by Alex George
By then my brother’s scoliosis was so advanced that his upper body was permanently contorted in a vicious twist to the left. Nathan showed none of the awkwardness around Liam that we had become accustomed to. Most people were so overcome with well-meaning sympathy that they couldn’t look at him without dissolving into inarticulate fits of compassion. But Nathan understood that my brother didn’t need anybody’s pity, even if the rest of us sometimes did. Liam liked him enormously as a result.
Every Tuesday evening my parents went out for their weekly bridge game. Liam took their absence as license to play his music even louder than usual. On one such night, Nathan and I were sitting on my brother’s bed while he lectured us about music he hated—which was pretty much everything. Liam was rigorous and unstinting in his derision of all music that didn’t fall within his narrowly defined tastes. Even Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin were dismissed as bombastic dinosaurs, self-indulgent fops. (Concept album? he raged. Pile of shit. How’s that for a concept?) But he reserved his greatest scorn for the hippies with their acoustic guitars.
“Joni Mitchell? Cat Stevens?” Liam wagged his finger at us in warning, as if listening to that stuff might lead us to Lawrence Welk. “Have you listened to the lyrics? Every song is a fucking question. But this!” My brother brandished the New York Dolls album that was lying in his lap. “This has answers.” He lowered the needle onto the vinyl.
As the skull-shaking noise of “Personality Crisis” blasted into the room, Nathan and I looked at the photograph on the record sleeve. The five band members were lounging on a sofa, looking moodily at the camera. They were a long-haired, androgynous bunch in platform boots and flamboyant outfits. Between them they wore more eyeliner than a chorus line of dancing girls.
“Those guys are the ultimate badasses,” said Liam. “They want to fuck the system. Break the rules.”
“They’re rock stars,” said Nathan. “They should be badasses. That’s kind of their job, isn’t it?”
“So?” I said.
“Well, what about us?” said Nathan.
“What about us?” asked Liam.
“I don’t see any rule-breaking going on around here,” said Nathan. “Not much system-fucking. Very little badassery.”
“What do you have in mind?” asked Liam.
Nathan shrugged. “Don’t you ever get the urge to do something crazy? I mean, if the New York Dolls can break the rules, why can’t we?”
“Because they’re rock stars,” I said.
“But who says we can’t break the rules, too?” said Nathan.
My mom, I wanted to say.
“So go on, then, big shot,” said my brother, grinning. “Do something crazy.”
I gave Liam a warning look, but Nathan had already stood up. He gazed out of the window into the darkness of the backyard. By then several weeks of accumulated snowfall covered the ground. Nathan pointed to the perfectly symmetrical hillock of snow that stood immediately outside the window. “Is that a trampoline?” he said.
Liam nodded. It had been years since my brother had been able to do his balancing exercises in the backyard. The springs were rusty with disuse, but getting rid of the thing would have been an admission of defeat, an acknowledgment that things were never going to get better, and so my parents had left the trampoline where it was.
Nathan looked at me. “Your bedroom’s right above us, isn’t it?”
“No way.” I shook my head. “You can’t jump out of my window, Nathan.”
“Sure I can,” he said.
“Don’t be stupid.”
“It’s not stupid. The trampoline will catch me.”
“You really are crazy,” said Liam.
“Put another record on until I get back,” said Nathan to Liam. He turned to me. “Come on.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “If you want to kill yourself you can do it on your own.”
“Okay.” Nathan shrugged and walked out of the room.
I shot Liam a dirty look and then ran up the stairs after Nathan. I found him kneeling on my bed, fiddling with the window latch.
“I just need to— Ah.” The latch clicked and he pushed the window open. Freezing air rushed into the room. Nathan put his head out and looked down. “Well, look at that,” he said.
I crossed the room and peered out of the window. Immediately beneath us was the trampoline, a raised circle of white.
“Come on,” I said. “You’re not really going to do this. Let’s go back downstairs.”
“Of course I’m going to do this,” said Nathan.
“But nobody’s jumped on that thing in years,” I said.
“It’s a trampoline,” said Nathan. “What could go wrong?”
There were so many answers to that question, but all the words caught in my throat, trapped by the memory of Nathan’s father falling to his death down the side of a house much like this one. “Just come downstairs, okay?” I said.
Nathan hauled himself up onto the window frame. Slowly he squeezed himself through the open space until there was more of him outside than in. He looked down at the ground with a thoughtful expression on his face.
“It would be a good idea,” he said, “not to miss.”
“Come back inside,” I pleaded.
Nathan glanced past me, into the warmth and safety of the bedroom, and I could tell that he was considering abandoning the whole idea. But the moment passed, and he turned back to contemplate the target below him. He shifted his weight a little further forward.
“What’s going on up there?” shouted Liam.
Nathan didn’t move. He kept staring out into the backyard.
I cleared my throat and called down to my brother. “Everything’s fine,” I yelled. “We’re just— I don’t think Nathan’s going to—”
Nathan jumped.
