“Well, is this an emergency?” she asks, more rhetorically than earnestly, and I realize now, acutely, how much I miss her, my battle-ax, bad-ass, foul-mouthed, knocked-up older sister.
“Not really,” I venture. “I just came to say hi.”
“Well, why didn’t you ring the bell? You scared the living shit out of me.”
“I wanted to see if anyone was home,” I answer, innocently.
“Bullshit,” she says, hobbling toward the door. “You saw the car. You just wanted to see what a fuckin’ sty this place is so you can go back and report it to Ma.”
I pick my way out of the bushes and up the steps, where she unlocks and opens the door, scowling at me.
“Hi!” I say, wanting to charm her, hugging her gently under the arms. “You’re humongous.”
“Don’t kiss me,” she says, patting me cursorily on the back. “I’ve got this stuff on my face. And you don’t have to tell me I’m humongous. It’s not like I haven’t noticed.”
“All right,” I say, stepping in. “I won’t do either.”
“Good.” She closes the door behind her. The two of us stand there, in the derelict living room, and stare at each other, me smiling dopily, completely at a loss for what to do or say next, her still frowning.
“I’m sorry the place is such a mess. It’s not usually like this. It’s just that I can’t bend down much, and Lori’s had to work the past four days in a row, double shift. She took over my shifts for me until this is over,” she says, gesturing lamely at her belly.
“That’s okay,” I say, picking up a dirty plate off the floor and putting it on the coffee table. “I didn’t come over to do a cleaning inspection.”
“Then why’d you come?” She’s still got one hand on her back, looking fierce and put-upon.
“To see how you’re doing. Why else?”
“I don’t know,” she mumbles, waddling into the equally disheveled kitchen, and I trail her. “To get me to go to Joani’s Confirmation. It’s not like I don’t know it’s today. I got the messages,” she says, significantly. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for it?”
“It’s not till three,” I say.
“Is Joani all excited? You wanna cup of coffee or somethin’?” she asks, washing out two mugs in the sink. She’s still not outright warm and welcoming, but at least she doesn’t seem angry that I’m here anymore. I notice a paperback book with a pen stuck in it lying on the dining island: What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
“Yeah—I mean, I’ll have some coffee. And yeah, she’s excited. She’s wearing this dress for the first time that she’s been working on for months now.”
“That’s cute. She’s really into all that sewing stuff now, isn’t she?” Brenda sets down my coffee.
“Yeah. Bren, should you be drinking coffee?”
“It’s decaf,” she says. “Hazelnut. Lori got it for me.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“But thanks for your concern,” she says, flashing me a mock-sweet smile.
I laugh. “Don’t mention it.” Then neither of us says anything. I sip my coffee, which is stale and awful. Brenda’s eyes wander to the book. She reaches over, pulls out the pen, caps it, and puts it back in place.
“Doing your homework, huh?”
“Yeah.” She laughs grimly. “It’s the first time in a while.”
“How you doing, Bren? It’s any day now, right?”
“That’s what the doctor says,” she says, singsong. Then she shrugs. “I’m fine, I guess. I’m just hanging around like a hausfrau, watching HSC and waiting for the big ka-boom. I can hear it thumpin’ and kickin’ all the time now. Here, feel.”
She puts my hand on the middle of her belly; it feels strange, hard and taut, like a huge basketball, but silent nonetheless. “I can’t feel anything right now,” I say.
“You can’t?” she asks, putting her own hand there. I shake my head. “Oh, well,” she says, picking up her coffee. “Maybe later.”
“Who’s gonna take you to the hospital?”
She shrugs again. “I don’t know. Lori, I guess.”
“What if Lori’s at work?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll call an ambulance or something.”
“Brenda!” I protest.
“Well, who the fuck am I supposed to ask. Ma and Dad? Frank?”
“Have you called Frank recently?” I don’t tell her that Frank calls our house virtually every night, looking for an update, and usually ends up crying on the phone with my mother, both of them wondering aloud why Brenda is making their lives miserable.
