How to Read an Unwritten Language (11 page)

*

While Laurie kept her grades up so Father couldn't forbid her from acting in school plays, Dan discovered new opportunities for trouble in school and on the streets, and a quiet, sullen anger settled into the rooms of our house. Even I nurtured my own defiance of Father, I now suspected, for how could I have let Bob's petty dishonesty continue unless each filched can of soda or packet of cheese crackers somehow gave me a secret satisfaction?

The very possibility so disturbed me that, after much nervous deliberation, I spent one Saturday morning at work quietly tracking Bob. When I saw him making off for the snack machine during a break, I followed and caught him popping the door open with his makeshift key. Before he could hide the candy bar in his vest pocket I grabbed the door and held it open.

“Put that back.”

Bob stood back and sized me up, trying to gauge the hazards of this unexpected confrontation. “Well,” he said, his voice cautious, even a little weary, “sometimes a sweet tooth can get out of control, now can't it?”

“Back,” I repeated, blushing at the tremor in my voice.

“It's nothing I haven't done before,” he replied. “You know that.”

I said nothing. Bob sighed, then slipped the candy bar back into its metal slot in the machine.

I closed the door, exhilarated by my victory. “Do it again, I'll tell my dad.”

“Tell him what? I never took anything that wasn't mine, not even once. And your father wouldn't like to think that anybody ever saw me do otherwise, would he?” Bob managed a weak laugh, his best show of bravado, and without a glance back at me he retreated to the nearest greenhouse.

Perhaps it was inevitable that my brother would bring his trouble-making home. Over the course of a few short months toothbrushes and favorite drinking cups vanished, mysterious stains began to appear on the carpets, two of the dining room chairs' wicker seats suddenly developed frayed holes, an ugly scratch marred a kitchen cabinet. One day, returning home from my after-school hours at the nursery, I opened the door to my room and saw that my collection of discards had been swept from the shelves, and now a strange brew of styrofoam peanuts, buttons, tiny bones and dirty coins, glass shards, feathers and nail clippings was strewn across the floor. I'd long since lost interest in them, and so I decided to keep this latest example of Dan's vandalism to myself. Yet when I emptied that mess into my wastebasket, the sound of those incompatible pieces jostling against each other filled me with a peculiar sadness.

A week later the living room houseplants all died at once, an inexplicable mass suicide. Of course Father blamed this latest disaster on Dan, who stood before him and declared his innocence in nearly convincing, stuttering frustration. “I didn't do it, why d-do you always blame
me?
“

“Why do I always blame you?
“
Father returned with mocking contempt. He swiveled his recliner away to face the wood paneling on the wall.

“Why? W-why do you—”

“That's enough,
son.”

Again, Dan was nothing. Torment distorted his face, and he turned that face on me—on me, who hadn't done anything—before rushing from the room and the house.

Father's chair rocked back and forth while I stood by the window and watched Dan's unhappy figure striding down the block. He was surely off to seek revenge somewhere out in the neighborhood, revenge that would certainly invite further punishment. But couldn't this cycle be broken? I had to bring him back. Without a word to Father—who rocked and rocked and thought whatever thoughts he locked inside himself—I slipped out of the house.

My brother was already far off and walking a good imitation of a run, and I hurried to catch up, silently willing my brother to please cool down, please come back. Turning down one street, then another, Dan seemed to be following a well-worn path, each angry step habitual, and then I decided to follow, to see where he would lead me. I lagged behind, keeping a careful distance between us.

At the edge of our town's small business district Dan turned a sharp corner and when I reached the street he was gone, as if he'd been biding his time to lose me. Was he peering out through one of the shop windows, pleased with his little trick? No, I thought, he'd never once looked back: if my brother was inside one of these stores, he wasn't thinking about me. I paused—maybe Dan came downtown to shoplift. If so, I needed to find him quickly. My eyes scanned the street for the most likely store.

