My Brother Michael

by Janis Owens

  Not “hello” or “glad you’re back” or “my son has returned,” but: “You done quit yo job, son. What’ll you do? Have you ever thought of going to work at the bank? They doan pay much, but the hours are good. You’d be off Christmas—”

  I wasted no time in nipping this in the bud with the pronouncement that I was home to write a book. A concise, broad–based, well–documented dissection of the Civil War that would sidestep no issues and set things straight once and for all—but Mama wouldn’t let me finish. “Well, sugar, that’s fine, but you cain’t stay here.”

  “Why not? I’ll only be here awhile. I can’t afford rent. I’m still paying the Yankees.”

  Mama conceded that might well be so, but she’d knocked down the walls of the little bedroom and converted it back to its original intent (the last ten feet of the back porch), and as for the other bedroom, my niece Lori was staying there until Candace and Ed came back from Germany in September.

  “She’ll be eleven in June, and that’s too old for an uncle to be sleeping on the couch, walking around in his underwear.”

  “She was raised on an army base,” I argued. “She’s lived around men in their underwear all her life.”

  But Mama wouldn’t be budged, and I was lying on the couch with a headache when she finally relented, saying, well, Michael was coming to dinner, maybe he had room. . . .

  “How’s Myra?” I asked, after she had finally bestowed on me a kiss of welcome and began cooking dinner, filling the house with the sharp smell of summer: white corn and butter beans.

  “Spent a lot a time on thet house,” she answered vaguely. “Refinished every floor herself. I told her she could a laid carpet for what she spent on varnish.”

  She was still harping on those wood floors, how hard they were to maintain, how cold they’d be in winter, when Michael came in for his lunch hour (apparently a Friday ritual), and he, at least, seemed genuinely glad to see me.

  “Why didn’t you call?” he asked, hugging me.

  Mama called from the kitchen. “He done quit his job, needing a place to stay, wanted to stay here; I told him he couldn’t; Lori’s here, she’s eleven—”

  “I’m working on a book,” I inserted as we sat down at the table, and his face in no way took on that here-we-go-again grimace.

  “Well, listen, you’re welcome to stay out at our place. We got plenty a room. It’s a big old house, built in 1903, off Thomasville Road.”

  When I told him I didn’t remember a house of any description on Thomasville Road, he said, “Neither did I till the realtor showed us. It’s set off the highway a good quarter mile, Clarence Thurmon built it for a summer house.”

  The Thurmons were county aristocracy, blood kin to the actual Sängers, and I remember being a little surprised. ‘A Thurmon house? Really?”

  “Yeah, it’s a nice house.” He paused for a fraction of a second. “Myra’s done a fine job of restoring it.”

  “Working her fool self to death,” Mama inserted as she set the food on the table; then, in a sly aside, “Of course, a little hard work never hurt nobody, thet’s what yo Daddy useter say—”

  “Are you sure I won’t be any trouble?” I asked, ignoring her.

  Michael began eating, “No. No trouble at all. Might be doing me a favor.” He paused for another fraction of a second, then, “Myra’ll be glad to see you.”

  For the rest of the meal, we caught up on the news: how Candace and Ed were moving back to town in August, how Sim and Missy were faring, and though Michael spoke no word on his own behalf, I could see he had prospered. His hair was cut close to his head in short, clean layers, not the old scalp job Myra used to do on him in the kitchen with Mama’s sewing scissors; his hands neat and free of the tiny rips and scabs of the wood shop; his clothes so pressed and sharp he reminded me of the prep students in Cambridge, with their button-down shirts and pleasant, even faces. It was a startling transformation, in a way, and when I went outside, I stood by his car in shock.

  “A BMW?” I asked. “This is yours?”

  “Yeah, I got it second-hand at the auction. It was two years old, only had 12,000 miles—”

  “How much they paying at Sanger these days?” I asked as I threw my bags in the trunk.

  He was vague. “Just the usual. There’s a big shake-up going on right now, a union trying to raise its head—” he slammed the trunk, “but I’m doing all right.”

