Did you know Jeff well?” Tim asks as we turn away from the town square.

  What can I say to this? That sometimes I felt like I knew him better than myself, and sometimes I felt like I didn’t know him at all? And now I’ll never know which is right?

  “Fairly well.”

  “From the accounting department?”

  “No, I’m in HR. We met when Jeff needed some HR training. A year ago.”

  “Have you lived in Springfield long?”

  “I don’t live here. I live in the other Springfield.”

  “Pardon?”

  I turn away from the window. I’m gripping my hands together tightly in my lap, and they’ve gone white. I loosen them, feeling the blisters forming from too many golf swings.

  “It’s this work thing. The company bought a company in another town called Springfield. So there are two, which is confusing, and mine’s always called ‘the other Springfield.’ Anyway, that’s where I live. With my husband and my daughter, Zoey. She wrote that poem Seth read.”

  I pause for breath, cursing myself. What the hell did I say that for?

  He frowns. “I don’t follow.”

  Of course he doesn’t. I barely do, and it’s my own life unfurling.

  “It’s this thing she does. This spoken word thing. She won Nationals last year, and one of the prizes was publishing some of her poems.” I swallow, my brain whizzing. “It’s about my father. The poem. That’s what Zoey was writing about. He died two years ago. That’s why I was so upset, I guess.”

  “Does Seth know your daughter?”

  “No, they’ve never met.”

  “Then how did—”

  “Seth get a hold of the poem? I’m not sure.”

  Crap, crap, crap.

  “Jeff had a copy,” I add.

  Which is true, 100 per cent true. But which is also proof that telling the truth to get yourself out of a bad situation isn’t always the best policy.

  Tim puts the blinker on and takes a left. I don’t know how close or far away we are to the house.

  Please let us be close. Please let us be far away.

  “They were given away at this office thing we were both at a couple of weeks ago,” I blurt, still trying to cover up my earlier words with new ones. “We played golf together.”

  A small smile. “Jeff did love golf.”

  “He did.”

  Tim parks the car at the end of a quiet street. He turns off the engine and pulls the key from the ignition. We get out in unison and I follow him up the block. Cars are parked here, there, and everywhere, and there’s a steady stream of people climbing the front steps dressed in solemn clothing.

  He turns down the walkway and trudges towards the front door, looking like he dreads going in there as much as I do. I stop at the edge between the concrete and sidewalk, staring at the house, fighting once again for self-control.

  He turns back towards me as he reaches the front door. “You coming?”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  CHAPTER 15

  The Creaking Dark

  My brother’s been home twice in the last fifteen years.

  Two years after Claire and I started dating, we received an unusual piece of mail. It was a postcard from Tim, again from Australia, with an address and an invitation—albeit cryptic—to write to him.

  Drop me a line were the words he used, if memory serves.

  It was, actually, my mother who got the postcard, and she’s the one who responded. In fact, I’m pretty s
ure she sat down at the kitchen table and pulled out several pieces of her personal stationery minutes after the postcard came shooting through the mail slot.

  Tim was open to communication and she was ready to communicate.

  Boy was she ever.

  Writing to Tim became a nearly daily occupation for her, narrating the small details of her life.

  I don’t know for certain, but I’m fairly sure she told Tim about Claire and me in that very first letter. It had taken her a while to accept us when she first found out, which was unfortunately from some local gossip before I’d had a chance to tell her myself.

  “I just heard the strangest thing,” she said to me on the phone, where she’d caught me at work. “I’m sure Betty must have it wrong …”

  “Have what wrong, Mom?”

  “Well, honey, she said that you and Claire James are dating.”

  She gave a nervous laugh, trying to convey a that’s-so-ridiculous air, but not quite managing it.

  When I fessed up and told her it was true, she went into flutter mode. “Well, I … If you think … are you happy?”

  I assured her I was and that I knew it was a bit weird but that it was a good thing. Eventually, she believed it, but she couldn’t quite let it go until she found out how Tim felt about it.

  When the next postcard arrived from him, three months later, the p.s. he added after saying he was working at a bank was: Tell Jeff and Claire I said hi.

  There were two ways to take this — as a passive PFO, or a tacit acceptance that things had moved on without him. I chose the latter, at first, and though it wasn’t with my mother’s speed or frequency, I wrote him back, writing of surface things. My practice, the latest town gossip about the boys we grew up with. Not much about Claire, but enough to let him know we were together and we were serious. That it maybe wasn’t the best situation there ever was, and that my happiness was tinged with moments of regret.

  He didn’t answer my letters, or my sporadic emails when he finally divulged his email address. He treated my mother’s correspondence with more respect; emails were usually answered within a week. He’s a busy guy, after all, my mother would say, making excuses for him, as she had during all those years of virtual silence.

  Tell Jeff and Claire I said hi.

  I waited a while to tell Claire about that one. When I did, casually over breakfast one morning, she went quiet, still, before asking me if I was going to write him back. I told her I wasn’t sure, and thought about asking her if she was planning to. But somehow I couldn’t get the words out. I’m not normally a jealous guy, but jealously has a different texture to it when the woman you love used to be in love with your brother. I held my tongue, and if she wrote him, she never said.

  I don’t know if I expected him to answer me, or what the answer would be if he did. Instead, all I got was radio silence, the absence of words telling me all I needed to know. Tim was pissed, and whatever it was that had driven him halfway around the world, well, the blame for that was now shifted to me.

  Eventually, I stopped writing. Maybe I wanted to send my own signal. Maybe I was tired of the lack of response. And there was life to live too. It was a good life; one I hoped was about to get better.

