Human Sister (27 page)

MARCUS BRIAND

For thirty-one years, a beloved man:

husband, father, brother, best

friend, student, and uncle.

We who live miss you.

“Tell me,” Elio said, lightly squeezing my hand, “what you remember about the day Pa’s ashes were buried here.”

“I was only five at the time, and though I remember what happened, I didn’t understand the ramifications until much later. It was nearing sunset. Grandma said we were going to bury Uncle in a beautiful place at the edge of our garden, a place that Uncle especially liked. She and Grandpa took me out into the yard to wait for Mom, Dad, and First Brother to arrive. Mom and Dad lived in Berkeley at the time with my two brothers, but First Brother was my only brother who ever came here to visit.

“Dad looked sad when he opened the car door. He hugged and kissed me softly. Mom cried. I felt her tears on my cheek. First Brother, who didn’t look sad at all—he had trouble expressing emotions—carried the granite gravestone. I asked where Uncle was. Dad opened the backseat door and lifted out a terra-cotta urn. I asked if Uncle was inside. Dad nodded. I asked to see. He lifted the lid. Nothing there resembled Uncle. Then, while the rest of us watched in silence, Dad dug a hole. He wiped tears from his eyes with the back of his hand as he worked, streaking his cheeks with dirt. When the hole was large enough, he placed the urn in it.”

Elio was staring wistfully at the inscribed stone, probably remembering the father he missed but never spoke much of to me after I’d told him how Uncle had died. I caressed Elio’s cheek with my fingers and continued: “Grandpa began to say something, probably something from his favorite Stoic, Epictetus, but Mom cut him off, saying, ‘I don’t want any words.’

“Grandpa nodded. Dad shoveled loose dirt back into the hole and, with First Brother’s help, placed the granite stone on top of the hole. By then the stone had become covered in shadow. I looked behind us, over there.” I turned and pointed toward the west. “The sun was about to dip below those hills, and I remembered Grandma once telling me that night doesn’t fall, as if from the sky; it rises like mist from low-lying pools of shadow and flows out from hills and trees, quietly ascending as it snuffs out light.”

Elio and I stood naked in front of Gatekeeper 3. “Only Sara may enter,” a deep voice commanded.

“I’ll enter first,” I responded. “Then, after I’ve passed, please admit and examine Elio.”

The door to the examination chamber opened. I stepped forward. The door whooshed shut behind me.

“Are you certain he is the one Grandpa calls ‘Elio’?” Gatekeeper asked in its deep masculine voice.

“Yes.”

The door to level 3 opened. Michael stood in the antechamber, looking relaxed in his kimono. He, like me, had never worn anything except underpants in those warm and comfortable rooms. Grandpa and Grandma, on the other hand, had always worn kimonos that normally hung in the little antechamber in front of Gatekeeper’s door. For Elio’s arrival, the issue of what to wear had been resolved conservatively in favor of underpants plus kimono for each of us.

I hugged and kissed Michael. Then, as practiced, Michael walked around the side of the antechamber so he wouldn’t see Elio until Elio had dressed.

I dressed, and soon Elio stepped through Gatekeeper’s door.

“Welcome!” I said, holding underpants in one hand and a kimono in the other. “These are for you to wear.”

“Are we in the top-security area?” he asked, taking the underpants.

“Yes.”

“Is it safe to talk about everything now?”

“Yes.”

“Then where’s Michael?” He pulled up his underpants.

“On the other side, around the corner,” I answered.

Before I could say more or stop him, Elio dashed out of the antechamber. Already things aren’t going as planned, I thought as I ran after him, still holding his kimono in my hand.

“Hi,” Elio said, and he and Michael hugged—flawlessly.

“Hi! I’m so thankful to meet you,” Michael replied with equal enthusiasm, a response more relaxed and genuine sounding than any during our many practice sessions.

When I offered Elio his kimono, he replied that it was so comfortable in this area that he didn’t need one, and Michael readily agreed. I hung all three kimonos back in the antechamber, then watched the two of them, hardly able to believe how well their first meeting was going. Michael, who for weeks had agonized and fussed over every conceivable detail of their meeting, seemed completely at ease and improvised masterfully. He took Elio on a tour of the hydroponic garden, including an unscheduled discussion of the air scrubbers and the recycling system that lasted over half an hour, even though our well-practiced tour had never taken more than eight minutes. Finally, I had to interrupt because Elio and I were expected to begin greeting guests in the banquet hall at 1800 sharp. But, first, Elio wanted to see the bedroom where he and I would be sleeping. On our way there, he leaned toward me and whispered, “I like him. He’s weird, just like you.”

“I’m glad,” I whispered back.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed upon arriving at the bedroom door. “Minimalism minimized!”

A queen-size platform bed abutted the wall opposite the door. Just to the left of the bed hung a full-length mirror on the otherwise blank white wall. Completing the inventory, a scenescreen displaying yesterday’s late afternoon sky was on the ceiling directly above the bed. There was no closet, dresser, chair or bathroom.

Elio abruptly lunged onto the bed. “Nice!” he said, rolling and bouncing around on the mattress. “It’s firm. And it doesn’t squeak like my rickety old bed back home.”

After all the dinner guests departed, Grandpa, Grandma, Elio, and I gathered in Michael’s rooms for the final birthday celebration of the day. We brought a platter heaped with dark chocolate truffles that Grandma and I had made, two bottles of our finest demi-sec, and five champagne glasses.

