Whiskey & Charlie (21 page)

“So you used to challenge him on things?”

“Well…no. Years and years ago maybe, when we were kids, teenagers. But not for a long time now, not directly anyway.”

“Indirectly then?”

“Well, no, not even indirectly,” Charlie says, starting to feel uncomfortable with Thomas's line of questioning.

“So if he did something you didn't like or didn't approve of, how would you let him know?”

“I stopped…” Charlie pauses.

“You stopped what?”

“I stopped talking to him.” Charlie looks at Thomas and then looks away. Never has his part in things been shown to him so clearly. He puts his head in his hands.

“Charlie?” Thomas says gently.

Charlie can't answer him.

Thomas waits awhile. “Do you want to leave it there for today?”

Charlie nods without looking up.

“I've left something for you to read,” Thomas says. “I'll check in with you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” Charlie says, but he still doesn't lift his head. And for a long time after Thomas is gone, he sits there, shame and remorse heavy in his blood, slowing his heart like a poison.

Thomas has left Charlie a pamphlet titled
Stages
of
Grief
When
Facing
Terminal
Illness
, the same pamphlet that had been tucked for months into the back of the notebook they used to record information about Whiskey's condition. Charlie had never read it. He did not believe a mass-produced leaflet could give him any insight into how he should feel about his brother being in a coma. And besides, didn't grieving come after death, or at least once you knew death was inevitable? Charlie did not believe Whiskey could die; therefore, he did not accept that he might be grieving.

When he finally reads the pamphlet, Charlie feels embarrassed by the extent to which he has conformed to the expected behaviors. Even his denial of the fact that he is grieving turns out to be the first stage of grieving. Denial is apparently
a
temporary
response
to
the
initial
shock
, one of the psyche's protective mechanisms. According to the information in the pamphlet, it is characterized by behavior such as avoiding the patient. Charlie thinks about the number of times he has resisted visiting Whiskey.

“I'm such a cliché,” he groans to Thomas the next time they meet.

Thomas is bemused by Charlie's response. “There are no points awarded for
not
going through the grief cycle, Charlie. In fact, if you weren't experiencing any of these emotions or exhibiting these behaviors, we'd have concerns about your psychological state.”

“It just seems pathetic to be so predictable. First the denial, then the anger—I'm an absolute textbook case.”

“Those are normal responses, Charlie. There's nothing pathetic about them. This information is designed to reassure you that virtually everyone in your situation responds the same way. A lot of people find it helpful to know that the way they're feeling or behaving is a stage they're going through, that they will at some point pass through those feelings and into another stage. It helps them to cope. But if it makes you feel uncomfortable to label them, we can forget about it.”

Thomas reaches for the pamphlet. Charlie finds himself grabbing it.

“No,” he says. “No. You're right.”

Thomas waits.

“It does help to know.”

“Which part helps?”

“Knowing everyone goes through the same things, I suppose. I mean, sometimes I've felt like I'm the only person getting angry about it. It's reassuring to think that other people feel angry too. I think I just feel a bit exposed.”

“Can you tell me what you mean by that?”

“Well, the third stage, about the bargaining. Reading that was like reading an exact description of my thoughts. It was as though someone had opened me up and looked right inside my head. I feel sort of…foolish that my motivations are so transparent.”

“There's nothing foolish about it.”

“It's pointless though, isn't it, bargaining?”

“I think that depends what comes out of the process for you. What makes you think it's pointless?”

“Well, if you believed in God, you could say, ‘I'll be a better human from now on if you let this person I love pull through.' You might believe that by doing good deeds or being kinder, you could impact God's ‘decision' and therefore whether the person you loved would live or die.”

“I take it you don't believe in God.”

“I don't. So who am I bargaining with? I can say to myself, ‘I'll be a better brother if Whiskey lives,' but deep down, I know that being a better brother won't influence the outcome. So it's pointless.”

“Is being a better brother pointless?” Thomas asks after a pause.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, even if you believe God can't influence the outcome for Whiskey, do you think any good can come of you behaving in ways that would make you feel like a better brother?”

Charlie thinks for a minute. “It would make my mom happy. And Rosa, I'm sure. I think Juliet would appreciate it as well.”

“Is there anyone else you can think of?”

Charlie frowns. “Well, Audrey, I suppose. Whiskey's friends maybe?”

“What about you, Charlie?” Thomas asks eventually.

“What about me?”

“Do you think it could do you any good, being more the kind of brother you think you should be to Whiskey?”

Charlie looks away from Thomas. How did he not see this for himself?

For as long as they had lived together, Charlie and Juliet had always lain in bed and talked before they turned out the light. They had talked about nothing and everything, the minutiae of their daily lives, the things that mattered to them most. Charlie had loved those talks. But ever since Juliet had asked “the question,” Charlie had felt that every time they talked, Juliet was waiting for “the answer,” and he had begun to fear those times they spent alone together, to dread the thought that the question might rise up again and he would still be unable to meet it. He had felt the question between them always—as if the words were printed on a badge Juliet wore pinned to her clothing—but never more acutely than when they were lying together in bed. Charlie had taken to reading before he went to sleep, saying it was the only chance he ever had for it, that it helped him to wind down from the day. He had thought he was buying time. It took him too long to realize that with that time came distance, a gap between them that would prove much harder to close than it had been to open.

x x x

After Whiskey's accident, Charlie had felt the tension between himself and Juliet ease. He knew Juliet couldn't expect him to be thinking about marriage while his brother was in a coma. She had been so supportive in those first few weeks, the accident bringing them closer than they'd been for a long time. Then Juliet had begun working at the school, keeping the focus off their relationship.

