My Friends

Chapter Forty-Three

FORTY-THREE

Ted explains that children know hardly anything about their parents, even if they live with them their whole lives. Because all we know about them is as moms and dads, nothing about who they were before that. We never saw them young, when they still fantasized about all the things that could happen, instead of regretting all the things that never did.

He tells her that at the end of that day when he and his friends had found the birds, Ted got home to a house with all the lights turned off. It had just started to get dark, and in the street stood a rusty car whose headlights blinded him, he couldn’t see who was sitting in it. He walked past it on tiptoe, his eyes darting about, his body so tense that when the driver suddenly touched the accelerator and the engine growled, Ted’s heart beat so hard that he jumped in the air.

He heard mocking laughter. When he squinted past the headlights he saw a broad-shouldered man in his twenties, with fists the size of shovels, sitting in the driver’s seat. The Ox.

“Were you scared, you little fag?” the man yelled through the open window. A cloud of heavy smoke billowed out after him.

The door on the passenger side opened and closed, with the heavy thud you get used to if you live on a street where everyone has twenty-year-old cars. Ted’s big brother got out and weaved through the beam of the headlights toward the house, too intoxicated to walk straight. Ted hurried after him, hunched over, but jumped in fear again when the car horn sounded. The Ox’s mocking laughter disappeared into the darkness with the rumble of the engine.

“Bastard,” Ted whispered with his fists clenched, furious with himself for being so easily startled.

His big brother opened the front door with some difficulty, stumbled through the hall into the kitchen, but managed to kick off his shoes out of sheer muscle memory along the way. Wearing shoes in their mom’s kitchen was nothing less than a suicide attempt, they had known that since early childhood. He opened the fridge but found no chilled beer, so he fetched two warm cans from the pantry. On his way back to the living room, he bumped into Ted, who flinched automatically as if he were about to be hit. Muscle memory, that too.

His big brother’s body was so hard, he strode into every room with such confidence, a honed knife cutting through air. Ted always moved like he was facing a headwind and driving rain.

“The Ox is a fucking idiot sometimes,” his big brother slurred, and it came so suddenly that it took a long while for Ted to realize what he had just heard. He would never come closer to hearing his brother say he was sorry.

Ted shocked himself by replying:

“So why are you friends with him, then?”

He was expecting to be hit, but nothing happened, his big brother just looked surprised.

“We’ve known each other since we were little.”

As if that’s any kind of answer, Ted thought hopelessly, but of course in that town it kind of was. Friends were something a man like his big brother simply acquired one day in the schoolyard, without quite knowing how it came about, and then he stuck to them, because in this town boys didn’t survive long if they were alone. Especially not an immigrant child of the age his big brother was when they arrived. Boys were defined by their surroundings here, the person you were when you started high school was usually the person you remained, either someone who hit, or someone who cowered. Hardly anyone could afford to move away, and no sensible person moved here voluntarily, so around here young men didn’t feel that they’d chosen a life, just that they had been allocated one. Life was an allotted period of time, like a prison sentence. After high school the Ox had gotten a job in the harbor, then he had arranged for Ted’s big brother to get one too, he had vouched for him and promised that he was “the right sort of guy.” That meant he was the sort of man who stood his ground, who didn’t back down, and who knew how to keep his mouth shut if the police showed up.

Now Ted stood in the kitchen looking at his big brother’s swollen red knuckles and realized that it had been another long evening of being the right sort of guy. Ted usually didn’t dare even open his mouth in the vicinity of his brother, but he heard himself say:

“You’re not a bad person.”

His big brother’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“What the hell did you say?”

Ted hunched up and looked down at the floor hesitantly:

“I said you’re not a bad person. You just pick bad friends. You pick people who are worse than you, because you think that’s all you deserve. You ought to pick people who are better than you.”

His big brother swayed from side to side, bewildered.

“Not everyone can be as lucky with their friends as you.”

Ted was so surprised that he happened to make eye contact, something which all his life had always been rewarded with violence, but this time nothing happened.

“I… I didn’t even know that you knew I had friends,” he said quietly.

His brother grinned.

“Did you think I don’t notice that you and those three little hyenas come up and empty the fridge of Mom’s food every other evening?”

Ted lowered his gaze again.

“You’re right. I’m lucky.”

