‘What about?’
‘I want your help with something.’
My help. With something. That didn’t seem to add up right.
‘What?’
‘The one thing you’re really good at. You know the one thing you’re really good at, right?’
I chewed that over for a minute. I could think of a couple of things, but I was pretty sure Ben would disagree with them.
‘Um … No.’
‘Memorizing.’
‘Oh. Memorizing. Right.’
I was good at something. Something even Ben couldn’t deny. I jumped off my bed and followed him into his room.
Ben’s room was all but unnavigable. All of his clothes, school books and sporting equipment lived permanently on the floor, along with many other items that not only resisted categorization but identification. But I picked my way through to his little round table and sat, and he sat across from me. Oddly, there was nothing on its surface. Everything that might have sat on the table lived on the floor. It defied logic.
‘I’m going to be a famous actor,’ he said.
‘You are?’
‘I am.’
He spoke as though there was no possibility, not even a remote one, that he could be wrong, that the world would not support him in this endeavor. It was as though he’d already made his dream come true just by declaring it.
‘OK,’ I said.
‘But I need you to help me learn my lines.’
‘For what?’
‘I got a part in the school play. We all have to start somewhere!’ he shouted, as if I had disparaged his announcement between sentences. ‘There’s this one part where I have to take a sword and fight a duel with this guy, and the whole time we’re dueling I have a speech. It’s kind of long. Well … like six sentences, but they’re long sentences, and they don’t make a lot of sense. So I want you to help me learn my lines.’
I looked up into his face, and it was open, unguarded. Nothing hostile or dangerous. It was a look I wasn’t sure I’d seen before.
‘I don’t know if I can help you,’ I said. Stupidly. ‘It’s not like I can memorize it for you.’
I watched the gates slam shut again in his eyes.
‘Well, just go over it with me,’ he said.
He had to read it to me. I was barely eight, and it was a bit beyond my reading level. But it wasn’t beyond my memorization level. Nothing was. When I hear things, or read things, they remain printed on my brain and I can access them again anytime I want. I don’t know why. It’s just always been that way.
Here’s what Ben had to memorize. Note that I’m now twenty-four years old, and I can still recite it word for word. At least one of us learned it that day.
‘ “I come to defend her honor, the honor granted to her by right of her station in the realm. And when I have won my battle she shall reclaim the keys to her kingdom, and all will be put to right again. Did you fancy no one would see, would notice your treachery, your crimes against your own fellows, or did you only think no one would be brave enough to fight you for it? I will lay down my life for my country and for its rightful ruler. Though, more likely, I will lay down yours.” And when I say that last bit,’ Ben added, ‘I stab the guy with the sword.’
‘That’s five sentences,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘It’s five sentences.’
‘Fine, it’s five sentences. Who cares?’
‘You said it was six.’
Ben sighed. ‘I guess it just feels like more.’
He got up from the table, rummaged around in his closet, and pulled out two hiking poles. He tossed me one. I wasn’t expecting it, so it just hit my shoulder and fell on to the rubbish heap of the floor.
I stared at it. I had no idea where we were going with this.
‘Who wrote this play?’ I asked, thinking it wasn’t very good.
‘Shakespeare. He was just having a bad day.’
‘Seriously?’
‘No, not seriously, stupid. Ken Friedman. He’s a sophomore. You want to pick up the pole?’ Ben was already fiercely impatient with me.
‘Why? Are we going hiking?’
‘No, we’re not going hiking, stupid. Why are you so stupid? We’re going to work on my big scene. That’s your sword.’
‘Oh. My sword.’
I got up from the table and picked up my sword. I wasn’t sure how one would go about sword fighting in the middle of a landfill. I wasn’t even sure how to move closer to Ben.
He kicked a backpack halfway across the room and made a swath in the mess with one foot. Then he approached me, hiking pole raised, and I winced. It was all I could do to keep from running back to my room. He looked quite sincere about running me through. But I steeled myself and raised my ‘sword’.
I could almost see the wheels spinning in Ben’s head as he tried to remember his first line.
‘I have come to … to honor …’
‘I come to defend her honor, the honor granted to her by right of her station in the realm. ‘
‘I have come to defend the honor granted by the realm. Her honor granted by the realm. By right of the realm.’
‘I come to defend her honor, the honor granted to her by right of her station in the realm.’
We went on like this for a few minutes. Every sentence came out wrong at least three or four times, then came out close enough to right that I didn’t correct him. But when we came around to the first sentence again, I found Ben was no closer to mastery. I’ve heard people use the expression ‘mind like a steel trap’, but in Ben’s case the trap seemed designed to keep anything from getting in.
‘You do it all the way through,’ Ben said. ‘So I can hear how it sounds. But leave the last line for me. I think I know the last line.’
I raised my hiking pole.
‘I come to defend her honor, the honor granted to her by right of her station in the realm. And when I have won my battle she shall reclaim the keys to her kingdom, and all will be put to right again. Did you fancy no one would see, would notice your treachery, your crimes against your own fellows, or did you only think no one would be brave enough to fight you for it? I will lay down my life for my country and for its rightful ruler.’
