My Brother Michael

by Janis Owens

  Myra only looked at me, but Michael dropped his arms. “What’s in Gainesville?” he asked, and I folded the paper back, giving it my full attention.

  “The library at UF. I need to do some research on the war,” I paused, “in Florida.”

  Michael was looking at me levelly. “In Florida? I never heard of no war in Florida.”

  “Son,” I said, standing and tapping him with the newspaper, “there were all kinds of wars in Florida. Don’t you know anything about your history?”

  He kept looking at me with his mild, level eyes. ‘Apparently not as much as I should.” Then he turned to Myra, “Call up old Ira. Tellem Gabe’ll run you over. Stay as long as he needs you.”

  Once he’d given her the word, she immediately went into action, for she was still nothing if not obedient, and within the hour, we were ready to leave, Simon and Missy squealing and excited at the prospect of spending a few spankless days at Grannie’s, Myra quiet and efficient, carrying a handful of suitcases around to the garage, telling Simon not to let Grannie forget Missy’s cough medicine. Simon was assuring her he would not when we turned the corner to the garage. When I saw Myra’s car, I stopped dead still.

  Now, I am sure that sometime at Gettysburg it occurred to Lee that he was outnumbered, hopelessly and desperately outnumbered, and even as he went through all the elaborations of feint and thrust, he caught a small, distant vision of Appomatox, and as I stood there and looked at the tail end of Myra’s new car for the first time, a similiar hollow dread hit me in the pit of the stomach.

  “This is a pink Cadillac,” I murmured.

  Michael was, as usual, very low-key about it, saying no, it wasn’t pink, it was champagne puce, a nice wide car for running the children around in.

  But I only stood there and blinked. “It’s a pink Cadillac.”

  He laughed then and admitted that yes, he’d thought of me when he ordered it, but it didn’t have white walls, he couldn’t go that far, and all the way to Mama’s, I thought dully, “His wife is driving a Cadillac. A pink Cadillac.”

  Well, it wasn’t 1861, but it was, in spirit and in truth, a declaration of war, and when we finally made the open road, whipping past the alligator farms and tobacco barns on U.S. 90, I could not concentrate on driving, I was wanting Myra so bad, trying to kiss her neck, while she wiggled away, saying, “Gabriel, stay on the road, you’ll kill us both—Gabriel—”

  I didn’t care; I’d rather see both of us dead than leave her for that damn Nazi. Once her father had bought her off with a red bicycle, and now Michael was doing it all over again with a pink Cadillac and a marble pool.

  “Those who do not learn from their history are doomed to repeat it,” I told her, but she paid me no mind, moving to the far end of the seat and watching the roll of the Chattahoochee hills till we were outside Tallahassee when she asked me to stop and buy her a Coke.

  “I need to take my pill,” she said, “before dinner or it’ll make me sick.”

  “What pill?” I asked. “Why do you need a pill?”

  “I been sick.”

  I tried to coax her back across the seat. “Crawl back over here, and I’ll make you feel better.”

  But she was like Mama, boy, dead serious when it came to matters of licensed medicine, so I pulled over at a greasy Fina station in Perry and bought her a Coke from a machine, then watched in horror as she retrieved a quart-size Ziploc bag full of medicine vials from her overnight bag.

  “What the hell?” I murmured, as she unscrewed the top of a small, tinted bottle and put a pill on her tongue.

  “My medicine,” she shrugged. “Michael said I shouldn’t forget.”

  Now, I’d long been familiar with the phenomenon of prescription drug dependency in women whose religion forbade the comfort of whiskey (Mama took a nerve pill every morning of her life), but never had I seen such a varied collection. I held the baggie to the light and read the strange, exotic names, Thorazine and Mellaril, noting the dosages, how they were all large, then looked at Mrya, who was calmly sipping her Coke.

  “You take this shit?”

  “Some of it,” she said. “Some of it’s old.” She shook the little bottle in her hand. “This is new.”

