| The Brothers Bishop Chapter One: When I was five years old I stuck a pencil in a nice man's eye. He was at a desk, typing a letter, and I was sitting on a stool next
to him, scribbling a brontosaurus on a sheet of typing paper. I remember looking over at him and wondering why he was so intent on
what he was doing, and I remember wishing he'd pay more attention to me. So I held the eraser end of the pencil by the corner of his eye
and waited until he turned toward me before making my move. I didn't push too hard and his lashes caught the bulk of the attack, but it
still must have hurt like hell.
"Jesus Christ, kid!" he yelled, cradling his eye socket. "What did you do that for?"
I didn't have an answer for him then. I still don't. Sometimes you hurt people for no reason. Just because you can.
So this is how it ends. The day, I mean, with the sun dropping in the dunes at my back, coloring the surface of the water red and gold.
I'm standing barefoot in the sand and the cold tide is licking at my ankles like a mutt with a foot fetish. I live half a mile from the beach, so I come here almost every day of the year to clear my head.
It's summer now so I don't have the place to myself like I do in the winter, but I can usually find a quiet spot and pretend the ocean
belongs exclusively to me. Tommy's coming home tomorrow, with his new scrotal-buddy and a young married couple in tow. He called last week and asked if he could come see me, but he waited until I said yes before he told me he was bringing an entourage. When I told him I wasn't really in the mood to entertain anybody besides him, he got pissed. "Don't be a dick, Nathan. You've had the cottage to yourself for
three years. Is it going to kill you to have a little company for a couple of weeks?" I told him that was the whole point, because we haven't seen each other since Dad died, and it would be nice to get together without a bunch of strangers barging in and taking over. He said his friends weren't really strangers, though, because "Philip is practically your brother-in-law" and "Kyle and Camille are my two best friends in the world." He assured me we'd all get along famously. He's been like this his whole life. He thinks if he loves somebody,
everyone else he cares about will automatically love that person too.
What an idiot. But of course I caved in. I always do. You can't say no to Tommy. Tommy's my younger brother and a complete flake. He bounces from one job to another and one relationship to another and one financial
crisis to another and all he does is eat, sleep, shit and fuck.
But he gets what he wants from everybody, anyway, because he won the genetics lottery. He got our mother's looks--thick blonde hair and startling blue eyes, clear skin, high cheekbones, delicate hands and feet--and he also got every ounce of her charm. I'm a clone of my father--pug-nose, high forehead, black hair, brown eyes, sloped shoulders, heavy limbs, and yes, okay, an admittedly unattractive
tendency to think of the world as a very screwed up place. If you saw us together on the street you'd never believe we're brothers.
I don't believe we're brothers, either. There is no way in hell somebody as beautiful and light-hearted as Tommy could be carrying around my father's genes. I think Mom took one look at me when I was born and decided she wasn't going to have any more dark, surly children, so she went and had an affair with a surfer or a Swedish porn star or something and got knocked up with Tommy. I don't really remember our mother. She died when I was five years old and Tommy was only three, so everything we know about her we got
from my father. From what he said, though, she sounds exactly like Tommy. Dad said that Mom could make people love her without even
trying. He liked to tell the story about the time they were at a restaurant and she couldn't make up her mind about what kind of soda
to order. Dad said she must have been overheard, because within half a minute three glasses appeared on the table--a Coke from the waiter, a Pepsi from the busboy, and a Dr. Pepper from the maitre d'. I guess I should warn you, though, that Dad was a liar. He had at least thirty different versions of that particular story--sometimes he'd say Mom was wearing a black evening gown with long sleeves, and
the next time he'd go on about how her tits were spilling out of a skimpy red halter-top. He always tailored his stories to fit his audience.
But something tells me most of what he said about Mom was true, because my brother can charm the short hairs off a troll, and he sure
as hell didn't learn that from anybody he grew up with. I think charm is genetic--a personality fluke equivalent to being able to shape your
tongue like a "u." Why I didn't get any of Mom's magic and Tommy got it all is just another of life's little inequities I intend to confront God with at the earliest opportunity. I've been standing in the water long enough for it to have covered my feet with sand and strands of foul-smelling seaweed. It's tempting to just keep standing here until I'm buried up to my neck.
