I shook my head. "Gray's got me."
He looked down again, letting the ring slip off his finger. Then he nodded half to himself, like a man deciding to accept a mission, and carefully replaced the photo of me and Brian in the box. I handed him the lid, which he gently laid in place. I thought perhaps I was the one going to cry. "Thanks," he said, tracing the gold tooling with a fingertip. "Is my dad gonna come back to us?"
"I don't know. He's got a long way to go."
"He'll be sad by himself."
"Yup."
"And then if you die—" He gazed up at me, unflinching. "Then we'll all be sad. How will we ever get happy again?"
How do you translate across the gap of twenty-seven years? "You can still have happy
days,"
I said carefully. "Like birthday parties." But I wouldn't pretend: the world once broken would never be all of a piece again. This kid was too smart to string along, too good with subtext. "Then someday if you're lucky, you find the right person. They let you be sad when you need to, but they don't let you stay there a minute too long."
"Like you and Gray."
A light rap on the door, and Susan's voice said, "Daniel? You ready?"
Curiously she sounded rather calm, and for once without the overriding suspicion that Uncle Tom was molesting her son. I stepped to the door and opened it. She smiled, startlingly beautiful in a green print dress, the first real clothes I'd seen her in—courtesy of Nigrelli, I later found out. She didn't appear remotely bent out of shape that Daniel and I were alone in my room. "He just has to grab his backpack," I said, as Daniel bolted between us, running up to the tower.
We shared a chuckle at the irrepressible force of him. Then she held out a square of paper. "Here's my sister's number. We want to hear from you." She closed the paper into my palm, more intimate than a handshake. "Brian said everything came out negative."
I shrugged. "For now."
"Thank you for being so good to our son."
And I swear, she reached her arms around my shoulders and embraced me. If Kathleen was this good with my sister-in-law, her battered women would soon be running corporations. Even so, I could see how composed it all was, like the dress and the black pumps, gracious as a lady in Connecticut.
This is what she was like before,
I thought. She released me but kept her hand on my arm, no fear of contagion at all.
I wanted to say:
Please take my brother back.
Then Daniel came rushing out of the tower, his backpack slung on his back, and there was no more room for Susan and me. She bent and fixed Daniel's collar where the strap of his pack had ridden it up. Then we descended the stairs in procession, Susan's blond head regal, a girl who saved her best for entrances and exits.
Nigrelli was at the dining room table, arranging his yellow pads and burrowing into a ponyskin briefcase. Across from him stood a thick-waisted man in a cheap Hawaiian shirt, fiddling with a tape recorder. Nothing about this potato-faced dullard suggested he was FBI—no black suit and shades, not even a gun—but it seemed to be the case. Both men looked up as we came down, nodding vaguely, nothing verbal. Susan, more than ever like a queen going unbowed into exile, hovered a protective hand at the back of Daniel's head, averting her eyes from the lowlifes. I led the way like an equerry, sweeping the swing door wide and hustling us into the kitchen.
Brian and Gray stood by the back door, both with their arms folded, staring out onto the back lawn. Gray was the perfect one, I thought, to be there for my brother—wordlessly. He looked just like he did at funerals, staunch and without any airs, standing next to the person most in pain. Yet as soon as Brian saw us, he flashed his baseball grin. His eyes were dead, but he made sure they didn't connect with anyone else.
"Got your parachute on, eh, buddy?" he said, clapping a hand on Daniel's shoulder. I flashed on the other day, my brother kneeling drenched and clutching the boy he thought was lost, almost as if he could fuse them together. Now he worked to keep it all light, playing against the real thing about to happen. Smiling the way he'd smiled in my dream, as he pitched out the door into endless night.
Gray leaned down for the duffel bag, while I crouched and hefted the paper sack. We followed my brother's family out. A black man in a proper G-man suit stepped forward from his unmarked Dodge and greeted Susan. "Agent Evans," he declared proudly. "I'll be taking you to the airport."
Susan declined her head, maintaining a rigorous distance. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Brian lead Daniel past the camellias for a last brief huddle. Gray and I hauled the luggage and stowed it in the car's trunk. As we came around, Susan was already waiting in the backseat, the door open. I took up a casual slouch on the rear fender, startled to notice that Gray was making straightway for the house. Did he hate good-byes? No, I expect it was just the fineness of his feelings—above all not to intrude, the first WASP commandment.
