The Half Brother: A Novel

by Holly LeCraw

  Then Booker’s father, a man even taller and darker than Booker, took the shovel from Angela’s father, but Booker kept going; another black man, another, then another white one, uncles, cousins, took the other shovel, but Booker would not stop, until finally his father put his arms around him and then gently slid the shovel from his hands the way a parent slides a toy away from a sleeping child.

  And Booker bowed his head and wept. The hole was so deep. Bottomless. The dirt kept going in. I couldn’t see Angela but I could hear her, the most defeated, wretched sound I had ever heard. And beside me Nick pulled away and I realized I’d been leaning on him and I nearly fell. “Charlie, Charlie, shhh,” May said, tears pouring down, and the tears were like light on her face, light in my own eyes, and I could see her, I could see. She looked after Nick, stumbling away down the hill, and I shook my head, and May came under my arm where Nicky had been and Divya still there on my other side and we all stood unwilling to let go.

  A MEMORIAL BEGAN at Zack’s locker but became so large it was moved to a bank of overflow, unused lockers at the end of the first-floor hall. The notes and stuffed animals and photos multiplied day by day; Zack’s name was spelled a foot high. All the girls in their dorm rooms, crying, drawing bubble letters, making collages, turning this enormity into ritual and then finally into kitsch—who could judge them? The Diversity Forum had made a huge poster. “We are all one Abbott—We love you, Zack.” There were multiple pictures of Zack and Celia. There were baby pictures, some with our old house recognizable in the background. There was an enormous picture of him from freshman year, in his football uniform, helmetless, smiling, Zackie Bear oh Zackie Bear, and I saw Nicky stop and stare at it, incomprehension on his face, whenever he passed.

  A WEEK AFTER THE FUNERAL. The pall beginning to lift by the merest fraction. Then: Dex Pentecost at the windowed door of my classroom. “ ’Scuse me, people,” I said, and went over and opened it a crack. “Hi, Dex, can it wait?”

  “It’s Mr. S.,” he whispered. “In our class. He’s—I think you need to come.” Our eyes met. “He’s crying,” Dex said.

  I glanced back into my room. “I’ll take them,” he said. It was my sophomores. “We’ll just hang out. Go.”

  “Invisible Man,” I said.

  “Got it.”

  I went past May’s classroom. They’d come to me. Me. Downstairs. Other end of the building. His room next to last, the door closed; I don’t know what I expected but when I went in it was nearly silent, the class frozen except for Marina, who was crouched at the front of the room next to Nick, slumped down under his whiteboard. “Mr. S.,” she said. “Mr. Garrett’s here.” She looked up at me, uncertain in her new role. “Your brother’s here.” She patted him gingerly on the shoulder. “It’s okay.”

  His head was between his knees, his head covered with his hands. Sackcloth and ashes. He looked horrible: unshaven, uncombed, unshowered by the smell of it. I got him up. I told the class I would be back. We went out in the hall and closed the door. “Nicky,” I said.

  “I’m sorry—it just—God, Charlie, I looked at his seat, and I couldn’t—”

  The exhaustion was suddenly crushing. I put my hand on the wall to hold myself up. “They’re all crying in there, Nick. There’s a time and a place. You have to give them order. You have to make them feel safe.”

  “It would be dishonest,” he said. “They need to know—”

  “Jesus,” I said. “They do know. Go home. I’ll come over later.”

  He looked stricken. “We can’t just leave them in there,” Nick said.

  I turned my back on him. “Go home.”

  I went back in, alone. I apologized for my brother. To a one they looked amazed, said it was all right, and then Celia stood up and asked if she could leave, and before I could answer she ran out of the room.

  I thought of her at the funeral, flanked by her parents, who had flown in from Hong Kong. They had been two of the most beautiful and expensive-looking people I had ever seen. Celia was not adopted, as it turned out: her father was a blond, blue-eyed American, her mother a Hong Kong native, porcelain skinned, exquisite; between those two visions Celia had faded to plain; the parents had looked distressed and, very faintly, impatient.