I'm not ready to deal with Tommy yet. Especially not with three complete strangers in tow. This will sound terrible, but my life has
been considerably better since Dad died. When we cremated him, it felt like someone took a pillow off my face and I could finally
breathe for the first time in my life. Now Tommy is my sole remaining relative, and the truth is I hate that someone is still alive in the world who has a familial claim on me. I don't want Tommy to die or anything, I just want him to forget about me and leave me the hell alone.
It's not about love. Of course I love the little shit. But he knows too much about me that no one else on the planet knows, and when he's
around I have no choice but to think about everything I hate about myself and my past. He's a gangrenous leg attached to my psyche, and I need to hack him off before he infects my whole fucking soul. Okay, okay, that's pretty dramatic. But it's exactly how I feel. And if you were me, you'd feel that way too. A couple of teenage kids run by, both of them dressed in ratty old cut-offs instead of swimsuits. They're probably fifteen or so, and slender and tanned, and one of them slows down and smiles and waves. "Hey, Mr. Bishop."
Great. One of my idiot students. Just what I need today. He's new in town and it takes a second to remember his name. "Hi, Simon.
Having fun?"
"Yeah." He picks at some peeling skin on his shoulder. "We've been here all afternoon and now we're getting ready to go out on my Dad's
new boat before it gets too dark."
I glance at the falling sun. "You better hurry. There's not much daylight left." He grins. He has straight, white teeth with just the hint of an
underbite. "I know. Dad's trying to prove to Mom what a great sailor he is or something. We'll probably all drown just because he won't
admit he's not very good at night sailing."
The other boy is waiting for him and Simon gives another little wave.
"I guess I should go. See you later."
He runs to catch up, water flipping from his heels onto his back. I watch him go, admiring his speed and lightness. His ass isn't bad either.
I'm a high school English teacher. I never used to work during the summer, but for the last three years I've been forced to teach remedial grammar courses to kids like Simon who can't tell a pronoun from a potato. And no, I've never done anything improper with one of my students, and I never will. But it doesn't hurt to look. Is anything more flagrantly sexy than a teenage boy? They're so full of hormones and semen it's a wonder they can walk. Most of them spend every spare minute playing with themselves, but there are a few who
haven't yet figured out how to deal with all the sensations in their bodies. You can see it in their eyes--a moist vulnerability, like
their corneas are floating in cum and they haven't got a clue what's going on or what to do about it. Simon is like that, I think. He's a
true innocent, a kid who would be horrified to know what most of his peers are doing three times a day in bathrooms and bedrooms and behind the bushes. But one of these days his body will override his hang-ups and he'll erupt like Vesuvius, spurting jiz on everyone and everything within a thirty mile radius. Mark my words. I know the type well. A gull flies overhead, calling out. Why do they always sound so lonely? The breeze from the ocean picks up and I raise my arms like wings to let it blow over me and tickle the hair in my armpits. The gull dips and glides and I try to imitate how it moves. Tommy and I grew up on the beach. Not literally, of course, but we spent almost every day of every summer here when we were little kids, and when we were in high school we were both lifeguards. I can't imagine growing up someplace far away from the ocean and the dunes. What's it like to go home to dinner without salt on your skin and sand
between your toes?
I live in southern Connecticut in a little town called Walcott. The name of this beach is Hog's Head Beach, and it's about two hours north of New York City and an hour or so south of Providence. I'm thirty-one years old and except for the six years when I was in
college and grad school I've never lived anyplace else and I never will. Sure, the town is backward (like every other small town in
America) and the winters are cold and real estate is expensive, but who gives a crap? I own my cottage, and I'm within easy walking
distance of a good pub, the public library, and a terrific bakery. A quarter mile from my front door in the other direction is a small cliff with a lighthouse on it (my closest neighbor, Caleb Farrell, lives in the house attached to it), and woods all around, and this beach. I know almost everybody in town and they know me, and while that sometimes drives me crazy, for the most part it makes me feel safe.
