We Are Not The Same Anymore

by Chris Somerville

  ‘You’ve been in there a while,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been adding hot water now and then.’

  ‘Still.’

  ‘Okay, well I’m getting out and I need you out of here. Off you go. I have a whole routine I have to go through and you’re disturbing it.’

  In the living room Beckman sat at their wooden table and started to read. He made a few notes. The ideas were fine, but the writing was all over the place. Some sentences were almost written backwards, others ended abruptly. Beckman looked at the stack of pages next to him. He got up and looked in the fridge. Thomas emerged from the bathroom.

  ‘It’s big, isn’t it?’

  ‘Only maybe a hundred pages,’ Beckman said.

  ‘You’re right,’ Thomas said. ‘I would have lost interest.’

  Beckman felt worried about it again and decided he needed to leave the house for a while. He waited for Thomas to get changed and then walked with him to campus. He sat on a bench and read a book. Now and then he got up to drink water from the drinking fountain, then he walked home in the late afternoon. There was a message for him, from Olivia, on his telephone. He listened to the message four times before deleting it, to hear her voice. She’d asked him to call her back.

  He spent the next two weeks avoiding her, and listening to the occasional message she left on his answering machine. Over this time he did almost no work on her thesis. He carried it around with him, though not all of it, just the first quarter, in his satchel. Sometimes he took it out, read another section, and wrote on it in red pen. He felt a bit like he was in a dream, in that time would feel slower or faster or would jump ahead suddenly, but all with its own unfaultable logic.

  Just before he was about to enter the third week he happened to answer the phone when Olivia called.

  ‘I left messages,’ was the first thing she said.

  ‘Oh,’ Beckman said. Because of the way she spoke he had trouble telling if she was angry or not. ‘My roommate may have erased them. He has a habit of losing my messages.’

  ‘Good. I thought something like this might have happened.’

  ‘Yeah. I bring it up with him all the time, but he’s set in his ways.’

  Beckman leaned his back against the wall. There was a long silence and he wasn’t sure if he should say something reassuring about her work.

  ‘Have you been reading my thesis?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ Beckman said. ‘I’ve been reading your thesis, yes.’

  ‘Will you be done soon?’

  ‘It shouldn’t take that much longer at all.’

  ‘Good,’ Olivia said. ‘This is good news.’

  Beckman took a postcard that had been stuck into the door frame beside the phone and tapped it against his teeth. The conversation was making him unwell. He looked at the front of the card, which Thomas’s friend had sent from Barcelona. The photo was of some men trying to push a horse up a stairwell.

  ‘Well,’ Beckman said eventually. ‘You know I should probably get back to work.’

  To make any real progress Beckman decided that he had to leave the city. If he was at home he would listen to records or read. Now and then he spent hours sketching, because he’d heard that it was something you could forget over time, like an unstretched muscle. When he did draw he drew trees or birds or girls in lead pencil. He needed a holiday.

  When he came home one afternoon, after doing what he considered a fair amount of work on Olivia’s thesis, Thomas was sitting at the table in their living room, reading the newspaper and wearing Beckman’s glasses.

  ‘I wondered where I left those,’ Beckman said.

  ‘Are your eyes really this bad?’

  ‘Not my eyes, my father’s.’

  Beckman dropped his satchel on the couch and went into the kitchen. He filled a glass with tap water and drank it. He’d been arranging Olivia’s sentences most of the day and felt like he needed something clear and simple to flow through his brain. He pictured a bright orange rope floating on top of a clear stream.

  ‘Your brother called,’ Thomas said. ‘He wanted you to call him back.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as you can, I think. You know what he’s like.’

  Beckman called Robert back. Thomas sat at the table with his head turned towards Beckman and propped up by one arm, as Robert explained that his boyfriend had left him. Beckman said ‘Yeah’ a lot, sympathetically, but mostly he just listened. Robert’s voice sounded small and a very long way away, and all Beckman could think of was the satellite probe that had been sent into space, to let anything out there know we were here by playing Mozart into a cold, empty universe.

  ‘Can I get a lift to the train station?’ Beckman asked Thomas after he had hung up the phone. ‘My brother’s boyfriend left him.’

  ‘He couldn’t have told me that?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s handling it well.’

  ‘I’d always considered us close,’ Thomas said, taking Beckman’s father’s glasses off and placing them on the table. He rubbed at his right eye.

  ‘I wouldn’t take it personally.’

  ‘Maybe I should come with you,’ he said, then Beckman frowned and Thomas looked down at the table. ‘Actually, forget it. I’ll drop you at the station, I just need to put on my shoes.’

  It was an hour on the train and then a short trip by ferry to Robert’s place. Beckman stood at the back, outside, with his hands in the pockets of his coat, looking at the lights of the city and letting the wind whip around him in a satisfying way.

  Robert greeted him at his apartment door. He took a few steps onto the front landing. He was wearing a shirt, untucked, with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of jeans. He was wearing white socks. He put his arm around Beckman and patted him heavily on his back.

  ‘Don’t get your socks dirty,’ Beckman said.

  ‘I doubt I’ll be the best of company at the moment,’ Robert said.

