Monday, June 24, 1996
Our
Brother's Grim
or
The
Squinchening
The
tall nurse pat me on the head in that vaguely reassuring but ultimately
patronizing way adults do when a kid hurts themself. Did it make everything feel slightly
better? Yes, but that is not the point. "You're gonna be fine, hon," she
told me. "Your folks just got here,
I'm gonna step out and talk to them so we can hurry up and get you home. If you need anything, or if the hand starts
to hurt again, hit the buzzer, we'll come running."
I
scooched down to press my head into the uncomfortable pillow supporting my
neck, "Thanks, Miss Debbie."
She
smiled down at me before turning to leave and gave me a wink. "Good to see you kids again, let's try
not to be patients next time though."
The door closed softly behind her.
Marlin,
looking as tired as I felt, took my hand in hers. "Don't be weird," I told my
sister. Instead of letting go, I
squeezed to make sure she could not pull away.
The drugs Debbie had shot into the bag of saline hanging from a
stainless steel hook affixed to my bedframe slow-dripped a cocktail of fluids
and industrial strength antibiotics through an IV line inserted into a fat vein
in my forearm. Slowly, so that it felt
like a natural progression of the onset of sleep, they took effect.
Except,
they were not anything at all like Debbie had advertised. According to her, I should have expected
instant unconsciousness, and a complete lack of sensation. At the moment, I was mildly sleepy, and there
was a lingering, dull thrum of pain that slid all the way up to my elbow and
back down to my stump with every slow beat of my heart. Chalk the drugs not working up to a
combination of youth, shock, and adrenaline, I guess.
The
good news was that my finger did not hurt.
Which, as it was no longer attached to my body: Duh. In the context of phantom pain,[1] this was good news.
We
could see the outlines of our parents talking animatedly with Debbie through
the closed blinds. Snatches of
conversation would have been helpful, but hospitals seemed to have been
designed with soundproof doors. Dad,
obvious as the largest of the three silhouettes, gesticulated wildly. Mom simply nodding occasionally. It was impossible to tell if they were angry
or sharing some kind of private joke between the three of them.
Between
the two of us, we had decided, in the hectic minutes after arriving home from
the shop, that telling our parents the truth was not in our best
interests. Stupid kid logic, of the type
that defies explanation and compels us to lie in the face of a monumental
screw-up regardless of its severity in order to delay the eruption of parental
ire for a later, yet inevitable, date, was the driving force behind that
decision. That logic also had a hand in
the brief showers we took prior to calling 911.
Not
like there had been an amputation or anything.
Mom
came in holding my chart. Dad came in
wearing a mixture of concern and undisguised relief, which was great because
disappointed father was not something I was capable of dealing with tonight.
Mom
bent down briefly to kiss me on the cheek, checked my IV, and finally
spoke. "Marlin, sweetheart,"
she was looking at Marlin, "why don't you come with me. I need some help finishing up the discharge
paperwork. Let's let your dad and brother
talk." She kissed me on the
forehead again, "I'm glad you're alright.
I love you."
"I
love you too, mom." My mother was
being unerring professional, and altogether way more calm than I would ever
expect a mother to be under the circumstances.
It occurred to me in that moment that I had also never seen mom in her
work environment. Mom, until then, had
never been anything but my mom, and I had never given her the due she deserved
as a nurse.[2]
Reluctantly,
Marlin stood to follow her. She was noticeably
weak on her feet. With a final hand
squeeze, she let go, and walked away.
Dad
smiled weakly, "You missed a step."
I
already had this conversation with the EMTs, so I replied wearily, "I know
I know, on ice is not the same as in ice."
Without
warning, he gently snatched my wrist to inspect my hand. 'What were you
thinking?"
"I
just wanted to be like you," I told him in a faux slurred voice and tapped
his fake leg with my free hand. That
might have sounded clever, but it took them an hour to get here, so there was
plenty of time to come up with witty one-liners.
"Funny,"
his tone was sarcastic, but the smile cracking his face was genuine.
"I
thought so. Besides, how else am I
supposed to get a sweet superpower origin story? It's not like we have Batman money if you get
shot in an alleyway. I'd be destitute."