  “He’s the new manager!” Mama hollered from the porch.

  I looked at him. “Are you serious? How long?”

  “Oh, awhile,” he said, and though he didn’t seem interested in pursuing the matter, I was undeniably impressed. Management at Sanger wasn’t small potatoes. It was the best job in town, maybe the best in the county, and I could hardly believe Michael had taken it at the tender age of thirty-one.

  But my surprise at his new red car and his manicured hands was nothing in comparison to the true and actual shock of his new house. From Mama’s hints I’d expected something interesting, a steep-roofed Cracker house or gabled Victorian, but as we rounded the final loop in the drive that wound like a snake between unchecked growth of twisted yellow pine and native willow, I began to catch glimpses of a house so well suited to the encroaching jungle that it was almost obscured by the rampant, unrelenting green.

  Built along old-fashioned, turn-of-the-century lines, it was two-storied, but carefully so, the size not distracting from the graceful design that could perhaps be described as Spanish gothic, with touches of Queen Anne in the porch and ornate moldings, but Territorial Florida in the graceful arched windows and buff-colored stucco, long ago stained green by the dense overhang of a huge, spreading live oak. It was a style that was enjoying a modest renaissance in the tract-house subdivisions of South Florida, but as Michael helped me carry my bags onto the deep, shaded porch, I saw that this was no cheap reproduction, but the genuine article. Old Florida, as old as you could get, short of a chickee, and I followed him through the ten-foot door in honest wonder, finding the shotgun hallway cool and wide, with what looked like twenty-foot ceilings and shining white oak floors, the ones Mama wanted to cover with carpet.

  “This is the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen in my life,” I murmured as I followed him through the typical Georgian four-square layout, ending in a long sunroom that was bordered by three identical arched French doors that looked out on a small yellow pool. “How high are these ceilings?”

  “Sixteen foot and a pain to heat,” Michael answered, opening one of the French doors and going out on the deck. “I thought you could stay out over the garage. Used to be the servant’s quarters; I thought about fixing it up for Mama, but she won’t leave the Hill.”

  I nodded, still in a daze, wondering how anything as vulgar as Sanger Manufacturing could produce such a stunning house, and when I had taken a few steps across the deck, I came to a dead stop.

  “This pool is marble.”

  Michael, half-way up the stairs, turned, “Yeah, that’s all they built them with back then. It’s nice. Easier to clean than concrete, somebody told me.”

  Easier to clean than concrete? I thought. A yellow marble pool and the best he can say for it is that it’s easier to clean than concrete? But I said nothing, only followed him up the creaking wooden stairs to a small two-room apartment that had lower ceilings than the house, but the same shining floors and a claw-foot porcelain tub.

  Aside from that, the furniture was spare, a table and chair and a narrow bed pushed next to the window, and Michael was apologetic. “It’s all we’ve done so far, the house has taken so much—”

  “No, no,” I said, looking out on the pool. “This is great. A table, a chair, a bed, that’s all I need.” I turned and smiled. “Where’s Myra?”

  He checked his watch, “She’s still upstairs with the children, taking a nap; she’ll be down to swim soon. Listen, I gotta get back to work. I’ll run up and tell her you’re here.”

  When he was gone, I lay down on the bed,
gingerly feeling the mattress, finding it packed cotton, the kind we slept on as children, lumpy and buttoned and smelling of endless hot, humid nights. But the sheets and the nubby cotton spread were fresh, and I looked around the room and thought if there was any place on earth I could do The Cause justice, it was in a house surrounded by live oaks, overlooking a marble pool.

  But for some reason, my broad, easy optimism didn’t pan out, and after a moment, I felt my smile fade. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but somehow, something was wrong. Curiously wrong, in a subtle, elusive way that made me lie uneasily on the bed, frowning at the beadboard ceiling. Maybe it was the sheer perfection of the place, the symmetry of the arched windows, the cold shining floors; maybe I was thrown by it, or maybe—maybe nothing. Maybe I was just tired from the horrendous trip. I closed my eyes and thought of sleeping when I heard her below the window.

