*culture is not optional

The ties that bind

Part two of two

by

Jack turned the nose of the car into a parking spot, and only as he slipped the transmission into park did he realize that he was gritting his teeth. His hands resting on the wheel, he closed his eyes and blew a deep breath. He climbed out of the car and opened the trunk. A moment later Diane appeared by his side and then Phil.

"What are we going to do now?" Diane asked. Phil stood behind her, staring blankly into the dunes around the parking lot. Jack wrestled a battered styrofoam cooler out of the trunk and rested it on the back bumper.

"I don't know," Jack said. "Thought maybe we'd find a spot on the beach, maybe one with a shade tree nearby. Phil gets sick if he's in the sun too long."

"Oh." Diane snapped her wrist to unfold her purple-lensed Ray-Bans, and she slid them over her eyes. "Let's go then."

As they crossed the parking lot and passed the concession stand, silence settled among them like an uninvited cousin who visits and then stays on for the weekend. Jack led the way, his right arm looped over the cooler on his shoulder, his left hand stuffed in a pocket. Diane would not walk beside him, and though he could not see her, he could feel her glare cutting into his back. Phil followed several steps behind, his face void of expression. He struggled to walk through the sand, and his left foot dragged, creating a softly twisting wake behind him.

Having passed by hot dog vendors, boom boxes, life guard towers, laughing children, raucous volleyball games, having passed beyond the scent of coconut oil and suntan lotion and barbecues, they arrived at a largely deserted patch of shoreline. The sand here was littered with small stones, and a breakwater made the lake inaccessible directly before them. A sparse collection of trees cut out of the dunes here, and Jack spread their blanket so that it was half in the shade and half in the sun. While he worked, Diane stood behind him, her arms across her chest. She scanned the empty beach around them.

"You've got to be kidding, Jack," she said.

"What?" Jack looked over his shoulder, feigning a lack of understanding.

"You know perfectly well what! This is the most godforsaken stretch of beach I've ever seen, and you're going to make me spend the day here."

"You find another spot with shade," Jack said.

"Shade," she mimicked him. "My brother has to be in the shade. Why does our whole day have to be dictated by what the retard wants?"

"Quiet!" Jack turned to find Phil. Twenty feet away, Phil was walking, picking stones out of the sand, stuffing them in his pockets. His jaw hung slack. He noticed Jack and grinned, his thick lips curving wetly across his teeth. Jack waved and then turned back to Diane.

"Don't call him that," he said softly. "If Phil hears you say that, I'll spend the rest of the day trying to coax him out of a fit. It's the one word he can't take. You'll ruin the day."

"I'd hate to do that," she said. "After all, the day has so much going for it."

Dropping her shoulder bag, she sat down heavily on the beach blanket and winced. Holding herself up on one hand, she dug beneath the blanket with the other and pulled out a jagged edged stone. She flicked it aside and lay back. Jack watched Phil a moment longer and then dropped down beside her. He sat, hugging his knees.

"I'm sorry, Diane. Today is a disaster. I know that, but I can't do anything about it."

For a moment Diane didn't reply. Then she pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her forehead so that Jack could see her face. It softened for the first time.

"I'm sorry, too. I've been hard on you because I'm disappointed. I wanted to make your birthday something to remember. I imagine we'll remember this one just fine now, whether we want to or not."

The corners of her mouth curved into a sad smile. Diane pushed herself up, leaned her head on Jack's shoulder, took hold of his arm. With her fingertips she caressed the crook of his elbow lightly. He turned to kiss her forehead beneath the mass of curls, and then he turned back to watch Phil, who stood still, peering straight up with wide eyes and an open mouth, watching sea gulls ride invisible currents just twenty feet above his head.

"In eighteen years," Jack said, "I've never been apart from my brother. Did you know that? Eighteen years, and not a single day gone by that I haven't had to take care of him."

Diane squeezed his arm lightly, and she kissed his shoulder.