He
laughed at that, trying not to jostle my too much. "For every one teenager that gets superpowers
from a radioactive boxer, the other six billion just get cancer and
die." Without taking his eyes off
my stump, he let real sympathy show through, "How do you feel?"
"Like
I'll never play the guitar." I was
on it!
He
looked suddenly thoughtful, "You know the first thing my buddies did when
I woke up after the crash?" I shook
my head, I didn't know. I couldn't know,
dad never spoke about the incident that cost him his leg. All I knew for certain was that he was shot down
and got two medals out of it.[3] He looked me dead in the eyes, lifted my
hand-
And
flicked my bandaged stump.
"Owyoudickow!"
I yelped, and immediately slapped my free hand over my mouth, turning shade of
regretful red.
Before
I could apologize, Dad let go of my wrist and started laughing so hard, he was
nearly in tears. "Welcome to the
club, boy."
Midnight
came and went, and as exciting as the whole ordeal began, it was over just as
anticlimactically. Shedding their
semi-formal outerwear, the parental units shuffled off their room only after
Marlin reassured them that she was perfectly capable of bringing me to bed on
her own, thank you.
I
did not need the help, I think, but took it all the same and leaned against her
shoulders as we walked upstairs together.
She shifted her weight at the side of the bed, allowing me to flop onto
the welcoming softness. Too exhausted at
this point to tuck myself in, I simply grabbed for the nearest blanket and
whipped it over my body.
Marlin
plopped down next to me, a comforting presence.
"Wanna hear something weird?" she asked, groggily. The question was rhetorical. There were no secrets between us. "I think I felt it when I cut your finger
off. I mean, it felt like I cut mine
off, too."
I
rolled over to face her, "I knew it.
You looked like I felt."
Her
eyes were half-lidded. Sleep began to
take her. "Sorry about that, by the way," she tried to tell me, but
it came out closer to, “Sorr ou tha, aye way.”
"Nah,"
I dismissively flapped my bandaged hand at her, "is kay." My last words, as I slowly drifted away,
were, "You were right, katanas suck."
I
was torn, abruptly, from my restful, dreamless sleep by the patriarchal roar
of, "Where are they?" followed immediately by a slamming door and,
"I'm gonna murder those little liars!" Heavy footfalls pounded deliberately up the
stairs. Dad was making the effort to put
his fake foot down hard, never a good sign, only stopping on the seventh step
as mom's voice, partially obscured by her softness, made it to our ears,
"-hospital, you insensitive ass."
I knew without looking that Marlin was awake and listening. We remained motionless in bed, quiet,
trembling, hearts racing from the unexpected wakeup and subsequent shouting
directed at us. "I'll cut off the
other 19!"
"I
think," Marlin said in a barely audible whisper, "we may have
forgotten something."
Those
same heavy footfalls went back down the stairs, "There was blood
EVERYWHERE! Thousands of dollars in
damage. THOUSANDS!" he bellowed.
Dad must have been aiming up at our room, taking care to ensure that we
heard him because the volume of his voice would alternate between raised voice
when making a statement to mom and, well, bellowing.
"Yep"
I agreed.
There
was more muffled argument, punctuated by a profusion of shouted profanity.[4] We strained to listen, as if catching any of
the heated discussion would have helped us mentally prepare for whatever came
next. A loud, "Fine!" caused
both of us to twitch. "I'll be in
the car, but I am NOT driving."
Slam.
Mom’s
lighter footsteps came on, accompanied by the creaking of floorboards as she
ascended. The bedroom door opened,
slowly, and before her head poked through, we both closed our eyes and feigned
sleep. "I know you're awake,"
she told us. Four set of eyelids opened
simultaneously. She was given our
undivided attention. "Your father
is furious, if you couldn't tell. I am
going to calm him down. When we get
back, we are going to have a serious talk." Mom gave us a look of utter disappointment
and blew out a sigh. "I am very,
very upset with the two of you."
At
least we had the decency to look ashamed.
It was particularly stinging coming from our mother.