Tommy graduated high school and moved away the following summer, but I think he was a fool to not come back after he finished college like I did. He keeps trying to get me to move. He's worried because I never
get laid and he says I'm wasting my life and he hasn't been to see me since Dad died because he says that Walcott is the rectum of the
universe and he'd rather glue his nipples to a car bumper than spend another second in "that godforsaken hell-hole."
But when I asked him why he was finally coming back for a visit, he said he was homesick. I knew it would happen, sooner or later. He can pretend all he wants, but he loves this place more than I do.
Walcott is a resort town that no one who isn't rich can afford to live in, unless, like me, you happen to be lucky enough to have inherited a house that's been in the family for over a hundred years. My great-grandfather was a fisherman in the early nineteen-hundreds
and he built the cottage himself, which apparently made my great-grandmother insane because it took him nearly eleven years to
finish it. He'd work on a room for a few days then he'd leave to go fishing for months at a time, refusing to rush the job or hire somebody else to do it. I feel sorry for my great grandmother, but I'm glad the old bastard did it that way, because he built the thing with a mind-boggling attention to detail that only comes from sitting around for weeks on end with nothing to do but fish and think about
what you want your house to look like.
He built it like a boat. I don't mean that it's shaped like one, but he designed it with the same practicality and space-saving principles
you find on small ships--nothing is wasted, nothing is merely decorative. It's two stories high, with the kitchen, guest room, bathroom and living room downstairs, and a gigantic master bedroom upstairs. The woodwork is simple and straightforward, but it's all oak and maple and pine, and when the sun comes through the windows in the morning the walls and the floors shine like church pews.
Bookshelves are everywhere; the door to the guest room is actually a bookshelf that swings out on hidden hinges and shuts again with a
quiet click. There's a potbellied stove in the corner of the living room, and a modest wine cellar under the kitchen, and in the master
bedroom there's a massive old Edwardian desk looking out from an alcove onto the cornfield behind the house. Family legend has it that my great-grandfather stole the desk from some snotty English nobleman who lived in Rhode Island, but like the rest of our family history the story is probably bogus.
My favorite part of the house is the narrow, spiral staircase that connects the two levels. It's the only incompetent piece of carpentry
in the house, rickety and uneven and somewhat dangerous to negotiate if you've had more than your share of red wine on a cold winter night.
All the upstairs furniture had to be lifted through the windows from the outside because none of it would fit up the staircase. But my great-grandfather built it like that on purpose. He was an exquisite craftsman and could easily have come up with something elegant and functional, but for some inscrutable reason he chose to build an eyesore instead. And what's really funny is that in his will he stipulated that no one was to alter the staircase in the slightest, save for replacing boards if the old ones rotted out. He never told his son or his wife why he did it that way and no one in the family since has had any clue. Maybe he wanted to restrict access to the upstairs; maybe he thought it was funny to have something ugly and out of place in an otherwise handsome home. Personally, I think he left it that way to piss off his wife. But whatever the reason, whenever I look at it, I wish I'd known the
contrary old son of a bitch. The staircase screams attitude, and the only people in the world worth knowing are people with attitude.
There's a note on the front door of the cottage when I get home. It's from the "chairman" of Walcott's historical society, Cheri Tipton, politely reminding me that we had an appointment earlier that afternoon, and she was sorry to have missed me, and could I please call her at my earliest convenience to reschedule. Shit. I forgot all about it. She called last week and asked if she could come over and take a walk with me through the cornfield, because she said she came across some historic papers that seemed to suggest that an old Indian village--predating European settlement by several centuries--may once have stood on my land. I told her I'd never found so much as an arrowhead out there but she insisted on stopping by anyway. I'm not surprised I forgot to be here. I have a bad habit of forgetting to show up for anything I don't want to do. I crumple up the paper and stand outside the door for a minute, wondering who else is going to invade my house this week. Jesus. Maybe I should just open a bed-and-breakfast and put up a neon sign advertising multiple vacancies. I make no apologies for being a hermit. My choice to live alone has
been deliberate and entirely voluntary. As a general rule, people piss me off and I'm a much happier man when I'm by myself. I should
mine the front yard and buy a couple of dobermans and then maybe I could finally get some privacy. I take a deep breath. There are two big bushes on either side of the door with cantaloupe-sized white flowers that smell faintly of cat urine. I have no idea what kind of bushes they are, but they've been there my whole life. I could ask Tommy, I suppose, but who cares? I don't need flowers by my door; I need a state of the art security system.
