A Book of American Martyrs(45)
“‘Agenda’—what’s that?”
“Some idea. Some reason. God damn motive.”
Lanky, loose-limbed Darren. At thirteen he was nearly as tall as our mother and he loomed over me when he wished as if to threaten me with his very being. Out of a strange sibling shyness he seemed to avoid Melissa whom he did not wish to bully but with whom he found it difficult to speak.
Essentially, Darren was protective of his younger sisters. If it came to that. For such protectiveness is a responsible brother’s duty.
“Oh, hell. Who cares.”
Darren spoke in sudden exasperation, disgust.
We were upstairs in the narrow low-ceilinged hall that buzzed faintly at times with flies you could not always see. Rudely my brother pushed past me as if my questions had annoyed him. Might’ve avoided bumping into me if he’d tried but he didn’t try, breathing loudly through his mouth like an animal hot-panting, eager to get away before he committed worse damage to his sister.
In a family of more than two siblings there is the inevitable oldest sibling, could be a girl, in this case a boy, burdened with a precocious knowledge of family politics that excludes the other siblings who remain therefore young, oblivious. Such responsibility is thankless, Darren seemed to know beforehand, as it is unavoidable.
One day I would be asked if my brother had been an angry child, or an unusually emotional child, before our father’s death, and I would say protectively My brother was a normal boy for his age, his class, and his time. We were a normal family and we were happy except when we were confused about whether we were happy or not because we were made to think about it, and to wonder.
And did we love one another?—yes. We did.
“YOU KIDS! C’MON! We’re late.”
From downstairs Mom called us. That voice!
A bright voice, a happy-seeming voice, a voice of motherly no-nonsense. The TV-Mom voice at the (playful) edge of patience lifting up the stairs—“Get down here, mes amis, or we’re leaving without you!”
Here was a festive voice. You might almost think.
Not the voice we’d (over)hear on the phone pleading begging Gus please return this call. Gus I am so worried about you where are you darling.
Melissa was already downstairs—or already outside, buckled into her seat in the station wagon—for (adopted, ontologically insecure) Melissa was never late.
Indeed, if Mom had wanted us to leave the house promptly at noon it was now several minutes after noon and it was proper for her to betray exasperation.
Quickly we descended the stairs. In the lead Darren was heavy-footed as often he was in the (rented) house on the Salt Hill Road which he resented, as if he’d hoped to break the wooden steps.
Close behind him Naomi did not—quite—dare to be too close for fear of treading on her brother’s heels which would provoke Darren to turn furiously upon her, striking her with the flat of his hand as you’d discipline a too-eager dog.
Sometimes (it might be confessed) Naomi trod upon her brother’s heels out of younger-sister mischief, or sibling-spite; such small assaults were deliberate enough, yet easily confused with accidental assaults for which it was unjust to be blamed.
“Watch out.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose.”
Almost in tandem we ran from the house. For always there was the half-pleasurable touch of child-panic—
Wait!—wait for me.
A BRIGHT WARM DAY in mid-June in Huron County, Michigan: school had been out just one week.
An incandescent light shimmered from the sky that was bleached of color, reflecting the rough water of Lake Huron five miles to the north, and not visible from the Salt Hill Road.
In a blur of pale lilac—linen slacks, matching jacket—our mother slid into the driver’s seat of the Chevy station wagon. Her glossy dark hair was plaited into a single thick braid that fell between her shoulder blades. Her eyes, that tended to water in bright air, were shielded behind sunglasses, and her mouth, described by our father (embarrassingly) as eminently kissable, was a dark plum color.
Beside our mother was our little sister Melissa pert and darkly pretty. So small, and so unobtrusive, you might almost miss that she was there.
But always, Melissa was.
We did not like to consider—(Darren and Naomi did not like to consider)—how frequently Melissa sat in front with our mother or, less frequently, our father. Overnight it had happened, seemingly irrevocably, that as soon as Melissa was old enough not to be strapped into the demeaning child-seat in the rear, she sat in the passenger’s seat beside the driver.
We did not complain, we took not the slightest notice.
But having so often to be together in the backseat of a vehicle, the two of us older siblings, thrown into each other’s company and forced to stare steely-eyed out the side windows pointedly ignoring each other—that wasn’t so great.
Now, we were (almost) late. Hurriedly Mom backed the Chevy station wagon down the rutted and puddled driveway at an angle, cursing beneath her breath—“Damn!”
Our (rented) house three miles west of the small town of St. Croix, Michigan, was a clapboard house dingy-white as a gull’s soiled feathers. It was a forgettable house, a house you could not “see” if you were not standing before it; not a house to nourish memories though it was, or would become, a house to nourish regret like the toadstools that emerged out of wet soil around its base.