Talking in Bed

by Antonya Nelson

  "But what if all that reassuring is bullshit?" Evan said. "What if you discover not that your nighttime fears were exaggerated and melodramatic, but that your daytime sunniness was the lie?"

  Rachel had stared up at the ceiling, seeing not it but the blurring colors on her own retinas. She felt as if she'd been turned inside out, becoming exposed and helpless.

  With Zoë, in the yard, she changed the subject, hopping back to William's tail, which had been, it turned out, slammed accidentally in a storm window.

  "After a bird," Zoë said. "Stupid thing. I can't stay out here," she added, patting her broad fair face and its various precancers. "I'll watch you from the window."

  "You don't have to watch me from the window." Rachel aimed the hose at the upstairs tenants' rusty swing set and sun-faded plastic playhouse, soaking everything. "I'm fine," she added after Zoë disappeared inside. Cars roared by and mosquitoes whined. Rachel took the opportunity to shoot William with the hose. "Fucking cat," she said venomously.

  "Are you thinking of killing yourself?" she'd asked Ev as colorless daylight returned. The elevator began humming as their neighbors left for work.

  "I have," he said, "and I'm not going to do it, but mostly because I don't want to hurt you or the boys. That's the truth—I just can't see it as an option." They sat huddled on opposite ends of the couch, staring bleary-eyed at the coffee table, the woman with her hand pushed up through the glass. All night long she'd held her muscles tight; Rachel ached as if she herself were in an eternal backbend.

  "You're scaring me," she told him, but he was also depressing her, wearing her out with the weight of being who he was. She recalled that her LSD trips had all come to this point as well: a desire to be done, to have the siege over. In the end, she was not unhappy to send him off to work, to fall into bed and rest.

  Now as she flung another arc of water toward the privet and William, the flow simply stopped. Rachel studied the nozzle like a cartoon character waiting for the inevitable prank. Zoë had turned the water off, and crossed the tiny mulchy yard demanding to know if Rachel had finished grieving.

  "I'm not grieving," Rachel said, presenting her dry face for Zoë's inspection. "Fuck him. Let him find himself, then he can come look for me."

  "Of course you're grieving," Zoë said. "What do you think all this watering has been about, anyway? You've been crying on my lawn all day. Enough already. The place is flooded." Zoë lifted her feet in the squish of her swampy yard, moved close to Rachel, and placed a peck on her forehead. "He'll be back," she promised.

  ***

  Alone in the condo with the last load of Ev's papers pulling his arms—had Ev actually written all these pages?—Paddy stood for a full minute ogling the Coles' coffee table. He'd been having dreams about this table. He'd had some hard-ons over this piece of furniture—the woman with her hand reaching from one side of the glass through to the other side, the bracing way she held her balance, her silver thigh and stomach muscles like a straining animal's, her riveted facial expression that reminded him of athletes in a seamless moment of perfect play. He wished Ev were taking the table with him to Wrigley Field; he'd like a chance to help carry it to the elevator, load it in his Bronco, embrace it in his arms, and learn the mythic woman's weight.

  II

  Eight

  GERRY COLE had once been described as a wastrel, connoting for his brother Evan, who'd been eighteen at the time, the image of a wandering minstrel wasting away in a carefree, drug-induced, utterly contrived euphoria, someone skipping along playing a brainless tune on a flute. Although Evan was only three years older than his brother, it often felt to him that he and Gerry belonged in separate generations, Ev with his parents' and Gerry with the one that followed, the one famous for never having learned restraint or responsibility, its males reputed to feel no particular desire to grow up.

  "It's all or nothing with Gerry," Evan had liked to say, mock mature, pretending to have a grudging admiration when in fact Gerry's life revolted him, infuriated him. Gerry, who'd been earmarked from birth as the doctor in the family, could not even finish the vocational school training that would have made him a simple lab technician. He'd been arrested for drug thefts; he'd had his driver's license and his voter's registration revoked; his blood was so polluted he could no longer be a donor—and the only reason he'd ever donated was for the money. He had only two sorts of friends, those he stole from and those who stole from him. Wastrel, Ev would think, recalling their father's face as he uttered the word, the contempt in his eyes, the consummate dismissal: he did not love his younger son.

