Give and Take

 "and I wanting only peace"

     -Ashberry

“Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and individually, as something that could be discerned by a better brain, the past would not be so seductive: its demands would be balanced by those of the future.” 

    - Nabokov
 

"None could begin to rival him especially in his later phase."

     - Heaney, on Auden

I told myself I wouldn't see him again so of course I did.  "What if he's got guns" Jane sniveled. That gave me pause, but fuck it, nothing guns can do but exacerbate existing drama.   I went over there.  He didn't have any guns, or if he did, he didn't point them at me when I pulled up in the company car.

"What are you doing here?" he asked from the balcony.
"I brought you some groceries," I lied.
"Where are they?"
"Err, I- I mean, I came to see if I can bring you any groceries?"
"Get the fuck out of here." I set the e-brake on the car and went on up to inventory. The place wasn't as bad as I was imaging, granted I was thinking Katrina level devastation, one had to remember that he was a grown man, he knew how to take care of himself, even if he usually chose not to. I noted the disassembled drones on the table, made a list, told him I'd be back.
"Don't bother," he said, "I don't want to be interrupted."
"In that case I'll knock first."
"How civilized."

On the phone on the way to the Safeway, Jane asked "how is he?"
"The old bastard's got me running errands for him," I lied.
"Don't bring alcohol."
"I wasn't planning on it." Especially after that last time. I had told myself I wouldn't see him again, let alone help sustain the guy, he's probably working himself up right now about how he'd rather go fishing without a pole than accept my help, priming himself to prise the '65 Mercury Monterey out of the garage.  "I'll see you later," says Jane, a weird undercurrent to her voice. A shaved head with hairy tattooed arms idling in a custom van. Mask donned I lock the company car and enter the store. Returning a short time later with a full cart and stooped shoulders a guy comes up and asks me for my card. 
"Sorry, yeah, sure.  I forget I'm advertising in this thing," I say, reaching into my rear pocket to pull out a business card.  The guy looks confused, thanks me and walks toward the store.  It's only a few minutes later I realize that he didn't ask me for my card he asked me for my cart.  Perhaps my hearing's going, just like my hairline, just like the control I once imagined I concerted over my waistline. Still brooding in this rather grueling subjectivity some minutes later, I pull back up to unload the cargo. Leave the phone in the glovebox and make a mental note of the weeds, like blighted blackhead, all around his shaded front quarter-acre.  The towering horsechestnut tree lending it's sad shadow all over the split level's roadfront southwest side.

Up the darkened interior staircase with that sinking feeling in my gut that I'd made a mistake in coming back here. Put away the groceries. Perhaps the old wizard had exercised his eerie powers of mind control over me. That's why Jane wouldn't be coming back.  "I'm back," I added aloud, an afterthought, wadding the wispy plastic shopping bags into a ball and looking at a sunfaded photograph on the counter, from university days, a pearly-toothed lad, with hair that reminded me of summer lawns after a rain, looking out of the cardboard frame, fresh as a newly sharpened pencil.  Some insufferable similarities. "You still here?" I snuck a nose into the bedroom and heard him ensconced in the master bath, grumbling and dawdling, so I struck out with the laundry, back downstairs to the washer in the nook next to the garage.

A western wind midafternoon drained the clouds from the sky like suds from a bath as a said a wordless prayer thank you G_d for the blessing of our blemishes, and for bleach to brighten out stains beyond easily visible distinctions. When I went back upstairs he was cradling a stripped handgun and wiping it down with the carbon fiber cleaning rod. "To what do I owe such preference, that as busy a man as yourself confers upon me two visits in one day?" Like a fat fart he suppressed a wrinkled stale smirk.
"Just lucky I guess."
"Or it was too busy a day in the unemployment line for you to bother there."
"I have a job so I wouldn't know," I lied.
"What job?"
"Your mom."  I put the clothes away quickly, glissading into the kitchen, I hollered around the bend, "how'd you want your eggs?"
"Poached," he huffed, "see if you can get that right."

I realized right away that couldn't.  Somebody somewhere and sometime in his life had offered him up a poached egg and now nothing I could do would meet the precedent of that expectation, even with an inkling of how to poach an egg, which I didn't have, too bad I left the phone in the car I could have googled it. I opted for egg salad and another breathless prayer, G_d please keep him in his chair and out of the kitchen for the next ten minutes.

From the next room I heard him continue "you know," he said at normal volume, as if I was right there on his lap, "I think I am going to call the police."
"You threatened me with that one already.  Just do it already," I leaned around the doorframe, "have you got a license for that gun?"

Since it's all just a game to him, that shut him up, except, it's not a fun game. Out here, dried to pasture as it were, hunting, the mind over seventy sets to strange sport in indifference, in want of authenticity and, I suspect, in some kind staggered atavistic frenzy to live as much as one can between the poles; debilitating bouts of bodily fatigue and general lethargy. The rank goad of being the gristle of a gnawing remembrance.  Shadows aren't enough.  What is enough? He's stuck up here with no one, I'd go crazy too, but Christ would a thank you hurt that bad?

"Why are you still hanging around here?" he asked.
"Just trying to help."
"Ah, well since you pushed me I suppose you feel responsible.  This is all your fault."
"Keep telling yourself that old man."
"Telling myself doesn't do any good.  I'll tell the county commissioner.  Elder abuse."
"That's fair, yeah, you want me to chew this food for you too, when I'm done cooking it?"
"You little bastard."
Then, to twist the knife "Jane says to say hello."

