“Sure, Eddie. But Jesus …”
“Anyhow, I figured maybe since now you’re in business for yourself … you know what I mean … well, I figured you could come up with enough fast cash to help me out a little. We can work a deal, keep it off the books, maybe cut you in on the business up here as part of the payback. It’s okay to talk, isn’t it? I mean, your phone is okay, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah. Sure. My phone … oh, sure.”
“Good. I’m not so sure about mine, you understand, so be cool. Right?”
“Right. Cool. Who … ah … who’d be listening in?”
“Doesn’t matter. Interested parties, okay? You got me?”
“Yeah.”
“So, whaddaya think? Can you help me out, like you said?”
“God, Eddie. I … I’m fucking broke, you know that.”
There is a silence on the other end. Bob hears his brother light a cigarette and inhale deeply.
“I mean, I’d do anything I could, I will, I will do anything I can, but Jesus, Eddie, I’m even more broke than ever. Even worse than up there. I don’t have a pot to piss in, like they say,” he says, forcing a laugh.
Eddie says nothing, so Bob goes on. “I suppose you’ve tried everything else….”
“Everything.”
“God, Eddie, I’m really sorry. I mean, maybe I can dig up a couple hundred someplace,” he says, thinking of Ave’s return from the Caymans on Thursday.
“A couple hundred bucks! Whew! That’s really something, kid. Look, let’s talk straight, Bob. Okay? I know what you and your pal Boone are doing down there. Okay? You understand what I’m saying? I mean, I know. I’ve known Boone since he was a kid, and I know you too. So I know, okay?”
“Well, yeah, but you’re wrong. I’m not … I’m pretty much on my own, and I only get a quarter of what we make with the boat, you know? Which is almost a quarter of nothing, the way it’s been going.”
“Bullshit,” Eddie says in a low voice.
“Aw, c’mon, Eddie. I’m fucking broke!”
“Yeah. You and the Pope. Look, kid, we gotta talk. I think I get the picture, we can’t talk on the phone, right? So we gotta talk in person. What do you say I drive down to Miami, we meet there for a drink and lunch tomorrow, say, and we talk. In private. I understand how it is right now, on the phone, I mean. I can call you tomorrow from a pay phone, and we can arrange to meet in Miami around one.”
“No, Eddie. No big meetings in Miami. I’m telling you the truth. No bullshit, I’m really broke. Busted. Flat. You don’t understand that; you never did understand that. I’ll do anything I can to help you, you’re my brother, for Christ’s sake, but I’m fucking broke!” he shouts.
“Yeah. Sure. I hear you.”
“No. No, you don’t, you bastard. You never did hear me. You don’t hear me now, and you never heard me in your life.”
Eddie is silent a second, then, in a hoarse voice, “I heard you a lot more’n you got any idea. Maybe I didn’t show it much, but I heard you. I know it’s been tough on you, but it’s tough for me. I got real problems, Bob. Even my epilepsy, it’s been coming back lately, like when I was a kid.”
“Jesus, Eddie. You see a doctor?”
“Yeah, sure. He give me some fucking pills and said go take a vacation. But that’s not important, the epilepsy. Not compared to the other stuff.” He is silent for a second. Then, “For Christ’s sake, Bob, I’m asking. You got that? I’m asking.”
“Eddie, goddammit, you’re always asking. You’ve been asking since the beginning. You make it look like you’re giving, but all you’re doing is asking. I’m sorry about the epilepsy and all your problems. But I got lots of problems too, and you’re one of the fucking reasons why. You say you’re giving me a big job, a chance of a lifetime, you say you’re gonna make me rich, but really all you’re doing is asking, you’re using me to work for nothing, to be your loyal clerk, your fucking nigger, while you add up all the profits and take ’em home to buy another fucking boat with. Listen, man, I learned something that year up in Oleander Park. I’m a little slow, I know, but eventually I learn, and I learned not to listen to you when you say you’re giving. I tune out now when you start saying you got just what I need, because it’s going to turn out instead to be just what you need.”
