Brother and Sister

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Something rippled through the room. Something unsaid. Something left over from a previous debate or argument, maybe not even between the brother and sister, but something. Something not yet resolved.

-

“I can’t believe that’s what I said to him.”

“What? It can’t be worse that the last guy. Wait, or was it the guy before that?”

“Funny. For god’s sake I asked him if he minded that I had night terrors… if I woke up screaming would he be scared.”

“What? You can’t ask someone that on a first date! I mean, is that even true? Do you?”

“No but I just needed a beforehand excuse to leave in the middle of the night if I needed to. I told him it would be like Sarah Michelle Gellar in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Like, when she wakes up with no hair. That’s what I scream like.”

He did mock screaming faces as his sister, which she tried to ignore as she drove slowly up the path. They were off the main road and sounds of pebbles under car tyres came through the floor as a soft crunch. He continued to try and distract her, now with a silently screaming face and hand gestures with splayed fingers for effect.

“Stop it! You want me to crash into one of these old peoples’ cars? We’d get him kicked out before we even set foot through the door…” despite herself she was laughing “…and that is not worse than what you asked the other one.”

“What did I ask?” There was no sense of trepidation in his voice, more like genuine interest at what seemed to be a funny memory forgotten.

“You asked him if he saw his brother die.”

“It came up in conversation!” He laughed now, knowingly and embarrassed, but aware that he was making his sister laugh as well.

“How? Please tell me… how does that come up in conversation on a first date at a restaurant?”

“It was on his Tindr or something-”

“-No way come on! That is not going to be what someone puts on Tindr about themselves-”

“-Well somehow I knew and first of all it was at a bar after we had been to a restaurant. Second, we were discussing films and he said his favourite was Sophie’s Choice and I said I’d seen it and I tried to do my Meryl Streep impression of crying in three different accents for him, which is really good by the way, and then I asked him if he’d read the book and he said no and then I asked him if, well, you said it.”

“He’d seen his own brother die?”

“It seemed relevant at the time!” He was, for some reason, fighting to prove his argument to his sister but knew, alongside their giggling, it was a losing battle to convince even himself.

“That would never be relevant. At all. And there’s no way someone would list that on a dating profile.”

She brought the car around a corner, the crunching path now replaced by tarmac, and stopped in the middle of several other cars. She could see one woman sat in her car, just staring out into the field beyond. She didn’t seem to be looking at anything in particular, just noticing the oak tree in the distance perhaps, or the sign to the right of the car park that gave directions to a nine hole golf course. They both looked to the left and felt the reflection of the building on the car’s windows. The windows of the building fit perfectly over their own eyes.

“Do you think he’ll be okay here?” Her eyes lingered back on the golf course sign for a moment. He took her hand and gave it a little shake.

“He’ll be fine. He’ll be flirting with the nurses already. He won’t even notice he’s not at home anymore.”

She shut the boot after taking out three or four bags and handing them to her brother. She hoped he liked the few things they salvaged from the house; that he wouldn’t ask or get angry about the things they were forced to sell or had just decided to throw. She pushed the button on her car keys just to make sure she had locked it.

“You always do that. It’s fine.”

“I always get this panic about six steps away that I’ve not locked something. Like the front door or the car. I always prefer to check.”

“You’re like Mum. She couldn’t even leave her bag in the kitchen at home without checking she zipped it up.”

“That’s because you always tried to get cash out of it.”

“That is a hideous lie! At the most I would look for chewing gum to cover up the cigarette stench.”

“Because that’s better.”

They walked up the front steps, she carefully navigating the cracks with her heels, and went through the open side of the glass double doors. The light inside was dull, duller than outside. There was a scent of vanilla, maybe cinnamon too, wafting from somewhere. Music, of no particular genre other than ‘calming’, played, and like last time a constant jingling and clinking of cups and saucers seemed to speak to them in the reception area. There was a lady sat behind the desk. She wasn’t there the last time. She was typing something a breakneck speed. Whilst the sister spoke to the receptionist and asked about their father, all the time trying to ignore the lazy distain being directed at her from across the desk, the brother took a seat opposite the main doors. The stained glass doors, which he hadn’t noticed when he walked through them just moments before, blossomed a kind of kaleidoscope of light into the room: pinks and purples, blues mixed with greens. They littered the floor like spilt pots of paint. He had a quick vision of him and his sister at their kitchen table (maybe Granmi’s?), flicking paints over pieces of white paper, newspaper, some type of homemade canvas. He couldn’t remember if his father was there. Perhaps mother was.

