Mary Ann Rivers

by The Story Guy

  And what is Brian’s life?

  From where I sit, I can see both the library and the Federal Building where he works. Stacy’s day care isn’t even three blocks from the library. He meets his Wednesdays here, and keeps his phone on, his bike ready. On our date, the restaurant was, likewise, only blocks away from the hospital where Stacy was staying.

  Even his time, the hour he fits in between Stacy’s hours, is ephemeral—ready to transform into her time. I think of him in his dark house, dark so he can’t see—what? Medical supplies? The debris of his daily labor?

  Dark, so he only had to listen, our voices together, dirty and playful, building toward what was for him a stolen release.

  It seems impossible. I don’t have a brother or sister, but I know the hard pull of familial love. My parents are healthy and have an active retirement, but I have already thought about what I will do when they falter and need me. And there will only be me, their third musketeer, to give my time over to them, to squeeze my life around the end of theirs. I scrub away tears, thinking of it.

  At least in theory, I’ve always thought I wouldn’t mind, given that they gave up part of their youth to my babyhood and childhood. Brian makes that theory just what it is—an untried idea.

  The reality is fitting all the kissing of a lifetime into an hour while a clock ticks twice as fast. The reality requires an abandonment of shame even while your contact list gets smaller and smaller. The reality is merciless and cruel, though your hands must remain tender while they do previously unimaginable things.

  And yet, every day, Brian gathers his sister’s long hair into a beautiful plait, and just the sound of his voice is enough to calm her when she is uncomfortable and frightened. I think that tells me his real story.

  Saturday, 10:12 a.m.

  While I am struggling to remove a stubborn security lock on an e-reader, Justin elbows me in the side, and when I look up, it’s Brian. He looks so good, standing uncertainly in the archway of the overrun teen center, that Justin has to extricate the reader from my hands to finish the checkout. “Go,” he says, “I can handle all of this.” I look around the packed room guiltily even while I start to get up. Justin laughs. “Seriously. Take your time, but don’t think I’m forgetting who writes my recommendation letters.”

  I think I tell him thank you as I walk to Brian, but all I really register is the way Brian looks at me, with open want, how he stands taller as I get closer. Next to him, looking up at him, I grab his hand and take him to the conference room no one is using because I am still sorting educational books.

  I close the door, and I know both of us mean to head to the chairs around the conference table to sit down and talk, but I look up and he’s right there, just a little in my space. I’m still holding his hand, and the contact is suddenly more intimate than I intended, pulling him in here. His eyes are finally deep in mine, and he turns his hand so that our fingers interlace and clench. His thumb circles my wrist, slowly. So slowly.

  I whisper, “Brian?” And then I grab the front of his sweater and he has his arms all the way around me and I have no idea exactly how it happened.

  His kiss is not gentle, and before I even take a breath, the pressure of his lips against mine is demanding that I open up. Of course I do, and he moans on a shudder and pulls me against him, his forearms tightly bracketing my spine. My arms are trapped against his chest, and so all I can do is receive what he is giving me.

  He angles over my mouth again and again, my neck arched backward, the skin under my bottom lip burning from his stubble, and it’s so, so good. He’s making noises, sighs and short groans, each time his mouth retreats and resets into a new angle over mine. His body is so hot and there is so much of it, his chest and thighs all around me, his penis glass-hard against my waist.

  I work to keep my eyes open, fighting the way my lids want to sink as my arousal rises. I want to watch how his dark lashes flutter against his cheeks and how the edges of his lips are losing definition as they rub and suck mine. He’s so lost in this, in me, and I want to suspend this moment, make it stretch over as much time as it can bear.

  He walks me against the wall by the door without letting me go and somehow just melts into me. He’s heavy and I’m surrounded by him. His kiss seals over my mouth, our tongues lazily rubbing, everything slow with the anchor of the wall holding us up. Holding us together.

