Beauty and the Brain

by Duncan, Alice

  “George,” he said, in a voice Brenda had not until now heard issue from his lips.

  The young man at the door turned and squinted through the dim bar lighting at Colin, his uncertainty falling away. He still appeared uncomfortable when he smiled, lifted his hat in a gesture of greeting, and said, “Colin.”

  “George!” Colin said, more loudly.

  “Who is it?” asked Martin with interest, obviously unperturbed by the newcomer’s entrance.

  “It’s George,” Colin said. He sounded as if he’d been struck over the head with a large rock and stunned.

  Brenda decided she might as well ask. “Who’s George?”

  Colin swallowed hard. “My brother.”

  No wonder they looked vaguely alike. How fascinating. She watched as the brothers met a few paces away from her table. They shook hands

  They shook hands?

  Brenda knew she was way too exhausted when she experienced a sudden furious impulse to holler at the formal, stodgy brothers to forget about shaking hands and hug each other.

  Chapter Ten

  Something was very wrong. Colin resisted the impulse to grab his younger brother by the nape of his neck, shout obscenities, and shake the news out of him. He was none too gentle, though, when he barked, “What in thunder are you doing here?”

  George’s lips tightened for a second. “Visiting you, Colin. Didn’t think you’d mind.” There was the faintest taint of insolence in his tone.

  He was also hedging, and Colin knew it. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” Colin knew he was. What’s more, George’s school was in Pennsylvania. George shouldn’t be within two thousand miles of California.

  “Not any longer.”

  Colin felt his anger rise and his gaze thin. “What do you mean, ‘not any longer’? I know good and well you haven’t graduated yet.”

  A flash of temper crossed George’s face. “And I’m not going to graduate.” He sounded defiant, as only a thwarted adolescent can sound. “I dropped out of school.”

  “You what?” Colin hadn’t meant to bellow, but he could scarcely believe his ears and bellowed anyway. Impossible! Yet if anyone in the family were to fail in life, he supposed George was the one.

  George took a step sideways, as if to walk around Colin. “You heard me.” Now he sounded sullen. “Why don’t you introduce me to your friends?”

  Colin knew to the instant when George saw Brenda. He’d evidently been too nervous to notice anyone but Colin before. But when his eyes bugged and his mouth fell open and he started gaping, Colin knew he’d spotted Brenda. He turned, too, and had to acknowledge that Brenda Fitzpatrick, when viewed for the first time, could dazzle a man. He was in no mood to be honest with himself or he’d have owned that she still dazzled him, and he’d known her for days now

  Both Martin and Brenda rose from their chairs. Martin looked curious. Brenda smiled, which was enough to overwhelm a young lad like George. Colin took him roughly by the shoulder. “Come with me. As long as you’re here, I might as well introduce you.”

  “As suave and chivalrous as ever, I see,” George muttered sourly.

  “Don’t push it, George. Do Mother and Father know you’re here?”

  “No”

  Now he was sulky. Colin wanted to shake him until he rattled and then batter him around for a while, but that would have to wait. Brenda was on her way over to them, along with Martin, although Colin was positive George hadn’t yet so much as registered Martin’s presence, so brilliant was Brenda’s.

  She was also very gracious. Colin admitted it to himself, although he’d never do so to anyone else. She gave George a warm, welcoming smile. “Hello there. Welcome to the Cedar Crest Lodge. I understand you and Colin are related.”

  “Th-thank you, ma’am.” George swallowed. “Yes. I mean, yes, we’re related. Colin and me, I mean.” His face burned a fiery red.

  Irked with his younger brother for being a harebrained twit as well as a college failure, Colin said harshly, “Miss Brenda Fitzpatrick, please allow me to introduce my younger brother, George. George is—visiting from back east.” Damn him.

  “How do you do, George? It’s so nice to meet you.”

  She held out one of her lovely, tiny hands to George, who dropped his hat in his eagerness to shake it. Colin cut the handshake short by introducing Martin. “Martin Tafft, my brother George.”

