May 16, 2004
FIRST CHAPTER'The Blue Bowl'
By GEORGE MINOT
y brother, like a bird, in his annual spring migration up to Maine,
stopped off, as usual, at the other end of my buzzer in New York,
wanting a place to stay for the night.
Simon, was all he said when I asked who was there.
His crooked grin when I opened the door broke my heart. A split wound in the bruised fruit of his big, lonely head. His troubled expression, as our eyes met and slid apart, was something right out of the silver memory of my own mirror. Am I like that? His nose is sharp, like a beak, unlike anyone else's in the family-as if sharpened by misadventure. He was panting, smiling. I could picture him rushing up the stairs, leaning forward, taking them two at a time with eager, tight, stretching strides. His clothes were dirty, red discount jeans, with his dick showing, yellow shirt with a pointed collar. His shoes were shot.
We hugged. He smelled like a homeless person, which he kind of was. He had his stuff, not much, in a black heavy-duty garbage bag.
He slid through the doorway as if pulled on a string, dipping one shoulder slightly as the other shrugged up.
I asked if he wanted to take a bath.
No thanks. Let's eat. I'm really hungry. I haven't eaten for like three days.
We went to a little Mexican place around the corner, fluorescent lit, bad decor, Mexican pop music blaring, really good fajitas.
This isn't real Mexican food, Simon commented in between bulging mouthfuls. He ate a huge, heaping plate, and part of mine.
I asked him how his painting was going.
Good.
Conversation isn't easy with Simon. He spends most of his life alone, and isn't used to talking. Though once he warms up, he's fine. He can be effusive and sweet. Or he gets going on these really negative riffs. As older brother, I'm both lifelong rival and confidant-for-life. I used to explain things to him-our childhood heads on pillows on adjacent beds, awake, at night-how things worked. He runs his plans by me, or gets me to draw things out of him, as if for paternal review and approval. Then, of course, he resents me for prying, or judging, and answers in monosyllables, as if he's being interrogated. I'd just as soon not go into those things at all. He reports to me; but at the same time he wants me to butt out, let him live his own life. Which I do.
I asked him about New Orleans, where he spent, as far as I knew, the past winter.
It's okay, was all he said. Lots of rain. And stray cats.
Like him.
We touched, barely, on baseball, Red, Timmy, and Bob Dylan's bootleg album.
Yeah, it's really good.
I asked him what his plans were, this being my role. Where he was going from here. Though I knew the answer.
North, was all he said.
I let it rest, and watched him eat. His agate eyes were bloodshot. His self-cut hair was short, a little nappy. He ate like a pig.
He wasn't supposed to go to the house in Maine-Dad didn't want him there-and he knew it. He was going there anyway-Dad would never know-as he had many times before. Dad always knew. The house in Maine is a summerhouse, left to Dad by his father.
Simon felt like it was his house as much as it was Dad's, and he felt like, Why should I pay rent somewhere else, where I don't even want to be, when the house is just sitting there, empty? It's my home. Too bad if Dad doesn't want me there. I'm going anyway.
This was their routine. Simon going and living in the house for a couple of months before Dad got there, maybe slipping back in when siblings arrived, then the full run of the place again for the fall, after Dad left. Washing, before the water was turned on, in rainwater gushing from a broken gutter, eating food left over on the shelves, bundling up with blankets till it got warmer. Dad hating it, but not really doing anything about it from his Massachusetts distance. Haplessly telling him not to stay there, leaving it at that. Shaking his head in dismay. Mostly avoiding each other when they were on the island together. When Dad was there, Simon slipped off to other places he could stay. Like at sort-of-friends', or good ol' rent-for-work type deals. Or out on Burnt Island, his salvation.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Blue Bowl by George Minot Copyright © 2004 by George Minot. Excerpted by permission.
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