The Half Brother (5 page)

I hadn’t held a lot of babies but whenever I did I thought of Nicky, still a vivid physical memory—he’d been a trusting, soft-spined lump on my hip, requiring two arms. I remembered that. And always the smile of joy, as though he’d been waiting for me. How when I took him the responsibility was suddenly fierce: he made no babyish efforts to disguise his dependence. And why would he?

But this little Zack was erect as a soldier, using me as support, not comfort. He regarded me with great seriousness. “Hey, Zackie,” I said. “You’re an independent soul. Where’d you come from, anyway?”

I was remembering how it was with babies. That you could look and look at them with abandon, and they wouldn’t object; that they had no personal space; that they literally didn’t know where they ended and the rest of the world began. Even with my face so close to his I was not another person, but a small moving piece of the vast world. A baby could not be offended.

Baby Zack’s skin was light caramel, his lashes ridiculously long. His eyes were a greenish hazel, baby clear, clear as water. “You’re a handsome dude,” I said, and those eyes, which had been wide and blank as clean plates, suddenly crinkled into a smile. In his mouth I saw two snow-white dots of teeth. Drool glistened on the curve of his bottom lip and then dropped in a long string onto my shirt. “Buddy,” I said. “That’s gross.”

I made a face at him, which apparently was hilarious, because he laughed, and his laugh, too, was like water.

When I had to give him back my arms felt abruptly light, as if they’d rise into the air on their own with his weight gone. “You’re a lifesaver, Charlie,” Angela said. “He took to you. He never does that. Watch out, maybe he imprinted.”

“No problem,” I said. “That would be nice.”

I went into my apartment. It was dim and quiet. I felt content to be alone again. Then I heard the little thumping footfalls above my head, the rising high voices, and unaccountably I was glad of those too.

Four

May Bankhead started at Abbott my second year there. I was still teaching freshmen, but she wasn’t in my section. The following year I taught sophomores, and she was. She hadn’t changed much, had only grown taller, but she usually slouched, her slender body almost comically neurasthenic. Sometimes she walked with her long hair hiding her face. But at other times she would stand up and push the hair away, and in those moments she was one of the changelings, she was becoming.

In class, she was quiet, but when she spoke she was direct and didn’t suffer fools gladly. Occasionally I saw Florence in her, and was sorry.

Sometime during the summer before May’s senior year, Florence moved out. The whole thing happened quietly. She moved to a house in Amherst, a half hour away, but May stayed with Preston, and eventually Florence went back to Savannah, where she’d been born and all her family still was. It was said she had a boyfriend there, a childhood sweetheart who’d been carrying the torch all this time. I don’t know where that story came from.

That fall, May was in my senior seminar. The first week, after class, I asked how she was doing. I wanted to let her know I knew, that we could be honest.

“I’m fine,” she said. Her eyes beetled at me—cold, then abruptly warm: Preston’s trick, which she had inherited, or learned. She tossed
her head a little, and then looked at me again and all of a sudden seemed to decide I was all right. “It’s a relief, frankly.”

“How could it be a relief?” I said, without thinking. I realized I wasn’t sure what color her eyes were—dark, but I couldn’t tell if they were brown or gray; I wanted to know, but I would have had to say
Come close
, so of course I didn’t.

“I don’t like lies,” she said.

I was uncomfortable. “There’s a funny southern expression,” I said. Blue? Were her eyes actually blue? “When they tell you not to lie they say, ‘Don’t tell stories.’ ”

She nodded. She didn’t smile. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve heard that before.”

I’D SEEN PRESTON
just days before at the Labor Day tea, an annual event in the headmaster’s garden, the day before classes started. I hadn’t known yet about Florence—I’d just returned from Atlanta, and Divya hadn’t gotten me up to speed. I did notice an odd aura around Preston. People approached him warily, as if he’d recently been quarantined; if they came close, they’d lay a hand on his arm; I also saw he was alone, but I assumed Florence was somewhere at the other end of the garden, probably with Louise Hueffer, the headmaster’s wife. I was surprised when Preston planted himself near me and said, without preamble, “I’ve had enough goddamn
vacation
. Enough of the
picayune
demands of
women
and
children
.” Then he downed half his Tom Collins in one gulp.

