Jaime must have had a guardian angel. Having a brother like me, it was more than likely. While I was helping him to lean out farther, getting ready to give him a little push, we heard my mother shout.
“What are you doing? Jaime, come here at once and you…you…How could you let your brother climb up to the window like that? He could have fallen. You’re so irresponsible.”
Jaime ran to hide in my mother’s arms, and she held him fearfully and close. She looked at me and I could see the mistrust in her eyes.
“Thomas heard a cat meowing,” Jaime said in explanation.
My mother walked over to the window and looked to see if there was a cat; then she shut the window and grabbed me fiercely by the arm, shaking me as though I were a sack of potatoes.
“There’s no cat! What were you up to?” And she gave me a pinch.
“He didn’t do anything,” Jaime protested, not understanding my mother’s reaction.
I didn’t even bother to defend myself and looked her up and down, trying to fix all the hate I felt on her with my gaze. It must have had some effect, because she left the room with Jaime, telling him to take a shower at once: she would bring his clothes to the bathroom. When she came back to the bedroom she stood in front of me. She seemed to be searching for the right words.
“I don’t know what went through your head, but I swear, if you put your brother in danger ever again then…then you’ll go to a boarding school, Thomas, a boarding school where they’ll keep you on the straight and narrow, where they’ll get those demons out of you.”
I remained silent. I knew that my mother was driven half desperate by my lack of a response.
She looked at me again and left the room, slamming the door. I wondered what would have happened if I had thrown myself into the void. Would they mourn me? For a moment I wanted to think that my father would regret it, but I could no longer fool myself. I had heard from his own lips just what he thought of me. And as for my mother, I was sure that after everything had settled down, my absence would be a relief to her.
No, I wouldn’t throw myself out the window. There was no better punishment than for them to have to keep putting up with me.
I left the room and went toward the kitchen to have breakfast. My mother, her nerves frayed, was telling my father what had happened.
“I’m telling you, we need to be careful with him. Thomas is jealous of Jaime.”
“Carmela, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but in this instance you must be mistaken. I don’t think that Thomas would…Well, don’t blame him that Jaime was climbing out the window.”
“But he was behind him…He was helping him lean out…John, I know our son, I know what he’s like…”
“But aren’t you exaggerating just a little?”
“We have to get him away from Jaime. We could change his room, put him in the guest room, which is a long ways away from his brother.”
“Come on, don’t exaggerate! And the guest room is very small. It wouldn’t be fair for Thomas. You always said that when the children were bigger you’d turn the playroom into Thomas’s room.”
“But he’d be too close to Jaime. He’ll be fine in the guest room. Thomas doesn’t need much space. Why does he need a big desk if he never studies? Have you ever seen him with a book in his hands?”
My father ended up giving in to my mother. I felt defeated.
How should this have taken place? Like this, perhaps:
When I heard my father referring to me so pityingly I should have gone into the kitchen. When they saw me, he would have been uncomfortable:
“Thomas, what are you doing here? It’s very early. How come you’re awake?” he would have asked, fearing that I had heard the last fragment of conversation.
My mother would have looked at me with her usual mistrust, sure that I had been listening behind the door, and I would have said:
“I woke up a while ago and I was hungry. And…well, I thought that if I got up earlier then I could be with you for a while.”
My father would have felt ashamed, guilty about having expressed such a negative opinion of me. As he was a good man, he would have come over to me and ruffled my hair, and asked me to sit down.
“Well, we like spending time with you as well. Isn’t that right, Carmela?”
“Dad, I heard you…You said that I’m not handsome like Jaime and that I don’t know how to do anything. You’re right, I need to make more of an effort. But I love you, I love you both very much, you and Mama, and Jaime too. I’ll try to do things better, I promise.”
I’m sure that my father would have embraced me and that even my mother would have been unable to do anything other than succumb to this humble confession.
I would have enjoyed that embrace, feeling comforted in having managed to make my parents see that there was more to me than this little monster who ruined their days.
After breakfast I would have said to my mother that there was no reason for her to worry about Jaime.
“I’ll wake him up and have breakfast with him while you get dressed in peace.”
I know she would have agreed, silently blaming herself for not being able to love me more.
Jaime would still be asleep when I went back to the bedroom. I would have sat on the edge of his bed and woken him up by blowing on him, because he’d think that was funny. I would have gone with him to the kitchen and filled his mug with milk and found him some cookies. Then I would have stayed by his side until he finished his breakfast.
—
Yes. That’s what should have happened. It would doubtless have awoken in my mother some feeling of benevolence toward me, and my father, although aware of my flaws, would have felt moved by my attitude.
But it happened in the way I have told you, so I found myself thrown out of my room, although I admit I didn’t much care about that. In spite of the size of my new room, it was, just as my mother had said, a long way from Jaime. And it was mine. I could enjoy my solitude without having to put up with my brother’s permanent presence.
