by Liam Durcan
He reassured himself he was not racist—he was a fair man, with black friends and trusted colleagues, and he had employed a vast army, all of whom he valued for their individual competences—and he reviewed the evidence often enough to understand what these perpetual reassurances must mean, what insecurities they addressed. He wanted to tell someone how it grieved him to think this way, that he tried to think every way except this way (and there was ample alternative evidence to invoke when the decline of Detroit was discussed: the failure of the Big Three, globalization, the city’s abandonment by people like him, the almost-expected—but still surpassing—venalities of the mayor’s office balanced by the purer village idiocy of the lame duck in the White House). He wanted to hate it all without race invoked, to tell himself that his anger was valid and not the easily dismissed rantings of some cracker. But DEE-troit was always there to goad him with its gleeful squalor. DEE-troit with its systemic arson. DEE-troit with its buildings emptying still.
Martin had been noticeably docile for the entire trip down, quiet enough that Brendan had almost convinced himself of a nostalgia for the flare-ups of bellicose paranoia that had gone on before. Martin’s behavior, almost since his awakening at the Dunes, had been difficult, but in a straightforward way—in a way that a snarling dog is always preferable, in its clarity of threat, to the quiet dog that is about to snap. Silence was simply more difficult to assess, and looking across at him, he was unsure if Martin was dazed or ruminating, exhausted or spiraling toward blacker thoughts. During one of their rest stops, with Martin safely confined by a bathroom stall, he had stepped out and made another call to the psychiatrist whom Martin was scheduled to see, but again he got the voice mail.
And so, with his brother mute to conversation and indifferent to diversion, Brendan turned on the radio and scanned stations, cycling through the available choices and settling on a neutral-sounding NPR station, relatively lacto-ovo compared to the anarcho-vegan NPR outlet that he regularly sampled and turned off at home in New York.
Fifty-five floors above the Detroit River, the outskirts of Windsor fading into the more distant darkness of southern Ontario, Brendan sat up in bed and arranged the pillows behind him. Martin had awakened long enough to stand beside him at the Marriott’s reception desk before wordlessly slipping under the covers of the other bed, where he now emitted an intermittent rasp, an exact impersonation of a screen door closing. The flash of changing channels in the darkened room was not enough to rouse him.
“You awake?” Brendan asked.
He turned up the television, not enough to disturb his brother, but loud enough that he would be distracted from reading the news ticker that ran along the bottom of the screen. The scrolling messages always managed to agitate him, with their endless haikus of vague information that drew his eyes to the last words when the rest of the message had already disappeared . . . toward the earth (What? Life-giving sunshine? An asteroid?) . . . vitamin can kill (Too much? Too little? Which vitamin? WHICH VITAMIN?). Television news had reduced him to Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, the hapless victim of too much velocity, frozen by the truths streaming by him while he was undoubtedly busy poisoning himself with the wrong vitamins while waiting for the asteroid to strike. Like most nights, he would find the three main news channels and bounce from one to the next, hoping to triangulate something resembling the truth.
Chapter 21
Martin allowed himself to be led down by Brendan to the hotel’s restaurant for breakfast, holding on to his brother’s arm more tightly than Brendan was used to. Brendan studied him at the table as they ate, his brother intently spearing pieces of fruit, working the right side of the plate while melon balls and a small stem of grapes accumulated on the other side, untouched, unnoticed.
As Martin searched for his coffee cup, Brendan reached over and rotated the plate. When Martin returned his attention to the plate, he simply resumed eating; never questioning where the new supply of fruit had appeared from.
“I don’t have anything for her,” Martin said.
“I’m sorry?”
“A present. I don’t have a present.”
“It’s okay; she doesn’t want a present.”
“Still.”
“She might not remember it’s her birthday.”
“Then why are we visiting today?”
“Well, because we remembered it’s her birthday. We can pick up something.”
“There’s a florist on the way,” Martin said, and paused. He had eaten the last grape and now studied the stem, which looked like a felled maple in winter. He looked up from the plate. “When did you know about it?”
“About what, Martin?”
“That I tried to kill myself.”
“It doesn’t help to talk about this.”
“I think you knew. Maybe from the moment you heard about my accident. Maybe before they told you.”
“How would I know something like that about you? I didn’t know you.”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m family.”
Martin leaned closer. “Why are you here? Is it just to confirm what you always thought about me?”
“Calm down, Martin.”
“I think you like the thought of its being a riddle.”
Brendan slowly rotated his head from side to side. “It’s not a riddle, Martin; it’s your life. Do you remember what you felt that night? Your intent?”
“No.”
“Do you want to kill yourself now?”
“No.”
“Then you probably decided against it back then.”
“Well now, I suppose that’s as life-affirming as this will get.”
“You sound like Feingold.”
“Maybe Feingold wasn’t so bad.”
“I never said she was bad.”
