Brewster: A Novel by Slouka Mark

Author:Slouka, Mark [Slouka, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-08-05T04:00:00+00:00

IT MAKES SENSE that she didn’t understand, that the more time she spent with him, or with us—the four of us out by the reservoir or up in my room, listening to records—the more she’d start wondering. What doesn’t make sense is that we didn’t. She’d ask me sometimes—more often as things went on—and I’d tell her what I could. About Gene, who was still living in Yonkers that summer, about Ray’s parents. Of course he’d want her to meet his father, I’d say—it was just that his dad was kind of a rough guy. His mom? She’d split for Reno when Ray was nine—nothin’ in the contract said a mother had to love her kid. Ditto with his stepmom, five years later. No, Gene was great—we used to take care of him together sophomore year.

She didn’t get it, she said to me one time as we sat next to each other in the hall—how could a man just send off his three-year-old kid? It was complicated, I said. What was he like? she asked—Ray’s dad. Complicated, I said.

Complicated good or complicated bad?

Not so good, I said, but everybody had something.

We were supposed to be preparing a report on Steinbeck’s The Red Pony. People were turning in their textbooks, the windows were open—everything had that end-of-the-year feeling.

“Ray won’t talk to me about him,” she said.

“I don’t blame him.”

“That bad?”

“Look at it this way—when people yell ‘Kill the pigs,’ he’s the one they’re thinking about.”

She didn’t smile. “Why does he get into fights all the time?”

“Maybe it’s easier,” I said.

“You don’t fight. Frank doesn’t fight.”

“Ray’s got a temper,” I said. “Anyway, he’s stopped.”

“Because of me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Listen, we should probably do this thing.”

She shook her head, looked down at our assignment, read aloud: “ ‘There’s nothing so monstrous that people won’t believe it of themselves. Discuss.’ God, that’s such bullshit.”

“That what we’re gonna say?” I said.

“Why not? Maybe we can talk about how he left out the word ‘some’—‘Nothing so monstrous that some people won’t believe it of themselves.’ Most people it’s the opposite.”

“You think?”

“You kidding?—Manson, Calley, Oswald, Sirhan, Joseph Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek—”

“OK, OK.”

“—every Nazi that ever breathed, that general that Falvo keeps talking about—LeMay?”

“Half of ’em were crazy.”

“The point is you couldn’t get them to believe it.”

“Maybe we could go with that.” I scribbled it down. When I leaned forward the air felt cool against my shirt.

She went back to Ray. “Thing is, it just doesn’t seem like him. I mean, he’s not a fighter.”

I smiled. “You think so?”

“I do—don’t you?”

“I think Ray’s a lot of things.”

“Let me guess—you think he’s complicated.”

“I guess I do.”

“Like you?”

“Different.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I said.

She paused. “Ray told me about your brother.”

“It’s not a secret,” I said.

“I can’t—I mean, there are some things you can’t even imagine.”

“Pretty much all of ’em.” I smiled. “Hey, maybe we could work that into our report somehow, whaddya think?”

She was looking at me. “I’m sorry, Jon. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“Long time ago,” I said.

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