The Half Brother: A Novel

by Holly LeCraw

  Family descended, briefly. I went over once, before May arrived. I was given lemonade and a cookie. Preston informed me, regal in a recliner and a red plaid bathrobe, that he couldn’t play chess that day, as though we’d had a plan, which we hadn’t. I wanted to say that he’d gotten a tough break, or something like that—something manly, but no southern manners bullshit. But in spite of myself I felt stupid and years younger, there in front of Laird and his pretty pregnant wife and Florence, who had greeted me with that enthusiasm that makes you think you’ve broken some rule; the air of emergency in the house seemed mild, almost jovial, slightly embarrassing, a brief thing that was just an obstacle to normalcy, and so I said very little.

  “Chemo once a week,” Preston said. “They’re fixing me up. We never know how long we have, anyway.” He didn’t even sound brave. He sounded amused.

  I hadn’t seen many people die.

  Seven

  And then she was back.

  She hadn’t written or called. I just heard about it. I didn’t know what to do. But I knew people brought food. Whatever else people do, they bring food, so I went to the trendy little bakery in town and picked something up and drove over there.

  When she opened the door she didn’t look surprised to see me. Or she pretended she wasn’t. Instead she presented herself like she was the guest: “Well, here I am. Charlie.” She smiled a little. My name still had the whiff of a joke. Or—it had lost that scent, but now it was back?

  I followed her into the kitchen and handed her the white box. “Éclairs,” I said.

  “Éclairs? Oh,” she said. “Do you want one?”

  “Sure.” Then I looked around, foolishly, as if I expected Preston to pop out of a cabinet and join us for an éclair.

  “He’s sleeping,” she said. “I took him for chemo today.” I nodded, Oh yeah, chemo, I know all about that, but it didn’t fool her. “It’s not to cure him,” she said, in a clipped voice. “It’s just for pain.” Then she sat down, gave down, really, into a chair, there in the kitchen.

  The box sat in front of her. She looked at it but didn’t touch it. “Actually I haven’t had dinner,” she said.

  I was so stupid. I was a useless man. I said, “I should have brought that instead.”

  “I’m not really hungry anyway.” The emptiness of the house rang around us. “Mom’s in Savannah,” she said. “She said she would come back if it got complicated.”

  “But your brothers will be around.”

  “They’ve got jobs,” she said. “Henry, for instance, is extremely busy building boats in Newport, and maintaining his supply of weed.”

  I should have been used to this family by now but I wasn’t, and I felt a strange internal roar of protectiveness. Even though I was probably the last person she needed.

  But then she looked at me quietly for a long moment. It was an expression she used to have when she was younger and trying to convince herself of her own bravery, a look I’d seen in my own classroom. I didn’t know if she wanted to present this character to herself or to me. Then she looked away again and said, “Mom did arrange for nurses, at least. If we need them. But it’s not complicated yet.” She reached out and fiddled with the string knotted around the bakery box. Her nails were short, but not bitten; the effect was well cared for, sensible; they were startlingly familiar; I found I loved her hands. This presented itself as a discrete and private fact. “I mean, the boys come on weekends. He’s not in a lot of pain right now. I don’t really have to do anything. Just keep him company.” She started to cry.

  “May-May,” I said, in that kitchen that was thick with history that wasn’t mine. Paralyzed with noticing my own awkwardness—but not caring about Preston at all; no, at that moment, not at all. He was an old man who was dying, they’d left her alone. Suddenly I was wild with not caring.

  “He’s so selfish,” she burst out. “He always has been. Selfish and horrible and full of shit,” and she stood up and then I knew what was going to happen.

  She stepped into my arms and, after all, she had been there before. By the lake, with her hair wet, the memory fresh of the nakedness I hadn’t seen. I’d kissed her and tried not to feel foolish, in a conversation with myself and not with her, and I’d been sure that for her that day would be only one experience in a long list, that she was already gone.

  But now she hit her forehead on my chest. She was sobbing, she was full of feeling that had nothing to do with me. Still, I seemed to be giving her comfort. This was astonishing.

  Then she looked up at me and said, “I was glad.” She said it like she had murdered someone.

  “About what? About what, sweetheart?”

  There was the smallest tick while she registered my word. And then went on. “When I heard how sick he was and that I had to come home. I was glad because of you, and then on the plane I just thought of you. Not even of Daddy. Just of you.”

  And so. Now we were both astonished.

  Then there was a change: we knew. A shift that was suddenly fact, that we both accepted. Pieces slid, could not be moved back. And then I was kissing her. And there was nothing wrong. And I was speaking only to her, not to myself or Preston or anyone else.

  I don’t know how long we stood there. We started off gentle and rapidly became near-frantic—it became clear how we wanted, we wanted. If I had dared to imagine that far, I would have said I’d be another version of that sad sack standing motionless with his hard-on on the banks of Abbott Pond. But that man had disappeared like smoke. Every moment was further confirmation. I was a believer.

  Then she took my hand and led me out of the warm yellow kitchen. Into the front hall, through the formal living room, to the little den. “We’ll hear him here if he comes down the stairs,” she said, matter-of-factly, and I nodded, utterly serious, and then we began to smile, smug smiles at the universe, because weren’t we somehow beating the odds? Having the last laugh?