Martin stared at him and Brendan smiled the sort of smile that felt to him like the mask that hotel clerks and flight attendants wore, the type of expression that politely severed further communication. Period. He wondered whether this was decipherable to his brother, who continued to stare at him in a way that told him that it was not. The grapes were gone from Martin’s plate now, leaving behind a stem that looked like a miniature maple felled in midwinter.
They ate breakfast together and said nothing more. It was as if they were kids again, heads down over bowls of cereal as their mother moved around them, between them. The silence made Brendan think how odd it was that he couldn’t remember a word that they’d ever said to each other, while he had more vivid memories for the nonverbal things: the feel of flannel pajamas, the sound of his little brother repeatedly kicking his chair. Him kicking back. Words were nothing. Words were sounds that they used to hide themselves in.
“Tell me about your wife,” Martin said.
“I’d rather not.”
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry. I spent some time in therapy after she died and I think . . . I think I did the work then, you know. . . .”
Martin nodded and smiled. Not the dogged acknowledging nod of someone fresh from the rehab wards of the Dunes, but something more nuanced, respectfully letting Brendan out of the conversation. He nodded again, very understandingly. Brendan studied his brother, now a Buddha of compassion. He tried to smile in appreciation at Martin’s gesture, so rich in sophisticated emotion that it was demanding to be replayed in Brendan’s head as it was simultaneously occurring. Iterations of Martin smiling. Parallel smiles, not just of commiseration but also empathy, yes, and solidarity, too. He recognized that this was the sort of gesture that should have strengthened whatever bond they had, that in some book you’d buy in an airport he would at this very moment reach out and clasp his brother’s hand. But Brendan sat still. How could he sit there and nod? You little fuck, how could you know what it’s like? How could a man who has pushed away every person in his life who ever loved him know anything about losing someone like Rita?
He lifted his coffee cup and studied the small brown moat that had formed
in the saucer.
“She had ovarian cancer,” he muttered, wanting the words to silence Martin and finding that he regretted the sound of the phrase as it left his mouth. Brutal and dismissive. Maybe it was because a life couldn’t be summed up in a rejoinder as easily as a final diagnosis. The words were almost as bad as just HBC, the abbreviation written on a chart when an animal was brought into the clinic off the streets after being struck by a vehicle. Animals snapping at the air, wild with pain and fear and nothing to be done. He felt something like a sob tear off inside him, and tried not to think about the details, how the history of Rita’s death could be followed back: One cell with an abnormal program becomes two cells that become the vague abdominal pain that becomes the doctor’s visit that becomes the motion required to pick up a ringing telephone, not knowing how it would change everything. Your wife for you on line two, Dr. Fallon.
“I didn’t know,” Martin said, his expression unchanged.
Of course you didn’t, he thought as a waitress cleared away the breakfast dishes, Brendan’s cup stranded in midair. He studied his brother and wondered how they had gotten to this point. He felt he urgently needed to understand the reason why he was here, with this man, dragging him, following him. Martin, regardless of what he saw, of what he could see, would not take his eyes off him.
“We should get going,” Brendan said.
The elevator from the restaurant to the parking garage was silent and swift, a thousand microprocessors striving to eliminate the sensation of g-forces and velocity and terror that should come with any hundred-foot drop down a darkened elevator shaft. Brendan tried to concentrate on the numbered lights flashing as they descended, trying to ignore the sense that Martin was staring at him. Judging him. You are here because you watch, he told himself. You are here because you are nothing more than an observer in your life. You watch your wife create a home life for your children that excuses a busy man like you from the day-to-day banalities of their upbringing, unaware that your detachment will mean their absolute indifference to you when she is gone. You watch as your life’s work is purchased and dismantled and you are handed a time card and a very large check. The irony, of course, is that all this feels so much like a life being lived, so real that you’re completely unaware that you’re only watching. At floor twenty-five now, falling at a speed as close to free-fall as you could get without an airplane and a parachute, comfortably nestled in a box that reassures you with the lie that you are not falling, you admit that you still watch, with two cups of coffee in your hands, as your brother staggers off toward a highway—oh, how you had wanted that automatic response to kick in, that protective reflex to be deployed that would leave you winded before you realized you were running. You tell yourself you wanted to be everything that that sprinting man would be—the father who had taken the time to enmesh himself into the messy details of his sons’ lives, the brother who forgave, the man who was not so easily and thoroughly embittered that the act of saving his brother was not perfectly instinctual. But you stood there in the parking lot, clutching two cups of take-out coffee. You watch. You watch because you want to see whether Martin is heading for the traffic, whether he is guided by the same dark drive and shares the same impulse that you have never been able to admit in yourself. Brendan looked at Martin, the half-blind architect leaning against a mirrored wall, unaware of their descent, and then turned around to face the opening elevator door.
It began to rain as they pulled into the parking lot of the Château, and in the time it took to park the car, a fierce downpour had begun. Brendan turned off the engine and waited, assuming a squall that began so quickly would blow over in a moment. He stared out the obscured windshield.