  It became Ev's adolescent reckoning that he would have to be twice the son to make up for Gerry, to tip his side of the scale so solidly that Gerry's offenses wouldn't particularly register—an attitude in part protective of his brother, in part malicious toward him; the percentage of each, Ev did not know. He wished to disassociate himself, too, to join the ranks of the adult members of the household: the three grownups who would despair of Gerry's ever making much of himself.

  But it was their mother who'd kept them a family, their mother who'd forgiven each and every one of them each and every weakness. Until her death, Gerry had remained at home, on the top floor of the duplex they'd grown up in on Diversey. His mother called him shy and goodhearted, a late bloomer; a few weeks after her funeral, Gerry's father called him a freeloading junkie and sent him away.

  That Ev would always be responsible for his brother was taken for granted by everyone—first his mother, who had died comforted by Ev's steadiness, and then his father, who wouldn't again mention his younger son's name. Ev's duty to Gerry was held up by Rachel as an object lesson for their sons, whose inclinations showed every sign of leaning the same diametrically opposed ways his and his brother's did.

  Here was his problem, he thought: he had reconstructed his early life—two parents, two brothers, his sons born three years apart, the younger one vaguely slothful, banking on forgiveness and luck, the older driven and humorless. Evan didn't want to be his father, yet he'd made a life that looked just like his father's. His father had died, and Ev had taken his place, cheerless and angry and unpleasant to be around.

  He'd also sought the opposite of his brother Gerry his whole life; doing so prevented him from becoming a wastrel himself. Perhaps he had Gerry to thank for that. But of course he resented it. Evan knew all about his own feelings, but his intelligence didn't change them. "Intellectually, I'm fine," he heard his client Luellen saying. "Emotionally, I suck." He was furious with Gerry. He wanted to hit him when he saw the bulky, woodsmanlike shape of him lumbering along like a harmless, tourist-fed bear.

  Evan moved away from Rachel in July; in October, Gerry appeared at Ev's office, his weather-worn face grinning shyly up when Ev stepped out. Gerry sidled closer automatically sliding his hands into his pockets. "Wallpaper," he said mysteriously, meaning that Ev had redecorated since Gerry had last seen the office. Ev stuffed his hands in his own pockets, as if the two of them might butt heads instead of shake. Gerry's appearances were seasonal; now it was autumn, and this visit was his announcement of it. They'd met most recently at the bank, in the summer, where Ev had withdrawn five hundred dollars for him. Gerry had asked for it in small bills: tens, fives, ones. He owed people, he said. He shrugged affably, still smiling, as if his debts came simply as the natural consequence of his character: he could not help them, any more than he could help the dimple in his left cheek, the recession of his hair, the vague limp when he ambled.

  When they were young, Evan had lit Gerry's first cigarette and poured his first drink; later, he'd fed him his first psychedelic mushroom, razored his first line of cocaine. "All or nothing," he'd said as Gerry slid out of a chair at a college party Ev had taken him to. Gerry slumped onto the floor in a pasty puddle, face drained and nearly green: an almost overdose. Whatever moderating force exerted itself over Evan's life was completely absent in Gerry's. When Ev quit drinking, he understood that part of his doing so was yet another fi
rm proof of the difference between him and his brother. That he'd taken it up again bothered him for the same reason: he was one step closer to Gerry. The proximity made him queasy.

  "Come on in," Evan told him now, noting that despite Gerry's apparent lapses, he still managed to show up between clients, ten minutes before the hour, when Ev was free. "How much?" he asked when the door had closed between them and the waiting room.

  But Gerry would not get to the point quickly. In the ten minutes Ev could spare him today, he would fashion a loose weave of topics, ranging from the political (what did Ev make of the upcoming presidential election?) to the seemingly intimate (a rash on Gerry's chest, itchy and red) to the ridiculous (had Ev noticed how closely an eggplant resembled a sweat gland?). These topics were pursued in a juggling and systematic method, one broached, then dropped, the next rotated in. That Ev had grown accustomed to his brother's style was beside the point; it had lost its charm for him, although others still seemed to find Gerry endearingly eccentric—"unique," Ev had heard one of them lovingly declare him. His own son Zach displayed what Ev considered a dangerous devotion to his miscreant uncle.

