Human Sister

by Jim Bainbridge

  On the way to the car, Elio spotted Grandpa and Grandma leaning against the passenger side of a new gray-blue Mercedes. Elio ran to them and exchanged hugs, kisses, and cheery greetings before he finally noticed the car. “I thought you had an old white Mercedes,” he said. “Did you get a new car?”

  “No,” Grandpa said. “We borrowed it for the day. Here,” he added, reaching into the glove compartment and pulling out a white card. “Let me show you the registration.”

  “But… that’s my name!”

  “Of course,” Grandpa said. “It’s your car. How do you like it?”

  With the sweet stunned expression of a child who’d just been given an unexpected gift, Elio ran his fingers along the edge of the car’s roof before ducking into the open door. A frond of jet-black hair fell over his gleeful face.

  We spent most of the morning driving around the Stanford campus, acquainting Elio with the buildings in which his courses would be held. For lunch, we drove up to the Claremont Resort in Oakland, where the first of the day’s three festivities to celebrate Grandpa’s birthday was held. Berkeley’s chancellor gave a moving speech in which she described a bio-implant that had been put into her mother’s brain after her mother had suffered a nearly fatal stroke. She credited Grandpa’s work for the implant’s success and for giving her mother many additional happy and productive years of life. I felt proud of Grandpa and hoped Elio and I would be able to measure up to him in our working lives.

  At 1430 we departed for home, where the banquet hall adjacent to the winery’s tasting room was being prepared for a birthday dinner. One of Sonoma County’s renowned chefs had planned a menu around the many fruits and vegetables then ripe in our garden. In attendance would be neighbors and many of Grandpa’s close personal friends, including Senator Franklin. Fortunately, the senator planned to fly to Los Angeles immediately after dinner, so Michael didn’t have to spend his birthday immured within my bedroom wall on the chance that the senator might ask to see what he’d been told was now my private part of the house.

  As we exited the A101 at River Road, Grandma remarked that we were in wine country, just a few kilometers from home. Elio wrapped his arms around me, and with the back of my head resting on his chest, I gazed out at the vineyards and the roadside fruit and flower stands, wondering what Elio was seeing and feeling on his first journey to his new home.

  Did he notice the flat Russian River basin and the gently rolling hills covered with neatly cultivated vineyards? Did he observe how the rows of sunburst honey locust trees form a yellow-green archway over the long drive leading up a hill to our winery? We turned right about a hundred meters in front of the winery, and as we drove through the gate opening in front of us, I wondered what his thoughts were about the huge, verdant yard.

  On our left, Grandpa’s tiltrotor sat on its pad, its proprotors pointing forward as if prepared to mow down a section of the ivy-covered security wall. On our right, over the broad green blaze of lawn, hovered plum and apple trees, and Japanese maples modeling their crimson and purple-bronze summer dresses. And in the garden frolicked late summer flowers, magnificent that warm, sunny afternoon, their colorful sex organs oozing fragrances full of desire.

  Straight ahead, the drive appeared to end in a tropical-looking profusion of rhododendrons, palms, tree ferns and a dense wall of Hinoki cypress. This lush, green screen lay at the foot of a knoll covered with large rocks, ornamental grasses, and salvia, their purple blossoms erect in the still air.

  At the top of the knoll was an English laurel hedge, behind which stood part of the security wall encompassing the nearly two-and-a-half-acre yard. Zigzagging up the center of the knoll were limestone stairs, which led up to a deck complete with bench and table. There, in the shade of the English laurel, I often studied on mild afternoons. Beyond the hedge and wall at the top of the knoll lay rows of chardonnay vines (unseen by us from the car windows), the roots of some having reached down through meters of soil to explore the outer surface of the ceiling of Michael’s rooms.

  I asked Grandpa to stop the car. “Let’s get out here,” I said to Elio. “I want to show you the yard. But first”—I put my hand over Elio’s eyes—“tell us what you remember seeing on the way here after we exited from the automated tollway.”

  “Um, I guess that must be Lily barking outside.”

