Our First Love (16 page)

Nigel was glowing when he came home, and I assumed it was due to the successful debut of the SJC cable system. He should have been excited since he was instrumental in developing it. On top of that, the broadcast allowed me to be part of our life as it was lived instead of having to be edited in later. Today was one of the happiest days of my life—of this life—and I hoped Nigel was happy for me.

Yesterday, Nigel caught me off-guard when he asked me to trim his hair. A haircut on Friday? My barbershop was open only on Sundays. It's been that way for as long as I could remember. Before I could ask why he needed a haircut on Friday, Nigel answered.

“I have to attend an important workshop on campus tomorrow, so I can't wait until Sunday.”

“What kind of workshop?” I asked.

“We're meeting with a few department deans about expanding the cable system.”

I figured Nigel was telling the truth because his lips didn't curdle, and he only needed two so-so breaths to serve that perfect response. Still, for future reference, I made a mental note: Weekend workshop…noted.

I began watching his every move and listening closely to every word. I even listened to his thoughts. I decided not to say anything to him. At least not yet. I kept telling myself to be patient because it would all come to light soon. Probably sooner than Nigel thought.

Nigel compiled the notes for the first week's lectures, so this week it was my turn. Today's lecture was about propaganda and mass communication. I paid close attention as Nigel presented the lesson I outlined to our first-period class. As I watched Nigel, I noticed his confident swagger as he sauntered down the aisles. During third period, I felt like I was listening to his voice and the lecture for the first time. Nigel wasn't Nigel. The guy standing in for him was engaging. Blithe. Unencumbered. He was not my brother. I was floored. Disturbed. Condemned.

I sat by the window and considered my fate.

Out there, Billy put mail in Professor Childers' mailbox, then waved as he drove past our house.

In here, fear hammered three-inch nails in the walls.

Out there, Mrs. Retired Walker began her solitary trek. Step by lethargic step, she rambled nearly two-hundred yards up the trail before she turned and headed back.

In here, I saw the rest of my life.

Nigel made it home around nine tonight. I waited in my bedroom until I heard the front door open and close, then I walked in the living room and sat in Dad's recliner. “So how was our afternoon and evening?” I asked.

Nigel set his briefcase on the floor by the sofa, then walked into the kitchen and answered, “Exhausting.”

“Really?”

“We've got less than a week to finish that report about expanding the network, and…”

“Check your briefcase,” I suggested.

Nigel walked in the living room and stood behind me, out of
my view, so I couldn't see what I assumed was his baffled expression. “Check my briefcase?”

I pointed at the briefcase. “Did you even open it today?”

Nigel picked up the briefcase and sat on the sofa. I watched as he fumbled with the combination lock, the apprehension evident on his face.

“Don't worry, there shouldn't be anything in there that bites,” I joked.

Nigel opened the briefcase. The seventeen-page report was front and center.

“It took nearly sixty man-hours,” I boasted. “Some people, like myself, take the time to do their job, while others, and I'm not calling any names, spend all their time doing whatever it is you do.”

I was stunned by the look on Nigel's face as he stared at the report. It wasn't a disbelieving, or surprised, or even thankful expression. I don't know how to describe it.

I leaned forward in the recliner. “What's wrong?”

Nigel's guilt-ridden gaze answered for him. The workshops and the report were fabricated to cloak what he was really doing.

“Nigel?” I walked over to him and picked up the report. “Was all the time and effort I put into this for nothing?”

Nigel stood and slogged to his bedroom without responding. He didn't have to.

“You lied.”

Nigel wasn't around even when he was here.

“What's for dinner?”

“The same thing we had yesterday. Sorry. I forgot you missed dinner yesterday, so you still wouldn't know. I suppose you could
look in the refrigerator and see, but you may have forgotten where the refrigerator is.”

“Caleb, I asked a simple question. Please don't make a big deal over nothing.”