  ‘It’s no problem.’

  Robert followed Beckman inside. His apartment was small, but not cramped. There was an upright piano instead of a television in the living room. There were books stacked in small piles against the walls. Robert went into the kitchen area and poured himself a whisky. He offered one to Beckman, who nodded, even though he didn’t usually drink spirits. He joined Robert in the kitchen.

  ‘Have you eaten? What time is it?’ Robert said.

  ‘It’s only about five-thirty,’ Beckman said.

  Robert shook his head. ‘Bryan gave me a real fright, that’s for sure. I came home and he was gone. I didn’t notice anything missing at first. We were supposed to go over to our friends’ place for dinner. I called everyone I could think of, so then I had the wonderful experience of calling them back and explaining what had happened. I was distraught though. I almost called the police.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like he took much with him,’ Beckman said.

  ‘A few clothes,’ Robert said, lifting his glass to his bottom lip but not drinking. ‘And that bust he has of Edmund Barton. He left everything else he owned except for that. His artwork, his books, his CDs. Can you just imagine him walking down the street lugging that thing? It’s solid marble too, it weighs a ton.’

  ‘And he didn’t say anything?’

  ‘I found this note stuck to the bathroom mirror. I didn’t even find it until about two hours after I got home.’

  Robert took the note from his shirt pocket and handed it to Beckman. It had been folded once and was on plain white paper. The note read, in pencil We are not the same anymore, and even though Beckman knew the other side was blank, he flipped the paper over to see if there was anything more to the message. He looked at his brother.

  ‘Trust Bryan to be so bloody dramatic,’ Robert said.

  They ordered takeaway from
the Chinese restaurant nearby. They sat on the couch, with their plates on their laps and containers of food on the coffee table in front of them. There was wine in the fridge and Robert said he didn’t know how old it was before pouring it into two glasses. After dinner they drank whisky. Beckman didn’t really care for the stuff and swallowed it in small mouthfuls. He thought he was drinking how a bird might. Each time he had to suppress the urge to vomit. Robert sat with his socked feet up on the coffee table.

  ‘Bryan will probably come back,’ Beckman said.

  ‘We’ve fought before,’ Robert said, ‘I mean, who hasn’t? But this time it was so wordless. He just left.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll call.’

  ‘You know, I’ve had other boyfriends, but they were either friends beforehand or friends of friends. Bryan was different. I went out and found him all on my own, and that felt special and I don’t think I can explain it any better than that.’

  Robert finished his drink and put his glass down next to their stacked plates and the empty food containers. Beckman looked around the room to see if anything other than the bust was missing, but as far as he could tell his brother’s apartment was the same. He thought of a drawing class he’d done a few years back where they’d sat at their easels in a loose circle around a girl and been instructed that, instead of drawing the model, they had to draw the space around her body, the white negative that her body cut out of the room.

  ‘I better get to bed,’ Robert said. ‘I’ll get you a blanket.’

  Robert collected the glasses and plates and containers and took them into the kitchen. He went into his bedroom and came out with a white towel, a white pillow and a thick white blanket stacked in his arms like a wedding cake. He placed them on the couch next to Beckman.

  ‘Feel free to stay up,’ Robert said, walking back to his bedroom. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  Once he heard his brother’s bedroom door close Beckman grabbed his towel and went into the bathroom. He stared at himself in the mirror, which was, like the rest of the bathroom, immaculate. The only blemish Beckman could see was the smudge on the mirror where, he assumed, Bryan had stuck his note. Beckman took his thumb and placed it over the smudge. He turned on the tap, waiting for the water to run warm, and when it did he wet his hands and rubbed them over his face.

  Beckman woke on the couch to the sound of his brother playing the piano. There was sunlight everywhere in the room but still it was cold and he pulled his blanket up to his shoulders. Robert would play a phrase over and over again, and each time he would try out different notes. If he liked them they stayed in the next run-through, and this way he progressed, slowly.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Beckman said eventually.

  ‘It’s for an art installation next week. A friend wanted something written for it.’

  Beckman rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling. Robert kept playing. He thought about asking his brother if he was feeling okay, but decided not to interrupt. He briefly regretted, again, that he hadn’t studied music. After half an hour Robert stopped playing and went to the kitchen.

  ‘Do you want a coffee?’

  ‘No,’ Beckman said. ‘Thanks. Can I use your phone?’

  ‘Use the one in the bedroom if you want,’ Robert said.

  Beckman got up off the couch, still in his t-shirt and boxers, and padded down the hall to the bedroom. He thought about closing the door, but then thought that this would send the wrong message, though he wasn’t exactly sure what the right message was. He sat on the edge of Robert’s unmade bed, near the pillows, and dialled Olivia’s number. He counted out three clear phone rings before she picked up. It was still early in the morning but she sounded awake, like she’d been sitting by the phone and waiting for him to call.

  ‘It’s Leonard Beckman,’ he said.

  ‘It is good to hear from you,’ she said.

  There were bookcases in the bedroom, and a chest of drawers. Sitting on one of the shelves were a few matchbox cars that Robert had kept since childhood. The wardrobe in the corner was open, and Beckman could see a line of shirts on hangers and his own reflection in the mirror on the back of the wardrobe door.