Then his brother shook his head and mumbled:

“No. It’s your friends who are lucky.”

Then his brother turned and went out into the living room, sat down at the piano, and drank beer. Ted stood there, overwhelmed. He leaned against the fridge and managed to knock off a note that was stuck to it, otherwise he might never have seen it. A short handwritten message from their mom: She’d gone to see a friend. There was food in the freezer. It didn’t say when she’d be back, or even if she would.

She hadn’t said a word to Ted after the funeral, the whole house had been a coffin.

Ted thought for a while, then he opened the freezer and took out all the ice cubes he could find. He filled two bowls, one for beer and one for his big brother’s hand, then went into the living room and put them on the piano. His big brother looked up, as if he didn’t recognize Ted at first, as if they were little kids who had been pretending to be grown-up and had suddenly been pretending all too well. Ted turned to go down to the basement as usual, so his brother’s soft voice came as a shock:

“You want a beer?”

Ted really didn’t, but he nodded anyway. When he took it, his big brother held on to it a second longer than necessary. Holding that beer at the same time was probably the closest they had ever come to a hug.

Ted sat down next to him at the piano. Not too close.

“Do you like your job?” he asked awkwardly because he so desperately wanted to know something about his brother but didn’t know where to start.

“At the harbor? No one fucking likes working at the harbor,” his brother grinned, but when he saw Ted look sad, he added: “It’s a job, Ted. All jobs for people like us are shit. But with my salary and Mom’s, we can probably keep hold of the house…”

That was how clear it was to him, that it was his duty too, not just hers. Ted sat and looked at the piano for several minutes before he plucked up the courage to ask:

“Can you… play something?”

His brother’s fingers touched the keys.

“Mom’s asleep. We mustn’t wake her.”

“She isn’t home, there was a note on the fridge,” Ted said.

His brother tried to hide his surprise, perhaps even his disappointment, not at the fact that she had left him so easily, but that she had left Ted. That’s how mercilessly great the responsibility of being a parent is, that you have to be able to take her for granted. Like food in the freezer. Like ballast in a boat.

“What… what do you want to hear?” his brother asked quietly.

“Something Dad used to play,” Ted asked.

So his big brother played and Ted tried to conceal his envy. He would have liked to be able to play too, but who would have taught him? By the time he was big enough to sit at the piano, their dad was already sick.

“He always used to play this for Mom when she was angry with him,” his big brother slurred, his lips slippery with alcohol but his fingers surprisingly assured.

It was a sad song. His brother sang hoarsely: “ Every day, a small eternity. Had I known how much the world had to offer, I would have asked for less .”

When he was done, he said gently:

“Mom always forgave him when he played that. She used to come and sit on his lap. They never said ‘I love you’ to each other. They just said ‘But, but, but.’?”

“What?” Ted smiled, carefully, as if he was afraid of disturbing the incomprehensible magic of his brother actually telling him things.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but Mom isn’t so good at expressing her feelings,” his big brother smiled.

“Nooo,” Ted said, sarcastically.

His big brother laughed, and it was wonderful.

“One time they were in the car, and Mom got angry because Dad complained about her driving, so she told him to shut the hell up. Then she lit a cigarette and almost drove off the road, so he had to reach over and grab the wheel, and that made her even angrier. And then Dad got so damn frustrated that he said: ‘For God’s sake, I LOVE you, but…’?”

He fell silent. Ted whispered in astonishment:

“How do you know all this?”

“Dad told me. Before he got sick. He used to talk a lot. It’s a shame you don’t remember that. Actually, maybe that’s good. Hell, maybe I’m actually a bit envious of the fact that you… don’t remember.”

Ted sipped his beer and touched a key without daring to press it.

“Was that the first time Dad told Mom that he loved her?”

His brother coughed.

“He told me it was probably the first time anyone ever said that to her. She didn’t even say anything back. It was kind of too much for her. But that night, when they’d gone to bed, she whispered: ‘But, but, but.’ And after that they never said ‘I love you.’?”

“But, but, but,” Ted whispered slowly down into his beer.

“But, but, but,” his big brother repeated down into his.

He still had his accent from their home country, it was more noticeable when he was drunk, but Ted’s was nearly gone. Slowly, slowly, their inheritance was being polished away.

