Everyday People Page 17
Brandon was engrossed in a conversation about Pickett’s Charge with the museum tour guide, who sounded like David Letterman. I stood in front of a mannequin that wore a Confederate soldier’s uniform. Slouch hat, butternut wool shell jacket, matching trousers. A pink quilt slung diagonally across his chest. The information card on the wall explained that female kin made the soldiers’ quilts. They didn’t just serve as bedding, but as emotional support too. Something to give men the will to come home.
I stopped short of feeling sympathy for a Confederate soldier, but it is unfair what we march people through. Unrealistic what we expect them to come back from.
Back at our hotel, Brandon made love to me. That’s what he calls it. Making love. It’s too sickly sweet a term for me. I prefer sex. Sounds sly. Fitting for what we’re doing. I wouldn’t take offense if he said “fuck.” Deployed under the right circumstances, the word itself becomes a third party to the act. Brandon would never use words like “sex” or “fuck” to describe what we do.
In the middle of packing our suitcases to fly to New York in the morning, Brandon held up a toy submarine he bought at the museum.
—Did you hear the story that guide told? About the H. L. Hunley?
—The what?
—The submarine.
—No, must’ve missed it.
—There was this legend about a lieutenant. His girlfriend gives him a coin for good luck before he leaves for the war. He keeps it in his pocket. In the middle of a battle, he gets shot and—
—Let me guess.
—the bullet gets embedded in the coin.
—What does that have to do with the submarine?
—Well, he went on to command the Hunley after that. In the mid-nineties, they recover it from the ocean—
—Wait. It sank?
—Twice. The third time with the lieutenant and the entire crew, but a researcher found the gold coin near his body.
Brandon rushed through the sinking as if it were a minor detail.
—The lieutenant’s initials and the date of the battle were engraved in the coin. Forensics found he had a healed injury to his hip. From the bullet. The legend was true. Amazing, right?
—Not much of a lucky coin.
—It saved his life.
—He drowned.
—He got to go home to his sweetheart before he did.
Only Brandon would use a word like “sweetheart.”
—Maybe he needed to do things. In the two years between the battle and the Hunley. You know, affect things.
I let it rest. Brandon needed that fairy tale more than I did.
• • •
Brandon lives by himself in the three-bedroom, two-bath house he grew up in. He bought it from his parents at their first mention of retiring to a condo farther down the Jersey Shore. Sometimes, I get up while Brandon’s asleep and sit in his brother Davey’s old bedroom. Everything redecorated with sale items from Target. Changed and unlived in. A battlefield where grass grows again, as if that proves anything.
Not long after Nebraska City, a US Postal Service box appeared on the dresser. Something Brandon must’ve bought while we were there and arranged to have shipped. The return address belonged to a fiber artist’s shop in Omaha. The tape sealing the box had been sliced apart. I reached in and felt something soft. Cloth. Folded and thick. I slid my hands between the softness and the cardboard sides of the box and pulled, delivering it into the room. A white quilt. I unfolded it to reveal a yellow-skinned Xipe Totec stitched in the center. An Aztec life-death-life god. He wore a scowl and a red headdress that resembled a bird, the beak serving as the brim of his helmet. He gripped a red staff in one hand, a white shield in the other.
Brandon’s brother, Davey, used to collect action figures. Eighties wrestlers, cartoons, soldiers. He kept one in his coat pocket to fiddle with when he felt anxious. Davey was always between jobs, so he fiddled a lot. I would assure him he’d find something soon. Tell him that we’re all between something, always beginning and ending. A platitude offered with genuine belief from the safety of my stable life. What did I know, really know, about existing in that space between an ending and a beginning?
Davey finally got a kitchen job in a restaurant. One night after his shift, he came over to my place and pulled a box out of his Carhartt coat pocket. He nudged it across the coffee table toward me. I opened the box to find an angry action figure wearing a headdress.
—Xipe Totec. The cape is supposed to be flayed human skin.
—How romantic.
