City of Boys Page 12

  —A couple of months. I’ll be seventeen.

  He smiles. —Deirdre’s birthday is coming right up too. She’ll be fourteen. And the twins. He shakes his head, smiling. —They do grow up.

  He stops suddenly, jarred by his words, and turns his attention back to the magazine. —Do you want another Coke? he says, making no move at all.

  —I guess not, I say, twisting the glass round and round into the wet circle on the coaster.

  —Well, he says, —it’s been awfully nice of you to come all this way just to see us. Me.

  He smooths his pants down over his thighs and prepares to rise and I think, Wait, but when I look up to say something, he is gazing down at me, patiently waiting, and I recognize the expression on his face, in his eyes: it is the look of every man my mother has ever loved.

  No one comes to the hall to see me off, only my father, who says goodbye with his hand on the doorknob.

  —Well, he says, and I say, —Well.

  —Say hello to your brother.

  —Okay.

  He calls my name when I am halfway down the front walk, but when I turn, he clearly does not know what to say. He stares at me helplessly and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He closes it and I turn again. When I reach the sidewalk, I hear the door close. On either side of their house, the houses look alike. A few dry leaves drift across the lawns as the wind picks up, and the rising chill of evening has driven most of the neighborhood children inside. I head back for the station and wonder what I could have been thinking. What could you have been thinking? my mother will say when I tell her and she’ll turn her face to the wall. Haven’t I been a good mother to you kids? she will ask. I count each block of cement in the sidewalk as dusk falls over the quiet street, the quiet cars, the quiet families living in each quiet house.

  Mr. Rosenberg looks down at me through his gray window. He is smoking and does not wave. When I knock at his door, I hear him creak slowly across the floor. I am surprised to see that the television is not on and that all of his window blinds, even on the side wall, are raised.

  —So, I say. —How about some TV?

  He throws his cigarette on the floor and rolls back to the window. —Oh, he says, —I don’t know. Maybe your mother was right about TV. He lights a cigarette and holds the match up in front of his face. —It’s cold in here, he says.

  —Don’t you think it’s cold in here?

  Through the uncovered windows I can see the people in the building across the alley. An old man takes off his shirt and stands in the cold, while next to him, only a thin wall away, a woman pets her cat, blinded by the certainty that love will come to her today, or tomorrow, and over them and under them lives go on that are just the same.

  —You know, Mr. Rosenberg says, staring out the window,—you ought to do something with your life. You really ought to. You just ought to do something.

  He does not look at me when I let myself out. The streetlight glints off the steel arms of his chair, and Brenda smiles sadly down at him.

  —Honey, my mother says as I open our door, and Nick looks up from where he stands behind her, his hands hanging loose at her neck. She smiles as his eyes travel up along my legs to my face, and I pull the door shut on them, but before it closes, I see Nick pull the scarf from her neck and let it fall to the floor.

  She is in his arms again by the time I am on the street. I look up at Mr. Rosenberg, but he doesn’t see me, gazing past me at a city full of people going on about lives that have nothing to do with me. He drops his cigarette and wheels away.

  Right now my father is sitting down to dinner, smiling absently at the bright blond heads of his new children while my brother sits in a dark room, turning to stone. In the alley, pigeons rise and settle anxiously, shaking off the growing chill. Mother, I want to call out, Mother, I am dying, but she is falling once again into the arms of a man she loves.

  At the End of My Life

  Because he is my brother, I will try to remember everything. I am waiting for him here at the edge of the campus, watching ragged clouds skid across a dirty sky. Across from me is the city, which comes right up to meet us, but we are cut off from it by a highway, cut off here with our books and our stone buildings. Around me pass students, and above me rises a statue of Winged Victory, its head long gone, the enormous shadow of its wings stretched out across the black grass. I wait here and try to remember everything.

