Four Things You Need To Know About My Brother by Jayson Carcione

There are four things you need to know about my brother. Sorry, I know it’s late. You’re tired. The book keeps slipping from your hands. Your hands are beautiful, spidery and strong. You could have been a surgeon — or a weaver of exquisite baskets. It’s a shame you gave up the piano. I always loved the way your fingers appeared to float above the keys like feathers. I detect a change in your breathing, a catch in the throat. You get startled when the book drops onto your chest and you’re awake again. You never ask me what I’m reading these days. Don’t look at me like that — you know what I mean. I know what you’re reading. I always do— but it doesn’t matter. I can’t read anymore tonight. The mind wanders. It is restless, covered in cobwebs.

That’s some rain outside. Listen to the rain, machine gun fire in the night. Why do storms come in the night? I hear the sound of planes overhead — an armada in the midnight sky. Hundreds of them ready to unleash a firestorm. No, it’s just the wind. I’ve been reading about Dresden — not that you’re interested — and my brain is on fire. I hear planes in the wind though, the mechanised roar of death, steady and relentless. I hope it doesn’t wake the baby. Did you keep her night-light on? If she can sleep through this, she can sleep through anything. This feels like a forever night. When you were dozing earlier, I looked out the skylight. The rain descended over the city like a dark shroud. No raindrops here, just a black wall of water in the wind. Listen there goes another garbage can. Another one. A clash of metal on stone. They will litter the streets tomorrow like wounded soldiers on a muddy battlefield — along with broken baby strollers and the corpses of unwanted umbrellas. There will be flooding downtown.

My head aches. I had too much wine with dinner. You were sensible as always but that lusty nero d’avola is hitting me behind the eyes. A war beat of drums in my temples. Do you remember that vineyard in the foothills of Mount Etna? We ate steak-sized chunks of ricotta, drizzled in olive oil. We scooped up the cheese with warm heels of bread and washed it down with the wine. Slabs of petrified lava surrounded us like black icebergs. I can’t remember if we made love that night in the whitewashed room in the old farmhouse. I’d like to think we did — it makes for a better story.

The first thing about my brother is this — he never liked me. He would take a bullet for me, yes. He would beat down the street bullies when they broke my glasses. He would let me win at chess and cards and always let me have the last slice of pizza. He stopped to tie my shoelaces on the way to school. He hugged me at Christmas, on my birthday, at our father’s funeral. It was always the same embrace — fleeting with two man slaps on the back and a “love ya bro”. But he never liked me — these things were done out of obligation. These things were done because that’s what older brothers do — or what he thought they should do. Of course you have to understand, we lived by the code of the street back then. The neighbourhood was everything. The city was dying, fires burned in the blackout, and Berkowitz was on the loose — but the neighbourhood was untouched. Our fortress of solitude in a city gone mad and my brother was our superman. I often watched him from the window of our apartment, from my sick bed where the asthma held me hostage on sultry summer days. With his brawny arms, he knocked stickballs to hell, carried groceries for the old ladies, delivered pizza for old man Rossi — and collected money for the book he ran in the room behind the pizza oven.

I know what you’re thinking — but you don’t truly understand. Yes, he always gave me the last slice of pizza. But hidden between the melted, pulsating cheese — Rossi always used fresh mozzarella, not the stringy processed junk from supermarkets — and the blood-coloured tomato sauce, there was always a smear of spit. A globule of foamy spittle expertly placed on top of the beautiful mozzarella. I always ate it without complaint. My inhaler would go missing too. I had bad attacks in those days, in that claustrophobic shithole of an apartment. In Dresden, the firestorm sucked oxygen out of air. People suffocated to death on the spot. Their organs vaporised. Bodies twitching on the ashen streets. That was me, gasping, clawing at the air, trying to pull it back into my lungs. Mamma’s hands caressed my back, she kissed my head. She shouted at my brother to find the damn inhaler. He looked under my bed. It wasn’t there. He rushed out of my bedroom. Drawers slammed shut. He stomped. He threw threadbare sofa cushions to the floor. No inhaler. He stood in the doorway of the bedroom. He leaned against the doorframe. Not a bead of sweat on his brow. He shrugged and threw up his hands. Mamma kissed my head. She reeked of fish and jasmine. Her perfume couldn’t mask the hours she spending gutting fish downtown. My body tightened, my chest rose and fell like an ancient accordion. Air slowly filled my lungs. My mother fetched a washcloth from the bathroom. She wanted to cool my brow. My eyes opened and closed. I was wiped out but I was alive. I could taste the air, the dead air of the apartment but it was sweet. My brother no longer filled up the doorway. He was standing over my bed. His hand is raised, giving me a thumbs up. He lowered his other hand into the pocket of his faded jeans. He revealed the inhaler. He dropped it to the floor and kicked it under the bed.