It had started when the modeling agency she worked for asked her to deliver their grooming and deportment classes. Juliet had wanted to give up modeling ever since Charlie met her, but as she had often told him, writing screenplays didn't pay the bills. So the classes had seemed like a good idea, easy money for something she could do with her eyes closed. But she'd been disturbed by the bitchy competitiveness, the unhealthy attitudes girls as young as nine or ten had about their bodies. The very first week, she told Charlie, she had heard two girls arguing over rice crackers.

“They're ninety-eight percent fat-free,” one of them had said.

“They're
carbohydrates
,” said the other disgustedly, as though she was naming a disease.

“I'm on the Atkins diet, like Reese Witherspoon,” a girl named Imogen had boasted in another class.

Juliet had told the girls they shouldn't be dieting at their age, that it was essential to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables to keep their skin healthy. “Sallow skin doesn't look good in photos,” she had added.

“But I don't want to do photographic. I want to do catwalk. You have to be a size two for that.”

“You also have to be five-foot-eight,” a taller girl called Caitlin said smugly.

“I'm still growing,” Imogen said.

“Good luck trying to grow eight inches in two years.”

“Why does it have to be within two years?” Juliet asked.

Caitlin had looked at her disdainfully, as if asking such a question made her unqualified to be their teacher. “If you haven't been discovered by the time you're fourteen, you might as well forget it.”

After a conversation with an old friend who'd become a high school teacher, Juliet had begun developing her own course for teenage girls, one that focused on health and self-esteem rather than how to maintain a size-two figure or perfect the catwalk strut. Charlie helped her with the course structure and session planning, and when she had finished, she contacted the eighth grade coordinator from her old school and arranged a meeting to present her idea. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, it had been approved by the board to be put on trial as part of the health education program the following year.

Over a four-week period, Juliet worked with more than a hundred Fintona students, teaching them about the importance of regular exercise and the dangers of eating disorders, how to look after their hair and skin and apply makeup to enhance their natural features, what kind of clothing flattered what kind of bodies, how to improve their posture. She did not lecture them from the front of the classroom or give them handouts to clip into their binders; she brought in magazines for them to look at—
Teen
Vogue
,
Seventeen
,
Cosmopolitan
. They looked through them together and talked about the articles, and Juliet tried to teach them to think for themselves about the real messages they were being given.

She came home from her days at the school exhausted and elated, thrilled by the girls' responses, full of ideas for ways to grow the program. She talked about enrolling for a Diploma of Education, becoming a real teacher. Now that Charlie was no longer working at a school, she had developed a new understanding of the world he had worked in, joking with him about the staff room politics, the strangeness of suddenly finding herself on the other side of the student–teacher dynamic.

Charlie convinced himself that the unanswered question had not been forgotten but put aside, that his reticence had been forgiven, that the rift between them was healed.

Then Darius entered the scene. Through her success at Fintona Girls' School, Juliet had been given a contact at another private girls' school called St. Mary's, a health education coordinator who was looking for new programs. He had asked Juliet to extend the program to run over eight weeks and to expand it to include ninth and tenth grades.

Charlie was suspicious of Darius from the start. He was too keen, too dedicated, too involved. Every time he and Juliet met to work on the program (which seemed to be more often than Charlie thought necessary) Juliet came home talking about how brilliant Darius was, how perceptive and innovative, how charismatic. She described him as
an
amazing
educator
.

Charlie complained to Marco about her enthusiasm for her new boss. “You've never heard her refer to me as an amazing educator, have you?” he asked.

“You should be happy for Juliet, that she's finally found something she loves doing.”

“I
am
happy for her. But this guy's trying to cut my lunch!”

“So what if he is? It takes two to tango.”

“I hate that stupid expression,” Charlie said. “I don't even know what it means.”

“It means, it doesn't matter how much this Darius guy likes Juliet—nothing's going to happen between them unless
she
wants it to. He can't tango alone,” he added unnecessarily. “Juliet would have to be willing too.”

“All right, I get it,” Charlie snapped.

“Come on, Charlie. Juliet's been fighting off other men since the day you met her. What makes this guy any different?”

“Nothing, I suppose,” Charlie said. But as soon as she had started the job at St. Mary's, he had felt things shift between them, the ground opening up. They had begun reading in bed again, and this time it had been Juliet's suggestion.

x x x

As well as being
an
amazing
educator
, Darius was also, apparently,
a
gifted
actor
. After they had been working together for a month or so, Darius had invited Juliet to see a play he was performing in. It was the last thing on earth Charlie wanted to do, but it would have been worse to let Juliet go without him.

“I haven't been to the theater for ages,” she said on the way there, sounding too enthusiastic for Charlie's taste.