I asked myself how it was possible that my mother could know me so well. In spite of myself I admired her for that. I wasn’t surprised that the next day, Monday, she asked María not to let Jaime out of her sight.
“Don’t you worry, I know just how Thomas can be, and how you’ve got to have a hundred eyes on him all the time. I don’t know what’s wrong with that boy.”
My mother nodded. She mistrusted me so much that she feared for my brother.
Jaime said that he missed having me in the room with him, a statement that earned him a kick in the shin.
“Well, I don’t miss you at all. At least I don’t have to put up with your silly face all the time, looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.”
He didn’t even complain. He put up with the kick just as he had put up with the many slaps that I had given him over the course of our short lives.
Everything about Jaime bothered me. The innocence in his face, his discipline in his studies, the fact that everyone liked him, not just because he was a pretty boy, but also for his open and cheerful character.
María used to say that Jaime was filled with good ideas and that I was filled with bad ones. She was right. That’s how things were; that’s how things have continued to be.
I didn’t try to get rid of my brother again. Instead I opted for indifference. An indifference that would help to harm him because despite all my rejections, he, the trusting fool, loved me.
I decided not to talk to him. I didn’t reply when he spoke to me, which made him very sad. My mother scolded me for my attitude, but I had decided to ignore her as well. No matter what she said, whenever she spoke to me I looked away. I even started humming to show that nothing she could say to me would ever matter.
My father tried to get me to explain why I behaved like this, but I just shrugged.
“Thomas, you’re not a baby anymore, you can’t behave like this. Mama is suffering and Jaime loves you
very much and can’t understand why you ignore him. Can you tell me why you are acting this way?”
No, I couldn’t tell him. He must have realized that I hated my mother and my brother. And the cause was nothing more than that Jaime looked physically like my father: thin, blond, his eyes halfway between gray and blue, his skin as white as milk. And I…I was just like my mother, but those parts of her that might appear attractive were a disaster in me: short for my age, dark-haired, swarthy. I still remember the day when one of the girls in my class said I looked like I’d been put in a toaster. I gave her a push and a slap. Joseph separated us: he scolded her for having compared me to a piece of toast and berated me for having hit her.
Joseph was the class leader. He didn’t do anything to make himself so. He simply was.
He wasn’t one of your typical horrible nerds. Quite the opposite, in fact. If someone came to class with their homework unfinished, Joseph would lend them his exercise book so they could copy his answers, and in tests he did everything he could so that the person sitting next to him could sneak a look at his paper.
Strong and tall, always smiling, he was friends with everyone and the teachers’ favorite. He didn’t even try: he was just himself, and everyone liked him.
The rest of my classmates barely spoke to me. It was Joseph who invited me to play soccer with the rest of the class and who brought me into the conversations on the playground.
I realized that, if not for him, everyone else would have ignored me altogether. They didn’t like me, and they had reason not to. I had hit them; I had torn up their exercise books or shredded their textbooks. They would have avoided me like the plague had Joseph not used his leadership skills to make sure I wasn’t abandoned.
I must admit that I had conflicted feelings about him. I admired him, yes. I could not deny that he was the best one of us all, and I would have liked to have been his friend; I fantasized about being his only friend. But I knew that this was not possible. Joseph treated me like a classmate, but he was not my friend. We never exchanged secrets and never saw each other outside of school. I knew that Joseph went out with some of our classmates on weekends. I heard them talking about the basketball game they had gone to with their parents, or the movie they had seen, or the Saturday afternoons they had spent playing basketball. It hurt me not to be a part of Joseph’s life. For him I was just one among many, although I must admit that he never abandoned me when another student muttered about me, accusing me of destroying his exercise book, or stamping on his ballpoint pen, or throwing a textbook into the street on a rainy afternoon.
I wished Joseph had counted me among his friends, his true friends, the ones he spent time with hanging out around the school gates. But he never did. I did not exist for him outside the school; even so, he was the only person who stood up for me against my teachers and classmates.
I think we must have been sixteen or seventeen, I don’t remember very well, when Claire came to the school. She was French, and, as they explained to us, her father’s company had sent him to work in New York, so she had to come and finish high school with us.
If Joseph had been the class’s sole leader up to that point, from this moment on Claire shared this leadership with him. The girls admired and envied her equally. And as for us, well, we all fell in love with her. It wasn’t that she was a beauty, but her way of talking, of moving, the way she dressed, all made her different. The girls all tried to imitate her, unsuccessfully. She was different—she was French.
I was charmed by Claire until I found out that she and Joseph had fallen in love. They didn’t do anything special to show it, but it was impossible not to see the glances they exchanged, or how they tried to touch each other whenever they were close enough, or how Joseph suddenly started to ask for her approval of everything he did, or how, if she had on a new pair of pants or a tight top, she would look at him out of the corner of her eye to find out whether he liked it.