"Where does it all end?" Jack asked. "My entire life I've been taking care of my brother. When I'm forty, I'll still be taking care of Bear. I'll come home from some lousy job as a janitor or from some factory job where I pull the same lever a couple of thousand times a day, and I won't have a wife waiting for me or kids. I'll open the door, and there'll be Phil."

"You're exaggerating," Diane said. "You cannot possibly know what the future holds that many years from now."

"No, but I know what the past years have held. Look, I plan all month to have one single day away from him, just one day—my birthday no less—and despite the month of planning, here I am. With Phil."

"You do it to yourself, you know," Diane said. Jack stared at her in disbelief.

"You really do," she said. "Phil is retarded, but he's not helpless. You take him everywhere you go, you defend him every time someone says anything about him. At McDonald's the other day, you actually put his straw in his cup for him. Just last night I saw you actually wipe his nose for him."

"C'mon!"

"You did. And even Phil thought it odd. He didn't say anything, but he stared at you when you did it. He didn't understand why you were doing it. He doesn't need all the help you give him."
Jack didn't answer, and silence enfolded them once again. They watched the waves roll in and bounce off the sea wall. Every third wave curled strongly and hit hard, spewing foam five or six feet in the air. Two would then take their rising more gently, kissing the cement barrier before disappearing softly beneath the surface, soft eddies the only sign of their passing, and then even these vanishing as the next powerful wave crashed against the shore. Phil stood by the sea wall where he could catch the cold droplets as they erupted from the lake. Diane's whisper broke the silence.

"I was going to do it with you."

Jack did not respond. She kissed his shoulder, ran one hand up the back of his tee-shirt , massaged his shoulders with her fingertips.

"That was your birthday present. I mean, I bought you a small gift, but that's nothing, really. Anyone can buy you a present. I wanted to give you something more."

She nuzzled his neck with her nose, kissing her way up toward his cheekbone. She playfully grabbed hold of his earlobe with her teeth, and then she whispered in his ear.

"I was going to take you for a walk in the dunes. We'd have found a quiet little spot out away from everybody. I was going to give you the one thing I can give you that no one else can, the one thing I can give you that I've never given to anyone. I wanted your birthday to be special."

Jack said nothing, but his breathing had turned a bit shallower, a bit quicker.

"It's not too late," she said. "If we get Phil set up here, we could sneak away for a half hour."

Jack looked at her as he pondered what she'd said. Everything in him ached to go, but a small voice deep in his conscience said he could not leave Phil behind. He was responsible for his brother.

"Jack," she said, "he's not helpless. We're only talking a half hour. Trust me, he can take care of himself that long. Don't be so overprotective."

So overprotective. The words stung. Jack had always viewed himself as Phil's protector, his champion. But he had never pictured himself as a sniveling, doddering old busybody who interfered where he wasn't needed. He'd never considered the fact that perhaps the reason he spent so much time with Phil was not because Phil needed him as much as because he, in some bizarre way, needed to control Phil. Had he really wiped Phil's nose?

"Phil!" Jack shouted, waving his brother back to the blanket with one arm. Phil shuffled back to them, stumbling two or three times in the loose sand. "Phil, Diane and I are going to go for a little walk. I want you to sit here on the blanket until we get back."

"I want to go," Phil complained.

"No, we need you to stay here and watch our stuff. We won't be gone long."

"But I want to go, too."

"Phil." Jack's voice had an edge to it.

"I want to go, I want to go." Phil started to rock side to side on his feet. "Don't leave me."

"We're not leaving you, Phil," Diane said. "Jack and I just want to go for a short walk alone. We'll be back in a little bit, and then maybe we can all go for a walk together."

"No, I want to go. Don't leave me, Jack! Don't leave me!"

Ironically, the more Phil protested, the more Jack was determined to make him stay here alone for a half hour. Jack couldn't shake the picture of his wiping his brother's nose. It sickened him. He grabbed Phil by the shoulders and attempted to gently place him on the blanket. Phil struggled. He was big and he was strong and he was upset. He started flailing his arms. The back of his left hand struck Jack hard across the mouth. Instinctively, Jack shoved his brother to the ground. Phil lay there panting. Jack towered above him. His tongue darted to the corner of his mouth. He could taste the blood where his lip had split.

