Corky's Brother

by Jay Neugeboren

  “Well, then, we can just take it along to the club.”

  “Let me sign out—I’ll put this stuff in my room.”

  As soon as he was a few steps away he heard them whispering to each other. Something about his posture being better, but still too “slouchy,” his mother said—she wished he wouldn’t always be looking at the ground. Billy smiled for the first time that day. That was one good thing about the drugs; they sharpened your sense of hearing. His father said he thought Billy looked perfectly normal, that maybe he’d be out soon.

  He didn’t hear what his mother said to that, but when they were in the car, on the highway headed toward the North Shore, she kept telling him what a good time they were going to have.

  “You do look a little pale, Billy—don’t you get much sun?”

  “The drugs make me dizzy if I’m in the sun—I’m still on thorazine.”

  “Don’t you remember?” his father said. “Last summer, when he came to Aunt Harriet’s with us for the picnic, how he broke out in a rash—”

  “I forgot.” She put her arm around Billy’s shoulder and shook her head sideways. “My poor baby.”

  “You’re no baby, are you, Billy?” Mr. Fisher said.

  “Oscar! Watch out—you almost hit that car—you should see the way that man gave you a look.”

  “I don’t think I feel good,” Billy said.

  “You want to sleep, son?”

  Her arm went further around his shoulder and his head rested on her, low, near her bosom. He remembered how she had comforted him at Aunt Harriet’s when all his aunts and uncles were standing in that circle around him, watching, waiting, muttering—were some of them crying? He didn’t understand why anyone would cry. Maybe it had been what he had said to his father. He couldn’t be sure, because he couldn’t really remember what it was that he had said; only that as the sun had made him dizzier, just before his stomach had given way, his mother had argued with his father, and Billy had joined her, yelling and screaming when his father wouldn’t listen to him. “Poor thing—maybe you’d like to stop for a Coke? That always settles your stomach—remember how I used to keep a bottle of Coke syrup with us whenever—”

  “I’m okay now.” He sat up. “It was the sun shining on me.”

  “Of course, dear. You know I was saying to your father, when you were in your room before we left, that to look at you, there’s not a thing wrong with you, Billy. You’re a little confused, mixed up. Of course. Who isn’t these days? And I’ll tell you something else—if you ask me, you never would have even gotten mixed up if—” She looked toward her husband and sighed. “Well, there’s no sense going into that story, is there? We re here to have a good time…”

  Billy looked out the window at all the other cars and wondered if he’d ever be able to drive; there was so much to think about when you drove: the other cars, the brakes, the speed limit, people, turns, signs, the gas level, the oil—his father was a good driver. Billy just wished that they could speak to each other about things sometimes. But they rarely did, even on days like this when they hadn’t been together for weeks. His mother was still talking, her hand lightly touching him now and then as she used it to punctuate her sentences.

  “One thing, though, Billy—and I’m not sure how to approach this. I certainly hope you won’t take it in the wrong way—but I see no need to tell people where you are now. Do you—?”

  He looked at his hands.

  “Now don’t be upset—if anybody asks you where you’ve been, just say you’re living with our cousins, Martha and Sam, in Maine for the summer. All right—?”

  He nodded.

  “Well,” she continued, “I just see no need for people to know now—when you want them to know, then it’s time enough. Even the doctors said there’s never any need for people to know until you want them to—”

  “I won’t tell anybody.”

  “Good—there’s nothing to be ashamed of about where you are, either, Billy. I hope you understand that. It’s just other people. Let’s face it—even you wouldn’t want to be there if you didn’t have to—”

  He smiled. “I know,” he said. “You—you have to be crazy to want to be there—”

  They laughed and his smile broadened and soon he was laughing also. “One thing about my son,” his father said. “He never loses his sense of humor.”