  In the neighborhood free-for-alls on the rolling lawn, he is always the smallest, always the most vulnerable. —Glen, Mother calls, sitting with Father and Uncle Bill and Aunt Eileen. —Glen, she calls again, flicking her cigarette ash onto the fresh-cut green of the lawn. —Don’t break anything. Watch your glasses, watch your braces. For God’s sake, be careful if you’re going to roughhouse like that. —Elizabeth, she calls to me, —you watch him.

  When I look over at her, her face is already turned up to Father as she holds out her glass for a fresh drink, already turned with a smile to Uncle Bill. She does not see me watching Glennie through a pile of boys, and she never sees me join the pile. When Glennie looks up with his myopic, undirected gaze, I wonder what he sees. He turns his small face to the ground, waiting for the boys to grow bored and wander off to some other cruel game; he turns his face to the ground to watch the beetles and ants fight it out over a territory smaller even than his own. In front of the house, Mother’s laugh trails out over the lawn and ice clatters against the sides of empty glasses. The boys wriggle off eventually, and Glennie stays on his stomach, looking down at the ground. When he raises his head, his face is cheerful, but I know that in one way or another I will later pay for this.

  —Lizzie, he whispers. —Don’t tell Mother I broke the lamp. He looks up wildly at the sound of her car pulling into the driveway, and looks down at the broken shard of lamp in his hand.

  —Tell her a burglar came in, he says. —Tell her that he tried to kidnap us and broke the lamp. Tell her that, he says, beginning to believe it himself. He hands me a piece of the lamp, and his eyes go sly and clever as he smiles a little half-smile. —Tell her he looked like Daddy.

  When I tell my mother that our dog broke the lamp, running from window to window after a squirrel it spotted in the yard, she fingers a frosty silver streak she has just had put in her hair.

  —Elizabeth, she says, already losing interest. —Did you and your brother break the lamp?

  —No, Mother, I say. —Honest.

  She turns to look at her new hair in the mirror. In the corner Glennie smiles, but later we are twice denied dessert: tonight for breaking the lamp, tomorrow for lying about it.

  I tell Glennie that I wanted dessert, and he smiles. —Don’t worry, he says. —I’ll buy you a candy bar.

  When I ask him with what, he opens his hand to show a few coins, a crumpled dollar bill. —With this, he says. —I got it from Mother’s purse.

  He closes his small fingers over the money and holds his fist against his fragile chest, smiling at Mother’s purse, where it sits innocently on the counter. Our parents’ bedroom door is closed and their voices are just a hum, an indistinct buzz.

  Boys pass me by as I wait for Glennie here in the moonlight by the highway. Girls pass me by, and the statue casts a pale shadow against the ground.

  Mother’s purse sits innocently on the counter and the door to their room is closed.

  —Lizzie, Glennie says, and he pulls me quietly over to the closed door. —Owlcake, he whispers, and we giggle, clamping our hands over each other’s familiar mouth. —Owlcake, he breathes against my warm hand, and we run off to our own bright rooms. —Owlcake? we offer one another; —Madam, may I get you some owlcake?

  We laugh and do not know why we are laughing. Their door rises far above our heads, and I feel nervous as I laugh, thinking of the owls that rise every night from the woods behind our house.

  There is something in his face I want to turn from, something strange and excited. But in the exact dark center of his eyes, I see my own face lo
oking out, huge and confused. I look away from him, at the four walls of my room, painted pink, at the white furniture, dotted with stuffed animals and familiar fluffy things. —Owlcake, Glennie croons. His hands are like soft little animals.

  —Look, Lizzie, he says and I see that he has taped closed the muzzle of our dog Puff. I watch her struggle for long, domesticated minutes, until finally she comes to me, tail wagging, dumbly begging for release. I reach for her, but Glennie puts his hand on mine.

  —Don’t, Lizzie, he says. —I want to see if she can get it off herself.

  —It’s mean, I say. —You’ll make her mean.

  He looks at me and smiles. —She loves me, he says.

  —She’ll always love me. He turns to Puff, who wags her tail hopelessly. Soon she will live in the back yard, not mean but not friendly, digging holes against the fence and watching us from a distance.