I rushed to the window. The two seconds that it took for his body to plummet to the ground were long enough for me to imagine all the terrible things that would happen next: the thud of Nathan’s body hitting the ground; the wait for the ambulance; the subsequent police interrogation—would they think I pushed him? was I going to be a murder suspect?—my parents’ fury; Mrs. Tilly’s sorrow; and my guilt, my guilt, my guilt. My best friend had jumped out of a window and I had done nothing to stop him.
Nathan’s body landed exactly in the middle of the trampoline. The force of the impact sent the snow that had been lying undisturbed for weeks flying into the air, momentarily obscuring him from view. An instant later, the trampoline catapulted him back through the snow, and I watched in horror as he flew through the night air. He landed on the ground, several feet away from the trampoline. His body lay facedown in the snow, horribly inert. I stared at him from the bedroom window.
“Oh my God!” yelled Liam. “He did it! He actually did it! He fucking jumped!” His voice jolted me out of my shock, and I turned and raced for the stairs. I flung open the back door and tore across the yard to where Nathan was lying. When I arrived by his side he still hadn’t moved.
“Nathan!” I said. Tentatively I reached out and touched his shoulder. He was wearing one of his cable-knit sweaters, warm enough for inside but not much use in the snow. I had already begun to shiver myself. “Nathan,” I said again. “Can you hear me?” Still he didn’t move.
“What’s going on?” shouted Liam. He had opened his bedroom window but the trampoline was blocking his view.
I looked down at Nathan’s crumpled body. “He’s just—” I whispered. “He’s not moving.”
One of my mother’s favorite albums was Ladies of the Canyon by Joni Mitchell, and a line from one of those songs came back to me now. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. The understanding of everything that I was about to lose smashed into me, and with it came a terrible fury. I grabbed Nathan’s shoulder and shook it. “You idiot,” I yelled.
“Why did you have to go and ruin everything?”
I sniffed, loudly and messily, a trumpet of angry tears and snot.
Nathan rolled over. “Are you crying?” he said.
I was so surprised that I just stared at him.
“You are,” said Nathan, propping himself up on one elbow and looking at me closely. “You’re actually—”
He couldn’t speak anymore after that, on account of the fistful of snow that I smashed into his face.
—
I STORMED BACK INTO the house, leaving Nathan lying in the snow. The sound of his laughter rang in my ears as I slammed the door shut behind me. By the time he came inside a few minutes later, I had retreated to the kitchen and was making myself a cup of hot chocolate. Nathan went into Liam’s bedroom and told him what had happened, which made me feel even more stupid. Of course Nathan was fine: the trampoline had taken all the force out of his fall from the window, and the foot of snow on the ground had softened the impact of his landing. After some further discussion, Nathan climbed back up the stairs to my bedroom and jumped out the window again. And again. Now each leap was accompanied by kamikaze shrieks of glee from Nathan and whoops of encouragement from Liam. I sat at the kitchen table and glumly sipped my drink, mortified by my tears.
I tried my best to shake off my lingering embarrassment, but a week later I could still hear Nathan’s laughter chasing me inside as he lay in the snow.
TEN
There was a fresh snowfall on Christmas Eve. My father and I spent the afternoon clearing the driveway and the sidewalk in front of the house while my mother and Liam worked in the kitchen. Christmas lunch was always a monumental production, the table groaning beneath mountains of food that we would eat for weeks afterward. But all that culinary industry was no act of celebration. Christmas had become a ritual of preemptive mourning for my family. My mother offered up turkey and all the trimmings in the unspoken fear that each holiday might be Liam’s last. Every gift she wrapped, every ornament she hung on the tree, every wreath she positioned just so—this was all done in the shadow of what she knew was to come.
Late that night, my father lifted my brother into the backseat of the station wagon and drove us to midnight Mass at St. Mary’s. The familiar melodies of the carols were a warm reminder of the pleasures of the day to come, as sure a sign of the holiday as the fresh scent of pine needles from the Christmas tree. Liam sang along with the rest of us. He had a beautiful voice, although his compressed lung meant that he could only sing softly. During the final verse of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” I glanced at my mother. Her lips were not moving, and she was not looking at the hymnal clasped in her hands. Her eyes rested on my brother. She was listening to his quiet song.
—
CHRISTMAS DAY DAWNED BITTERLY cold, but with a brilliant blue sky. The sun was dazzlingly bright on the snow.
Just before lunchtime my mother gazed out of the kitchen window. She wore the same sweatshirt that she wore every Christmas morning. The word HALLELUJAH! was emblazoned in sequins across her chest. “Do you think they’ll make it?” she asked my father.
“Who?” I asked.
My father cleared his throat. “Nathan and his mother are coming for lunch.”
“What?” I said. “When did you—”
“I invited her that afternoon when we cleared the driveway to their house,” said my father. “While you and Nathan were at the beach.” He paused. “She’s not a big talker, is she? I was really just trying to fill the silence in between sips of coffee.”
“You did the right thing,” said my mother. “It’s the first Christmas since Nathan’s father died. They’d have been all alone, and we couldn’t have that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said.
“We thought it would be a nice surprise,” said my father.