Is that thunder? No, it’s more like a series of concussive sounds, sequential. Explosions? It could a gas main, a burst water pipe, a bomb in the subway. Listen, there’s the drone of a car alarm. Another will follow. One always triggers another, like a pack of howling dogs. Give me your hand, so smooth and cool like glass. I want to kiss the tips of your fingers. Sorry, my hand is sweaty. I hope I’m not coming down with something. A few of my students were out sick last week. There’s something going around. Touch my forehead — do I have a fever? No, it’s probably just the damn wine.

My brother was sixteen when he was first arrested. That’s the second thing I want to tell you. He had a few scrapes with the law before — breaking open fire hydrants and breaking into cars downtown — but this was the first time he was cuffed, put in a squad car and hauled to the police station. This is how I remember it…

The dying days of summer and my brother would vanish at dawn only to reappear at dinner time. That was mamma’s cardinal rule — be home for dinner. Run riot in the streets all day if you must, but be home for dinner with scrubbed hands and a hearty appetite. Mama went to work in the darkness, in the grey murk before the dawn. My brother left at first light. I was left alone to fend off a pathogen, a stubborn viral infection that had stolen my summer. I was over the worst of it but a lingering fever bound me to the bed. Sleep came in fits and starts like a nagging cough but I was awake when I heard my brother ghost-like close the apartment door behind him. A turn of the key, a click of the lock and I fell into a fever-burning sleep. I heard my grandparents, long resting in their plot at Calvary across the East River, muttering over me. They spoke in Sicilian and I couldn’t understand them. My grandfather wore Joe DiMaggio’s 1947 World Series jersey. Nonna wore a bathrobe of seaweed, tied at the front with a tendril of dripping kelp, a pile of broken seashells atop her head like a crown. She cradled a large fish in her arms. It struggled to break free. Their first child died from influenza and was buried at sea on the voyage over — although I didn’t know that then.

While I communed with my grandparents, my brother was ransacking houses on Long Island. He was caught with a good haul — silver candlesticks, jewellery, wads of cash stuffed in gentlemen socks — in a summer house on the sound, masturbating into pillaged black-laced panties over a four-postered bed. The bag of loot at his feet. The judge only gave him a month in juve — he wanted him out before Labor Day so he could go back to school. Of course, my brother never went back to school.

Do you think the baby is still asleep? The monitor is too quiet, the static unsettling. I told you we should have hooked up a camera too. Do you think she’s dreaming yet? Or just forging neural pathways while she’s in baby oblivion? Do you ever wonder what she’s thinking? Or trying to think — or whatever is going through that lovely, well-shaped baby head of hers? I know you find it unnerving when I watch you feed her. I marvel at her little lips fastened to your stiff nipple, her cheeks pulsating like the gills of a fish — that look of utter contentment. I wish I could feed her like that. I can remember my first months — sometimes with such clarity that I need to scrub the memories with brain bleach. I am trapped, alive, in a glass incubation cage in a room with the other preemies. I existed in a spider’s web of tubes and wires, breathing like a dying hummingbird. I remember the shadow-filled faces watching me through the glass, the smell of the hospital floors. All disinfectant and rosewater. When I finally came home, they put me under the Christmas tree. My brother was expecting a train set. He got me instead.

Is bad behaviour progressive? Does criminality follow a linear path — you lift a pack of gum, you mug an old lady, you rob a house, you rob a bank, you hit a man, you kill a man? If you smoke a joint, do you become a crack head? I’m sure there are learned men and women who could answer such questions, but for my brother there was a natural progression from his stint in juve to the gutter.

And that my love — how beautiful you look in the glow of the reading lamp — is fact number three about my brother: By the time he was 20, he was living on the streets, flopping in old tenement squats, doing stick-up jobs and dealing weed. His own drug use came later after the streets wore him down — like I said, a natural progression. Once, I found him panhandling on the No. 7 train bound for Manhattan. Mama was dead now and I had stopped looking for him on crowded subway platforms where pockets could be picked. I no longer searched the waterfront dive bars and drug dens in the darkest corners of the city. I closed my eyes when passing slumped bodies on park benches. I no longer walked in Thanksgiving rain and Christmas snow to bring him home.

