Tony was out on the river, atop the oildrum raft that he and the other kids of his age had been building all summer. The wide sweep that cut between the fields and the gasometers into town had narrowed in the drought heat. Tony was angling a pole through the sucking silt to get to the deeper current. He was absorbed, alone; he hadn’t noticed Bobby standing on the fissured mud of the bank. Earlier in the summer, there would have been a crowd of Tony’s friends out there, shouting and diving, sitting with their heels clutched in brown hands, chasing Bobby away with shouts or grabbing him with terrible threats that usually ended in a simple ducking or just laughter, some in cutoff shorts, their backs freckled pink from peeling sunburn, some sleekly naked, those odd dark patches of hair showing under their arms and bellies. Maggie Brown, with a barking voice you could hear half a mile off, Pete Thorn, who kept pigeons and always seemed to watch, never said anything, maybe Johnnie Redhead and his sidekicks, even Trev Lee, if his hay fever, asthma, and psoriasis hadn’t kept him inside, or maybe the twin McDonald sisters, whom no one could tell apart.
Now Tony was alone.
“Hey!” Bobby yelled, not wanting to break into his brother’s isolation, but knowing he had to. “Hey, Tony!”
Tony poled once more toward the current. The drums shook, tensed against their bindings, then inched toward the main sweep of the river.
“Hey, Tony, Mum says you’ve got to come home right now.”
“All right, all right.”
Tony let go of the pole, jumped down into the water. It came just below his naked waist. He waded out clumsily, falling on hands and knees. He crouched to wash himself clean in a cool eddy where the water met the shore, then shook like a dog. He grabbed his shorts from the branch of a dead willow and hauled them on.
“Why didn’t you just come?” Bobby asked. “You must have known it was time. The doc’s waiting at home to give you your tests.”
Tony slicked back his hair. They both stared at the ground. The river still dripped from Tony’s chin, made tiny craters in the sand. Bobby noticed that Tony hadn’t shaved, which was a bad sign in itself. Out on the river, the raft suddenly bobbed free, floating high on the quick current.
Tony shook his head. “Never did that when I was on it. Seemed like a great idea, you know? Then you spend the whole summer trying to pole out of the mud.”
Around them, the bank was littered with the spoor of summer habitation. The blackened ruin of a bonfire, stones laid out in the shape of a skull, junkfood wrappers, an old flap of canvas propped up like a tent, ringpull cans and cigarette butts, a solitary shoe. Bobby had his own friends—his own special places—and he came to this spot rarely and on sufferance. But still, he loved his brother, and was old enough to have some idea of how it must feel to leave childhood behind. But he told himself that most of it had gone already. Tony was the last; Pete and Maggie and the McDonald twins had grown up. Almost all the others too. That left just Trev Lee, who had locked himself in the bathroom and swallowed a bottle of bleach whilst his parents hammered at the door.
Tony made a movement that looked as though it might end in a hug. But he slapped Bobby’s head instead, almost hard enough to hurt. They always acted tough with each other; it was too late now to start changing the rules.
They followed the path through the still heat of the woods to the main road. It was midday. The shimmering tarmac cut between yellow fields toward town. Occasionally, a car or truck would appear in the distance, floating silent on heat ghosts before the roar and the smell suddenly broke past them, whipping dust into their faces. Bobby gazed at stalking pylons, ragged fences, the litter-strewn edges of the countryside; it was the map of his own childhood. It was Tony’s too—but Tony only stared at the verge. It was plain that he was tired of living on the cliff-edge of growing up.
Tony looked half a grownup already, graceful, clumsy, self-absorbed. He hadn’t been his true self through all this later part of the summer, or at least not since Joan Trackett had grown up. Joan had a fierce crop of hair and protruding eyes; she had come to the area with her parents about six years before. Bobby knew that she and Tony had been having sex since at least last winter and maybe before. He’d actually stumbled across them one day in spring, lying on a dumped mattress in the east fields up beyond the garbage dump, hidden amid the bracken in a corner that the farmer hadn’t bothered to plough. Tony had chased him away, alternately gripping the open waistband of his jeans and waving his fists. But that evening Tony had let Bobby play with his collection of model cars, which was a big concession, even though Bobby knew that Tony had mostly lost interest in them already. They had sat together in Tony’s bedroom that smelled of peppermint and socks. I guess you know what Joan and I were doing, he had said. Bobby nodded, circling a black V8 limo with a missing tire around the whorls and dustballs of the carpet. It’s no big deal, Tony said, picking at a scab on his chin. But his eyes had gone blank with puzzlement, as though he couldn’t remember something important.