“Trust me. It's not a big deal. I'm saying that you're never here. Not counting the two hours you sleep and the four hours you spend plucking your eyebrows, you're here an average of three hours a day. And you spend the majority of those three hours getting dressed to leave or concocting lies about where you're going.”

“I'm not here around the clock because I work.”

“So do I. Wait. I forgot. You work while I sit here every day and watch you work.”

“Caleb, it's been a long day, and I really don't feel like this tonight. I have apologized a thousand times for lying to you. But in case you need to hear it one more time. I'm sorry! Now let it go!”

“You ungrateful bastard! Who in the hell do you think you are? Some kind of castrated God because you get to decide my fate?”

“You really don't want to know who I am, but I'll tell you anyway. I'm a man stuck in a life that he hates! A man who detests the bullshit life he's been forced to live! That's who I am!”

“Forced? Forced?”

“Caleb, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said…”

“Forced?”

“Caleb, please don't blow this out of proportion. You know who I am. First and foremost, I'm your brother. Your big brother. And that means…”

“Forced?”

Until today, I presumed Nigel was living a life of penance. I didn't know what happened to me and our parents, but I've always
believed that Nigel was somehow responsible. That was why I never tried to talk about Mom and Dad with him. I thought he caused whatever happened, so I didn't want to bring it back up. I thought all the sacrifices Nigel made and still makes were out of obligation. That he was sharing his life with me because he destroyed mine. But Nigel said he was forced to live this life. Being forced to live a life and living a life of penance exist on opposite and parallel ends of the benevolence spectrum.

My mind had been racing and thinking inconceivable thoughts that all converged into a single assertion: If Nigel isn't living this life for atonement sakes, then he had nothing to do with the tragedy that claimed Mom and Dad. And me.

I almost died two days ago, and now I'm certain Nigel wants me out the way so he can live the rest of his life unhindered. Why else would he open the front door and let the world inside, only to stand there and watch me drown?

He said he was going to a reception for a distinguished lecturer visiting FAMU, but I knew better. I was tired of pretending to believe all the shit he had been spouting, so I told him he was lying. I didn't know whether he was pissed off over whether the truth slapped him in the face or whether the stress of trying to be here but wanting to be there had him all wired up. Whatever the reason, I'd never seen him so angry…so vindictive…so far past his end.

I'd stayed away from Nigel since he returned from wherever he went Saturday night. I heard him when he was getting dressed for work and I saw him as he backed out the driveway every morning. I saw him in the evenings when he pulled in the driveway, and I
heard him stumbling around the house like he's in an unfamiliar place until way past midnight.

I'd known for years that this house was my grave. Now, I needed to know how I got here. How did I die?

This morning, Mrs. Retired Walker teetered toward the starting point of the hiking trail at Myers Park. She stood to the side and waited while others charged by. When the last procession of walkers and joggers were off and away, Mrs. Retired Walker stepped up to the starting line. She looked down the trail and smiled. She kissed her frail hands, blew the kiss into the wind, then turned and walked away, never looking back. She started down the sidewalk but stopped suddenly. She looked directly across the street at the house. She stared at the front window; at me. I could not believe it. I didn't think the Retired Walkers knew I was here watching. A smile replaced her pitiable expression as she waved. I forced a smile and waved back, realizing that I was seeing her for the last time when she turned and walked away. Before I knew it, I was unlocking the front door. I begged my hands to turn the doorknob, but my pleas went unanswered. So, I ran to the den and yanked the curtains open. Circle Drive. Towering oaks. Stately magnolias. Myers Park. People coming and going. The world was still outside my window, but she was gone from it. And that was when, for the first time that I could remember, I cried.

Yesterday forged through the barricades around 207 Circle Drive. Today, on my thirtieth birthday, I remembered being seven. I was walking from the kitchen to the living room when someone turned
on a projector inside my head. I was bombarded by shards of indistinct images that knocked me off my feet. I cowered on the floor until the pictures came into focus and I realized I was recalling a real childhood memory.