  “You are precious sometimes, Billy,” his mother said, between laughs. “Oscar—don’t laugh so hard. You shouldn’t be so funny, dear—you’ll distract your father—”

  At the club, he put on a bathing suit so he wouldn’t appear to be out of place. All the boys and girls his own age, though, were down at the beach, swimming, sunbathing—and, because of the sun, he couldn’t join them. His mother and father offered to play cards with him. At first he said he’d rather not; to please them, though, he let himself be talked into a few games of gin rummy. Then he excused himself, saying he wanted to take a walk.

  As he wandered around the club, he noticed that his mother kept glancing up from her beach chair—then from the table where she was playing Mah-Jongg—to keep an eye on him. Finally, to escape her glances, he slipped into the TV lounge and sat down where she wouldn’t be able to see him. The lounge was glass-enclosed and air-conditioned, with easy chairs all around. A ball game was in progress on the TV and he watched for a while. In the back of the room, two teenagers—the boy might have been his own age—were sitting on a couch necking and Billy tried not to look their way. He didn’t want to embarrass them. The girl’s hands were caressing the boy’s neck and shoulders, her fingers stroking, stroking while the boy clutched her. Billy noticed that the boy’s bare chest was pressed against the girl. Once, coming up for air after a long kiss, the girl caught Billy’s eye and he didn’t know what to do. He was afraid she would say something to the boy, would involve him in an argument, but she only curled one corner of her mouth, indifferently, condescendingly, and then—as if drugged, Billy thought—her eyelids closed, she exhaled slightly, and her lips, wet, parted, searched for the mouth of the boy. The next time he turned around—two innings had passed, though he couldn’t have said which team was ahead—they were gone and he felt relieved.

  Outside the lounge, on the shuffleboard courts, a group of children were playing. A little girl in a red bathing suit was examining another little girl, who was stretched out on the ground, mouth open. A little boy—he was the doctor—had a spoon pressed inside the girl’s mouth, and the girl in the red bathing suit, who had an empty Dixie cup on her head, kept giving the doctor orders. In her right hand she held a pail from which she took invisible things that she applied to the patient. She pushed the doctor away now and began wrapping what must have been gauze around the patient’s head, then picked her up by the elbow, patted her lightly on the rear, and sent her on her way. There were other children sitting in a row and one of them ran forward and sat down. The girl sent her back to the waiting room, conferred with the doctor, and then took one of the patients by the hand—not the one who had come forward—and sat her down on the ground. She stuck a Popsicle stick in the girl’s mouth and took her pulse. Billy laughed. The little girl had the biggest blue eyes he’d ever seen.

  Two mothers came along after a while, and the children all clapped and shouted—they were going to be taken swimming. The girl in the red bathing suit ran in front of all of them, her blond ponytail flapping up and down, her pail swinging out from her side. Billy was surprised at how graceful she was for her age; and he was particularly taken by her legs, which weren’t at all pudgy.

  In the middle of a beer commercial he left the lounge. It was hot outside, but a cool breeze blew intermittently and the sun wasn’t directly on him. He was hungry and went to where his father was playing pinochle and asked for some money.

  At the snack bar he ate two cheeseburgers and sipped a Coke. Only a few old people sat around the clubhouse. Somehow it seemed to him that when he was young there had been no old people at the club. Before his mother
had sent him away to camp, when he was thirteen years old, he had spent all his summers at the club. If asked, he couldn’t actually have said what he had done during those summers, but he knew he’d had a good time. When you were with friends, you didn’t have to be doing anything special. He and his doctor had talked about this, because whenever Dr. Klein asked him what he had been talking about with his friends at the hospital, he could never remember. That, he told Dr. Klein, was what made them friends. With friends you didn’t have to talk about something special; you just talked.

  There was one thing, though, which he did remember doing. In the men’s locker room, right next to the drinking fountain, to the right of the shower, in locker 267—he remembered exactly—there was a hole that they used to take turns looking through to see the women undress. The locker had always been one of the open ones, for guests to use.