  I feel a swoop drop my middle as he releases his hold on me to frame my face with his hands, firm pressure along my jaw telling me exactly where he wants my mouth. He slips his broad thumb between our bottom lips to feel our kiss, and it is so erotic I shiver all over and lick his thumb as if I am in the middle of coming and have lost all self-consciousness to pleasure.

  He drops his face into my neck, panting, moving his hands over my nape in restless patterns. I can finally move my arms and so I slide them up to capture his head between my palms—I want him to look at me. His expression is solemn, but his eyes are dark with the passion left over from our kiss.

  “I didn’t come here to do that,” he whispers. The rough bite of his whisper pulls all my short hairs back into goose bumps.

  “I wouldn’t mind if you did.” My voice is more torn than his.

  “I came here to tell you that I am not a good man, Carrie.” His hands drift away and he steps back, so I lose my hold on him. Resigned, I sit in one of the chairs, and he slumps in the one next to me. He turns so that we’re knee to knee.

  I lean forward, trying to maintain some kind of connection. “I don’t believe that. It’s all I’ve been thinking about. I wish that you would have told me sooner, would have trusted me, but I can also understand why you didn’t. It must be hard for anyone to get what you go through.”

  Brian shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut. “All you saw was the clean, noble rescue.” He turns toward the table and drops his head into his hands.

  “It’s not like that. Almost never. In fact, when I haven’t been arguing with social workers for the last ten days about ‘the level of care’ I can provide, I’ve been leaving Stacy with a home health aide I barely know to try to get in to work. The day care has fired us, because they’ve decided Stacy is too medically fragile for their services.”

  Brian turns toward me again. His cheeks look hot and his eyes are just—lost. “Home health agencies work with state insurance agencies and my insurance agency to determine how many hours a week of care Stacy qualifies for. We’ve been down this road before, which is why I was so fucking glad the day-care place took her. We’ve had six months in a row of relative stability and routine with them.

  “The home health places set up constant battles between you, insurance agencies, social workers, and new nursing and aide graduates who have provided trach care three total times in their whole career and who leave after six or eight weeks for better jobs or because your eighty-pound sister gave them ‘back problems.’ ”

  His speech is pressured, and as I watch he closes up, crossing his legs, his arm over his body. I realize that this is how he holds himself when he thinks of his sister. His picture with his ad truly was a portrait, as layered as an oil painting with what his life has come to. Smiling without meeting anyone’s eye, literally holding himself together with nothing but his own arms.

  “But it’s not just that.” His hand tightens around his opposite elbow like a vise, and his eyes squeeze shut, and he turns his head away, utterly determined not to look at me. “You can’t know what it’s like to stare into the dark, in the middle of the night, and listen so hard for a single skipped breath that your entire body aches. I hold my own breath sometimes, because I’m afraid that my breathing’s too loud to hear hers.

  “And then when I can’t stand it another minute, because I’m so afraid, I finally get up. I sit in the corner of her room with a blanket around me, to hear her breathe, but that’s not what I’m trying to say.” He brings his hand to his eyes, as though he needs another barrier against me.

  “I’m trying to tell y
ou that what I really wonder, in the middle of the night, when I’m listening to her breathe, is what I’ll do if I hear it stop. If I’ll pick up the phone, or if I’ll pick up my blanket and go to bed. Sleep, just sleep. Finally.”

  Oh, Brian. I realize my hand is over my mouth, as if I’m trying to keep his confession inside of something. I don’t know if it’s him, or me.

  He bends over at the waist, hands over his face. His neck muscles are bunched tight, and his sides are heaving. The sound of our breath mingling in the quiet room is painful and awful after what he’s let me understand.

  “The only reason I can tell you this,” his voice is a whisper, less than a whisper, but it fills every corner, “is because I can’t have you.”

  “Brian—”

  But he doesn’t answer. He just leans into his hands, lost.

  I take his hand, which feels almost feverish. “But these agency places, aren’t they just trying to help you? A social worker seems good—just to work out all your options?” Brian huffs out a laugh and pulls his hand away.

