Shiver

by Eric Prochaska

 

   On that night, did he dare to slip into your room as you slept, mouth a farewell you could not requite, oblivious to his stealing away?  Did even a breath of regret give him pause to reconsider? This plan that was arranged outside of your confi­dence.  Though you had never betrayed him. Would he have looked upon his only sister sleeping and foreseen that she could never be heartbroken again?  Not when lovers left or when parents passed away? After he destroyed her this way?  

 

 

How were you to know when he made you repeat to him the alias he had devised that it was more than an adolescent They’ll-Miss-Me-When-I’m-Gone fantasy?

“This is only between you and me,” he said.

“If I ever have to leave,” he said.

“If the phone rings and someone says this name,” he said.

You made your own artificial name, and said it to him, though he did not confirm it audibly.

“And I’ll use this one,” you said, wanting to join the game, ignorant of the difference between a sulking teenager and an angry young man.  

 

 

The river was for swimming.  The two of you, relent­less, imagining yourselves dolphins, piercing the lethargic cur­rent of the cove.

“This is the last time I’m telling you,” he said, his voice controlled. Voices carry clearly across the lazy water.  More­over, this day, he had guests on the boat.

Eventually succumbing to your father’s stern commands, your dripping decelerating with your towel draped over your knees that were huddled toward your chest, riding on the sun deck, misted  by the spray of broken waves.  Giggling even though you shiver.  Your father was merely impatient with you for these antics you refuse to abandon though you are nearing high school; he was clearly vexed that your older brother frol­icked as much as you. That this was done on the day that his business associates were on the boat.  Associates whose sons and daughters are called “mature” and “responsible”.  Depend­able.  

As you climbed out of the water, you heard him bemoan­ing your love of the river water, how it stinks of the factories, how he wouldn’t eat a fish from it if he had caught one.  

With your back to them because their appetites are not so furtively concealed, stealing glances at the points erupting from under your swimsuit as the breeze cools.  

“Marcus is on every honor society and merit list in school,” he told them.  He knew better than to say, “Isn’t that right, Son?” because Marcus, in a generous mood, would merely have cast a “Whatever” over his shoulder.

Their sport, your tedium. Fishing in the heat of day. Wait­ing until they realized fish don’t bite in the daytime, which is for swimming, which you were not doing because their lines were in and you would scare the fish away, as your father said. You couldn’t talk back to him because he had a look on his face and he meant it.  Marcus did it first.  Laid flat on his back, hands in a butterfly paper-clip position behind his head on the sun deck, which is called a sun deck, so what could be wrong with it? You followed suit, your arms at your side, you at Mar­cus’s side, like chocolate delicacies, your lithe bodies, both.  Daring the sun to melt your skin. Undulation under you.

Feeling that water below you and baking in the sun.  The river was for swimming.  You didn’t care about fish.  If he had wanted to impress them, why bring them to the river? They all had boats. Bigger boats.  Your father continually apologized that this boat was not equipped with a larger refrigerator, a more accurate fish finder, a quieter motor.  It was hard to listen to.  

“I have to say I’m glad I'm sending him to Wadsworth,” he told them.  “Worth every penny. And he's absolutely excelling at everything.  But then he’s got his father’s brains!”

Their names you discarded as soon as introductions were made.  Nothing more than snails without shells, these men without suits, their powdery white legs.

“Honey,” he said, meaning you.  No one has scheduled a tour of Wadsworth for you.  “Get us those mixed nuts, will you.”

More intense than the early afternoon sun you just escaped under the canopy, his eyes etched contours up and down your thigh, the smoothest part of your back.  Something should have been said or done to remove his eyes. A “Would you look at that?” just to turn his head away.  But something was understood from your father’s silence, though you saw him seeing him see you that way. Something was understood about the word “Honey.”

“Put your shirt on,” Marcus said, casting it toward you. Your oversized beach shirt. You couldn’t button it up to your neck because that would be an accusation, so you overlapped the sides over your front and pulled the tails over the tops of your thighs.  

Having suffered the heat of the sun, their incessant pleas­antries like a swarm of gnats, you deserved your swim.  It wasn’t too much to ask them to wait thirty minutes after a whole afternoon.

Never swim here without me.  

