This is a story about context. About things being out of context.
There’s no closer read to do than that.
Starting with my brother being out of context. A night my brother is on a dare. It’s a nightly thing, this kind of dare.
Get in a stranger’s car, they say.
Or, Get in a stranger’s car, they say, and drive.
Parts of my brother’s brain, these days, don’t connect with other parts of his brain. It has something to do with synapses, something to do with neurons.
Think of it as short-circuiting. Fried wiring.
Think fork in the socket. Blow dryer in the bathtub.
Or just think the pills he takes that are our mother’s pills for something. They’re in a drawer by our mother’s side of the bed. Our mother has said to us both, more than once, Don’t ever touch this drawer.
But my brother is getting into everything that isn’t his. Like other people’s cars, and now our mother’s drawer that our mother specifically said not to touch.
The market is always open. The locals are the ones who shop there. We only shop there when we’re desperate and it’s late. When we’re out of something absolutely essential.
The cars outside the market are often unlocked. Sometimes the cars are running. The locals make it too easy for my brother. He gets into the cars like he owns them. It’s a whole big show, my brother getting into the cars. And his friends just laugh, all fucked up, across the street.
My brother will only drive a car away once. That night, he’ll be missing for hours, and my brother’s friends will all pretend they aren’t worried. They’ll make it into a joke how they often do with things that make them feel.
He’s probably in another state, they’ll say.
He’s probably picked up a girl, they’ll say.
But they’ll drive around looking, all night, for my brother.
The cop will drive around all night.
He’ll tell me to wait at the boathouse.
In case he goes there, he’ll say.
So I’ll wait on the boathouse lawn for my brother who I know will never show up.
On all of the other nights, my brother just stays in the lot. The locals come out of the market, see my brother sitting in their cars. They tap on the windows. Some of them pound their fists. Some of them open the doors and try to reason with my brother.
But most just stand away from the car, too confused by my brother to do a thing.
And it doesn’t matter what they do, besides. My brother won’t get out of their cars. The owners have to call for help. And when the cop comes, my brother’s friends, assholes that they are, run.
This time, the owner is a woman. She’s standing by a wall, holding a bag of groceries. My brother is in the passenger’s seat. The cop is standing by the driver’s side.
Some nights, the cop has to approach the car slowly. He has to make sure my brother isn’t wild. Some nights, he’s too worked up. Some nights, he takes swings at the cop. One night, he broke a windshield.
Some nights, he says things that make no sense. Like the time he spoke a series of numbers. The cop was like, what was that.
Some nights, my brother is passed out cold on the seat. On these nights, the cop has to call for backup, then other cops stand there, radios hissing on their shirts.
On these nights, the cop says I should go home. They can take it from there, he says.
On this night, though, my brother is awake. He’s looking at the cop through the window. He makes his fingers into a gun. He points his gun at the cop. He points it at the cop’s gun.
I hadn’t noticed, before this, the cop’s gun. I’m sure the cop doesn’t use it. Because he isn’t a real cop, but a summer cop. He looks too young to be a real cop. He isn’t a cop who shoots at things.
When the phone rings, nights, our mother ignores it. My brother and his friends have turned, this summer, our mother says, into trouble.
My brother is pushing it, our mother says.
He is treading, she says, on thin ice.
But my brother is just fucked up in the way that most of us are this summer. The difference is he’s learned how not to care. Or he’s learned how not to feel.
Blame our mother’s pills or blame some skill not all of us have. But our mother has reached her limit. She’s at her absolute edge.
So I’m the one who answers the phone each time it rings. I’m the one who helps the cop with my brother sitting in some stranger’s car.
I’ve been spending time, alone, in our father’s study. Our father’s study smells like apple tobacco, which doesn’t smell like apples.
I was once attracted to the picture of the apple on the bag. So I once tried to eat pieces of tobacco when our father was putting it into his pipe.
Our father said, Go ahead.
He said, It won’t hurt you.
The tobacco tasted like dirt.
Our father said, Go ahead.
He said, It won’t kill you.
The woman who owns the car is a local. You can tell this by her car. And by what she’s wearing. And how she’s standing against the wall.
She says, Get him out.
The cop says, Calm down.
She says, I will not calm down.
She hugs her bag and looks at her car, at my brother sitting inside it. But looking at him like that won’t break him down. He’s been known to sit for a very long time. And the cop has been known to stand there, useless, for just as long.
The night before our father left, he grabbed our mother’s wrist as she was walking through a room. To talk, he said, but our mother said she had nothing to say and tried to pull away from our father.
Our father seemed to forget where we were. Not physically. But more in terms of schedule.
He seemed to forget he was scheduled to leave us the following day. That he was leaving us to be with his woman. That we were in the process of adjusting to his leaving.
