I did think of these things, as I walked through my brother’s room, trying to pick up the scent of his secret drinking, as I was told by one friend, secrecy is the habit of “people like him.” They drink and hide, she said. And you can’t hide nothing from them. “They’ll find it, and drink every drop. They can’t help themselves.”
I began to worry. I began to see my brother dying on my hands. Either from the liver which they said from Brooklyn was shot anyhow. Or from the spleen. I have never seen a spleen. And I really don’t know which part of the body to find it in. But the word has a collapsing sound in its meaning, whatever its meaning is.
I began to lose sleep. And would stay awake all night, waiting to hear the collapse of his kidneys, if kidneys collapse, and for his cry for help, to take him to the emergency. And I would use a searchlight, no larger than a fountain pen, and walk through the house, after he had said he was going to bed, spotting its pencil point of light, on the floor in the kitchen, round the table, in the hallway, and in and out of the small spaces left by the furniture, cluttering the sitting room. And then I would climb the stairs, soft as if I were a cat, trying to walk on ashes, in silence, in secrecy, like spy, and run the weak shaking light over the pieces of fluff, over the dropped inch of a matchstick, over a careless spot of ash from my own cigarette and from his occasional puff and along the hallway on the second floor, and outside his closed bedroom door. Inch by inch, I moved the pencil light looking for the first clue. And when I realized that I did not know what the first evidence would be, and would look like, I stood outside his door, listening for the slightest murmur to tell me he was drinking in bed, which, according to my friend, was worse than smoking in bed. I sniffed to see if, in fact, he was smoking in bed. All that came from the room was the heavy unmelodious sound of his breathing. But he was smarter than me: and he could have been pretending to put me off the scent.
I pushed the door slightly. And it was blocked. He had placed a valise behind the door. Did he fear me? Did he feel I was going to enter his bedroom, in the middle of the night, and smell his breath? Was this the way he slept, in his own home in Brooklyn? And was it for fear of thieves and men with guns, about which he talked? I decided it was strange. But I would have to think about this at some other safer time.
I continued along the hall, and into my own bedroom. And I shone the light over the walls, all up to the ceiling, in corners, in the cupboards of clothes, in bookshelves, in the pockets of suits and in the soles of shoes. I even shone it in the plastic of laundered folded shirts, in socks and between the two piles of handkerchiefs ironed and folded in quarters. What was I looking for? I was looking for the evidence. They had telephoned from Brooklyn and New Jersey and had talked in whispers, reminding me “not to let the boy drink anything hard, you hear? No more harder than a beer, or one glass of white wine, then!”
But one morning as I was leaving for work, he said he was expecting something from Amurca, by Federal Express; and he asked if he would be able to cash “the thing,” and what was the exchange; and I told him that I could do it for him and I gave him the cash; and he said, “no problem” and I went to work and forgot about it.
He had no money. He had no job. And I knew, by miserliness, how much change was left from the purchase of milk; what was the change from a container of vanilla ice cream. But I did not tell him that the empty beer bottles in the cupboard could be exchanged for hard, unearned cash. I had put him under “very heavy heavy manners,” as my mother said to do.
Once, when I returned from work, he asked me if I needed anything from the Vietnamese at the corner, and I told him no; and he said he needed some butter and some bread and some orange juice; and I said, “See if there’s any change.” And he said, “No problem.” And he returned, wearing his dark glasses, which he had first arrived in, and which he wore during the night, taking them off only about three in the morning, when he came back from his night walk to the all-night restaurant where they sold espresso.
I had forgotten about the dark glasses. And the all-night restaurant slipped my memory. The all-night restaurant has a liquor license.
But this afternoon, he returned with butter and bread and orange juice and a package of cigarettes. The “thing” had arrived by Federal Express. He did not tell me this. And the receipt from the Vietnamese round the corner showed that he had had his own money in his pocket.