‘Though it’s more likely I will lay down yours,’ Ben shouted, and jabbed me in the solar plexus with the tip of the pole.
I fell over backwards, and a notebook rammed painfully into my back. I remember thinking that it hurt to be around Ben even when we seemed to be getting along fine.
‘Ow,’ I said, rubbing the spot on my chest, though my back hurt more.
‘Sorry.’ He held a hand down to help me up. ‘Can’t afford to piss you off. I still need a lot of work. Don’t I?’
‘I’ll say.’ I got up by myself, without taking his help.
I sat down at the bare table and he sat across from me, a look in his eyes like he might be about to eat me up. Like somehow ingesting me would help him gain access to something. Something I had that he needed.
‘How do you memorize things like that?’
‘I don’t know. They just go in and stick.’
‘I wish I knew how you did it. That’s one thing about you … Well, two. Actually. Something else you do, and I wish I knew how.’
‘What?’
He waited a long time, appearing lost in his own thoughts. I would have bet money he’d never spit it out. But he surprised me.
‘How do you always make Mom and Bert like you?’
I was short on tact when I was eight, I guess. Because I just told the truth. You’d think I’d have known better by then.
‘You just … don’t be bad.’
And that was Ben’s detonator.
Looking back, it seems clear that I was triggering my brother by suggesting he was wrong and bad and irredeemable. But at the time it just felt more like stating the obvious. And Ben’s reactions were about as understandable to me as advanced calculus.
He pushed away from the t
able so hard that the table lurched in my direction, and my recoil upended my chair, and I fell back and hit my head on something on the floor. I was never sure what.
‘Screw you!’ Ben yelled. ‘Get the hell out of my room! I’ll learn these lines on my own! I’ll be fine without you, you little shit!’
I got the hell out of his room. Locked myself in my own room to nurse my wounds. Physical and otherwise.
27 October 1984
WHEN THE NIGHT of the school play came around, Ben was anything but fine.
I sat in the third row of the auditorium, between my mother and my father. They had to lean over me to talk to each other. To say all the things I didn’t want to have to overhear. It was painful.
My mother was prepping my father on how not to hurt Ben’s feelings regarding his first dramatic performance.
‘Now, you say something encouraging to him, you hear? Even if he’s bad.’
‘Well, I don’t think that’s much of a way to raise a boy. Calling bad good.’
‘I didn’t mean you had to say it’s good if it isn’t. Just be encouraging.’
‘Like how?’
‘Oh, I don’t know …’ she said impatiently. ‘Why do I always have to think of these things for you? You have a brain. How about you say something like, “Well, Ben, if you keep going with this acting thing you might really get somewhere.” ’
Long silence.
Then my father said, ‘Just keep your fingers crossed that he’s good.’
When Ben finally marched out on to the stage holding a painted wooden sword, I could feel the jolt of electrical tension that ran between the two of them.
Ben raised his wooden sword to another boy who stood about eight inches shorter, and glanced nervously out into the audience.
‘I come to claim …’ he said, and then trailed off, and I knew we were in big trouble.
Honestly, I was surprised. I knew he was bad at memorization, but I also knew this was hugely important to him. So I figured he’d found a way to solve the problem somehow. Hard work, maybe. Or maybe that’s just what I would have done.
The whole audience picked up on the tension, and shifted slightly in its collective seat. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my father sink his face into one big hand.
‘I come to claim … the right …’
More painful silence.
I whispered, ‘I come to defend her honor, the honor granted to her by right of her station in the realm.’
When nothing happened, I rose to my feet, ready to call out the line loudly enough for Ben to hear it. I felt my mother’s hand on the crown of my head. She pressed down, and I was returned to my seat. She put a finger to my lips.
‘He’s on his own now,’ she whispered into my ear. ‘No matter how bad it gets. We’re not trying to be cruel. It just has to be that way.’
Then we heard the line, but not from Ben. It came from offstage, and in the voice of a grown-up.
Ben repeated the line, then opened his mouth to say the second line, and ended up right back where he started from. For many, many painful seconds.
‘Shit!’ he said, really belting it out, and threw his wooden sword down on to the boards of the stage, where it clattered loudly.
I winced. My parents winced. The whole audience winced.
Ben stormed off the stage.
In the excruciating silence that followed, my father leaned across me and asked my mother, ‘What was it you wanted me to say to Ben, again?’
A long silence. Then she said, ‘Maybe just don’t say anything at all.’
‘No problem there,’ he said.
A grown-up, probably a teacher, took the stage, picked up Ben’s sword, and fought the duel while reading the lines from a script clutched in his other hand.
I thought we might leave, and go find Ben, but we didn’t. Not until the play was over. To this very day I don’t know whether my parents thought it would be unconscionably rude to leave mid-play, or if they simply chose to hide the fact that Ben’s performance was in any way connected to them.
Afterwards, we found Ben sitting out on the front steps of the school, in the dark, talking to two girls. They both sat disturbingly close to him – disturbing to me, anyway – one on each side, laughing in a way that sounded forced and artificial. One had her hand on his forearm.
All mirth ended when they looked up and saw us standing there.