—Shut up. I’m not explaining it right. Look it up. It’s like the god is hiding under this blanket of death, but there’s life right underneath. Ready to come out. Like spring after winter. Or corn seeds shedding their skins before they sprout.
—You mean snakes. Snakes shed their skins.
—No. I mean corn seeds.
One day, after I entombed everything Davey left at my place in storage bins, Xipe Totec tumbled off a shelf. I pushed it into Brandon’s palm without explanation. He didn’t ask for any. At the time, I was grateful not to have to speak, but lately it struck me how similar my relationship to Brandon is to Davey’s old/new room.
I didn’t bother to put the quilt away.
• • •
The first Sunday of every month, we eat dinner at Brandon’s godson’s house. The boy lives with his mother, half sister, aunt, and cousins. We sit on their black wraparound faux leather couch. It’s too soft not to sink into, making it impossible to balance plates of food on our knees. There’s no room for a dining table. I pretend to like them. I’m supposed to because we’re from the same part of the world.
Brandon acts like he’s at ease with the two women in his life in the same room. He asks me questions he knows the answer to so she’ll take the hint and make small talk. He repeats the ritual with her. He punctuates the conversations with more positivity than a motivational speaker.
He dated his godson’s mother in college, over fifteen years ago. He must’ve been quite the trophy to bring home, a white man. Irish, he always insists, as if that made his reddish-brown hair or blue eyes any darker. Anyway, she and Brandon broke up soon after graduating and she got pregnant from someone else. The baby’s father left and she asked Brandon to be the baby’s godfather. Then the pregnancy became something to celebrate. It had a patron to sponsor a baby shower, replace outgrown clothes, buy school supplies. She acquired respectability with Brandon’s support. He kept the sainthood her family granted him when they were dating. Brandon doesn’t attend Mass every Sunday, but being a godfather he considers an unbreakable Catholic duty. He gets to sow his paternal instincts without the pressure to marry.
Sometimes I feel his godson’s mother eyeing my natural hair, tracing my tattoos. My cat-eye glasses instead of colored contacts. Wondering what Brandon sees in me. When I feel her looking, I smile back. I study her hair dyed a shade of burgundy not found in nature. Her makeup, I later learn, takes an hour in the bathroom. Her blouse, always a size too small.
I rarely eat rice, never drink soda, never eat anything fried. She makes it a point every single time to say she made a salad just for me, since I don’t eat anything. Thank you, that’s thoughtful of you, I say. After dinner, Brandon and his godson go outside to play some basketball. If it’s too cold or raining, they play video games. Total War: Shogun 2 or Crusader Kings II.
As we’re getting ready to leave, she always asks us to wait a minute. She fills a plastic dollar-store container with food for Brandon to take to work for lunch the next day. I make sure to stand right next to him. Brandon always wraps his arm around my waist as we wait.
• • •
My daughter comes home from Amherst, Massachusetts, in the middle of her sophomore year for spring break. After a few days she’s suffocated by the neighborhood, the apartment, and me. She asks why I stay in New York City now that nothing anchors me here. I don’t tell her I’m waiting for the lease to end in the summer. I’m crossing my fingers that
Brandon suggests moving in with him. I like the Jersey Shore, but Brandon pointed out that my apartment is closer to his job, closer to his godson. He said it’s great to share two places instead of one.
My daughter told me she was asexual when she was fourteen. I asked if she meant to come out as a lesbian, but no. She felt attraction toward men but no inclination to act on it. It must be freeing not to need. When she was a teenager, I went on dates every Saturday night. After a breakup, I spent weekends in bed, getting up only to eat baked macaroni and cheese and chocolate ice cream.
She disliked all my boyfriends. She reserved judgment until they showed themselves. Called her stupid in the heat of an argument. Lingered in her doorway when they shouldn’t. There was nowhere to go except out the door once she smoked a man out of his sheep’s clothing. She became good at it because I failed to see them for what they were, and for that I’ve always felt guilty. She was a sniper by the time Davey came along, but he was the only one who was what he seemed. A sweet, nervous guy, unprepared for the life of a man.