“Bob, listen. For Christ’s sake, Bob. You got burnt, I know, and I’m sorry. I … I thought things would be better for you. And that stupid stuff about the gun and all, I didn’t understand that stuff, I admit it. Shit, I still don’t understand. But it don’t matter. Things like that don’t matter anymore.”
“Fuck they don’t matter. They mattered then, they matter now. You think I’m a bozo.”
“No, Bob. Aw, shit … listen … I’m …” he stammers, and then his voice breaks, and he’s weeping. “I … I’m really gone now, Bob. This is no shit, this is how it comes out. Lemme give it to you straight, okay?” He stops weeping and gathers himself together. “Sarah and Jessie … she left me, just took the kid and left. She went back up north to her parents in Connecticut. It’s all gone now, Bob. All of it. The boat, that’s a fucking laugh! Gone. The store, the new store over in Lakeland? Forget it. All I got is what I got in my pockets, Bob. And the house. But I only got that for a few more days is all. Then it’s gone too. And then I’m gone, right along behind. You understand me? If I can’t come up with the money, I’ll be gone too. Repossessed, just like the fucking house and the boat and the store and everything. You didn’t know that, probably. There’s people can repossess people.”
Bob hears the man, he understands what he’s saying and feels a great wave of pity and fear for him, but he also feels a counterwave of anger that keeps on sweeping in from the opposite side, neutralizing his pity and fear, making him cold, quiet, withdrawn, as if he were idly watching a TV soap opera. “How much money you talking about?”
“A lot. A fucking lot.”
“How much?”
“I thought you said you was broke.”
“I did, I am. Dead stone broke. How much?”
“Hundred and thirty thousand.”
“A hundred and thirty thousand bucks you need! And you think maybe I can help you out!”
“I hoped, that’s all. I just figured you and Ave were into some big bucks now, with the boat and all. I hear things. I figured you’d be able to put a hand on some large cash, that’s all. You know?”
Bob is laughing, a high-pitched, rolling, derisive laugh that goes on and on, like a train whistle.
Then Eddie clicks off, and all Bob hears now is the dial tone and his own subsiding laughter.
Elaine watches him from the sofa bed, her upper body propped on one elbow. She’s been watching him throughout. When Bob sees her, he stops laughing altogether and realizes that he’s naked, standing at the kitchen counter with the telephone receiver in his hand.
“What’s happened?” she asks calmly.
Bob scratches his head and puts the receiver back on the hook. “I guess … well, I guess the bottom’s dropped out. For Eddie.”
“He thinks you can help him?”
“He thinks I’m smuggling dope.”
“Ave is. Why not you?”
“You want me to? That what you’re telling me now?”
“No. I mean, why shouldn’t Eddie think you’re doing it too? He’s right to think Ave’s doing it. That’s all,” she says in a thin, watery voice, as if deeply tired and a little bored, and she lays her head on the pillow, rolls over and leaves her back to him. “Shut off the light soon,” she says, “I have to get up early in the morning. You obviously don’t.”
“Yeah. Sure.” He reaches over and flicks off the light. But he doesn’t come to bed. He stands at the counter as before, thinking about his brother Eddie. His anger has left him now, like a storm blown out to sea. The horizon is dark and turbulent, but here, directly overhead, it’s clear skies and sweet breezes.
“He’s alone now,” Bob says in a quiet voice, almost a whisper.
“Sarah and Jessica left him. And he’s got the epilepsy again.” He reaches over in the dark and grabs Elaine’s foot and shakes it. “It’s really bad for him, Elaine. He’s scared.”
“Talk about this tomorrow. I’m exhausted. Now let me sleep. This has not been an easy night for me, you know.”
He lets go of her foot and walks over to the chair next to the TV and sits down, the plastic netting cold against his naked buttocks and back. Eddie the man deserves everything he gets, Bob thinks, but Eddie the boy, the boy that’s still in him, doesn’t deserve to be alone, to lose everything he ever wanted and worked for, to be deserted by his only brother. It’s hard for Bob, though, to see the boy in his older brother; he has to struggle to see him. He knows he’s there, but Bob has to will himself to remember Eddie as a boy and to look back and down on him from where he stands now, a grown man looking down on a nervous, wildly energetic, towheaded boy, and ruffling the kid’s hair, give him an easy pat on the shoulder and say, “Go on, kid, try it anyhow. If you screw it up, you can always try again, until you finally get it. Don’t worry, kid, you got all the time in the world.”