 

 

“This is your senior year coming up, and I can't let you waste your time on any more plays. I’ve let you piddle around in the past because I thought it might take some of the pressure off.  But this is the moment of truth. You have one year to elec­trify the admissions departments of the Ivy League.”

Marcus, the dramatist, never employed histrionics.  He knew your father did not, would not, refused to understand, accept, acknowledge his aspirations.

Marcus, just do what he says.  It doesn't matter, anyway. You can do whatever you want in a year, when you turn eighteen.  You don't have to go to any Dartmouth, or wherever.

“If I ever have to leave,” he said. “If the phone rings and someone says this name,” he said.  

 

 

Determined.  That was for them both.  But the ambi­tion led them toward separate stars.  Your father had climbed the ladder and now bore the sky on his shoulders and would hold it there until his son joined him and proceeded to stretch it wider and higher.  Wasn't it a beautiful sacrifice? To pave his son's path in life? But Marcus, the artist, could never demand the scope of the world expand before him.  He could not appreciate this preordained succession.

Demanding.  Expecting others to contribute as much as he, but to receive greater rewards than he, and to devote them­selves with a drive at least as firmly rooted as his.  Perpetually disappointed. These comprised your father.

What did you know about the ghetto?  He warned you this way.  He warned Marcus he would return there if he didn’t wise up.  Return there?  Marcus and you had never lived there. He had lived there.  He had escaped, as he said.  But Marcus and you were in your own cage, and your father had never been in that place.

 

 

There was no storming out.  No hastily packed duffel bag and slammed door.  He simply disappeared.  You woke, and he was not there. You woke to realize the umbrella that shielded the world had been folded and deposited in some closet. You knew he was not there, and so you had to see for yourself.  Every step toward his room a distinct still frame.  Every molecule of air suspended, brushing against your cheek, parting before your hand extending toward the doorknob.  

What scared you about opening that door? What were you afraid to see?  He would not be hanging limp from a belt fash­ioned into a noose.  He was not the kind to kill himself. There was no reason to be afraid.  But you did not want to see that he was not there. Absence was not an answer. Where was he? Would he call?  He could have gone for a jog.  He could have gone out to buy breakfast.  No.  You knew.  You knew he was gone.  So you did not even bother to knock before easing the door open.

There was no note.

You stood there with the door left open behind you.  His barely slept-in bed. The organized desktop. The stillness of the room.  He could have walked in behind you, caught you there, made your heart leap. And for a second, you closed your eyes and wished.  A halfhearted wish, honestly.  Because you knew he was really gone.

But how long would it be before it was confirmed? Would it be two days and Marcus would be brought home by a squad car or private detective?  Should you hold your breath that long?  Or had he planned this escape so meticulously that no one could follow his trail?  Could you be happy for him now? This thief in the night?  Had he gained his freedom? And what had he bartered for it?

 

 

No storming out and no slammed doors.  If the film of your lives had been snipped through and left to litter the floor of an editing room, the reel of the past few years would show that Marcus's leaving was no sudden dramatic act. Until he was fifteen, he was the ever-grinning, ever-obedient son.  The shining golden apple of his father's ambitious eye. He was the betterment of the family line.  He was hope and promise and dream and glory. You did not know what made him want to be so perfect.  How could you? You had never basked in your father's adoration as he had. But you knew why you wanted to be as perfect as Marcus.  Because Marcus was simply ideal. Where other siblings might act out and distinguish themselves through opposing behavior, you saw no greater purpose than to be like your big brother.  

Until he was fifteen.  But the film would show now how Marcus decided to try out for a role in Death of a Salesman. How it... called to him.  And maybe this made sense.  Only the most complex characters in history and literature could enter­tain his appetite. And not to read them, but to be them. Yes, he landed a key role in the school's winter production as a sopho­more.  “Well, that's terrific!” your father would say when Mar­cus told him the news.  And he meant it sincerely.  It was good for Marcus to have a hobby.

And, yes, the film would show Marcus playing baseball and football and excelling at both. Excelling without ever being truly challenged.  Enjoying the sports well enough, but only as much as he enjoyed bread or water.

The movie would reveal how deeply acting had enchanted Marcus, how it made him eager to abandon the shell of all the things he no longer wished to pretend to be so that he could finally be and more deeply be the one thing he now loved and felt could love him.

