White People (13 page)

I opened our bathroom door and he was standing right there, fresh from the shower, drying his hair with a towel, a black one, wound in turban round his head, the yellow ringlets, wet to brown, popping out like decorations, and he was otherwise attired in absolutely nothing but the waist-high results of having to wear gym shorts through a tanning summer. Into our mirror, he grinned at my reflection, not seeming to note how nude he was, not seeming to recall that no one in our family had seen him in the altogether since he was chubby and maybe eleven. My image showed a skinny blur, but he was focused. He’d rubbed clear one porthole wide enough to hold his shoulders, face, and headdress. His confidence ricocheted from shower-steamed mirror to me. Brother’s grin simply said, “Oh. It’s you.”

I slammed the bathroom door. I jaunted to my room, knocked books out of my desk chair, and sat. Having seen his smirk, I thought I understood the kind of rowdy grown-up loudmouth he was going to be. I knew, for instance, how he’d probably act in gym classes. I knew from kids in mine who strode around like ads for their own brand-new nakedness, popping one another with wet towels, genitals
aswing matter-of-factly, boys noisy and shameless as young chesty iridescent bantam roosters. I was not like them. Half-immobilized by modesty, I wore the towel double-knotted at my waist, and when I dressed, it was behind the locker’s door. Blushes, I’d discovered in gym showers, commence not at the chin but with a burning all across a person’s shoulders, rising to his face as the very thought “I’m blushing” brings a whole barrage of extras, till your ears are ringing with the headstrong blood.

Thanks to silken brunette bristlings on my upper lip, I now looked somewhat dingy. People kept telling me this, out loud, and in front of others. Mother insisted that severe regular scrubbings would take care of everything. In her philosophy of life, nun-strict hygiene always loomed large. The poor could at least
wash
. I looked poor now.

Bradley got taller than I quicker than anyone expected, considering the childhood allergies. No one was surprised at my size itself, only how it became less and less than Bradley’s, whose chin and shoulders got squared and solid faster. He stayed blessedly blond, and his was not the grimy ghost of a mustache. The lip under his snub nose grew only the palest down. And, in direct sun, as a sort of bonus, this shone golden.

They planned to ship me off to boarding school the next September, the school my father had graduated from, the one my grandfather, self-made, would have chosen to attend. I imagined the place as some rambling landscaped hospital where doctors and patients all wore, not robes, but crested double-breasted blazers. Bradley planned to follow. He spent the summer he turned fourteen getting into shape for the St. Matthew’s Preparatory track team. He took to running around our neighborhood without a shirt or shoes, just white shorts. Young housewives, coming home with groceries, climbed out of sedans, a bag under each arm, and watching him jog flashily past wearing gym trunks he’d outgrown, these women who’d witnessed his recent unruly upsurge, would simply shake heads back and forth and say, in sighs, such husky girlish things as, “My my my.”

Meanwhile, I stood half-hidden by a hedge, big-eared, observant and embittered. At grandmother’s house, relatives poked my lower back, uttered the hateful word “Posture.” Distant cousins who had
no right, kept telling me to stand up like a soldier. Our Aunt Cecily, who’d been twice married, twice divorced by handsome semigigolos from Florida, thought herself a pretty good judge of manly form, and she said young Bradley was Greek, almost. Like someone hurling discus on a vase, almost.

It was easy to see his total posture since, from May till October, he rarely wore more than shorts. Sundays were exceptions. And, in coat, shirt, pants, tie, cufflinks, he seemed choked as someone active who’s been sealed up in a body cast for months. After benediction, he’d gallop to our station wagon, claw off his tie, wrestle himself free of his own jacket. He sat there, half-dressed, staring out at scenery.

C
URE MEANS
the extinction of your illness, right? That should be good, such health.

Once asthma rattled in my younger brother. Breathe out, breathe in for him. Once they told me that one thing only stood between his dying and his not and that seemed me. And I felt ready to stay on guard like that forever.

How he became our state’s singles junior tennis champion is anybody’s guess. The wind it took! I attended the finals, half expecting an attack on the court, half prepared. Instead I had to sit up in the overheated bleachers with others. I had to watch him—oblivious to anything but winning—win.