My daughter says she’s never getting married or having children. I wonder if I made her feel that way. Or if watching me lose Davey did.
When Brandon gets busy with work, I won’t get a text or phone call for days. I remind myself that I fell for his diligence, how he tends to everything that needs his attention. I busy myself with my daughter to relearn that silence doesn’t mean an end.
When he almost fades into a ghost, he reappears with an apologetic text and begs to see me that same night. My anger melts into gratitude when I hug him and feel his arms, solid around me. He changes out of his button-down shirt and slacks, and I sit with him while he eats what I cooked for dinner. He says it’s great to come home to me. We are the foundation we rebuilt our lives on.
• • •
Brandon’s cell phone rings. His godson’s mother. Brandon measures his replies so that I can’t tell what’s wrong. He leaves the living room where we’re watching a movie but stays within earshot. I try to keep paying attention to the actors on the screen, but my heart pounds.
—Is everything okay?
—She got a dispossess notice on her apartment. She and the kids need a place to stay for a little while.
A war drum beats in my blood. In my head, I scream obscenities and throw things at Brandon.
—I have plenty of room, and they don’t have anyone else.
—Of course.
I go to bed early. Brandon tries to rouse me by nuzzling my neck, caressing my thigh. I pretend to be dead asleep.
• • •
Brandon let Davey keep his old bedroom after buying his parents’ house, but Davey took cover at my place whenever he quit or got fired, like he was from that kitchen job. Then he’d call me in the throes of a panic attack on his way to an interview for a new job. The night before his first day of work, he’d snap at me to turn down the TV. I couldn’t even turn over in bed, or he’d say I wasn’t letting him sleep. He’d come home exuberant about his first week until a bad day struck. The bad days would outnumber the good ones, and he’d quit or get fired again.
He went to work for his uncle’s general contracting business. He made it through a whole six months. One night he complained of a headache. I scolded him for overmedicating, taking sleeping pills and pain medication. I woke up in the middle of the night to Davey throwing up in the bathroom. In the morning he said his head felt like it was splitting in two. I told him to take some aspirin. I cooked breakfast. My daughter was already eating, and Davey still hadn’t gotten up. When I went to check on him, he’d gone back to sleep. I shook him by the shoulder and told him to get his ass up and go to work. He groaned and rolled over. I told him I left his breakfast in the microwave. I left for work. I texted him during the day to check up on him, but he didn’t reply. I figured he was busy at work, but in an eight-hour day everyone stops to eat or take a piss, so I was annoyed. I checked my mailbox. I walked up to my floor. My daughter was home from school. She’d eaten a piece of flan before dinner like I asked her not to. I yelled at her to pick up her laptop and papers, stuff for her SATs, scattered across the kitchen table, forgotten after finishing homework. Davey was taking a bath, but I didn’t hear the fizz of water shooting from the showerhead. No splashing. No plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner knocked down. Only a quiet that made it seem as if beyond that door the world had stopped. I knocked and called his name. Then faster and louder until my hand stung and my throat burned. I kicked the door, and the skinny slide bolt snapped and flew off. Later, my neighbors three floors down told me they could hear me screaming.
—What happened?
My daughter tugged at my elbows. The front of my shirt and pants were drenched. The bathroom tiles were dangerously slippery. I couldn’t get words out. Sound, plenty, but not words.
My daughter must’ve dialed 911.
The pathologist who performed the autopsy found water in Davey’s lungs, of course, but also enough Vicodin left over from my last root canal to cast doubt on carelessness. Not enough to declare intention, though. A preexisting heart condition too. The results were inconclusive.
Brandon was the only one who reached out to me. The rest of his family blamed me for not saving Davey from drowning way before that bath. Brandon stopped by every week to check on my daughter and me. He brought us groceries. He threw out the trash. He slept on the couch. He got my daughter out of the house by driving her to the mall under the guise of picking out things for her dorm room. She was so afraid to leave me alone, she would only acquiesce to errands. She wouldn’t go to her father’s place on the weekends or out with friends. Brandon and I would send long texts back and forth late into the night full of thoughts we could only confess to each other. He was gentle and apologetic with his questions. He drove me to Davey’s wake and funeral, against his mother’s wishes.