I watched my brother and his son. The boy's head was bent, looking at the ground as he listened to Brian's pep talk. I couldn't hear a thing, but the moment was near hallucinatory. For they were the mirror image of West Hill Road, my father giving Brian a last bit of shorthand coaching before a thousand games.
And the queer thing about it was, this jealousy I'd carried like a clamp on the heart for thirty years released me at last. I saw for myself that the secret to being a man, withheld from me season after season, was never there at all in the pregame one-on-one. Brian and Daniel were clearly doing the best they could, but there was no special dispensation. The tentative shuffle of the boy's feet, the crouching stance of the father, the firm hand on Daniel's shoulder proof against nothing out there. It was only a waltz on the lip of the void.
I felt what I'd never imagined before: sorry for all the fathers, even mine, for the secret that couldn't be taught.
Then the huddle broke, and they strolled together toward the car. I wished Brian could see it from my vantage, because no one would have doubted who they were to each other. The sense I'd had when Daniel walked beside me, unconsciously matching his step to mine, was beyond mimicry here. Man and boy were the same. As they loomed closer it seemed like a grand achievement, something my brother had won, rather than just the mute work of genes. I would have given anything at that moment to gather them in my arms and hold them here, till they made the father-and-son thing work.
But I didn't, because I knew my place—not to show more feeling than my brother did. Now we were all bunched in the lee of the open door, and Susan was leaning out to embrace her husband. Again it was rather
pro forma,
good-bye Connecticut-style. Would passion have served them better, my brother roaring in pain and clutching the side of the car, dragging along as it lurched away? Daniel and I locked eyes across their last banalities, Brian swearing to write as soon as he got settled.
My nephew smiled and reached a hand behind to pat his backpack. "Don't forget," he said, "I got all your stuff."
I spread my arms wide, as if to take in the whole bluff. "Treasure Island, right?"
Brian pulled away from Susan, who scooted over to give Daniel room. The little guy clambered in, and there was an instant altercation, because she wanted him to take off the backpack. No way. "You can't wear this on the plane, young man," she declared, but only halfheartedly. Evans swung into the driver's seat, exploding the engine to life. I was standing shoulder to shoulder with my brother, trying to stay as motionless as he. Daniel struggled to poke his head out the window, but as the agent swung the Dodge in a half circle, the boy was thrown back on the seat.
Seat belt,
I screamed in my head, but said nothing.
The Dodge roared down the drive, the oleanders on either side tossing in its whirlwind. Daniel had managed to prop himself up so he could look out the back window, but he didn't wave. His face was perfectly still, just like my brother beside me. I didn't blame either of them for holding back, all my death watches having taught me that the thing itself when it finally came was beyond feeling.
At the end of the drive the Dodge hovered momentarily. With the glare of the sun on the window, the boy was hardly an outline. And I suddenly realized, just as the car bucked out into traffic, that the last sight he had of us was the same as the picture lost in the fire.
Dust swirled in the driveway, the oleanders nodding. For a long moment we stood there silent, nearly at attention. I'd taken a blood oath not to be the first to move or speak. Anything else would have seemed an insult to my brother. I could hear a mockingbird in the sycamore by the garage, veering impatiently from song to song. More acutely than ever I felt as if I were straddling two worlds, West Hill Road and here.
"Well," he said finally, "kiss
my
life good-bye."
Tough—he wanted to play it tough. We broke ranks and swung toward the house, nothing required of me but to match his steps and keep it laconic. I thought of Gray in his funeral mode, mute and stoic. As we came in the kitchen Brian darted a look about, as if he wanted to grab a shield before doing battle in the dining room. "Some coffee?" I asked hopefully, and he gave me a grateful nod, heading on in.
I boiled the water in a trance of selflessness, not spilling so much as a sigh over Daniel's sudden departure. That would come later. Right now I had a mission of my own—to be what bridge I could for Brian, only a day before he took off himself. Every detail now, starting with this cup of coffee, would be our last transition. I suppose the enormity of small things was the residue of my twenty-four hours at Brentwood Pres, the phenomenal world surrendered. Here I was the nurse in charge.