Let me tell you, when he was out the pencil searchlight was moving over each item in the house; over the picture frames, in the washrooms, in the toilet bowls and under chairs; checking bottles of mouthwash; checking bottles of cough medicine; checking things and containers that made me see myself, mean and foolish.
And I started to hate my mother; and my sister; and my other brothers and his wife and his girl friend, who had telephoned me, in whispered confidence, and had burdened me with this sick brother, “And if you don’t send for him and get him outta Brooklyn, by next week he be dead and I know you won’t want to have that on your conscience.” There was a pause; and then my mother said, “You don’t want to say, years from now, if. If I had helped my brother….”
The “if” bothered me. If I did not call him and force him to come, he would die. If I did not invite him, the liver would give out. “He hardly got any left back,” they had said. If I did not remind him that he is my favourite brother, that it didn’t matter he was still working on his PhD in “pure” anthropology, after all these years. If I did not open my arms to him, the spleen would splinter, collapse, and perhaps his blood sugar would roar, or rise, or do whatever blood sugar does. And now that he was here, if I couldn’t snatch the liquor bottle from his mouth, the reverse of what I used to do to him when he was an infant, forcing the bottle with a different colour, into his clenched teeth, if I didn’t do all these things, I would live with that guilt all my life.
This thing about bottles is very ironical: at the beginning of his life I helped to force a bottle into his mouth, and at the end, which I was sure was at hand, I was entreated to snatch it from his lips.
That night, with the pen-sized torchlight, I searched until the batteries gave out; and I was left standing in the dark. He was still snoring. The valise was behind the door. He had placed it there to protect himself from some devil. They had told me that men who drank in the quantities he did, were visited by devils. Demons, actually, was the word they used. The demons or the devils which stalked his life and his sleep, were now accompanying me as I walked with cold feet on the hot carpets in the house, furtive in my own house, wearied by the spying, and made thirsty by the endeavour.
And then, I remembered. It was the day before he arrived, and I had gone to the liquor store, and had stocked up my cupboard in the kitchen with brandy, scotch, Bombay Gin and wine. But when the urgency in the whispering telephone calls had sunk in, and I was gripped with the unknown terror of having a dying man on my hands, I had no choice but to hide these four bottles. I hid them so cleverly that I forgot their hiding places. I know I did not hide them in the same corner. My mother and his mother, now as I think of this, was the expert at hiding things in our house. She hid things from us, and ended up hiding them from herself. And she couldn’t ask our assistance. She hid things so completely, so successfully, new shoes, new belts, candy, her purse when it contained change and gifts at Christmas, from our prying eyes, that she forgot where they were buried in the large dark drawers of the large dark mahogany bureaus in the large, dark house. Once, at Easter, she had to travel back to town to buy presents for the two of us all over again, and she swore and cursed because her corns were killing her. But her dignity and her memory, which we all knew she was losing, could not brook that blow of forgetfulness.
I could not ask him to help me search for the four bottles. I could not bear his telling me that I was getting dotish like our mother. So, in the darkened house, now that the searchlight had given up its life, and as I ran my hands under chairs, under cushions, in dark drawers and feeling the same sensation as when I p
lunged my hand in the sea, searching for sea-eggs, or for sea-crabs, and knew the damage a spike or a claw could cause, I cursed the day when I’d answered the telephone, and heard the pleading voices of my mother, my sister and my brothers from Brooklyn and New Jersey telling me “the boy need help,” and I cursed myself some more for offering that help. And now, I found myself hiding booze from myself in my own house, while I raged in that need, with that thirst which they had told me he had no control over. That need and that thirst had me now ripping the house apart to find a bottle.
The snoring had stopped. And it alarmed me. And the sound of his breathing became clear, as if the darkness in the house was making it easier to hear. I tiptoed back to the door behind which he lay, protected by his valise, and listened. The breathing was my own. It was quiet behind the door. From outside the room, at the back near the garden, came the laughter of the neighbours. That too was clear and ironical, because it was a reminder of life. But no life could I hear coming from the closed door.