  When Claire accepted my proposal at the Thai restaurant where we’d had our first date, we decided quickly that we didn’t want a big wedding. Family, a few close friends. If we went beyond that we might have to invite the whole town. I didn’t really care one way or another, so long as she showed up and said yes, but Claire didn’t seem interested in the spectacle.

  She was the one who sent Tim the invitation. I saw it sitting on a stack of ones to mail near the front door of her apartment. Right on top of the stack like there was nothing unusual about it. And maybe there wasn’t, but it led to our first big fight, one we’d probably been putting off since the beginning, one you didn’t really want to have two months before your wedding.

  “What the fuck is this?” I asked, holding Tim’s invitation by the corner, standing over her in a way I knew was more aggressive than it should be.

  She glanced up from the kitchen table, where she was making her way through a pile of case law. “A wedding invitation.”

  “Come on, Claire.”

  She put her pen down. Two spots of colour appeared on her cheeks. “Come on what? He’s your brother.”

  “Right. My brother. Your ex-boyfriend. The guy who hasn’t spoken to either of us in years.”

  “I thought he should be here, or at least have the option to be.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell or ask me?”

  “No. I did.”

  “The hell you did.”

  “I meant, I thought about it.”

  I threw the envelope on the table. It skipped like a pebble across a pond, once, twice, and landed on the floor with a soft whooshing sound.

  “So you thought about it and decided not to tell me?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What am I supposed to do with that?”

  She reached down to retrieve the envelope. “I don’t know why you’re getting this upset.”

  “You don’t? You used to sleep with the guy!”

  I knew as soon as the words left my mouth that I’d said the wrong thing. This had always been unspoken. That he’d touched and kissed her lips, her breasts, and the soft, wet folds between her legs. But it was something I was all too aware of the first few times we were together, when I was trying to figure out how to unlock the sighs and cries I craved.

  Of course, I’d been with women before who’d been with someone else. There was often that feeling the first few times, before the present began to erase the past.

  Someone’s been here before me. Was he better? Did she cry out his name? Did he make her come easily, the first time?

  I always shoved these thoughts down with the reality that I, too, had practised on others. That this particular swirl of the tongue, or rub of her clitoris, might not satisfy like it had done in the past.

  Adjustments were necessary.

  Adjustments were made.

  But I’d never had to adjust for the fact that one of the men before me was my brother. That if I disappointed her, if I continued to do so, her lack of satisfaction could always be compared with him, another man who’d been in my place, the place I hoped to make mine exclusively.

  She gave me a cold stare. “You’ve known that from the beginning, Jeff. What does it have to do with us now?”

  “You’re the one bringing him into it. Sending him that invitation is bringing him into it.”

  “Inviting him to our wedding isn’t bringing him into it, it’s keeping him out of it.”

  “How’d you figure?”

  “He’s your brother. If he isn’t at your wedding, people will talk. And your mother would be heartbroken if he didn’t come. You know that.”

  “I don’t give a shit what people say. I only care about—”

  “That we were together? Is that it?”

  I stuffed my hands in my pockets and looked down at the floor. “I don’t know.”

  “Seems like that’s something you should’ve figured out a long time ago.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Do you think I’m still in love with him?”

  “No, I …”

  She watched me stumble, unable to deny it. “If you feel that way, I don’t think I should be sending these out.”

  She picked up the invitation and walked out of the kitchen. I followed her down the hall. She placed Tim’s invitation back on top of the pile and straightened the stack, making neat hospital corners.

  “You want to call the wedding off?” I said, my throat closing in panic.

  She looked me straight in the eye. “No. I don’t.”

  “You think I do?”

  “I think you need to figure out if you can live with this. With me. The person I was and the person I am now. You go figure that out and let me know.”

  I felt like I�
�d been punched in the stomach, but there was anger there too. So out the door I went to spend a miserable night at my own apartment, a place I barely spent any time in anymore, a place that no longer felt like home.

  In the morning I crawled back to Claire’s, begged her forgiveness, and, when she gave it, buried my jealousy of Tim deep within.

  Besides, I told myself, it’s not like he’s actually going to show.

  He did, of course. Not that he answered the reply card. Instead, he sent a cryptic email to my mother, which she decoded as his arrival time in Springfield two days before the ceremony.

  I knew for sure by then that my take on his silence, his absence, wasn’t paranoia. It was all connected. But what I didn’t know was whether he was coming home to try to do something about it or to accept it.

  I watched him closely in those first twenty-four hours after his arrival, looking for signs that might point the way. He looked older, tanned, and less restless. Australia agreed with him, I thought, as we sat across from each other at my parents’ dinner table, as we had all our lives, eating lemon chicken, because Thursdays was lemon chicken night, rain or shine.

  He’d kissed Claire briefly on the cheek when we arrived and told her she looked well. Claire’s face was like glass, reflecting back the expression of whoever she was speaking to. When she looked at Tim, the few times I caught her looking, she seemed calm, impassive, and slightly distracted; a woman having dinner with her in-laws a few days before her wedding.

  After dinner, Tim cornered me in the living room, passing me a Scotch glass with an inch of liquid in it, neat.

  “So, brother, have you been properly feted?”

  “Feted?”

  “I’m talking bachelor party. Has it occurred, or will you be in need of sleep and half-drunk on your wedding day?”

  I smiled, remembering the weekend with my college buddies, the golf, the drinks, and the drinks after that. “It’s been taken care of.”

  “Good. Sorry I missed it.”

  “No worries.”

  It was his turn to smile. “That sounds like home.”

  “Home is Australia now?”

  “That’s right. For now. Maybe for always. We’ll see.” He paused to take a sip of his drink. “You should … come visit sometime.”