“No,” she scoffs. “Why should I? Just so he can call me a fucking bitch and an unfit mother and say he’s gonna come get me? He’d probably try to trace the call!”
“Oh, Brenda, come on! Somebody’s gotta go to the hospital with you. And what if I’m in school when it happens? You gotta call Ma.”
“Eric, why? So she can call me an ingrate and all that shit? No, thanks. I can get through this myself. It’s not like I’m the first or anything.”
“Jesus, Brenda, you’ve gone off the deep end.”
She glares at me through the apricot masque. “Do you wanna just leave, buddy?”
“All right, all right, I’m sorry,” I say hastily. “I just don’t know why you’re making things so hard on yourself.”
“No, I guess you don’t,” she sulks, and then we’re both silent again. That goddamned southern belle is screeching on about some do-it-yourself sequin stapler on the TV in the other room. “So, you got into Yale, huh?” she finally proposes.
“Uh-huh,” I answer warily.
“You psyched, or what?” She sounds like she’s trying to be nice now, and I would be touched if she already hadn’t gotten me so down.
“I guess so,” I say, assuming her fuck-all tone. “I’m not really thinking about it right now. I have to give another stupid speech for graduation next month.”
“Oh, poor baby!” she bursts out, then with unmasked rue, “Jeez, Eric, you got it fuckin’ made.”
“That’s not true!” I say, wounded. “I hate it when you say that.”
“Okay, sue me”—broadly sarcastic. Then, gesturing first at herself, then around the apartment, “I guess I mean relatively speaking.” I just stare down into my coffee, a little pissed that I even decided to come now, and I guess she senses it, because she says, mimicking Joani, “Hey, Erky. Hey! Just kidding, okay?”
“Whatever.” I look up, smiling weakly.
“But Eric, listen. If you came out here to get me for Joani’s Confirmation, you know I can’t go to that.”
“Why not?” I whine. “It was the first thing out of Joani’s mouth this morning when she woke me up: ‘Is Brenda gonna come?’ She misses you so much, Bren. She doesn’t understand why you’re doing this.”
“She’s too young to think one way or the other about it.”
“You’re so wrong!” I say. “She misses you a lot. We all do. You don’t believe it, but I swear to God we do. Ma hasn’t been the same since you left. She’s a nervous wreck, she lashes out at everyone, she can hardly say your name without bursting into tears. And Dad’s not any better. I mean, living in that house has been like—”
But I stop then. She’s been frowning down into her coffee, and all of a sudden I realize that she’s crying, shaking infinitesimally, tears running down her face, cutting jagged lines into her dried-up apricot masque. The sight of her, crying so softly, scares me. Awkwardly, I take her hand in mine on the dining island. “Bren,” I say quietly. “Bren, it’s okay.”
“Oh, God, Eric,” she says in a tiny, tight voice. “It’s not okay. It’s not. I mean, I miss you guys, too—even Ma. I hate it here, I swear. But, Eric”—and she looks up at me, her face filled with clayey anguish—“look what I’ve done to my life! Look at the fuckin’ mess I’ve made! I’m not even twenty-one and I’m gonna have a baby in a few days—” She stops and coughs, like the very thought overwhelms her. “—And I do
n’t know what the fuck I’m doing with my life, and I don’t want to get married, not yet, and—and so what have I done? I’ve disgraced the whole family! It’s bad enough with Ma, but I can’t even think about Dad, let alone talk to him. Do you think I don’t know how humiliated he is when he’s walking around town thinking that people are sayin’, ‘Oh, there’s the guy whose daughter’s a fuckin’ slut!’ Eric, I know that’s what he’s thinking!”
“Brenda—”
“And then there’s Grandma—Doris!—and her wrath of God on my back.”
“Bren, forget about Grandma. She’s an old woman from the old country. She doesn’t even know what’s going on anymore.”
“And then there’s you, this walking picture of perfection. I mean, you’re three years younger than me, and you’re outta here! You’re gonna have a life, and I’m trapped here—with this!” She gestures at her belly. “Eric, what’s gonna happen to me?”