Bobby looked up at Tony as they walked along the road. He was going to miss his big brother. He even wanted to say it, although he knew he wouldn’t be able to find the words. Maybe he’d catch up with him again when he turned grownup himself, but that seemed a long way off. At least five summers.
The fields ended. The road led into Avenues, Drives, and Crofts that meandered a hundred different ways toward home.
The doctor’s red station wagon was parked under the shade of the poplar in their drive.
“You don’t make people wait,” Mum said, her breath short with impatience, shooing them both quickly down the hallway into the kitchen. “I’m disappointed in you, Tony. You too, Bobby. You’re both old enough to know better.” She opened the fridge and took out a tumbler of bitter milk. “And Tony, you didn’t drink this at breakfast.”
“Mum, does it matter? I’ll be a grownup soon anyway.”
Mum placed it on the scrubbed table. “Just drink it.”
Tony drank. He wiped his chin and banged down the glass.
“Well, off you go,” Mum said.
He headed up the stairs.
Doctor Halstead was waiting for Tony up in the spare room. He’d been coming around to test him every Tuesday since Mum and Dad received the brown envelope from school, arriving punctually at twelve thirty, taking best-china coffee with Mum in the lounge afterward. There was no mystery about the tests. Once or twice, Bobby had seen the syringes and the blood analysis equipment spread out on the candlewick bedspread through the open door. Tony had told him what it was like, how the doc stuck a big needle in your arm to take some blood. It hurt some, but not much. He had shown Bobby the sunset bruises on his arm with that perverse pride that kids display over any wound.
Doctor Halstead came down half an hour later, looking stern and noncommittal. Tony followed in his wake. He shushed Bobby and tried to listen to Mum’s conversation with the doc over coffee in the lounge by standing by the door in the hall. But grownups had a way of talking that made it difficult to follow, lowering their voices at the crucial moment, clinking their cups. Bobby imagined them stifling their laughter behind the closed door, deliberately uttering meaningless fragments they knew the kids would hear. He found the thought oddly reassuring.
* * *
Tony grew up on the Thursday of that same week. He and Bobby had spent the afternoon together down at Monument Park. They had climbed the whispering boughs of one of the big elm trees along the avenue and sat with their legs dangling, trying to spit on the heads of the grownups passing below.
“Will you tell me what it’s like?” Bobby had asked when his mouth finally went dry.
“What?” Tony looked vague. He picked up a spider that crawled onto his wrist and rolled it between finger and thumb.
“About being a grownup. Talk to me afterward. I want … I want to know.”
“Yeah, yeah. We’re still brothers, right?”
“You’ve got it. And—”
“—Hey, shush!”
Thr
ee young grownups were heading their way, a man, a woman, and an uncle. Bobby supposed they were courting—they had their arms around each other in that vaguely passionless way that grownups had, their faces absent, staring at the sky and the trees without seeing. He began to salivate.
“Bombs away.”
Bobby missed with his lob, but Tony hawked up a green one and scored a gleaming hit on the crown of the woman’s head. The grownups walked on, stupidly oblivious.
It was a fine afternoon. They climbed higher still, skinning their palms and knees on the greenish bark, feeling the tree sway beneath them like a dancer. From up here, the park shimmered, you could see everything; the lake, the glittering greenhouses, grownups lazing on the grass, two fat kids from Tony’s year lobbing stones at a convoy of ducks. Bobby grinned and threw back his head. Here, you could feel the hot sky around you, taste the clouds like white candy.
“You will tell me what it’s like to be a grownup?” he asked again.
But Tony suddenly looked pale and afraid, holding onto the trembling boughs. “Let’s climb down,” he said.
