“I’ve got the ennuis,” he says rummaging through my utensil drawer, his words slowing like cold molasses. He finds the vegetable peeler, eyeballs the blade for dried up bits of carrot.
“I do wash my dishes,” I tell him. “And you don’t strip the skin off dried figs. That’s just dumb.”
Two years ago, my brother started showing up on my doorstep Saturdays, when Ellen, his wife, shopped at the mall with her girlfriends. He camps out here all day, so he feels compelled to bring me stuff I don’t want or need and trash or donate later. Picture frames from the dollar store with warped black and white photographs of sad kids. Mesh bags of onions, green tails sprouting out the ends. Today, a box of dried Smyrna figs. I grimace, tell Alan wasps die inside them and get absorbed into the flesh, next time bring something crisp and juicy, maybe Arkansas black apples at the peak of their season.
When she’s ready for him to come home, Ellen calls me instead of him. She whimpers, “He’s disappeared again, hasn’t he,” as if she can’t guess where he is. “No worries, he’s here, Ellen,” I reassure her, putting a quick end to her misery. “I’ll return him.” He’s like a boomerang between us.
Along with the oblivious gifts Alan brings, he paralyzes me with complaints so petty and vague I flounder in the cumulus of them. There are the “actuals,” like his usual ham and cheese from Don’s Delicatessen that arrived the other day on white instead of rye, followed by the “hypotheticals,” like what if Don had put something on the sandwich Alan was allergic to and Alan didn’t notice it ‘til he started gasping for air or breaking out into hives. I just roll my eyes. My brother’s got his own mildewy basement, with a tv and mini fridge. Why drive 50 miles round trip to visit when all we talk about is the way our parents ignored us. Not to mention, whenever I open my mouth to speak, he’s off in another world. I’ve learned to abhor a vacuum, to fill that empty time and space recounting the times we were young and mother forgot us in the car while she was shopping and someone called the police. Alan just slumps over to the sofa and starts fiddling with the channels till he and the remote become one.
When we were kids, Alan and I scrapped like cats, but neither of us can remember what about. We never saw our parents much, never saw them touching, their voices just insect drones in our ears. We wonder why we don’t buzz, how uncurious we must appear when we just assume no one cares what we think. “A penny for your thoughts” is a question we never really understood. Not even worth that, we’d agree. We didn’t bond till we were both in college, when we realized what we had in common was a mother and father whose laps we couldn’t remember ever having sat on.
Today, Alan’s been quiet—pensive, he’d correct, for an unusually long while. He’s got the cartoons on without sound and is doodling in the sketchbook he keeps in his backpack. I pass him a Michelob, recite for the hundredth time the moment that stinging epiphany about our parents landed. He reaches out with his free hand to grab the beer, his eyes on The Simpsons when he asks, “So, anything going on love-wise?”
I ignore the question, waltz over to the kitchen island, rearrange pears in the antique wooden bowl I splurged on when I moved into my apartment. I look out the window. Snow is starting to fall. If I don’t get Alan out the door soon, he’ll never leave, and Ellen will fret. I point to the changing weather, the grey sky. He’s too engrossed in changing channels to notice. I stamp my shoes, slam cupboards. Nothing makes a sound.
Alan hasn’t stirred for a while. My cat jumps up, yawns, and stretches the length of his lap. The remote tumbles to the floor. Little by little, the atoms that make up Alan’s lank body merge with the cushion. Soon all that’s left of him are his rumpled clothes: a flannel shirt, cargo pants, underwear, socks and shoes. I wish he’d stop doing that. I shake my head at the space formerly occupied by my brother. Whiskers’ hackles rise and he leaps to the top tier of his cat tree.
My phone’s ringing off the hook. I sigh, walk over to the sofa to fold Alan’s clothes and pile them on the hallway table. I pick up his drawing pad and flip through the pages he’s filled in: Ducklings paddling upside down in a pond. The dog he can’t have because Ellen was bitten when she was little. A list of things for him to pick up on his way home. The moon. Some blobs that could be clouds. I tear off the last page, a bulleted memo, magnet it to the fridge:
Ask sis:
- About work
Is she dating- Why would wasps want to do that