  When Ev had reached Gerry to notify him of their father's death, Gerry had had a kind of seizure, grabbing at his heart, rotating on his feet, setting one heel like the point of a drawing compass while the other spun wildly around. The purely physical response shook Ev; his own had been so cerebral. This was the last time his brother had been to Ev and Rachel's apartment, more than a year ago.

  Gerry found it difficult to sit down, ever, and now wandered around Ev's office, picking up things, turning them over, studiously avoiding the box of their father's ashes, as if he might begin an uncontrollable spinning once more. The clothes Ev bought him— Rachel bought him, Ev corrected himself, Rachel in her thoughtful way finding practical clothing for her homeless brother-in-law, hiking boots and fishing vests and woolen shirts, traction for the snow, plenty of pockets, warm and waterproof, thoughtful of her, genius—became instantly worn out and filthy. Or he gave them away, blithely trading them for a meal or a high or a lay. "I'm a generous guy," Gerry would say when asked where his wool sweater had gotten to. "Or maybe just a chump." Between the two, Ev thought, lay a very fine line, one he himself would never be likely to overstep.

  At the bookcase, Gerry turned to waggle a wrist. A heavy bracelet jingled. "Got myself some dog tags," he said, muffling the end of his sentence in his sparse beard as if embarrassed. As if, but not genuinely embarrassed, Ev thought unkindly, then scolded himself. If Gerry were his patient, he'd have offered to hang up his coat, to make him a cup of tea, to listen without annoyance to his fragmented bits of friendly conversation, to insist, for God's sake, that he sit down and take a load off. He would be able to extend all this magnanimity if Gerry's hopelessness didn't seem so creepily to include him. He would be able to inhale his brother's body odor without recoiling if he didn't fear exuding the same odor himself.

  "And?" Ev said, resting his rear end impatiently on his desktop, crossing his feet at the ankles, his arms over his chest, defensive and demanding—a posture he assumed against his will. His brother made him hate himself.

  "Read it." Gerry fluttered his hand once more, forcing Evan to step forward, hold the metal disk, make contact with Gerry's weathered, dirty hand. Gerry's ring finger ended above the second knuckle, the result of a childhood bicycle accident, thirty-five years in the past. Evan had carried him home from beneath the el tracks, where it had happened, leaving behind their bikes, allowing his brother's blood to soak down his neck and shirt, steadfastly not caring when he returned to find both bikes stolen, knowing that his virtuous behavior would earn him another one, one purchased immediately; his mother would make sure to replace his first, because he was older, because he'd traded on his own noble behavior in thinking of his injured brother the flapping fingertip, the shock. As soon as he'd lifted Gerry in his arms, he'd imagined his new bicycle, imagined his mother's pleasure in his selflessness. He waited several hours to return to the tracks, banking on larceny. Did he hate Gerry because Gerry seemed to know that he was not truly merciful? Or was he miscalculating, assigning Gerry the role of idiot savant when in fact he was merely a benign drug addict with a faltering neurochemistry?

  The bracelet was for identification; it listed Ev's name, address, and phone number. It was literally a dog tag: My name is Gerry, read one side, and on the reverse I belong to.

  "Used to have a wallet, then I lost it. Can't stand things around my neck," Gerry said, tugging at nonexistent neckwear. "Never have been able to. You think I should have this rash looked at?" He was opening his jacket and shirt once more, making a path through the layers for himself to peer into. "How about another hundred fifty or so? Hundred fifty O.K.? Maybe just forty-five, one forty-five?" He was speaking into his chest, the patch of acne that had cropped up. Asking for money appeared to embarrass him, but it also appeared to amuse him, being a kind of taunt, a demand that Evan would never deny.

  Gerry's body odor would linger, although Ev had a functioning window he could open after Gerry left. He had dropped his brother's wrist and now plunged his hand into his back pocket, was counting out cash without thinking about anything but opening the window, perhaps purchasing a small fan to circulate air better about his next client, a woman whose two children and husband had died in a car accident, who couldn't overcome her grief, who was paralyzed now with a barrage of fresh phobias and worst-case scenarios.

