"How did you meet him?"
"I haven"t yet-but apparently all the neighbors know there"s a foreigner living here."
"So he knows you"re living here alone?"
"Yes, everyone does."
"Then why did he leave you two fish?"
"I don"t know, maybe he thinks I look hungry."
"Or maybe he wanted to eat with you?"
"Do you really think so?"
"I think he looks lonely," Rebecca said.
"But there are always people on the street below his balcony-"
"That doesn"t mean anything," Rebecca interrupted. "Loneliness is like being the only person left alive in the universe, except that everyone else is still here."
"That"s beautiful," Henry said. "A really beautiful thing to say."
Then Henry told her about something sad from his childhood. Rebecca stared at the topless man. He stood at a tilt as though tethered to some terrible weight-some moment of his past that simultaneously defined who he was yet denied him life.
Chapter Nine.
"Bye, Henry," Daddy said.
"You"re not worried, are you, love?" Mammy said. "Because we"re only next door if you need us."
Henry nodded.
"I know, Mam."
"If your brother wakes up, just run over and tell us, now, like a good boy."
"I know what to do, I can do it, Mam."
"And you"re not afraid?" she said gently.
"He"s fine, Harriet," Daddy said. "We"ll be late."
The house was very quiet, but sometimes creaking, or a sharp tick from the kitchen, or the cat flap as Duncan came and went to do his business. The television was on. Henry sat down. There was a plate of rock cakes and a large gla.s.s of orange squash. It was still light out. Cars swished along in the wake of heavy rain.
When the cartoon ended, Henry wondered if they would come back. He stood in front of the television to see what would happen next.
There were pictures of Spider-Man on his underwear. He could see himself in the reflection of the television. The boy in the gla.s.s stood very still. They both waited to see what would come on.
Then Henry decided to check on his brother. It was his main job, after all. He was in charge when they were out.
Henry was five years older than his brother, but they looked alike. His brother always wanted everything-was always reaching his fingers into things, always touching-his face contorted with the difficulty of retrieval. Hanging saliva. The stench from his diapers-as heavy and hot as parcels of fish and chips. The violence of crying. His hair so wispy it might blow off. Henry remembered little black eyes when he came home from hospital. Mammy let Baby suck Henry"s finger.
"That"s how I eat gooseberries," Henry had said. Everyone laughed.
Baby didn"t have any hair then. Now he was almost one. Henry liked to bounce him on the bed. His clothes were soft and blue. He was entered into them through a zip. There was a fish sewn into the cloth. It was smiling and blinked one eye.
Henry stood in his brother"s room. The smell of disinfectant and baby powder filled him with despair. The blinds were down. The light was soft but bright enough to see.
His brother breathed quickly. His hands were very small, but wrinkled in all the correct places.
And then, outside a dog barked.
His brother"s eyes opened quickly. He turned his head blinking. When he saw Henry, he smiled, but then began to cry.
"No use crying for Mam," Henry said. "She"s next door."
Henry put his hand through the bars of his crib, but it didn"t help.
Then Henry did a little dance and sang a song about bears he had learned at school.
"I"ll teach it to you when you"re older, like me," Henry said.
His brother"s face was red with crying. His eyes bulged.
If only he would stop screaming. Mam and Dad would be mad that he woke up and blame Henry for going in.
Henry was about to run next door when he suddenly had the idea to give him a toy.
On his changing table, next to a pile of diapers, was a mobile that had once hung over Henry"s crib. Henry"s dad had said that maybe his brother might like it and he"d hang it tomorrow.
Henry grabbed the mobile and dangled it above the crib.
"This was mine once," Henry said. "So stop crying."
His brother stopped crying and reached up his hands.
"Would you like to play with it?"
The baby was laughing. His face returned to normal and the room was suddenly bright with the final moments of day. Henry dropped in the mobile.
Baby looked satisfied. His short, fat fingers explored little parts. He put one of the plastic animals into his mouth, then took it out and looked at it. He pulled on the strings, and tried to chew the wood.
"Go to sleep, little brother," Henry said. "Have nice dreams."
When Henry stepped out, he felt very proud. He would boast to Mam how he"d quieted his brother when a dog barked.
When his parents got home it was almost dark. There was nothing on television and so Henry had his toys everywhere. The house was now a place of shadows and Henry was too afraid to leave the glow of the television to reach the light switch.
"What a big boy," Mammy said.
"C"mon, young man," Dad said. "Time for bed."
Henry yawned.
"Did your brother wake up?"
"Yes," Henry said, "but went back to sleep after I went in and checked on him."
"You"re such a good boy," his mam said. "I knew I could trust you to be the man of the house."
"Even though we were only at the neighbors," added his father.
As Henry zipped into his own pajamas, watched dutifully by his father, there was suddenly a piercing scream that seemed to go on for a long time. His father bolted.
Then shouting from his brother"s room.
Henry watched through the crack in the door.
They had to use scissors to cut it off. Henry peed his pants but no one noticed.
Then the police came with an ambulance.
Neighbors appeared at the door in dressing gowns.
Henry was allowed to stay up and talk to the policeman.
Chapter Ten.
For most of Henry"s childhood, his brother"s room was used for storage. They never talked about it as a family. Sometimes his mother cried in her bathroom. Sometimes Henry found his father in the garage staring at nothing.
As a teenager, he woke up gasping. Everybody knew his brother had died. In the supermarket, people would approach his mother.
"How are you coping?"
Even years later, the same question, the same grimace of sympathy. An arm placed gently upon her arm all helped to keep it fresh.
It was blamed on the toy; n.o.body knew anything beyond that.
By his final year at university, Henry realized that something wasn"t right. The mechanism that allowed other students to form long friendships over rowdy nights at the student bar had broken in him, or had never worked.
The few relationships he"d had were quiet disasters. What began as genuine intent ended quickly with indifference.
And now Rebecca. It had begun like the others. Attraction, conversation, a night together. But there was something about her that was deeper and braver-something about her that compelled Henry beyond the details and feelings of the moment, as though they were both tethered to the same point in the future.
And so he told her some things, but not everything. Of course she blamed the toy, and Henry was safe to continue impersonating the man he should have been.
After a long silence, Henry awkwardly asked Rebecca about where she grew up. "In some French country house with shutters and garden hoses and beds of lavender and a vintage Citroen?"
"Not exactly," she said, still visibly shaken by his story.
"Where are you from in France exactly?" Henry asked.
"Guess."
"Well, not Paris, I know that. How about Champagne?"
"Non."
"Bordeaux?"
"No, not Bordeaux."
"Dijon?"
"Is your geographical knowledge of France limited to what you can eat and drink?"
"Lascaux?"
"Good answer-being that I"ve made only sketches and not paintings yet, but no."
Rebecca reached for the orange juice on her bedside table, but then changed her mind and set it back down.
Henry went to the kitchen and returned with a gla.s.s of water.
"Thanks," she said.
She stretched out her body in the sheets.
They were both tired. As they lay down, Henry said, "I find proof of life, and you explain the significance of it."
"Non, Henry, I don"t think that"s it-I think you search for proof of your own life."