Halfway Home

by Paul Monette

  Protracted silence again. This could go on all night, at this rate. I see him stealing little looks at me, fixed no doubt on the purple on my cheek. I wonder how sick I look otherwise, compared to a decade ago. In between I had some years where I felt pretty sexy. Pumped my tits regular, rode my bike with my shirt off, and connected up with a run of men as dazzling as any on Brian's team. Now I feel pained, almost cheated, that he can't know what I was like, that I had it all for a while. Not that I was so beautiful, or anybody's hero, but a man after my own kind.

  Then I hate myself for caring what he thinks. The whole idea of talking about myself seems like a kind of special pleading. "So tell me, what're they like? Daniel and—I don't even know her name."

  "Susan." Visibly he relaxes. Home turf. "Oh, they're terrific. Best thing could've happened to me."

  And he's off on a staggering round of cliches, as if none of the rest of this lurching conversation had ever happened. Susan teaches special ed, and Daniel plays peewee hockey. A pair of golden retrievers and a summer place in the Berkshires. Somewhere in there the crusts are cut off the bread. Brian is hypnotized by the sound of his own voice, pouring it out like an aria, morning in America. He makes it all sound like the fifties, a decade I only caught the tail end of, but even at three years old I wanted to poop all over it.

  "We go see her on Sundays," Brian says, and I realize he's talking about my mother. "She's pretty bad. Barely knows who I am. But she seems to like seeing Daniel."

  Within a year of Dad's death she was in a fog, and two years later she'd shrill into the phone: "Who? I don't have a son. I don't have any children at all." Somehow she remembered only her miscarriages, before Brian and me. I never called again.

  "At least she's still in her own house," declares Brian with passionate Irish pride. This is the kicker, that our zombie mother gets to wander through her lace-curtain rooms, frail as a Belleek cup, instead of being a veggie in a nursing home. Nothing in Brian's voice betrays that he's bitter about having to shoulder this burden himself, or pay for the daily nurse/companion.

  Then he segues into a peroration about his business, and here I really tune out. I remember the great drama that erupted when Brian graduated Fordham, deciding not to go after the glittering prizes of Wall Street, opting instead to throw in his lot with Jerry Curran. It was the only time I ever recall my father faltering in his worship of Brian, who had to woo the old man shamelessly to convince him Curran Construction would make him rich. Which it did, but more than anything else it let him stay on his own turf, so he and Jerry could strut and raise hell, till life and high school were one and the same.

  "I don't know, maybe we got too big too fast," observes my brother with a labored sigh.

  So things aren't perfect at Curran Construction. Since I haven't been following what he's said, I haven't a clue what's wrong. Last I heard they were pouring an interstate and building twin towers in Hartford. Brian stares at the blue-red coals in the fireplace, lost in a troubled reverie. This alone is startling enough. In the twenty-five years I knew him before the breach, I never saw him stop to think. He was always in motion, always grinning, as wave after wave of cheering greeted his every turn.

  "The stress must be pretty intense," I remark, lame as a radio shrink. "Sounds like you need a break."

  "Yeah, I need somethin'." The brooding is still in his voice, but I can hear him shutting down. It's not that he won't discuss it any further with me. He doesn't want any more commerce with his feelings. This is a peculiar phenomenon of straight males—the shutdown valve—which I used to think was the exclusive province of the Irish. Now I know it crosses all cultures, instinctive as the need to carry weapons. Brian turns back to me with a smile, as if he's never felt anything at all, and reaches over and slaps my knee. This is his idea of a kiss.

  "You still a good Catholic?"

  He laughs easily. "Sure, I guess so. We go to Mass on Sunday. Don't ask me when I made my last confession."

  There's a Bing Crosby twinkle in his eye. I feel the old urge to flash my dick in church. "According to them I'm evil, you know. That's the latest doctrine, from God's mouth to the Pope's ear. Intrinsic evil.'" I spit this last phrase out like it's poison.

  Brian writhes slightly on the chair arm. He wedges his hands between his thighs, clamping his knees together. "That doesn't mean gay people," he retorts. "That's just about... acts."

  A regular moral theologian, my brother."Oh, fabulous. You can be gay, but you can't have a dick. Pardon me while I piss out my asshole."

