Yet even now he smiles, trying to catch my playful tone—always a natural, no matter what game. "Not even purgatory?"
"Piece o' cake," I scoff with a crooked grin. "Didn't you hear, they finally put in a golf course there? All those novenas have paid off. The Percodan flows like honey. It's the afterlife version of Orange County."
My brother, hardly hearing, is looking at me with an almost frightening intensity, as if he is trying to memorize my face. I can see the guilt leave his eyes like a pool clearing. Whatever he has been carrying all these years releases its grip on his heart. When he speaks there's a tremolo in his voice, an operatic whisper. "I was always afraid to love you," he says, then bends his head and tenderly kisses the back of my hand, gallant as an Arthurian knight.
I wait for him to cry again, but he doesn't. He squeezes my hand and turns his head and gazes out to sea. I'm not used to straight people's feelings, or the curious tableaux they strike when they've finished dancing. But I sit there holding hands with my brother, watching the sun as it narrows toward the horizon. Because it's his last window of quiet before he hits the road, I let him make all the choices how we spend the time. Doing nothing is fine by me.
As for the lurching revelations just concluded, I suspect that our having it out has settled the issue for good in Brian's head. It's the cleansing of confession, beyond Dear Abby and Dr. Toni, more like the old Catholic way than Brian would freely admit. He thinks he's an ex-Catholic, but it's a pretty soft lapse if you ask me.
In any case, if he's feeling released from his ancient violation of me, then I'm the one he should thank. He doesn't suspect that the whole exchange—my sunny absolution, putting the past to bed, as it were—has all been a sort of performance piece. That I've swallowed a mountain of phlegm in order to whistle this cheery air. Even a month ago, what Brian so shyly calls our "fooling around" had been the stuff of railing and mad revenge.
I was raped by my brother,
I'd announce to anyone who'd listen—potential boyfriends who found me skittish, twelve-steppers from here to Santa Barbara. My life was my brother's fault. And the incest survivors in the folding chairs, the sexual compulsives gripping their styro coffee mugs to keep their hands out of their pants, would nod in lonely sympathy, cursed as much as I.
So Brian has no idea how lucky he is, to have brought it up now, a week to the day Gray and I fell in love. For I don't care anymore what a hypocrite he used to be, sneering fag jokes with Jerry Curran, and my spit barely dry on his knob. Or the raging denial later, once I showed a little
cojones
of my own and came out to the old man. Brian's strutting outrage, louder even than Dad's, always had for me a certain secret satisfaction. Because he could never look me quite in the eye, knowing I knew he'd had a little taste himself. Once I was all the way out, the small part of me unconsumed by self-pity clung to a sick superiority over Brian—as if I'd raped
him.
Wherever I went, pursued by his contempt, I always carried the trump card of our secret tryst, like a diamond sewn in a cuff. Oh yes, he's luckier than he knows.
"I think I'll go down for a swim," he says softly, gazing without a flinch into the sun's fire.
"I wouldn't, not after a storm like that. Too rough. And
cold."
He laughs at my auntie's caution, but squeezes my hand in a comradely way. "Sorry, pal, but they dropped a couple of hints today that my ass is gonna get parked in Oklahoma. Might be the last time I ever get this close to water again."
With that he releases my hand and rises, blocking the sun for a moment as he rolls his shoulders. Then he kicks off his Nikes, one after the other, and strides across the lawn in just his faded jeans, making for the beach stairs. Irrationally I feel abandoned, plus a goose of the old inadequacy, never once picked to be on the team. I can't help it: my brother's throbbing good health mocks me in my frailty, even though I love him now. Always, always the same blind projection—a picture of life in which I am a blur, endlessly turning away. The camera doesn't want me—just Brian.
Then he pivots on the top step and cocks his head. "Want to come?"
What spinal tap? I am up and trotting in one propulsive rush, keeping my eyes on the grass because the sun is directly in front of me, and I mustn't get dizzy. So casual is the moment for my brother that he's already clumping down the stairs. I'm glad to reach the railing, for it steadies me, and down is easy anyway. There actually isn't any pain right now, neither my head nor the base of my spine, though I do wonder with a certain detached perplexity how I will make it up again.