  I wait patiently, and in the windows of dorms girls hold dresses up to their bodies and turn this way, that way, seeing how they look, wondering what the boys they love will think of this shirt, those shoes, the hair pulled back that way. They turn in the mirror and admire themselves and each other for the boys they love.

  —Lizzie, he whispers. Like an insect he seeks the light at night, the moon coming through my window. His tiny heart beats against my hand and I tell him what I learned in science class today: that the heart is a muscle, made up of a long connected cluster of nerves. When it beats, the impulse runs down the cluster, activating each nerve ending, so that every heartbeat is nothing but a long involuntary tremor of nerves, a running impulse that can’t stop itself once it’s begun. He smiles and turns his face to the moon. —Look, Lizzie, he says, pointing to an owl coming up out of the woods. His heart beats, a long running pulse that feels like a cloud of moths fluttering against the wall of his chest.

  Father works in the garden, digging away in the blazing sun, poking his trowel into the dirt. His blue shirt is marked with a pattern of sweat that runs wide across his shoulders and narrows as it trickles down the small of his back; it is like a butterfly pinned to his spine, spreading its wings across him as he bends to the dirt. Glennie sits rocking back and forth on his heels, staring down at the tiny mazes of life in the ground around him, looking up at Father, then back down at the grass. As he rocks, the sun glances off his glasses, so that his eyes, when he turns them on me, are like two blinding panes of flashing light. As Father digs into the lush waving flowers, Glennie watches, and hisses at me, —Lizzie, Lizzie, owlcake, and we slide into hilarious, uncomprehending collapse. Father looks up at us, Glennie rocking on his heels, me rolling backward on the grass. When Father waves his trowel, Glennie stops laughing and swats at me with his arm. Father goes back to tending the bright heads of roses and carnations sunk in dirt.

  —Lizzie, Glennie says. —Don’t you think Father will have a heart attack? and I am shocked by this. I look away and bright sunlight glitters off the chain-link fence. Behind it Puff stares at us.

  —Lizzie, he says again. —Don’t you think he will? I do.

  —That’s bad luck, I say. —Don’t even think about it.

  He turns his eyes on me. Through the thick glass they are the color of the ink that runs out of my fountain pen, faint blue and brilliant both somehow.

  —It’s true, he says. —Look how hard he works.

  I pretend he has not said this, and suddenly his hand darts out and closes around the delicate wings of a butterfly. It is his only talent, catching butterflies, snatching them right out of the air, or from where they rest on the grass around him. He catches them and brings them to me, opening his hand to show a butterfly sitting there, like magic, until it flies shakily off, or drops feebly from his hand.

  It grows late as I wait here. A few lights go out in buildings. Girls lie in the darkness, just a few feet away from the strangers who are their roommates. They sleep and try to grow accustomed to the strange patterns of breath, the strange noises, the strange rustlings of people they don’t know lying in beds only a few feet away. Somewhere the boy I will soon love tries to sleep. He pulls the covers up to his chin and dreams of touching my pale skin.

  What I remember: the sun stretching across my bed, the crows quarreling in the trees, the quiet whisper of Puff’s tail against the floor as Glennie opens the door.

  —Lizzie, he whispers in my ear, —time to get up. Lizzie, he breathes. —Owl eyes, and I keep my eyes closed until I feel the pressure of his forehead against mine, his nose on my nose.

  —One, two, three, he says, and I open my eyes to see his, spread like a shining mask over his face, half an inch from my own. I close my eyes again and wonder at the tiny fine bones of his face.

  This is what I remember. This is all I remember and this is how I remember it.

  —Lizzie, he calls. —Come. Look.

  It is a late summer evening and all the children have gone home from our game of hide-and-seek. As they move away from this safe ground, under the streetlight that serves as home, I imagine they turn into monsters. Glennie is crouched under our parents’ window, and when I join him, I see Mother’s body and over her Father, arched backward, straining like a bone about to snap.

  —Owlcake, Glennie whispers, and he lets go a high-pitched giggle. He smiles. —I watch them all the time, he says.

