Drowning Lessons (21 page)

“Good day, sir,” Viva greeted him, keeping his smile intact as the officer approached. “A routine check?”

The officer nodded. He did not seem to be in an especially good humor. As predicted he asked to see Viva's driver's license.

“Of course, my good man, no bother at all,” said Viva, reaching for the wallet he did not own. He patted his empty pocket. “
Ay coño
, do you believe it? I have forgotten my damned billfold! I'm old; I'm losing my memory. My children are always angry at me because I keep forgetting things. You understand, I'm sure. After all, I wasn't breaking any laws, was I?”

“To drive without a license is breaking a law.”

“Ah, yes, my man, but I forgot, you see? I forget everything these days. I shouldn't drive anymore. After today, I will stop driving. I promise. May I please go now?”

He had broken into a sweat. The officer's eyes hardened.

“Please, I am just a toothless old man who could be your grandfather.”

The officer leaned close and smiled. “Is that so?” he said. “Well, then, Grandfather, now is a good time to show your fosterage, understand?”

Standing erect, the officer shifted his glance to Viva's pants pocket.

Now Viva became truly panic stricken. It was one thing to be caught driving without a driver's license, another, far worse thing to be caught driving without at least one peso in one's pocket. Viva's eyes darted helplessly, catching a glimpse of the officer's powerful-looking motorcycle parked, just as the Cadillac had been, in the shade of a roadside palm. His previously calm demeanor began to melt away in the late afternoon sun. He licked his lips.

“Sir,” Viva trembled in his seat. “I have no money.”

The officer's smile vanished. “Get out,” he said.

“Please, sir, I am old —”

The officer pointed his rifle. “Out.”

“Please, please — listen — I want to tell you something.” Viva was crying. “I confess; I did it. I have —”

“Out!”

“Please.” Viva buried his face in his hands. “Please, sir, please —”

The officer lowered the rifle. He pulled the door open, reached forward and, by Viva's left arm, started to drag him out of the car. In a panic Viva grabbed hold of his sugar-cane walking stick. Using all his strength, he brought the cane down on top of the officer's head.

The officer's cries sounded distant as Viva tried to slam the car door again and again, unaware that it was the officer's hand that prevented it from closing. He put the transmission into drive and squeezed his foot down hard on the accelerator. The Cadillac's tires spun up a wall of sand as it sped off, dragging the officer a dozen yards before depositing him in a whirl of dust. The officer rose slowly to his feet. It took him several moments to find his rifle, to aim, to fire. Viva saw the windshield shatter to his right. He ducked his head and pressed his foot down harder on the gas pedal. As though gripping life itself, his hands gripped the steering wheel.

The Cadillac veered off the edge of the
malecón
. It scraped between the trunks of two palm trees and went over the side of the cliff.

Still, Viva felt he was in control, though it was the control of a person dreaming. He saw, flashed in rapid succession, a series of
picture postcards: of surf, of palm trees, of white-sand beaches, the dazzling chromium grills of expensive cars … The Cadillac did a three-quarter turn in midair and seemed to hold itself in suspension for a moment before bouncing off the jagged, balsamic cliff face and landing in the ocean, which proceeded to lick it, like a lioness licking the fur of her young, with a harsh, salty tongue.

MY TWIN BROTHER
does not look like someone who recently attempted suicide. He stands by the nurse's station, trim, suntanned, smiling, the muscles of his cyclist's arms bulging from the sleeves of his canary madras shirt. With his sandals and his gym bag slung by a strap from his shoulder, he looks as if he's just wrapped up a two-week stint at Club Med.

“How are you?” he asks shaking my hand, his grip strong and assured as ever, the grip of a college dean greeting freshmen on orientation day. As always, Lloyd's handsome face comes as a bit of a surprise to me, since I happen to own an identical face, with a little less flesh on mine and a scarred chin (courtesy of Lloyd's practicing his baseball swing in the living room when we were nine). Otherwise we look pretty much the same, except that I'm a few pounds thinner. And while Lloyd's good looks seem to me solid and durable, mine blur and waver like a photograph in a developing bath or a reflection in water. At least to me they do.

“Fine,” I say to him. “How are
you
?”

“Great,” he says. “Just great.”