When the laughter beyond the fence died, and the small branches of the maple trees licked one another and touched the fence itself, and the house was still again, and I was thinking of him dead on his back, and the vomit had erupted from his eaten-out guts, bursting his spleen and collapsing his kidneys, wanting to get out, and could not, because it could find no opening and had gone back down into his throat; and when the picture showed my brother with the thick white line from the left corner of his mouth, making his beard a little more grey and making him look older than his short life said he was, in this silent darkness with these thoughts of sudden silent death, came the picture of the hiding places of the four bottles. It was like the relief of solving a crossword puzzle. Or like seeing the solution of a problem in a dream.
They were still wrapped in the brown paper of the liquor store, with the tops of the paper twisted. And I could remember how they felt in my hand, trembling a bit, as I carried them from the brightly lit store. One was in the bottom drawer of the dresser under a pile of sweaters. One was in the cupboard under the sink in the bathroom, in a box that had contained FA Bubble Bath. One was in the basement in an empty box that had contained ABC soap powder. And the fourth was under the mattress of my bed.
I turned the hallway lights on. If the light should wake him, we would talk. I would ask him how I can help. I would ask him if he was ready to go to the doctor to get his blood looked at; and whether he wanted the doctor to check on his sugar. To protect him from this sugar, I had not bought sugar for tea in all the time he was with me. I felt good about that precaution. Not knowing better.
My footsteps, with my new mortal assurances, were heavy enough to wake him. And I wanted to wake him. I went downstairs and turned all the lights on. I was determined not to make my house into a vault, or a hospital ward, not caring to walk around on tiptoe, as if I was beside someone passing from unconsciousness into death. I was no longer mindful of his presence. Patterning my life and behaviour after the precautions to his drinking, I needed a drink, and I was going to have one. And if he awoke, if he escaped from whatever demons and spirits were holding him down, then to hell with them. And to hell with him. I needed a martini. A strong one. A dry one. One with four olives. In my best crystal. And I would have a cigar. The excitement of relief, the end of restrictions. It was like the celebration of something that was new, something that was born. The box of Jamaican cigars was in the top drawer of the buffet in the kitchen.
Bounding down the stairs, making more noise than when the woman who said she loved me came one night unawares, and broke every piece of china and crystal in the house, and would have broken my arse too, had I not learned about discretion and speed and escape, I wetted my lips in anticipation of one Mario Palomino, exquisite Jamaican cigar. The smell of the wood in which they were packaged rose to my nostrils and I was wafted away on the pleasure I would have in pouring myself a drink, the first in the five weeks I had been my brother’s keeper. I could taste the martinis with olives large as miniature avocado pears. I could taste the smear of lemon which a senior civil servant in the Federal Government had told me to rub in the bottom of the glass (civil servants know about power and about drink!); and I was going to open the bottle of vermouth secco created by Martini & Rossi, bless their souls, and pass it without pouring, over the two-pint glass tumbler, in which would be chipped ice, and half the bottle of Bombay Gin, put down and saved like money for a Christmas present, and I would sit in the wing-backed chair, and listen to Miles Davis, and sip and sip and close my eyes, and savor the taste and see the faces of Italians and Indians and Portuguese and those of whichever race of people grew lemons.
I found the hiding place of the gin. And I laughed at my skill and skulduggery, and how bright I was, how I had hoodwinked him. And I took the brown paper bag from the empty ABC soap powder box, ignoring the smear of powder on my fingers, passing the finger into my mouth, as a woman making cookies passes the spoon with the remains of the mix across her mouth. And it must have been the power of my imagination about the drink, or the size of the ABC soap powder box, which failed to warn me of the disaster. I took the paper bag out of the ABC box. Do not drink and drive, the bag said. I ripped the message up. And I stood looking at the empty bottle. The headdress and the crown, and the shroud on Queen Victoria’s head, her pudgy face like the countenance of someone who drinks gin, and the bragging declaration that what had been in this bottle was made from a recipe in the year 1761…was she alive then?...was to me, empty and hypocritical and imperialistic like all hypocrisy and emptiness. I had thought that the gin was like its name, manufactured and distilled in India. I imagined Indians, thousands of them coming towards me, with pangas and knives in their hands, screaming and foaming at the mouth in anger and hatred. And knowing I was out-numbered I retreated back upstairs to the other hiding places.