  “I’ve been doing this for ten years, Carrie. Longer than most of the social workers have held their jobs. None of these fights are new, they just keep getting longer. I—” He suddenly stops and shakes his head.

  “No, here’s the thing that I came here to say. I am not a good man. I am not some hero, or anything like it. I hate my job, do you understand? I hate it. But it was the only job I could get out of law school that had regular hours and good benefits. I couldn’t work anywhere that required billable hours. Or ambition. Or a dream of any kind.” His tone is harsh. Low. A little mean. I can’t help the tears tracking down my cheeks.

  I think about how young someone fresh out of law school is. How much is ahead of that young person. I think about how many years it’s been since he’s been young, if he ever got to be, at all.

  He reaches over and follows one of my tears with his thumb, rubbing it softly into my temple before pulling away again.

  “That’s what I mean when I say that I am not a good man. Carrie, I live—I mean I absolutely fucking live—for the two times a year Stacy has to go to the fucking hospital for some complication or another because, guess what? I can sleep. I can get a beer after work. I can masturbate myself raw in my own goddamn living room. I can take a beautiful girl out for pancakes.”

  And then he’s pinching his nose, hard, but the tears slide over his thumb and forefinger anyway.

  I am just staring, my throat filled with something so hard and heavy it could be granite. I make myself breathe, as though if I take the right kind of breath he’ll breathe with me and be still. Still inside, just for a moment.

  “But you braid her hair” is what I say. Which is stupid, and I am stupid.

  “What?”

  “She has beautiful hair. You keep it long and so you must have to wash it and dry it. You braid it.” He just looks at me. He’s looking at me so blankly for so long that I get uncomfortable, but then one of his dimples dives in, even without him smiling.

  “Oh Carrie, you’re just so—” He closes his eyes again, but the dimples sort of turn into a smile, and everywhere he’s hinged shut opens just a crack.

  “Stacy was in a car accident when she was seventeen. I had just started college, and she and my mom hadn’t gotten along for a long time by then. She was always calling me, in tears, about the fights and the battles, and as soon as I hung up with her, my mom would call to tell me I needed to ‘say something to her’ to get her to behave.”

  “That seems kind of unreasonable.”

  “Yeah, well. And so it goes.” His sigh doesn’t have any regret left in it. “The night she was in her accident, she had basically stolen the car because she was two strikes down on the three-strikes rule for new drivers. If she had another violation, moving or nonmoving, she was going to lose her license for a year. She picked up her girlfriend, and they took the car out to this neighborhood near where we lived. People out there live on two- to ten-acre properties and some have hobby farms, and all the roads are gravel.”

  I take his hand again, and he lets me hold it.

  He rubs his thumb over my wrist.

  “They think she was trying to avoid a deer. Her friend, who survived and is okay, still doesn’t remember exactly what happened. Stacy was in the hospital for almost a year. She has some spinal cord damage, but it’s mainly the traumatic brain injury that is responsible for her condition now.

  “The last time,” he clears his throat, “the last time I talked to her was a few hours before she went out that night. It was a normal conversation. All she could talk about was some ridiculous fucking important girl project to grow her hair out long. I barely listened to her. Carrie,” he looks into my face, his curly lashes stuck together in clumps by tears, “I hardly listened at all. I was so, so tired of listening to her.” He sits up a little, and I squeeze his hand. I don’t want him to go, but I can already feel him leaving.

  “In the hospital, her hair was shaved multiple times for surgeries and for shunts to drain fluid, and when my mom took care of her, she kept it short, too, almost buzzed.”

  “Oh, Brian.”

  Ignoring my tears, he laughs again. “Right before I graduated from law school, I found out Mom was being investigated for neglect. It wasn’t so serious as to be criminal, but Stacy was getting a lot of bed sores and had a couple of hospital stays due to food poisoning because Mom wasn’t practicing proper technique with her feeding tube—stuff like that.” His eyes have found someplace to look into over my shoulder, red-rimmed, watery, the green irises hazy with whatever memory he was reaching for.

