Brotherly Love (6 page)

A man Peter has seen on television, on the show
Bandstand, is next to the rabbit. His name is Larry Tock; Peter says
it out loud, listening to the sound. Larry Tock, the king of Rock. He
is not a dancer, but the one who introduces the music. For that
reason, and perhaps for his clothes, he is the star of Bandstand.
Larry Tock picks up a microphone and begins talking to the crowd. The
speakers are mounted on the white Cadillac which brought him into the
park. Peter hears the words once as they are spoken, and again as
they echo off the houses across the way.

Larry Tock starts to count. "One, two, three . .
."

On "three," the mayor and the rabbit drop
the ribbon and a wave of children with Easter baskets breaks over the
opening between them, the bigger ones pushing the smaller ones out of
the way, pushing two of them down.

As Peter watches, the wave spreads and slows; some of
the children trail their older brothers and sisters, some move off in
their own directions, searching the grass and shrubs, stopping now
and then to pick up one of the eggs. The parents come behind them,
taking pictures, and in the background, Peter hears the voice of
Larry Tock over the speakers, calling, "Happy Easter."

The children cross the park. A few of them are
Peter’s size, but mostly they are smaller, three and four years
old. A few are as small as his sister.

He picks out one of the smallest and follows her,
watches her run in circles in the grass, lost in her own purposes,
dropping the eggs out of her basket as she bends to pick others up.
The wind blows her hair and the collar of her coat into her face and
she stops, tossing pieces of hair and material behind her, as if she
were unattached.

She runs a few steps and another egg rolls out of her
basket, a silver egg that lies in the grass—she doesn’t know that
she has lost it—sparkling in the sun. And for a moment he thinks of
putting on his jacket and shoes and going into the park too, of
picking up the silver egg and putting it back in her basket.

He sees himself doing that, and also sees himself
sitting here in the window. One thing as real as the other.

 
And then he hears the music. Polka music. He
walks into the yard and looks at the house next door. Victor Kopec’s
windows are open, the curtains blowing in, and the music that Peter
has not heard since before the accident is loose in the neighborhood;
it sounds like drunk men laughing.

He walks back inside thinking of his father, afraid
that he will hear the music from Victor Kopec’s house too, afraid
of what he will do.

He walks into the kitchen and pours himself a glass
of milk.

Too full, all the way to the brim. He carries it back
to the living room, sipping at it as he goes to keep it from
spilling, and then, just as he and the milk are settled in their
places at the window, his father’s long black Lincoln stops in
front of the parking place across the street.

His father turns in the front seat and begins to back
in. Peter’s uncle sits in the front seat with him, talking.

The car moves backward, then forward, then back
again. His father straightens the wheels and then climbs out—his
uncle is still talking—closes the door without bothering to lock
it, and crosses the yard toward the house.

He does not seem to notice the polka music spilling
out of Victor Kopec’s windows.

Peter’s uncle comes out of the car after him, still
talking, and follows him.

"You want, me and Theresa could take Petey for
you a while . . ."

Hearing those words, Peter understands his mother
isn’t coming back to the house.

His father opens the door and walks inside, his uncle
a step behind. Peter is still facing the window and doesn’t look at
them as they come in. He stares out at the park, watching the little
girl collect Easter eggs, coming back now almost to the silver egg
itself, then turning, distracted by her mother and father—she is in
a straw hat, he is wearing a suit and tie—who want to take her
picture.

"Petey," his uncle says, "how you
doin’?"

In the silence that follows, his uncle laughs, and
then turns to Peter’s father. "He’s more like you all the
time," he says.

Peter’s father sits heavily on the davenport and
closes his eyes. Peter watches him a moment, over his shoulder, then
turns away from the park and the hunt for Easter eggs and drops down
next to him. He feels the heat of his father’s body. His uncle
stands in the middle of the room, smiling, suddenly out of words.

"I gotta go," he says finally, "let
you talk things over with Petey."

His father nods.

His uncle says, "Be nice, Charles. Don’t do
nothing until you’ve had a chance to think it over."

His father doesn’t answer.

"Promise me," his uncle says.

His father moves his head as if it weighed a hundred
pounds and slowly fixes his look on the boy’s uncle. "I don’t
want to go through this promise-me shit right now," he says.
"It’s the wrong time."

"I got to hear it, I know you."

His father shakes his head.

His uncle begins to say something else, but his
father interrupts him. "Nothing’s changed," he says. "You
want me to promise something, this don’t change a thing."

"Maybe," his uncle says, "it was the
best thing she left. Think about it that way .... "

And Peter’s father stands up, takes his uncle to
the door and opens it for him.

"I’m just sayin’ it might be for the best,"
his uncle says. "They get like that, they ain’t the same
afterwards. It’s like a scar . . ."

He makes a cutting motion across his cheek. "It’s
there where you see it all the time .... "

His uncle stumbles down the steps as if he had been
pushed. His father stands in the doorway.

Across the street in the park, Larry Tock takes over
the loud-speakers and begins singing. "In your Easter bonnet . .
."

Peter’s father closes
the door.

* * *

H
is father stands at the
door a long time after it’s closed, until the Easter song is
finished and all the music that’s left outside is a polka.

"What would you say," he says finally, "you
go stay for a while with your uncle?"

Peter doesn’t look at his father; he shakes his
head no. "Your Aunt Theresa, she thinks you’re her kid
already." He smiles, making a joke.