  But sitting on the sofa was different and at first uncomfortable. Rearrangement of height, of limbs was necessary, sitting up less efficient than mashing against the wall in the kitchen; there, all had been wild and effortless but now shyness reentered, a small stutter, but was it really time to lie down just yet? And did we feel suddenly teenaged on the sofa, in front of the dark TV, the urgency, the moral clarity and imperative of the crisis-suffused kitchen now gone—were we slightly absurd? I was beginning to wilt. It wasn’t overly concerning, it was for the best. I would not take advantage. We’d truly kissed, we could keep kissing, the situation was plain now and there was no going back, and maybe next time—

  May reached behind her and turned off a lamp. Now just one light remained; the corners of the room were suddenly velvety dark, the blank TV screen no longer shone. It was better, she was right. Her expression was inward, oddly determined. “I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t care.” Then she stood up and said, “I want you to see me.”

  She pulled her sweater over her head. “May.”

  “What.”

  I stood up. “Sweetheart.” I wanted to say it over and over. I reached to stroke her hair; she stepped away; she would not be dissuaded. “We don’t have to. To do anything. Not now.”

  “It’s time now.” She unzipped her jeans, pushed them down her legs. She straightened and reached behind her with that lovely sudden wing-motion that women do, and her bra was loose and then she leaned forward with a little practiced shake and slid it off.

  Up till now she could have been alone, getting ready for a quick shower or bed, her movements had been so rote and everyday. But now I saw her fingers trembling. Then she hooked them at her sides into her underwear and slid it off and stepped out, one leg, the other, and then she stood up and looked at me and her bareness electrified the air, stilled every noise.

  “I want you to see me,” she said again, and her voice was firm.

  I was aware I was staring and that the scientific gaze was a refuge, and I blinked, try again—and God yes, her breasts and the roundness o
f them, sloping into her ribs, enough to break your heart.

  I’d always thought the rest of her body was a little boyish—not that I cared, not that that wouldn’t be just fine with me—but now I saw I was wrong, with her naked I was completely wrong. There was a swell of buttock and a curve at her hip, the secrets I never knew. I stood up, and put my hand gently on the hanging sweetness of breast and stroked down, down her side, the curve of her, the line of her, oh how she is here, right here, right here. “I see you,” I said.

  There were certain planes and angles that had to be mapped and verified. There were her arms, there were the sockets of her hips. The tautness of her waist was an announcement and I touched it and its downward flare again and again.

  She was reaching then for the buttons of my shirt and it was only fair. “You are beautiful,” I said, as explanation, apology.

  “Shhh.”

  I felt the air like hands on my chest and I didn’t want her to know my paltry self, but it was far too late for that, wasn’t it? So late that I could not possibly care. I would just have to be acceptable as a created thing. As the body that held my heart. She leaned forward and kissed my chest, she brushed her cheek against the hair there and sighed, and her hands were at my buckle and I had to let them work, not push into her, with my fingers sunk into her soft backside pulling her to me, erasing all the space between us, See me, see me too, I said, shh and yes and we were on the floor.

  I was careful, I shoved the coffee table away with my foot, I put a pillow under her head and she let me, watching me the whole time. I am not going to say we did not choose it all. It’s time.

  And we are both asking and answering: Do you know how long Oh yes I know Do you know So long Oh yes. Oh please. Our words flow under and around and together, we say what must be said. If Preston comes down the stairs we won’t hear him but he won’t and it wouldn’t matter anyway. We try to be quiet then we laugh and then we are past laughter.

  I’ve been formless and void but now I have shape, meaning, I am myself. I did not know how it would be, to be myself. Oh do you know.

  Do you know how long.

  Yes I know oh I know you yes.

  I am conscious for just a moment of Preston somewhere above us in his drugged sleep inching toward death, as indeed we all are. I am sure though that, being closer to it, he has attained new wisdom, I am sure he would approve, I am sure that all he wants for us is love.

  “SOMEONE’S IN LOVE.”

  “Divya.” A match has been set to my face. “Be quiet.” Panic.

  But she says, “I think it’s all right.”

  “Do you?” It’s all I can do not to say Please please tell me this is all right. I need, I trust her calm, her twinkle.

  “Are you serious about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t flaunt it.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “It just started.” She doesn’t say it as a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Honestly, she seems older than you do. If you don’t mind me saying.”

  Of course she’s right. I do not mind a single thing.

  She considers me. “You’ve been boring a long time, Charles, so there’s that in your favor.”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  “Everyone will know anyway, of course—”

  “Not if you don’t tell them.”

  She smiles. “Tell them what?”

  HER HAIR WAS IN TWO BRAIDS. She was standing in the front hallway of my house. She was seeing my house.

  It was my first fall there, and soon it would be the first winter, the first spring. I’d cycle through again and then again, digging myself in deeper and deeper. As I stood there looking at her, I realized that’s what I wanted. And that right now was the beginning of everything.

  She had been back two weeks.

  “This is a big house,” she said. “It’s so much.”

  “People do buy houses,” I said.

