Read Online Brothers and Sisters by Charlotte Wood - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Charlotte Wood
Tags: Family
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stones in this life, knocked together until they acquire a sort of polish, and hoarded into our own personal set of irregular gems. Our fingers slip along them, arranging and rearranging, sorting and rejecting.
I wonder whether this particular memory is burnished with retelling and revision, sealed under the cracked, fallible emulsion of old Polaroids. I wonder whether these elements are only here because they feel like they belong to the same strand of treasured, sentimental objects, beads and shells and teeth, strung together and counted through for comfort like a recited litany.
I observe them now, each shining smooth-edged piece, dense and solid and unerringly part of me. Here is the child running recklessly towards her father, the baby son running from him, the older sister hesitating between impulsiveness and the barricade, endlessly torn. Everything pivots on the tall uniformed man walking towards us all, his face stricken with all he would never speak of.
He grows larger as I run towards him, his face gathering more and more aching secrets into itself the closer I get. He’s holding in his hand a white folded handkerchief. Any moment, I think, he will shake it open, and raise it in surrender.
LIKE MY FATHER,
MY BROTHER
Michael Sala
My brother wants to know what I am writing about. I tell him that I am writing about him and me, when we were young. My brother has a quality that women used to find fascinating. I don’t know if they still do. It has something to do with the boyish glint in his eyes, the way it plays against his smile.
It reminds me of my father, who had that same youthful expression even when the wave of hair on his head was dead white and years of smoking had pulled his skin into an ashen mask around the angles of his cheeks.
We are standing together in a pub. My brother holds his drink in front of him like the host of some cocktail party, and his other hand is draped across the shoulders of his girlfriend. His girlfriend is pretty and polished, with glossy brown hair that shivers around her shoulders when she laughs. I have already noticed that she looks a lot more at my brother than he does at her.
My brother cocks his head, flashes his boyish grin at me and says, ‘I hope you haven’t portrayed me as some sort of monster.’
The first clear memory I have of watching him, my brother and I are not alone. He is kicking a ball, juggling it from one foot to the other. He does this effortlessly. I am watching him and my father at the same time. We are in the park. There is a naturalness to my brother’s movements that fills me with wonder. The ball looks as if it will never hit the ground. My father smokes a cigarette and stares at my brother as a pillar of ash lengthens on his cigarette. His mahogany eyes burn with an intensity that disappears when they turn my way.
In the pub, I am wearing a shirt that my brother gave me, and though I am skinnier than him, it strains across my chest. He stands there with his girlfriend and I sit on a barstool across from him. Another girl with a restless gaze and silky bob of dark hair sits beside me. Her name is Anna.
‘I feel like we are being watched,’ she tells me.
‘We are, but who cares.’
Anna’s glance stabs my way, but I don’t know how to read it. I have never been good at that sort of thing. I feel as if I am waiting on the starting block and I don’t know what to do with my body.
My brother suddenly steps close. ‘Mate, you need to loosen up a little.’
He says it loud, with that relaxed, boyish grin on his face. He undoes the top button of my shirt, and then the next one. ‘We have to bring out the Greek in you.’
A song comes on and he begins dancing. It’s a parody of dance but he doesn’t let go of the sexiness entirely. In the last few years, his features have shifted, as if an invisible river is wearing down the angles of his nose and cheeks, but his body is trim and black hair glistens at the opening of his shirt.
I wonder whether this particular memory is burnished with retelling and revision, sealed under the cracked, fallible emulsion of old Polaroids. I wonder whether these elements are only here because they feel like they belong to the same strand of treasured, sentimental objects, beads and shells and teeth, strung together and counted through for comfort like a recited litany.
I observe them now, each shining smooth-edged piece, dense and solid and unerringly part of me. Here is the child running recklessly towards her father, the baby son running from him, the older sister hesitating between impulsiveness and the barricade, endlessly torn. Everything pivots on the tall uniformed man walking towards us all, his face stricken with all he would never speak of.
He grows larger as I run towards him, his face gathering more and more aching secrets into itself the closer I get. He’s holding in his hand a white folded handkerchief. Any moment, I think, he will shake it open, and raise it in surrender.
LIKE MY FATHER,
MY BROTHER
Michael Sala
My brother wants to know what I am writing about. I tell him that I am writing about him and me, when we were young. My brother has a quality that women used to find fascinating. I don’t know if they still do. It has something to do with the boyish glint in his eyes, the way it plays against his smile.
It reminds me of my father, who had that same youthful expression even when the wave of hair on his head was dead white and years of smoking had pulled his skin into an ashen mask around the angles of his cheeks.
We are standing together in a pub. My brother holds his drink in front of him like the host of some cocktail party, and his other hand is draped across the shoulders of his girlfriend. His girlfriend is pretty and polished, with glossy brown hair that shivers around her shoulders when she laughs. I have already noticed that she looks a lot more at my brother than he does at her.
My brother cocks his head, flashes his boyish grin at me and says, ‘I hope you haven’t portrayed me as some sort of monster.’
The first clear memory I have of watching him, my brother and I are not alone. He is kicking a ball, juggling it from one foot to the other. He does this effortlessly. I am watching him and my father at the same time. We are in the park. There is a naturalness to my brother’s movements that fills me with wonder. The ball looks as if it will never hit the ground. My father smokes a cigarette and stares at my brother as a pillar of ash lengthens on his cigarette. His mahogany eyes burn with an intensity that disappears when they turn my way.
In the pub, I am wearing a shirt that my brother gave me, and though I am skinnier than him, it strains across my chest. He stands there with his girlfriend and I sit on a barstool across from him. Another girl with a restless gaze and silky bob of dark hair sits beside me. Her name is Anna.
‘I feel like we are being watched,’ she tells me.
‘We are, but who cares.’
Anna’s glance stabs my way, but I don’t know how to read it. I have never been good at that sort of thing. I feel as if I am waiting on the starting block and I don’t know what to do with my body.
My brother suddenly steps close. ‘Mate, you need to loosen up a little.’
He says it loud, with that relaxed, boyish grin on his face. He undoes the top button of my shirt, and then the next one. ‘We have to bring out the Greek in you.’
A song comes on and he begins dancing. It’s a parody of dance but he doesn’t let go of the sexiness entirely. In the last few years, his features have shifted, as if an invisible river is wearing down the angles of his nose and cheeks, but his body is trim and black hair glistens at the opening of his shirt.
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