Robbie is seeing Nick today. His brother is flying up from Melbourne, and is expected to arrive any moment now.
‘He’s over the moon,’ Celia says. ‘Can’t wait to see you.’
Nick, eighteen months older, was always a step ahead in school or sport or whatever they were into at the time. He’s a lot more than a step ahead now. He has a job in some big telecommunications company, although Celia can’t remember which one. There’s a wife and three teenage children in Melbourne. They’re nice kids, according to Celia. Well brought up and smart – they all do well in school.
‘Do you keep in touch much?’ Robbie asks with detached curiosity.
‘Nick’s in Sydney a few times a year with work. Sometimes he stays with Mum and Dad. Megan and the kids usually come in December or January, during the holidays.’
‘Has he changed?’ Robbie visualises his brother as a teenager: tall, gangly, gregarious.
‘Well, he’s bigger ... But aren’t we all?’
Bigger? Does she mean fatter? Nick always liked his food; he ate as voraciously as he did everything else in life. Nick and Robbie were close as young children. They engaged in long extremely competitive games of backyard cricket, tore around the neighbourhood on their bikes, and traded football cards with each other before anyone else. Nick pulled away as soon as he started high school. Overnight he became more independent, more confident, more out of reach. A year later, when Robbie started at Macquarie High, he thought the same would apply for him. New friends. New experiences. A whole new life. But it wasn’t like that at all. Robbie didn’t grow; he regressed.
There’s a pounding on the door.
‘He’s here,’ Celia exclaims unnecessarily and races to answer it.
Robbie waits in the kitchen. He examines his feelings one by one. Various psychologists have recommended this strategy to him. To look inward. To put a label on whatever he is feeling. Apparently, it helps to process things, to come to terms with whatever is happening, or about to change. Apparently, it prevents a blow-out or an extreme reaction. This morning he feels apprehensive, guilty and overwhelmed. Apprehensive about the man at the door and how he may be received by him. Guilty at the longterm upset he has caused Nick, Celia and his parents. But he has learned that it’s the last feeling – being overwhelmed – that is the most dangerous one.
‘Where is he hiding?’ a voice, a man’s voice, booms down the hall. The timbre, the resonance, are only vaguely familiar.
A figure bursts into the kitchen. A big, burly figure to match the big voice. Nick stands at over six feet tall. His belly protrudes, straining the buttons of his business shirt. His face is quite boyish and his hair is darker than Robbie remembers. He envelops Robbie in a hug and Robbie fights a wave of claustrophobia. Nick pulls away before Robbie has to push him away.
‘Look at you.’ He has tears rolling down his face and doesn’t seem the slightest bit bothered by it. ‘Just look at you.’
Robbie doesn’t know what to say in response. His conversational skills are poor at the best of times.
‘Jeez, it’s so good to see you.’ Nick pulls out a chair, plonks himself down. ‘Twenty years is a lot to catch up on. You better start talking, mate.’
*
Robbie tosses and turns in bed. Nick is sleeping in the room next door – Charlie is in with Sienna – and his snores can be heard through the plasterboard wall, and probably the entire house. Nick was a heavy snorer even as a kid. Robbie recalls throwing things at his brother in the dead of night, prompting him to turn on his side, from which position the snoring was never quite as bad. It was one of the downsides of sharing a bedroom. That and the fact that Nick could come crashing through the door at any minute; Robbie could never be sure how long he’d have on his own. He used to love and hate hearing the door crash open; love and hate the commotion that followed Nick around; love and hate his snoring, because even though it was irritating, at least it was there, like a one-way conversation he could listen to. Now Robbie wonders how one brother can be so vital and present (even when sound asleep), and the other so insipid and unessential. How one can be so engaged with life, and the other so adrift.
Robbie is desperately tired but unable to sleep. Nick talked late into the night. Telling Robbie about his kids, his wife and his job. Finding photos on his phone of the children, his house and Megan, who is dark-haired, attractive and works as a dental nurse. Of course, he asked questions of Robbie. What places he’s lived. If there’s anyone special in his life. How he spends his time. But when Robbie’s replies were bare, Nick filled the gaps with even more information about himself.
At some point after dinner, when Charlie and Sienna were in bed, Celia opened some bottles of beer. Robbie sipped on one – he is cautious with alcohol – while Nick knocked back several. Drinking, drinking, drinking. Talking, talking, talking. The more he drank, the more sentimental he became.
‘I missed you, bro. I missed you every single day. I looked for your face everywhere I went.’ He started crying again. Crying and laughing at himself. ‘Look at me ... I’m a big sook.’
As the night progressed, and more alcohol was consumed, Nick’s sentimentality turned into self-recrimination.
‘I should have been watching out for you. I was your big brother, it was my job to see that you were struggling, it was my job to give you a helping hand ... I’m sorry that I didn’t do my job, that I let you down. I’m sorrier than you can ever know.’
Nick is more subdued this morning. Hungover, not quite as talkative, but still able to laugh at himself.
‘Jeez, the old head isn’t good. Have you got anything I can take, Celia?’
Celia gives him some Panadol, a glass of water and a telling-off. ‘You’re old enough to know better.’
Nick grimaces. ‘That’s what Megan would say, too.’
Robbie is mildly curious about Megan. Is she loud and unselfconscious too? Or a quieter personality, a foil to Nick’s brashness?
‘I’ve got to leave for work,’ Celia declares. ‘How long are you hanging around for, Nick?’
‘A few days. I can bunk down at Mum and Dad’s if Charlie wants his bedroom back.’
‘Never mind Charlie ... I’ll be home around five thirty.’
Celia rounds up the children, there’s a flurry of goodbyes and hugs, and the bustle progresses down the hall and out the front door.
The two brothers are left alone, sitting across from each other at the table. Nick leans forward, clears his throat.
‘Celia said there’s a school reunion. Is that why you came back?’
‘Don’t know. Maybe.’
Nick is obviously perplexed. ‘I thought you’d never want to set eyes on that lot again.’
Robbie averts his gaze from his brother to the window. For some reason this makes it easier to talk. ‘Might be the chance to put some ghosts to rest.’
An extended silence. Nick is noticeably less frenetic this morning, less inclined to rush in with anecdotes to fill the pauses. Maybe some of yesterday’s bluster was due to nerves.
‘I suppose all teenagers can be cruel at times – my three are no angels by any stretch of the imagination. But to drive you away from home, away from your family for all this time ...’
There’s a bird perched on the fence outside the window. Grey, nondescript, insubstantial, maybe a finch. It jerks its head from left to right, as though on the lookout for a companion, before staring straight ahead, obviously resigned to being alone.
I’ve got more in common with that fucking bird than any human.
‘Nah, Nick, I can’t keep blaming them. There was something amiss in me, something not right. It’s still that way ... I’m as fucked up as ever.’