In spite of those cold eyes, I knew I was supposed to act like what Preston had said was a joke. I went for halfway in between. “May’s a senior,” I said. “I don’t think she’d be happy, being called a child.”

He gave me a sidelong look of measured disappointment and finished the rest of his drink in two long swallows. I thought about Preston enduring all the long summer, his family immune to him, a prophet without honor, missing his sea of captive faces in Grey Chapel. I realized he was a man without reserves. Still, May seemed to need defending. “She’s in my seminar,” I said. “She’s so … bright. Looking forward to it.”

Preston moved his shoulders around loosely in his coat. He looked down into the ice cubes in his highball and rattled them a little and then smiled at me again, transformed: he was suddenly warm, complete with a fatherly twinkle, confidant instead of confider. “Win Lowell tells me you’re a chess player,” he said.

“Not really,” I said, startled into honesty. “I mean, Win’s a lot better. And my brother. In Atlanta. He’s kind of a genius at it.” I’d just come back from Atlanta the week before, where I had, in fact, played with Nicky, who could now demolish me in a handful of moves, although he tried to string it along for my sake. I had been the one who taught him, as Hugh had taught me.

“Come by the house,” Preston said. “After supper.” Was his voice suddenly more southern than it had been just moments before?
Suppah
. His voice caressed the little absence of the
r
, which was entirely different from the Yankee way of chopping it off with no mercy. “What about Thursday?”
Thuhsday
. When I hesitated he said, giving every impression of indulging me for my own sake, “Or another time. Name a day.”

“No,” I said, “Thursday’s fine.”

Which was how I became, for a time, Preston’s chess partner. I went over every couple of weeks. Preston would have had me more often but I begged off, saying I had grading or lesson planning, and it was often true, because I was teaching new courses, with syllabi I’d designed just that summer. I wasn’t fed at the Bankheads’, but I was given as much alcohol as I wanted. Preston was a silent player; afterward we sometimes sat and had one more drink.

I knew all about southern manners, but he was exceptionally good at graceful obfuscation. Sometimes I worked up the nerve to push him. “How old did you say you were when your father left?”

“Ten. Just turned ten.”

“And that was in New Orleans.”

“Oh, no. I was born in the Delta. Moved to New Orleans to be with my mother’s people.” He gave me a look. “When I was ten.” He nodded slowly, and the shadows rose and fell on his sunken cheeks.

“The Delta. I thought I heard that in your voice.”

“Ah. You like accents,” he said, as if some suspicion had been confirmed. “The illusion of identity.”

He never asked me about my own origins. I wouldn’t have told him much; I didn’t know what he wanted to hear. And yet, at the end of every evening, I left feeling that we had somehow been on the brink of connection.

When I was there, May was usually upstairs doing homework. Sometimes I never saw her at all. But I was aware of her, over our heads, in a bedroom behind a closed door, and I hoped the sound of our voices was comforting to her in that big, empty place.

It was still stuffed with detritus from the days when a family of six had lived there, and if you’d said they were all about to troop in the door I would’ve believed it. In the mudroom, there were coats on all the hooks, and a row of boots of various sizes on two boot trays, and a pile of sneakers. There were old birthday cards on the mantel, and the refrigerator was covered with magneted postcards and cartoons and outdated team schedules. On the closed top of the baby grand piano, there was the village of silver-framed photos. Percy the golden retriever, his muzzle nearly white, was still extant, along with his dishes and leashes and bones and drippy tennis balls. The house still seemed to hold life.

Once, though, I was sent to the kitchen for club soda; when I opened the fridge I found, besides the two bottles I’d been sent for, an orange, a jar of pickled cocktail onions, a half-gallon of skim milk, a can of grocery-store ground coffee, and a wedge of moldy Cheddar. Which could not have been the way it was back when there were six mouths to feed, three of them teenaged boys.

I stood there looking into that sad white expanse and then felt someone behind me. There was May, her head tipped, a wry expression on her face. Here at home she looked older, I thought. Or just more relaxed. “I eat mostly on campus,” she said.

“Well, thank God for that,” I said.

“May-May!” It was Preston, a sudden bellow. “Help Charlie find the goddamn fizz!”

We exchanged a look. “I’ve got it,” I called back, and reached in for
one of the bottles, which May promptly took from me. She loosened the cap to test it: no
whoosh
. She handed me the other, unopened one. “Sorry,” she said, with a general shrug.