  "Tommy, you know what the church is about. They think sex is for making babies." He grimaces and rolls his eyes, as if to bond us against the folly and the hypocrisy. "Nobody takes that seriously. Including half the priests."

  "Excuse me," I hiss back at him, scrambling out of the afghan. "Maybe you guys get to wink at the priest while you fuck your brains out." He doesn't like my language, not one bit. "But they're still beating up queers in Chester, because Her Holiness says it's cool."

  "Hey, ease up. It's not my doctrine."

  "And sixty percent of the priests are fags anyway!" I'm wild. I have no idea where that statistic came from. It's like I've been waiting for a little doctrinal debate for years. "They hate us for being out. They liked it the old way, where you get to be special friends with the altar boys, and maybe you cop a feel off little Jimmy Murphy after Mass—'"

  "For someone who doesn't believe, you sure do get yourself worked up."

  "Don't give me that smug shit." I can feel his coldness, the backing off, though he doesn't move from the arm of the chair. "I bet you get all kinds of points for coming to visit a dead man. Corporal act of mercy—you should get a big fuckin' discount in purgatory."

  I'm pacing in front of him, panting with fury, and he sits there and takes it. But there's no satisfaction. I feel impotent and ridiculous—feel as if Brian has won. All I can do is wound him and push him away. I stagger against the mantel, my forehead pressed to the great splintered slab of wood that's anchored in the stone.

  "Dad went to Mass every Sunday too," I declare with a wither of irony. "And you know what? He was still a scumbag drunk who hit me for nothing at all. He used to hit me for reading. And when I finally told him I was gay, he told me I made him want to puke." Then a very small pause. "Isn't that where you learned it?" Nothing, no answer. He's still as a rock. "So you'll forgive me if I keep my distance from all you good Catholics."

  Brian stands and reaches for his jacket, thrown over the back of the sofa. "I thought we could heal it up between us. I was wrong. I don't want to upset you like this. You've got enough to deal with." He shrugs into the jacket and turns to me. There is oddly no shyness between us, and nobody looks away. Perhaps this is the proof we are brothers. "Look, if there's anything..."

  He lets it hang, and I shake my head. "You can't help me."

  He nods, and we move together. Through the dining room and kitchen, then out to the yard, shoulder to shoulder across the grass. The silence between us doesn't feel strained, and is even rather soothing. We are ending it before it comes to blows. This is so sensible, we are practically acting like WASPs. The faint spoor of a skunk feathers the night air, and the moon is still bright, casting ice shadows across the gravel drive. We reach the boatlike rental car, nosed in between two Monterey cypresses. I wish my brother no harm and hope he knows it, but I say nothing.

  Brian opens the door and half turns again. His mouth works to speak, another set speech perhaps, but all that comes out is "Take care."

  I stand with my hands in my pockets as he fishes for the keys. We will never see each other again. No drunken promises to visit, no embrace to pass on to my nephew, no jokes. This is a surgical procedure, the final separation. And then the key turns in the ignition, and there's a clunk. Brian tries it again, this time pumping the gas. Nothing.

  It is so ludicrously a symbol of the deadness between us, I want to laugh out loud. But it's so clearly not funny, the useless click of the key as he tries i
t over and over, because now my brother is stuck here. I know this a second before he does. In fact I can see the bloom of shock in his face as he remembers there's no phone. It's nine o'clock on a Saturday night, and the nearest pay phone is two miles south at the Chevron station. I have no car and no jumper cables. Our mogul neighbors with Uzi guard dogs are not the sort you bother for a cup of sugar.

  Brian looks at me, dazed and slightly foolish, like a man who can't get it up. He seems to understand instinctively that he's trapped in a movie twist. "Fuckin' piece o' junk," he grumbles, so raw you can almost hear the brogue of Gramp Shaheen.

  "You'll have to walk down to the Chevron in the morning. When's your flight?"

  "Noon."

  "Oh, you'll be fine. Don't worry, there's lots of room."

  My own voice amazes me, so solicitous and chummy. I open the door like a bloody valet. You'd think the bile and snarling never happened. But this is different, a matter of hospitality, like laying down the guns on Christmas Eve. Brian grabs his briefcase from the backseat, and we head back to the house. The skunk is nearer, or at least sending out a stronger warning. The silence between us is comfortable. We both appear to agree that this part can be handled in purely practical terms, no frills and no demands.

