Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

Distance was a funny thing.

It was not until he was in high school that Cramer found himself walking the same hallways as his half-brother, Jackson Page. He had known of his existence since he was a kid. Once or twice on trips to town, Mavis had pointed Jay out to him, a boy the same age as he was, shopping with his mother, skateboarding with a friend. Now here he was every day.

He was a month and a bit older, a big brother to Cramer. He was Jay to everyone who knew him, and everyone did-everybody, it seemed, but Cramer himself. How strange was that? They might have shared the same halls, but they were never in the same class. Jay read announcements on the school intercom, played piano at assemblies, served on the student council. He was valedictorian. They went through four years of school together but not really together, because the currents in a high school were not ones that Cramer could negotiate. He had no Bunny to handle school. He had no quick, responsive craft to find his way through those waters. But he watched Jay all the same, like he was some exotic animal or a movie star. Never talked to him, though.

Well, once.

He was in a line for something, and turning around he found to his surprise that Jay was standing right behind him with Iris Xu.

“Hi,” said Cramer before he knew what he was doing.

Jay smiled. “Hi,” he said. “Long line, eh?”

“Yeah,” said Cramer, already regretting his impulsiveness. What was he supposed to say now?

“Hi,” said Iris. Cramer nodded, words abandoning him. Then Iris remembered something she had been meaning to show Jay, and as she dug into her backpack to find it, the line moved on. Just like that.

And just like that they graduated. Jay went west and Iris went to University of Toronto and Cramer stayed in Ladybank, never really expecting to see any of that crowd again, the college crowd-the ones that got away. And he didn’t, until last fall, when Jay returned and started hanging out at the house on the snye. Didn’t have a job, as far as Cramer could tell. Didn’t have to work. That stuck in Cramer’s craw. Not working. He could hardly imagine such a luxury. But that first day he saw him on the river, Cramer didn’t feel anything like anger. On the contrary! He had been sitting in the shade of a huge willow on the south shore of the Eden, looking through binoculars at the Page house across the way, and then suddenly there was Jay, climbing into his kayak, heading upstream. For one crazy moment, Cramer wanted to call to him. To paddle out of the shadows toward him “Hey, Jay. Hi! It’s me, remember?”

Like they were soul mates or something. Princes of the river.

Jay became a project, something to do on his days off. The house on the snye became somewhere to go. Then he started leaving him things. It happened almost by accident. A bluebird crashed into his mother’s studio window and broke its neck. She’d heard the crash and it had startled her. Cramer found the bird in the uncut grass, cradled it in his hands. It scarcely weighed a thing. But the iridescence of its wings was something. It was exactly the kind of thing you would run to show your big brother. And so he did.

Then there was the snake skin he’d found in the woodpile. Cramer was no poet, but he looked hard at things and saw what was there. And when he looked hard at their two lives-his and Jackson Page’s-he decided that a snake skin might also be a good thing for Jay to think about. The thing you had to crawl out of if you were to grow. Anyway, a little reminder to the golden boy that he was not alone in the world.

Then Jay fixed the upstairs window and Cramer was locked out, until he discovered the trapdoor. It was something he knew that Jay didn’t. Something he had over him.

Cramer had never taken anything from him. The stone, but that was worthless. It was just to play with his head. Nothing truly nasty. He didn’t want to scare him away. He wanted to be noticed, and he had no idea how-no other idea how. And yes, he wanted to disturb Jay’s comfort. Comfort was what Jay had a whole lot of. A world of comfort! He wanted Jay to know what it felt like to never really be able to relax, to never really feel at ease, to never have any time off. In a way, though he couldn’t exactly explain it, he was just trying to make smaller the distance-the gulf-between them.

Conchita’s was down a flight of wooden stairs to a deck suspended only a foot or two above the river, shallow at this point, offering little risk of drowning if one happened to fall drunk over the railing. Or if you accidentally pushed someone. Now, now, Mimi, she muttered to herself. I’m sure Iris will be lovely.

The restaurant was tucked into what was once the basement of a building constructed by Scottish stonemasons a hundred and fifty years ago, never knowing that the building would one day serve quesadillas and killer margaritas.

Blue-and-yellow Corona umbrellas were open above every table on the crowded deck but served no real purpose, for the setting sun was blocked from the patrons’ eyes by the massive old place that housed the restaurant, a craft store, and bookstore as well.

Jay and Iris had already ordered a pitcher of margaritas when Mimi arrived, Thursday evening. She arrived late, on purpose, determined not to be the one sitting there alone and waiting. She had only packed a couple of dresses for her trip, and she dressed in the flirtiest of them before remembering that it was hardly a date. So she changed, a little reluctantly, back into her black capris and a black V-neck. She wore a lime-green plastic belt and a button that read IMPEACH NIXON. A girl had to show some style.

Jay actually stood to introduce the two women. Could he be more chivalrous? Iris Xu was petite, but her handshake was firm. Her smile dissolved her face into a glinting array of smooth and burnished plains. Her long hair shimmered; her eyes were warm. Mimi laughed with relief. Liking her was not going to be hard at all.

“Are you beat from the drive?”

“No, it’s just three and a half hours,” said Iris. “Except that Jay drives exactly at the speed limit!”

“How boring is that.”

“I know,” said Iris, and patted Jay’s hand affectionately. High-school sweethearts now old-marrieds. Mimi wasn’t sure if she felt very young or very grown up in their company.

Then a waitress arrived, smiling-mostly at Jay. And Mimi got carded.

“I can vouch for her, Nikki,” said Jay while Mimi fumbled for her ID.

“Okay, Jay,” said Nikki, blinking and winking at him and stumbling away with her tray clasped to her chest.

Iris leaned forward, with her hand to the side of her mouth. “Nikki’s been in love with Jay since third grade.”

“Poor thing,” said Mimi. “What does she see in him?”

Iris shrugged. “Back then I think it was his Han Solo action figure. But now I think she’s after his kayak.”

“Well, it is a really long kayak,” said Mimi, and Iris cracked up.

“All right, ladies,” said Jay. “Let’s keep it down.”

Nikki soon returned with the beer and a plate of nachos with jalapenos, sour cream-the works.

“Restraint is so last year,” said Iris, who was as thin as a rail. And then leaning against the table, she whispered, wide-eyed, “So how weird is it to find you have a brother you never knew about?”

Mimi poured herself a drink. “Oh, it’s right up there with getting arrested in the Uffizi,” she said. And she told them all about it.

They talked about travel misadventures and then history, which was Iris’s major, and art and music and New York. Spent napkins piled up around them.

“Sour cream alert,” said Iris, and taking Mimi’s face in her hand, she removed a smear from her cheek. They exchanged smiles and, unless Mimi was imagining it, blessings.