  Minnie looked after her with anguish and just a shade of self-importance. “Why don’t you go check on her,” I said, and waved her out. Celia probably shouldn’t be left alone anyway.

  The rest of them looked at me with absolute credulity, with faces wiped clean of attitude, of bluff. I told them that they weren’t imagining it, this was all horrible. I told them there was no way around but through. I said we had one another and to be kind. I knew what I was saying was true, but it felt like there was no truth to be had except the finality of Zack’s absence.

  Then I dismissed them, went and dumped the whole sorry mess in Nancy Beamer’s lap—she’d round up everyone, subs, advisors, dorm parents, and I even told her to tell May; I wasn’t going to do it—and then I went back to relieve Dex, who was reading aloud to the class and actually had them laughing. Oh ye Dexes, oh ye salt of the earth. Ye competent and uncomplicated. We shall rise up and call ye blessed.

  WHEN I WENT TO NICKY’S after classes were over, it was clear May had recently been there: papers were stacked, dishes washed, pillows fluffed. That precise V dent in each one. Maybe I’d just missed her. I sensed the remnants of freshness, of purpose, in the air. How quickly she’d moved through, establishing order.

  Nicky didn’t answer when I called out to him.

  He was in bed, on his side, facing away from the door, a position I knew, remembered, and beside him on the floor a liter of vodka, nearly empty. May’s ministrations had stopped at that bottle. She had left it there for me to see. I went and stood over him, so I could see his face. “Nicky.” He grunted at me, opened unfocused eyes, closed them. I could smell it now, in the room, in his evaporating sweat.

  I reached down and shook him, hard, my hand, my arm seeming separate from me—they had their own ideas. I held on too tight to his ropy young self, oh my poor poor emaciated brother. I took pleasure in squeezing too hard. I felt for a moment what I could do if I let my control lapse altogether.

  “Ow,” he said, turning over to his back. He groaned and dragged his eyes open again. “Charlie, what the hell.”

  “What the fuck have you been doing?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Do you do this a lot? How long has this been going on?” He curled up again, small, small. “It’s just this once, right? You don’t do this. Do you hear me? No. You don’t. You don’t hear me and you don’t do this!”

  He was muttering something into the filthy bedclothes. I shook him again. “I can’t hear you.”

  I was waiting for him to start talking about Zack. Something that would make me furious. That empty chair. Celia’s so upset. But instead he said, “I’m sorry I said I would stay here forever. I’m sorry.”

  I let go of his arm. I sat on the edge of the bed. I’d had a rudimentary plan when I came over: I was going to talk him down, or up, whichever way he needed to go. Then I was going to take him back to campus, in time for dinner; I was going to sit there in the dining hall with him, with his wet hair freshly combed, maybe a fresh cut on his now-smooth chin, the circles still there under his eyes, gray velvet, the circles that I’d seen May smooth with one gentle finger, and I was going to watch the parade. All the girls, and the boys too, marching, no, drifting by, lingering: all deferential, all acolytes. All hoping. A long slow line of those kids, fresh and fortunate, wanting him, as we always want the rare, the delicate, the souls with the air of elsewhere.

  But instead I thought about all the times he’d been sick this winter. How he kept disappearing. I thought about his trips to Boston. I looked around the room and it suddenly seemed filled with malice, and I knew that I could look in closets and cabinets and drawers and trash cans and find evidence of an entirely different man. And yet the same. The Nick we all wanted, but
there wasn’t enough of him, and he knew it. My brother, my talisman.

  I touched him again, gently, on the shoulder before I left, but he was asleep, and didn’t move.

  I WENT HOME and as soon as I walked in I knew she was there. They were in the living room, playing two-handed bridge. “Your mother taught me,” May said. “This afternoon.” Her eyes were red.

  “I hope she’s letting you win,” I said.

  “Not a chance.” She smiled faintly, without looking up.

  “She’s doing very well,” Anita said.

