SHORT STORY CONTEST WINNER
What two brothers leave unsaid in a life changed by ego and lost love,
It was a strangely snowless December. Derek and I had not seen each other since the summer, spending an afternoon in July on a clean, steeland-glass patio in midtown, getting a bit drunk but trying to flatten it out with food. We eventually moved to a crowded eastside pub and then a dive bar — our venues growing as sloppy as we were. As usual, by the end, we were suddenly falling into brotherly hugs and talking about things that normally did not appeal to either of us. Our parents, work, women that had disappointed us. Often the same stories. Repetition was not tiresome but soothing, like wheels going round and round. Then french fries, sleep and he took the train back to Burlington in the morning.
Now it was my turn to visit him. It didn’t feel much like Christmas yet, without the snow, but I usually went to his place around this time of year. I liked a little bit of snow around, to feel festive. Otherwise the decorations in the shops — and women’s pretty little scarves or coloured tights — somehow turned a little sad. Their efforts at cheer seemed misplaced in a cold, grey city; it was a theme with me. A little bit of prettiness somehow making me feel lonesome.
Brenda didn’t come with me. Derek’s apartment — a rented floor in a cold, brick house — was not suited to hosting company, did not have a proper table for a proper meal. More than that, Derek was not suitable company for girlfriends; he did not know how to interact with women that he was not interested in. Or any person, for that matter — polite obligations taxed him and, drinking, he would grow snide. Brenda and I never said anything along those lines, about the table or otherwise; I just saw him sometimes and did not extend the invite, and she did not ask to come.
The small train station was a bit animated, flushed on a weekend close to the holidays. A man in an athletic-themed coat stood holding a sloppily wrapped gift, staring at the wall-mounted board that showed train times. He just stood there, in front of a board that did not change. His rumpled running shoes indicated that he was single and not exactly interested in improving on that. A pale, thin young woman sat nearby, not looking at anything. She seemed twitchy and abandoned, with red around her nostrils. A mother in her 30s attempted to both soothe and remonstrate three young children, with a firm cheeriness in her voice intended for the rest of us. A well-off couple, however, was the warm, glowing centre of the small station. They both wore the coats with the shoulder patch indicating they spent on coats what I once spent on a used Hyundai, and she had those rubber boots too with the label on the front — I saw those boots downtown a lot — and both wore mirrored aviator sunglasses. His and hers. Their lips looked creamy and moisturized. I admired them. I really did. They looked like they would live forever.
The train ride was an unremarkable passage through industrial tracts of land and the ugly backs of buildings. Occasionally there would be a new development, a subdivision of pink and beige brick townhomes, huddled together, facing each other, a dense cluster of families in every- one else’s business. Staring at each other through kitchen windows. Who wants a pink house? The brick was probably called “salmon” or “coral” — but it was pink. Burlington. I texted Derek and said I would be landing at quarter after four. He texted, “K.” I fiddled with my phone for a few minutes, cycling through apps but not lingering on anything in particular. Finally I tweeted, help, i’m going to burlington.
Derek seemed to have lost a little weight. I smiled through the passenger-side window and then got in the car. It looked alright on him; he didn’t look thin exactly. He looked maybe younger — except the eyes, the eyes do not age well. He was wearing a leather bomber jacket over a navy blue sweatshirt, with trim pants — not jeans — tucked into bulky boots. Handsome guy. He was grinning at me; evidently in a good mood today. I was relieved. “Heeeeeeeeeeeey Jamesy,” he drawled out in his impressive, practiced older-brother dominance display.
“Your car smells like sh-t,” I said, my younger-brother stab at appearing gruff.
“I can’t smell it anymore.” He was still smiling as we were pulling out. “I refuse to smell it anymore. I win.”
