Tom Piccirilli - Every shallow cut

My brother kept scrutinizing Church. He was already worried about the dog. His eyes flashed with visions of shit-stained carpets, pee-soaked couch cushions, shredded throw pillows, having his throat torn out in his sleep. His breathing grew more rapid. I wondered if he was going to suddenly grab up a frying pan and attack my sleeping dog. I glanced around for a weapon. I spotted a ladle. In a clutch it might still prove useful. I imagined my brother and I in a death match involving kitchen utensils. I saw us wrestling and bleeding across his immensely clean floor, me whacking him over the head trying to crush his skull with the ladle. I could hear the ka-bong of the frying pan smashing my jaw, could almost feel my teeth rattling loose in my head. I don’t know why I didn’t see myself drawing the gun. I seemed to keep forgetting there was a gun.

“You’re always welcome here,” he said, “but the dog stays in the garage. He stinks.”

I heard the hanging implication in his voice. He meant, The dog stinks even worse than you.

“I’ll give him a bath,” I said.

“That’s not good enough. Then the house will just smell like wet dog, and that’s even worse.”

“I’ll dry him.”

“Don’t argue, right?” he said.

I looked deep into my brother’s face. As usual, there was no give there, no mercy. He always held his chin high, his shoulders squared. It was a good tactic that made him more imposing. He was still tall and muscular and cut a real swath. His eyes were hard as shale.

I got up, shook his hand and said, “Good seeing you,” then started for the door. “Thanks for dinner.” Churchill grumbled as he climbed to his feet and followed me.

“You’re leaving?” my brother asked.

“Yes.”

“Because of a dog?”

There was no way to explain it to him so I just said, “Yes, because of a dog.”

“What the hell has happened to you?”

“Is that the question you’re really asking?”

He gave me the sad long once-over and shook his head sorrowfully. He couldn’t meet my gaze. “All right, the dog can stay in the house. But give him a fucking bath now. And he doesn’t roam the house until he’s completely dry. And if he pisses or shits inside even once, he’s in the garage for good.”

That sounded fair. And all I was looking for was fair.

I stood under the shower with the spray coming down, the bathtub about half full, water coming halfway up my calves. Church sat at the other end of the tub with two-in-one shampoo and conditioner worked into his fur and a pile of bubbles on top of his head. He didn’t look amused. My brother wasn’t going to be either.

I still thought it would make a funny scene in the movie version of my memoirs, with some B-grade beefcake actor playing the loose cannon dude in the shower with the trained dog barking on command. There would be witty dialogue because I wouldn’t be the screenwriter. The guy would say something cute to the dog, and the dog would make funny faces and groan and belch, and the audience would laugh. On the daytime talk shows the screenwriter could say he wrote the script in a divine cathartic expulsion. God moved through his body and into his fingers. The host would have tears in her eyes.

I got out and towelled off. Then I drained the tub and rinsed Churchill and dried him too. My brother had a lot of aftershave, colognes, and body powders on his bathroom counter. Too many, I thought, but who was I to judge.

My brother was sitting in his den with his feet up on an ottoman, reading a celebrity magazine. It surprised me more than anything else we’d talked about all day. I’d never have imagined him reading that kind of thing. Then again, he was squinting so badly that maybe he thought he was reading the Wall Street Journal.

He looked up and said, “You’re tired. Go get some sleep.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I turned to go and he said, “So what are your plans?”

“To go to bed.”

“After that.”

My shoulders tensed and my stomach tightened. “Dream the dreams of the righteous.”

It made him toss his magazine aside. He couldn’t quite hit me with his usual glare, but a dark light filled his eyes. There was sadness in there, and even some humility, but still no mercy. My brother liked to educate and advise and nail down matters of large import, especially if they weren’t his own.

I cocked my head at him and wondered which topic he was going to tackle right now. What he was going to tell me to do first thing in the morning? Shave my beard? Find a job? Hit the gym? Check in with the collection agencies and start the long process of cleaning up my credit score? Meditate at the cemetery? I waited expectantly. He wet his lips. He stared at my dog. He sniffed the air and could only smell his own body powder. Church had a dab of it on his ass still.

But the light in his eyes dimmed and he sat back in his chair. He reached for the magazine again. He nodded to himself once more. I wish I could hear the conversations he had with himself in his head. His inner voice seemed to always be agreeing with him, he was always nodding along. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He turned back to me and said, “See you in the morning.”

“Right.”

The guest room was larger than the master bedroom in my former house. It was freshly painted in sky blue and decorated in a country style, with lots of natural wood and wicker. I was thankful there wasn’t a butter churn or wagon wheel in the corner. I’d been right about the fruity air freshener. It spritzed the air on a timer and made the place smell like a funeral parlour.

Folded up neatly at the foot of the bed was a blanket my mother had nearly finished crocheting during her final days in the hospital, waiting for the docs to fix her varicose veins. I was surprised and glad to see it again.

On a perfectly dusted shelf smelling of pine oil stood all of my novels. I’d sent him a copy of each one of my books through some irrepressible sense of pride. The spines had never been cracked. I hadn’t expected them to be. But shit, to discover that he chose the celebrity weekly gossip mags over me, that hurt a bit.

I wondered why he kept my novels in the guest room. Was it merely as decoration? The books, taken as a whole, had nice colourful covers. Or was he actually offering them up as entertainment to his guests, whoever and however many of them there might be? I got absolutely no sense that anyone had ever stayed in this room before me.

Had he left my books here because he knew that one day I’d lose everything and be forced to come stay with him? So I could see, packed into thirty inches of shelf space, all the fruits of my labor and my life? Did he want me to ask myself, Was it worth it? Look at how small my accomplishments are. A child could carry them all away in a tiny red wagon.

On another shelf I found all of my mother’s photo albums. At least two dozen of them. My brother once said he would send some to me, but he never did and I never reminded him. I took the first one down. It wasn’t full of baby pictures. My mother used to keep free photos going back decades in a big box and decided one weekend to put them all into albums, in no discernible order. I flipped through the pages.

My old man watering the lawn, washing the car, sweeping the patio, reshingling the roof. His Navy tattoos could barely be seen on his forearms beneath the thick black hair. His muscles bulged and he smiled with all his hipness, a real sharp joy. My mother cooking, sitting around the table smoking at parties, wearing funny birthday hats, standing at waterfalls, on beaches, in front of Broadway theatres. My brother as a youth, on a bicycle, on a motorcycle, in a Mustang. With a blonde, a brunette, a redhead, another blonde, another brunette, even a black girl as my father stood in the background looking uncomfortably aware of his own inherent old-school racism. Me with my childhood love, at the prom, holding my diploma, at college orientation. My mother holding up my first novel with a wide smile, her eyes lit with delight. My mother holding up my second novel, looking less interested, not so happy. My mother holding up my third book, bored, faking a smile and doing a poor job of it. I remembered what she said next. “I read the bestseller lists every week, and your name is never on it.” My wedding. My wife. My lips pressed to her temple, eyes closed, mouth caught in some kind of half-whisper, but I couldn’t remember what I was saying. Her eyes closed too, lips tugged into the smallest of grins. We had a huge print of that picture hanging over our fireplace. When she left, I took it down and kicked it to pieces and chucked it in. Let the next family use it as kindling.