A couple were sat just a few chairs down from him. He was trying to get something out of her handbag, his hands finding it difficult to bend or clasp – or so it seemed from a slight distance. His wife – again presumed – gently took the bag and clipped it open. She took out a newspaper. An orange. She peeled it for him. She gave him the first segment.

“You okay?” His sister sat beside him and fanned herself with some papers she had just been given. “Hey, you okay there? What’s got you?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just,” in a lower voice, “watching that couple there. They’re so sweet. She’s peeled his orange for him.”

“Are you getting romantic in your old age?”

“I’m 29.”

“I’m 33. You’ll feel it soon.”

He sighed. “Can we get into his room yet?”

“She said they’re just vacuuming the carpets on his floor. A few minutes. You will though, you know.”

“What?”

“That sudden dread when your stomach drops and realises you’ve got a decade until your ovaries shrink.”

“First of all,” he laughed – and, despite a slight, unconscious twinge, she was laughing too - “I don’t think I have that exact problem. Second of all, you have Tommy.”

“I know. I know.” She took a sharp intake of breath, just a gasp, as though trying to hold something in rather than let it go. “I know I’m lucky. Mark and Tommy… they’re great. But I… I want a kid of my own too, you know?”

“You will. It’s early days.”

“It doesn’t feel that way. And you know how dad is about Tommy.”

“He loves him. You know he does. Whatever he says is just… his old fashioned bullshit.”

“He doesn’t like that Tommy’s not mine. He never has.”

“Tell you what. I’ll adopt an African baby and sling her around this place in a papoose and take some of the heat off you, huh?” She punched him lightly on this upper arm. He feigned pain. “It’s the only way I’ll get a kid anyway.”

“Don’t say that. You can have whatever family you choose.”

“Look, this is getting a bit too serious talk for me. It’s not even noon yet.”

“Yeah, well, you might need to get through a one stand without resorting to Meryl Streep night terrors or whatever before you can have a relationship that justifies a child.”

“Fuck you. You’re right,” he punched her back,” but fuck you.”

Their attention both fell again on the elderly couple a few seats down from them. The wife was unfolding her husband’s handkerchief. The way she did it was so loving, so careful, as though it held something beyond its basic purpose and use; it was perhaps an heirloom or gift from a child, maybe for his retirement that was presented in a box, wrapped with a bow, when the gentleman retired from… teaching, or medicine?

Brother and sister realised they were both doing the same thing: looking and thinking, admiring almost the simple relationship between the two older lovers – and that love itself, as easy and basic as it appeared to be, could be simple after all.

“Do you think mum and dad were ever like that?”

“God no. Maybe in the beginning. But no, I really don’t think so.”

“That makes me sad.”

“Why? It’s not like they had any hobbies… or shared interests. They never did anything together. If they were meant to be together it would be them sat here wouldn’t it? It would be them blowing each others’ noses.”

“That’s not what they’re doing!” he hissed at his sister, embarrassed they would be overheard, “they’re just caring for one other.”

“First: don’t feign embarrassment. Not the boy who once enthralled our said parentals with a New Year drunkenly regaled tale of “The Missing Condom” and second: as I said…” she paused here momentarily - for dramatic effect or something else was unclear - “if they were meant to be here, together, they would be. Dad wouldn’t be here alone and well, Mum wouldn’t be… somewhere else.”

“You can say it you know. Not saying it doesn’t make it any less real.”

“I know. I just always hope that… I don’t know.”

