Chapter Nineteen: Bradford and Q
You try hard, but you can’t fully understand your brother’s joy. Like not at all. It’s as if he’s been replaced with a changeling. His happiness abounds causing an inner turmoil like when you’ve eaten too much fiber. Weekly he calls with updates like that he and that new boyfriend of his have been painting the walls of their apartment an off-white that enhances the Bluetooth LED bulbs when lit green, red, green, red.
Stupefied with his newfound simple comforts, he’s video called to show you their cheap dinner wear-housed in two cabinets above a stove thin enough to fit a single chicken. Their only bedroom is 8x8 and the floors are that gray laminate everyone from blonde middle class house flippers to horrible landlords have been installing to cover old rotting hardwood. Dressed in Sonoma everything, your boy glides across the floors into each room of the cramped apartment on the bad side of town.
A slovenly and baritone voice in the background says to no one in particular, “I don’t even know why you log onto my server. I’m just going to head-shot you back to the waiting room like the little bitch you are.”
Spinning around in the middle of the living room with waist height plastic Christmas tree under which are a few shoddily wrapped fist-sized gifts, Brad says, “Merry Christmas, Tabby!”
Before you say anything, you let it wash over you. There is joy in less. Your little man is trying to show you how to do it. Maybe you were wrong about his inability to fix anything. Already there are signs of it blooming in your own life. Though mother still calls weekly, her protestations for you and Bradford to get back to work fall on deaf ears, and for weeks now you’ve been churning up yard to remove giant stones and infiltrate the soil with nitrogen from compost and rid it of weeds. You’ve been introducing beautiful brown earthworms to aerate the soil for you and already the dotting rows of pumpkin leaves are sprouting and crawling across each other.
To your brother, you say, “it’s May, sweetheart.”
Stopping mid spin, your boy says, “why is Christmas only once a year? It’s stupid.”
In the background in front of a 63” TV, sits that new man of his, ponytail under a headset flopped over the headrest of a worn leather Barcalounger. On the screen is some first person shooter. Digital soldiers bouncing around desert environments faster than humanly possible.
Q asks, “you think I’m kidding you little cum-guzzler?” Then calls in an air-strike to a location somewhere off in the distance. Explosions abound, Q says, “that’s what you get when you fuck with a professional.”
Far from the old Bradford, your favorite boy’s smiling a real smile. Leaning over the headrest, he gives his Q a deep kiss, to which the pony-tailed mastodon kisses back and returns to his game. Brad flounces around the living room cleaning up bottles of soda, used paper plates with half-eaten dried spaghetti on them. Some of the bottles, they’re filled with urine, but Brandon casually picks them up, and goes to the bathroom and dumps them in the toilet. There, Brad inadvertently shows the rust stained shower and toilet and sink. Noticing you’re noticing, he does the work of spraying scrubbing bubbles around the fittings to fight it back.
He says, “speaking of fake Christmas, I bought you a gift. It should be there today sometime.”
Still on the phone, still on screen, he does all this one handed, a little smile working across his face. True to his word, he’s been giving away his money but for that which he and Q have earned from working at Walmart. This simple living, it’s not all Brad idea either. Q’s got him working like a little housewife and tending to his needs. This work, Q says, isn’t meant to simulate the patriarchal, or be abusive, but a penance for the way Brad’s lived for so long. You ask what Q does for him and shutting the bathroom door and sitting on the toilet, he tells you about the division of their duties.
You see, apart from earning meager wages at Walmart, teaching him ways to live poor, Q’s got Brad’s healing down to a science. They’ve been attending AA meetings together, and talking for long hours into the night, and giving their time at soup kitchens, and attending a sleep paralysis group, and most of all, Q’s been keeping him in sexual comfort since the moment they moved in together.
“But I’ll get to that,” Brad says.
You say, “you don’t have to.”
He says, “you know I haven’t taken any drugs in a week?”