  In the house I douse the downstairs lights, and Brian follows me up the spiral stair. "This is where I sleep," I say, pointing into Foo's room. Then we cross behind the stairwell, and I throw open the door opposite. "Cora's room," I inform him as we enter, by way of historical orientation.

  In fact, this is where Gray stays when he spends the night, though he's never stayed over during my two months here, so assiduous not to intrude. I snap the light on the bedside table, bathing the room in peach through the old silk shade. This room's not so tatty, though, its green wicker furniture crisp as Maine. Brian nods approval, soberly indifferent, even when I open the balcony door at the foot of the bed, to the beckoning shine of the moonlit sea.

  "We share a bathroom," I explain, pushing through yet another door. Even as I flick the light I wish I'd had a minute to tidy up. It's pretty gritty. There're prescription bottles all over the sink and counter, like Neely O'Hara in Valley of the Dolls. Funky towels on the floor and underwear strewn haphazardly. The plumbing hasn't been scoured in ages, and green blooms around the fixtures.

  "Beautiful tile," Brian says gamely, as I snatch up shorts and toss them into my room.

  "Look, you don't have to go right to bed. Maybe you want a drink or something." I'm rattling on as I scoop the prescriptions and push them to the far end of the counter. I open the cupboard above the tub, and eureka, there's one clean towel. I present it to Brian. "I think there's vodka in the freezer. Whatever you like. It's just that I get real tired."

  "Sure, sure, you go to bed. I'll be fine." There's a crease of worry between his eyes as he studies my face. "I'll just do a little work and then turn in myself."

  "I bet you were supposed to call Susan."

  "No, that's okay. They know I'll be home tomorrow. I'll be fine."

  As he repeats this ringing assertion of life, he lifts his free hand in an awkward wave and backs out of the bathroom. Gently he closes the door. I who will not be fine turn and blink in the mirror above the sink, which I usually avoid like a nun. All I can see is the lesion on my cheek. My sickness is palpable, and indeed I'm completely exhausted. I splash my face with water, then use the hand towel to scrub at the smegma on the sink. It's hopeless.

  I stand at the toilet and pull out my dick—O useless tool, unloaded gun—and dribble a bit of piss, not a proper stream. The virus does something in the bladder to tamp the flow, or else there're lesions there as well.

  I leave the light on for Brian and close my own door. I don't even bother to turn on the lamp as I shrug out of the crew-neck and kick off my jeans. I duck into the bed and under the old down comforter that's shredding at the seams, spilling feathers like a wounded duck. Moonlight streams in, blue-gray on the furniture.

  And I lie there, I who sleep like the dormouse now, nodding off into naps two or three times a day, ten hours solid at night. I stare at the ceiling, and the rage comes back. My father with the strap, my useless mother whimpering, "Don't hit his head." Brian on the field swamped by fans at the end of a game. Laughing with his girlfriend, horsing around with his buddies. My memory is split-screen, the Dickensian squalor of my woeful youth against the shine of Brian. No slight or misery is too small for me to dredge up. I am the princess and the pea of this condition.

  I don't know how long it goes on. At one point I realize I'm clutching the other pillow as if I'm strangling someone, and my teeth are grinding like millstones. Then I hear Brian and freeze. The water goes on in the sink, right through the wall behind my head. I can hear him scrubbing his face—can see it.

  Because it's as if the sixteen years have vanished since we shared a room in Chester. I in my scrawny body have finished brushing my teeth, and Brian the god, a towel at his waist from the shower, steps up to the sink to shave. At sixteen he's got hair on his chest. His stomach is taut, the muscles cut like a washboard. I am so in awe of him that I have to force myself not to look, for fear of the dark incestuous longing that licks at my crotch like the flames of hell.

  The water goes off. There's a shuffle of feet on the tile, and then I hear him pissing. But with him it's a geyser, a long and steady stream that drums the bowl like a gust of tropical rain. I am spellbound by the sound of it. I can feel the exact shape of my brother's dick—heavy and thick with a flared head—more clearly than my own. The pissing is brutally sensual, beyond erotic, and I'm not especially into kink. The stream abates to spurts, gunshots in the water. Then Brian flushes. The bar of light under the door goes out, and there's silence.

