Brother and Sister

by Edwin West

  Paul rushed back into the apartment, gathered up Grimes’ clothes and threw them down the stairwell. Then he went back into the apartment, closing and locking the door behind him.

  lngrid was sitting on the floor, the expression on Paul’s face prompting her to raise her arms protectively in front of her face, pleading, “Don’t, Paul! It isn’t what you think!”

  “You were in bed with him!” Paul roared at her.

  “I don’t love him, Paul! I swear to God, I don’t love him. I don’t love anyone but you!”

  He hit her, batting her hands away from her face with his left hand and slapping her forehand and backhand with his right.

  She fell back, sprawling, crying, “I couldn’t help it, Paul! I swear, I swear, I tried not to, but I couldn’t help it!”

  He went after her, grimly silent, hand upraised to hit her again. She rolled away across the floor, using a chair to help her to her feet. “Paul,” she gasped, “don’t do this! I’ll leave you if you hit me! Don’t you hit me!”

  He slapped her, open-handed, but it wasn’t enough, so he closed his hands into fists and did it right.

  When he had spent his anger, she lay cowering on the floor, sobbing and moaning. “Get out,” he told her, barely able to talk through his labored breathing. “Get your clothes on and get out, you tramp. Don’t come back.”

  She didn’t move. In fact, she acted as if she hadn’t heard him at all, but just stayed crouched on the floor, head buried in her hands, weeping noisily.

  He kept telling her to get up, to get to her feet and get out of the apartment. She wouldn’t move, though he kept screaming at her to do so. Finally he stalked out of the apartment and proceeded to get roaring drunk. Ingrid packed her things and left.

  The next day he borrowed two hundred dollars through American Express and went to see a lawyer. The divorce was speedy, requiring only that he keep signing forms, and then he moved back onto the base. He never heard from Ingrid again.

  That had happened three months ago, and it would have been over and done with except that Grimes was more of an idiot than anyone could have guessed. He tried to prefer charges against Paul for striking an officer. Colonel Gunderson, Paul’s commander, heard Paul’s side of the story and then told Grimes where to head in. Grimes was transferred, almost immediately, to another base.

  Three weeks later, Colonel Gunderson called Paul into his office. “You’re coming up for Airman First this month,” he said, “isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re going to be passed over, Dane,” said the colonel, “and I want to tell you why. It’s because of that thing with Lieutenant Grimes and your wife. I’m not saying you weren’t justified in what you did. But, no matter what the circumstances, a man shouldn’t be encouraged through promotion to go around punching officers.”

  Paul stared at him. “Encouraged?”

  “That’s all, Dane,” said the colonel.

  Paul felt bitterness rising in him like vomit. “You people really stick together, don’t you?” he said.

  “Watch yourself, Dane,” said the colonel. “You keep your nose clean, keep a clean record--you can still make Airman First next time around.”

  “You can keep Airman First,” Paul told him, and that was the end of it.

  But it had been the same way then as it was now. He’d moved, he’d acted, he’d been in motion, but it had taken weeks before he’d been able to believe that any of it was really happening. A couple of times, after he’d moved back to the base, he’d almost taken the bus into town after work, just as though he still lived there with Ingrid.

  It was the same way now. His mother and father were dead. The Red Cross gentleman had told him that, and the Air Force had confirmed it by cutting emergency leave orders, putting him on this plane and sending him home.

  That was real. If nothing else in all the world, at least that one fact was real, the fact that he was going home.

  He’d gone away from home only once in his life, and that was to serve his time with the Air Force. Once in his life he’d left home and he’d married a whore. Once in his life he’d ventured away from home, and they’d denied him his well-earned promotion because he hadn’t let an officer finish his business atop Paul’s wife. Once in his life he’d been away from home and, while he’d been gone, his mother and father had died.

  He was never going to leave home again.

  He sat staring out the plane window, not seeing drifting cloud mists and the countryside far below -- they were over France now--his mind busy with images of own home. Outside, the gray-blue painted clapboard, the porch across the front, the porch floor he’d painted a deck gray, the porch swing, the stoop, the trellises on either side, one of them loose. When he was a kid he used to pry that one away and crawl in on the cool dirt beneath, the porch floor inches above his head. He had liked to go there when he wanted to be alone, sometimes to play with soldiers or sometimes to lick his wounds when he’d lost a fight or been paddled by his mother.

  He could see the house inside as well. The living room, with the cream and gold wallpaper in vertical stripes. The long sofa and the two armchairs, all three pieces covered in the same dark green upholstery. The Oriental rug made in Brooklyn. The painting of Mary coming back after the Crucifixion--The Return From Golgotha--hanging over the sofa..