  “I made a decision to help Stacy, and I had just finished an internship with the federal contracts department, which was one of the places to offer me a job. Three days after I graduated, Mom moved to Florida, and I moved Stacy in.”

  “And let her grow out her hair.”

  “Yeah.”

  I move out of my chair and awkwardly curl into his lap, relaxing when he lets me hold his head against my neck. I comb my fingertips against his scalp, forehead to nape, the way my mom did for me when I was little and upset. The motion soothed me. I want it to soothe him.

  His breath is warm and soft along my collarbones, but his hands stay on the arms of the chair.

  “I’m not a good man, Carrie. That’s what I am trying to say.” His voice is gentle, but very flat. He carefully moves me so he can stand up. He looks at the floor but picks up one of my hands, stroking the back of it, circling the knuckles with his finger.

  “I’ve hurt you and so many other people. I’m never sure that I’m not hurting Stacy. Stacy’s new social worker is really concerned and I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve really gotten on their radar in a meaningful way. I’ve got to focus, on what’s right for Stacy and—”

  “What’s right for you?”

  “I don’t even know what ‘me’ is. Lately, you know about as much as anyone. Another really good reason I have to go.” He curls his hand around my shoulder but drops it instantly. “It’s really not that it’s a secret, I’m not ashamed, but I’ve learned it isn’t anything I can share, either. No one can count on me but Stacy, and I’m not even sure she can, either.”

  I am never going to forget how he looks right now, as if he’s actually physically trying to hide the longing in his face.

  He pinches the bridge of his nose again. “I have nothing to offer, and believe me when I say I am really good at figuring out exactly how much I can offer anyone.”

  “That’s where I think you’re wrong.”

  “Carrie—”

  “No, hear me out. You dole out these stolen little pieces for yourself. You’ve been doing it for so long that you not only have no idea what you need, you have no idea what anyone else might need, either. No one is all or nothing. Grown-ups don’t need someone to be all or nothing.”

  “Stacy’s not a grown-up. She never will be. She’ll always be my little sister, just my little sister.”


  “Right. I know. What I mean is you’re the grown-up. Who knows other grownups who know how to help and share. Who, in fact, when they grow to like and respect you, want to help you and share because it makes them feel good. Because no one should have to give everything they are to just one other person at the expense of their own life.”

  “That is in no way my experience.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, ‘oh.’ You don’t understand. When I say Stacy will always be just my little sister, I mean she can never be anything else. She can’t grow up, go to school, date, have a family. She’s in a lot of pain, and probably doesn’t understand why. All she knows is me, or some kind of routine that represents me and the physical comfort I can provide.” Brian looks right in my eyes now, but it’s hard to hold his gaze because my tears keep blurring it.

  “In the beginning, I did work harder to get out more, get to know people, and you’re right, at first, people act like they want to help. Women, in particular, seemed understanding that I couldn’t drop everything for a date, or that we might have to hang out at my place.”

  “So what happened, Brian? Please, please, explain this to me.”

  “Nothing so dramatic. People just live. Their lives get filled up with all of these—things. They can actually fill their lives with things I can’t even imagine because my entire adult life has always been full of Stacy, just Stacy. It’s why I can’t stand, can’t stand, Carrie,” he says as he angrily swipes away another tear, “those moments I told you about, the one where I can almost imagine a whole life with someone else, filled to the brim with other things. Because I can never have that. I already have enough, what I’ve been given. Everything else is just a reminder of how easy it is for me to hurt someone. You. Stacy. I can’t move in any direction.”

  “Brian—”

  “Even if what you say is true, I have to go. I really have to go, I have to go back. I just had a few minutes, really, to get away. And I didn’t want to leave things at that stupid pergola. Because you’re not,” he says as he slides my tear-splattered glasses up my nose, “just a Wednesday. You’re not. You weren’t after two minutes of talking to you on the bench, and I had never wanted to kiss someone so badly in my entire life. I can’t imagine ever wanting to kiss someone as much as I always want to kiss you.”