It was the best part of the journey — the train hugged the elevated track out of Queensboro Plaza. I fastened my gaze through the smudged windows of the carriage. I was a kid again and Manhattan spread out before me, the skyline loomed like the jagged spine of a giant prehistoric beast rising from the river. It was snowing too — in great powdery clumps — and I couldn’t believe my luck. My child-like wonder was complete. The snow settled quickly over the track and we took it easy out of the station. The train creaked past the Silvercup Studios sign, the Sunnyside yards below spread out like a field of broken zippers. The train abruptly stopped and for a beautiful moment I was floating in mid—air before the train resumed its journey. I could almost taste the snowflakes on my tongue. The train descended without a sound in the snow silence as we approached the mouth of the tunnel. I sat down — it was a Sunday afternoon, the carriage nearly empty and I had my pick of seats — and the train entered the tunnel. I was swallowed by the darkness. The lights dipped briefly and flickered on again as we pulled into Hunters Point Station. The doors opened, the air was stale and fetid, the inside of a drunkard’s mouth. People packed in, snow still on their collars. He must have trailed the crowd because I didn’t see him come in.

My first instinct was to wrap my scarf around my face, take off my glasses and let him pass me by and flee at the next station. He was a beautiful corpse. All skin and bones, glassy eyes twitching in sunken sockets. Bags dripped under his eyes like oil slicks. His cheekbones burst through his vanishing face. His drought-stricken lips twitched to reveal an addict’s teeth. Teeth broken like tree branches. Nose busted in a few places. His hair was immaculate though, slicked back and tied with a small crimson ribbon. He was clean-shaven save for a Van Dyke beard with streaks of grey. He wore a black roll-neck sweater, moth-eaten yet elegant, with a black cashmere overcoat that hung over him like a dirty sack. The sleeves of the coat were short and revealed the black veins on his wrists. The track marks on his forearms. He wore black, woollen gloves cut at the knuckles. His fingers the colour of dirty snow. In one hand he held a white styrofoam cup that chimed with coins. Then he spoke: “Ladies and gentlemen. I’m a little down on my luck on this frosty winter’s eve. Any spare change for a cup of coffee would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Thank you and god bless you.” And with a bow, he moved methodically through the carriage like he was learning to walk again. I couldn’t breathe. Every step brought him closer to me, every step was a knife in the ribs. I closed my eyes every time a coin dropped in the cup. I opened my eyes and he was before me, like he had just come down off the cross. He leaned down to me and whispered: “Wait for me at Grand Central, near the clock. Gotta finish working the train, bro.” He put a hand on my cheek and I closed my eyes. I didn’t open them until the train limped into Grand Central.

That was the last time I saw him. It must be twelve years now — just a few weeks before I met you. I really should have told you all about him on our first date, but I didn’t want to frighten you off. I’ll check on the baby soon. Yes, I waited at the clock. I waited. Time bled on for hours and I waited. I waited until dawn light filled those magnificent windows in the concourse. I’m still waiting.

But, he is coming. This is the fourth thing you need to know — he is coming. He rang my office two days ago. I should have told you then. He rang from upstate — where he’s served 10 years. A drug deal gone bad. Something about a dead junkie, a maimed woman. I didn’t get the details. He is getting out tomorrow. That’s it. He just wanted to let me know and hung up without a goodbye. I’m back on the No 7 train on a snowy night and I can’t breathe again.

Will he seek me out? Will he come here? I don’t know. Will he return to the city? I have no doubt. This is how I see it — He will leave prison tomorrow, the mesh gates topped with razor wire close behind him. He won’t look back. An olive canvas duffel bag is slung over his shoulder. He is no longer a beautiful corpse — but he is dead, a grey wasted ex con thumbing his way down country roads towards a cup of coffee at some diner, the first wayward station of a new life. He will get on a shabby bus. Maybe, for a moment, he will think about going west, follow the dying sun to another ocean. But, no he will travel south, through the hinterlands of the Adirondacks, through the suburbs, the outskirts of the city. Over pot-holed streets and bridges, he will return to the city and the bus will spit him out at Port Authority.

God, there is no let up outside. This storm will devour us, the lightening will shatter our windows. Aren’t you glad I stocked up on batteries for the flashlight, bought those extra candles, and filled the bathtub? You know, we can never have enough canned goods. I hope they put enough sandbags along the river. Still no sound from the monitor. Listen to that thunderclap — the dead will surely rise. I can’t believe she’s sleeping through this. Will you check on her? I can’t seem to move. My legs are heavy, dipped in molten iron. My heart could break through my chest. I’d love a glass of water after you check the baby. Will you go to her now? You’re very quiet. I know it’s a lot for you to take in, but everything will be fine. We’ll be fine. Don’t you think? Don’t you? Don’t you…? Are you awake?

………………..

Jayson Carcione is a transplanted New Yorker living in Cork, Ireland, where he works for the Irish Examiner newspaper. His short story, Undertow, was longlisted for last year’s Seán O’Faoláin prize.