But, no, the director would not forget to examine the effect this would have on Marcus's father. What did he see his son becoming? What was Marcus unbecoming?  By the time Marcus was seventeen, those moments of pride in seeing his son emulate himself had disappeared.  The father's path and his very self had been rejected.  

 

 

Sitting.  Chewing.  Quietly. With your mouth closed.  Your father spoke to your mother. Your mother spoke to your father. A tennis match with an invisible line judge.  You.  Chewed quietly.  Had food ever contained flavor?

The phone startled you, angered him.  The calm, the composure, the portrait dissolved as the phone continued to ring.  “Who would call during dinner?” he said.  As your mother pushed away from the table, he said, “No.  Don't answer it. This is our dinner. Whoever it is can wait.”

“It's just going to keep ringing,” she said, still leaning over the table, awaiting approval to continue toward the distraction.

Grumbling not in agreement but in tolerance and turning his eyes back toward his plate, but you saw him watching her approach the phone through the corners of those eyes, watch­ing her to see if she did this correctly.  She lifted it from its cra­dle on the wall inside the kitchen doorway.  “Hello?”

Her eyes lifted and looked somewhere in the back of her mind.  “Hello?”

She listened.  “I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong num­ber.”

Seeing him look back to his plate.  Seeing her stride so nonchalantly to her throne.  Past you, past your questioning eyes.  “Who was it?”

“It was a wrong number.”

“Did they say who it was? Who were they looking for?” you press.

“Someone looking for... I already forgot the name.”  Speaking to him, not you.  Invisible.

“Who was it?!” Your voice was too sharp, too demanding, you realized. You knew the question could not be answered, but you thought you already knew the answer.  

“If I ever have to leave,” he said.

“If the phone rings and someone says this name,” he said.

Glaring at you, the both of them, proving you were not invisible.  Not truly.  But they only decided to wish you were.

 

Despite his artistic temperament, Marcus never fought in a fit of rage.  His blows were driven by passion, yes, but guided by a strategy and economy that ensured he never tussled with an opponent. His fists flew without hesitation and that suddenness always surprised his foes, sending them ducking and covering in their backward stumbles.  No fight lasted more than three blows for Marcus.  And when it was over, he stood with his collected posture and even breathing, and no need to reiterate the point his fists had instilled.  He never had to repeat himself.

Marcus was not violent.  He used violence when called for.  But only as long as necessary.  By the time his father had told him to stop using his fists, he didn't need to anymore, any­way.  His lightning fast thunder strike knuckles were already legendary, so a word of warning was enough to make anyone do anything to avoid his fury.

“My son will not use his fists to solve problems.  You want to feel powerful?  I am trying to teach you power.  By the time you are twenty-seven, when you sign your name, it will have more impact than a shotgun blast to the chest. When you are thirty-four, the clearing of your throat will part seas.  Your fists can only be as strong as your muscles.  Your true power will come from all the determination and vision that burgeon within you.”

He was too fatherly to Marcus.  So much love that he could not help but crush the boy. And his love for you?  Do daughters have fathers?  Marcus was your father figure more than anyone.  It was Marcus's approval you sought. It was the sternness in his voice that chided you.

Marcus intercepted your first cigarette as its butt touched against your lips.  You were shocked to find him there, finding you there, with those girls, the kind who hung out with those guys.  

“She doesn't smoke,” he warned them, all three of them with disdain embossed on their faces, heads cocked irrever­ently.  Legs crossed, except Sondra with her fat thighs in the tight mini.  Cigarettes fuming between fingers atop wrists turned back limply above forearms.

Protective.  Expecting understanding from no one, solicit­ing praise from no one except himself, devoting himself only to his own ambitions.  Marcus was formed in this way.

 

 

Your father did not even ask you how school was.  He waited for you to drop your bag on the back seat and fasten your seat belt once you'd climbed in up front. Then, eyes still fixed on some smudge on the windshield perhaps, he pulled away.

The drive to Wadsworth.  Disquieting as a visit to the morgue. To collect his belongings.  To empty out his locker. This tortuous chore.  It could have been made easier. The bur­den could have been shared. Don't you know that I love him, too?

Your father didn't speak to you any less.  It's just that he never did speak to you much.  But with Marcus in the front seat and you in the back, you would observe their exchanges.  Those exchanges that grew shorter, more mechanical, more forced. And Marcus would glance at you over his shoulder, flash you his understanding grin.  Now you were in Marcus's seat, but not his place. Your father could speak to you and dis­cover all the things you'd waited to say.