  “I went by Nicky’s,” I said. No one answered. I took off my coat, went to the kitchen to see about dinner. I knew I was hiding. Oh solitude. Oh the lost silence. Now bits of me kept being peeled away. All the safety. And today was Friday. Now it was the weekend, two long days.

  Then I heard the tapping and they were both there, in the kitchen. I turned to them and said, “Did you know he did this?”

  May said, “He told me he didn’t drink because of his father.”

  I said, “Do we believe him?”

  Silence. Then May said she was leaving. “Don’t go over there,” I said.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said. I wondered where she would sleep tonight. I hated myself for wondering.

  The front door opened and closed. I said, “I didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t either,” Anita said.

  “I don’t know how long he’s been doing it,” I said. “I don’t even know what he’s doing.” Oh the cowardice. I didn’t want to know. I was asking her, Do I have to know?

  She tapped over to the table and sat down. “I did what I thought was best,” she said. “Getting him to come here.”

  “I know you did.”

  “It was a lot to ask of you.”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “And you let me ask. You let him come. Thank you, Charlie.”

  “Don’t be so valedictory, Mother.” Cold, cold. Pushing her away. “We’re still in it.”

  She said, quietly, “I had another one today. It’s fine though. I’m fine.”

  I pulled out the chair across the table from her and sat down. My legs were trembling, like I’d been standing for hours.

  “I try not to worry,” she said. “But I do. I’m not afraid of pain but I don’t think there will be pain.” She rubbed her forehead, as though trying to smooth it. “Aphasia is a concern.”

  “In English, please.”

  “If I can’t talk.” I remembered Preston’s eyes, wild as he spoke his gibberish. My mother is Anita Spooner. “I try not to be afraid, Charlie,” she said. “But that’s the only thing I’m afraid of. If I can’t talk to you and Nicky—”

  And I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I reached out and took her hand, and she clung to it, hard, and was there, all of her—fighting, dug in, I felt it. And I felt how the battle was already lost, because that was the nature of battle itself.

  “Tell me,” I said. “Tell me everything you want to say.”

  Twenty-two

  She was in the town of St. Annes. In the stone church with the red door.

  FROM TIME TO TIME. In newness of life.

  When they knelt to pray it seemed a kind of idolatry. But she was ready to worship a different God.

  HIS CAR HAD A RADIO and he let her find the stations she liked. It was an older car, but he’d taken good care of it. She loved his long, smooth hands on the big polished steering wheel. The chrome on the dashboard gleamed.

  When not in his robes, he wore a seersucker sport coat, or short-sleeved collared shirts like a golfer would wear—like the college boy he was. He wore his hair short, no sideburns. He wore white suede oxford shoes.

  HE’D HAD TO THINK of some way to stay in school, to avoid the draft; he’d never thought he’d end up a priest. “I don’t know if I heard a call or not,” he said. “Sometimes I’m worried I made it up. Other times I’m sure I didn’t.” He nodded, more to himself than to her. “Please don’t think I’m a liar.”

  “I don’t,” she said.

  SHE WANTED TO KEEP seeing him only in the neutral fairyland of St. Annes. But he must come to her house in his car, he must pick her up. She wouldn’t let him in to meet her grandparents. “I don’t know what you’re about,” he said.

  “I don’t either.”

  “It’s not the way I was raised.”

  “Nor me.” She said it like a lady, looking out the window, her back straight.

  She felt the pull of him beside her. She was sure he knew it. She terrified herself.

  They went down Main Street and she watched everything familiar go by, looking flattened and dusty, beaten, unlike St. Annes, which was where she would see him, in her mind, for the rest of her life. “I’m from a town just like this,” he said. She didn’t answer. “Only worse.”

  “I thought you were from New Orleans.”

  “I was born in a town like this.”

  She turned to face front, glancing at him only quickly. “I don’t think I would say worse,” she said.

  “Anita, we’re the same,” he said.

  HE LEANED DOWN TO HER and there was a familiarity in the tilt of his head and then in the pressure of his mouth. How many times has he already touched me? and she felt the sudden whirling loss: she should have been counting.