  “Melissa Ann, not till I get out there. You know what Mama told you, not without the life jacket—”

  I sat up and saw her through the wobbly, beveled glass, standing at one of the French doors, holding it open for a dark-haired little boy (Simon, surely, though he had grown tall and spindly), her face averted, looking down at a small red-headed child who was resolutely headed for the water, despite her mother’s continued warning.

  “You’ll go inside and take a nap this minute. You take one more step, young lady—”

  The toddler paid her no mind, stepping point blank into the shallow end, and though she bobbed up immediately in a tight, efficient little dog paddle, Myra went in after her, her voice never pausing. “Bad girl for jumping in like that, a bad girl—”

  Sim brought out small, child-size life jackets, and the whole time Myra strapped them on, her voice continued. “Water’ll get in your lungs and you won’t be able to breathe. That’s why I want my girl to mind me, you hear me? Do it again and I’ll tell Daddy.”

  The little redhead looked pretty undaunted by it all, sliding back in slick as a seal the instant her mother let her go, and with a small look of exasperation, Myra pulled herself up on the poolside and watched them swim.

  From my aerie above, I was able to watch her unnoticed, and on first impression, found her much like Michael, familiar, yet changed, her hair cut in an uneven shag that circled and spiked off her face like a gypsy’s, her skin no longer ivory pale, but oddly stained a light pecan brown, a concession to modern fashion that I looked on with distaste, remembering the pale, fragile porcelain of her youth. However, these details were a matter of momentary annoyance, insignificant in comparison to the most shocking change, which was her size. Even as a child, Myra had been curved and round, and after bearing two children, I expected her to be even rounder, but sitting there on the edge of the pool, she looked like a different woman altogether, lean and snake-hipped, with long tapering legs and a small tight chest. It didn’t suit her, I thought, and as I made my way downstairs, I wondered peevishly why women starved themselves to death for the privilege of looking like prepubescent boys.

  The strangeness, however, was greatly dispelled when she saw me and stood, her face kind and slightly distanced, the Myra I remembered from Magnolia Hill.

  “Gabriel,” she said, standing and hugging me, “you cut your hair.”

  I held up her chin and looked at her. “You been on some fool diet, woman? You’re skinny as a rail.”

  “No, no—” she said vaguely, dropping her face, murmuring, “I been busy. With the house—” she turned and called to the children, “Simon honey, d’you remember your Uncle Gabriel? And this—” she smiled at the little girl who was bobbing up to the steps, “this is my baby. Missy, say hey to your uncle. Missy?”

  The carrot-red head turned up for a moment, and I had a two-second glimpse of a fat little Ira Sims face before she resumed her bobbing.

  “She looks just like Ira,” I said, and we sat together on the edge of the pool, our feet in the water, our backs to the sun, and with a good deal more ease than with Mama (or Michael, either, for that matter), I filled in the boring details of my life since I’d packed my bags and left Florida for good.

  I told her of Chapel Hill, of Boston and the Archives, but found her quiet on her own behalf, speaking mostly of the house, and all the work she still had to do. I noticed that it was only when she spoke of her children that she was lit with any spark of the animation, the wonder, that used to light her face when I spun my stories over the fence on Magnolia Hill. Even when I asked what Michael had been up to, her face retained that blank, inflectionless honesty.

  “Michael works,” she said, very simply, with no qualifier, no other explanation at all, and suddenly, I knew what was wrong with this lovely house and its perfect children and shining oak floors, but spoke no word of it, only wondering why in God’s name Michael hadn’t listened to me. Why had he forfeited the love of this good woman to become a slave at a sweat house? It was such a damn waste. I mean, what was the use of having a marble pool when your only concern was how easy it was to maintain, what joy the breathing space of sixteen-foot ceilings when they were nothing more than inconvenient to heat?

  My suspicions were confirmed later in the evening when Michael stood us up for dinner. Myra had begun cooking early, remembering my favorites, setting out the good dishes and getting the children to pick flowers for the centerpiece. When the phone rang at seven, she answered it, her face very calm, very resigned as she listened a few moments, then hung up.

