My Brother Michael

by Janis Owens

  “He’s bringing the baby.” She smiled, and Michael must have noticed the sweet liveliness about her, for he made the first open move of affection toward her since I’d been back, reaching up and feeling her neck with his hand.

  ‘And he’ll let you hold it all day and it’ll spit on you and pee on you and you’ll cry when they make you give it back,” he said with a touch of his old tenderness that reminded me sharply of Daddy Then he stood. “You have fun, baby. Tellem I’m working. I’ll be there Thanksgiving.”

  Then he kissed her very lightly on the mouth and left to do his dirty work on the poor suckers at Sanger, and I was mad and desperate again, resenting that two-second contact, suddenly wondering if she’d been sleeping with him at night after the lights went out and the house was surrounded by that blanket of silence. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that it must be so, I mean, what excuse could she give? She couldn’t say she had a headache four weeks in a row.

  And damn, it made me mad. So mad I was afflicted all afternoon with my two perennial torments, a nasty headache and a screaming stomach. After Exedrin and Tagamet finally got me back in decent shape, I worked off a little nervous energy retyping my resumé, putting a little Virginian spin on it (de-emphasizing everything but Lee) and made plans to be at my best, most prosperous behavior for the reunion. I think I might have even ironed my pants. I was certainly desperate enough. I could tell Myra’s family still wielded a powerful influence and figured if I could win them over and land a decent job and find a place to raise her children, then it’d all be over but the paperwork, and Michael would never lay his greedy hands on her sweet neck again.

  So I dressed carefully the next morning, in what I hoped was the personification of the prosperous, agreeable son-in-law, pressed khaki and a white Lacoste pullover, at the last minute strapping on a Rolex I’d bought for seventy-five dollars from a starving undergraduate at UNC. Yes, I was dressed for success, but when we joined up with the larger Sims/Odom clan, I began to wonder if I’d overdone it a bit.

  The reunion was being held at a spring on the river, the kind surrounded by cypress and water oak and a dirt parking lot full of trucks with rebel license plates and NRA stickers, and the moment I stepped foot into the swimming area, I remembered something I once knew, but had apparently forgotten: things like Lacoste shirts and pressed pants and Rolex watches didn’t pull any weight around here. Not much weight at all, and even as Myra introduced me, I could see the glint of resentment in the eyes of the men, semi-educated farmers and laborers, who looked on my smiling face with self-induced blindness, seeing nothing but Harvard. God knows Mama had spread the word among them; she considered it my one bragging point, and there was just nothing I could do or say to detach myself from the awful stench, just talk and smile and tell the women their children were pretty

  Myra’s mother, a tall gray-haired woman, much older than I expected, was very kind, though, telling everyone how well she remembered me, and what a sweet little boy I’d been, always telling stories and building things in the backyard. She went on to relate a few miscellaneous childhood anecdotes, with no mention of the wrist or the ponking, and to hear her talk, you’d have thought we were happy-go-lucky, close-knit neighbors there on Lafayette. In the interest of letting sleeping dogs lie, I went along with her, adding a few footnotes of my own, and by lunch, my determination to hold my mouth right was paying off, the men venturing to ask what the Kennedys were up to, the women commenting on my bachelor status, putting in good words for unattached nieces and cousins. I listened to their hints with nods of polite interest, though I doubt I’d have pursued them, even if I didn’t have Myra, for all in all, the Sims clan was a big-boned, red-headed bunch, the women, with one or two exceptions, as big and wide as the men. And I’m not talking city-wide, either. I’m talking country-wide, size 24, 42DDD wide, with no apologies to anyone, wearing flowered bathing suits and keeping good-looking husbands in line with their loud wiregrass voices.

  One of them was pressing food on Myra, telling her how awful she looked, how skinny she was, like she had cancer or something, when Ira and his wife arrived with a tiny infant in a blanket that Myra took without a word, jiggling and walking and anointing with lotions out of her enormous tote bag, with no attention left for anyone, including me.