  Billy wondered if it was still there and he finished his Coke and left the table. He walked into the locker room, down the first aisle of lockers, turned right, then left to the end of the room. He wondered if any of the younger boys would be there now, looking through the hole. He turned the corner and breathed more easily. Nobody was around. No noise in the showers. He looked to either side, then opened the door. To his surprise, nothing happened. He put his hand inside and rubbed it across the back; a piece of cardboard moved. His heart thumped, louder, and he wiped the sweat from his mouth and chin with the back of his hand. Then, looking down the aisle once more, he thrust his head in, pushed the cardboard aside, and pressed his eye to the cool metal.

  He exhaled in relief as he spotted no women. He closed his eyes, opened them, and was about to move back and close the door when the girl in the red bathing suit came into view. She was wearing a blue bathing suit now and was being pulled along by her mother. Billy moved closer to the back wall of the locker, pressing his eye flush against the metal. The mother sat the girl down in front of a large locker, almost directly in front of Billy.

  “One more chance,” he heard the mother say. “I’ll give you one more chance.” The girl sat and stared at her mother, her jaw set, her eyes fiercely defiant. The mother pointed, and shouted this time. “Now get going—”

  Billy switched to his left eye and pressed his cheek against the side of the locker. The edge of the locker cut into his left shoulder, but he wanted to see where the mother was pointing. A few feet to the right, several women were talking, some of them half undressed. He looked away quickly, back at the girl and her mother.

  The girl didn’t budge. She had her pail in her lap, and Billy saw the Dixie cup in it. The girl looked up, toward the mother, then away, to the right, directly at Billy. But she didn’t seem to have noticed him. He licked the sweat that slipped off his upper lip, then drew his bottom lip under his teeth and sucked away the salt that had collected in the crevice between his lower lip and his chin. The mother grabbed the girl and shook her.

  “I know your ways, young lady,” she said, holding onto the girl’s arm. “So help me God, though, if you don’t go back and say excuse me to those ladies, you’ll sit here all day.”

  The girl thought, then her eyes opened wider and she smiled: “Then you’ll have to sit with me—”

  The mother sat down. “Okay, miss smarty-pants, we’ll see who can wait longer.”

  Billy pressed his face to the side again as the girl got up and walked toward the women. She was almost past them and still hadn’t said anything. “Get back here, godamnit!”

  “There’s enough room to go by—” the girl protested. “I don’t need to say ‘scuse me. See—?” She pointed to where the women had stepped back.

  The mother took a few steps and grabbed the girl, pulling her back, and sat her down on the bench. The girl pointed to the left. “There’s a back way—”

  “You’ll go the way I say, and you’ll say excuse me or I’ll know the reason why. Do you hear? Your father’s so worried about breaking your will, is he? Well, IH tell you something, young lady. I’ll break your will before you break me. Do you hear?”

  The girl looked around, trying to find another way out. After a while, though, the fierce look left her eyes and she began to fidget. Billy felt his own jaw set in anger. The girl looked his way again. She squinted and he knew she had noticed him. She didn’t give him away, though. Instead, she made a dash for the door, running past the women and mumbling something that must have been “Excuse me, please” as she did.

  “Don’t tell me, Marge,” said the mother, anticipating what one of the women was about to say. “How can I treat her that way? How—”

  “Look, Ruth, you bring up your kids the way you want—but if my daughter were half as bright and pretty as—”

  “Bright? Sure she’s bright. They’re the worst kind, I’ll tell you that. You know what she’s learning now? Do you know what she said to me yesterday when I had to slap her? ‘Godam-nit, stop I’ Can you imagine—?”

  “Well, Ruth, let’s be honest,” one of the other women said. “You yourself curse in front of her. The child just wants to imitate you, to do what you do.”

  “Do what I do? I can have intercourse, can she?”