I played at petting the ornamental glassware in the china cabinet, to see what he does with that dangle of bait. A wasp outside the window, spattering around.  When he doesn't respond I set to finish the egg salad, fruit salad, and a couple porkchops ensconce them in glassware, label brightly and set prominently displayed on the otherwise bare topmost fridge shelf, then take it upon myself to leave the dignity of the man intact. A magnet on the fridge door with young Jane's picture, propped up on a soccer ball, her hair braided, her smile resplendent. Loneliness is it's own kind of hunger.  We'll see if these little arpeggios of acrimony can immerse him back into any happier days.  "Your bed is made," I lied, kind of, "call if you need anything else."
"Call you, or your parole office?"
"Thank you sir, may I have another."
"Do let the door hit you on the way out."
"Every little bit helps."

The wind outside feels pregnant with rain.  One thinks of all the embryonic little seeds, tucked away dry in the dust, waiting for the slightest kiss of moisture to blossom.  I turned the car stereo all the way up and cranked the bass for good measure, leaving the little spindly vein roads and rejoining the main artery, the freeway, headed for home, one car among many, beneath that vast wheezing lung of the sky.

Lessor Brother

There is so much life in me its spilling over into tomorrow.

But if it is the stories we tell about ourselves that define us, allow me then if you will, to not tell you about my day, my recent obsession with Leona Lewis or my curmudgeonly bowel dilemma. Sit back.

A story now.

Glad you could be here.

To hear.

To see.

Go back. The Point.

A beach.

By the lake.

Late afternoon, a cool breeze off the lake and two boys who have been there all day. One of them is me. I have been watching the girl from a distance all day. Her red hair. Her green towel. Her blue magazine. She is beautiful and the silent freckled secret of her existence under the sun would have sustained me for years to come— but Nigel saw my daydream eyes and gave me a grinding punch to the ribs.

"Be brave brother," he said with a truculent grin and took off bravely for her.

Fresh from the water, my twin's skin glistened. I bristled with goosebumps trying to throw on a T-Shirt as I rushed after him. Nigel walked in rushing deep strides, as if his feet were always ahead of his body.

"Beautiful day," he said to the girl. Burnish the living moment. She looked up and smiled, radiant behind her big silly sunglasses.

"Uh huh."

Just then I caught up.

The older brother, Nigel propped himself subtly ahead of me, so I was left gawking behind his pale bare 10 year old chest.

"My brother's been looking at you all day. He just wanted me to tell you how pretty he thinks you are."

Blushing. I wanted to slap him. Right square between the shoulders. I could swear smoke was coming out of my ears. Now for the kill.

"Hey do you want to come back with us?" Nigel asked. I slapped him. The girl smiled querulously.

"I'm sorry," I commandeered, "about my brother. He gets carried away sometimes." Nigel spun like an angry top, trying to rub the sore spot on his back. I introduced myself, "and this is my twin brother Nigel."

"The older brother," Nigel added regaining pride.

"Janice," a clear care-free voice declared. She held out her hand. Nigel took it. "Call me Jan," she looked at me.

Now a word to the wise concerning Nigel.

You know that thoroughbred glow that some colts seem to be born with regardless of their bloodline. The ones that seem to hit the racetrack already galloping full out. That was Nigel. I really was the better looking of the two. But when they cast parts for the school play Little Red Riding Hood that fall Nigel got cast as the greasy haired leather jacketed slick con-man Wolf, while I got to be the disfigured woodsman who storms in wearing a mask as a flannel shirt to save the day. An ugly deus ex machina, that was me. The novelty item you pick up after you've got what you want. The younger brother.

With his hair back you could see that it was already receding, I thought as we all met that next day on the beach again. Nigel had brought Jan flowers and suggested that we all make sandcastles. They built one together, with a moat and a wall and castle spires. I watched jealously from my own pit of tidal spew, fighting the elements in vain as his charm and swagger won out over my introversion and social aversions.
"Man, you're getting swept away," Nigel said with a grin, and Jan laughed. But later she winked at me when Nigel had run off to buy ice cream with our allowance money, and that saved the day.
Her favorite summer pastime was lying on her back in the cool grass, gathering its lithe sweetnesses into her freckled skin. A cool breeze off the lake, fingers touching like shared secrets, yours and mine.
I know this because Nigel knew this within two days of having met her and I dreamed of it constantly after he told me. She and I. Talking movies. Telling silly stories and her laughing and rolling over against me. I would dream she was there while I lie on the grass alone. She and Nigel gone off somewhere and me left alone with my dreams.

I took up drawing to pass the time. I drew a comic where a boy loves a girl but there were never any words spoken between them so by late August all I had was about 60 pages of stick figures staring longingly at each other across the white pages. The plot was entirely in my head, but if anyone were to ask, especcially Jan, I was ready to explain the deeply inferenced meaning of each and every stroke line and shading.

During one of my drawing days before school started Jan came by and I was too shocked to even say hello.

"I just came by to wish you well," she said.

"Where's Nigel?" I asked.

"Oh he's around, somewhere. I'm leaving today. Going back home to my mom. Dad and I are coming back next summer of course, but I don't know if you two'll be here. It's been really great meeting you both."

"Well, I ... "

"Nigel's given me your guy's phone number to call. Maybe we'll talk."

"Uh, yeah! Yeah that'd be great."

"K, well bye." And that was that. She was gone. She called Nigel once or twice, and he called her maybe once but once she was out of his sight he'd almost forgotten she'd existed. I called her number a few times myself but I'd always hang up right after the first ring. They'd see on their phone bill that our house had called right? And then Jan would call back thinking she'd missed Nigel. And maybe she'd ask for me. Right?

That was the hope anyway.

That was my hope.