As we round the landings Brian is just at the next turn, a flash of him disappearing as I follow. Below us, nearer and nearer, I see the white seethe of the surf bordering the dark emerald of the ocean. The sound grows more particular, the susurrus of the churning gravel. Downhill isn't all easy, requiring a certain steadiness in motion to keep me from pitching headlong. I stop at the final, fresh-built landing and prop my elbows heavily on the banister. Brian darts out below me onto the sand.
He halts at the brink of the foam, a wave's last clawing reach along the strand. The next instant it withdraws again, the undertow rattling the bed of stones as the next wave crests and smashes. From my vantage I can see the clog of litter that the storm tide carries, the labyrinth of kelp below and a strew of driftwood bobbing the surface.
"Don't go in!" I shout down to him.
But he's as contrary as I am, and my warning is like a trigger. Already he's yanking his pants down, then hopping from foot to foot as he pulls his legs free. I can't stop him. He tosses the jeans behind him onto the sand, then prances butt-naked into the swirling shallows. He whoops at the sting of the cold and flashes a grin at me over his shoulder, pantomiming a chatter of teeth. Then he lunges forward and dives, pitching into the green wall of the next wave.
I clamber down the last flight, stumbling onto the sand as he breaches the surface twenty feet out. Behind him at the horizon, the sun has dipped its toe in the water, sheeting the whole ocean with hammered gold. Brian waves, another whoop, then pushes what looks like a timber out of his way. The sea is a shipwreck around him. Meanwhile my first wobbling steps on the beach send a stab sharp as an ice pick to the bottom of my spine, on account of the uneven ground. I wave back at my brother, beckoning him in.
He laughs and dives under again, and suddenly I'm pounding with fear. It's as if he's flung open that door in the dream and tumbled out into blackness. I call his name, uselessly, the words drowning in the roar of surf. I skitter to the water's edge, grimacing from the darts of pain between the vertebrae.
Once more Brian explodes to the surface, seeming to dive up into the ball of the sun, mercurial as a dolphin. Then he wrestles a loop of kelp from one arm, twisting free. He's facing the shore again, his features frozen in stunned delight. He knows he's in over his head, barely holding his own against the furies, and he loves it.
"Aren't you coming in?" he bawls at me, treading the current. "It's great!" He sucks in a mouthful of seawater and lifts his head and spouts it out.
I can't even look, the sun is so bright behind him. I imagine I am cowering, helplessly rubbing my hands together, enduring the panic and praying for it to be over, whatever praying is. It takes a few moments before I hear an unearthly wail, more piercing than any gull's cry—then another moment before I understand that the sound is coming from me. A scream without beginning or end, except I know it will empty me out, like a last gout of arterial blood.
I don't see the jolt of fear in Brian's face, as he realizes his brother has cracked. All I know is, he's suddenly pumping for shore, grappling through the wrack and the pitiless current, pounding home with a butterfly stroke. My siren scream dwindles to keening as I slump to my knees in the quicksand. Brian stops swimming and rises up, swaying as he takes his footing in the foaming tide. It's only up to his knees, but he has to tramp like a man on snowshoes, bucking the ferocity of the water's drag, pulling for firmer ground.
"It's okay, Tommy," he calls to me, gasping. "I'm okay."
I know. There's more relief than panic now in the wordless cry that spills from me. My open arms are pleading like a child as he splashes toward me, the next breaking wave churning about his ankles and rising up the sand till it drenches my pants. Brian looms and blocks the sun, water streaming off him and beading like pearls in his fur. Born like a sea god, he crouches to embrace me.
"I didn't mean to scare you," he murmurs, and I'm engulfed in the shocking coolness of his skin, tasting salt as my mouth grazes across his shoulder. The flat of his hand strokes up and down my spine, as if he's trying to banish a chill, and yet it's he who's shivering. I can feel the heat of my own skin absorbing the water from his. Over his shoulder I watch the sun speed up as it sinks, the optical trick that lets you watch its final throes, bleeding from yellow to red. We cling together rocking softly, and the sun goes under.
"I'm sorry—" I try to blurt out, foolish now, but Brian cuts me off abruptly by lifting me to my feet. I let out a groan, seizing my forehead, trying to deflect the hammer blow of the spinal migraine.
"Don't move," my brother commands me, taking charge.
