Tom Piccirilli - Every shallow cut

Now I knew.

New York, I’m coming home.

At around midnight I parked in front of my brother’s house on Long Island and watched him through his huge bay window. He was ten years older than me and looked at least five years younger. He’d never had to watch his weight. I had more grey in my hair. He refused to go for glasses. He held the newspaper at arm’s length and squinted and pretended he was still nineteen years old. He turned out the lamp and went up to his bedroom, and after an hour he shut out the light and the house went dark. I got out and took a piss on his neighbor’s lawn and Church took a shit. We got back in the car.

My brother’s prostate must’ve been bother-ing him. He got up several times during the night. At least once he came down to the kitchen. I caught a glimpse of him at the refrigerator. In the pale yellow glow he appeared dissatisfied and restless. He made himself half a cucumber sandwich. My brother was big on half-portions. He’d eat half an orange, drink half a bottle of water, chop a tomato perfectly in half for a salad and then wrap up the remainder carefully in plastic.

My thoughts kept flitting. I wondered how many photos of us he had in his house. I wondered why he hadn’t found the time to visit the old man or Ma right before the end. I wondered why I’d called him after my marriage went bust. It was the last thing I should have done.

I crawled into the back seat and got under the blanket and did my best to get comfortable in the cramped space. I wasn’t ready to face him yet. Maybe I never would be. This might be the worst misstep yet.

Church climbed on top of me and stretched out on my stomach. He missed my fat belly. For him it had been like a waterbed.

My brother had appeared in a lot of my fiction under a variety of guises. He was the villainous father figure in at least two of my novels. He was sometimes the best friend whose expression of disappointment eventually leads my protagonist to betray him. I’d written about the love I’d felt for him when I was a boy and he’d ride his ten-speed around our hometown with me on the handlebars, coasting into the corner stationary and buying me comics. Presenting me to his girlfriends and telling them how smart and talented I was. I used to show him my early stories and he would critique without criticizing. He would encourage and compliment. He would write inspiring notes across the top of the loose leaf pages: You’re going to go all the way, kid!

I slept a few hours and then got up and turned the dome light on. I pulled out my wallet and looked at the picture of us when we were kids. I was seven, he was seventeen. We’re both grinning like crazy. We’re at the beach. He’s muscular with a resigned air of power and hepcat cool. I’m cheesing it up with my front teeth missing. He looks like our father. I don’t look like anybody.

Our falling out was still a few years off. When I became a teenager his affection for me faltered. He grew hypercritical. He became domineering, overbearing, teasing and down-right nasty. He seethed and hissed at me. I wasn’t athletic. I couldn’t catch a football. I didn’t lift weights. When we played basketball in the driveway he was always eager to throw an elbow into my bulging gut. He talked about making me stronger and healthier. He acted like an angry, frustrated parent. I brought home straight As but they weren’t straight enough. I was too slovenly, I was already gaining weight. I didn’t get outside enough, I read too much, I watched too much TV, I wasted money on kid stuff like comic books. He got his own apartment and I’d ride my bike over there and knock on the door. I’d see the blinds flutter but he wouldn’t answer.

I still didn’t know why it had gone so wrong. Maybe he had his own premonitions and visions too. Maybe he saw what lay ahead of me and hated me for it. Or himself. Maybe he’d been warning me all along, and I just hadn’t listened.

We’d seen each other at weddings and funerals but he’d never visited me out west and I’d never been to his house on the island, even though he lived in the same town where we’d grown up.

The sky began to lighten to a purple blur. I pulled away from the curb and drove through town with my hackles up. It looked familiar but didn’t feel that way. I had that same nervous feeling you got whenever you were lost in some unfamiliar city. Everything put the shits up you. You looked at the faces on the street and wondered which one of them might make a sudden dash for your car and smash the windshield with a brick. You wondered if you might be reading the street signs wrong or heading down a one-way going in the wrong direction. You read about assholes driving the wrong side of the expressway for miles and miles until smacking head-on into a freightliner. Everybody’s always stunned that it could have happened, but all you have to do is come home to find out how. It’s the same feeling. That you’re doing something wrong but you can’t put your finger on it.

The sun climbed. I passed my parents’ house. What used to be my parents’ house. My brother and I had sold it after our mother died. I spotted a few moderate changes here and there but was surprised it still looked practically the same after all this time. I could imagine my father sitting on the stoop watering the lawn. I could see my mother trimming her roses, wearing men’s working gloves, a kerchief tying her hair up. A smear of mud across her forehead from where she’d wiped sweat away with the back of her hand. My old man occasionally swinging the nozzle of the hose and flicking water at her. Ma shrieking like a little girl, Dad laughing loudly.

My brother in the driveway, his head under the hood of a car. Three drops of oil splashed on his tight T-shirt. Thick black veins twisting up his powerful forearms. Every so often a car full of girls would drive by and stop at the curb. They’d wave and call to him and he’d trot down to the street and lean in the window and smile, cool as could be, hip, virile, in charge, and the girls giggling, and he’d pinch one of their chins between thumb and forefinger and leave a dash of oil on her face. They’d drive off to some party and he’d finish up on the car, slam the hood shut, wash his hands with pumice stone, put on a fresh T-shirt, and then follow after.

I was there in front of the house long enough for an angry face to appear at the front door. I remembered the guy from the closing. He’d been freshly married then. He and his wife were ecstatic about buying their first home. I left a bottle of wine on the counter along with the extra sets of keys.

Now he looked like he was ready to defend the place with his life. If anyone dared to step foot on his property he’d grab up a shotgun. His eyes burned like twin lakes of flaming gasoline. He’d hold the bankers at bay, the police, the SWAT teams, the communists, the alien hordes, the barbaric populace of disintegrating cities. I thought I should’ve done it myself. I should have mined the yard. I should have held out at the front window with a rifle in my hands. I should have protected my home. I should have fought for it. I should have died for it.

I gave the guy a little salute.

He glowered and rushed out and started to run at my car. I didn’t know what troubles he had on his mind but there must’ve been plenty of them. Maybe he thought I was a bill collector or a process server. Maybe his wife had left him and was sending her lawyer around. Or maybe he recognized me after all and wanted me to take back the house and everything that went along with it. Busted water pipes, termites, damp rot. County taxes, hazard insurance, backed up cesspool. I stomped the gas pedal and ripped out down the street. He fell in behind me and sprinted a hundred yards before he finally took a tumble and lay on the asphalt sucking wind. I almost went back to lend him a hand. Or to drive over his throat.