“Does that hurt?” Ted asked, looking at his brother’s battered knuckles, soaking in the bowl of ice.

His brother shook his head.

“It wasn’t us who started it. There were some fucking idiots arguing with the Ox. We were just defending ourselves. I… don’t start fights anymore.”

He said it as if it was important to him that his little brother knew that.

“Play that song again,” Ted asked.

So his brother played, and when he was finished he asked:

“Have you noticed that one of the basement steps is taller than the others? Dad used to trip over it EVERY time he went up or down. Mom used to go insane because he never looked where he was putting his feet. Sometimes she left things on the floor, boxes or forks or small buckets of water, anything at all, just to see if he would walk straight into them. And he stumbled straight into EVERY single damn one! Mom used to say he could walk through a damn minefield unharmed because he never lifted his feet. She used to call him ‘the Worm.’ So when he got home from work late, he would step on every creaking floorboard in the hall on purpose, so she would know he was home.”

His brother fell silent, perhaps because he remembered that he had once thrown Ted down the basement staircase he was talking about, but his little brother just giggled.

“The Worm!” Ted repeated.

Then his brother smiled gratefully and went on:

“This house was the cheapest in the whole town when they bought it. It was practically falling down, of course, even worse than it is now… but one of the neighbors said it was so cheap because it was haunted. Dad thought that was hilarious, so he went around all the rooms calling to the ghosts, and Mom said: ‘You know you’re so annoying that even GHOSTS can’t cope with you?’ So then Dad started playing a game. He would wait until she wasn’t expecting it, when she was brushing her teeth or cooking, and he would stand next to her and jump like he was terrified of something. And then she would jump too, of course. And then he’d say: ‘I thought I saw a ghost.’ She never learned. And he never got tired of it.”

“I didn’t know he was so funny,” Ted whispered with embarrassment.

“He was seriously damn funny.”

“I’ve never heard Mom laugh,” Ted admitted.

His big brother probably didn’t know how to respond to that. So he drank more beer and said:

“She’s just tired, Ted. Everyone has had a day when they’re so exhausted that they can hardly think, but she’s been having that same damn day for the past ten years now. That’s hard. She’s done her best. She tried to make you and me tough, because soft people don’t survive in this town. One time… hell… one time I got into a fight at school, and she was called in to see the principal, and the principal said I ‘maybe needed male role models.’ Can you imagine? What a damn psychopath. Dad wasn’t even dead then, just sick. Do you know what Mom said?”

“What?”

“She said: ‘Male role models? How well do you think that’s worked out so far, purely historically, for you men?’?”

“What did the principal say?”

“He was so taken aback that the next time I got into a fight, he didn’t even call Mom.”

Ted laughed, even though he shouldn’t have. His brother had never known how to handle grief other than with anger. Who would have taught him?

“So Mom was funny too?” Ted asked.

“Really funny, when she wanted to be! One time she put rotten fish in the mailbox of a neighbor who was always complaining that you and I were too noisy! And she wasn’t always this… this hard. When I was little I used to have nightmares, I would wake up screaming so hard I lost my voice. And she would come in with a blanket and pillow and lie down on the floor right in front of the door to my room. So the nightmares couldn’t come in, she used to say.”

Ted sat next to him wiping his eyes on his sleeve, then he asked:

“Tell me something else.”

So his brother took a deep swig of beer and said:

“Dad told me that his favorite time of the evening was going round the house turning all the lights off. Because that’s the sort of thing dads do, Dad said. Last of all he would go from room to room whispering: ‘Good night, ghosts.’?”

Ted sipped his beer, then suddenly brightened up.

“I… I remember that. I remember I used to lie awake in my bed waiting to hear that before I could get to sleep. It’s the only thing I remember of his voice. Or… sometimes I think I just dreamed it.”

His brother’s red, battered fingers moved beneath his gnarled knuckle, and played a few scattered notes on the piano. Ted was so amazed that those hands were capable of both things: brutality and beauty.

“He sang pretty good, Dad.”

“Why didn’t he become a musician?” Ted asked, but regretted it at once, he could hear for himself how naive it sounded.

“That isn’t a job,” his brother replied calmly.

He meant “for us,” that it wasn’t a job for people like us, Ted realized that. Their dad had worked at the factory, just like their mom, to give their kids a better life. Trying to be a musician, following their passion, that sort of thing was for parents who only wanted to give themselves a better life.