  “How-do, George. Good of you to visit us. Colin’s been trying to keep us straight, but he hasn’t had much luck so far.” He chuckled, and Colin’s insides clenched. Martin thought he was being funny, Colin supposed, but Colin didn’t see any humor in the comment.

  “I’m sure,” George said with a hint of malice in his young voice even as he smiled and shook Martin’s hand. “Colin’s aim in life is to keep everyone straight.”

  Colin caught the sharp glint in Brenda’s eyes and could have kicked his brother from here to Sunday. Anyone would think Colin was some sort of monster, the way George talked. Yet Colin had never given George any reason to think ill of him. He’d only ever tried to help him with his lessons, and there was nothing wrong with that even though George had always been a recalcitrant recipient of Colin’s assistance. A couple of instances tiptoed through Colin’s mind, and his lips tightened.

  George, although smarter than most human beings on earth, was probably the least ambitious member of the Peters clan. Sometimes people equated his lack of intellectual curiosity as a sign that he was unintelligent. Colin knew better. The boy was only lazy; perhaps even good-for-nothing. As this latest escapade of his proved.

  “How long do you aim to visit with us, George?” Brenda asked courteously. Colin was sure she didn’t care in the least, but was merely being polite. Even he, who didn’t normally notice people’s faces, could detect the fatigue in hers.

  George shot Colin a hasty glance. “Er, I’m not sure, Miss Fitzpatrick. This visit was sort of—sort of a surprise.”

  “Unequivocally,” Colin growled. George looked peeved.

  “Well, I hope you enjoy your stay. This is a lovely place. Perhaps we can all go horseback riding together one of these days.”

  “I’d like that,” George said quickly, flushing a deeper red as he did so.

  This was ridiculous. Colin wasn’t going to stand here in the middle of the Cedar Crest Lodge’s bar and watch Brenda Fitzpatrick make mincemeat of his idiot brother.

  “I suppose you can room with me as long as you’re here.” He pitched his voice to a tone he hoped would curtail further conversation. Brenda needed her sleep. So did he, for that matter.

  Brenda seemed a little surprised, but she didn’t take him to task for his abrupt manners. Thank the good Lord for small favors, he thought caustically.

  “It’s very nice to meet you, George, but I’m afraid we’ve had a strenuous day. I think I’ll go on up to my own room.” She gave him a parting smile that probably finished George off, blast her. “Good night.”

  “G-g-good night,” George stammered, confirming Colin’s assumption.

  Martin said, “Think I’ll go, on up to bed, too. It’s been quite a day, but we got a lot done.” He was clearly delighted about it. “Will we see you in the morning, George?”

  George hadn’t entirely recovered from Brenda’s smile, but he did manage to stutter, “Oh, thank you, Mr. Tafft. I’d like that a lot. I’m very interested in the pictures.”

  Martin nodded, as if he’d already deduced as much. Everyone in the world seemed to be interested in the pictures these days, fools that they were. “Good night,” Colin said to Brenda and Martin, more curtly than he’d intended.

  Brenda shot him a curious glance but didn’t scold him for being a pill. “Good night,” she said in that beautiful, melodious, albeit slightly New Yorky voice of hers. Colin wished that hearing her voice didn’t send waves of heat through him, but it did. Every dashed time. He could just imagine what Brenda’s voice was doing to his impressionable younger brother. He and George watched as Brend
a and Martin left the bar, chatting in low voices. George, he, noticed, was gawking after Brenda as if she were a lifeline and he a drowning sailor.

  Feeling out of sorts and very touchy, Colin whirled around. “All right, George, what’s going on? What’s this about dropping out of college? And what do you mean by haring off across the country without even telling our parents?”

  George heaved a big sigh. “For the love of God, Colin, let me at least sit down before you tear me to pieces.”

  He sounded dispirited, and for the first time Colin wondered if there was something more to George’s defection than mere irresponsibility. He muttered, “Very well. Here.” He gestured at the table Brenda and Martin had vacated. They sat, and George at once began fiddling with an empty ashtray on the table. He looked around as if with fascination.

