Unpossible (42 page)

One night the summer after freshman year, we were coming back through the yards at 3 AM. Stevie had the camera, and I was pulling a wagon full of props and models. We came around the corner of the house and saw Mr. Spero. He was sitting in a lawn chair under Stevie’s window, a plastic tumbler in his hand. I dropped the wagon handle, but before I could take off he told me to stand there, and I was too afraid to move. He made Stevie drop his pants, right there in front of me. Told him to put his hands against the side of the house. Stevie was already crying. Mr. Spero stood up, unlooped his belt, and folded it in half. He held it by the buckle, and slapped it against Stevie’s thighs. The boy yelped, and started bawling.

I’ll give you something to cry about, Mr. Spero said.

Sometime during the beating I ran to the back door of my house, not even bothering to sneak, and ran into my bedroom. My mom tried to get me to tell her what was going on, and I blubbered something about Stevie and his dad.

A few minutes later, Mr. Spero was at our front door. My dad went to the door barefoot in his robe, and then he called me in to the living room.

Did you sneak out? he asked me.

I nodded.

Don’t do it again, he said.

And that was it.

I stood there for a moment, stunned, and then ran out of the room. But I didn’t go far. I ducked into the bathroom and put my ear to the wall above the sink. Mr. Spero kept talking, in a low, spiteful voice. My dad didn’t say much.

When Mr. Spero finally left I heard Dad say to Mom, That man’s the southbound end of a northbound horse. I was fourteen, and thought that was the wittiest thing my father had ever said.

And then I started wondering. How long had Mr. Spero been sitting there in the dark, waiting for us?

The baby monitor Mrs. Spero used broadcast at 43 kilohertz. I bought a scanner in Des Moines and tuned in to Radio William. I listened to him whenever he was on. The format was pretty regular: he cried, he breathed, he jabbered in his private language. I learned to differentiate the various cries, from hunger to anger. He had a special kind of yelp when he wanted to be picked up after his nap. Mrs. Spero would come to retrieve him, speaking to him in her calm way, and when she leaned into his crib it was like she was speaking into my ear. At night I would lie in bed and try to time my breaths to his, but he was too fast, like a rabbit.

Mr. Spero was a background noise, a distant rumbling that occasionally resolved into words. I listened for any change of tone, waiting for the flat contempt he’d used with Stevie. That first week I watched him leave for work in the morning, and come home in the afternoon. He looked the same: pale skin and thin lips, hair combed back on his forehead in a mini-pompadour. Only the hair color had changed, from sandy brown to white.

I unpacked, and shopped on the Internet. Most of the sites encouraged homeowners to be paranoid: about their babysitters, their housecleaners, or anyone coming within twenty feet of their front door. I was amazed at the range of equipment available. I put together a complete package for less than two thousand dollars: cameras, digital switcher, software, antennas, cables, everything.

UPS delivered it in pieces over the next couple of weeks. I played with my new toys, and I listened to Radio William.

All Stevie’s movies—our movies—were part of a long saga called The NovaWeapon Chronicles. The plot was impossible to explain, even to ourselves, and changed depending on whatever special effects were available. We shot parts of the story over and over when we changed our minds or got better models. There were large gaps in the story that we never filled in.

Most of the "chapters" had to do with Rocket Boy, played by Stevie in black snow pants and a mesh shirt. Rocket Boy was the only kid our age (twelve, fourteen, sixteen) who could pilot his own starfighter in the Counter-Revolutionary StarForce, which we’d called the "Rebel Alliance" until some kids said we just copied from Star Wars. In the later chapters Rocket Boy became the strong silent type; once we’d switched to film we couldn’t record dialogue anymore. Stevie would act out Rocket Boy working on his warp engines, or at the controls reacting to unseen laser shots, or gazing meaningfully into the distance. I appeared in various roles, from Flight Commander to Alien Overlord. My younger brother was drafted into playing ensigns, lackey aliens, and especially corpses. Stevie said Hitchcock used Bosco for the shower scene in Psycho, but we found out that Karo Syrup was cheaper, and looked just as good. On black and white film, Karo looked more realistic than real blood.

For the action shots, Stevie’s stunt double was a G.I. Joe with life-like hair and Kung Fu grip. We dressed up the action figure (never a doll), inserted him into scale models, and then punished him in various ways. One day during summer vacation—this was the year before Stevie died, in 1991—we threw the Joe off the side of the quarry about fifty times. It was ninety-degrees and ninety-percent humidity, and I was losing interest in the Chronicles. But there was nothing else to do, and Stevie swore it was a critical scene that he needed me to film. Rocket Boy’s starfighter had been hit, and his escape pod had burned up in reentry (or something), and Rocket Boy was supposed to parachute the rest of the way down. So Stevie stood at the top of the cliff with a handkerchief bunched around Joe, and I was at the bottom of the pit with the Super-8 shooting up into the sun. There was no wind down there and no shade and sweat was pouring off me.

And the fucking handkerchief would not come open. Joe just crashed into the rocks, over and over. And every time he hit, Stevie yelled down, Did you get it? Did you get it? Like there was anything to get.