Derek wanted to drive to the bar but I told him we should walk. Park at your house and walk to the bar, I said. He made a theatrical sigh but turned for the house, knowing I was always willing to mention a former girlfriend’s younger brother, killed by a drunk driver. Patrick. He was the only dead teen in our high school. It changed our school; we had assemblies about it. It changed my girlfriend and for a long time I thought I would stay with her, marry her, to make up for it.
We parked, didn’t even step inside the house with my bags, just walked to the bar with our shoulders hunched up and hands stuffed in our pockets. “Cold,” Derek said. “Patrick’s colder in the ground,” I said. I win.
The waitress brought us a pitcher of beer. In the city, you called them servers, but here they were waitresses. There was a female performance aspect. The contours of her smile changed as she looked from me to Derek.
“How’s Brenda?” Derek asked, pouring a pint. One question, no follow-up, so I would have to make it count.
“She’s good. We’re talking about moving in together. She also talks about kids too, which I am thinking about. So we’re good, it’s serious.”
“Ah!” he said. “That sounds niiiiiiiice, James.”
I hadn’t mentioned marriage, it was a word that carried some undue weight between us. “So what happened to Erica, then?” I asked. “The same that always happens?”
“The same,” he said, smirking. “She just wanted attention; it didn’t necessarily have to be mine.”
“Well, you pick them for the same reason, so.”
“So,” he repeated. He rubbed the side of his face with his palm, his thoughts leaving the room. “Yeah,” he concluded.
He was a warehouse manager for a spice importing company. His clothes often smelled vaguely of cumin, coriander, a tickle of pepper. The rest of his life was the gym and hockey, weed and beer. His notebooks, though. His notebooks filled the lowest shelf on his bookcase — mostly inexpensive “cahiers” that we had used in school. A few of them nicer journals that were purchased for him as gifts, hardcover, a few leather ones with the embossed initials. He filled them and then they filled the shelf.
“I just write some words when I’m high,” he would say. He knew that I wrote a lot for my job, part of my role in marketing, and he knew that other people read my work, and even commented on it, and shared it. Once or twice, he expressed an admiration of that, although he never read what I wrote — it was industry stuff, selfperpetuating and ultimately disposable.
His work was the same. His boss was OK but another manager there got on his nerves — “A really little prick.” The renter that lived upstairs had moved out and the new renter was a really old guy who was a bit weird, but harmless. At least he was quiet; shifts at the warehouse started at 7 a.m. He did like animals — birds and squirrels and chipmunks and such — and this seemed like an endearing quality, considering he also walked strangely and swatted at his own head.
“He doesn’t seem to have anyone, at all,” Derek said, rolling the pint glass between his palms. “If he has a phone, I’ve never heard it ring. I guess it makes sense — he’s crazy. But you’d think he could find another weird person. Seems bad enough to be crazy, but also crazy and alone, it’s a bit too sad.” “Well, you’re sane and alone.” “Yeah but at least I have a thriving, creative career,” he said, deadpan. Absolutely picturesque.
I told him my work was doing better. They hired beneath me so I was able to delegate a lot of menial work — mostly the reporting — and although it wasn’t actually a promotion, it felt like one. My building recently added a gym and sauna but also tried to increase maintenance fees significantly, which I was not happy about. Brenda and I were talking about cohabiting anyway, which means I would save half on everything. She had a cat, and I showed pictures on my phone; Derek liked cats.
In about two hours, once we started on rye, he would bring up Sam. Sam was The One. Sam got away. Sam was on the Internet somewhere, sharing photos of herself and lots of people liked it. She was the drunk topic for more than six years. He dumped her but regretted it, and she never asked to come back, and he was too proud to ask — so she found someone worthy but less proud, and he found less proud women but not worthy ones. So she came out on top, and he had lost.
It crippled some fundamental part of Derek. I didn’t know whether it was the mistake itself, or his inability to right the mistake, that hurt him most. I didn’t know how much of it was about Sam at all, but his awe, his terror, at his own immovable ego, even under a lifetime’s worth of regret. And he was right to be afraid. It was so stupid — and so characteristic of him — to prefer his ego over his own happiness.