I tried the comic book shop and stalked the aisles, prepared to come upon Dan paging through a new adventure, surrounded by racks of superheroes and monsters. But he hadn't sought refuge there and I hurried out, skipped a flower shop and the law office, then sped through the stationery store so swiftly the cashier seemed to suspect
me
of shoplifting.

The toy store farther down the block was another likely candidate. Like some cartoon version of a detective, I edged along the storefronts: a deli, then the model train museum called Tomtown. Devised by a Tom somebody, this sprawling little world was one of our town's few prides, though I hadn't wandered in there for years. At the sound of a tiny train's shrill whistle, I couldn't help glancing inside.

There was Dan, his back to me, and so preoccupied that I easily snuck in and stood a few feet behind him. Three sets of trains rolled with restless energy through a miniature downtown much like the one I'd been sneaking through: fast-food restaurants, clothes stores, mom-and-pop shops, a church and travel agency. Those tiny trains must have turned in the same circles and tracks for decades, past the carefully sculpted hills, an abandoned factory, a drive-in movie and a fairground's tacky carnival. The thought of such relentless repetition made me queasy.

Dan hadn't moved or shifted his head once since I'd come in. Instead of following the trains, he was watching something in the miniature town, where nobody moved, no matter how pressing the business of those little plastic figures. A mother led her reluctant son to the barbershop, a drunkard hunched over in an alley, two kids peeked into a toy-store window, a dogcatcher reached out with his net for a mongrel, a hook and ladder crew hurried before a house engulfed by red-paper flames, and every action was locked in place. Which of these scenes held my brother's attention?

Then I noticed Tom himself standing quite still in a corner, an old, old man with alert, shifting eyes, enjoying us taking in his carefully constructed world. He began to shuffle down the aisle, ready to point out some little detail that we might have missed.

But I didn't want Dan to discover me so I stepped backward, trying to keep out of his line of sight. Then I was out the door and down the steps, hurrying across the street to Young Miss Fashions—somewhere my brother would surely never go—where I'd wait for him to leave.

Unfortunately, the saleswoman seemed to think I had no business wandering in her shop. She dogged me down the aisles, interfering with my lookout on Tomtown's entrance and I had to feign interest in the racks of blouses and skirts. “I'm looking for something for my girlfriend,” I offered as she hovered beside me, and she finally left me alone.

I still had no idea how to even ask a girl out for a date and doubted I'd ever learn, yet I pretended the smooth, pleated skirt in my hands belonged to an actual girlfriend rather than someone I'd invented for the sake of a saleslady. Blushing at my ignorance of the secret world offered by this store, I stroked the shoulder pads of a blouse, lightly touched a skirt's belt loop in an attempt to defeat my shyness. I discovered that skirt zippers were thin, almost delicate, and that blouse buttons buttoned on the wrong side—I flushed at the thought of my clumsy fingers ever undoing them. Then I saw Dan march down the street and out of sight.

I didn't follow. Instead, I returned to Tomtown and stood right where Dan had kept watch. Crouching slightly to reproduce his line of sight, I peered at the crowded downtown street of meticulously painted figures, searching for whatever had drawn my brother's attention.

I heard Tom's steps behind me and then his hand was on my shoulder. He coughed lightly and said, “You know that boy who just left here?”

Had Dan stolen something? Afraid of betraying myself, I shook my head
no
without turning around and lightly shrugged off his hand.

“You sure? You look a little alike I think. And that was you who came in a while ago, wasn't it?”

I nodded, stalling for time. “Uh-huh … I, I remembered I had to post a letter for my dad.”

“You always walk backwards out a door?”

Speaking quickly to distract him from my blushing, I said, “I do if I don't want to miss what the trains are doing. I haven't been here for a while and I'd forgotten what a great place this is.”

Tom didn't reply, then sighed. “Well, too bad you don't know that boy. I'd ask a question or two about him if you did.”

Afraid anything I might say would give me away, I didn't reply and continued my survey of the little figures: a mother and daughter holding their hats against the wind, a dog eyeing a fire hydrant, two old men taking it all in from a storefront bench.