The others accepted that something special was beginning to form between Claire and Joseph, but I could not bear it. I felt doubly betrayed. Why had this girl not chosen me? Why had everyone else stopped existing for Joseph?
It became normal for them to leave school together and for him to drive her home on his motorbike. On Saturday afternoons, when he used to meet up with his friends and play basketball, he would now catch a movie or go out for burgers with Claire. No one else mattered anymore. I asked myself if they even saw us, or if we were just part of the scenery.
I couldn’t help feeling resentment toward Claire. She had broken the status quo at the school, which made me more alone than before, and I could not put up with that.
I had to find a way to make Joseph break up with her. It would not be easy, because it was clear to everyone that they were in love, and first love leaves space for nothing and no one else within its boundaries.
My mother realized that something was happening. She mentioned it one night at dinner.
“I don’t know if you’re planning something or if it’s just that you’re growing up, but you’ve gone a few days without causing any problems around the house.”
“Don’t be like that, Carmela, can’t you just accept Thomas’s good behavior for what it is?” my father scolded her.
At any other time I would have been annoyed by my mother’s comment, but I paid no attention to it. Nor did I thank my father for his support, even silently. I was obsessed with finding a way to have Claire disappoint Joseph and to have him stop devoting all his attention to her. Then everything would go back to how it had been.
Jaime looked at me curiously. It was a relief for him that I had other things on my mind, because I hadn’t tormented him for several days. The last time I had paid my brother any attention was when I poured ink over the drawings that he was supposed to hand in at school the next morning.
It was not easy to find a way to get between Claire and Joseph. My idea was that the only sure way to provoke Joseph’s rage was for him to see Claire kissing someone else, but it would be difficult to ensure that this would happen. I had only one option: I myself should kiss her. The problem was that she barely noticed my existence.
I prepared my plan down to the last detail. Nothing could go wrong, or else not only would I show my hand, but neither Joseph nor the rest of the class would ever forgive me and I would be a pariah forever.
It had to be on a Wednesday. That was the only day that Joseph did not walk Claire to class. On Wednesday he had violin lessons first thing in the morning, and arrived only just in time to go to school. I would have to take advantage of the timing to accost Claire, who, I had noticed, was usually the first student to get to class.
I was very nervous on the Wednesday I had chosen. I was not one hundred percent certain that all the elements of my plan would come together.
I left home early and when I got to school neither Claire nor any of my classmates had yet arrived. The drama had to play itself out in the span of a very few minutes; that was all the time I had.
As always, Claire arrived ten minutes before the class began and was surprised to see me in the classroom with my head in a physics textbook.
“You’re here early!”
“Yes, I’m just going over a few things. I don’t understand physics very well…I’m not that good at it and we’ve got an exam in a few days.”
“If you want, I could give you a hand. What don’t you understand?” she said, coming closer.
“This,” I said, pointing to the open page while I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. I couldn’t rush this part.
She sat down next to me and started to explain one of the physics problems. I looked at her with attention, as if I were really interested in what she was telling me. When I heard footsteps in the hallway I acted quickly. I grabbed her by the neck and forced her down onto the table, then I started to kiss her. She tried to struggle free but I wouldn’t let her go; we struggled and I undid a few buttons of her blouse.
The door opened. Some of
our classmates started to come in, but stopped in the doorway as they saw me on top of Claire.
I stood back and she climbed to her feet. There were at least half a dozen students looking at us.
“It was him…the son of a bitch…He forced me,” Claire babbled.
“What are you saying? You kissed me!” I replied.
She started to button her blouse and straighten her skirt. She seemed confused as well as ashamed at our classmates’ recriminatory gazes.
“It wasn’t me…He threw himself on me…I was helping him with his physics…” Claire tried to explain.
The murmurs had grown louder and the students now entering the class heard from the lips of those who had first come in what they had seen.
“They were kissing,” one girl said to another.
“Making out? If we’d been a minute or two later, who knows what we’d have seen!” said another girl.
“What about Joseph?” said Ian, who shared Joseph’s desk.
“We’ll have to tell him,” said Simon, the class geek.
“Don’t be a dick! I’m not going to say anything. If Claire’s tired of Joseph, then she should tell him herself. That’s the least she should do,” another girl said.
“But I didn’t do anything!” Claire shouted.
“But we saw you!” Simon exclaimed.
“You didn’t see anything! This cochon attacked me!” Claire said.
“Right…He attacked you…Is that the best you can come up with?” said the ugliest girl in the class.
I hadn’t said a word. It was better that the others speak. Up to this moment no one had blamed me for anything. Even among us, who were still young, the old prejudices still flourished. The girls in the class had never really liked Claire because she was, if not the prettiest, then the most attractive, and all the boys preferred her to any of the other girls. As for the boys, the old cliché about self-confident girls came into play: they were easy prey and anyone could take them.
Suddenly their envy had bubbled up: the girls were envious of Claire, who was different from them, and the boys were jealous that they had not been chosen over Joseph.