He could have easily berated her for such false ideas and illusions. He often did, but there was something in her voice, in the room itself, that made him think again and keep schtum. He occasionally forgot that her bravado, that he knew so well, was in fact just that… a cover. He took her hand.

“Do you think they were romantic though? When they first started out?”

“They had us didn’t they?” she replied.

“I think sometimes that maybe one of them had an affair. Probably mum. That’s why I can’t settle on any one person at anytime.”

“That is such bullshit and you know it. You meet guy after guy because that’s what you enjoy doing. It suits you. And it means you never have to pay for drinks.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve seen you work a bar. Never in our ten years of drinking have I ever seen you buy a man a drink. It’s a skill, it really is.”

He looked at his sister, his hand still cupping hers. He couldn’t decide whether to be flattered by her attention to detail and possible awe at his social talents, or slightly offended that that was how she defined his behaviour towards people, towards men: selfish, money grabbing, alcohol fuelled.

“Is that true?”

“Is it true that most men, even the straight ones, somehow find you attractive? Yes. Is it true that your lack of monogamy is mum’s fault? No. Anyway, it would’ve been dad who would’ve affected you anyway. Not mum.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you’re a boy… dad’s indiscretions would have affected you; mum’s would’ve affected me. If there were any.”

“That is so sexist. And borderline homophobic I’m sure.”

“Are you serious?” She was laughing at how irritated his face had become.

“Yes! You’re saying that a mother can’t influence her son’s behaviour because of gender? Because of sex? That is ridiculous.”

“I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what I meant.” She ignored his intent gaze, shifting her head to one side, her posture too.

Something rippled through the room. Something unsaid. Something left over from a previous debate or argument, maybe not even between the brother and sister, but something. Something not yet resolved.

The brother seemed to pick up on this, consciously or not, and moved as though to stand up. He took his hand from his sister’s.

“Come on. Let’s see if we can get into the old duffer’s room yet.”

She went and asked at the desk if the room was free. Brother watched as sister tapped her fingers on the desk, her manner irritated even though she wasn’t aware of this herself. He walked over to the elevators thinking how telling people are, how tiny movements reveal so much about a person… especially those they aren’t even aware of. His sister’s tapping and flicking of nails on the desk, probably rolling her eyes; she will have no idea, he thought to himself, how rude she appears - how stuck up. He called the elevator to go up. He wondered if he had any tells. Perhaps, he thought, it’s how you treat others too - like how peeling an orange would tell how much you loved someone, each segment showing how deeply you cared for them; each segment a year or a vow or a memory.

The elevator doors opened with a soft ring. There was nothing there. He turned around to see if anyone else had noticed. Was it a usual thing here… with the building being as old as its inhabitants? He turned back to face the open elevator and could make out several pipes and ropes in the shaft, the blackness oddly alluring and terrifying at the same time. He stood on tiptoes and peered down, then up. He smiled. It was kind of thrilling. He felt it: his pulse, some sweat in his armpit. He could hear a churning and chugging of wires as the elevator, presumably, was coming up or down to fill the gaping hole. He was on the ground floor though so the drop couldn’t be that dangerous could it? He dared himself to have a second look – how far down did it go? The door closed as silently as it had opened. The space was filled as if never there.

He felt a tap on his shoulder.

“You pressed the button?”

“Yes. No, they’re not working.”

She looked at him for a moment, weighing him up as only a sibling can. She suggested the stairs.

“We might as well see these vacuumed carpets we’re paying for.”

The room still looked nothing like the brochure. Just a few weeks ago they’d dropped off some things for him but when they walked into the bedroom now, for the second time, it suddenly hit them where their father really was. What had really happened to him - and that he had become old. Even moments earlier in the reception, the brother and sister did not see their father as an elderly man; like most children whatever their age, they saw their father as a man who seemed to defy aging, who could still change a tyre for them or fix a blown fuse when called, panicked, at 10 o’clock at night; he could still flip eggs to cure a morning hangover; still grate on them so very much in that unique way that only a parent can: that look, that tone, that shrug of disinterested interest. But now, standing in the room without him and without his gripes for putting his shoes in the wrong cupboard, without him to gripe at, they saw what had really happened… and what they had ignored for some time.