When Bobby thought back, he guessed that that was the beginning.
Mum took one look at Tony when they got home and called Doctor Halstead. He was quick in coming. On Mum’s instructions, Bobby also phoned Dad at the office, feeling terribly grownup and responsible as he asked to be put through in the middle of a meeting.
Tony was sitting on the sofa in the lounge, rocking to and fro, starting to moan. Dad and the doc carried him to the spare bedroom. Mum followed them up the stairs, then pulled the door tightly shut. Bobby waited downstairs in the kitchen and watched the shadows creep across the scrubbed table. Occasionally, there were footsteps upstairs, the rumble of voices, the hiss of a tap.
He had to fix his own tea from leftovers in the fridge. Later, somehow all the house lights got turned on. Everything was hard and bright like a fierce lantern, shapes burned through to the filaments beneath. Bobby’s head was swimming. He was someone else, thinking, this is my house, my brother, knowing at the same time that it couldn’t be true. Upstairs, he could hear someone’s voice screaming, saying My God No.
Mum came down after ten. She was wearing some kind of plastic apron that was wet where she’d wiped it clean.
“Bobby, you’ve got to go to bed.” She reached to grab his arm and pull him from the sofa.
Bobby held back for a moment. “What’s happening to Tony, Mum? Is he okay?”
“Of course he’s okay. It’s nothing to get excited about. It happens to us all, it…” Anger came into her face. “Will you just get upstairs to bed, Bobby? You shouldn’t be up this late anyway. Not tonight, not any night.”
Mum followed Bobby up the stairs. She waited to open the door of the spare room until he’d gone into the bathroom. Bobby found there was no hot water, no towels; he had to dry his hand on squares of toilet paper, and the flush was slow to clear, as though something was blocking it.
He sprinted across the dangerous space of the landing and into bed. He tried to sleep.
* * *
In the morning there was the smell of toast. Bobby came down the stairs slowly, testing each step.
“So, you’re up,” Mum said, lifting the kettle from the burner as it began to boil.
It was eight thirty by the clock over the fridge; a little late, but everything was as brisk and sleepy as any other morning. Dad stared at the sports pages, eating his cornflakes. Bobby sat down opposite him at the table, lifted the big cereal packet that promised a scale model if you collected enough coupons. That used to drive Tony wild, how the offer always changed before you had enough. Bobby shook some flakes into a bowl.
“How’s Tony?” he asked, tipping out milk.
“Tony’s fine,” Dad said. Then he swallowed and looked up from the paper—a rare event in itself. “He’s just resting, Son. Upstairs in his own room, his own bed.”
“Yes, darling.” Mum’s voice came from behind. Bobby felt her hands on his shoulders, kneading softly. “It’s such a happy day for your Dad and me. Tony’s a grownup now. Isn’t that wonderful?” The fingers tightened, released.
“That doesn’t mean you don’t go to school,” Dad added. He gave his paper a shake, rearranged it across the teapot and the marmalade jar.
“But be sure to tell Miss Gibson what’s happened.” Mum’s voice faded to the back of the kitchen. The fridge door smacked open. “She’ll want to know why you’re late for register.” Bottles jingled. Mum wafted close again. She came around to the side of the table and placed a tumbler filled with white fluid beside him. The bitter milk. “We know you’re still young,” she said. “But there’s no harm, and now seems as good a time as any.” Her fingers turned a loose button on her blouse. “Try it, darling, it’s not so bad.”
What happens if I don’t.… Bobby glanced quickly at Mum, at Dad. What happens if … through the kitchen window, the sky was summer grey, the clouds casting the soft warm light that he loved more than sunlight, that brought out the green in the trees and made everything seem closer and more real. What happens … Bobby picked up the tumbler in both hands, drank it down in breathless gulps, the way he’d seen Tony do so often in the past.
“Good lad,” Mum sighed after he’d finished. She was behind him again, her fingers trailing his neck. Bobby took a breath, suppressed a shudder. This bitter milk tasted just as Tony always said it did: disgusting.
“Can I see Tony now, before I go to school?”