  The dining room, with the table where they ate, using the good china and the special silver, but only at Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. And the small table with the phone and phone book on it.

  The kitchen, always bright and always hot, with the refrigerator door that squeaked, so nobody could steal a midnight snack without being heard by Mom. And the bedrooms upstairs--he could see the color of the bedspreads, smell the faint smell of talcum that always pervaded the hall near the bathroom, because there was always somebody taking a bath and it was usually Angie. And the attic stairs where, his mother told him, he once had had an imaginary playmate, when he was maybe two or three years old.

  He could see the house, the people in it--his father, his mother and his kid sister--and he couldn’t wait to get back to them, because it was home and he was never going to leave again. Away from home it was cold and full of knives. He was never going to leave again. He was going to stay there. It would be the same again--

  It wouldn’t be the same.

  His parents were dead.

  The talcum smelled like a funeral parlor, the bedspreads were faded, the porch was rotting away, there was no one there any more.

  His parents were dead.

  All at once it was real, and he sat forward in the seat as though he’d been punched in the groin. He thought he was going to be sick or that he would die. But neither happened. The plane kept going over France toward home.

  ***

  The plane landed three times. First, at some place in Scotland; then in Newfoundland; and, finally, at Maguire Air Force Base in New Jersey. That much of the trip, three thousand miles, the Air Force took care of. From there, he was on his own.

  He took the bus up to New York, and went to the Port Authority building where he got another bus for home.

  It was the first time he’d ever been in New York City, but he didn’t even look out the bus windows. He was concentrating on the gnawing pain inside him, paying exclusive attention to that, because that was all that was real. And it was real now.

  On the second bus, headed through the late evening darkness, south along the Eastern Seaboard, he began to blame the Air Force. The Air Force had taken him away from his parents. It had been more than a year since he had seen them and now he would never see them again. That was because the Air Force had taken him away.

  And the Air Force had brought him to Germany where he had met Ingrid. The Air Force had known what Ingrid was, but no one had told him. And the Air Force had kept his promotion away from him because he had refused to let his wife be a whore.

  I’m not going back, he thought. No matter what happens, I’m not going
back.

  The bus roared south, stopping now and again, and at one rest stop he realized suddenly that he was hungry. He hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours. He hadn’t slept either, except for a little nap on the plane shortly before they’d reached Newfoundland. Still, he wasn’t tired. He was only hungry. He felt as though that were a betrayal--his parents dead and he hungry and able to think of food. But he had a hamburger and a glass of milk and then got back into the bus and they went on.

  The bus was supposed to arrive at eleven fifty-four--it was eleven minutes late. He had forgotten to send a telegram, forgotten to tell anybody he was arriving. Well, maybe the Red Cross would have told them he was coming home.

  He carried his suitcase and his canvas bag out of the bus depot and got into a taxi. He had only seven dollars left, but couldn’t stand the idea of waiting for a bus. He was suddenly filled with urgency. He had to get home.

  The cabbie tried to overcharge him and Paul boiled with rage. He reached across the seat, grabbed the cabbie by the throat and screamed at him, “I live here! This is my home! You can’t cheat me. I’m not a stranger.”

  “Jesus!” cried the cabbie, trying to get away. “Jesus, leggo! What the hell’s the matter with you? Leggo!”

  Paul let him go, carefully counted out the exact fare, leaving no tip. His hands shook with rage and he dropped a dime, refusing to get out of the cab until he found it. Then he got out, dragging the suitcase and the canvas bag after him. He glared after the cab until it disappeared around the next corner. “I’m not a stranger,” he whispered after the cabbie. “This is my home.”

  He turned and went up the walk, thinking, I’ll have to mow the front lawn. He went up the stoop, thinking, I better give the porch a coat of paint. He pulled on the screen door and found it locked.

  That enraged him again. He dropped the suitcase and the canvas bag and pounded on the wood of the door. How dare they lock him out! This was his home!

  All at once, the inner door burst open and his Aunt Sara was standing there, staring out at him, wide-eyed. “Paul! We didn’t know when you’d get here. Why didn’t you send us a telegram?”

  “Let me in!”

  Aunt Sara looked at him as though she were terrified of him. She unlocked the screen door and opened it for him. He ran into the house, leaving his suitcase and the canvas bag on the porch. In the living room he found Angie sitting on the sofa with the dark-green upholstery. It was the same house all right--he was home.

  Angie ran to him, her eyes puffy and red from crying, and she clung to him, sobbing, “You’re home! Paul! I’m so glad you’re home!”