“What’s that? She’s where?”

Behind them a woman in a white suit was passing quickly along the corridor. She seemed to be in pursuit of someone. The brother and sister looked out into the hallway but couldn’t see who had spoken or where the lady had turned to go. The hallway was pale. They hadn’t noticed this before either. The door to their father’s room, in fact every door along the corridor, was white – perhaps an off white, like an poorly duck egg. He could sense she was doing the same, as both their eyes trailed back from the corridor to the bedroom door to the carpet to the bedspread. White, beige, dull brown. Nothing in the surroundings signified excitement or joy or even relaxation in old age. They looked at each other for a fleeting moment but in that second enough was said; the colours, the room, (now that they had noticed it, the building itself) seemed… not deathly… that was slightly ridiculous… but just hollow… no, that wasn’t it either. Their eyes met for a second time as they turned to close the door… what was it?

“Where do you think Dad’ll want these things?” He put one of the bags down on the bed.

“He doesn’t even know we’re bringing them so I don’t think it matters. I hope it’s a surprise for him. I hope he sees it that way at least.”

“Maybe…” the brother tapped a finger on his lip, looking around the room for space, “by the window? Over there?”

She walked away from the bedroom door, now closed-to, and ran her hands over the small television, the pillow at the foot of the single bed, touched her index finger to one of the bookcase’s shelves. She sighed. The room seemed full of folds and undulations, bends and curves like the skin of growing old. She saw her father in every rise and every fall of every surface: his aging face was there in the bed’s tundra, his thinning curls in the bumps of carpet. How, she thought to herself, how could they not have seen this for what it was a week ago… or, when they looked it up in the brochure months ago?

Empty. Yes, empty was the word.

Brother and sister turned and looked at each other as though something unspoken, but still heard and understood, had occurred between them. That was it - that was what the place was, this building; that was what the colours had told them.

They snapped out of whatever reverie they had found themselves in and started to shuffle and move as only two people who know each other well enough to leave something unsaid can.

“Yeah over there is a good idea. He’ll see it as soon as he comes in then too.”

“Do you think we’ll be staying late?”

“Why? Another date?”

“Good one. No. I have no energy for anyone after night terrors boy.”

“You do remember our conversation just half an hour ago right? That it was you who claimed night terrors?” She knew, like their father, how to irritate her sibling with just the flick of intonation, a dry tone. “Or was that a turn on for him?”

“Funny. And no,” and he knew, as only a sibling can, that to ignore such invitations a rise was the best way to irritate in reply, “no, I’ve got a job interview tomorrow and just, well, just need to go over a few things.”

“An interview?”

He kept his back turned to his sister during the whole exchange. He zipped open two or three bags. He took things out and placed them down. “Yes. In the morning.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure about what?”

“Well, after what happened? Are you, you know, ready to get back into work again?”

The zipping and opening of pockets and linings of bags continued on both sides of the room.

“Yes. I think so. I think I am. Yes.”

A knocking could now be heard from the corridor. It grew louder and after a few raps was keeping a steady beat. Rap - rap rap… rap – rap rap. She tapped her foot to it without knowing. Then there were a few voices. Maybe staff? A visitor? Then a raised voice, a command, then silence as though something was in wait, then a continuation of rap – rap rap at the same tempo as before.

“Do you think they’re okay?”

“It’s probably just one of the nutters here. They’ll be fine.”

“You shouldn’t call them that. You really shouldn’t.”

“Oh come on. It makes things easier if you make fun of them.”

“Making fun of Dad?”

“He’s not a nutter.”

“But he’s old.”

“We’ll get old. It happens.”

“Are you sure you’re okay for tomorrow? I can’t believe you just mentioned this now.”

“And I can’t believe your skills at changing topic.”

“First of all –”

“-Do you notice how often we both say ‘first of all’ or some kind of ordering phrase? It’s like we’re always counting down to something. It’s depressing.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

He put down the shirt that was in his hand. He bowed his head a little which was something his sister hardly ever saw him do. She held the quiet and just waited. She kept folding the same scarf in her hands.