“I wouldn't get too worked up. I'm a bit dubious about these group-devised things.”

“You didn't have to come,” she reminded him.

If he was honest, Charlie had to admit that the play wasn't too bad. But without a doubt, the best thing about it was finally seeing Darius in the flesh. Darius was what Marco would have called
plug
ugly
, except he pronounced it
plurg
urgly
, which made it sound even worse. Every time Darius appeared on stage, Charlie added to his mental list of his flaws. To begin with, he was short. Not “of medium height,” which is how short men always described themselves, but downright vertically challenged. And not only short, but also stumpy. He had an enormous, misshapen nose and strange, tufty-looking hair. He resembled, Charlie thought, a donkey. Charlie bet he had a hairy back. Making this mental list pleased Charlie. It pleased him so much that he almost managed to enjoy the play. He reached over and squeezed Juliet's hand.

The thought that Juliet—beautiful Juliet—might be interested in him was absurd. Charlie felt so good he agreed to stay and meet Darius. He left Juliet sitting at a little table in the foyer while he went to get the two of them a drink. It was a typical theater bar, where none of the bottles had been opened in advance, and as soon as the rush came, the bottle opener couldn't be located, and there wasn't enough ice and they were short on change and had to ask every customer if they had something smaller. As a result, every round took three times longer than it should have, but Charlie felt perfectly cheerful throughout the lengthy and painful process. When he finally moved away from the bar with his two flat gin and tonics, without ice, he saw Darius was sitting at the table with Juliet, wearing, of all things, a waistcoat.

The
nail
in
his
coffin
, Charlie thought to himself. Juliet had a thing about waistcoats. She said they should be worn as part of a three-piece suit or not at all, that to team them up with pants or, worse still, jeans was one of the top-ten fashion crimes of all time. Charlie thought he would make a joke about it to Juliet later. He imagined them laughing together about it. Then he saw Juliet burst out laughing at something Darius had said, and he suddenly noticed how close together they were sitting, and all his smug confidence evaporated. Darius was looking at Juliet as if she was the only woman in the room. This was nothing new to Charlie. He had seen it happen before, hundreds of times. But what made this time different from all the others was this time, Juliet was looking at Darius the same way.

Charlie walked over and put the drinks down on the table.

“There you are,” Juliet said, jerking back in her chair. “This is Darius.”

“Ah, Darius,” Charlie said. “The way Juliet was laughing, I thought she must be talking to Woody Allen.”

Juliet frowned.

Darius looked uncomfortable. “Nice to meet you, Charlie.” He put out his hand.

Charlie shook it.
Cock
blocker
, he thought to himself.

“So what did you think of the play?” Darius asked.

It
was
a
steaming
pile
of
dung
, Charlie wanted to say. He shrugged. “It wasn't really my cup of tea, to be honest.”

“Fair enough,” Darius said pleasantly. “Contemporary theater's not for everyone.”

Wanker
, Charlie thought.
You
wouldn't know contemporary theater if it came up and bit you on the ass.

“I was very moved by it,” Juliet said. “I thought it was very honest.”

Darius smiled at her. “I had a feeling that's what you'd think.”

How
would
you
know
what
she'd think, donkey man? You don't even know her. Keep your hairy hooves off her.

“I'm sorry to hear we didn't win you over though, Charlie. I always think there's nothing more painful than sitting through a play you're not enjoying.”

Too
right
, Charlie thought.
Especially
when
the
lead
is
played
by
a
furry
beast
masquerading
as
a
man.

“Charlie doesn't like things that are too emotional,” Juliet said apologetically. “They make him uncomfortable.”

Darius nodded sympathetically, as though Juliet was shackled to a caveman.

That's right. I'm a shell of a man
, Charlie thought.
I've got no feelings at all. That's why I don't mind you two talking about me as if I'm not even here.

Darius cleared his throat, and Juliet's face went dark. Charlie realized he had spoken aloud.

“Well,” Darius said after a moment. “I have some other friends I should catch up with so…”

“Of course,” Juliet said. “There must be lots of people waiting to congratulate you.”

“See you soon,” he said, smiling at Juliet and nodding at Charlie.

Juliet didn't look at Charlie. She picked up her handbag and made for the door.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked when he caught up to her outside the theater. “How could you be so rude? I've never been so humiliated.”

“You think that was humiliating for you, do you? Well, how do you think I felt, standing there like a spare prick at a wedding while you two made eyes at each other and talked about what an emotional cripple I am?”

“Don't be ridiculous. You're twisting things. It wasn't like that.”

“Don't lie to me, Juliet. If you're going to cheat on me, you could at least show me the respect of being honest about it.”

Juliet turned away from him. “Don't shout at me, Charlie. I'm not cheating on you.”

“What does that mean? You haven't slept with him yet? You've thought about it though, haven't you?”

Juliet put her head in her hands.

“Tell me, Juliet, you like him, don't you?”

She nodded.

“Are you in love with him?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know? Jesus Christ, Juliet.” Charlie felt like he'd been hit from behind. He beat the heels of his hands against his forehead, as if that might help him to understand what was happening.