Mary Gaitskill - Don't Cry

In the story, the brothers got drunk and had a fistfight on the lawn. In real life, they did the dishes together. In the story, the architect makes the do-good brother realize he's giving himself away to win his mother's love. The do-gooder makes the architect realize he's riding free while his brother does the work of keeping the family together. In real life, no one realized anything.

“It's very good,” said Janice. “Though I'm not sure the mother's feelings would be so clear-cut.”

Sweating and irritated, he emerged from the path. Here was a clearing, an overlook. There was no way to go farther up, though there was another way down. He sat on a rock and breathed deeply Either he had reached the top ahead of Kevin or he was lost. Either way was okay From somewhere came rustling, the sound of rubbing cloth and parting limbs; Kevin had come. “You beat me,” he said.

“For once,” replied Joseph.

Kevin smiled and sat beside the rock, dropping his pack beside him. Joseph passed the water; Kevin drank. They sat a long time silently, looking at the grass, the trees, the sky. A bird, black in the distance, flew gracefully from one point to the next, dipping almost out of sight before rising again. Kevin leaned back on his elbows, legs stretched out before him. Joseph felt warmth for his friend; he felt good that they had finally reconnected.

“So, do you think you'll stay in touch with Janice?” Kevin tilted his head slightly up and back, glimpsing at Joseph with a sliver of eye.

“I don't know, maybe a little. It wasn't a social relationship; she was my professor.”

“Students keep in touch with teachers.”

“Are you going to keep in touch with anyone?”

“Yeah, Don and I will definitely be in touch. I want to follow his work in the Middle East, maybe go over there with them.”

“Wow,” said Joseph, “that would be incredible.” He thought of Kevin's mother, one son already in Iraq. The Odyssey rushed to the front of his thoughts; he remembered how, when a soldier had been killed, the narrative had stopped to say who his mother was and what kind of blanket she had wrapped him in when he was a baby.

“I have to tell you something,” said Kevin. “I feel like I have to tell you.”

“What?”

“I slept with Janice.”

“What?”

“I fucked Braver.”

“You're lying.”

“Why would I lie?”

“But you didn't like her. She didn't like you.”

“She liked me.”

“When did this supposedly happen?”

“The weekend before the graduation ceremony.”

That weekend: Joseph had been at that party too. Everyone was at that party all the grad students and most of the faculty Everyone was drunk. Late at night, he had been surprised to see Janice and Kevin talking in a corner: Kevin was leaning close to Janice and she was looking up at him with a strange naked expression on her face. He had not paid further attention because he was trying to get a girl to give him her number.

“But you said you didn't like her.” Joseph stood up. “You made a whole huge point of not liking her.”

Kevin stayed sitting on the ground. “I didn't like her as a teacher. I liked her as a woman.”

“She's married. She's old enough to be your mom.”

“No, she's not. She's forty-eight.”

Kevin stood up. “Why should I care about that? It was good, for one night. We both understood it was for one night.”

“I don't want to hear details.”

“Who said anything about details?”

Kevin turned away abruptly. He walked to the edge of the overlook and bent to pick up a rock. Joseph wanted to kick him. Kevin threw the rock over the edge, hard, like a little boy with something to prove. Joseph wanted to kick him in the ass. Kevin turned around; his face was startled and soft. The kicking urge went away Kevin spoke mildly. “Do you want to go back down your way?” he asked.

“No,” said Joseph. “It's all slippery rock.”

But Kevin's way was slippery, too; almost immediately, Joseph stumbled and fell against him. Kevin staggered and nearly went down; anger flashed in his eyes.

Joseph said, “Why didn't you tell about Janice until now?”

“She made me promise not to.”

“But you're telling it now.”

“The semester's over. You just said you're not really going to stay in touch with her. It doesn't seem like it matters now.”

Joseph tried to concentrate on his footsteps. Instead, he thought of Janice naked, in sexual positions. He had never thought of her that way before.

“So, how was it?” he asked.

Kevin didn't answer. His broad back expressed an upright reticence that was somehow dirtier than dirtiness.

“Did she like it?”

“It seemed like she did.” He paused and then added, as if he couldn't help it, “Even though she cried.”

Semicrouched, Joseph stopped. “Why? Why did she cry?”

Kevin turned and slipped a little. “I thought you didn't want to hear details.”

“I don't.”

“What's wrong?” asked Kevin. “Did you like her or something?”

“Not like that,” said Joseph.

“Then what …”

“It isn't anything, I just …” He thought of Janice with her legs spread. He did not see her face or her upper body, only her spread lower half. “I just want you to go on down,” he said quietly “I'll come in a bit.”

“Okay.”

The sky had changed. The clearing was now covered with soft shadows broken by slow-moving light. Joseph sat on the stone and put his head in his hands. His thoughts of Janice faded. He thought of Marisa, how she had asked not to feel sorry for him, when it was clear she didn't. He thought of holding her from behind, her breasts in his hands. He dropped his hands and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. In truth, no one knew if his mother was well, or if she still had cancer. They could not find cancer now, but one day she might go to the doctor to check and cancer would be there again. She would have to check and check always.

He stood up, looking into the valley. Giant broken rocks fell motionless down the incline, harsh gray stippled with black moss, shadow deeply pitting the spaces between the raw chunks. Broken trees stumbled down the slope, half-living, half-dead. At the bottom, only the living parts were visible, converged in the crease of the valley like virile hair at the fork of the body.

He pictured Caleb acting for his mother in the living room, making her laugh. It wasn't what Caleb said that made her laugh; it was something in his voice that, without his trying, touched her somewhere that Joseph couldn't reach.

He looked up at a flat field of clouds hanging low in the sky, rippled with soft gray; above them, bright light massed together as if trying to give itself a shape, like a sound trying to form a word. Above this light rose pale sky that deepened and turned blue as it rose higher into cloudlessness. He thought, Kevin would always win. That's just how it was. Radiance shone, receded, and shone again.

Our first day in Addis Ababa, we woke up to wedding music playing outside the hotel. We had traveled for twenty hours and we were deeply asleep. The music entered my sleep in the form of moving lights, like fireflies or animate laughter, in a pattern, but a loose and playful one. I was dreaming that I was with Thomas. In the dream, he was very young, and we were chasing a light that had come free of the others, running down a winding path with darkness all around.

When I woke, at first I did not know where I was. The music seemed more real than the dingy room; its sound saturated me with happiness and pain. Then I saw Katya and remembered where we were and why. She was already up and standing at the window, lifting a shade to peer out — the sun made a warm place on her skin and I felt affection for her known form in this unknown place. She turned and said, “Janice, there's weddings going on outside— plural !”