"How
you feeling boy?" dad asked with a gruff voice, scaring the bejesus out of
all three of us. He had managed to sneak
silently back into the house, up the stairs, and behind mom.
Hazarding
some lightheartedness, I answered, "Like I'll never play the guitar again."
Still
steaming, but not enough to not enjoy solid dad humor, he fought the smile
creeping up his face. "Funny. Since you screwed up our date last night, we
are going to go out and try again. And,
because marriage is full of compromise, I'm not allowed to murder you."
"When
are you coming back?"
Mom
answered before dad could speak up again, "That is none of your
concern. Watch Soren, he needs to be in
bed by eight o’clock."
"What
time is it now?"
"It's
after three." Dad gently put his
hand on mom's waist and led her away, "Let's go, darling wife."
Before
she disappeared from the doorframe, she added, "Clean the house, if you
can. And all of my children better be in
one piece when we get back, or I'll sell you to a factory."
"And
feel free to not chop anything else off," dad added.
Throwing
the covers off and sitting up, I said, to no one in particular, "Well,
that could have gone worse."
Even
taking into account our past-noon wakeup, late evening came quickly. Not surprisingly, that time was accompanied
by a conspicuous lack of parents. Dad,
while nominally calm, could, given the right circumstances,[5] quite easily fulfill the
role of irascible old man. His temper
was only tempered by mom, and then only after a minimum of at least a few
hours.
Sometimes,
mom would purposely provoke his ire just to hurry the whole ordeal along. Sometimes, mom would poke the bear because
she enjoyed being evil.
When
they returned, and they would be back in due course, both would be in markedly
better moods. Dad having blown off steam
and mom having gotten her jabs in, the only noticeable difference in their
household attitudes would be a conscious shift towards annoyingly affectionate
and mushy. Comfortable love never under
any real threat, these displays were always for their amusement at our
embarrassment. They were only ever one
of 'those' couples around their kids,[6] and especially around
their kids' friends.
Our
parents were, thankfully, predictable, and it was easy to pander to them.
And
pander we must, because sustained good moods were never guaranteed, so it fell
to us to make amends in the least subtle ways available to ensure a smooth and
peaceful transition towards absolute forgiveness. With that strategy in mind, Marlin and I set
about the house to clean up, with a vengeance, the mess we had now been twice
tasked with.
It
was in those hours of housework that a deliberate silence descended. Neither of us were entirely comfortable
acknowledging the fact that my pain pills were making both of us equally hazy,
or that even in a different room and out of sight from the other, Marlin would
yelp in agony whenever I absent-mindedly rapped my stump against a hard
surface. Any attempt at conversation, as
we learned through several false starts, may eventually lead to an exploration
of those topics, so we kept to ourselves and away from each other.
Only
when Soren came home, having been dropped off by his friend's parents, and his bedtime
had long passed did we reluctantly break our reticent silence. "He should have been asleep a while
ago," Marlin said, looking up towards the light beaming out of our
brother's room.
"Let's
go check on him," I told her by way of agreement.
Soren
sat, a book under his nose, in the middle of his bed. It was obvious he was fighting himself to
stay awake.
"You
need to go to sleep little man," Marlin's voice was surprisingly
gentle. "You look like you're
halfway there already."
"I
don't wanna," came his slightly slurred defiance.
"Well,"
she said, moving to sit next to him while I took up a post against the
doorframe, "what you don't want is immaterial. What you need is to close your eyes and be
less of a pain."
Putting
the book down near a pillow, he adjusted his body in order to place his tiny
head in Marlin's lap after she got settled.
"You're a pain," he shot back sleepily.
A
genuine smile broke across my face at that.
"He's got you there."
One
finger pointed at me, "You shut up.
You," she tousled Soren's hair like only a big sister could,
"tell me what's up munchkin. What's
your deal?"
Soren's
eyes opened fully to give me a sideways look, then he mumbled something out of
the corner of his mouth that only Marlin could hear. "What was that?" She leaned in close as he tugged at her
shoulder to whisper. His eyes kept
darting towards me, embarrassment clear on his tired face.
Suddenly
very self-conscious, "What?" I asked.