Do you know how much he means to me?  You've never loved me the way you love him.  But Marcus loves me.  Whenever I'm about to do something really stupid, he just appears and he saves me. He's like my superhero.  I could tell you so much you don't know about him, and you'd be so proud.

But you don't want to hear those things, do you?

As those rural miles churned by, you looked over at his profile. Focused. Aiming. This anger at what Marcus had done.  This disappointment. This betrayal.  Your father's granite statue, with the bright fields and trees and streams blurring past it.  He was a boulder that no amount of weather could erode.

The few weeks that your father seemed intent on finding Marcus, it seemed to you a desire to capture him, not save him.  “I spent a fortune educating that ungrateful little punk,” he told your mother, “and I’ll be damned if he’s just going to waltz out of here in the middle of the night.”

You learned to interpret the things he would say each eve­ning.  “He’s old enough to make his own decisions now” meant that when he came back to admit he had failed, there would be no charity. “He can shiver on the streets, then, if that's what he wants” meant that if he came back this could all be forgotten.

At the school, you watched your father listen to the dean. You heard the brilliant praise of Marcus that was bestowed.  You followed down the hall and stayed a few steps behind as the dean authorized the custodian to remove the lock and your father stood for a moment—just a moment of hesitation—with that box held limply at his side.  Then he set the box on the ground and began transferring his son's belongings from one container to the other.

As you stood there, you looked over the clippings and photos taped to the inside of the locker door. A school newspa­per article about Marcus's performance in Death of a Salesman. A few sticky notes. And at the top, on bright yellow paper, in all capital letters, a strip that read, “DEUS EX MACHINA.” Strangely, you recognized the term.  Marcus had explained it to you some time ago.

Return to the car.  Resume your position.  Again that stoic boulder, those rural miles.  But as you turned your gaze from the fields to you father, you caught something.  Just a flinch of emotion before he reasserted his resolve.  It surprised you, so you peered more intently. And you saw it now. Finally, you knew that this was not anger.  This was not even strength.  Not exactly. This was pain. And this was a broken promise. This was an illusion. This fixed stare and granite brow were not keeping the outside world at bay. They were containing the shivers of failure and regret and heartache over a lost son.  He had not been steadfast on this journey to collect Marcus's things from Wadsworth so much as on a mission to simply not crumble.

This is how fathers love sons.  This is how men refuse to cry.

You saw it, and you wondered what would happen if you reached over and laid your hand on your father's shoulder. Would a single touch burst him like a soap bubble floating in the summer lawn?

When I leave home, I will call you often.  When I live away from you, I will visit on the holidays. I will send you presents and surprise you on your birthday.

Or, if it were you who touched him, would he have noticed it at all?

None of those things will matter to you.  You won't even recognize the name on the return label, will you?  When the driver has you sign for the parcel, you will ignore the box being handed to you and instead gaze over his shoulder at the empty street, hoping to see some furtive shape reciprocating your wistful stare.

You are my father, so I will love you all my life.  Even when it hurts.  I will spend my life loving you, and I will believe you love me, too.  But you will spend your life loving Marcus more than me. Marcus did not run away to make you miss him, but you will miss him incon­solably.  You are my father, and I wish I were enough for you.  I wish my being here was some comfort.  And even though Marcus was my favorite, too, he has gone.  He has left us to each other.  Why can't you see this as a chance for us?  

You removed your stare from your father and watched the countryside rush past your window. Was there anything you could say? Was there anything he would ever want to hear from you? There was one thing. There was one thing that flickered in your mind when you read those words.  Would that be too much to promise him?

Daddy.... I might know how to bring Marcus home.

 

You dared not dive in alone.  An undertow. A current.  Dangerous ways to die alone underwater.  How could you ever swim here again? Your parents, their guests, laughing unfash­ionably soon after their son disappeared.  You, alone, under the waking stars.

From the sun deck whose only glow was the deck lights' dim white-blue hue, you stared at the shoreline.  Those are the rocks that mark the bend, where the current quickens.  Before those, the beach where Marcus brought you every Saturday three summers ago.

“Never swim here without me,” he said.  “You hear?  Don't you ever swim here without me.”

“OK.”