  “This is a nice place, Colin. What kind of picture is this going to be?”

  “I’ll tell you later. First you tell me why the deuce you’re here instead of in school where you belong.”

  George heaved a long sigh before he spoke, and then his tone was unhappy. “I didn’t belong there. I didn’t fit in, didn’t care for my course of study, did a lousy job at it, and hated every minute of it.”

  Colin felt his eyes widen as his fury rose. “So you dropped out without telling anyone and headed west. Hoping to seek your fortune in the moving pictures, I presume.”

  Although Colin was often abrupt and untactful, he’d never heard his voice drip venom as it was doing now. He was surprised by it, although he understood why he felt George’s defection so deeply, because it was a betrayal of everything Colin himself had ever valued in life.

  George waved a hand in a gesture that spoke of weariness and defeat. “For Pete’s sake, Colin, you don’t have to be so damned heartless.”

  “Since when have you started swearing, George? Is that what they taught you at college?”

  “Oh, God.” George propped his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. “If you’ll listen to me, I’ll tell you what they taught me, Colin. But I don’t want you to be interrupting all the time. You’re smarter than I am, and you use words better, and I already feel bad enough about this without you playing older, better brother and pounding me to a pulp with your superior wit.”

  Scalding words piled up on Colin’s tongue, and he swallowed them with a good deal of difficulty. He wanted to spew them out all over George and render him sensible of the huge mistake he’d made by leaving school without their parents’ knowledge or consent. He knew if he said what he wanted to say, George would only withdraw from him, however, so he held his tongue.

  Not that Colin cared on a personal basis. He was so angry with George, he could have beaten him about the head and shoulders with great joy. But above anything else, Colin honored their parents, who had reared their children with affection and great care, and instilled in them—or in Colin, at least—a vast respect and love for education. Colin believed he owed it to their parents to get to the bottom of George’s latest regression into the realm of capriciousness and frivolity.

  “Very well,” he said through gritted teeth. “Tell me what happened.”

  George gave another airy, helpless gesture with his hand. It was a slender hand, with long, tapering fingers. Colin’s own hands were much more blunt than George’s. He wondered if that meant anything; if a man learned in such things could discern a person’s character by the structure of his hands

  He jerked himself hack to the present. George’s problems were of immediate concern. Colin could look into the representative properties of hands later. “Well?” he urged none too gently.

  George sighed again. “I’m not cut out for biology and physiology, Colin. Nor for science of any kind. I know Mother and Father were hoping I’d become a naturalist, but I hate that stuff. Spiders make me crawl, mice male me sick, and the great out-of-doors only makes me feel dirty.” He seemed to be searching Colin’s face for any signal indicating understanding, if not approval. He didn’t find any

  “Oh?” So far, Colin could drum up no sympathy. There were lots of things one could study, and the mere fact that George didn’t want to be a naturalist didn’t preclude a hundred other vocations. “Why didn’t you tell them you wanted to study something else?”

  “They seemed so keen on my becoming a naturalist. God knows why.”

  “Nonsense. They’d have been happy if you’d ever shown any aptitude or interest in another field.” Colin sucked in a breath and curbed his biting words. “As I recollect, you never showed interest in anything but lounging around and reading novels. But the university offers many courses of study. Surely you could have found something there that interested you. Even in the humanities.” He tried not to make the word sound like a curse.

  George lifted his head and stared straight into Colin’s eyes. Colin had the strangest sensation that he was looking into his own eyes, so alike were the brothers’ ocular organs. “That’s just the problem, Colin. I—” He stopped speaking abruptly.

  “What’s the problem?” Colin knew he should probably stop frowning, if only to make George feel, more comfortable talking to him, but he couldn’t make himself do it. He was enraged, and there was no disguising it.

  George looked very unhappy—as well he might, in Colin’s opinion—when he said, “I don’t want to study anything there.”

  It was too much. Colin spat out, “For God’s sake, George, have you no common sense at all? What do you expect to do with your life if you’re not trained for anything? Do you expect to be able to make a living by staring up into the blue sky and counting clouds? Or reading novels? Or do you expect our parents to support you until they die? Or me? Do you expect me to carry you around like a sack of oatmeal forever?”