I believe it. Yet ten days ago he lay sprawled across the Duncan Phyfe bed he and his wife had shared until the month before last, his belly full of Château de la Chaise and diazepam, the empty wine bottle and prescription vial on his nightstand. Had Lisa, who'd moved into a neighbor's house, not come by to borrow a casserole dish, he would be dead, probably.

“Well, I'll bet anything this must be your brother, Edward,” says the young, attractive duty nurse. Red hair, freckles. His type.

“Amazing deductive powers these psychiatric nurses have, don't they? This is Dana,” says my brother, introducing her like she's his date.

“Your brother is something else,” says Dana with a sly look.

“Bet you're glad to be getting rid of him,” I say.

“Now why would you say that? I'm going to miss him. Your brother's a sweetheart,” says Dana. “And I bet you're every bit as sweet.”

“He's not,” says Lloyd. “I'm much sweeter. There's no comparison. Come on,” says Lloyd to me. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

“You all take care,” says Dana, watching us go.

We float through the bay of gleaming paint and chrome that is the visitor's parking lot, where I have lost the rental car. It's hot as hell in Alabama. As we comb the lanes in search of a white sedan (I'm not even sure if it's a Ford or a Chevy), already Lloyd's impatience starts to flare. “The spaces are numbered,” he reminds me. “Didn't you make a note of the number?”

“No, Lloyd,” I say. “I didn't take note of the number. If I had taken note of the number, we'd be in the car by now.”

We locate the car. A Honda. Lloyd stows his bag in the trunk. The upholstery is hot as a griddle. As we fasten our seat belts, my
brother says, “Is there air conditioning in this thing?” I — who asked for the very cheapest subcompact and can scarcely afford
it
— shake my head.

“Great,” says Lloyd.

With that “great” I realize several things. First, that near-death experiences notwithstanding, my brother is still as much of an asshole as ever, and second, that in coming here I have made a big mistake. It was not my idea. It was our mother who phoned me in tears, begging me to drop everything, as if I had anything worth dropping, and hop on a plane. “He is your
brother
, Edward.” She would have dropped everything herself had “everything” not included a kidney dialysis machine. So I'm dispatched. Heck, I've got nothing better to do than fling paint at canvas.

Lloyd directs me through a series of increasingly posh neighborhoods, into one of quaint Victorians with gabled roofs — some made of tin — with wraparound porches out of a southern-fried fairy tale. I hardly recognize his home, Lloyd, who's quite handy, has done so much with it. There's the new picket fence, white to go with the trim, the house itself yellow like his madras shirt, with cantaloupe and nutmeg accents to complete the gingerbread effect. He's added a porch swing and a red mailbox and wicker furniture. The roof of the porch is painted blue to match the sky. I swing the car past the pachysandra that swoops up to but stops just short of the edge of the house, like a well-trained dog. As we creep up the drive (“Slowly,” says Lloyd, “or you'll displace the gravel”), my brother fills me in on the latest improvements to his neighborhood, the new cupola on the Episcopal church (the old one struck by lightning), the first Starbucks in town, the Salvation Army store, which, after years of petitions to the zoning
board and letters to editors, he and his neighbors have finally succeeded in shutting down.

“When you buy a house, you buy the neighborhood. That's one thing I'm grateful for,” says Lloyd. “I've got the best neighbors. We've cleaned up most of the riffraff, with one exception.” He thumbs the house behind his: the neighbor Lisa has moved in with, a woman with a passion for sparrows and motorcycles. “I've offered her twice what that house is worth, but she won't move. There's something wrong with her.”

I nod. I live in a rental in Marble Hill, the Bronx.

As we carry our bags to the door, Lloyd tells me all the trouble he went through to get his new patio bricks. “You'd be surprised how hard it is to find bricks like these. The ones they make today are either too big or they're too perfectly shaped. They have no character. They don't make bricks like these any more.” We stand in the sliced shade of my brother's pergola.

“How's your place?” Lloyd says as we step into what he calls the mudroom. “Still got that crazy lady living next door?”

He refers to a woman with nine cats and at least one dog that never sees daylight; I hear it barking through the thin wall that separates my bedroom from her kitchen. I also smell its shit, along with the shit of all those cats, whose litter box or boxes are emptied all too infrequently. The stench leaks into the hallway, so bad at times I have to hold my nose while turning the key in my lock.

“Yeah,” I say. “She's still there.”