Ted’s gaze swept across the wall above the piano, he saw photographs of himself when he was little, until his eyes came to rest on another picture: his parents’ wedding. No fancy clothes, a simple ceremony in the town hall, his mom was pregnant. But she was smiling in that picture, she was beautiful, she looked as if she was still dreaming about big things.

“Do you think it was romantic? When they fell in love?” he asked shyly.

It was stupid, of course. His brother snorted instinctively.

“What sort of damn question is that?”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry…,” Ted whispered at once, hating himself for ruining the magic, he should have known that real men didn’t ask questions like that.

He huddled up on the edge of the stool, getting ready to be hit, but something far stranger happened: a little gust of wind. That’s what happens when a hard man tries to stifle a sob. His brother didn’t cry any tears, just let out a long, ragged exhalation. Then his voice was stern but his words soft:

“It isn’t like it is in movies, Ted. It’s different in real life. But Dad once told me, when he was really fucking drunk, that he and Mom weren’t like two magnets. They were like two colors. Once they were mixed together, there was no way of separating them.”

Ted had never, before or since, heard anything more romantic. He peered up at the wedding photograph, trying to focus, it would be a few more months before he admitted to his mother and brother that he really, really needed glasses.

“Tell me something else,” he asked apprehensively.

His brother sighed. He tapped the top of the piano with the beer can. Smiled faintly.

“Dad always drank the same beer. He said Mom liked that, because men who never swap beer brands aren’t very adventurous, so they don’t swap wives either. When he got sick, Mom carried on buying beer every week. As if he might suddenly just get up and go get one.”

That’s an extra cruelty that cancer brings, Ted thought, when you’re waiting for everything to go back to normal again. Until one day you realize that the illness has become the new normal.

“Did Dad like Mom’s cooking?” he asked, without really knowing why, maybe just because the frozen meals in the freezer were the closest thing he had come to real tenderness from his mom in recent years.

“Are you kidding? He loved it! I think the whole reason she learned to cook was because she liked to see him eat,” his brother grinned, then glanced at his little brother and added: “I think she feels like a good mom when she puts meals in the freezer for us, Ted. When she makes sure that we eat. That’s probably the only time she feels like she’s… enough.”

Ted leaned over his beer as if it were a chasm. He asked:

“Do you think Dad was scared when he died?”

Rather than giving him a lie for an answer, he just said nothing for so long that it was an answer in itself. His breath sounded ragged again.

“The night Dad died, one of the nurses phoned home to us here. I suppose she wanted you and me to know right away, and I think she understood that Mom couldn’t cope with… words.”

More ragged breathing.

“What did she say? The nurse?” Ted wondered.

His big brother smiled.

“She said that Mom had very gently curled up on Dad’s bed at the end. And that Dad died in her arms.”

They said nothing more to each other after that, the brothers. They just sat there at the piano in the empty house, drinking their dad’s beer and glancing at each other with their mom’s eyes. When the cans were empty, Ted took them into the kitchen and rinsed them. Then he got a meal out of the freezer, ate it even though he wasn’t hungry, and left his plate unwashed on the counter.

That evening he lay in his bed in the basement and heard his big brother stumble drunkenly through the rooms upstairs, stopping in every doorway and whispering good night to all the ghosts.

The night was warm, the basement window was open, Ted smelled his mom’s cigarettes when she came home. She got out of her friend’s car, sat down on the steps and inhaled deep drags, gathering the strength to go back to a life full of responsibility. She probably never knew how to explain that she loved her boys, and they had no words either, because who would have taught them? But when their mom walked into the house, she intentionally stepped on all the floorboards that she knew creaked, so they would know she was there. And when she went into the kitchen she saw the unwashed plate that Ted had left on the counter so that she would know he was full and that she was a good mother. So she washed it and felt like one, just for a moment.

When she lay in bed that night she heard a shuffling sound outside her bedroom door, then a small thud , it was the big brother, who had gone to sleep on the floor in front of the door to her room. So her nightmares couldn’t come in.

Ted lay in his own bed in the basement and had almost fallen asleep when he heard a different noise at the window. It was barely a knock, just a scrape, and when he looked up he saw small red marks on the glass. Joar was sitting outside. His hands were covered in blood.