My father was a mean-spirited, petty old man, and a complete waste of human DNA. Aside from that, though, we got along fine. It's impossible to talk about my dad without getting mad. Tommy says I should get over it and move on, but Tommy has never understood the
healthful benefits of loathing someone with your whole heart. He thinks my bitterness is self-destructive and difficult to maintain,
but, truly, it's no effort at all. It comes naturally to me, like breathing, or taking a crap.
I'm being flip because I know Tommy's right. My resentment of my father eats at me like cancer. And I should get counseling or a
lobotomy or something and maybe eventually learn how to deal with everything he did to us as kids and adults--all the endless cruelties,
large and small, he so liberally bestowed on us--except there's one thing I know I can never get past or dismiss so I won't even bother to
try.
He loved us. What a bastard. Yeah, I know how fucked up that sounds, but there it is. If he'd
hated Tommy and me, I think I could maybe forgive him for how he treated us. But he didn't hate us. He loved us, and still he went
out of his way to hurt us, time and again, and he never apologized for anything.
His name was Vernon Michael Bishop, and he had a glorious tenor voice. He sang for local weddings and funerals, and people always
said it was like listening to an angel. He ran the local paper, the Walcott Gazette, for a number of years, and I've been told--ad infinitum--how he generously allowed charities and "good causes" to advertise for free. He was interim mayor for two years when Cloris Adams suddenly died in her office and the town needed a replacement until the next election, and he organized the annual food drive for
the Lion's Club every Christmas. He was a big, hearty man who looked you right in the eye and did his best to make you laugh. He was a
pillar of the community. So goodness gracious, what's my problem? The man was a saint, right? Oh, did I neglect to mention that Vernon Michael Bishop liked to beat up little kids? Not all little kids, of course. Just two very special little boys. His sons. The worst time--though certainly not the first--was when he found
Tommy in bed with Jacob Roberts. Jacob had spent the night (he was the last overnight guest we were ever allowed to have, incidentally),
so I had given up my bed and slept in the living room on a cot. When Dad got up in the morning and came down to boil water for tea, he decided to poke his head in and see if Tommy and Jacob were awake.
They were nine years old, and they were naked, and apparently Tommy had his fist wrapped around Jacob's puny penis when Dad walked in on them. I was just waking up and came running into the kitchen just in time to see dear old Dad drag Tommy out of the bedroom and begin slamming his head on the counter by the sink. Jacob was scrambling
into his clothes in the bedroom and wailing like a cat in heat. I tried to get Dad to stop but I was only eleven and when I grabbed his arm and begged him to let go of Tommy, he backhanded me hard enough to break my nose and send me flying into the dish cabinet. I still have scars on my neck and shoulders from plunging through the glass.
Tommy told me later that Dad apparently came to his senses when he looked over and saw me crumpled on the floor in a puddle of blood. He let go of Tommy--who was only marginally better off than me--and calmly told Jacob to stop crying and go home. Dad called an ambulance for us and was soon arrested by the police, but because of his sterling reputation in town and the heinousness of Tommy's actions
(discussed, no doubt, in the strictest confidence), the charges were dismissed after a stern warning from the sergeant on duty, who then graciously offered Dad a ride home and probably gave him a cheerful clap on the back as he was getting out of the car. Dad gave his word that he'd never hit his children again, and, being a man who followed his own peculiar code of honor, he never did. But with physical violence no longer available to him, he was forced to come up with alternative strategies to continue waging war on his children. And that was when he began his long, inspired campaign of verbal and emotional abuse that continued until the day he died. In retrospect, I wish he'd kept hitting us. |
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