  —Look at Father. He’s going to have a heart attack.

  They hear our voices and turn toward the window, ghostfaced, wondering what is there, but we back away, making noises that could be nothing more than the rustling of small animals in the bushes.

  In my own bed, I cannot sleep. When I turn out the light, all I can see are their round ghost faces, glowing in the dark room.

  The boy I will fall in love with wakes and walks to the mirror. He looks at himself and rubs his hand across the new stubble on his cheeks. He imagines what it must be like to touch my face.

  * * *

  At school Glennie is what they call difficult, behaving in ways that confuse teachers and administrators: he talks too loud, will not sing in his music class, breaks whatever he makes in art. Our teachers are always surprised to find we are related, and I can tell they see me differently then, watching me with sideways speculative looks. My parents shake their heads over the notes on his report cards, and put them down, fully intending to do something about it all, but time drifts away from them, and they sign them and send them back, settled by the sense that if the card has been signed, something must have been done.

  Glennie is only two years younger than I. In the hallways and on the playground I watch the other children move uneasily away from him; they are deceived at first by how much he looks like them, his cheerful happy face, his neat little shoes and shirts and shorts.

  In first grade he sits at the edge of the concrete playground, holding a stick; as the other children climb over the jungle gym, he whacks the stick against the ground, humming a little song and gazing intently at their arms and legs as they move like spiders over the bars.

  In third grade he always wanders away from his class at recess, and I spot him, a little dark hump in the corner of the schoolyard, digging holes with his hands. He removes his shirt in the heat and his back glows, the brightest spot in the whole gray day, as he puts things in the holes, then covers them up.

  I should do something, I think, there is something I should do, but I am only in the fifth grade. I am only in the fifth grade, I tell myself, and I turn to watch the children my own age, then go to join them.

  * * *

  Glennie’s fourth-grade class is keeping a rabbit, to teach them about responsibility, and soon, the teacher has told them, they will experience the miracle of birth. Each child is given a week with the rabbit at home, but somehow Glennie’s week never comes, even though he has made a bed for the rabbit in the corner of his room, and dug a little hole in the yard for it to rest in. He is already planning to bring home one of the baby rabbits as a pet, and when he tells my parents this, they nod absently in his direction. We’l
l see, we’ll see, they murmur, and his face glows as he plans the fun he will have with his new pet.

  When the children come in one morning, the rabbits have been born, five new rabbits, and one tiny dead one. The teacher picks the students who will get to keep a baby, and of course none of them is Glennie, but somehow in all the excitement and confusion he gets hold of the little dead one. A while passes before they notice the blood on his bright shirt, where he has hidden the rabbit against his chest, and when they take it away from him, he runs from the room. They find him later in the bathroom, gazing down into the toilet as he flushes it over and over.

  Because my mother is shopping or at the beauty parlor or having lunch with her friends, I must walk Glennie home to change his shirt, and as I approach the office where he waits, I see him before he sees me. I stand in the hallway just out of his sight; he is bent over his knees, looking down at his feet, but even so, I can see the stain creeping across his shirt, and I run to the bathroom, where I don’t have to believe this is happening.

  I look at myself in the mirror. —I am in the sixth grade, I say out loud. —I am in the sixth grade, and I don’t care, but the face that stares back at me does not resemble my own. For the first time I realize that he is going to get in my way. When I come back to the office for him, he smiles when he sees me. —Lizzie, he says. —Let’s stop for candy on the way home. His shirt clings to his chest in dark, wet patches, but as we walk down the hall together, he takes my hand and smiles at the empty walls; behind the walls, children stare at figures on a dark board.

  In the bathroom, the girl next to me, whom I would like to be my friend, says, —Your brother tried to steal that dead rabbit.

  She pulls a tiny lipstick from her purse. —Didn’t he?

  I look at myself in the mirror. —No, I say.

  She brings her face close to the glass. —He had blood all over his shirt, she says.

  I watch her smear lipstick across her pink lips.