An unwelcome sliver of jealousy threaded itself around my heart but was
quickly stamped out. Marlin and I had
always been a singular brother-sister sibling team; I just had never given any
thought to her having an individual relationship with our younger brother. Seeing them together as they were was, I am
not ashamed to admit, actually heartwarming.
This
caused him to cower a bit, and he let go of Marlin. "Are you serious?" she asked
without any trace of criticism. He
nodded slightly; his eyes fixated on me.
I felt like he was expecting me to do some kind of terrifying magic
trick at any moment. More sternly now,
she snapped to get his attention and commanded, "Then tell him
yourself. It's not attached to him, so
it's not like he's the one that's going to get you, right?"
He
thought about that with all of earnest contemplation of a world weary eight
year old. "Right," Marlin's
reasoning finally edging him towards a reasonable conclusion. Soren extracted himself from Marlin's lap, scooched
over toward me, and gestured for me to come closer. When I was in range, he grabbed my wrist,
looked right at my bandages, and asked, "Where is it?"
That
took a second to process, and I wondered whether or not he was being
serious. The solemn, yearning look on
his face assured me he was. "My
finger? Why?"
"Humor
him," Marlin huffed.
I
shrugged, "It's gone. I think the
hospital burned it."
"Are
you sure?" Before I could answer,
he added, "Don't lie."
This
was important to him, but for the life of me, I had no idea why. "Honestly, dude, I don't know. Why does it matter?"
He
looked around, like he believed it was in the room with us. "What if it comes back?" he asked gravely. Soren dropped my hand and began crawling his
own finger across the mattress. "What
if it's squinching across the floor in the middle of the night and it tries to
get me?"
A
mental image of my severed pinkie, bloated and purple, bending at the joint and
flattening to inch its way across the floor like a grub, leaving a slick trail
of congealing blood in its wake, crossed my mind. To me, it was comical. Just one day ago I held the thing in my hand
and watched it flopped around harmlessly.
Looking at the whole ordeal from Soren's perspective, that of a child
with an overactive imagination, I considered how he might see it as scary. Our brother had seen a lizard he caught lose
its tail and watch in horror as the thing writhed and twitched like it was
alive, only for a whole new one to regrow within a matter of weeks. Soren never knew what happened to the old
tail or how the new one got there,8 and he
had no idea how the human body worked just yet.
Maybe the combination of those two things, and knowing I had suffered,
was enough for him to assume the worst.
Just one more monster
added to his personal pantheon.
I
should have laughed at him, teased him.
It was my brotherly duty to ridicule his irrational fear, to encourage
it, to weaponize it, to mentally scar him on a daily basis until he grew to an
age where Santa was no longer real. I
opened my mouth in a moment of savage glee to permanently damage my younger
brother's fragile psyche.
One
brief glance at Marlin was all it took.
My
twin was glaring daggers at me. Incipient murder stitched across her
face. Looking like a rather confused fish,
my mouth closed and opened several times as I worked out just exactly what to
say next. The streak of vindictiveness dissipated
under her stony gaze. "Just because
we don't know what they did with my finger,” I said carefully, “doesn't mean
it's coming to get you." He did not
even pretend to look convinced, so I kept on.
"But that doesn't mean it's not." Marlin started to speak, the spark of anger
reddening her face; I held a hand up to forestall her. "So, we are going to tell you everything
we know about the rules to keep you safe."
THE
RULES, Marlin mouthed.
"The
rules?" he asked, shakily.
"Safe from what?" He
was scared, but that fear was rapidly transforming into excited curiosity.
I
gave him a condescending ha, trying to calm him by implying that this was a
fact everyone knew, and how could he not.
"Monsters, you tiny dummy."
His
eyes went wide in horrified fascination.
"Monsters are real?" he asked, the edges of his mouth turning
up in a self-congratulatory smile, as if I had confirmed something he had
always suspected.
Marlin
silently mouthed again, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
I
waved away her concerns.9 "Of course they're real. But you need to know where they come from,
and how to protect yourself." I
wracked my brain before speaking, thinking about all the random things that
scared me while I was trying to sleep.