Several times that morning, as they’d stood side by side in the bathroom, finishing Martin’s shave, Brendan had given his brother the option of staying back at the hotel. If he didn’t feel well. If he wasn’t up to it. Mom wouldn’t know the difference, he said. Each offer was refused. He hadn’t known why he’d been so insistent in giving Martin chances to back out, but perhaps he’d sensed something, as Martin slowly became more agitated as they neared their mother’s residence. His hands seemed to flutter on his lap, and his eyes, visible now that he had abandoned his sunglasses, seemed intent on focusing on things five or ten feet away, invisible to the rest of the world.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” Martin said unconvincingly.
Brendan pulled opened a couple of heavy institutional doors and entered the reception area. Even with fifteen or so residents waiting to receive visitors, it had an atmosphere that, to Brendan, seemed to be particular to old-age residences: silence and stillness, the laws of thermodynamics muted in accordance with the overall decorating style. Martin, who followed a pace or two behind him, now swiveled his head; his attention seemed to be caught on the large flower arrangement that sat in the middle of the hall.
“Is there some sort of reception desk?”
“We have to sign in”
“You handle it, okay?”
“Uh, sure,” Brendan, said. “Are you all right? A nod, as though Martin were trying to swallow a pill without water.
“We’re here to see Mrs. Fallon.”
“Oh, Mr. Fallon, it’s good to see you again. Is your mother expecting you?”
“We called earlier. I’m here with my brother.”
“I’ll just check the register,” the nurse said, and looked over at Martin, whose face twitched into a furtive split-second smile before he ducked behind his brother. Brendan glanced at him over his shoulder, certain that if this had been a bank, the security guards would have unclipped their holsters at this point. But the nurse handled it like a consummate pro, her gaze simply bouncing off Martin and back to him, intuitively understanding Martin was one of those simply fucked-up but essentially harmless types. The brother fresh out of some drug rehab collared into a visit with his mum. A potential disturbance if he were the sole visitor, but accompanied by someone like Brendan, he would be fenced in by familial embarrassment. Split second assessment, years of staffing the reception desk, years of smelling people out from three feet away. Had he still been in business, Brendan would have hired someone like her on the spot. “Here we have it. Oh, she’s been a busy lady. You gentleman can wait over there in our solarium. I’ll make a call to get her down for you.”
“Thank you.”
Brendan had been to the Château dozens of times, and while he was for the most part pleased with the home he had secured for his mother, he hadn’t yet found a reason to revise his initial dislike of the solarium. The air in the room seemed perpetually damp and several of the panes of glass were obscured by a dun haze of mildew, which, for what he was paying, seemed a little substandard. Still, he reasoned, he couldn’t put his mother through the trauma of another move just because of solarium issues. The floor was tiled, not carpeted—an essential part of the setup to encourage the easy movement of wheelchairs—and this detail, along with the fact that the solarium was often deserted, nudged the ambience of the room into the depressing “institutional” category. Perhaps understanding this, the management had tried to remedy the situation by decorating the room with small circular tables and garishly upholstered wing-back chairs straight out of the lobby of a Ramada Inn. It was all well intentioned and utterly confused and he was glad Martin—who had found a chair opposite him and collapsed into it—was in no shape to critique it. He looked around for his mother but saw no one. He smelled Scotchgard and the faint scent of urine and consulted his watch.
Brendan was surprised by their mother’s appearance at the entrance to the solarium, sitting in a wheelchair pushed by a nurse’s assistant. He looked at his mother in her wheelchair. She wore a white cardigan over her dress, something he could have imagined her wearing at home, which he realized meant a lot to him. After a rapid descent into the incapacities of old age that necessitated selling the house and arranging for her to come here, their mother, it seemed to Brendan, had stopped agi
ng in the last two or three years. Now she sat in the chair with a patrician calm that, Brendan noted, was common among the other residents. He imagined that she could sit this way for hours, then return to her room without a word if she had not been prompted into some form of interaction. There was no pleading when he left, no recriminations that one might expect for not having visited enough. And while it didn’t seem entirely like his mother, this equanimity cheered Brendan nonetheless, not just because his mother seemed comfortable but also because it allowed him to think that getting old was not necessarily a harrowing sentence of rattling bed rails and diapers and anguished incoherence, but offered the possibility of a dignified retreat into silence.
The nursing assistant maneuvered the wheelchair into position between the brothers and bent down beside each wheel to engage the hand brakes. She wore a multicolored polyester smock over what appeared to be surgical greens, instantly recognizable to Brendan as the default uniform of the health-care worker. On her left wrist she wore a rubber bracelet, the kind that advertised an adopted cause, usually one’s opposition to a specific illness, often cancer. Who wasn’t against cancer? he thought, already ashamed at his peevishness and wondering what color would signify ovarian. A light blue came to mind, and he didn’t know why. The nursing assistant’s band was green, and it was only when she finished putting the brakes on the chair and straightened up that he saw the band also had the black triangles and yellow cross that made up the flag of Jamaica.