I take a deep breath, and brace myself. Then I say, “Bren, I gotta tell you a few things. First of all, nobody’s judging you—nobody that matters. You’re wrong about Dad, I swear. He’s not hanging his head in shame. He’d gladly walk down Main Street with you right now, just as you are, carrying a big sign with an arrow that says ‘My Pregnant Daughter,’ if only you’d stop shutting him out of your life and let him be your father. And as for all the rest—all the aunts and cousins, and all the philistines—”
“What?”
“—and all the assholes in West Mendhem, then you just have to tell them to go fuck themselves. Because the people who really matter—your family, and your real friends, and Frank—we’re all behind you. And you just have to be able to smile at all the other losers who have nothing better to do than cast judgment on you, and tell ’em to fuck off.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Second, you’re gonna have a life. You’re gonna have a beautiful baby, and Ma’s gonna help you bring it up for as long as you want, and you’re gonna figure out what you want to do with your life—whether that’s going to computer school, or just being a mother, or whatever—and you’re gonna do it. And you’re gonna have to work it out with Frank that you don’t commit to anything you don’t want until you’re ready. He’s gonna have to understand. But he will, if you finally sit down and talk to him.”
“Easy for you to say,” she repeats, implacable.
“There’s one more thing I have to tell you,” I push on, and this is where my hands start to shake around the coffee mug, and I feel that horrible tremor come into my voice. “And that’s please don’t ever tell me that I’m the picture of perfection again, or that I don’t have any problems. Because you’re wrong in a big way.”
“Oh, really?” she scoffs, pushing me further. I can feel it. I’m not going back this time.
“Yeah, Bren, really!” I come back, harder than her. “Really. ’Cause you don’t know this, but I fell really hard for somebody this year.”
She looks at me, quiet for a second. Then she goes, “So? It’s about time.”
“Yeah, but it’s not that simple.”
“Why, who is it—Phoebe? What’s the problem? ’Cause she’s half Jewish? Who cares?”
“It’s not Phoebe. It’s nobody like Phoebe.”
“So?” she keeps pushing. “Who, for God’s sake? Some black girl?” She laughs.
“No, some black—” I retort, then stop, my heart racing.
Then she suddenly stops, too. “Some black what?”
I don’t say anything. I just stare at her defiantly, shaking like crazy.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” she asks me in a tiny little voice.
“I think so,” I say.
“Like, what everybody at school always said about you?”
“Yeah.” Now I know she knows what I’m talking about.
“Oh,” she says, then, oddly, “And I always told them they were wrong.”
“Well, thanks for defending me,” I say, for lack of anything else. I feel like I’ve pushed a boulder off the side of the cliff and I’m waiting for it to crash. But it doesn’t seem to crash. Southern Belle keeps carrying on in the other room.
“But I guess I was wrong. Right?” She looks up cautiously at me, and I feel like she’s looking at me for the first time, like she feels like she’s looking at a total stranger. “Is that what you’re tellin’ me?”
“I guess so,” I say, shrugging. For the longest time, she just stares down into her coffee mug, perplexed, and I begin to wonder if it was such a good idea to tell her, but for the fact that I wanted her to know that, like her, I wasn’t without dilemmas. Finally she looks up at me and goes, “Are you sure?” She sounds more annoyed than anything else, like I’ve just asked her to work out on paper some mathematical brain-teaser.
“About what?”
“About—you know. I mean, what about Phoebe?”
“What about Phoebe?”
“Well, I mean, you spend all your time with her. Aren’t you attracted to her?”
“No! Not that way! Would you be?”
Brenda throws her hands in the air. “Oh, fuckin’ A, Eric, don’t make this any more confusing than it is! I mean, you’re not attracted to girls at all?”
“Bren, I don’t know!” Now I’m getting exasperated because I hadn’t expected the conversation would go this far. “I really haven’t given it that much thought. It’s not like it’s forever, or anything. Or—I don’t know. I just wanted you to know, that’s all.”