  Fortunately, Ira filled in the void, grinning his same old grin, slapping me on the back and introducing me to his very young wife as his good friend Gabe Catts, Michael’s baby brother. I appreciated his open acceptance and talked of old times without pause, but it wasn’t easy, for poor Ira had unexpectedly grown into the spitting image of his father, and for a while there, it really threw me. He had the same height, the same high, ruddy face, the same fox-colored eyes, and I didn’t see how Myra or her mother could stand to look at him, much less hug him. But they seemed pretty oblivious to it all. I guess watching him change day by day had numbed them to this shocking transformation, and the image of the Old Man had been slowly replaced by that of harmless little Ira.

  Late in the afternoon, when the crowd had thinned and the food was covered from the flies, he and I moved our lawn chairs down to a sandy loop in the river shallows that afforded a unobstructed view of the spring, where Myra stood knee-deep in the coral green water, watching her children swim, the baby still in her arms. She made an arresting picture there, the baby a tight bundle at her chest, Sim and Missy and the other children dancing through the shallows, throwing up arches of water that glittered like sapphires in the white slant of the late afternoon sun.

  I was calmed and reassured by the sight, giving Ira only half an ear as he spoke of his years as a drill instructor at Parris Island, why he’d left to take a job with the Navy, and how married life was treating him, for he was a relative newlywed, only six months into it.

  “Yeah, Junior there got me to the altar,” he admitted with that same old shameless grin.

  He must have noticed how my eyes were traced on his sister, for he finally turned and looked at her over his shoulder a moment, then sat back, unwrapping a fresh pack of Camels, his voice flat and friendly. “Yeah, old Myra. She loves them babies, now. When she come to see us, she didn’t put him down a minute. Slept with him.”

  I smiled and again apologized for leaving before he’d come home, making some excuse or another that he accepted easily, poking the cigarette in his mouth and lighting a match with a small clean jerk of his hand. “That’s all right. Dana understood. Hated to see Myra go, though. Nice having somebody to hang onto your baby for you.” He paused to light the cigarette, then shook out the match. “Guess she has to, won’t be hanging on to namore a her own.”

  This was news to me, and I drew my eyes back to Ira and met his levelly. “Why not?”

  “Why not?” he laughed. “Well, I doubt Michael’ll let her, after what she’s put him through.” He stretched his face into that skeletal grin. “I mean I might could handle a wife that laid the preacher, but listen, even I’d draw a line at the yard boy”

  There was a blank moment there after the words hit when I could only watch him, not saying a word, just watch his auburn-colored eyes that lifted in surprise.

  “You ain’t heard?” he asked incredulously. “Michael didn’t tell you?”

  But still, I didn’t answer. I couldn’t, for without realizing it, his words had knocked the breath out of me, and I could only sit there and painfully inhale the sharp bitter smell of the river, while Ira, taking my silence for acquiescence, shook his head ruefully.

  “I mean, old Myra, she’s a good girl, but damn if she won’t spread her legs for anybody that asks. I mean that yard boy, a goddamned kid, sixteen years old, doing it right in front of the children. Hell, it was Simon who told Michael—asked him one night at supper why Tommy’d lay on top of Mama every day while they swam.”

  I stood up then, suddenly, before I’d caught my breath, and turned my back on him, leaning my elbows over my head against the low-hanging limb of a water oak, trying to get one cl
ean breath in my lungs, while his voice rang on, jovial and merciless.

  “And listen, I’d a had his balls for it, but Michael, he said no, it wasn’t Myra’s fault. And he didn’t even lay a hand on her. By God, I would have. I’d a ripped them fancy clothes off her back, beat her raw—”

  I stood there pressing my forehead against the rough bark of the twisted old oak, wishing he’d stop, shut up, for God’s sake, that he was killing me, but he didn’t, his smoke drifting by in sweet wafting clouds.

  “But that preacher, now, that was Michael’s fault. Had her there for counseling, had her to this quack revival preacher, and everything was going fine and dandy till one morning he got a call from this screaming woman, saying she’s gone kill his wife, the whore was sleeping with her husband—” He laughed aloud again. “And it was this preacher’s wife. And that damn Michael, he had a man from the plant go and stay at the house when he went in to work at night ‘cause that woman was dead on Myra’s tail, wanting to kill her. And hell, if it was me, and Dana’d done that, shit, I’d a give that woman my address and set her out on the porch, lock the door behind her, tell ‘em to have at it—”

  “I think I’m gonna puke,” I said lightly.