He’s over thirty now. Our Bradley is the father of twin boys. He gave up his early partnership in a Georgetown firm and moved west, where health is. My parents sold their house with its yard big enough for baseball and tentworms. They shipped off to Bermuda of all seemingly inviting but actually deeply uninviting places. Dad had a touch of prostate trouble but is better now. My mother plays shark like bridge four days a week with the wives of retired IBM vice-presidents and English military brass, and she’s as contented as I’ve seen her. That makes Father happier, he says.

Ardelia retired from ironing for us, attended junior college. Dee got certified as a teachers’ assistant, grades one through six. She now wears conservative suits to work. She uses contact lenses. She improves
the world for thirty kids per year, not just my brother and me.

Bradley, set up with some money from his wife, Elaine (good person, Elaine, a relief, a surprise), now manufactures water-skiing equipment. He says he’s allergic to nothing that he knows of. We see each other once every two or three years and he’s just wonderful company. With his wife and twins, he lives in Venice (California)—a big home, a Labrador, a vegetable garden, hollyhocks, bees, what have you.

There, in Venice, Bradley has a dock. We sat on it one year ago, just at sunset, admiring sky as an extension of his real estate. He smokes some, Bradley, and that worries me but I say nothing, of course. I was, after all, his houseguest. Laughing a bit, we sat discussing our parents, now called “them.” We jawed about them with the same wry fond concern once overheard in private talks when their “them” meant us. The wine was running low. I volunteered to head back to the kitchen for a refill. He asked if I’d bring out more goat cheese too. I rose, a bit unsteady, I lifted the platter, took three steps uphill toward his low-slung lighted house, his boys playing in the yard.

“I burned your models,” I told a quiet seated smoking man.

“Yeah I pretty much guessed that.”

“When?”

“I must’ve been, oh about twenty-seven, in there. I’m slow about these things.—What’d, you set them on fire one by one, or what? The paintjobs were all I really cared about.”

“Remember the hole where we buried club dues in the Maxwell House can? I chucked them all in there. Let them have it with Dad’s charcoal lighter fluid. They sort of fused—great smoke, these whining sounds. You would’ve been proud. They’re probably still out there with our club dues underground. Actually, the planes would’ve looked great in your twins’ rooms. Those planes would have an added period appeal by now. Sorry.—How about some more endive with that goat cheese, bro?”

“Sure. Super.—It’s okay. You took everything to heart. We’re grown now, remember?”

“Yeah. Please keep reminding me, all right?” Then I trudged uphill toward my brother’s lovely home.

And myself? I’m in Manhattan. A bachelor again, and not unhappily. I support myself by ad-copywriting, doing occasional magazine opinion pieces. I’m still a review stringer for one dance magazine that was kind to me early on. I don’t forget these things. I lost my actor friend to an early illness, unexpected, unexplained. For reasons of my own, I subsequently married—a woman somewhat younger than myself, and then a woman considerably older. Versatile, I’ve proved. A good provider. Lately alimony mostly. But, turns out, I like taking care of people, actually. I do.

So,
LET’S SEE
, Bradley just turned thirty-four. What does that mean I am? Bradley’s thirty-four, and thriving; that makes me thirty-six.

1975-76

T
HE
N
ATIONAL
F
UNDAMENT
of the Arts—all too aware of its jeopardized fiscal standing at this time of increased government scrutiny—announces what may be its final competition. At her recent news conference, Fundament director Dorothy McPhee repeatedly stressed the need, at this moment of world crisis and sharp cutbacks, for continuing optimism among American artists.

The prominent west wall of a large Washington D.C. office building will be given over to the provocative design theme “America, Where Have You Come From, Where Are You Bound?” The space in question is windowless, 555 by 310 feet (see attached diagram).

If you are a non-, semi-, or fully professional artist of American citizenship, over eighteen years of age, you qualify to enter. Written proposals should accompany the drawn-to-scale renderings. Winner (one only) will be announced May 5 and the mural will be completed in time for a nationally televised July 4 unveiling by the First Lady.

Due to the number of expected participants, applications cannot be returned. We refuse responsibility for any entry’s loss or damage. Ours is an Equal Opportunity competition. Nonetheless, the judge’s decision will be final.

