T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

In his room, Achilles propped two pillows against the wall and spread a blanket across the top. Sleeping in his pillow fort, he felt certain he wouldn’t be disturbed anymore that night.

The next morning, his father placed Achilles and Troy side by side on the corduroy couch, their legs dangling, and sat on the ottoman facing them. “Things are going to be better for both of you.” Troy nodded. Achilles mumbled, “Okay.”

His father leaned forward so his hair fell across his eyes, curled his bottom lip up, and blew, making his white forelocks tickle the air like smoke. “What’s happening?” he asked anxiously. “What’s happening?”

It had been dark the first time his father did that trick, and Achilles had thought he was on fire. Achilles was supposed to say, You’re burning up, Daddy. First he had to share his cake with Troy, now this. He looked down at his feet. Troy was wearing his red Superman socks.

His father tried again, curling his lips and blowing, but this time he poked Achilles in the ribs, and Achilles couldn’t help laughing, even though it hurt a little to do so because his sides were still sore, and when his father chucked his chin and hugged him, his memories of the night before faded, the way landmarks dwindled in the rearview mirror, sometimes receding so swiftly he flinched and wondered if they had ever really been there at all.

“Things are going to be better than they’ve ever been before,” said his father. “Troy, you have the home you deserve. Achilles, you finally have the brother you need.”

They nodded obediently. His mother cruised by, her purposeful gait becoming a limp when she thought herself out of sight. She wore the same look as the night before, a mix of guilt and embarrassment.

His mother said they never had to be alone. His father said brothers had to stick together. Troy wanted to join the Cub Scouts, Achilles joined the Boy Scouts. Troy wanted to play T-ball, Achilles played Little League. Troy wanted to take judo, his mom made Achilles go too (though Achilles eventually switched to karate because it provided more opportunities to kick people). They didn’t stick together; they were stuck. The ice cream and waffles had only been the beginning. That night, his parents did switch bodies, his father chipper, his mother suddenly somber. If their father went anywhere with Troy, even for a quick smoke and fire run — to fill up the tank and buy cigarettes — Achilles’s mom made them wait for Achilles. By the time they were in high school, Achilles was a wind-up doll. Troy wanted to learn guitar. Achilles signed up without being asked. Troy wanted to run cross-country. Achilles went shopping for new shoes. Troy wanted to join the military, go Airborne, jump out of perfectly good airplanes. Next thing Achilles knew, he was dodging bullets and shitting sand and there was Troy, always smiling, always with the sun and the wind to his back. Troy, the one everyone thought older and wiser because he was taller. Troy, always raising Cain. Troy, not, as promised, always warm and friendly, but damned near tireless.

“BRING A FRIEND TO THE SCREENING,” SAID INES. “YOU’LL SEE MY NEW Orleans.” Did she think he needed medical attention? She said she wanted to thank him for his help over the past couple of weeks, but upon hearing screening, Achilles thought triglycerides, blood pressure cuffs, lipid tests. He imagined helping Mabel and Dudley — Ines’s two longtime volunteers — escort the old and infirm to a mobile medical clinic and knew Wages wouldn’t want to spend an afternoon doing that. Good thing Achilles agreed, because a couple days later he and Ines were on the St. Charles streetcar entering an area of town previously known to him by name only — Uptown.

With the wooden seats, manually operated curtain, wheeled popcorn machine, marble floor, and gilded marquee, it was like no theater he’d seen before. The feature starred an Icelandic band singing in a make-believe language, and included interviews with several eccentrically attired, dour musicians with thick accents. The film ended with one of their music videos. In it, a boy dressed like a soldier and carrying a drum marched across somber tidal flats, traversed black shale dunes, scaled ragged gorges, and hiked through tawny fields of waist-high grasses, picking up other kids along the way until a troop of them followed him, clinging to his heels like ticks, the whole gaggle in costumes. Some wore bear masks, some rabbit ears. Trailing the group was a little boy in a nutcracker outfit like the one Troy wore every Christmas, between the ages of six and nine. He surrendered it only after the pants ripped in half, but he cried about it and wore the hat for two more years. At the end of the video, the drummer boy led a charge up a steep, grassy hill that gradually tapered into a narrow spur. The audience could see that the promontory ended at a bluff hundreds of feet above the sea. The kids could not.

Knowing it was silly to worry about a video, Achilles nevertheless found himself looking away, and noticed the other audience members were rapt. He wanted to yell, to ask if they thought this brave. Ines, who had been wringing her fingers, started clapping. The drummer boy had gone over the edge. The other kids followed, flinging themselves from the cliff and flying into space, blue and wide. They took air for water, fanning legs and arms like swimmers, banking to the beckoning clouds, the winds teasing their hair, at ease in the palm of the sky. The boy in the nutcracker suit hesitated at the edge. Finally he stepped off the cliff into the ether. The camera cut back to the flying drummer boy, and the video ended without revealing what happened to the child in the nutcracker suit. Achilles tried to recall the final, swift image. Had he kicked at the air? Looked down? Floundered? Frustrated, Achilles didn’t applaud when the lights came on.

Achilles’s motto was Look both ways before crossing a one-way street. While waiting at a crosswalk, stand on the side of the light pole opposite the flow of traffic. Avoid crowded elevators. Back into parking spaces. At traffic stops, maintain a distance of half a vehicle from the car ahead. Drive with one hand on the seatbelt button. Never wear open-toed shoes, in case you need to run or fight. Always wear a belt because it quadruples as a tourniquet or maul or lariat or garrote.

The list exhausted and frightened him. This fear was heightened by the presence of Ines and her smile, and her tall, good-looking friend who stood beside them in the theater lobby, and all the fine-looking, smiling people crowded around them, blissfully unaware of what price the rest of the world paid for their conveniences. Sharp creases, wind-resistant hair, perfect makeup, gold bangles. Hushed tones, subdued nods, polite laughter. They all looked so happy. The polished wood floors, the colossal chandelier suspended from gilded chains, the etched box-office glass. Even the building looked happy, as if the ticket was worth more than the price of admission.

Running through his list, Achilles doubted he would ever be happy because he couldn’t stop holding his breath. Even that was cynicism. He couldn’t stop thinking about what he was thinking about without being cynical about it. The army taught him to hope for the best but expect the worst. Yet how he yearned to join those kids.

Looking at him, Ines’s smile flattened, then rebounded, her own eyes starting to glisten. She placed one hand on each side of his face and gently drew her thumbs under his eyes. The overhead lamps reflected in the wells of tears along her bottom lids, making her eyes bright and lively bowls of light, framed by thick eyelashes long as pine needles, brown at the base and blonde at the tip. He’d thought them light brown, but they were amber irises, brass in the center and honey around the edges, speckled with pearl and peach and his reflection, really just the outline of his face, set in shadow by the chandelier glowing behind his head like he was on fire.