I was a seven-year-old standing on a chair in our kitchen in Richmond looking inside a clear mixing bowl as electric beaters blended two sticks of butter and two cups of sugar. A box of blue birthday candles was on the table next to a box of chocolate. Mom was there. She was sifting flour in another bowl. Nigel was sitting at the table trying to make me laugh by cracking eggs into a measuring cup and pretending to eat the shells. Then Dad walked in the kitchen and kissed Mom. “I'm taking the birthday boy out back to cast a few lines,” he'd said and turned his back to me. “Let's go catch your birthday dinner.” I'd climbed up on his back.

I'd heard Nigel say, “Catch one for me, Lil' Daddy.”

Mom had said, “I'll let you guys know when lunch is ready.”

I'd waved bye to Mom and Nigel as we walked out the door and headed toward the creek behind our house.

Today, for the first time, I recalled more than a hazy face or a barely audible voice from my childhood. I remembered Mom and Dad and the sound of their voices. I remembered looking up at the cloudless sky and seeing Heaven. I remembered feeling sunlight frolic across my face. I remembered walking on grass. Joy. Life. I took out Nigel's photo albums and found three pictures of Nigel, Mom, Dad, and me on my seventh birthday. The pictures coincided with my memory. I really was seven.

Nigel stood in the hallway contemplating whether he should knock on my bedroom door. He wanted to apologize, tell me happy birthday, and give me my birthday gift. My hand was on
the doorknob. I was tempted to open the door; I wanted to tell him what I remembered about my seventh birthday. Neither one of us got what we wanted tonight.

I hadn't been sick enough to need to see a doctor since we moved here, but this morning I woke up feeling something between nauseous and numb. I wondered if any doctors in Tallahassee still made house calls. The last time I actually saw a doctor was when Dr. Allen Bedford overcharged us to put me in a medically induced deep sleep and fly with me from Richmond to Tallahassee. Now that I think about it, I woke up in the same bed feeling the exact same way that morning.

A red envelope was on the table in the living room this morning. It was a Valentine's Day card from Nigel. I picked up the envelope, carried it to Nigel's bedroom, and placed it next to an unused roll of paper tape on the nightstand.

What happened?

Angela and Donald Taylor, Arnette Wilkerson, Clarence Brown, Denise Moody, Greta Lambert, Jerome Josey, and Andrea what's-her-name weren't in class this morning. Five more students were absent, but I couldn't recall their names.

Nigel's lecture was on reporting crime stories. I was watching, as usual, so as he discussed an article superimposed on a projection screen, he spoke to me with his eyes.

“After the lede, the reader knows that a masked robber walked into a convenience store with a gun and walked out handcuffed with a sore behind,” Nigel explained.

His eyes told me he was sorry.

“The reader is hooked,” Nigel told the class. “And now the reader has to read on.”

Please forgive me,
his eyes pleaded.

The students began to laugh halfway through the article.

“How stupid can you be?” Bernard Williams yelled. “Who in their right mind tries to rob a store when their mom's the clerk?”

Nigel pointed at the screen. “The article doesn't tell us if he was in his right mind, but this young man tried it.”

“How come the robber's name or the name of the store doesn't appear in the article?” Mikah Cook asked.

The back door opened and Nigel looked toward the back of the lecture hall. His eyes lit up, although he restrained his smile to keep it from leaping off his face.

Another student, Ricky Jones, answered Mikah's question. “Because his parents owned the store and they asked the police to arrest him, but no charges be filed.”

“Professor Greene, is that legal?” Bernard asked.

Nigel didn't respond because he had forgotten where he was.

I moved closer to the TV screen and followed Nigel's gaze.

A captivating woman, wearing a navy blue skirt and jacket, walked down to the third row from the back and sat in an aisle seat. She was too refined to be a student. She was already polished. I watched her eyes speak to Nigel. Her sunny smile kissed him.

“Can they do that, Professor Greene?” Bernard asked again.

She pointed at the screen and Nigel turned to see what she was pointing at. That's when he remembered he was in the middle of our lecture.

“Are there any questions about the article?” Nigel asked the students.