But I can’t seem to pull her out of her distraction. “Because if it’s forever”—and she actually lowers her voice—“do you know what kind of a fuckin’ life you’re gonna have? People are gonna be beating on you for the rest of your life!”
“Not necessarily. Not at Yale. Anyway, Bren, this is all beside the point. I just wanted you to know that I’m not perfect, and I’m sick of hearing it from you. It’s presumptuous.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me,” I say, feeling stern and authoritative.
She gets up and pours more coffee for herself. “You want some?” she asks, waving the pot at me.
“No thanks.”
She sits down again, pats at the remaining apricot masque on her face, looks uneasily at me, sips, looks away, then looks back again. Finally, she puts down her mug. “Who did you say this—this person is? Some black—some black person?”
“Yes, Brenda, some black person,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Who happened to go to St. Banner. Who’s really smart and really rich and really fucked up, okay? And who doesn’t happen to go there anymore, okay?”
“Oh my God,” she says, going blank. “Is he that kid who, you, like—the one, you know, who you saved his life? The kid getting beaten up on the common? And all that publicity and everything?”
“Yep.” I nod gravely.
“Oh my God, Eric, this is too much for me to take in all at once. Do Ma and Dad know about this?”
“No!” I say. “And you’re not gonna tell them. You gotta promise me that, Bren. The time’s not right to tell them. Maybe it’ll never be.”
“All right, all right.” She sounds faintly offended. “I wasn’t gonna say anything. Does anybody know?”
“No.”
“Not even little Phoebe?”
“Not even Phoebe,” I say. “Well, actually, no one except this creepy teacher at school who saw us in Boston once.”
“This really gets weirder and weirder. Which teacher?”
“Mrs. Bradstreet.”
“I always hated her.”
“She’s weird,” I concede.
“Yeah,” Brenda says blankly. She’s silent then, absently running her hand over her belly, and I fall silent, too. It’s May outside—so warm and guileless—and it’s pressing in unbearably upon the kitchen windows, summoning us out of this squalid double helix of secrets and into the sun.
“Are you mad I told you?” I finally ask her.
“What?” she says, looking up. �
�Mad? No!” She seems offended again. “I’m just taking it all in, that’s all.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah! Eric, for God’s sake, you’re my little brother. The last thing I’m gonna be here is mad. I’m not some bigot or something.”
“I know,” I say indulgently.
There’s another long, funny pause. I wonder if, my primary mission failed and my secondary, spontaneous one eliciting such an ambivalent response, I should cut my losses and leave now. I’m about to propose as much when she slides herself off the barstool and puts her hand over my arm. “Look, honey,” she says, “do me a favor. I’m gonna go in Lori’s room and do my breathing exercises and put myself together, and think this through, and make a phone call I have to make. And when I come out, we can talk some more, okay? Why don’t you hang out in the den and watch some TV or something? Or did you bring a book?”
“No.”
“Well, just watch the TV for a half-hour or so. You’ll be okay.”
Brenda suddenly seems oddly businesslike to me. “You sure you don’t just want me to go?”
“No, no,” she says. “Definitely not. Just give me a little time, hunh?”
“I can’t stay too late. I gotta get back for the Confirmation.”
“I know. Just—just bear with me, okay?” And she looks so funny, standing there pleading with apricot flaking off her face, and she sounds so much like our mother, that I shrug—confused, still feeling half-freakish for my confession—and plant myself in front of Home Shopping Club while she waddles off down the hall.
I don’t know how long I sit there watching Southern Belle, who sounds all pumped up on helium, hawk cubic zirconia earrings and home blood pressure kits, but it’s coming up on one-thirty and I’m anxious about getting back to West Mendhem in time for the Confirmation. Brenda is in Lori’s room, on Lori’s phone, having some sort of animated conversation—I can hear her voice rise and fall in exasperation and entreaty from time to time—but I have no idea whom she’s talking to. Finally, fed up with Southern Belle, I decide to flout Brenda’s wishes and make myself useful. I gather up all the dirty plates, glasses, and cutlery lying around the apartment and start scraping them off in the kitchen sink.
Getting Off Clean Page 33