  “Yes, that’s Lily. But what did you see and feel on the way here?”

  Keeping my hand over his eyes, I glanced at Grandma, who had turned around and was now smiling a knowing smile.

  “I guess I was just looking at you,” he finally answered.

  Grandma chuckled and turned back away from us.

  “Oh, I can’t believe it!” I said, pushing my head against his chest. “It’s so beautiful around here.”

  He kissed the top of my head. “Well, then, let’s get out, and you show me, okay?”

  “Okay, but wait here. I’ll bring Lily around to greet you.”

  I opened the car door, and as my right foot began searching for the ground, I experienced one of those strange feelings one gets while on the cusp of something new, that sense of a feral world between was and is, as when the solution to a problem is about to reveal itself, but just before the resolution erupts into consciousness. The two main threads of my life are coming together, I thought. I’m bringing Elio home, and my life—our lives, and Michael’s, too—will be new and wonderful.

  Lily barked, jolting me back to the present. Harvest hadn’t yet begun, but everywhere the dry brown hills gave off a fragrance of hay, and near the vineyards hung the distinct scent of grapes ripening. Soon the little orbs of sweetness would bleed profusely into tanks and barrels and there metamorphose into wine.

  Lily barked again. I knelt down to greet her. She licked my face and hands and sniffed curiously. “Come. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  She pawed and nipped at my ankles as I walked around the car to Elio’s door. I opened the door and knelt beside him. She barked and growled. I took his hand and kissed it. She watched attentively. I intertwined our hands and offered them to her. She sniffed. I slowly turned his pinkish tan palm up to her. She sniffed, hesitated, sniffed again, then licked.

  “Good girl!” I said, reaching to pet her.

  Elio got out of the car, and Grandpa and Grandma drove on.

  “Watch the car,” I said as it approached the giant, green feathers of the tree ferns at the end of the drive, turned left, and disappeared under a promontory of the knoll.

  “That’s amazing!” he said. “From here I’d never guess there’s a garage or house or anything else there except the top of a hill. The house must be to the right.”

  “Yes. The house and garage face perpendicular to each other. There’s an arborway of flowering shrubs and vines leading from the right side of the garage to the house entrance, but even if you watch carefully, you won’t be able to see Grandpa and Grandma walk through it.”

  I knew Michael was eager to meet Elio, so I tried to hurry through a tour of the yard. But Elio wanted to take photographs to send to Aunt Lynh of the deck’s magnificent view: the tree-lined drive, the winery, the ribbons of vines coursing up and over and down the vineyard hills. Then, back down in the yard, he asked to see his father’s gravestone, beside which daisies and lavender blue asters bloomed. The dark gray granite, polished on one side, was inscribed:

  MARCUS BRIAND

  For thirty-one years, a beloved man:

  husband, father, brother, best

  friend, student, and uncle.

  We who live miss you.

  “Tell me,” Elio said, lightly squeezing my hand, “what you remember about the day Pa’s ashes were buried here.”

  “I was only five at the time, and though I remember what happened, I didn’t understand the ramifications until much later. It was nearing sunset. Grandma said we were going to bury Uncle in a beautiful place at the edge of our garden, a place that Uncle especially liked. She and Grandpa took me out into the ya
rd to wait for Mom, Dad, and First Brother to arrive. Mom and Dad lived in Berkeley at the time with my two brothers, but First Brother was my only brother who ever came here to visit.

  “Dad looked sad when he opened the car door. He hugged and kissed me softly. Mom cried. I felt her tears on my cheek. First Brother, who didn’t look sad at all—he had trouble expressing emotions—carried the granite gravestone. I asked where Uncle was. Dad opened the backseat door and lifted out a terra-cotta urn. I asked if Uncle was inside. Dad nodded. I asked to see. He lifted the lid. Nothing there resembled Uncle. Then, while the rest of us watched in silence, Dad dug a hole. He wiped tears from his eyes with the back of his hand as he worked, streaking his cheeks with dirt. When the hole was large enough, he placed the urn in it.”