  "Oh yeah, great," said Gerry, taking the cash without touching Evan's hand, which was precisely the way Evan wanted him to take it. "Oh yeah, this is the ticket, this fits the bill. You gonna vote? I was thinking of not voting this year, what the hell, make a statement, it never helps, but you can never tell. I like Bill's wife, I'm thinking of becoming Gerry Rodham Cole myself, what do you think?" He was buttoning his shirt, zipping his jacket, stuffing money in his pockets, pulling on a hat—not the thermal one Rachel had taken the time to order from a catalogue for him but a cheap Cubs cap—and was suddenly gone, precisely ten minutes after entering. Was it the exact timing that bothered Ev? Was it the tightness in his stomach as he watched Gerry gently close the outer door, wiping away an errant fingerprint? Was it the flow of what he should have said that would plague him the rest of the day?

  If he were Rachel, he might cry. She had a brother she cried over, a perfectly functional human being with children and a job and a mostly acceptable wife. It was this emotion, this not-crying, that he took with him weekly to the racquetball court with Paddy Limbach. He'd recommended hitting sports for several of his clients in the last few months, having found it helpful for himself. When Paddy had suggested it, Ev could not have imagined anything more unlikely. But he now looked forward to their weekly games, to the unspoken exclusion of women. If Lisel Carson and her dire grief weren't already awaiting him, he might have called Paddy and tried to set up a game. Rachel always thought it was the money that bothered Ev about Gerry, but the money, the thing that brought Gerry time and again to Ev's door, was the very least of it. Ev felt responsible and guilty and angry and despairing—parental, as if Gerry had three instead of the standard two, as if Ev had an extra son—and Gerry seemed both to know and not know it. He came to collect payment on a debt that would never be satisfied.

  "The wrong address," Ev said aloud in the middle of his session with Lisel Carson.

  "Beg pardon?" she asked. It pleased her to have Ev mutter anything at all during her sessions; he was so quiet she tended to babble.

  "Nothing, go ahead, I'm sorry." His old address, the one where Rachel and the boys lived, now swung on Gerry's wrist.

  ***

  Rachel drank more now that Ev had gone. She looked forward to it the way magazine articles told her she shouldn't. The first drink relaxed her made her glowing and somehow optimistic, happily miserable, gung-ho for her glumness. The next three or four dampened her spirits, but they also eased her like a shoehorn toward sleep.

  She was prone to remini
scence, and now indulged it methodically, chronologically, as if she were old. She thought about when her boys were young enough to cry in the night, the way she lay in bed with them, cramped and uncomfortable, smoothing one's sweaty hair, rubbing the other's cold feet. How temporary it had been. How condescending she'd felt toward women who approached her to call her lucky, to warn her that she ought not to squander the brief days of her boys' youth. Now it was as if those tiny children had died. She thought about her husband's love, which she had apparently taken for granted. She thought, with genuine amazement, that she had felt too much needed then, as if she were the heart of the house, the busy organ that kept it alive, and of how she had often fled to the bathtub, locking her family on the other side of the door, submerging herself in oily steaming water until all she heard was the faraway clang of the apartment building's plumbing and her own selfish heartbeat. You, you, you, it said.

  Then, she had felt stuck and frustrated, unable to be autonomous in the world, scattered like buckshot, little parts of her flung all over town, at day care and kindergarten, riding buses and trains with people who couldn't have cared less whose life they touched, short-temperedly, recklessly. Her burdens then had seemed sticky and warmly damp: tears and urine and feverish foreheads. She and Ev had often reached their bed at the end of the day as if it were a foxhole, a place to fall into and take refuge in. It could overwhelm her, once upon a time, such neediness and need.

  And now she seemed hardly necessary at all. Zach and Marcus snapped into action every morning as if wound up during the night: they rose before Rachel, fed themselves, pulled on their jackets, took their bus passes and lunch sacks, summoned the elevator, and disappeared down the shaft into the clockwork of their day.

  Rachel would rise later, restore herself to reasonable enough shape to attend a consultation or hearing, then return home and stare out her office window. It was a good view for thinking, she'd discovered. Although the rest of the building had had its roof replaced, the patchwork green and brown slate still remained over the elevator shaft, a pitched roof over a box like a cottage in a forest, complete with small, decorative leaded windows. When it rained, water ran over the stones like a stream, a small piece of nature for Rachel to turn her eyes toward: the Virginia creeper sneaking up the drainpipes, an autumn orange flushing its leaves; the water dripping unhurriedly down, down, down. It was a place where elves might be imagined to live, or foundlings, or a warty witch.