• • •
My brother’s friends will find the car my brother took stuck in sand by the water. They’ll find my brother inside the car, his head pressed to the wheel.
At first, it’ll look to his friends like my brother is sleeping. They’ll make some jokes like wake that lazy fucker up. And they’ll go on like this, as they often do, for as long as they can.
The cop knocks on the window. He has one hand on his nightstick.
I’m scared, I admit, of what might happen. Bad things have happened, and the cop, too, is likely scared.
My brother presses his face to the window.
He says, Call my fucking mother.
He says, Call my fucking sister.
We have your sister, the cop says.
He says, This is your sister right here.
The cop shakes his head and looks at me. He laughs and wants me to laugh as well. He wants this to be our private joke. My fucked-up brother not seeing that I’m right here.
But the cop isn’t even a real cop. So I’m not going to have a joke with him.
Instead I tell him to get my brother out of the car. It’s his job, I say, to get my brother out. Or I’ll call our father, I say.
The cop doesn’t want me calling our father. Even the locals know what our father is like.
Not that our father is even around. I mean now that he’s gone. But the cop doesn’t know our lives.
• • •
The girl once dared me to steal from the market. The thing I stole had to be longer than my arm.
It was a dumb dare. There weren’t many things that long in the market.
There was beef jerky nearly as long as my arm. And there were watermelons nearly that long.
I walked the aisles and found a statue of something holy. It was a statue of a person. I can’t even tell you who it was. And I didn’t know if it was for sale. But I walked right out, carrying the statue like it was mine.
I, too, have looked in our mother’s drawer. I’ve held the bottle of pills. I’ve shaken it. I’ve opened it and looked inside.
I’ve thought about taking the pills. And I’ll take the pills in the near future. Just to see if they do the same things to me. Make my brain fire all wild. Make me some broken-down machine.
Most nights, I walk my brother back to the house. He often wants to stop somewhere to eat. The only place open, besides the market, is on the boardwalk.
Then it’s terrible having to sit with my brother. Terrible how fast he eats.
How I have to say, Slow down.
I have to say, It’s not going to run off your plate.
In our father’s study, I sit in his leather chair. I put my feet up on the desk. I put my feet up on the other leather chair.
In my head, I tell our father’s woman, Sit here.
In my head, I tell her, Do this.
I can’t tell you what this is about.
It’s something to do with power. I mean my lack of power.
There are ways I want to hurt her.
There are many ways, I now can admit.
I won’t hurt you, I tell her, in my head.
Our mother was kicking our father’s legs. It was pathetic how weak our mother was. How persistent our father was.
He said, Kids, go to your rooms.
But we were too old to send to our rooms. So we stood right there and waited for our mother to win.
My brother’s friends will think my brother is sleeping in the car. But my brother’s arms won’t be how sleeping people often hold their arms.
They’ll then have a decision to make. To take this seriously or not.
They’ll decide to take this seriously.
They’ll try to open the doors. But the doors will be locked. The windows will be up. So they’ll bang on the windows. They’ll push on the body of the car.
When our father brought me into his study, it meant I was in trouble.
Like when I stole the statue from the market. The cashier dragged me back inside. He called our father and stared me down. Our father was enraged. Not enraged at me, but at the cashier for calling when our father was working.
Then, later, at home, it was me he was enraged with. Then he yelled at me for stealing. He said stealing was for the poor. And did I want people thinking I was poor.
I walked in on them, and the woman saw me walk in.
I’ve told this story a thousand times. I’ve told it a million fucking times.
That I saw them and she saw me. That she didn’t let go of our father. That she looked at me while touching him like what are you going to do.
Like he’s not your father now.
She said something into our father’s ear.
There was a lot happening in a little time.
And I knew one of us in that room was to blame. Not just for that moment, but for all the moments that happened before and all that would happen after.
My brother punches the windshield, and the woman drops her bag.
I can see what sad groceries she’s bought. I can see she’s a desperate woman, and she’s moving, now, toward her car.
This isn’t a good idea. The cop and I know what my brother is capable of. Bad things have happened many times. So the cop tells the woman to stay where she is. He’ll take care of this, he says.
But the woman says she’s done. She’s fed up, she says, with this dumb game. She wants to go home, she says.
And I wonder for a second about her home, what’s even there.
Our mother never pulled away from our father. It was my brother who disconnected them. He yanked them apart with a force that surprised us all.
Then he left the house and didn’t come back for the night.
Our mother went to a guest room and slammed the door, then opened the door, then slammed it.
Our father just stood there, staring at a wall. I felt sorry for him in that moment, and then I didn’t. And I didn’t for a very long time.
But I will in the future, when he loses it all. I mean the near future. And I mean it all.
There are nights when my brother’s brain is firing correctly. On these nights, he’s more like he used to be.