Grandma was about to begin pouring the wine when Grandpa interrupted: “Dear, I believe Michael would like to give Elio a special musical welcome.”

Michael signaled he was ready. “Imagine the hour is midnight,” he said. A bell chimed twelve times. “That was the campanile in Berkeley. Grandpa recorded it for us. Imagine now that on this midnight, watchmen in an ancient tower spot a bridegroom coming.”

I had heard the “Wachet auf” cantata several times before. I had heard all of Bach’s extant works several times, for Bach was Grandpa’s favorite composer, having achieved a perfect balance, Grandpa said, between emotion and intelligence, the balance Grandpa strove for in the conscious, intelligent products of his own efforts. Tears welled up in my eyes as soon as I recognized the sublime opening ritornello theme. More than ever before, I appreciated then how Bach had miraculously endowed dignity and splendor with a beautiful, quivering mixture of intimate tenderness and desire.

Immediately following the musical interlude, Grandma poured the demi-sec, allotting to Michael only the quarter glass we had found quite sufficient to make him giddy, and we sat around the study table eating, drinking, and talking for about twenty minutes before Grandpa suggested we take some photographs.

The last photograph taken by Grandpa that evening became Michael’s most cherished. In it, Elio, Michael, and I stand, arms around each other as we laugh together in front of a scenescreen displaying a view of the garden recorded earlier that day by a camera mounted near the garage. In the hand not wrapped around Elio’s waist, I hold a platter containing the few remaining truffles. In his free hand, Michael holds an empty demi-sec bottle.

In photographs taken minutes earlier, Michael stands on one side of me, appearing pleased as he studies Elio, who stands on the other side of me, and who at various times hugs me, kisses me, and makes faces at the camera. But by the time this last photograph was taken, Michael had moved around to Elio’s other side, foretelling the near future in which I would remain Michael’s sister/mother, but Elio would be his beloved best friend.

As I look now at this last-taken photograph, I wonder what Grandpa thought of us that evening of his ninetieth birthday. Did he see Michael as the crowning miracle of his life’s work? Did he see me as the peculiar product of his attempt late in life to find something meaningful outside of the competitive world of academia, business, and the military? Did he see Elio as being in part a rootstock with the strength and virility that Grandpa recognized in himself but not in me? Did he have any inkling of what was to come?

“Hey, where’s the bathroom?” Elio asked as soon as this last photograph was taken.

“As a security precaution,” Grandpa answered, “the water and sewer lines were not extended to this part of the house. You’ll have to go out and come back through Gatekeeper.”

“How do I leave, and how do I get back?”

“Go to the antechamber, take off your underpants, stand directly in front of Gatekeeper’s door, and say, ‘May I leave?’ or anything to that effect. ‘I wanna get outta here’ will also work. When you wish to return, simply stand in front of Gatekeeper’s other door and request to enter.”

When Elio returned, Grandpa and Grandma left for the night. I asked Elio to wait in our bedroom while I said goodnight to Michael. I was concerned that Michael might be upset, for never before had I closed my bedroom door to him while I’d slept.

Excepting my vacations to visit Elio or Mom and Dad, Michael and I had slept together every night until I’d returned home the summer of my thirteenth birthday, when Grandpa had insisted that Michael and I begin sleeping separately. During the following six months, Michael slept alone two nights each week; during the next six months, he slept alone four nights each week; and thereafter, until the day Elio arrived to live with us, Michael slept with me only one night each week.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to write that it was I who had slept alone on the aforementioned nights, for Michael, refusing to sleep alone in his bedroom, had slept on the floor beside his plants with his eyes closed but directed toward my open door.

“We’re going to bed now,” I said as I approached Michael.

“He likes me!” Michael whispered as he threw his arms around me. “I can feel that we’ll be friends!”

“Yes. I feel so, too.”

“He wants to make love to you now.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t forget to close the door,” Michael said, releasing his hug and smiling.

I set the scenescreen over our bed to display one of my favorite full-moon skies, then dove in beside Elio. He seemed so familiar, so perfectly where he should be—his body over my body, his mouth over my mouth, his hands all over me. Then he entered into the warm, moist yearnings between my legs, fitting himself perfectly inside me. He sighed, then softly kissed me and murmured, “Now, at last, I’m truly home.”

One night several years earlier at 0237, a full moon, together with patches of gray-white clouds scudding southeastward and a sky not black but luminous, dark grayish blue, had been recorded by a camera on the deck directly above Grandpa and Grandma’s bedroom. At 0237 of this night that was Elio’s first night in his new home, I opened my eyes to the same moon, clouds, and sky. My post-celebration bladder was full. I slowly disentangled myself from Elio so as not to wake him and made the journey past Michael, who was sleeping curled up beside Amy, his amaryllis—then with two buds tumescent and six blossoms uninhibitedly trumpeting their red lust—through Gatekeeper, to the bathroom, and back.

Upon reentering our bedroom and closing the door behind me, I was struck by how heavily the musky-sweaty scent of love and the stale breath of our sleep seemed to weigh in the air. Had Michael and I correctly calculated Elio’s added consumption of the oxygen-rich exhalation of our hydroponic plants? The thought that an alarm might sense some gas out of permissible range and disturb our sleep sent me back to reopen the door halfway.