Elaine doesn’t understand that. All she can see is Eddie the man, and the man she sees is childish, selfish, cruel, manipulative and shallow, a man who mistreats his wife and daughter and doesn’t deserve their love, a man who manipulated and deceived his younger brother and therefore doesn’t deserve his loyalty and support now, a man who made big money fast and easy and shouldn’t complain when he loses it just as fast and just as easy.
Bob gets up from the chair, and his back sticks to it as he rises.
He reaches out in the dark for the phone, realizes he can’t see to dial, and switches on the kitchen light, then dials his brother’s number. He lets it ring a half-dozen times, ten, twelve. No answer.
8
It’s raining when Bob arrives in Oleander Park, a steady, heavy rain from low clouds, and it’s cold. He’s got the heater of the old Chevy on, and the dry smell of it reminds him of driving in New Hampshire on cold, wet spring mornings along slick highways, stomach growling from too many cigarettes, too much Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in paper cups, heading out from Catamount alone like this, early in the morning like this, to fix somebody’s oil burner. In those days, he knows now, he was constantly depressed and, to avoid the fact, had gone to some secret place deep inside himself, where he went over again and again the trivial details of his life, as if fingering the beads on a rosary, rehearsing, always rehearsing, how he’ll fix the porch steps, how he’ll clean out the cellar this weekend, how he’ll stop tonight on the way home for a few beers at Irwin’s, how he’ll clean his fishing gear this week so he can go out the first day of trout season—filling his mind with scrupulous visions of the actions that most people do automatically and without anticipation, living his life as a constant, slow-motion preview of coming attractions in which the boring, linking, low points are in fact the crucial scenes of the movie.
For a second, as Bob turns off Highway 27 a few miles south of Oleander Park, he forgets why he’s done this, why he’s left his home and family at four in the morning and driven north across Florida for five hours. He knows where he is and recognizes the roads, marshy lakes, trailer parks, palmettos, orange groves, recognizes the acrid smell of the citrus-processing plants, the signs pointing with excitement to Cypress Gardens, the Water Skiing Hall of Fame, Disney World, recognizes on his left the Lake Grassey trailer park and back on Tangelo Lane the blue trailer he owned for close to a year, and recognizes the white cinder-block building out on Route 7 where he worked and where he shot one black man and chased after the other. The windows are covered with sheets of plywood now, the store blinded and abandoned by the side of the road. He sees the road to Auburndale, where Marguerite Dill and her father live, and his chest suddenly fills with a mixture of shame, nostalgia and longing that momentarily frightens and confuses him. Then he recognizes the turnoff to the country club, and he remembers Eddie’s birthday party, the way he saw himself then, poor, stupid, clumsy and inept.
Finally, as he approaches Eddie’s house, low and dark, with an acre of lime-green lawn in front, a plain of slate-gray lake behind it, he remembers why he has come here. He’s come to provide aid and comfort to his elder brother, simply to be present in the man’s time of troubles. He knows there’s little he can do or say, but he believes that his presence will be helpful, that together they will be able to remember who they are and will in that way be able to withstand the awful pressures of the moment. He believes, too, that Eddie will help him as much as he will help Eddie.
Bob is not angry anymore, and he’s not worried. He knows Eddie will be all right as soon as he sees his younger brother’s face, sees that Bob has raced through the Florida night and cold, gray, rainy morning to be at his side, to be family, the Granite Skates, the two of them against the rest of the world. They’ll hug each other, Eddie will gruffly welcome him in, and they’ll sit down, maybe at the huge dining room table, where they’ll drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and discuss possible solutions to these problems, both their problems, and now and then they’ll remember something amusing or touching from their childhood, and they’ll laugh a little.