  I held out my hand, and she handed it over. The brand name was misleading, but she supplied the translation: “lithium.” The name was vaguely familiar, with a connotation of a giant and lasting sleep. I thought, no wonder she’s so expressionless, so unanimated. No wonder she waits on Michael hand and foot with such languid passivity. The son of a bitch had her zonked on nerve pills.

  “Myra, you shouldn’t take this shit; it’s addictive, it fries your brain.”

  She looked at me over the rim of her Coke with the beginnings of a frown between her eyes. “But I have to, Michael says”

  And something in the way she spoke his name with such assured familiarity, such boundless confidence, was suddenly intolerable to me, infuriating, and with a lightning whip of anger, I kicked open the door and threw the only pitch of my career, a ninety-mile-an-hour line-drive that shattered the little glass vial against the blank concrete wall of the gas station.

  “Gabriel!” she cried. “That’s all I brought, Michael said—”

  “Fuck Michael,” I told her, flinging the whole Ziploc to the oily pavement, then slamming the door and taking her face in my hand. “Myra? Do you want to stay shut up in some asshole’s backyard all your life? Walk around like a zombie, waiting on him hand and foot?”

  She only looked at me, her eyes bothered, but too distant to comprehend, and I kissed her, long and slow, trying to rekindle the bowed-neck laughter of the years I’d known her when Simon was a baby, before Michael had done his number on her.

  But there was still no response, and I whispered, fiercely, “Listen, Myra, you don’t have to live like this. You don’t need a baggie full of tranquilizers to get you through the day when you’ve got me. I love you, do you hear me? Love you. I’ve always loved you, don’t you remember? The fence and Napoleon and Gone with the Wind?”

  I was still holding her chin up, so she had to look me in the eye, and when she answered, her voice was low and tired and curiously ashamed. “No Gabriel. I can’t. Not the fence or Napoleon or Gone with the Wind. I lost it.”

  Lost it, she said, and the pathos of the words cut like a knife, filling my chest with grief, knowing she was not lying, but confessing an awful truth; that she had lost something back there, both of us had, and I tried to bring some of it back, whispering into her face, assuring her. “Well, I did. I loved you, loved you so much and you loved me and it wasn’t a game, a child’s game. I never forgot it and you never forgot it and it was real.”

  Then I kissed her again, closing my eyes, feeling the rise of the old relentless drive, and it was awful really, not like lust at all, but more like torment, and a few miles down the road, when we came to a small town past the Suwannee, draped and ballooned for a watermelon festival, I pulled into a strip motel and turned off the car, looking at her in the hot, still silence.

  “You been a slave too long,” I said. “You need a rest. Let’s stay here, let’s live awhile. To hell with everybody; we’re getting old waiting on everybody else.”

  Then I signed us in as Mr. and Mrs. Gabriel Catts, and God in heaven, I loved that seedy, sleazy old motel. I can remember it today, the cheap pressed paneling, the worn cotton spread, the ancient, sagging bed. At thirteen dollars a night, seven dollars a half-day, the whole place smelled of indiscretion, of time rented by the hour, but I was charmed by it all, for to my eyes it seemed that Myra and I were transforming the cheap and worthless into something precious by the alchemy of our love. And while Michael had to give her pills and marble pools and pink Cadillacs to keep her, I was satisfying her where it counted, taking her right out from under his nose. A wise fool, I thought him, and when night settled on the storefronts and the ferris wheel lit the salmon sky, we went out on the town in search of something, I don’t know what. Freedom, maybe, or laug
hter, or maybe nothing more or less than the childhood that had once been taken from our hands.

  Whatever the reason, I have vivid memories of that night, memories time has not touched: of the smell of carnival food on the hot, river-damp air, fried elephant ears and sausage and the sound of hawkers on the midway, teasing suckers into trying their luck at the games, their harsh voices cushioned and softened by the rolling crackle of the organ music of the rides.