  ‘I wanted to call and tell you that I’m away from home at the moment. But I should be finished on your thesis in a week. I’m at my brother’s house, his partner has left him.’

  ‘She has died?’

  ‘No, no, sorry,’ Beckman said. ‘They’ve just broken up, I meant to say.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s not handling it too well.’

  Beckman coughed to clear his throat. He could feel his hair sticking up at an odd angle. He felt the coldness of the morning pushing onto his scalp in odd places.

  ‘It’s nice of you to visit him,’ Olivia said. ‘You are a good brother.’

  ‘You know, you have a beautiful way of speaking,’ Beckman said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Olivia said.

  Beckman watched a model airplane that was hanging from the ceiling, in the corner near the window. It was turning clockwise, slowly, in an undetectable breeze.

  ‘I just wanted you to know that you have a wonderful voice.’

  Olivia was quiet. Robert started playing again, softly at first, then louder. Beckman looked at his bare feet on the bedroom’s carpeted floor. He curled his toes. Robert was playing something different; this was much slower and sadder. The music floated down the hallway. Beckman didn’t recognise the song, it wasn’t familiar at all, but he could tell that his brother didn’t miss a single note.

  Trouble

  We could hear our neighbours fighting. My wife Karen was watching their house through our bedroom window. It was late and I was sitting up in bed, reading an article about an airline disaster. I’d photocopied it from a magazine at work. On Karen’s side of the bed I had piled a stack of essays. I was supposed to be marking them but I didn’t really have the heart for it. The fight next door had started with the sound of a glass breaking, and neither of us knew whether it had been dropped or thrown. We couldn’t really see much of their house from our bedroom. I told Karen that the neighbours might catch her spying.

  ‘I don’t think they even know we exist,’ she said.

  ‘They do,’ I said. ‘It’s just that they don’t care.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  Our neighbours were only our neighbours on the weekends. During the week they lived in the city, but I wasn’t entirely sure where. We had never really spoken. Usually they fought loudly enough for us to hear them. They had kids, identical twin boys around ten; for a while I thought they only had the one child, until I saw the two of them together. The twins never fought loudly like their parents, but I once watched them carry a television set out of their house, put it on their front lawn and then throw rocks at the screen until it was completely busted in.

  ‘It was probably already broken,’ Karen had said when I’d told her about it. The set was still sitting on their lawn.

  I went back to the magazine article. Apparently a man had survived because, at the time of the crash, he had been leaning down to tie his shoelaces. Everyone else had been taken by surprise. The article made out like this was a great, hopeful thing, but to be honest, it terrified me. My thumbs had smudged some of the type at the margins. It wasn’t printed on very good paper.

  Sleeping didn’t seem like an option and I felt like a coffee. Karen was still wearing her work clothes. She worked at a café down on the beachfront, next to a newsagent and a post office. I never liked to ask her to make a coffee until she had changed. She turned from the window. She was wearing a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans. She never wore any jewellery.

  ‘I think they’ve stopped now,’ she said.

  ‘Are their lights off?’

  ‘No, but th
ey’ve quietened down.’

  Karen and I had married when we were twenty-two, and I guess we’d been in love, though back then we hadn’t had much to compare it to.

  We spent most nights at home together. Now and then we went down to the surf club for a beer, but neither of us were big drinkers. We didn’t live in a large town and I suppose everyone knew everyone else, though we hadn’t made many friends. I’d once heard the neighbours refer to my wife and me as ‘the Christians’ though we weren’t very religious. Karen sometimes talked about how our neighbours probably hadn’t gone to university, but she hadn’t gone either, so I had trouble seeing her point.

  Karen scooped up the assignments and put them carefully on the floor. She took off her jeans and climbed into bed and lay with her head on my chest. She tapped me on the foot with her foot. Three taps. It was a habit of hers that I didn’t mind.

  ‘Actually I should have a shower,’ she said.

  ‘Your shirt smells like fried eggs,’ I said. ‘Or maybe your hair.’

  She climbed off the bed and went into the bathroom. Our place was small and I could hear it when the water came on and hit the tiled floor of the shower.

  Earlier in the week a student had come into my office and told me she’d tried to kill herself. She was vaguely familiar; I think she had turned up to a couple of my classes at the start of the semester. I didn’t have a real office; I’d borrowed one from a professor who was on study leave. The girl cried for a few minutes and I sat behind my desk and tried to be consoling, but I didn’t really know what to say. She pulled a tissue from her pocket, blew her nose and then coughed a few times. She composed herself.

  ‘You have a lot of books,’ she said, looking around at the books that weren’t really my books.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘Have you read all of them?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ I said. ‘I may have skimmed a few pages here and there, but I basically know what they’re all about.’

  The girl nodded. She was quite pretty, not that much younger than me. She had a pair of sunglasses holding her hair back. I tried not to look at her too closely. She stood up, nodded at me once in an official kind of way, and then left. It was getting late. I could hear someone laughing down the hallway, and somewhere nearby there was a vacuum cleaner running. I gathered my things, walked out of the building and climbed into my car. It was a warm night.