"We are going without you," Jack said slowly, deliberately. "You will sit on this blanket and wait. In a half hour we will be back. Do you understand me?"

Phil struggled to a sitting position, nodded yes, and curled until his forehead was tucked between his knees. He rocked back and forth.

Jack blew out a deep breath. "Let's go," he said. He turned, and Diane took his arm. As they left, Diane looked over her shoulder at Phil, wagged her head sadly. Jack never looked back.

When Jack and Diane returned an hour and a half later, the yellow sun was sliding toward the water like an egg yolk across a pan. The surface of the water danced with the light, broke it into glitter, and casted it back toward the sky, creating a low level fireworks display of white and gold. The shimmering water was both blinding and mesmerizing, and neither Jack nor Diane noticed Phil was no longer where they left him until they were almost on top of the spot. Jack was the first to notice, and without a word, he let go of Diane's hand and ran toward the beach blanket.

"Phil!" he shouted. "Phil, where are you?"

Only the wash of waves answered him. Desperate, he motioned for Diane to check along the lakeshore. A moment later, he noticed where the sand appeared heavily trodden, and then a series of footprints leading into the stand of trees between the dunes. About five feet into the trees, Jack clearly identified Phil's track, for a piece of it here also had the small, twisting wake from his left foot trailing behind. Jack sprinted down his brother's tracks, calling his name as he ran.

Only ninety feet back from the beach in a grove of scrub pine, Jack found his brother. He lay curled in a fetal position, his hands clasped above his chest, his eyes squeezed shut, his lips trembling around words he did not say. Except for a tee shirt, he was naked. His shorts and underwear, ripped almost in half, sat half-buried in the sand at Jack's feet. Phil's legs were thick and pasty-white and hairy, and a small stream of dried blood that started from his anus crept down the inner and back portions of his right thigh. A broken and bloodied piece of driftwood sat in the sand a few feet off.

"Oh, my God."

Phil heard the voice, and he started shouting, his voice a low wail: "Go away! Leave me alone!"

Jack swallowed the bile rising in the back of his mouth. He knelt beside Phil, reached out a hand to stroke the hair above his brother's ear.

"It's okay, Bear. I'm here now. I'm here."

But as Jack's fingertips touched Phil, he erupted in a bellow. No words, just a howl, a sound so racked with pain it struck Jack like a fist, cracking his ribs, squeezing the air from his lungs. Jack shrunk back, his eyes wide and wet with fear, with guilt.

"They wanted me to touch their private parts," Phil mumbled. "They wanted me to, but I said no."

"It's okay, Phil. You didn't do anything wrong."

Silence engulfed them again. Phil did not open his eyes, did not change his position.

"I'll find these guys, Phil. I'll find them, and I'll make them pay. Trust me."

Phil did not respond. Jack turned, fetched his brother's shorts, knelt beside Phil again. He gently touched Phil's shoulder.

"No!" he howled again, his voice sounding like a mud slide. "Don't touch me. You left me, you left me, you left me, you left me. . . ."

Phil's voice trailed off, but his lips kept forming the words over and over. Jack made no reply. He felt his whole life turning in on itself, like a balloon losing air. Arms clasped around his knees, he stared at Phil's hairy shoulders and thought, so this is what it's like.

"Jack?" Diane stepped into view, off to his right. Jack turned to look at her. The blanched look of horror on her face stood in such stark contrast to her skimpily clad body, all Jack could think was that she looked like a fool. They both looked like damned fools.

Jack looked away from Diane, whom he suddenly found repugnant, and he studied the vast blue expanse overhead. His whole life seemed to be preparation for this one test, and he couldn't remember any answers. He gazed at a lone shapeless cloud, swirling in motion, pulling itself apart. Diane called to him again.

Jack cleared his throat and climbed to his feet.

"Let's go home," he said. His voice was so confident, so calm, for a moment even he almost believed such a thing was possible.