A. Homes - May We Be Forgiven

And so the next day I visit the boy, more out of a kind of familial guilt and less out of the need to calculate the impossible cost of making the boy “whole.” I stop at the gift shop, where the selection is limited to brightly colored carnations, religious necklaces, and candy. I pick a box of chocolates and powder-blue carnations. The boy is in the same hospital as George, in the pediatric unit — two floors higher. He is sitting up in bed, eating ice cream, his eyes fixed on the television— SpongeBob SquarePants. He is about nine years old, chunky, a single eyebrow arches across his face in the shape of the letter “M.” His right eye is blackened, and a large patch on the side of his head has been shaved, and there’s a meaty purple line of stitches exposed to the air. I give the gifts to the woman sitting with the boy, who tells me that he is doing as well as can be expected, there is always someone with him, a relative or one of the nurses.

“How much does he remember?” I ask.

“All of it,” the woman says. “Are you from the insurance company?”

I nod — is a nod the same as a lie?

“Do you have everything you need?” I ask the boy.

He doesn’t answer.

“I’ll come back again in a few days,” I say, anxious to leave. “If you think of anything, you’ll let me know.”

It’s funny how quickly something becomes a routine, a way of doing business. I stay with Jane, and it is as though we are playing house. That night I take out the trash and lock the door; she makes a snack and asks if I’ll come upstairs. We watch a little television and read. I read whatever it was that George had been reading, his newspapers and magazines, Media Age, Variety, The Economist, and a big history of Thomas Jefferson that sits beside the bed.

The accident happens and then it happens. It doesn’t happen the night of the accident or the night we all visit. It happens the night after that, the night after Claire tells me not to leave Jane alone, the night after Claire leaves for China. Claire goes on her trip, George goes downhill, and then it happens. It’s the thing that was never supposed to happen.

The evening visit to the hospital goes badly. For reasons that are not clear, George is locked in a padded room, his arms bound to his body. Jane and I take turns peering through the small window. He looks miserable. Jane asks to go in and see him, the nurse cautions her against it, but she insists. Jane goes to him, calls his name. George looks up at her; she sweeps his hair out of his face, wipes his furrowed brow; and he turns on her, pins her with his body and bites her again and again, her face, her neck, her hands, breaking the skin in several places. The aides rush in and pull him off of her. Jane is taken downstairs and treated in the Emergency Room, her wounds are cleaned and dressed and she’s given some kind of a shot, like a rabies vaccination.

We go back to the house. Jane heats hundred-calorie brownies in the microwave, I scoop no-fat ice cream onto them, she sprays them with zero-calorie whipped cream, and I cheer them further with chocolate sprinkles. We snack in silence. I take out the trash and change out of my clothes, the same clothes I’ve been wearing for days, and put on a pair of his pajamas.

I hug her. I want to be comforting. I am in his pajamas, she is still dressed. I don’t think anything will happen. “I apologize,” I say, without knowing what I am saying. And then she is against me, she puts her hands on the sides of her skirt and slides it down. She pulls me towards her.

There was a time when I almost told Claire about Thanksgiving — in fact I tried to tell her, one night after sex, when I was feeling close to her. As I started to tell the story, Claire sat up straight and pulled the sheet tight against her body, and I backed away from what I was about to say. I changed it. I left out the kiss and just mentioned something about Jane brushing against me.

“You were in her way and she was trying to get past you and not get to you,” Claire said.

I didn’t mention that I felt the head of my cock pressing against my sister-in-law’s hips, her thighs pressed together.

“Only you would think she was making a pass,” Claire said, disgusted.

“Only me,” I repeated. “Only me.”

Jane pulls me to her; her hips are narrow. My hand slides down into her panties. It is a new jungle. She sighs. The feel of her, this private softness, is incredible. And I’m thinking, this is not really happening — is it?

Her mouth is on me; she reaches for something, some kind of cream, it starts cold and then goes warm. She strokes me, looking me in the eye. And then again her mouth is on me and there is no way to say no. She pulls my pajamas out from under, is quickly upon me, riding me. I explode.

Drenched in her scent, but too shaken to shower or to fall asleep in their bed, I wait until she is asleep and then go downstairs, to the kitchen, and wash myself with dish soap. I am in my brother’s kitchen at three in the morning, soaping my cock at his sink, drying myself with a towel that says “Home Sweet Home.” It happens again in the morning, when she finds me on the sofa, and then again in the afternoon, after we visit George. “What’s the story with your hand?” George asks Jane the next day, noticing her bandages. He’s back in his room, with no memory of the night before.

Jane starts to cry.

“You look like hell,” he says. “Get some rest.”

“It’s been a difficult time,” I say.

That evening we open a bottle of wine and do it again, more slowly, deliberately, intentionally.

The hospital lets him out, or more likely he simply decides to leave. Inexplicably, he is able to walk out unnoticed in the middle of the night. He comes home in a taxi, using money that he’s found at the bottom of his pocket. He can’t find his keys so he rings the bell and the dog barks.

Maybe I heard that part — the dog barking.

Or maybe he didn’t ring the bell and maybe the dog didn’t bark. Maybe George took the spare key from inside the fake rock in the garden by the door, and, like an intruder, he came silently into his own house.

Maybe he came upstairs thinking he’d crawl into his bed, but his spot was taken. I don’t know how long he stood there. I don’t know how long he waited before he lifted the lamp from her side of the bed and smashed it onto her head.

That’s when I woke up.

She is screaming. The one blow isn’t enough. She tries to get up; the lamp isn’t even broken. George looks at me and then picks the lamp up again and swings it at her. The porcelain vase that is the base explodes against her head. By then I am out of bed. He tosses aside what remained of the lamp — blood streaming down his fingers — picks up the telephone, and throws it to me.

“Call it in,” he says.

I stand facing him, wearing his pajamas. We are the same, like mimes, we have the same gestures, the same faces, the family chin, my father’s brow, the same mismatched selves. I am staring at him, not knowing how this is going to work out. A disturbing gurgling sound prompts me to dial the phone.

Accidentally, I drop the phone. I bend to pick it up, and my brother’s foot catches me under the chin, kicking me hard; my head snaps back. I am down as he leaves the room. I see his hospital gown under his clothes, hanging out like some kind of tail. I hear George’s heavy footfall as he goes down the stairs. Jane is making an alarming noise. I reach across the floor, pull the phone towards me, and dial “0.” I dial “0” like it is a hotel, like I expect someone to answer. There is a long recording, a kind of spoken word essay about what the “0” button can do for you, and I realize it will be forever before a real person comes on. I hang up and after several shaky attempts am able to dial “911.”