“Don’t be,” I said, and thought I sounded condescending, and hated it, but she’d already turned and left the room.

AT THE LOWELLS
’, Ram wanted to play chess with me. We set up the board and he went at it hammer and tongs—it was just a game to him, not an intellectual contest. In rapid succession he lost half his pieces. I let him put me in check four or five times before I finally ended it. “Again!” he cried.

“Fine. Set it up.”

“I’m going to beat you, Charlie!”

“I have no doubt,” I said. “If not now, then soon.”

Win came in and stood smiling, his arms crossed over his chest. “Be careful,
bachcha
, Charlie is merciless.”

“Only sometimes.” Which reminded me. “You told Preston Bankhead I was a chess player.”

“I did,” Win said.

“Well, so are you.”

“I thought you’d be better company for him.”

Ram was arranging the pieces very carefully. I loved his skinny little fingers. “Why does Bankhead rub you the wrong way?” I said.

“I think the feeling is mutual. Doesn’t mean I don’t have sympathy for the man.”

“Well, thanks.”

“Don’t go if you don’t want, Charlie.” There was a mild rebuke in Win’s voice that I was not inclined to unpack. Maybe I’d spoken aloud more than I’d realized about wanting to know Preston Bankhead.

“Charlie,”
Ram said, bouncing up and down in his chair. The board was ready, he’d moved his pawn.

I shrugged. “No,” I said, “I don’t mind.”

ONE EVENING I CAME HOME
and found May in the vestibule of my house. “Hello, Miss Bankhead,” I said. My brain in suspension:
Of course she’s not here to see you!
“What’s up?” What I said to kids who came to my office hours. My voice came out unnaturally deep.

She looked at me quickly and then turned back to stare at the door. She was hugging a few textbooks to her chest. “I’m babysitting,” she said. There must have been something strange about the silence. “The
Middletons
.”

I felt the laugh bubble up between us
—Oh we are absurd
. Felt it squelched, all silently. “First time?”

“No,” she said, and finally looked at me. “I’m here a lot. Every other week or so.”

“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t realize.”

I’d babysat a couple of times myself but Angela and I both quickly realized that I was better one-on-one. So I took Zack into town sometimes for ice cream, or to Abbott Pond to fish. He was five now.

I heard Booker’s heavy footsteps on the stairs behind their door. “See you,” she said. The corner of her mouth lifted. “Or not.”

Miss Bankhead
. I’d wanted so badly to age myself, and now it was the quirk I was known for. I was trapped in it.

That night the thumping over my head was louder than usual. I wondered which feet, which sounds, were hers; I fancied they’d be a different, distinguishable timbre. But how many times had she been up there, right above me, and I hadn’t even known?

The running turned to walking, the creaking I normally didn’t notice anymore. Gradually all grew quiet. She must have put the kids to bed. She’d read them stories and turned out the lights. Smoothed Zack’s forehead, if he let her. He liked to have a book of his own read to him; he held himself apart from his brother and sister, was conscious of being only five. Maybe she knew that, too.

Now she’d be sitting on the sofa doing her homework. Feet curled under her. Chewing on a pencil.

I liked that she was there. That we were in a small town. That these connections were everywhere.

When I was finished with my own work, I poured myself two
fingers of bourbon and sat drinking it with a satisfaction that was mysteriously giddy, that teetered on the edge of epiphany.

MY SENIOR SEMINAR
then was British poetry. Old-fashionedness was not discouraged at Abbott, and a nice, thorough British survey was felt to be just the ticket to prepare seniors for the world; so that particular day I was teaching John Donne. I have always been fond of the metaphysicals. Strickler Yates, who was retiring that year, thoroughly approved of my syllabus, and I never forgot that I might have owed Donne, that old apostate, my actual job.

I was sitting at the edge of my desk, and in front of me the three conference tables were pulled into their U. It was the period after lunch and from the looks of things that day’s mac and cheese was sitting heavy. “Readers? Anyone? For ‘The Good-Morrow’?” May was in her usual spot at the lower left-hand corner, and slowly her hand went up, a shy sea anemone waving in the current. “Take it away, Miss Bankhead,” I said, and she bent her head down to her book.