Winman, Sarah - When God Was a Rabbit

‘What the fuck are you doing, Jenny?’ he screamed, as he dragged her limp, smiling body through the surf, across the shingle. ‘You fucking little idiot! We’re all out looking for you, worried about you. How dare you? You could have drowned out there.’

‘I was never in any danger,’ she said calmly. ‘Nothing can ever hurt me. Nothing can take me from me.’

And from that moment, I watched her. Watched her with different coloured eyes, until the raging energy that coursed through my body finally revealed itself and gave itself name: envy. For I knew already that something had taken me from me, and had replaced it with a desperate longing for a time before; a time before fear, a time before shame. And now that knowledge had a voice, and it was a voice that rose from the depths of my years and howled into the night sky like a wounded animal longing for home.

She never explained what happened, why she didn’t show, and I never pushed; instead she disappeared for weeks, leaving my letters, my concern, unanswered. And then as June approached, her reappearance was heralded by a familiar scrawl across a familiar envelope, inside of which was a familiar hand-made card, this time with a solitary rabbit on the front.

I’m sorry Elly , she wrote in her minuscule cut-out lettering. Be patient with me. I’m Sorry .

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know it’s late.’

I’d just finished a magazine article, just got to bed and looked at the clock – three o’clock – and that was when the phone rang and that’s when I’d considered letting the answer-machine pick up but I could never do that, because I knew it was him – he always called at that time – and so I reached for the phone and said, ‘Joe?’ and he said, ‘Guess what?’ and I said, ‘What?’ and he did something unusual. He laughed.

‘What is it?’ I said, hearing the sound of people in the background, the clink of glasses. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Out,’ he said.

‘That’s great,’ I said.

‘Guess who’s here?’

‘Dunno,’ I said.

‘Guess,’ he said again.

‘I dunno ,’ I said, feeling suddenly irritated. ‘Gwyneth Paltrow?’ (He’d actually met her two weeks before at an opening, and had forced me to talk to her on the phone like a fan.)

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not Gwynnie.’

‘Who then?’ I said, adjusting my pillow.

And he told me.

And on the line I heard a voice that might or might not have been him; a man’s voice, not a boy’s, surrounded by eighteen years of silence. But when he said, ‘Hey, little Ell,’ the thing he always said to me, I felt a sensation upon my skin as if I was falling through feathers.

Two weeks later, the sound of New York chatter and car horns rose from Greene Street as the sun poured through the large windows, filling the space with an abundance of light that seemed lavish and greedy. I rolled over and opened my eyes. My brother was standing holding a coffee, staring at me.

‘How long have you been there?’ I said.

‘Twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘Sometimes on one leg, like this,’ and he showed me. ‘Or like this,’ and he changed legs. ‘Like an Aborigine.’

‘You’re so weird,’ I said, and rolled over, tired, happy, hung over.

I’d landed quite late the previous night. Joe had met me at JFK as he always did, and held a big sign that said ‘Sharon Stone’. He loved to listen to the whispers of the passers-by, the gorging anticipation of the star-struck, and he loved to watch their mute disappointment as I stood in front of him, dishevelled and casual and oh so not Sharon Stone. He relished this statement meant for the masses, and delivered it with precision that verged on cruelty.

As the taxi crossed Brooklyn Bridge (the bridge we always asked the driver to take), I opened my window to the smell of the city, to the noise, and my heart leapt as the lights illuminated my welcome, urging me onwards as it had done to millions of others, those wanting a different life. My brother had been one of the lured; brought by the promise of anonymity, not of gold, where he could be himself without the label of the past; without all those workings-out and crossings-out, the things we have to do before we come to an answer, the answer of who we are.

As I looked towards the financial district I felt a surge in my chest – for my brother, for Jenny, for the past, for Charlie, and I could feel the gnawing inclusiveness again; the them and us of my brother’s world; the one where I was always an us . He pointed to the Twin Towers and said, ‘You’ve never been up there, have you?’ And I said, ‘No.’

‘You look down and you’re so cut off from everything. It’s another world. I went last week for breakfast. Stood against the window, leant against it and felt my mind pulled towards the life below. It’s awesome, Elly. Fucking awesome. The life below feels so far away when you’re there. The minusculeness of existence.’

The taxi pulled to a sudden halt. ‘Yeah, yeah, you’re fuckin’ killin’ me. Fuck you, asshole!’

We pulled away slowly and my brother leant towards the grille. ‘Let’s go to the Algonquin instead, sir.’

‘Anything you want, buddy,’ said the driver, and swerved dangerously into the inside lane. He reached down for the radio and turned it on. Liza Minnelli. A song about maybes and being lucky – even a winner – a song about love not running away.

His name had sat between us since my arrival like an odd chaperone, bringing a quaint propriety to our stories. It was as if he deserved a chapter all to himself, a moment when we turned the page and only his name was visible. And so with the drinks ordered, the bar quiet and our attention mutual and assisting, that chapter began when my brother finished chewing on a handful of peanuts and said, ‘You’ll see him tomorrow, you know.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘He’s coming with us,’ he said. ‘To watch me sing. Do you mind?’

‘Why should I mind?’

‘It’s just so quick, for us, I mean. You’ve just got here.’

‘I’m OK.’

‘He just wanted to,’ he said. ‘He wants to see you.’

‘It’s OK, I understand.’

‘You sure? He just wanted to.’

‘I want to, too,’ I said, and I was about to ask if they had become lovers again, but the martinis arrived and they looked perfect and tempting, and there would be time for that, and so instead I reached for my glass and took the first sip and said, ‘Perfect!’ instead of ‘Cheers!’ Because it was.

‘Perfect,’ said my brother, and he unexpectedly reached over and held me.

He had become like Ginger. You had to translate his actions, for they were seldom accompanied by words, because his world was a quiet world; a disconnected, fractured space; a puzzle that made him phone me at three o’clock in the morning, asking me for the last piece of the border, so he could fill in the sky.

‘I’m so happy you’re here,’ he said, and I sat back and looked at him. His face was different: softer; the taut tiredness that had hung about his eyes, gone. His face looked happy.

‘You are, aren’t you?’ I said, grinning.

The older couple by the palm looked at us and smiled.

‘So,’ my brother said.

‘So?’

‘Can I tell you all over again?’

‘Of course,’ I said, and he downed half his glass and started again from the beginning.

It was a Stonewall party, a charity party he always supported, and one that was going to be held that year in one of the large brownstones on the edge of the Village. They were intimate affairs that catered for the usual people, but which always made good money from the tickets and the silent auction, and the other silent auction that only the naughty ever knew about.