So I stand there, fingers pressed to my temples and breathing gingerly, while he grabs his jeans from the sand and roughly pulls them on. There's a moment as he tucks his equipment in, sheathing his sword, that echoes from an ancient place, a ring of runic stones. Then he swiftly buttons the fly and hunkers before me, presenting the broad beam of his shoulders.
"Get on."
No point in protesting. Right now I don't even think I could reach the stairs on my own steam. So I swing my knee across his back and clamber on, locking my hands about his neck. He doesn't even grunt as he rises, tough as a camel. His arms clamp tight around my thighs. "You okay?"
"Fine," I assure him curtly, stopping myself from apologizing again. He moves in a lumbering crouch across the sand, somehow without any jostle, as if he knows how to use his powerful legs as shock absorbers. My face keeps nodding against his wet hair. I'm trying to be as light a burden as I can, my hands away from his throat so I won't choke him.
Slowly he mounts the first step, testing the balance and shifting the load more securely onto his hips. And then we seem to glide the ten steps up to the first landing, effortlessly, though that is how Brian always makes it look on any field. He pauses once again to adjust my weight, breathing heavier now. His body's too cool to break a sweat.
We ascend the next flight more slowly as Brian paces himself, though it's clear he's enjoying the physical challenge and would happily carry me all the way up Everest. I flash on him straining to bench press in the garage on West Hill Road, all through the heat of the summer, the barbell bowed by the masses of rusty weights at either end. What I wouldn't have given then to have my arms around him as he pushed his limit.
Even now, it's the closest I've ever been to him, and I don't know quite what to do with it. I'm unaccountably reticent. I ought to be making breezy jokes, or clucking that I'm too heavy. When he stops at the next landing, moving to the rail to gaze at the sunset sky, an acid clash of tangerine and lavender, I'm positioned to whisper absolutely anything into his ear. And I'm mute. But then, the very thing I'd been waiting twenty years to confront him with—the carnal spring of '70—has turned out to be a mirage. So why should I trust that I know my heart now well enough to speak it?
Perhaps he senses the strain of my silence, for he gives a sudden shrug to jog me. "How you doing?"
"Fine," I repeat with quick animation. "Do you feel like a poster for Boy's Town?"
"Nope." He glances down the beach, drinking it all in, memorizing it the way he did my face. I'm racing to double-play the Boy's Town joke, Spencer Tracy in leather, but Brian gets there first. He says: "How long do you think you've got?"
Scratch the comedy. The horse decides which way we ride. "A year," I reply uncertainly, following his gaze along the juts and runnels of the cliff face. After a moment I amend the prognosis: "Not two."
He nods almost imperceptibly, then moves to go up the next flight. How many times this winter have I been up and down these stairs, testing the strength I have left but never quite asking the question point-blank? A year is actually fairly optimistic, but not compared to saying nothing at all. I've been operating for some time now, at least since coming to the beach, in a zone of deliberate gray with regard to lifespan. Almost a sense of indelicacy, as if it would be bad luck and bad manners both to pin myself to a time frame. But having said it now, chiseling it in the sunset air, I feel a sudden rush of irrational merriment. As if I have dared the furies as deeply as my brother did, rollicking in the storm-tossed sea.
We don't stop at the landing but head on up, biting off another ten steps. I can hear the grit of my brother's teeth as he pushes against the envelope of his strength. He almost staggers as he gains the midway platform. I long to offer a break, dismounting so he can recover, but I know better. He wants it as tough as this—a small Olympic event in which he is the only player. In the space of forty steps he has raised it to a mythic test, half to do with the athlete he used to be and half to bear his losses.
Again he lingers at the railing, staring out over the cobalt blue. I feel the most extraordinary balance, that he should be carrying me and I embracing him. There's a kind of perfection in this, a meeting of powers like the confluence of rivers. It's my turn to say the hard thing. "I promise, I won't waste a minute of it," I declare in a low voice close to his ear. "But I don't think we'll be seeing each other again."
The same barely perceptible nod, to sundown as much as to me. "I know."
The coolness has left his skin. My chest against his back is hot, a slick of sweat beginning to gather between us. When I bend to kiss his neck, I still don't know if the salt is Brian or the sea. "But hey, what do I know?" I ask with a curve of self-mockery. "I never thought I'd love
anybody
—let alone three in the same week."