My father said, ‘Ready to go home, son?’ Speaking of forced and artificial, my father had been calling Ben ‘son’ for the better part of a year, ever since legally adopting Ben, but he still couldn’t manage to sound like he meant it.
The prettier of the two girls stared into my face, and I looked down at some squashed gum on the concrete and blushed.
‘Oh, Ben. Your little brother is so cute,’ she said.
‘Him?’ Ben asked. Like there were several.
‘Yeah. He’s adorable.’
‘Hmm,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t see it. But OK.’
‘Now, Ben,’ my father said.
Ben sprang to his feet.
‘You were great, Ben,’ the other girl said.
Ben was, of course, stunned. We all were.
‘I was?’
‘Oh, yeah. So much passion!’
Ben smiled and followed us out to the parking lot, a good ten paces behind me. And I was a good ten paces behind my parents.
I heard my mother say, ‘See? That’s how you find a compliment.’
And my father snorted and said, ‘Yeah, right. I think there’s some romantic interest required for that one.’
Then behind me I heard one of the girls say, ‘Maybe we’ll see you later, Ben.’
And Ben said, ‘Yeah. Maybe you will.’
I wondered what that meant. It definitely sounded like it meant something.
Later that night, much later, there was giggling in Ben’s room, and some other noises I struggled to identify. It woke me, and I lay awake for a long time, clarifying beyond a doubt that I was hearing more than one girl in Ben’s room.
I didn’t even try to go back to sleep until I saw their shadows creep by the shrubbery outside my window on their way out.
I never said a word to anyone about it. Maybe so he wouldn’t kill me. Maybe because I was grudgingly impressed.
31 December 1984
THIS IS A brief memory of my brother Ben ‘before’, but a disturbingly vivid one.
Ben had a New Year’s Eve party in our ‘recreation room’ downstairs, which I guess is a nice name to call a basement with some old couches, a ping-pong table and a dartboard.
Hard to imagine that room packed with at least thirty reveling fourteen-year-olds, but I don’t need to imagine. I saw it with my own eyes.
My parents stayed upstairs and didn’t really chaperone. I guess they thought being right on the other side of the living room floor would be close enough. The one thing they absolutely insisted on: at fifteen minutes into the New Year, party over. All fourteen-year-olds, except theirs, would clear out on time, as agreed.
I sat in the living room with my parents, and we watched that New Year’s Eve entertainment show that ends with the ball dropping. There were moments when I had to physically hold my eyelids up with my fingers.
My dad had an old starter pistol, and, right after the ball dropped, he went off to get it. Brought it back into the living room with us.
‘I’m going to go down there and fire this off,’ he said, ‘and that’ll get their attention, and then they’ll know the party’s over.’ Then he looked right at me and said, ‘Unless you want to.’
‘Yeah, let Rusty,’ my mom said. ‘It’ll be cuter coming from him. Not so embarrassing to Ben as having his father come down there and chase them all out.’
I felt the cold metal of the pistol in my hands when I took it from him, and the weight of it. I had to remind myself it wasn’t a real weapon.
‘What am I supposed to do again?’
‘Just go down there, point this up at th
e ceiling, pull the trigger, and say, “Party’s over.” I guarantee you’ll have their attention by then.’
Nearly paralyzed by the responsibility, I made my way down the basement stairs.
It was crowded. And loud. There was supposed to be no alcohol, of course, but it was plain by the stumbling around that someone had sneaked some in. I got my foot stepped on twice before I made it out to the middle of the room.
I saw Ben lying on the old green couch. On top of a girl. Just lying still, his face buried in the crook of her neck. He wasn’t kissing her, or giving her a hickie. He wasn’t doing anything. Just burying his face in her.
I raised the pistol and put one finger in my ear. Which was silly, because of course it could only be the other ear. The wrong ear. And I pulled the trigger. The sound was deafening. Almost literally. I could hear nothing but a ringing noise in my right ear for quite some time.
I looked up to see all Ben’s friends holding perfectly still. Staring at me. Then one fell down, laughing.
‘Party’s over,’ I said.
There were a couple of disgusted groans – even though all had agreed to the rules in advance – and Ben’s friend Kurt said, ‘Ben, do we really have to go?’
It took Ben what seemed like minutes to raise his head from its hiding place on that girl.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Go. Or Bert’ll be down here in, like, thirty seconds.’
They filed out with surprising speed.
I stood in the middle of the rec room, staring at Ben. And Ben lay on the couch – on the girl – staring back. His eyes were cool and completely placid. It frightened me. Looking back with the wisdom of years, I know he was probably on something. Something stronger than the flask or two of booze someone had undoubtedly snuck into the punch. At the time I just had the weird sensation that he had turned into someone else … but not really. Like Ben squared.
We stared at each other like that for a truly bizarre length of time.
Then Ben raised one hand and made a gun of his fingers. He sighted me down, and aimed at me for a few chilling moments. Then, in cold blood, he pulled the imaginary trigger. His hand even recoiled from the kick of the shot.
The look in his eyes never once changed as he murdered me.
When You Were Older (retail) Page 12