I set the mug on a tray, along with a wedge of coffee cake—service for one only. When I batted the swing door open, Nigrelli and the agent gave me a pair of poisonous looks, that I should interrupt their man's work. Already Brian's face was dark with the blood up, fuming Irish, as he tumbled out a monotone of kickbacks. He smiled wanly as I laid the tray before him. Then, moving toward the stairs, I passed behind Nigrelli's chair and coughed with my mouth open, rippling his hair. I could see his head pull in like a turtle's, certain he'd been exposed.
They waited till I'd reached the top of the stairs before they began the questions again. "May of 'eighty-six," said Potato-face, "the interstate contract. What was the union involvement? Who was your bagman?"
"You've got all this," snarled Brian, and Nigrelli purred how they needed it all on tape in a certain order.
I pushed open the door to Foo's room—and Gray shot awake, half sitting up, as guilty as if he'd fallen asleep at the wheel. He looked bone-weary, rumpled as the clothes he'd slept in at the hospital. I crossed to the bed and motioned him to lie down again, but he wanted to know right away. "How'd it go?"
I shrugged wearily, kicking off my shoes. "Nobody cried."
"How are
you?"
I ducked and burrowed against him. "I'm glad I'm not seven," I mumbled into his shirt.
We left it at that for a while, holding tight. Across the room I could see the dresser, its top drawer still yanked open. I felt a low thrill of victory, to think I'd dispersed my tangible wealth in a single stroke, like a millionaire trying to get into heaven. Daniel I couldn't bear to think about too closely—getting on that plane with heavy heart, his losses too numerous to count. I'd had the best of it surely, his presence here a burst of unexpected light. And the memory would be enough, because I still had Gray.
"That guy downstairs," he said sleepily. "I know him."
"Who?With the tape recorder?" Potato-face.
He nodded, his chin brushing my hair. "Yeah, been around for years. He's the one keeps the files on all the artists. I'm sure he's checked out Miss Jesus."
I bristled at this information, not having previously considered any interface between my brother's mess of problems and my own small conspiracy to bring the nation down. Loathing Christian Amerika so, hawking lungers at Family Values, I assumed I was on any number of lists, those who'd been naming names with foaming regularity all the way back to McCarthy. I couldn't place Potato-face myself, that sift of dandruff like epaulets on the shoulders of his aloha shirt, but I knew the type. What put me in a huff was that they couldn't come up with anyone better for Brian, the gaudiness of whose crimes deserved a triple-A agent, not some fourth-rate local cheese. And besides, how would Brian get the right protection from this jerk?
Maybe they didn't want to protect him very much.
Prickly now with paranoia, I lay there brooding as Gray dozed off in my arms. Poor guy, he'd probably logged no more than a few hours on that cot. Let him make up for it now, I thought, slipping out of his arms and pulling the quilt over him. Nurse Tom was more than glad to take care of the pair of them, my lover and my brother. Restlessly I moved to make my rounds, padding out into the hall again, soundless in my stocking feet.
"What did the senator say to you?" asked the agent, as I leaned my elbows on the banister.
"He didn't
say
anything. He was too busy pawing the cash."
"This isn't enough," sneered Potato-face. "If you want to bring a senator down, you gotta wear a wire."
"I don't give a shit if he comes down," retorted Brian, matching him sneer for sneer. "He can shoot his scum all the way to the White House, for all I care. I just want to bring down Curran."
"Yeah, well he says this whole interstate thing is you, not him. And I still haven't heard a fuckin' thing to contradict him."
Brian slammed the table. "He set me up, asshole."
"Confer with my client," Nigrelli piped in, smoothly declaring a recess.
I heard the screech of chairs shoving away from the table, and turned on a dime and retreated to Foo's room, in case somebody came up to take a leak. I burrowed beneath the quilt, ready now to hibernate in the curve of my sleeping friend, and feeling a good deal better about my brother, just hearing him seethe. Revenge—now there was a good place to go with the scalding emptiness over losing your kid. And there was something especially satisfying to me, hearing him ring down curses on the serial bully of Chester. It proved their long blood brotherhood was a hollow sham, convenient as the girls they'd fucked, or the priests who absolved their every sin because they were All-State quarterback and center.