Your bicycles laid on their sides in the grass at the edge of the strip of sand.  Towels dangling from the skyward handlebars.  Shoes and socks and shirts, just puddles in the grass.  Only the two of you were there, and only you are left.  You remember it so clearly, but can't be sure if the memory is true. You remember him teaching you to swim as a father would have.  As your father should have. And then that moment of pierc­ing terror—the sudden arctic cold of the water—as you were caught without ground below you and your novice strokes too futile, too flailing to save yourself. The moment you knew you were dying.

The moment Marcus slashed through the water so fiercely sharks would have fled in alarm. The moment his arm was the smoothest steel and his muscles were his love and his love could ransom you from death.  He pulled you with the one arm, and the two of you against the current with the other, and he defeated nature and death and every myth was shattered and laughable in light of his strength.

Marcus loved you.  Like your father did not love you.

Marcus, where are you?  I want to tell you something.

No, this isn't hide and seek. A silly olly olly oxen free won't make him appear.

Marcus, I need to ask you something.  Where are you?  I don't even know which direction to whisper to when I stare at the sky at night.  I know why you left here.  But why did you have to leave me?  

All these weeks and you haven't come back, and no one by your special name has called, and every phone ring opens this wound that you gave me.

Cuddling yourself in just your t-shirt and shorts and your still-dry swimming towel over your huddled shoulders as the moon is blown too far away by deceptively gentle breezes, spirits which determine the atmosphere of those river evenings.  Where did he stash the childhood he stole from you? What were those nights without him? Were you even whole, now that your mem­ories could not be corroborated?  Every you-had-to-be-there moment of your youth suddenly had no one who was there. How many stories could you never laugh over again? Your youth, your life, simply became vacuous. There was nowhere that you could write to ask your brother to return home.

Marcus.  If I just lean backwards now, let myself fall into the water dark as unknowing, will you still save me?

It did not matter how much you wanted to remain under his wing, because he was no longer offering it.  You were not his little sister any more.  You had no big brother.

 

 

Yes, Travis had a girlfriend, but preferred your inno­cent, wide eyes to those half-closed lids, so lazy and smug.  Yes, Travis had already been kicked out or dropped out, depending who told it.

Your parents never saw the cream bikini, so unsubstantial, mail-ordered, delivered while they were at work.  Lest they fall into the wrong hands, stores in the mall dared not sell such weapons.  But this was nothing more than a prop.  Meant only to establish the correct degree of verisimilitude. In front of the mirror you felt horny just trying it on, looking at how it refused to stretch any wider over your ass.  Honey.

Concealed under a t-shirt and cut-offs.  Two miles of hot streets.  You itched to cast aside those clothes, paid to enter the public pool Travis hung out at in the afternoons.  How hard was it? To climb the ladder out, dripping and glistening, just before him?  Right in front of her, Venice, his girl. Walk by as he lay out, tell his friend to tell him to meet you.

“I'm not fooling with you, girl. Your brother's a crazy fucker.  I don't need that kind of trouble.”

“You're worried about Marcus?  Shit!  Guess you're not who I thought you were.”

He laughs.  “Little sister comes around here, looking fine, trying to get me worked up.  I could take your brother in a fair fight.  But that fucker just starts hitting before you know he's even there. Don't need to get my ass kicked with my pants around my ankles.”

“Well, for your information, big man, Marcus broke out.  He hasn't been around for a month.”

“He's just up at that school.”

“He's not at school.  He took off.  I don't think he's ever coming back.”

“He's never coming back?”

“Well, not tonight he isn't. I know that much. So you don't have to be scared my big brother's gonna catch us doing it and kick in the door like Superman.”

“Yeah?”

Cocoa butter lotion masked your nervous scent.  But all predators smell their prey. And his cocky face shifted into devi­ous.  

“Don't know why you suddenly came around,” he said. “But I'm gonna make you glad you did.”

This was not smoking behind the gym. This was not a call of olly olly oxen free! Marcus, where are you?  I need to ask you something.

You didn't want him to take his time. You wanted to get to the end of the scene. The crown of his down-turned head bobbed, brushing your cheek, his breath on your breasts that had never felt breath before. You gasped.  You put your open hand on his head, as if to bless him, as if to push him away. But that indecisive hand refused to clench and simply rode his bob­bing head as if keeping time.  Your eyes ignored the charade, settled instead on the door behind him.

Any moment, that door could be splintered by a single kick.