  George’s head fell back and he commenced staring at the ceiling of the Cedar Crest bar. He looked both frustrated and nettled, and his attitude rubbed Colin raw.

  “Well?” he demanded, furious. “What is it? Or perhaps you’d like to be a common laborer. I don’t suppose a man needs a college education to work with his hands. You can mow grass or plant crops. Would you like to go into farming? Of course, you have no business sense, so you’d certainly not make a go of it, but the world always needs farmers. Or laborers. You can dig ditches. There’s nothing innately dishonorable about manual labor. Is that what you want?”

  “No!” Something in George seemed to snap, and he jumped up from his chair. Slamming his hands to the table and leaning on them, he looked Colin straight in the eye. “No, Colin, I don’t want to dig ditches. I don’t want to be a farmer. What I do want is to have my wishes respected for once in my life.

  “Respect,” Colin ground out through his teeth, “has to be earned.”

  “Right.” As if he were a balloon and someone had just, pricked him, George deflated. He stood back and jammed his hands into his trousers’ pockets. “And, of course, since no one in the family ever cared enough to ask me where my interests lie, none of you knows anything about them.”

  “You have a voice,” Colin reminded him. “You could have spoken up. I never noticed you being particularly shy about voicing your opinions before now. I’m sure our parents would have been thrilled to have been spared the cost of your first two years at college if you’d ever bothered to tell them what you really wanted to do.” George probably wanted to be a juggler in a circus, thought Colin savagely. His brother always had been a frivolous sort of fellow.

  “Right. You’re right.” George swung around, dropped his chin broodingly, and stared at the floor. “It’s because I was a coward and didn’t tell anyone what I wanted to do. That’s why nobody ever knew.”

  Exasperated almost beyond bearing, Colin said in a voice gritty with suppressed fury, “Why don’t you tell me now?”

  George turned again, eyeing Colin with grave misgivings. Small wonder, given Colin’s state of rage, although he couldn’t feel guilty about it to save himself. George was a noddy and that was that. “Well? Out with
it. Maybe we can salvage something from this deplorable situation yet.”

  “Don’t sound so encouraging,” George advised bitterly.

  Colin only expelled a huff of breath.

  “All right,” George said. “I don’t suppose you know this—I’m sure no one else in the family does—but I’m an artist, Colin. I’m good. If our parents ever wanted to spend money on an education for me, they’d have done better to send me to art school.”

  “An artist?”

  If there was anything more asinine than being a juggler in a circus, it was being an artist. That was only Colin’s opinion, but he judged it a sound one. Artists were notorious for their penchant for insanity, drugs, and alcohol, and for killing themselves and making everyone who cared about them miserable. He clenched the hand resting on the table into a fist. He wanted to sock his crazy brother in the jaw with it.

  “Yes,” George said simply. “I can’t help it, you know. I was born this way.”

  “Good God.” Colin shut his eyes and tried to calm himself. But—for the love of God! An artist? He didn’t think he could stand it. He was sure their parents wouldn’t have been able to stand it. It was probably a good thing that George had come to him instead of going back home with this outrageous story. When he opened his eyes, he saw George licking his lips and looking miserable. He ought to look miserable, the damned fool.

  “I thought somebody in the pictures might be able to use me,” George said in a small voice. “I know they use set designers and people to draw the subtitles. I’m very good at calligraphy.”

  A memory shimmered indistinctly in the back of Colin’s mind. “Yes. I recollect something of the sort.”

  George used to do the titles for the amateur theatricals the Peters children presented. And he’d painted sets for school plays. Odd how no one in the family had taken any particular note of his interest in that sort of thing or of his talent, which was considerable. Of course, that was because everyone else in the family possessed some common sense. They knew better than to consider art as means of making a living. Not George. Never George. Colin sighed heavily and stood up. There was no sense prolonging this conversation. Neither brother was up to it tonight.