  He put his arms around her. “I’m home for good,” he said, closing his eyes and burying his face in her hair.

  THREE

  The funeral was on Wednesday. It was the wrong kind of day for it. Funerals should take place on rainy days, with a chill in the air and a look of brown-dying fall on the face of the world. There should be mud, and looming gray cloud banks filling the sky, and the few passers-by on the streets should be huddled miserably within their coats, clutching fast to their own guttering sparks of life. There should be the sorrowful repetitive sound of automobile windshield wipers, and the sorrowful, persistent sound of rain dripping down from rotting eaves.

  That is the kind of day which should be set aside for Funerals--it was not the kind of day on which the Danes were laid to rest.

  Angie awoke on Wednesday morning to the treble singing of birds. Sunlight, gay and warm and brimming with life, tumbled sportively through the bedroom window, gleaming like caramel on the wooden floor. The air was bright, the mirror over the dresser sparkled, the gaily colored kewpie doll Bob had won for her last year grinned and winked at her from atop the bureau.

  At first she didn’t remember. Her eyes opened. Feeling rested and warm, she snuggled beneath the top sheet. It was a beautiful day, warm without being muggy. She threw back the sheet and bounced out of bed, young and vibrant in white pajamas. She caught her reflection in the dresser mirror and smiled at it, happy to see herself, happy to have the knowledge reaffirmed that she was young and lithe and lovely.

  She spun in an impromptu dance step and stopped all at once when she saw the clothes on the chair, waiting to be put on.

  Her black wool skirt. Her black wool sweater. Her black cotton stockings, worn only once before, last Hallowe’en. And, on the floor next to the chair, her old black flat shoes.

  She looked at the clothes awaiting her. They were like the tolling of some grim Puritan bell, like the burnt-flesh reek of Salem.

  Then she remembered.

  Suddenly emptied, like an overturned jug of cream, she stripped off the white pajamas and bound herself in black. When she looked in the mirror, her blond hair was nasty--it was laughing when it should have been subdued. She searched through the dresser and the bureau, but could find nothing black to cover the too-alive hair. The best she could do was a gray bandanna.

  She donned it, tucking the stray, laughing curls beneath it, out of sight, and left her room.

  Aunt Sara had stayed over the last three nights, and she was now in the kitchen amid the smell of frying bacon. Paul was seated at the table, wolfing eggs, bacon and black coffee. She couldn’t understand how Paul could eat at a time like this, and Aunt Sara, just as though she were answering Angie’s unspoken question, said, “Can you imagine a boy like this? He spent all that time on his trip home, and he didn’t get any sleep at all. Only ate one hamburger and a glass of milk the whole time. Can you imagine a boy like this? How many eggs this morning, dear?”

  “I’m not hungry, thank you,” said Angie.

  “Have something, dear. You should eat something to keep your strength up.”

  “I’ll have a piece of toast, I guess. And some coffee.”

  “All right, you sit down right there, I’ll be just a jiffy.” And Aunt Sara went bustling around the kitchen.

  Angie sat down across from her brother. “Hello, Paul,” she said.

  He gave her a wan smile. “Hello, yourself.”

  She studied him as he ate. It had been a long while since she’d seen him, and the changes in him were startling. Last night things had happened too rapidly. Their meeting had been too emotional for her to really notice anything about him. But now she saw the profound changes.

  He was older, but that she had expected. It was more than that. There was a hardness about his face, a bitterness in his eyes, that she had never seen before. She had the feeling that he was a much different person from the brother who had left here less than two years ago.

  Part of the change would be because of the wife, of course. Angie wasn’t really clear about what had happened there; her mother had always refused to give her the details. All she knew for sure was that Paul had met a German girl, had written glowing letters about her and had finally married her. Then, all of a sudden, he had divorced her and her name had no longer been mentioned in any of his letters. He had written to Mom and Dad about what had happened, Angie knew that much, but that was all.

  Aunt Sara gave her the toast and coffee. She ate slowly, neither tasting nor noticing the food.

  Uncle Edward came for them at nine-thirty, to drive them to the funeral home. He was a big, bluff, red-faced man, almost always smiling, the man Angie always thought of whenever she heard the word “jolly.” Today he was encased in a dark blue winter suit and wore a serious expression--both looked out of place.

  On the way to, the car, Angie paused on the sidewalk to look at the neighborhood. It was July and school was out so there were a lot of children around, most of them down at the far corner playing hide-and-seek. There were people walking around in the sunlight, bright and cheerful, wearing the light-colored clothing of summer. And here were Angie and the mourners so dreadfully out of place in their dark, drab winter clothes, cold and solemn beneath the sun.