  “Michael will be late,” she told us. “He said to eat without him.”

  The children didn’t seem too bothered by it, as if this weren’t such an uncommon occurrence, and later, while I helped with the dishes, I asked, “Myra? Does Michael do this often?”

  She looked at me. “Do what?”

  “Work this late?”

  “Oh,” she said, then repeated her vague words of the afternoon, “Michael works.”

  She lifted her face to the high ceiling, the shining appliances, and shrugged. “He gave me all this. He bought me a car last year. He has to work. It don’t come free.”

  I could have pointed out that there was more to life than cars and houses and marble pools, but there was a tired finality in her voice that was too beaten to argue with, so I only smiled and said something about what a good job she’d done with the restoration, then kissed the children good night and went upstairs.

  I was still awake on the hard narrow bed, the window open to catch any breath of a breeze, when Michael finally pulled into the garage well past midnight, and let himself in the French doors. I watched his progress through the dark house by the lights he turned on, noting that his bedroom light never came on at all. Just the kitchen, then the hall, then the bathroom, then nothing at all, and with the darkness like an insulating blanket between us, I spoke aloud the word forbidden in this Baptist stronghold that had been recurring in my mind all day, ever since I’d first seen Michael’s neat, perfect face at Mama’s door.

  I whispered: Damn. Then I went to sleep.

  Chapter

  7

  Perhaps it was, in those first hours home, that the groundwork was laid for the rest of my life, but at the time, I was only interested in churning out my book. Either Mama’s words of reproach had sunk into my brain, or Michael’s labors had shamed me, and I was suddenly overwhelmed with a burning desire to get on with the business of writing till I had one clean draft. However, once I had established myself and gotten down to the real pen-to-paper work, I realized why Shelby Foote had drawn his narrative out into volumes, for the war in my head was taking up dozens and dozens of legal pads with nothing more than dry, well-documented facts that challenged nothing, covered no new ground, sounded pointless and repetitive, even to my own captive ear.

  In retrospect, I can see that the phantom I was grappling with was the small confrontation between reality and fantasy that comes at the start of any long-dreamed-of, but just-undertaken project, but at the time, I was simply baffled, baffled and depressed, reduced to spending great chunks of
irretrievable time doing nothing more than tapping a sharpened pencil on the table and staring at my impressive stockpile of books and maps and secondary sources, trying to ignore the tiny voice of panic in the back of my mind that wondered aloud at the wisdom of embarking on life at the mercy of an older brother and a shaky wallet full of the credit cards all the banks had sent me once my name got on the Harvard lists.

  Not that either of my benefactors, Michael or MasterCharge, ever went out of their way to remind me of my responsibilities; the latter so sure of my eventual earning capabilities that the very thought of demanding more than the minimal balance never crossed their minds, the former simply because he was never home. If I had not taken upresidence over the garage, I doubt our paths would have crossed at all, for the most I saw of him was when the slam of his car door sometimes wakened me late at night, and when I’d occasionally join him at breakfast, which Myra prepared with all the skill and finesse of any other woman raised by a woman who was raised on a farm: eggs and grits and fried meats and little buttermilk biscuits, every damn morning, alongside jams and conserves and whatever produce was in season, tomatoes, now that it was May, and later, cold watermelon, cut in thin, sweet wedges, lightly sprinkled with salt. All of it set out on the table at six o’clock sharp, the back of the house lit against the gray pearl of the morning sky, the windows thrown wide to entice a thin stir of breeze to the hot kitchen, and though I was painfully conscious of being on the dole and trying to make my presence as little a burden as possible, once the lights had wakened me, I could not resist the temptation to creep downstairs and open the French doors on the sometimes awesome, sometimes bizarre sight of my brother calmly enthroned at a formal dining table, surrounded by mountains of steaming food, all nestled in china and silver, his busy, flushed wife, coffee pot in hand, waiting on him hand and foot.