“Y'know,” Tom broke in, “he comes in here about once a week and he doesn't move from that spot you're standing in.”

I nodded, straining for disinterested politeness, and peered at a tiny man slipping a coin in a parking meter.

“He can stand there for up to an hour, real interested in whatever it is you're looking at.” Tom coughed. “Though perhaps you could move just a touch to the right.”

While thankful for his advice, I didn't move, still not trusting Tom enough to give him satisfaction. Eventually he walked back to his captain's chair in the corner, and of course I shifted before he turned around.

At first I saw no difference: the barber staring out his window remained the same barber, and the young mother kept pushing a baby carriage past the same streetlamp. Then I noticed a tiny arm raised in the air, cut off by the sharp corner of a hardware store—
Damn it
, I thought, I hadn't moved enough to the right. Tom was watching me now, so I took infinitesimally small, infinitesimally slow sideways steps until that upraised arm became a man leaning over a child, a little boy who crouched down and shielded himself from a coming blow.

They were father and son, two tiny figures that never moved, the father's threatening gesture always held in check. This terrible stalemate must be what drew Dan here week after week under Tom's watchful eye, a little sculpture of what he came home to every day after school, for weren't Father's angers and silences a kind of beating, inflicted without lifting a finger? I remembered his harsh words the opening night of Laurie's school play, remembered her later that evening, her cheek as raw and pink as if she'd been struck.

A train and its five little passenger cars chugged by, and I stepped away, ready to leave.

Tom called out, “Find anything?”

I had, and with his help, but this was nothing I could share. “Sorry,” I managed, and ran outside.

Unable to bear the thought of returning home just yet, I took a detour through the park, passing beneath shade trees, and with a quick glance here and there at the shadows at my feet I easily tossed off
oak, maple, dogwood
. But while my abilities now approached Father's, they didn't nourish me in the same way.

I stopped and sat in the gnarled crook of an oak tree. The spreading branches above shook their leaves as if in rebuke, and beneath me, I knew, was a broad echoing skein of roots. I was locked in the middle of the tree's grasp, and I closed my eyes for an escape that offered no escape: the image of those two toy figures returned as if bestowing some unsettling secret. That little posed drama played inside me the same way I'd long stood by and watched my brother and father combat each other day after day.

I'd always been more than a mere spectator. From the look of fury Dan had trained on me today, it was clear he understood this. My silence supported Father, a price I'd been willing to pay. Yet what had I received in return? During my hours of transplanting and weeding at the nursery I would sometimes sit, transfixed, by a simple sight: a caterpillar chewing a leaf studded with holes, or a grub boring tunnels into a delicate stalk, and I'd despair of ever finding a way inside my father's private world.

If I was tired of silent green things, then perhaps it was time for my brother to work at the nursery: as an employee he would never be called “son,” Father would have to be fair with him, and I could oversee the transition in the next year before leaving for college. Already I let myself imagine Dan and Father murmuring protectively over sickly plants, trimming and pruning, planning the spacious curve of a garden.

*

Father's recliner still faced the wall when I returned home. Only a slight pause in the steady rocking acknowledged my entrance.

“Dad,” I said. The rocking stopped. He was ready to listen to whatever I had to say, and so I said it. “Why not give Dan a job at the nursery? He's old enough.”

Father swiveled around, his face guarded and surprisingly weary. “Why? So he can vandalize my business as well as my home?”

This wasn't an outright rejection. I continued. “I don't think he'll do that. Anyway, you know how he hates to stay indoors. He might even like a job out in the open—”

Father shook his head no.

“If he does mess up,” I said, “you can just fire him.” Suddenly inspired, I added, “And if he ruins anything, I'll pay for it, out of my own salary.”

Father kept silent, as if we hadn't spoken. But his rocking eased to a relaxed rhythm, convincing me that soon he'd agree: this family matter had now become something more manageable, a business proposition.

Convincing Dan that evening was less easy. The mere suggestion set him flinging his comic books about the room, and their colored pages flailed eloquently in the air—briefly, magically animated—before falling to the carpet.