  And Myra, of course, I remember her, for she was very beautiful that night, dressed like the WASP princess Michael had trained her to be, in khaki shorts and a white cotton shirt, and a face that began to show signs of wakefulness as we hit the puke rides, the Tilt-a-whirl and the Scrambler, over and over again, laughing and kissing, me putting my hands under her shirt in plain sight of everyone, but never seeing any raised eyebrows. It was carnival time, after all, the celebration of the harvest, and the hot night had an exuberant, pagan quality, a taste of Fasching among these plain, country folk, making them look kindly upon us, as if they understood intimately that this was the way it was between a man and a woman, so what did it matter? The night had plenty of darkness to go around, and the red lights of the midway only made everyone’s private obsession seem hotter and riper and more full of promise.

  It was past midnight when we returned to our room, and after we’d finished our evening there behind the locked door and the checkout sign, I lay in bed with my hands under my head, fascinated by Myra’s bedtime routine. It was hardly exceptional, just the hair brushing, the bath, the putting on of a simple batiste gown, but it lent a feel of domesticity to the seedy little room, and when she climbed into bed beside me, it was so sweet, so right, that I held her face in my hand, and whispered softly, fiercely, “I need you to marry me, Myra. I want you to sleep next to me the rest of your life. I can’t stand leaving you anymore.”

  There was a blank pause as I watched her, waiting for her answer. Then her face took on that slightly quizzical expression, and she almost smiled. “Gabriel, I’m married already. You know that.” Then another pause. “I’m married to Michael.”

  The impact of her words didn’t connect for a small, prolonged moment, and when they hit, it was like the blow of a mule kick, so hard I couldn’t speak, couldn’t argue, couldn’t even cry, but only watch as she calmly went to sleep curled against me in apparent contentment, sometimes rubbing her face to my chest like a baby nuzzling a mother’s breast.

  After an hour or so, I carefully shifted her and got out of bed, going to the window where the lights from the ferris wheel had finally been pulled, leaving the town quiet and tired and ready for another year’s work. Stale and spent, it looked, and I pressed my forehead to the cold glass in despair, knowing there was nothing I could do but fight. I couldn’t give her up; I couldn’t take her by the hand and make her love me. All I could do was hope and wait and show her that I loved her, that she could leave her boundaries without fear.

  That was all I did. I didn’t cry, I didn’t sweat; I only stood there with my forehead against the cold glass and confessed to the darkness that I couldn’t let her go, and I got back in bed, slipping my arms around her waist and sleeping till morning. Then, before we ever got out of bed the next morning, I made love to her again, much like before, with all the same heat and chilling release, then dressed and left the tip for the maid and the untouched condoms on the bedside table beside the Gideon Bible with no explanation at all; none requested, none given.

  Chapter

  8

  The rest of the trip was bittersweet, the bitter being the four days Myra spent rocking her nephew in Jacksonville while I made a pretense of doing research at UF; the sweet, the ride home, a drive of about six hours that I managed to stretch into a two-nighter, staying at strip motels along U.S 90 with names like The Journey’s End and The Sunny South.

  When we pulled into Mama’s late Friday afternoon, the front door opened with a pop, and Simon and Missy mobbed us at the car, hugging Myra, hugging me, recounting their week on Magnolia Hill in a hysterical, breathless rush. I returned their kisses and gave them the small presents I’d bought them in Gainesville, but Myra got a little unglued by it all, holding Missy to her chest and crying like we’d been gone a year instead of a week.

  I tried to calm her, but there was a panic in her tears, something far more intense than mere joy at being home, and it was only when Mama came out and filled the air with her nonstop rattle (“Lori painted Missy’s fingernails ever’ night and Sim found a snake in the shed, nothing but a little green snake but I toldem he couldn’t keep it, that I never had and never would let no old snake in my house—”)did she stop, and later that night, alone in my narrow bed, I was swept with another wave of nervousness.

  I loved her, surely, no question about that, but in a more practical vein, she was a woman who’d grown used to big houses and big cars and buying her children anything they wanted. And while she might be content to abide by my lifestyle, she’d surely be hesitant to accept such a life for her children. Once I’d considered it from this angle, her tears in the car were explicable, even expected, and I began to see that the business of separating a home, no matter how hollow that home was, could be an enormous task—one I was sure I could overcome, for I had no intention of hurting Sim or Missy. I loved them, too. As I lay in bed that night, I came up with a firm stategy and woke up early the next morning and borrowed Myra’s car to run into town and call a few colleagues up north, asking about openings and possibilities, getting a few favorable leads.