On these nights, my brother says the other nights, the rougher nights, will make for a good story. Like someday they’ll be funny to us.
Like the night he thought he was stuck on a lawn.
Like the night he let the dog fall from the window.
But it wasn’t a good story, as it turned out, my brother just being a lazy fucker on a lawn.
And it wasn’t a good story, the dog with three legs bandaged up.
Then all the nights him acting up in strangers’ cars.
Then the car he drove away in. The car stuck in the sand. My brother inside, his head to the wheel.
Then one of his friends smashing a window. One of them running to the boathouse. One of them calling for help.
The cop standing by the car that day won’t say, Good story.
But my brother won’t be dead that day. He’ll just be passed out like a dumb bitch. Just passed out cold at the wheel.
One night, we were eating dinner, and our mother left the room.
Then she came back holding a shirt and said, What’s this.
Our father, not looking up, said, What’s what.
And our mother said, This, and held the shirt high, and our father looked up and said, What.
Our mother said, This, and our father sighed and looked at me and said, It looks like a shirt, and ate.
Our mother stretched out the shirt, which was a woman’s shirt, and said, Whose shirt is this, and our father said, Is it yours.
Our mother said, No it’s not mine, and our father said to me, Is it yours, and I said, No.
So our father said to my brother, Is it yours, and my brother looked at his plate, and our father laughed and said, I guess we have a mystery on our hands.
And our mother said, I guess we have a mystery on your hands, and she threw the shirt at our father, and it made a painful-sounding smack, and it fell into his food, and our father looked at us, and the phone was ringing, and our mother, again, left the room.
Now my brother punches the windshield harder. He punches with the force that’s needed to crack it. We know the force that’s needed.
The cop is reaching for his radio. There’s static, then the cop talking numbers into his shirt.
The woman is walking through the lot. She’s walking straight to her car. Her face looks fierce, and this will be something. This will be a whole big show.
Our father had brought me into his study. He told me to sit. Neither of us talked at first.
I could hear sounds from another room. Music or dishes. It doesn’t matter.
What you saw, he said.
What you think you saw, he said.
And I remembered a dream I had the night before. In the dream, I was standing in a field. And I was able to see the back of my head, while seeing through the front of my head.
And remembering the dream wasn’t unlike having the dream.
I mean I was part there, part not.
Our father looked at me too hard. The study smelled like tobacco. And it wasn’t even good for you. I’m not sure why he ever let me eat it.
What you think you saw, he said.
He said, You didn’t see.
Then he held out his hand to shake mine.
We were making some kind of deal.
You can’t say a word, he said.
You need to swear, he said.
On your mother’s life, he said.
As if he even believed in the power of swearing.
I was at the point where I almost believed.
I mean I wanted so much to believe.
So I swore on our mother’s life.
So I swore on our father’s life.
Because fuck them both for putting me there.
So I was going to hell.
I told our mother after she found the shirt.
How I pushed the woman into the sink.
How I held her there like what are you going to do.
I mean I thought our mother would want to know.
I mean everyone wanted to know.
But the way our mother was looking at me.
Like I’d become some brutal guy.
Like I was now that fucking guy.
By the time I get to the car that night, my brother will be gone. One of his friends will have walked him home.
It’ll just be the cop standing by the car. And it won’t be night but light already. The following day already.
We’ll both look at the water.
I’ll be tempted to talk about it.
Say something about how still it is.
Or something about how blue it is.
But the cop will say, He’s going to kill himself.
He’ll say, Is that what you want.
I’ll say, Is that what you want.
He’ll say, Is that what you want.
The statue was big, and it was heavy, and it must have been important.
I meant to take it all the way to the boathouse. I meant to hold it high above my head. I would hold it like the holy thing I knew it was standing in for.
And the girl would just die laughing. Everyone would just die. Because what a fucked-up thing, of all the things, to steal.
But they would never know the feeling I had standing outside the market. The feeling of power that came from stealing.
Or it came from the thing I stole.
Or it came from feeling like part of a club.
It came from our father, and I mean Our father, who.
For a second it felt holy.
And in the next second, I was stopped.
And had I not been caught, it might have been something that changed my life for good.
Now my brother is punching the windshield with both fists.
In another context, this could be funny, his arms just firing, wild.
In that other context, this could be one of those stories we tell for years.
But there’s nothing funny, in this moment, about my brother.
And there’s nothing funny about the cop.
There’s nothing funny at all about this night like any fucking night.
No, there’s something funny about the woman.
It’s the way she’s running to her car.
The way her shoes land hard on the ground.
And the insects crashing into her face.
And her poor windshield about to crack.
And the cop saying, Stop, like she’s going to stop.
The cop saying, I said stop, and what.
I mean what’s the cop even going to do.
Do you think he’s going to chase her down.
Do you think he’s going to shoot her.