I was as disoriented in my retreat as I had been in my assault. And in retreating there was no solace, no possibility of discretion, and I was never a man who could be accused of valor. The bottle of brandy was empty, too. The bottle of Père Anselme Chateauneuf-du-Pape was empty. And like the gin, was placed back in its paper bag, with the top twisted for easy carrying. The scotch was the last I found. I stood looking at the bottle, imagining the times in my long life when a sip of this scotch had been like victory and salvation.
And I went back up the stairs. I did not rush. For I had done that too many times, showing the enemy my intention and disposition. I did not shout, as I had done in times past, foolish with the anger I could hear. I walked calmly and when I reached the top of the stairs I was not even breathing heavy from the exertion. I did not burst into his room. I rested my hand on the doorknob, and turned it, and eased the weight of the empty valise he had brought his things in from Amurca, inch by inch, and felt the door reacting to my push. He was no longer snoring. And I could not hear his breathing, although I could hear from outside, beyond the fence in the garden, the branches of the maple tree brushing against the fence.
And I filled my lungs with the curse and the violence and the chastisement. I blew myself out, in anger like a frog proclaiming dignity and territory and rights. I could hear before they were spoken, the words of abuse.
But all I did was call him by his name. Softly. Almost too soft for the voice to wake him up. The branches of the maple tree below rubbed against the fence. I called him a second time by his name. There was no snoring in the room. The sound of the branches was stifling the sound of his breathing, in case he was breathing. And I felt in the close darkness, to my left, for the switch. And before I turned it on, I called him by his name, for the third time, just as softly, and perhaps, in a different time, lovingly, for I had always loved him. And years ago, when I was twice his age, and he was months only in this world, I used to hush him to sleep and rock him in his bed, and I used to keep the small rubber nipple in his mouth, to get him to drink his milk and mother’s love.
The light rested softly on his face, in a kind of smile and cove
red his entire body in a sheet of contentment. His lips were relaxed, for the smile had painted them too. He was sleeping. And in the light now brighter, in the passing seconds I stood looking down on his body, fully dressed, as I had seen him hours earlier, I saw the thick line of white foam that had started inside his mouth, and was now dried to his face.
They’re Not Coming Back
On the second night, the day after it happened, the home was dark. She was surprised to hear the six o’clock news on television as she closed the front door. She could not remember whether she had left the television on for security or whether she’d wanted to hear voices in the empty house when she came home. The bottles in the big brown paper bag nearly slipped from her hand. The liquor store was closed at six. The bottle was her sustenance for the night. She was a Catholic. She went to church irregularly, but devoutly, if that is possible. And always, she read books of devotion at night or The Lives Of The Saints, especially when she needed something steadfast in her life. She was doing well: confident in her new job; saving when she could; dressing smartly, and she kept in touch with her friends and family. What grieved her was her husband.
She’d always said it was a bad marriage, but she could offer no certain act, no one thing for blame. She knew she was unhappy. And that was the only important thing. When she’d left him in the house, her house, the house her parents had “given” them for one hundred dollars, she said it was a decision she’d made three years earlier. But she’d taken with her, though she’d tried differently, countless problems from the small renovated bungalow, built in the same style as the one she now rented: she’d taken with her pains and anger from the past two years, unpaid bills and balances on his credit cards, personal debts now changed into consolidating loans; her fifty percent obligation to all these debts; and the two girls, one sixteen, the other nine.
There Are No Elders Page 11