After two hours Joe’s face was looking like he’d been in a knife fight. I climbed out of the hole with the camera hanging from a strap around my neck, yelling that it was his turn to sit in the pit and broil.

Stevie was pulling on his shirt. His pale skin had turned bright pink, but before he tugged down the shirt I saw a dark stripe on his chest.

What the hell is that? I said.

This? He lifted his shirt. A long, thin welt, like a snake wending its way from his collarbone to his navel. That’s nothing.

What did he use on you?

Stevie shrugged. One of my cables.

Holy shit, I said. That had to kill.

He shrugged. Not really. Pain’s just a signal from the equipment. Like a telephone ring. It only has to hurt if you decide it should hurt.

He’d been talking like this all summer. The body is a machine, the mind is a pilot.

Yeah, I said, you’re a regular man of steel.

I’ll prove it to you, he said. Punch me.

Oh you don’t want me to punch you, I said.

This is an ugly thing that Stevie brought out in me. I was bigger than him, stronger than him. I could put him in unbreakable headlocks, manhandle him into closets, make him cry if I wanted. I didn’t do it often, but I liked knowing I could.

So he tried to slap me and I knocked his hand away. Come on, come on, he said, and kept slapping. I fended him off, and flicked a few shots at his chin. He started swinging wildly, and I pushed his arms away, and then his fist connected with my lip. That pissed me off. So I socked him in the side of the head.

He spun away from me, a hand over his ear. See? he said. His eyes were welling with tears, but he made himself laugh. Okay, good, he said.

He charged at me again, throwing crazy punches, a tantrum, going for velocity and damage and not even trying to protect himself. You could only fight like this with your brother, or your best friend.

We went on like that for a while, until I was straddled on top of him, my fist raised. But I couldn’t hit him while he was flat on the ground, bleeding, and smiling at me.

He dabbed at his nose, and held up his red hand. Sprung a leak, he said.

Sure, I said, and it doesn’t hurt a bit.

Nope.

Why’d you start crying then?

He shoved me off him. Nobody has total control, he said condescendingly. Too many systems are on automatic. But I’m working on it.

I don’t remember what I said at that point. Some crack.

Stevie shook his head and pulled up his shirt. You think this is me. This, he said, running a finger down the bruise, is hull damage.

He grinned. The pilot, he said, is intact. He pointed at his eye. Behind there. Can you see me? Hey man, I’m waving at you.

"It must be hard to do this again," I said. We were in her back yard, sitting on the same green wrought-iron patio furniture they’d always had.

"You mean, at my age." She was breastfeeding William, holding him close with a blanket draped over her shoulder and covering her breast, but he was a big guy, and kept yanking off the blanket. I kept looking away.

"No! Well—"

"It’s all right. You know, I didn’t breastfeed Steven. Back then, formula was supposed to be better. You were a formula baby, too." She glanced up at me. "I never would have planned on this. But it happened, and I wouldn’t trade him back."

"Of course not."

"Still, it’ll be good to get away." Mr. Spero was going to a convention over the weekend, and she was taking William to her sister’s house in Cedar Falls. "Thank you for watching the house, by the way."

"Not a problem. That’s what neighbors are for."

The baby’s head lolled sideways, eyes half closed. He looked drunk. She dabbed the thin milk from the corner of his lips, and he smiled. Then she did something to her bra, and deftly buttoned her shirt. All with one hand.

"Do you still have any of Stevie’s movies?" I asked. She didn’t look up. "You know, the videos, or the film cans?"

She shook her head slightly, still not looking at me. "I don’t think so. I’m sure they’re gone."

"Gone where?"

"We gave a lot of stuff away, after. Boxes and boxes."

The car pulled up behind me, the engine loud against the side of the house. I turned around, putting a smile on my face.

Mr. Spero stepped out of the car, his suit coat over one arm. "Well look what the cat dragged in." He said it lightly, a little chuckle behind it.

"Hello, Mr. Spero."

"Claire told me you’d moved in. I couldn’t believe it." He draped his jacket over the back of one of the patio chairs. His shoes were still shiny, his bright yellow tie still cinched, as if important clients might ring the bell at any moment. "Now where’s my boy?"

He took the child from Mrs. Spero and turned to me. "He’s a big one, isn’t he? What a monster!"

It was true. He looked like he’d be much bigger than Stevie, more solid.

"Careful, I just fed him," Mrs. Spero said. "I need to go turn on the oven." She disappeared into the house, and Mr. Spero jiggled the boy in his arms.

"So what brings you back to our little town, Timmy? It can’t be the job prospects."

"I work over the Internet," I said. "My office can be anywhere."

"The Internet? I thought you guys all went out of business." The baby started to fuss, and Mr. Spero sat down where Claire had been. "There we go, there we go." He patted his back, and the baby twisted his head back and forth, knuckles crammed into a slobbering mouth.

"So why come back here?" Mr. Spero said. "I’d think that someone in your situation would want to be near family."