My mother has the most delectable face. When I was a kid, not more than five, I used to try and lick it; as if her face, her nose, mouth, eyes, ears, dimples were the tastiest treat around: an ice-cream sundae, banana flavored. It used to drive my sister insane, the licking that my mother encouraged. I’ve always been my mother’s favorite and it has driven my sister to bits. She has taken jealously on a whole new level – beyond the playfulness of a sibling rivalry and into the dawn of the grown up grudge. She doesn’t speak to me unless there is a third party present, in the room, on the phone, outdoors. She hasn’t said a word, directly, for the past decade. And I do nothing to encourage her. I play the game; have gotten quite good at it, you might even call me the master of indirect elocution.
Anyhow, we get along, as much as any one in our family gets along. She lends me money when I cannot make rent, I remember her boyfriend’s name and try and keep up a conversation with her, oops him, from time to time. My mother begs to differ – she has this idea that my sister, Lily, is the one who is being ‘abused’ in the relationship. Only women can come up with such nonsense!
The dude used to be ok, could pass for a dude, but my god, ever since they moved in together he’s been working out, even joined a neighborhood fitness program. Got into crystals, shaved his head, to be close to the natural self. Might even wake up Buddhist one day. If you ask me I think that he is afraid she’ll come to her senses one morning and leave him unattended – oh, I ought to tell you that he’s twice her age. And twice divorced. No kids tough. Smart move, who needs more of him in this cracked up world as it is? Just last week, as I was about to visit them (my mom send me over with a cheesecake), I ran into him in the driveway, and he started giving me advice about women, out of the blue – how I should treat them, the gentle flowers that they were, and that safe sex is the safest road to travel. Man, if I wanted a fatherly advice I’d ask my dad. Go to the cemetery and have one of our quiet chats. No stings attached.
Ok, so he tries, wants to be a surrogate father or something. Which makes me wonder more about his story, about his choice not to bring more kids into this world. I bet he is infertile, and now looks at ways around it, less painful. I know for sure it’s not my sister’s fault. She did give birth to me when she was sixteen, and my parents, that is grandparents, convinced her to give birth and then, well, assign them the right to raise me as one of their own. But that’s, well, the past, and have long made my peace with it.
As I was saying, my sis and I communicate via helpers. Except that last time I almost had her. She was about to break her streak. It was after one of her visits to my mom; our ‘mother’ has always had high expectations of Lily, on account that she was, is, a genius, Mensa and all, yet somehow everything Lily does runs Mom through the roof – her choice of friends, school, job, men. You can’t blame the woman – she missed out on a great part of Lily’s childhood and is trying, helplessly, to catch up.
So I hear this loud knock on the door, and there I am just about to crack one more panel (I squiggle for a low-key, out-of-the-mainstream, comics book publication called Scruf; kind of a big deal; it’s the only way I can turn my hobby into the work I am supposed to be aspiring to do as an adult), the obnoxious ramming continued to pine away at my skull. My cigarette was all about to drop on the Bristol paper I use to create my stuff, and make a big indent into the second third of a really large new thing I was working on for the past month. I yelled, ‘Hold your horses’, banged my left foot on the decrepit fireplace in the hall (an old Victorian-style dump I live in comes with the weirdest of perks), cursed to heavens and back, and opened the door, to face the ultimate trip: Lily. Just Lily, no buffer in the shape of Randy, the middle-age Deepak Choppra of our berth.
I was lost for words, for real. No stunts. I wanted to ask, whisper, scream, hey you, here, alone, what’s wrong? But I sensed that she just wanted to come in. So I motioned her in, the same way relatives usher in their deaf cousins, allowing them to partake on the ‘sacred space’ that a household pretends to hold, while at the same time, glancing towards the side, just to make sure that none of the neighbors are close by, to witness the ‘scene’. My genial ‘older sister’, the dumb-stricken invalid of the moment.
She walked in, a bit humbled, not at all her usual confidant self. She wasn’t certain where to sit or stand, or lean against (I live in a pigsty. Literally.) She just stood there, in the hallway, next to the antic fireplace, clutching her hands. I was afraid to look. She seemed so old, so out of place, so unsettling. Yet I knew if it had anything to do with family, with Mom, she would have had someone call me. She’d never have come herself, not like this.
I made the first move. I tried to at least. I was about to open my mouth when she spoke, to me, directly, after a ten-year long silence. Well, a case of silence.
She looked at me and said – Bret (I have a somewhat stinky breath; she came up with the moniker and it stuck, although my aunt Ayelet told me once unintentionally that Brett was the name of the boy who got Lily ‘in the family way’, the only boy she ever let herself love), I’ve been meaning to tell you something.
I waited. Looking at her, still amazed at the great strength talking took out of her, I wanted to interject, but she beat me to it.
I want you to know that I, well I, have missed you. All these years, I’ve missed you.
I cried like a baby out of a stroller. Tears kept pounding on my chubby checks, and this time it was someone else who did the licking.
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