  Still I stare at the ceiling, but now the rage is replaced by an ache, just like the empty throb that followed my little heart attack. Not that I want my brother anymore—not his body anyway. At least my own carnal journey has brought me that far, slaking the old doomed hunger. I used to jerk off sniffing his underwear, the uniforms he'd peel off after practice. But even with the incest gone, a darker yearning wells up in me, undiminished by years. I still want to be him.

  For he's what a man is, not Tommy. From seven to seventeen I walked around with a sob in my throat, the original crybaby, mourning for what I would never become. And now it's come back like a time warp. I'm still wearing the glove I can't catch with, a Wilson fielder. I'm flinching in the middle of a scrimmage, terrified someone will pass me the ball.

  This goes on for maybe half an hour, a sort of anxious misery, leaving me wired and desolate. I'm sick, I need my sleep. Eventually the rage comes back around like a boomerang, because it's also Brian's fault. I get up and grope into the bathroom, flicking the light, my ashen squinting face looking dead and buried. Fishing among my prescriptions, I palm a Xanax and down it. Neely O'Hara again. I turn off the light and take a silent step to Brian's door, cocking my ear. I don't even know what I'm doing. Go back to bed, I order myself, but that is the voice I have always ignored, the one that used to tell me not to pull my pud or stare at boys.

  By inches I open the door into the darkness beyond, barely breathing, craning to hear. And there it is: the deep rolling surf of my brother's breathing, a soft whistle at the end. He sleeps a hundred fathoms deep, he always has. Please—I slept in the twin bed next to him for seventeen years. I step inside and stand there a moment to orient myself. The moonshine is strong, though it throws deep shadows on the clutter of wicker, crazy expressionist angles.

  Brian in the bed is lit up clear, the white of the sheets like a luminous ground. He's turned on his side and facing me, one arm under the pillow that cradles his head. Bare to the waist, the top sheet drawn up only to his hips, so I can see the waistband of his briefs. He doesn't even bother with a blanket, for the Irish side is very cold-blooded. Unlike me, who's always shivered in the California nights, shrouded in quilts and comforters.

  Yet the cold doesn't bother me now,
even in just my underpants, as I move to the wicker armchair by the bed. Though I sit carefully, perching on the edge, still it creaks and rasps under my weight. I scan Brian's face for any stir, but he sleeps right through. Now I am only three feet from him, so close I could reach out and touch him.

  But I just watch. His red hair is silver in the moonlight. The arm that's crooked under his head has a biceps as round as a melon. The other arm rests on his side, and now that he's bare I see that his chest and stomach are still in shape, if not so finely chiseled as when he was young. All evening I've been trying to find him battered and soft, but it's not true. He's beautiful still, and even the puffiness in his face has soothed in sleep. If anything, the greater bulk and mass the years have wrought have only made him more of a warrior, king instead of a prince.

  Am I still in a rage? Yes, livid. The last thing I need is this mocking reminder that life goes on for straights, mellowing and ripening into an ever-richer manhood. In the glint of the moon Brian's skin fairly radiates with health. The bristling hair on his belly is thick with hormones. He'll be fifty, sixty, seventy, and still be winning trophies. And I'll be dead, dead, dead. Of course I know I can't blame my illness on Brian, but I can still hate him for being so alive. And the deep, deep irrelevance of his shiny life, with the peewee games and the goldens, I can hate that too. The white-bread sitcom cutesiness and the lies of the Nazi church.

  I'm leaning forward with gritted teeth, my face contorted with nastiness. I'm like a bad witch, rotten with curses, casting a spell even I can't see to the end of. And maybe Brian picks up the vibes, because at last he stirs. A soft murmur flutters his lips, and he rolls from his side onto his back. His hands are on the pillow on either side of his head, so he lies defenseless. You could plunge a dagger into his heart.

  Except I have shifted position now too, the roller coaster of my feelings bringing me up from down. Perhaps it's the Xanax starting to work. But suddenly it's like I'm guarding him, watching over the last of my clan, the only one whose luck has held. Oh, I still want him out of there. Back to his sweet vanilla life, every trace of him expunged, all the torrent of stinging memories he has brought in his glittering train. I wish to be left to die in peace. I don't need a brother—it's far too late in the game. But I stand watch anyway, keeping him free of harm as he sleeps, from curses and daggers.