Dear Miss McPhee and other Fundament Folks,

Would you kindly mail the first mural packets to my Massachusetts studio instead of the Manhattan address I gave you before? I expect to be up here on our little farm for three luxurious months. I’m planning to paint in the mornings and spend evenings poring over the proposals. As the final authority in all this, I
think
I’m game and capable. I do take it seriously and am eager to see the first responses. So is Lucia, my wife. She’ll be here for a few more weeks and has agreed to help.

Today we cleared off two plank tables in the kitchen. Lucia carried back issues of magazines to a chicken coop we use for storage. I’ve dusted and polished both tabletops and so we stand braced, Miss McPhee. Bombard us with that first batch of America potential. I sign myself

Dearest Sirs (or Madame[s]),

I had the distinct good fortune to serve on the Beautify America Committee a few years back. I’ve done a little research, and, I believe, of Mrs. Lyndon Johnson’s select group, I am the only one still actively planting on the civic level.

What you’ve got is a long wall with a westerly facing. In Oct. 1916, my late mother and her head gardener planted forty boxwoods and lots of English ivy sprigs around our local branch post office. All forty shrubs still thrive, and every inch of the building’s outer walls is now nicely ivied. Meanwhile, inside, murals done during the Thirties by three New Yorkers (painted twenty years
after
Mother planted) are now water-stained and flaking like some rash. They weren’t all that great to begin with. The farm children depicted have huge necks on them and are smelting iron (on a farm?) and surveying with equipment that is absolutely inaccurate, even for back then. Each time I go to mail a letter, I come out more angry. Then, luckily, I see the English ivy plus those stately boxwoods—always so soothing. Time cannot wither nor custom stale
their
infinite variety.

In the greater D.C. area, wisteria will do nicely for you as a wall climber. Its perfume would offer a lovely bonus to passing office workers.

Pyracantha can eventually be espaliered, and its orange autumnal berries provide a visual feast, then a literal one for migratory cedar waxwings forced to lay over en route to haven in the South.

Think in terms of perennials. Don’t settle for fast-fading painting fads. When you and I are pushing up daisies, my suggestion will go right ahead without us. The miracle of photosynthesis remains as up-to-date as tomorrow’s newspaper and a whole lot more comforting. What better symbol of our national hope than a plant—well chosen, expertly maintained, grounded in native soil but straining upward, always upward?

Dear Judge Artist of National Distinction,

I’ve always thought one art carries right over into another and that really sensitive people can spot true quality in other similar type artistic persons. For this reason, I am sending not a mural but a children’s book, one of my best, “Jenny the Wren’s Vienna Misadventures.”

I also illustrated it. Some people have said my book’s wren is sketched much more realistically than the Viennese buildings—but how many English-speaking kids care that much about Austrian architecture anyway? What they love is Jenny the Wren herself!

Jenny has sure been to lots of publishers lately. I’m still trying to get her into the right hands. Suggestions? Anyway, enjoy, enjoy. Here is “Jenny the Wren’s Vienna Misadventures.” I am

Dear Contest,

My Dad he did good drawings. He work out at Moss Furniture evenings and the Grave Yard shift Kenilworth Byproducts. He finished forty pictures of Eagles holding the branch in one hand and the arrows. He love that Eagle. Please send these back if they don’t win it. My Dad died. He did Eagles on placemat menus from where our Momma worked waitressing.

Miss Martin the teacher she told my wife to inter this. Dad was 74 and never sick a day in his life. He was born at West Virginia but come out here when Momma needed to for her breathing.

Miss McPhee,

There was no return address on this bundle. Our posters said we wouldn’t send back applications but this seems an exceptional case. Can you trace this Krause fellow, maybe through the teacher the poor guy mentions? Lucia studied every one of these menus, all yellowed and obviously used before the old man drew eagles on them. Somehow, when I agreed to do this judging, I expected perhaps a higher degree of “professionalism,” whatever
that
is. To tell the truth, it’s hard to recall just what I expected. Reading some of these “essays” becomes a humbling experience. Many of the drawings are done in Crayole, Bic pens, even fingerpaints. One was sketched in homemade charcoal and had not been sprayed with fixative. By the time our mailman lugged it up the front stairs with two dozen others, nothing remained in the envelope but a smudged piece of cardboard and a handful of crumbly black powder.