Mum hesitated. Dad looked up again from his newspaper. Bobby knew what it would be like later, the cards, the flowers, the house lost in strangers. This was his best chance to speak to his brother.
“Okay,” Mum said. “But not for long.”
Tony was sitting up in bed, the TV Mum and Dad usually kept in their own bedroom propped on the dressing table. Having the TV was a special sign of illness; Bobby had had it twice himself, once with chicken pox, and then with mumps. The feeling of luxury had almost made the discomfort worthwhile.
“I just thought I’d see how you were,” Bobby said.
“What?” Tony lifted the remote control from the bedspread, pressed the red button to kill the sound. It was a reluctant gesture that Bobby recognized from Dad.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine, Bobby.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Yes … Not really.” Tony shrugged. “What do you want me to say? You’ll find out soon enough, Bobby.”
“Don’t you remember yesterday? You said you’d tell me everything.”
“Of course I remember, but I’m just here in bed … watching the TV. You can see what it’s like.” He spread his arms. “Come here, Bobby.”
Bobby stepped forward.
Tony grinned. “Come on, little brother.”
Bobby leaned forward over the bed, let Tony clasp him in his arms. It was odd to feel his brother this way, the soft plates of muscle, the ridges of chest and arm. They’d held each other often enough before, but only in the wrestling bouts that Bobby launched into when he had nothing better to do, certain that he’d end up bruised and kicking, pinned down and forced to submit. But now the big hands were patting his back. Tony was talking over his shoulder.
“I’ll sort through all the toys in the next day or so. You can keep all the best stuff to play with. Like we said yesterday, we’re still brothers, right?” He leaned Bobby back, looked into his eyes. “Right?”
Bobby had had enough of grownup promises to know what they meant. Grownups were always going to get this and fix that, build wendy houses on the lawn, take you to the zoo, staple the broken strap on your satchel—favors that never happened, things they got angry about if you ever mentioned them again.
“All the best toys. Right?”
“Right,” Bobby said. He turned for the door, then hesitated. “Will you tell me one thing?”
“What?”
“Where babies come from.”
Tony hesitated, but not unduly; gro
wnups always thought before they spoke. “They come from the bellies of uncles, Bobby. A big slit opens and they tumble out. It’s no secret, it’s a natural fact.”
Bobby nodded, wondering why he’d been so afraid to ask. “I thought so … thanks.”
“Any time,” Tony said, and turned up the TV.
“Thanks again.” Bobby closed the door behind him.
* * *
Tony finished school officially at the end of that term. But there were no awards, no speeches, no bunting over the school gates. Like the other new grownups, he just stopped attending, went in one evening when it was quiet to clear out his locker, as though the whole thing embarrassed him. Bobby told himself that was one thing he’d do differently when his time came. He’d spent most of his life at school, and he wasn’t going to pass it by that easily. Grownups just seemed to let things go. It had been the same with Dad, when he moved from the factory to the admin offices in town, suddenly ignoring men he’d shared every lunchtime with and talked about for years as though they were friends.
Tony sold his bicycle through the classified pages to a kid from across town who would have perhaps a year’s use of it before he too grew up. He found a temporary job at the local supermarket. He and Dad came home at about the same time each evening, the same bitter work smell coming off their bodies. Over dinner, Mum would ask them how everything had gone and the talk would lie flat between them, drowned by the weak distractions of the food.
For Tony, as for everyone, the early years of being a grownup were a busy time socially. He went out almost every night, dressed in his new grownup clothes and smelling of soap and aftershave. Mum said he looked swell. Bobby knew the places in town he went to by reputation. He had passed them regularly and caught the smell of cigarettes and booze, the drift of breathless air and sudden laughter. There were strict rules against children entering. If he was with Mum, she would snatch his hand and hurry him on. But she and Dad were happy for Tony to spend his nights in these places now that he was a grownup, indulging in the ritual dance that led to courtship, marriage, and a fresh uncle in the family. On the few occasions that Tony wasn’t out late, Dad took him for driving lessons, performing endless three-point turns on the tree-lined estate roads.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection Page 37