Just then Mrs. Tilly’s car appeared around the corner. It was moving quickly, far too quickly for the road conditions. As it approached the house, the Impala’s brake lights went on, but instead of slowing down, its wheels locked up. The car skidded to a stop, its progress halted by a small bank of snow in front of our house. We waited for Nathan and his mother to climb out, but nothing happened. The windows were fogged up. Then the driver’s window opened and a cloud of smoke billowed into the cold air.
“She’s poisoning that poor boy,” said my mother crossly.
“Maybe she’s nervous,” said my father.
A minute or so later the window rolled back up again, and the driver’s door opened, but not very far. The car had stopped right in front of our mailbox and the door could only open a few inches before it knocked against it. We watched as the car door nudged the mailbox gently a couple of times, and then, to my astonishment, Nathan’s mother began bashing it repeatedly, with increasing violence. The mailbox shuddered but did not move.
I looked at my father. “Should we go and help?” I asked.
Before he could answer, there was a ferocious squealing of tires. The Impala’s wheels were spinning uselessly. The engine whined alarmingly, but the car was firmly stuck in the bank of snow. Through the fogged-up window I thought I could see Mrs. Tilly hit the steering wheel with her fists. Finally she gave up and switched off the engine. The passenger door opened, and Nathan appeared. A few moments later Mrs. Tilly climbed out of the same door, looking somewhat disheveled. She wore a dark green puffer coat that went all the way down to her ankles. The coat had a hood, which she pulled over her head, making her look like an ambulatory Christmas tree. Nathan and his mother made their way up to the front door, where we stood waiting for them.
My mother stepped forward. “Merry Christmas!” she said as she grabbed Mrs. Tilly’s hand. “Judith, it’s so nice to finally meet you!”
“I’m sorry about your mailbox,” said Mrs. Tilly.
“Let me pour you a sherry,” said my father kindly.
As we went inside Nathan beamed at me. “I got you a present,” he said. “I made it myself.” From behind his back he produced a plastic bag. I peered into it and saw a handful of thin wooden poles wrapped in bright green fabric. It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at.
“A kite,” I breathed.
—
MY MOTHER’S ROAST TURKEY was delicious, and the gravy and roasted vegetables were all up to her usual high standards. Mrs. Tilly had accepted only tiny portions, and she spent the meal staring down at her food, pushing it around the plate instead of actually eating anything. She looked as if there was nothing she would have liked to do more than crawl under the table and disappear. I wondered why she had agreed to come. My parents, though, weren’t going to have their Christmas dinner spoiled by an untalkative guest. They gamely tried to coax the conversation along.
“So, Judith,” said my father. “Did you ever get those snow chains for your car?”
Mrs. Tilly shook her head. “I never got around to it.”
“Are you managing all right without them?” said my mother. The question seemed redundant, given that Mrs. Tilly’s Impala was stuck in a bank of snow in front of our house.
“Well, most days I just stay home,” she said.
My parents exchanged looks.
“You’re awfully isolated out there,” said my mother.
“That was part of the appeal of the place.” Mrs. Tilly prodded at a piece of turkey. “Leonard worked in an office for seventeen years, when we lived in Texas. When we arrived in Maine he built a bonfire and burned all his suits.” She paused. “Leonard was a terrible lobster fisherman, but he loved being out in the boat on his own, alone on the ocean. And I liked living out of town. We both enjoyed the solitude.”
“Do you miss Texas?” asked my mother.
“Every day,” said Mrs. Tilly. “I swear I don’t know how you people get out of bed. These winters are so long.”
“Mary and I don’t know anything else,”
said my father cheerfully. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Ignorance is bliss, and all that.”
“Maybe,” said Nathan’s mother doubtfully.
“Have you considered moving back to Texas?” asked my mother.
I stared down at my plate. It was the one question I had never dared to ask.
Mrs. Tilly shook her head. “We’re going to stay in Maine.”
I’d been holding my knife and fork so tightly that the metal had left anxious indentations in my flesh.
“I’m pleased to hear it,” said my father. “We would hate to see you and Nathan go.”
“Yes, well.” Mrs. Tilly picked up her wineglass and drained it in one needful swallow. “If it were just up to me, we’d have gone back already. But Nathan doesn’t want to leave.”
“Mom,” said Nathan.
“I was an only child, and so was Leonard. And so is Nathan. He’s always been a bit of a loner, just like his parents.” Mrs. Tilly looked across the table at me. “Then he met you, Robert.”
I felt my cheeks start to burn.
My mother smiled. “As thick as thieves, aren’t they, living in each other’s pockets!”
Nathan was staring at his plate.
“Anyway, that’s why we’re staying,” said Mrs. Tilly. “Nathan doesn’t want to go back to Texas. Not unless Robert comes, too.”
“My goodness,” said my father.
Ever since Nathan had jumped out of my bedroom window I had been quietly dying of embarrassment about my tears that night, fearful that I had revealed too much. Now all that worry vanished in an instant, like a wonderful conjuring trick. I could barely see the food in front of me. All I could feel was the blood roaring through my veins, the thrilling pulse of secret elation.