  Elio was staring wistfully at the inscribed stone, probably remembering the father he missed but never spoke much of to me after I’d told him how Uncle had died. I caressed Elio’s cheek with my fingers and continued: “Grandpa began to say something, probably something from his favorite Stoic, Epictetus, but Mom cut him off, saying, ‘I don’t want any words.’

  “Grandpa nodded. Dad shoveled loose dirt back into the hole and, with First Brother’s help, placed the granite stone on top of the hole. By then the stone had become covered in shadow. I looked behind us, over there.” I turned and pointed toward the west. “The sun was about to dip below those hills, and I remembered Grandma once telling me that night doesn’t fall, as if from the sky; it rises like mist from low-lying pools of shadow and flows out from hills and trees, quietly ascending as it snuffs out light.”

  Elio and I stood naked in front of Gatekeeper 3. “Only Sara may enter,” a deep voice commanded.

  “I’ll enter first,” I responded. “Then, after I’ve passed, please admit and examine Elio.”

  The door to the examination chamber opened. I stepped forward. The door whooshed shut behind me.

  “Are you certain he is the one Grandpa calls ‘Elio’?” Gatekeeper asked in its deep masculine voice.

  “Yes.”

  The door to level 3 opened. Michael stood in the antechamber, looking relaxed in his kimono. He, like me, had never worn anything except underpants in those warm and comfortable rooms. Grandpa and Grandma, on the other hand, had always worn kimonos that normally hung in the little antechamber in front of Gatekeeper’s door. For Elio’s arrival, the issue of what to wear had been resolved conservatively in favor of underpants plus kimono for each of us.

  I hugged and kissed Michael. Then, as practiced, Michael walked around the side of the antechamber so he wouldn’t see Elio until Elio had dressed.

  I dressed, and soon Elio stepped through Gatekeeper’s door.

  “Welcome!” I said, holding underpants in one hand and a kimono in the other. “These are for you to wear.”

  “Are we in the top-security area?” he asked, taking the underpants.

  “Yes.”

  “Is it safe to talk about everything now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then where’s Michael?” He pulled up his underpants.

  “On the other side, around the corner,” I answered.

  Before I could say more or stop him, Elio dashed out of the antechamber. Already things aren’t going as planned, I thought as I ran after him, still holding his kimono in my hand.

  “Hi,” Elio said, and he and Michael hugged—flawlessly.

  “Hi! I’m so thankful to meet you,” Michael replied with equal enthusiasm, a response more relaxed and genuine sounding than any during our many practice sessions.

  When I offered Elio his kimono, he replied that it was so comfortable in this area that he didn’t need one, and Michael readily agreed. I hung all three kimonos back in the antechamber, then watched the two of them, hardly able to believe how well their first meeting was going. Michael, who for weeks had agonized and fussed over every conceivable detail of their meeting, seemed completely at ease and improvised masterfully. He took Elio on a tour of the hydroponic garden, including an unscheduled discussion of the air scrubbers and the recycling system that lasted over half an hour, even though our well-practiced tour had never taken more than eight minutes. Finally, I had to interrupt because Elio and I were expected to begin greeting guests in the banquet hall at 1800 sharp. But, first, Elio wanted to see the bedroom where he and I would be sleeping. On our way there, he leaned toward me and whispered, “I like him. He’s weird, just like you.”

  “I’m glad,” I whispered back.

  “Whoa!” he exclaimed upon arriving at the bedroom door. “Minimalism minimized!”

  A queen-size platform bed abutted the wall opposite the door. Just to the left of the bed hung a full-length mirror on the otherwise blank white wall. Completing the inventory, a scenescreen displaying yesterday’s late afternoon sky was on the ceiling directly above the bed. There was no closet, dresser, chair or bathroom.

  Elio abruptly lunged onto the bed. “Nice!” he said, rolling and bouncing around on the mattress. “It’s firm. And it doesn’t squeak like my rickety old bed back home.”

  After all the dinner guests departed, Grandpa, Grandma, Elio, and I gathered in Michael’s rooms for the final birthday celebration of the day. We brought a platter heaped with dark chocolate truffles that Grandma and I had made, two bottles of our finest demi-sec, and five champagne glasses.