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine. And,” he picked up the shirt and put it into the drawer nearest the bed, “if I don’t get it, at least I’m back right? I’m trying.”

“Yes,” she hung the scarf up now and closed the cupboard door, “yes, you’re right. And you are. Which is good.”

The mirror of the room hung on the right wall. If you entered the room, you would see the double bed before you with headboard resting on the left wall. The balcony windows would be straight opposite you, vaguely coloured curtain tied at each side. A plastic looking desk with space for a notepad or laptop to the left, bedside tables on the right… left, right, straight ahead… everything in the room was in one of these three directions. Just the door would be behind you, in the fourth wall, the wall that no one ever seems to notice: the wall that gets you out, that lets you escape those three other walls that can comfort or contain, soothe or stress. The siblings didn’t notice it now, but were too busy getting the other sides of the room just right, just so, for what would make him feel comfortable, never thinking about the door, the exit, that wall that leads out and onto something more, something different from where you sleep, where you stay for most of your time whether you want to or not. The mirror showed them moving and turning and folding and, at slight twists of light or grimace, you could see a five year old in their cheeks and nose; a hint of their teenage years in the flick of their hair or brush of fringe behind ear; a glimpse of a baby even, their infant skin still there in their lips and mouths when smiling, when talking to one another across the room.

Something dropped. They both turned and saw it roll under the bed, fleeting, like a darting cat. He knelt and reached under the bed, and after a few seconds his hand found it: small, round. He threw it gently into the air as he stood up.

“What is it?”

He held it out to his sister as a way of answering her question.

“Beats me” he replied.

She picked it out of his hand and held the tiny ball on the tips of her fingers and thumb. She ran the dimples and scuffs over her palm. It was a golf ball. Little flicks of mud were dried over its surface, some smudges making a dashed outline like that of a smiling, naughty face. A little boy covered in dirt. Red lettering had faded away with use, with being hit; she imagined, for a moment, this tiny ball careering through the air, blue, a cloud promising rain, flashing towards a fairway, a hole. She remembered now how much her father loved playing. How often he’d played. She’d put his golfing shoes away in the cupboard hadn’t she? Surely she’d packed them? She wrapped her fingers around the ball now, tightly, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Her hand, ball still clenched, bobbed up and down upon her knee.

“We never really knew him, did we?”

“What do you mean?” He had his back to her. His response was flippant. “What are we doing here, then?”

“Exactly. What are we doing here?”

He turned around and saw her sat there cradling that small object, this memory she’d found.

“Of course we knew him.”

“Did we? Do we? I… I, god I didn’t even remember his…” she pointed her fist to the wardrobe, managed to say another “his” before a slurred “fucking” and, as her brother took a step closer, “golf shoes!”

She was sobbing now. Loudly (and seemingly to her brother, out of nowhere)… but this small catalyst, this tiny bombshell held in her hand had started something, unearthed something. He stood frozen for a moment as though shocked for once to see her in such a state, but suddenly snapped to and rushed to the wardrobe.

“Look, we’ll find them! They’re here don’t worry, I’m sure-”

“-No, no. I know. I know I didn’t pack them. I didn’t even think about them. I think I, bloody hell, I sold them. I sold them and didn’t even think about it.” He continued pulling a few shoes and slippers out of the bottom shelves. There was a belt. “No, stop. Please. Just stop. They’re not… there…”

…she stopped mid sentence; in fact they both stopped. There was a tap, ever so gentle, upon the bedroom door. They looked at one another. In the mirror their profiles were slim but bent now. Both were holding something: an item and object that belonged to their father, a possession of what once was, once went somewhere, once was used before –

“-here. They’re in here.” It was a woman’s voice. “They’ve been getting your bits and bobs ready for you, Sir.” She sounded kind.

The golf ball rolled from her hands and across the floor. She hadn’t even realised she’d dropped it. The door began to open and the ball stopped, just short of the threshold.

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