If I got this wrong, Soren would be screwed up and Marlin would kill
me. "Monsters come from four
places, and four places only," I held up three fingers, remembered my
phalangeal situation, switched hands to hold up four fingers, and started
counting them off one at a time.
One finger went down, "Under
the bed.”
Soren nodded, “Well,
duh.”
“Hush.” I put down a second finger, “Inside closets
with closed doors.”
He nodded again, “I knew
it.”
“Really dark shadows,” I
told him, leaving my remaining pinky raised.
“You know, like behind furniture and doors, under the car, in the
corners of your room when you don’t keep it clean.”
Part of him wanted to
argue that last point, but he pressed his lips into a grim line. Better safe that sorry, apparently.
As I formed a fist to
count off the fourth monster breeding area, my brain failed me. “And, um, uh…"
Marlin
finished, "Mirrors."
“Right,
mirrors,” I mirrored. ""They
only ever come out at night, though. And
only with the lights off. For all of
it. Monsters hate light."
“You
can't let your hands or feet hang off the edge of the bed, or they'll get you,”
Marlin added.
Soren nodded sagely,
agreeing with us as if this made complete sense to him. “That’s why I always jump into bed from a few
feet away when I use the potty at night.”
He bought it, more power to the kid.
Marlin,
mollified, adopted her muted mellifluous mom voice, "You are always,
always, always, always, always safe if you hide under the blankets."
"Always?"
"Always,
but you have to be quiet, because they can still hear you."
Soren
placed himself firmly in the center of the bad, “How do you stop them?”
“We
can't tell you that,” I told him, imagination already strained from pills and
pain and lack of use.
His
pout was mostly obstinance, “Why not?”
Marlin
answered, “You're too brave, and too little.
We know you'd try to do it yourself, but you'd get eaten. You have to let us do it for you.”
“Can
you do it tonight?” he asked. “Get the
monsters out of my room, I mean. There
aren’t that many, I promise. And you
might find the,” he nodded towards me, “you know.”
“Yes,”
we replied simultaneously, with a confidence that I faked, but made our sister
sound like she had an actual plan.
Marlin
stood, grabbing my arm and walking us toward the door. “Okay, munchkin,” she told Soren, “hide under
your blanket like we told you, and we'll be right back. We'll leave the light on to be extra safe.”
“K,”
came his compliant peep. From beneath
blanketed safety, he watched us go.
Marlin
led us downstairs, and as soon as I was positive we were out of earshot, I
asked, “What are we doing?”
“Grab
a lobster hammer and a saucepan. Then,
follow my lead. We’ve got monsters to
fight.”
Twenty
minutes later, Marlin and I were relaxing on the couch while our brother was
snoozing away peacefully in bed with the lights off. The lead I was meant to follow became a performance. After summarily expelling Soren from the
room, and closing the door behind him of course, the act consisted mostly of
yelling nonsense and banging the hammer and the pan against the wall for
noise. It was meant to sound like a
terrible clash of monster and man, but I suspect it sounded like two kids just
losing their minds on a hot summer night.
We left the room a little worse for wear and covered in sweat.
Soren, having shown an
uncomfortable level of interest in the whereabouts of multiple monster corpses,
accepted a brief but fantastic explanation of their rapid sublimation after
death. Being thoroughly convinced that
his older siblings had indeed cleared his of room of no less than six boogeymen
and one wayward digit, he happily allowed himself to be tucked in for the
night.
[1]
Re: Peg leg dad.
[2]
The lesson here being: Never underestimate your mother. -Marcus
[3]
Or your father. -Marlin
[4]
An obscene amount of obscenity, if you will.
-Marcus
[5]
His two, supposedly mature, pre-teenage children lying about accidental
amputation and the resultant pecuniary damage caused by their recklessness, an
apparent qualifier.
[6]
As far as we knew.7 -Marlin
7 Gross.
-Marcus, et al.
8 Despite
having kept the thing in a terrarium and clearly watching it regrow. Kids are dumb.
9 If it was
not obvious, the Mardises were a very expressive family. -Isabelle
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