  Grandma was about to begin pouring the wine when Grandpa interrupted: “Dear, I believe Michael would like to give Elio a special musical welcome.”

  Michael signaled he was ready. “Imagine the hour is midnight,” he said. A bell chimed twelve times. “That was the campanile in Berkeley. Grandpa recorded it for us. Imagine now that on this midnight, watchmen in an ancient tower spot a bridegroom coming.”

  I had heard the “Wachet auf” cantata several times before. I had heard all of Bach’s extant works several times, for Bach was Grandpa’s favorite composer, having achieved a perfect balance, Grandpa said, between emotion and intelligence, the balance Grandpa strove for in the conscious, intelligent products of his own efforts. Tears welled up in my eyes as soon as I recognized the sublime opening ritornello theme. More than ever before, I appreciated then how Bach had miraculously endowed dignity and splendor with a beautiful, quivering mixture of intimate tenderness and desire.

  Immediately following the musical interlude, Grandma poured the demi-sec, allotting to Michael only the quarter glass we had found quite sufficient to make him giddy, and we sat around the study table eating, drinking, and talking for about twenty minutes before Grandpa suggested we take some photographs.

  The last photograph taken by Grandpa that evening became Michael’s most cherished. In it, Elio, Michael, and I stand, arms around each other as we laugh together in front of a scenescreen displaying a view of the garden recorded earlier that day by a camera mounted near the garage. In the hand not wrapped around Elio’s waist, I hold a platter containing the few remaining truffles. In his free hand, Michael holds an empty demi-sec bottle.

  In photographs taken minutes earlier, Michael stands on one side of me, appearing pleased as he studies Elio, who stands on the other side of me, and who at various times hugs me, kisses me, and makes faces at the camera. But by the time this last photograph was taken, Michael had moved around to Elio’s other side, foretelling the near future in which I would remain Michael’s sister/mother, but Elio would be his beloved best friend.

  As I look now at this last-taken photograph, I wonder what Grandpa thought of us that evening of his ninetieth birthday. Did he see Michael as the crowning miracle of his life’s work? Did he see me as the peculiar product of his attempt late in life to find something meaningful outside of the competitive world of academia, business, and the military? Did he see Elio as being in part a rootstock with the strength and virility that Grandpa recognized in himself but not in me? Did he have any inkling of what was to come?

  “Hey, where’s the bathroom?” Elio asked as soon as this last photograph was taken.

&nbs
p; “As a security precaution,” Grandpa answered, “the water and sewer lines were not extended to this part of the house. You’ll have to go out and come back through Gatekeeper.”

  “How do I leave, and how do I get back?”

  “Go to the antechamber, take off your underpants, stand directly in front of Gatekeeper’s door, and say, ‘May I leave?’ or anything to that effect. ‘I wanna get outta here’ will also work. When you wish to return, simply stand in front of Gatekeeper’s other door and request to enter.”

  When Elio returned, Grandpa and Grandma left for the night. I asked Elio to wait in our bedroom while I said goodnight to Michael. I was concerned that Michael might be upset, for never before had I closed my bedroom door to him while I’d slept.

  Excepting my vacations to visit Elio or Mom and Dad, Michael and I had slept together every night until I’d returned home the summer of my thirteenth birthday, when Grandpa had insisted that Michael and I begin sleeping separately. During the following six months, Michael slept alone two nights each week; during the next six months, he slept alone four nights each week; and thereafter, until the day Elio arrived to live with us, Michael slept with me only one night each week.

  Perhaps it would be more accurate to write that it was I who had slept alone on the aforementioned nights, for Michael, refusing to sleep alone in his bedroom, had slept on the floor beside his plants with his eyes closed but directed toward my open door.

  “We’re going to bed now,” I said as I approached Michael.

  “He likes me!” Michael whispered as he threw his arms around me. “I can feel that we’ll be friends!”

  “Yes. I feel so, too.”

  “He wants to make love to you now.”