  He answered just as lightly, “Go ahead. It’s all private here. I seen men puke before, use to run ‘em till they puked. Told ‘em it was good for ‘em.”

  For a moment I just stood there, unsure of what I was hearing. Then I turned and looked at him, and his red-tipped, fox-colored eyes were very bright, burning with a happy, carefree hatred as he blew a line of smoke into the air and tilted his head a little to the side.

  “And then we come to the real icing on the cake. The baby brother.”

  I only looked at him, thinking with an odd detachment that wasn’t it funny—there’d been another angel on Magnolia Hill after all, one Mama never named. And he had me right where he wanted me, regarding me with unabashed joy.

  “Comes home to write a book, he says. Needing a place to stay. So poor Michael, that stupid sonofabitch, he says sure thing, move right upstairs, and bam, it ain’t no time till he’s not only in her pants, he’s making plans. Big plans. Plans to meet the family, to steal away at twilight—”

  At this, he threw his head back and laughed with such abandon that the women in the water looked up, Dana’s face curious, Myra’s calm and expressionless, dropping back to the baby, while Ira shook his head.

  “You don’t think,” he said, “that for one minute we didn’t know what you were up to ever since you drove up in that big old Cadillac with your gold watch and your shit-eating grin? ‘Myra’s got another stray on her tail,’ I told Mama, and she’s all worried, ‘fraid this’ll be the straw that breaks Michael’s back and she don’t have room for her no more. You got Mama all worried, Gabe.”

  I still didn’t answer. It was just too unnatural, the children’s happy squeals; Myra, knee-deep in the clear green water; and over all, Ira’s silky, friendly venom.

  “So listen here, Gabe, my good friend Gabe, who has helped maintain my sister’s sterling reputation as a whore. You can sure have her, just feed her and pay her bills, but listen, everyone else will before it’s over. It’s just a matter of time. So enjoy it while you can. You sure stood in line long enough. God, you were hot for her when she didn’t even have tits. Boy, you were ready for her then—”

  “I love her,” I finally said, whispered, trying to see if this honest truth would put some possibly sane spin on it all, but Ira only stood and pitched his cigarette in the river, lifting his arms over his head in a massive catlike stretch.

  “Sure you do,” he grinned. “We all do. Everbody loves little Myra, everbody always has. Shit, you think you’re the only man she was driving crazy when she was ten?”

  I hit him then, knocking him backwards into the shallows and diving in after him, rolling and sliding through the mud as I tried to get at his neck and not merely hurt him, but choke him, destroy him. To erase everything he’d said, to turn back the clock to four o’clock, when we were going to Virginia and seeing about a job and staying in an old bed and breakfast with a balcony that overlooked a salt marsh.

  But Ira’s time at Parris Island had been well spent, and it was only a matter of seconds before I was the one taking the beating. He fought like a machine, with no wasted energy, landing cruel dicing blows to the face and kidneys that had me lying face down in the mud after half a minute’s uninterrupted pounding.

  Then, showing very little sign of damage himself, just a rivet of blood from a gash on his forehead, he lifted my head by my hair and dispensed with the grin long enough to spit in my face. “You love her. You love her. Shit.”

  He slammed my face back in the mud and started up the embankment, his voice lighter, reclaiming an edge of its vicious tease. “Boy, why don’t you ask yer brother Michael about love? He’s on to you and you know why?”

  I was trying to sit up, coughing at the mud and filth in my chest, feeling the blood on my face with the back of my hand, and the laughter was back in his voice as he made the incline and turned and finished, “’Cause that stupid cunt told him. Think about that awhile, shithead. Think about what your Daddy would say if he knew.”