• • •
Brandon’s godson’s mother fits into this house like a piece of shrapnel under the skin. The kids take Davey’s old room and she takes the other one. Whenever she gets home, she hangs her set of keys up next to Brandon’s, opposite from mine. Sometimes I watch Brandon cutting his godson’s meat or helping the boy’s sister work out a math problem. He looks happy. I’ll watch Brandon looking in the cabinets under the sink for a particular pot to cook dinner. Brandon’s godson’s mother steadies herself with a hand on his shoulder. She tiptoes—poking her ass out—to reach a cabinet over the sink where the pot is.
One night, after sex, during which I am especially vocal for her benefit, Brandon taps his chest. I lay my head where he beckoned. He says it’s nice, the house full of people. Reminds him of growing up. Hints at maybe us adding to it.
I won’t start all over again with a baby. I tell him how difficult it was to do it alone. How difficult it’s been to be alone since Davey. We always end up alone. I’m angry at him for pretending these things aren’t true or hoping I’ve forgotten they are. But something in me also feels victorious.
• • •
The grass in Brandon’s backyard grows lush as spring arrives. I’m helping him plant things. Brandon’s godson’s mother and the kids have lived here for three months. We overhear her pleading with the storage facility over the phone. We pretend her voice doesn’t blast through the air like a car horn. Later, on my way to the bathroom, I overhear her on the phone arguing with her son’s father. On a sunny Saturday, we get to Brandon’s to find her sniffling and bleary-eyed on the couch. I start dinner. He comes into the kitchen a short while later. She visited a dozen apartments with Realtors, but no one will accept her application. Her credit is bad.
One morning, I hear them in Davey’s bedroom. She’s crying. Brandon tells her to calm down. He tells her they’ll figure it out. That she can always count on him. She says she’s too old for this. He says things aren’t that bad. That it’ll change soon. To be patient.
A sharp pain seizes my chest. I’m breathing too fast like after plunging into cold water. I surface in the room.
—Are you fucking her?
She’s startled and jumps away from him. As if he caught on fire. I can’t tell if this is an admission of guilt. His shirt is damp where she left her tears.
—What? Are you crazy? No, she’s like family.
We’re standing in Davey’s room. Davey once sat on my couch and said, “I love you.” I said it back. I was Davey’s girlfriend, and Davey was Brandon’s brother. Something even stronger than love binds me to my dead boyfriend’s (ex-boyfriend’s?) brother. At first, it was the need to feel alive, yes. Then we were the conduit that kept Davey alive. Now it’s the even distribution of the weight of shame between us.
—I was like family. I know how good you can be when you’re needed.
Brandon blinks. A look of surprise at an injury turns into a look of disbelief at my accusation of betrayal. I cannot take it back.
• • •
On Davey’s birthday, two months after he died, Brandon drove me to visit his grave. We stood on the plot, staring at the headstone. I felt nothing. If Davey strolled up and clapped Brandon on the shoulder, it would not have shocked me. He existed everywhere except underneath us in the ground.
I grew aware of Brandon’s body pulsing with life next to me. His visible breath in the cold. Our arms connected from shoulder to hands. Squeezing each other’s hands. Not letting go when we should have. His warm skin underneath layers of wool and denim and cotton. Inhaling. Dropping our gaze to our mouths. His hands never stopped roving over my skin. My skin wasn’t numb anymore. On the drive back, we kept the windows rolled up. Our heat, fogging up the windows, created the atmosphere of our world.
On the front porch, Brandon’s godson’s mother apologizes to me. She says she didn’t mean to cause a problem. I bite my lower lip and nod. I hand her the keys to Brandon’s car. Her kids dive into the backseat. She’s dropping them off at her mother’s for the day while she does some overtime at work. Her car sits in the driveway. The two front tires deflated, the car tilting forward. Frozen at the start of a nosedive it will never achieve.