Peter looks straight ahead, and watches his uncle
walk up the street toward his own car.

His father moves away from the door and sits in a
chair, holding his face. He stands up, he sits down, unable to make
up his mind.

"Your mother ain’t going to be around now,"
he says finally, and the boy nods; he already knows that. "She
decided she don’t want to live here anymore."

"Where is she going to live?" he says,
feeling himself beginning to cry.

His father looks around the room, and then at the
ceiling, and finally back at him.

"It might be better, you was to stay for a while
with your Aunt Theresa," he says again. And Peter shakes his
head; the tears drop off his cheeks onto the davenport cushion. He
feels his father watching and turns his face away.

"I don’t know what to tell you," his
father says quietly, "things ain’t going to be the same."
And then he stands up and walks upstairs and down the hallway.

He wipes at his eyes and looks into the park, trying
to find the little girl. He stays in that same position for half an
hour, listening to the sounds his father is making in the bedroom
upstairs. She is gone.

He stays here until the children begin to leave the
park, holding on to their baskets and their parents’ hands; until
the mayor and Larry Tock and the man dressed as a rabbit get into the
white Cadillac and drive off to their offices in center city.

Peter envisions these offices, quiet, dark places
full of servants and secret drawers. There are reports in the
drawers, and one of them is his.

He saw the policeman write down his name after the
accident.

When there is nothing left to watch outside, he backs
slowly off the davenport, climbs the stairs and walks to the end of
the hall. He does not enter the bedroom, but stands just outside. All
his mother’s dresses from the closet are lying on the bed. He
stares at the pile, recognizing the dresses, the sleeves he has
touched while her arms were inside them.

He takes a single step, entering the room. All over
the floor are drawers that have been pulled from the dresser and
emptied into boxes. What is left of the dresser is like a skeleton.

Her shoes are in another box, sitting on a chair near
the window, thrown carelessly inside. He thinks of tangled feet. Of
accidents.

The bathroom door is open and his father’s shadow
lies across the bedroom floor. Peter steps farther into the room
until he can see his back. He is standing in front of the medicine
cabinet, its doors wide open, emptying the things inside into a
wastebasket that sits in the sink.

He sees a toothbrush, a pair of tweezers, combs that
she used to hold up her hair. A razor for her legs. Perfume, mascara,
lipstick. His father picks each thing off its shelf, looks at it, and
then drops it into the wastebasket. He is in no hurry, and gradually
the sounds that her things make falling into the basket change as
they no longer hit the metal bottom, but fall onto each other.

Glass against glass, it is almost music.

He thinks of the music next door. He wonders if his
father noticed it, with his uncle following him across the yard,
talking. Yes, he noticed.

There are three shelves inside the medicine cabinet,
and when they are emptied his father shuts the door. Peter and his
father find each other in the mirror.

He comes out of the bathroom, carrying the basket.
"Things ain’t the same," he says again, sounding not so
unsure of himself now, almost angry.

Peter sits on the bed. The movement in the room has
filled it with the smell of his mother. He holds himself still as his
father begins carrying the boxes through the open door and down the
stairs. He remembers that she had been afraid to leave this room, to
move even a finger; he remembers the feeling as he stood in her
closet and quieted himself and then stopped breathing.

He remembers these things, trying to glimpse her, but
even with her smell in the room and her things on the bed, he can’t
find her in the way he wants. Not for even a moment.

His father is back on the
stairs when Peter notices a small, round compact lying on top of the
things in the wastebasket. He stands up and moves to the basket, and
puts it in his front pocket. He feels it there against his leg as his
father reaches past him for the dresses on the bed.

* * *

H
e wakes up early in the
morning. The sky outside the window is dark, and he cocks his head,
following the almost soundless steps of his father as they pass his
room and then descend the stairs.

The front door opens and closes, and Peter puts his
feet on the cold wood floor and feels for his sneakers.

His jacket and pants are tossed across the foot of
the bed and he dresses in the dark, listening to the sounds of his
skin passing through his pants legs, of his own breathing. He fits
his feet into the cold sneakers without putting on his socks, and
ties the laces in double knots. He stands up and walks into the hall,
and then goes down the stairs too.

At the door he stops; he has never been outside alone
at this time of the morning. He weighs the darkness outside against
the darkness in the living room; he touches the place where the door
meets the frame and finds his father has not closed it completely,
not wanting to make the noise.

Peter opens the door. His father’s car is parked
across the street; in front of it is the green car with the antenna
mounted on the trunk. The windows of the car are fogged; a policeman
is inside.

He holds himself still and looks across the yard to
Victor Kopec’s house. Nothing moves. He takes a few steps and then
stops, afraid of making the smallest noise.

He hears a bus somewhere in the distance, and then a
dog, farther off still. The sounds relieve him.

He moves again, walking away from the house until his
line of sight clears the edge of Victor Kopec’s porch and he sees
the front door. There is a lamp above it that Victor Kopec keeps on
even during the day, and in the orange light he sees that this door
is not flush against the frame either.

When he steps again, the surface beneath his tennis
shoes changes and he finds himself standing on the bare spot where
the convertible uprooted the tree. He moves off the spot—he has
avoided it since the accident—and then, faintly, hears a drowning
voice inside Victor Kopec’s house.

"Fucking God," it says.

A moment later something breaks on the floor, and
then the house is quiet. Peter stands a few feet behind the bare spot
in the lawn and waits. Time passes, he doesn’t move. He stares at
the front door and wills his father to come out.