  “CHARLIE, IT’S LIKE HE WAS ME,” my mother said. “Nothing he said surprised me. Everything was familiar. I know that doesn’t make any sense.” She was quiet awhile. “It was just falling in love. But I didn’t know that.”

  HIS FIANCÉE WAS THE DAUGHTER of a bishop. “But I can’t marry her. I can’t do it.”

  Anita understood, fully, how she had been wronged. She understood exactly who and what the other girl was.

  “Anita, I have to tell you who I am,” he said.

  “Tell her.”

  But he told Anita instead. He told her how one day his father had laid his hand, warm and heavy, on the top of Preston’s head, and looked with him with a kind of disbelief, and then disappeared.

  Preston and his mother went back to New Orleans then to live with her family, the Broussards. It was such a large family that there were members he rarely saw. Some of these were cousins with dark skin and kinky hair. Yet they were his cousins. He had other cousins too, with light, straight hair and blue eyes, who were merely tan. Not much was said. Nothing was explained. But he understood he had a responsibility not to take his luck for granted. He also understood, now, the disbelief in his father’s eyes. “You’re no different, son,” his mother said. “You’re the same person you ever were.” And he tried to believe her.

  ANITA SAID SHE DIDN’T CARE. Of course she didn’t. How could she? “I don’t even know who my father is,” she said.

  But once they were bare to each other, known, the same, she fell to his own level, the level of the bastard, the mistake, the level he could not accept.

  At the end of the summer, he went back to Virginia, and the blond, blue-eyed daughter of the bishop.

  SHE HAD SUSPECTED before he left but had prayed she was wrong. Had prayed not to be punished. Finally though her situation was clear, and she wrote and told him.

  He wrote back. He enclosed a check. He’d asked around, and thought this would be enough to take care of it. Since she was a nurse, he wrote, she might know someone.

  She knew gathering the money and asking around hadn’t been easy. She felt an enormous pity for him. Which was almost harder.

  SHE SAW JIMMIE GARRETT every now and then in town and their glances still held the truths of high school: she’d been smart and had graduated; he’d been handsome and wild and had not. They rarely spoke. But one day, in the dime store, he swaggered over as she stood in line. He had a way of stopping not directly in front of a person, so you were forced to turn to orient yourself toward him. “Anita Spooner. I thought you got the hell out of here by now,” he said. He slid his eyes sideways at her, and back. “Beg pardon.”

  She paid and headed for the door, n
ot inviting him to follow but not dismissing him. They stopped together on the sidewalk. The November light was white and thin. It was colder than it looked. She said, “I’m leaving in a month. When I’m done with school,” and she knew it was true as soon as she said it aloud. She’d be four months along. Not showing, if she was lucky. Preston’s check in the bank.

  He regarded her with hooded appraisal. “Me too,” he said. “Gittin’ out of here. Vietnam.”

  She looked around at the storefronts she’d been walking past all her life and she thought how people would see them standing there together. People might be impressed that Jimmie Garrett was even giving her the time of day or they might wonder why she was talking to white trash, but she didn’t want them to think anything. She began to walk. Again he followed her. They went half a block and she said, “Are you scared?”

  “Naw. Shitty little war in a jungle.” His eyes slid lazily to her, and away. “Beg pardon.”

  “Have you always wanted to go to war?”

  “Sure,” he said. He smiled an inward smile. “Glad they thought one up in time for me.”

  HIS FINGERS WERE ROUGH and smelled of lye soap, like Memaw used for laundry, and for just a moment she saw him washing before he picked her up, leaning over a tin sink, with an earnestness that she hadn’t thought of. She tried to feel passion, reminded herself she knew now what it was like; she let him do more than he expected he’d get, she was sure. But it felt unreal to her, and she knew that, for the first and last time, it didn’t matter.

  “Anita Spooner,” he said slowly. “Little Anita.”

  When he had driven back to town and was idling in front of the big peeling white house and she was reaching for the door handle, he said, “I’m leavin’ soon too. In two weeks.”