  Then he was gone, his footsteps playing across the fresh, sour smell of the river and the effortless squeals of the children, and I rolled slowly to my back and lay there in the black water, wishing he’d killed me. For I could take the electric sheer of the broken teeth, the agonizing grate of cracked ribs when I did puke, after all. What I couldn’t stand was the news, the stunning bit of revision he’d given me with such massive enjoyment, for it was simply unthinkable, like taking a child in for a routine cold and being told it was leukemia. The same dull shock (“Was Simon what told him—”), then the calm of denial, then the sickening rebound (“—asked him why he’d lay on top of Mama while they swam—”).

  The nasty, awful kick of the words made me stand, suddenly, and dive into the river to wash off, then climb the steep bank, past the tables where the men watched me with flat, level eyes, but the women turned away, embarrassed at what a beating I’d taken. But I didn’t care, I hated their stinking guts, every fat-assed, degenerate one of them, and when I called to Myra in the water, she turned, her face suddenly alight.

  “Gabriel?” she called, handing the baby to Dana. “Are you all right? You’re bleeding.”

  I turned and started for the car. “Can you get a ride back to town? I’m leaving.”

  She waded out of the water, running a little to catch up. “What in the world did you do to yourself?”

  But I kept walking, quickly, past the tables where Ira stood with a drumstick in hand, grinning like the demon he was, and when I was close enough, I leaned over and spit blood at him, for I had nothing left to lose. I mean if he killed me, he’d be doing me a favor, but he didn’t oblige, only jumping aside playfully, calling to Myra, “Come on, shug, leave the boy alone. You’ll find you another one here soon. I got a friend at work been wanting to meet you. Got sevral—”

  She stopped then and turned to her brother, asking him something, but I didn’t stop to listen, going straight to the car and heading back toward town, taking the stairs two at a time to the vacant little room that was bright, too bright, in the flat yellow glare of the western sun, the maps full of red casualty pins and blue prisoner of war rolls.

  Twilight fell slowly, painfully, as I lay there on the bed in my damp clothes and replayed every word, every glance that had led me to Myra’s bed, and in retrospect, I had to admit that something was wrong. Bad wrong. Something past mere bad judgment and hitting into the realm of the unthinkable. Lying there in the fading evening hush, the smell of the river still on my hands, I began to feel the presence of something I had not felt in years, not years, and at first I couldn’t place it, not until darkness had nearly fallen; then I remembered the hot, nasty breath on my neck, the soft, coy voice in my ear, Whatsat arm doing in my yard?

  Once I’d pegged it, I was filled wi
th a restless dread, standing and pacing, stopping to rub my eyes and try to put a name, an explanation, to Myra. What was she? A nymphomaniac? A drug addict? Some nameless, mysterious evil, her father’s feminine counterpart?

  Why had she told Michael?

  I paced and spit blood and began to run a fever, chilled and stabbed and tormented by every demon in hell, actually jumping in fright when a car door slammed downstairs. I went to the window and watched Myra and a cousin unload ice chests and sleeping children, and when the cousin was gone, suddenly, I had to know, I had to be told, at whatever cost, and went down and knocked at the French door. She was still in her bikini when she answered it, her face creasing with concern as she opened the door. “Gabriel, what in the world didju do to your—”

  “We need to talk,” I snapped, my words muffled from the swollen jaw. “Where’re the kids?”

  “In bed,” she said, closing the door behind me. “Fell asleep on the way home, had a big day, Mama said.” She smiled when she said it, a smile that faded at the sight of my face in the light. She reached out a hesitant hand to touch my face. “What happened to your face?”

  The ache in my side, the screaming questions in my mind were set aside for a moment by her touch, and I felt the old drawing, the pull toward her, and let her touch me, quietly, her eyes on my face, watching my reaction. Nervous, searching eyes that seemed to require my approval, and I had laid a quiet hand on her arm, when Ira’s voice, full of that good-old-boy hilarity, came back to me: “Simon’s the one who told him, asked why Mama—” and instead of a caress, I grabbed her high, near the shoulder, and shook her.

  “Did you tell Michael?” I whispered. “Why did you tell Michael?”

  She flinched at my grip, her eyes still on mine, her face very concentrated, as if she were trying to remember something, and after a moment, she said, very slowly, “Michael is my husband.”