Bob will tell Eddie about Ave and about Honduras, and maybe he’ll tell him about what happened years ago between Ave and Elaine and how it still bothers him. He’ll tell him about his money problems and about Ruthie’s emotional problems, and he’ll let his brother know what a fool he was last night. He’ll tell about Marguerite, too, at last, and what she meant to him and how confused loving her became for him because she was black. Everything will be made clear in the telling.
He’ll admit that Ave fooled him, though not deliberately, into thinking he could make good money by selling his trailer in Oleander Park and buying into the Belinda Blue. They’ll curse the Republicans and the Democrats, Reagan and Carter, and blame the recession and the Arabs for the falloff in the tourist trade. Bob will even tell his brother about Doris Cleeve back in Catamount and the night he saw his life there for what it was and decided to trade it for another. And he’ll tell Eddie how his feelings toward Elaine have changed, how, even though she does nothing wrong that he can point to, she still manages to make him feel guilty all the time, which he never used to feel, even when he was now and then sleeping with Doris Cleeve, an act no better or worse than fucking Honduras last night or falling for Marguerite last summer. He’s no different from the way he’s always been, he’ll say to Eddie, and yet now he goes around feeling guilty all the time, especially toward Elaine and the kids.
Eddie will understand, and there’s probably a lot of it that Eddie will be able to explain away. And by the same token, there’s probably a lot in Eddie’s life that’s just as confusing to him, things that Bob will be able to explain for him. Bob will know what to say when Eddie tells him how he got himself into debt to people he never should have borrowed money from. He’ll know how to reassure his brother that he did everything a man could to make Sarah happy and that her desertion of him now is an act that should never be forgiven. Bob will tell him not to worry about losing his daughter, you never lose your children, no matter what. They eventually discover the truth about you, and they come back, he’ll say. Bob will tell Eddie he can start over. He’s only thirty-three years old, a young man, and he’s smart and energetic. His epilepsy will get better as soon as the pressure on his daily life has eased.
They’ll come up with a plan, two plans, one for Eddie and one for Bob, and by God, then they’ll crack open a bottle of Scotch or maybe Canadian Club, and they’ll drink the sonofabitch dry, talking about the old days, remembering their parents, growing up in Catamount, the house they were raised in, the winter days they skipped school together and played hockey with the American Legion guys down on the river, the way their father used to snore, the way their mother constantly nagged them to go to church early with her and then, when they did, told them to go to late mass on their own because they made her so nervous with th
eir fooling around and whispering that she was too distracted to pray. They’ll remember everything together!
Parking the car before the closed garage door, Bob gets out and runs under the rain across the lawn to the front entrance and pushes the doorbell. A new pink Lincoln driven by a woman wearing a pink pillbox hat and veil sloshes past and turns into the driveway of the pink stucco house next door. The garage door lifts automatically, and the pale car slides into the darkness, and the door descends.
Bob pushes the brass button again. Maybe he’s asleep, Bob thinks, and he holds the button in until it sounds angry to him, or worried.
He pushes the doorbell a third time, with no response from beyond the thick oak door, and it occurs to Bob that Eddie may have driven into town or gone to his office early, though he’s not sure Eddie even has an office anymore, or a car. The liquor store is closed, the store in Lakeland never even opened, his birthday boat is gone, either sold or repossessed, and Eddie said that the house was about to go too.
Stepping from the doorway into the rain again, Bob jogs across the lawn and around his car to the garage. He tries the door, and discovering that it’s locked, hunches his shoulders against the downpour, steps to the side of the building and peers through the small, dark window there. The first bay, where Sarah used to park her Celica, is empty, but in the gloom beyond it, Bob sees Eddie’s white Eldorado, which looks unexpectedly huge and vulgar to him. He recalls the white Chrysler he thought Ted Williams owned. Eddie, he thinks, doesn’t really have much class. Then he sees his brother inside the car, his curly blond head laid back on the headrest as if he were sleeping. The windows are all up, the doors closed, and rags have been jammed along the bottom of the garage door. Putting his ear close to the pane of glass, blocking his other ear against the sound of the spattering rain, Bob hears the motor running, and only then does he see the hose that leads from the tailpipe over the fender and through the rear corner window, and the tape sealing the opening around it, and he knows that he’s come too late, his brother is dead.