  One in particular caught my eye, a teaching position at the University of Virginia. It was straight entry-level American History, but in Virginia that meant the Colonies and the Confederacy, and since I’d always written favorably of Lee and Jackson, I’d have the inside track. I figured Myra would enjoy living south of the Mason-Dixon, and the very name Virginia conjured up Walton-like images of farmhouses and mountains surrounded by loving children.

  Once I’d gotten the ball rolling, calling the department head and feeling it out, I was nervous and happy and broke my self-imposed exile to go inside to tell Myra the good news. I found her standing at her bedroom closet and came up behind her quietly, wrapping my arms around her waist, asking her how she liked Virginia, but she was frowning at a line of identical blue oxford-cloth shirts, the button-down kind Michael wore to work.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  Her face was intense with concentration. “Can’t remember which ones are dirty. I need to do Michael’s work clothes today.” She was unrolling a cuff as she spoke, pressing the sleeve to her face, then pulling it out, murmuring, “This one smells like Michael—” and I jerked it out of her hand and threw it behind us.

  “Dammit, Myra, forget Michael—what are you, his houseboy? Come on, come here.” I pulled her to the edge of the bed. “Listen, have you ever been to Virginia?”

  She shook her head, picking the shirt off the floor and folding it on her lap till I took it away from her again and threw it behind us.

  “Then listen. I’m flying up there to see about a job. I want you to come with me. We can tell Michael we’re going back to Ira’s and take the kids and look around.” I was too nervous to sit still and began pacing. “It’ll only be a few days, we’ll stay somewhere nice, somewhere the children’ll like—”

  “I can’t,” she said calmly, and I stopped, but before I could argue, she said evenly, “Saturday’s Fourth of July, the family reunion. Mama’s coming. Ira’s bringing the baby. Everybody’ll be there.”

  I had tensed myself for a major moral battle and laughed aloud at this small distraction. “Then I’ll change the appointment, no problem. The thing is, we need to move soon. You stay around here much longer, you’ll be comatose.”

  So it was arranged: I was to interview for the job a week from Monday and made reservations at a bed-and-breakfast inn in Charlottesville, booking two adjoining rooms, one for us, one for the children. Once everything was in motion, the pressure lifted a l
ittle, and I began eating breakfast with Michael again and was astounded a few mornings later when he casually mentioned he’d bought Sanger.

  ‘Are you serious?” I asked. “Where the hell did you get the money?”

  “Well, we been buying up bits and pieces of it all along. They been pretty crippled since the wage-and-hour people hittem and scared spitless of the union. Knew it’d sendem down like a sunk brick.”

  “I thought you broke the union. I thought they voted it down.”

  He chewed his toast with no change of expression, nothing but that fierce, quiet determination that he’d once used drilling line-drive fastballs into that old stump. “They did. Two days later.”

  I just looked at him. “Are you serious? Why?”

  “They made too many demands. They were,” he paused, “unreasonable.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said. “Started asking for health insurance, did they? And decent money and overtime?”

  “I’ll have to pay ‘em overtime,” he said mildly. “Or the wage-and-hour people’ll sink me.”

  “Well, bless your heart,” I drawled, leaning over and tapping him with the paper. “You know how greedy those workers get, start wanting all kinds of shit. You know, educations for their children, good houses, a few hours a week with their wives—hey, soon the bastards’ll be wanting to move off Magnolia Hill.”

  He was not at all touched by my sarcasm, only taking a final bite of toast, murmuring, “You talk like a Yankee, Gabe. You don’t know nothing about bidness.”

  Yeah, I thought acidly, but I know plenty about slavery. And with no apologies, no subterfuge, said, “I’m taking Myra to the family reunion tomorrow.”

  He looked up, “Why?”

  “Ira’ll be there,” I said, meeting his eye. “I haven’t seen him in a while—”

  Before I could finish, Myra came between us to pour his coffee, and her face was closer than ever to the Myra of old, flushed and excited, the pink in her cheeks making her eyes very light, almost cornflower blue.