“Jesus. How can you stand it?”

“It's gotten better,” I lie.

In the mudroom two bicycles hang on racks along with spare
tires, a bicycle pump, caps, gloves, helmets, and a collection of jerseys in bright acidic colors, like flags on steroids.

“Tomorrow we ride,” says Lloyd.

When we were kids, Lloyd and I had this running vaudevillian shtick. One of us is a millionaire, the other a pauper. As a snowstorm rages outside (to the tune of the second movement of Suppés
Poet and Peasant
), the millionaire sits by his cozy fire, wearing a quilted smoking jacket and slippers, swirling brandy, puffing a cigar. Meanwhile, the pauper claws at his door begging to be let in. When we were kids, the gag used to crack me up.

Lloyd shows me around his house, each room a museum display with the velvet ropes down. Art-pottery vases and Eastlake frames; wallpapers by Charles Renee Macintosh; beaded curtains strung with tourmaline, amber, and hornblende (the replacement white wool threads stained with used tea bags to match the weathered originals); mosaic tables; tapestries; and stenciling everywhere. My brother's home is a meticulous study of Victorian clutter: no displaced books or strewn magazines or empty coffee cups or other signs of human habitation. The wicker wastepaper baskets yawn empty. An ornate coffin with coffered ceilings and central air conditioning. “Nice,” I say.

My brother points to a pair of paintings over one of his three working fireplaces, both minor Hudson River School artists, asks me what I think of them. Lloyd owns two of my paintings, one of a fruit stand, the other of the Henry Hudson Bridge. They hang in his downstairs bathroom.

“Hungry?” he says, opening a bottle of wine in his kitchen. “I've made reservations at an Italian restaurant nearby. You may
want to dress up a bit.” He nods at my attire: a pair of cargo pants and an army green T-shirt.

In the garret guest room I put on new jeans, a clean pullover, and black sneakers. My best pair.

“Those are your dress clothes?” says Lloyd when I return. He sips wine, shakes his head. “Grab something from my closet, why don't you?”

My brother's closet, a room larger than the bathroom in my apartment: shelves lined with shirts, trousers, sweaters, all organized by season and color. Silks and linens of every conceivable hue, spread out like the colors on my palette. I choose a vermilion and gold striped shirt with cuffed sleeves and navy linen pants — both loose on me.

“Here,” says Lloyd, handing me a pair of cuff links inscribed with his initials. “And please try not to spill anything on that shirt. It's raw silk. I got it in Hong Kong. It's expensive.” He takes a pair of shoes out from his closet rack, hands them to me. I'm about to ask him if he wants to talk about things when he squints at me and asks, “Did you shave this morning?”

In Lloyd's bathroom, using his gold safety razor, I shave. While doing so, in the steamy mirror, I see not myself but my twin. It's Lloyd who looks back at me from the thin coating of mercury, Lloyd who cuts himself behind the ear, Lloyd who, while shaving, sips a glass of Pinot Noir in the kitchen and waits for himself impatiently there.

I apply the styptic pencil, slap my cheeks with Lloyd's cologne. I slap them again, hard.

By foot, the restaurant is ten minutes away. We walk past an old Coca-Cola bottling plant, recently converted to condominiums.
Lloyd points out more improvements to the neighborhood. “So Lloyd,” I interject more than once, or try, but Lloyd just plows ahead, telling me what this or that piece of property sold for whenever and what it's worth now. When we get to the restaurant (Il Pappagallo), the proprietor, Maurizio, who wears a doublebreasted suit and stinks of cologne, greets me and my brother expansively and says, in Neapolitan Italian, how he can truly see that we are twins.

“Effettivamente non e vero,” Lloyd contradicts him. “I've never seen the motherless lush in my life.”

Maurizio gestures with his fingers in his mouth, Italian sign language for “feed me more of your bullshit.” He and my brother laugh. Then he escorts us to Lloyd's favorite table, a well-lit one to the rear of the restaurant, far from the bar and the piano. It is understood that my brother, who makes eight times what I do, will treat, and so he commandeers the wine list, running down the selections, all red, of which I know absolutely nothing. Yet for appearance' sake I venture opinions. For my brother it comes down to the Barbera or the Barbaresco, but I hold out for the Ecco Domani Sangiovese — the cheapest wine on the list, it so happens.