  Hearing no objections to this argument, the mother stalked past her friends. Billy felt his heart pounding. He withdrew his head and slammed the door to the locker. He didn’t care if anybody heard him. Something had to be done. His left arm was shaking, quivering the way it used to when he had first become sick. He didn’t feel good either. He breathed in deeply. Billy’s arm shook more violently and he thought he heard footsteps. He darted into a toilet and locked the door behind him, sitting down on the seat without removing his bathing trunks. Whoever came into the locker room left in a few minutes. His arm had stopped shaking but his stomach was still upset. He left the toilet, went to the fountain, and then he knew what it was he would do. He filled his mouth with cold water but neither swallowed it nor spit it out. It filled his cheeks, pressing them to the sides. He sucked them in, letting the water rest under his tongue, and he walked outside quickly, hoping to head the mother off, but he didn’t see her anywhere. He walked all around the clubhouse, then past the snack bar. They must have gone down to the beach, he thought, and so he started walking away from the clubhouse area, onto the sand and down toward the water.

  When he neared the shore, he stopped. The blankets were covered with people. What would he do if someone said hello? He couldn’t let the water out of his mouth. He’d better wait for her near the clubhouse. She had to come back, if only to change her clothes. He turned and walked back up the beach. To the right of the women’s locker room the sun was blocked by a post. He stood next to it, rubbing his skin against its cold metal. He looked at his arms and could see that they were splotchy, red. In his mouth the water was warm now, mixed with saliva.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been leaning against the post when he spotted her. It might have been ten minutes, or it might have been two hours; the slight dizziness that spun on top of his eyes confused him. The water was almost hot now. He moved his cheeks in and out, pressing air up against the top of his mouth, slushing the water around. She had stopped to talk to some women. He wished the little girl were around to see him when he did it. His arm had stopped quivering, but there was no doubt about the rash now, and if the rash came, he knew what was bound to follow. Two women came out of the locker room and he started, almost swallowing the water. He wondered if they had seen him with his cheeks blown out. One of them looked at him strangely and he lowered his gaze to the ground.

  When he looked up, he saw her coming toward him. He slid behind the post so that she wouldn’t see him until the last moment The girl in the blue bathing suit ran after her mother now, the mother said something to her, and then the girl ran off again. Maybe she would turn around in time to watch. The mother came closer and Billy was surprised at how young she was. She was probably no more than thirty years old and she was very pretty. Her hair was auburn and she wore a two-piece bathing suit that revealed a trim f
igure, wide hips, and two very large breasts. Billy couldn’t take his eyes from them. He peeked out from behind the post. When she was about ten yards away, he made a dash toward her, spat the water, hitting her on the right shoulder, and then he continued running, away from the clubhouse, away from her shout, away from what might even have been his own scream. He didn’t look back. Not until he reached the water and dove into it and came back out. Some boy called to him, a boy Billy had known in high school, but Billy didn’t stop. He ran back toward the clubhouse, just far enough to see the spot where he had done it. The woman wasn’t there.

  He walked up the beach and sat down near the snack bar. He felt good. Excited, but not anxious. He was shivering from having been in the sun, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything. The little girl was at the snack bar. His smile broadened.

  “Hi,” he said.

  She stared at him for a second, cocking her head to one side. Up close, her eyes were even more beautiful. Not really blue, as he’d thought, but blue-green, like sea water.

  “You were the nurse, weren’t you?”

  “I was the surgeon,” she said.

  Billy laughed. “Would you like something?”

  She hesitated. “Maybe…”

  Billy dropped down to a deep knee bend position. He felt very old, very fatherly. “Maybe you’d like some milk—surgeons like milk.”

  She made a face.

  “Then, let’s see—you wouldn’t by any chance be interested in some ice cream?”

  “I might.”

  “Well, how about a Creamsicle—a special one with an orange and green wrapper?”

  “Maybe yes…and maybe no,” she said, but her eyes betrayed her.

  “Two Creamsicles,” Billy said to the man behind the counter. “A regular one for me and a special one for—” he didn’t know what to call her “—for her.”

  Billy paid and handed the girl the Creamsicle. She took it, ripped the wrapper away, and started licking the orange ice. He bent down again, to her level. “Would you like to—to play something?” he asked. “A game?”