I had met Sam. It was apparent why I should be smitten. She had an attractive mouth that turned up at the edges, as if she was capable of mischief or guile. I don’t believe she had either, the eyes had no light in them, but it didn’t matter. Alpha female, provocative dress, spoke in clipped speech, generally brisk in movement — she seemed quite an important female to be associated with. She was disapproving, pretty, tough. It made men feel important, her presence.
Derek’s kind of woman. And it was such a Derek thing to be sitting in a pub in Burlington, about a 20-minute walk from his rented floor in a cold house, talking about how stupid social media was but how a lot of people liked Sam on it, about seven years after the last time they spoke.
The year they broke up. During one of my visits, while he was in the bathroom, I pulled out his notebook and flipped through some pages. Most were crammed with non sequiturs and small sketches, but one page was blank except for a rushed scribble across the top of the page.
“She doesn’t know who I am.” That was it, on the page. I had a painful tug in my heart, then, for my brother. He didn’t see how much time he spent ensuring nobody knew who he was. He expected that he could always do that, but that someone would still know.
After midnight, after rye, he was slumped forward in the barstool. The game was long over and now they were playing clips. “One of these guys liked a photo of Sam,” he said, gesturing to the basketball players on the television. I didn’t ask about it.
We left the bar after spending several hours watching and talking about sports. We were drunk. Flurries were coming down as we stomped home, not feeling the cold but our bodies strangely, painfully contracted nevertheless. “I’m cold, James!” he shouted. “I’m cold, Derek” I shouted back. Snowflakes flew into our eyes and flashes of the sidewalk, my boots, and occasional trees or lampposts, flickered through my vision.
We got back to his place. He showed me the sofa and a pile of blankets. “You’re my favourite brother,” I said, stupid with relief. “No, I’m not,” he said.
He went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and I walked over to the bookshelf, the bottom row. I pulled out a recent journal and opened to a page close to the end. I felt like a scattering of red birds. I closed the book and lay down on the sofa, pulling the blankets over me and feeling a strange, warm consciousness in my arms, my stomach, my thighs, my feet pushing beneath the cushions, elastic muscles uncurling. A scattering.
He came out of the bathroom and walked over to the sofa, standing over my feet. His figure was silhouetted by a light in the hall. “I just want you to know something.” “OK,” I said. “There is a chance I might kill myself,” he said, without emotion. “But I don’t want you to be upset, if it happens.” “I won’t,” I said. “OK,” he said. “Thanks, bro.” He walked away. I realized my overnight bag with toothpaste and socks was freezing in the backseat of the car. I reached for my phone and texted to Brenda, goodnight sweet princess.
Derek didn’t kill himself. He met a girl named Jessie and they lived together in a comfortable arrangement. He didn’t talk about her much but did text her once or twice as an evening progressed.
Brenda and I moved in together, and then got married a few years later, and had a daughter soon after that. I watched my daughter look at me with eyes that flickered with new recognition. I could see her consciousness flutter and open, like flower petals. Derek liked her. Her name was Belle. Annabelle, but we called her Belle.
I knew my brother. Handsome guy. Lone wolf, too proud. Our parents died early and had despised each other, taking great pains to conceal that from us. There was a final and total meaninglessness to their abrupt lives. I felt it too. The strange weight. Mostly at the edges of the night, as things were winding down. I knew what Derek wanted — scared of death and loneliness, the threat was his bravado. Made him feel brave enough to let the night end, alone. Let himself fall asleep, alone. I got it.
We were kind of destroyed the next morning. The old man was outside the house, on the front porch. Derek seemed surprised to see him out front and cleared his throat a few times, saying good morning and introducing me quickly. The man was not interested in me but wanted Derek to see the neighbour’s tree, out front, a young oak. There was a cardinal in it. Its colour was a deep gash in the neighbourhood’s grey; it was inexplicable, startling. “It’s pretty,” Derek said.