  But even at twenty-nine I was a little young for this place. We both knew it. Especially because I had no need of all those bedrooms upstairs, not yet.

  She walked slowly farther in. Her footsteps were gentle and the old wooden floors received them. She walked to the wide door of the living room as if she were approaching a sleeping baby. She said, “I think this house is a life.”

  I didn’t dare imagine what she meant. I wanted, I wanted.

  She was looking all around, up into every corner, down to the rough boards, taking the house’s measure. “What’s that?”

  “A floor sander.”

  “You’re doing it yourself?”

  “Win’s helping me.”

  “He can he fix anything.”

  “Yes.”

  Her face was alight. “I like him so much,” she said.

  So much more than a squealish Oh I love him! May could do that. Say things very deliberately, things you actually believed.

  “Yes, any fuckups you see are definitely mine.” She was still looking all around at the empty room, the empty shelves. “I’ve moved everything because of the dust,” I said. “Look though. C’mere.”

  I took her hand and we walked down the hall, where all the books were piled against the walls under tarps, and into the kitchen. Her hand was in my hand. Even though we’d done everything—as we might have said in high school—it was still so new, and just that touch, now, exhilarated me. I led her to the sink, and the window above it, and said, “Look.”

  Her face between those braids (I’d never seen her wear her hair like that before) was as entranced as I had hoped (which was not at all a sure thing, since for her these little Massachusetts mountains had long been ordinary). So I took her outside through the kitchen door.

  My property backed up to conservation land, and through the luck of topography you couldn’t see another house. The mountains rolled bluely westward, away and away, giving the illusion of progress to an unseen land, a shining sea, that might be perfect, paradise even; the mountains were pure, untainted possibility. I was sure she saw this.

  She looked out for another moment, and then down, at the flagstones. She could tell that every detail was important. I said, “That was the first thing I did when I moved here. The patio.”

  “Without Win?”

  “Without Win. I was overconfident.”

  “Well, you managed this.”

  “It was really just putting together a puzzle. Although I have to redo that mortar over there. But, see. We’re facing southwest. It’s warmer than anywhere else. Sun all day long.”

  She turned in a half circle, orienting herself. “And it sets—there,” she murmured. “Over that mountain. So here is the sunset.” She swept a hand across the view, confirming it.

  Then she began to walk very carefully, one foot directly in front of the other, as though she were balancing on a narrow beam of a path. She walked the perimeter of the patio and looked out to either side, through the apple trees, down the slope. I thought that in her mind she was walking even farther, through the tall frozen grass beyond us—down into the woods, taking the measure of the land now. The measure of me.

  I didn’t know that in the years to come, I would often return from work, go in my front door, through the house, and straight out the back. As though the house existed only as a foyer for this view. That I would stand and look out like a parched man gulping from a spring, that the mountains’ chief beauty would be that their seeming infinity stopped thought.

  But then she shivered and so we went back inside, which was good because I needed to show her the rest of the house. Needed to. I took her hand again, we went quiet, urgent. Already we were rarely shy with each other. Upstairs there were, sure enough, five bedrooms, echoing empty except for mine. But at the bottom of the stairs, my conscience smiting me, I had to ask. “Is Preston really okay by himself?”

  “Mom’s with him. She’s here for a little while.”

  “Oh.”

  “I know.”

  �
��Does she know where you are?”

  She smiled. “I needed some time to myself.”

  I wasn’t going to ask if she was ashamed of me, because I knew she wasn’t. She was just prudent. Just smart. This was only ours, for now, we were keeping it.

  Instead I came closer and reached out and took her braids, one in each hand. “What are these?” I said. “Who are you? Gretel? Heidi?”

  “Hmm.” She thought. “Your milkmaid.” She tipped her head and simpered.

  I let go. In this moment I wanted no role-play, no hints of anything sordid: it was all too new. “Are you feeling young?” I said. I was ready with my guilt.

  “No.”

  I wanted to touch her again. My hands burned with it.

  She said, “I don’t feel young. My father used to like my hair like this. I suppose I did it for him, or something. I don’t even know.”

  I saw tears in her eyes. She tossed her head, drove them away. She reached up and pulled the white bands off the braids, raked them apart with clawed fingers until her hair rippled loose around her.

  “I don’t feel young at all,” she said. “Come here. Come here right now.”

  “THE HAPPY FAMILY,” May said. “Fuck that.”

  We were at her house, standing in front of the piano, looking at the lacrosse picture.

  “I think I’d gone to the bathroom. Anything to get away from the field. I was always having to watch someone’s game. Or I was just wandering in the administration building, to get warm. I loved it there, when I was little. I pretended it was a palace. Because of that crazy marble floor in the main hall, and the columns. Being alone there, gliding around—I loved that.”

  For a child who grew up at a boarding school, May seemed to have spent a lot of time alone, at least some of it by choice. Which I completely understood.

  “That picture even went into the alumni magazine,” she said. “Lickety-split. Without me. Did you know that? I think that picture is Mom’s ideal.” She cut her eyes at me. “I know. I’m being self-pitying.”

  I pointed at another picture, in another silver frame, of May solo, at about age five. “So what’s that?”