It crosses your mind, the pharmacopeia of psych meds he’s been taking since childhood and how quitting them all cold turkey can be dangerous. It’s on the tip of your tongue to ask him if he’s spoken with a doctor.
Bradford says, “don’t worry Q’s an Ayurvedic doctor,” as if this should allay your fears. It doesn’t. Then, “I feel just fine.”
He tells you about how it’s all so hokey, with oils, and roots, and herbs, and stuff, but that he’s willing to try anything because of how often real medicine has failed him. When he opens his mind to the possibilities he finds a comfort he’s never felt before. That rather than fighting the panic attacks, sleep paralysis, waking dreams, forgetfulness, sadness, and such, he goes with them. He says them, like as if they were physical entities that visit him during the day with gifts of terror and sleeplessness. He sits with his pain, talks to it, asks it questions. Tells it how he accepts its lifelong influence.
You ask, “what does it say?”
Still on the toilet in the bathroom, he says, “usually it laughs at me, but the thing is, the laughter’s become weaker. You know how like when a bully starts to realize he can’t get to you anymore?”
You ask, “don’t they fight harder?”
Brad says how Q’s method of getting lost in the lights is a religious experience like no other. He and Q even have the second bedroom set up with diffuse track lighting, exactly like at Walmart to reproduce the experience of a hopeless existence. While in the light, Q plays a recording of wonky carts against linoleum. The sound of plastic bags being ruffled. Of children screaming at the top of their lungs for unaffordable toys. Old Ladies penny pinching. The checkout beeps.
It’s all so immersive, Bradford feels like he’s right there. This grounding in the reality of the world has helped him gain a new perspective on life. Giving your all and getting nothing in return has a sort of simple satisfaction that makes all other pains disappear. He can listen to the voice make fun of him for hours and it doesn’t even phase him. After all, nothing is worse than listening to a middle aged mom complain she can’t fit all 5 of her kids into the carriage along with her groceries.
“These people exist, sissy. Like out there in the real world buying off-brand shoes and condoms that taste like strawberries.”
Panning the camera down he shows you a pair of Asics shoes already dirty from his months of work, says, “and I can’t get a new pair for a year or two.” Then he asks, “can you imagine it?”
All this has got him understanding what it’s like not to have a safety net, such that the simple pleasures in life are enhanced. Going days and days only eating ramen and peanut butter sandwiches, the sparse times they splurge on a microwave pizza or frozen lasagna is like heaven. Bradford can’t simply read or hear about it; he needs to live it. To know for a certainty, he can’t just call an ambulance if he’s hurt and can’t merely replace his used Honda Civic with a new one if he gets into an accident.
True to his word, his recklessness is over with. The light gives him a reason he can’t drink, or do drugs, or stand on the edge of a tall building. He’s irreplaceable and the experience of life is like no other. As he says this, your favorite boy is looking away from the camera, contemplatively smiling. Like as if there’s a breathtaking Ansel Adams scene just off in the distance away from the thrice painted plaster and arguing neighbors.
The unreality of a happy Bradford makes you uneasy, but you say, “I love you, brother.”
Letting his eyes come back to the camera, he says, “I love you too, Sissy,” then he expounds, “I want you to experience this joy with me.”
In your head is drab party of people all dressed in black with black Nike’s standing around a poisoned punch bowl. Or was it apple sauce. You can’t remember. But the influence of that guy Brad is living with gives you that feeling like you’ve reached the top of the stairs, and your brain says how there’s another step and you almost die thinking you’re going to fall forever.
He says, “I need to apologize, Tabby.”
You say, “no need.” As you say this, your doorbell rings and you go to it and whoever rang is gone. In their place, on the doorstep is a small gift box wrapped in Christmas paper.
He insists, “you have to let me,” he says, “I’m sorry for how many times you’ve had to save me. I’m sorry for all the times I’ve OD’d. For all the times I’ve attempted or threatened suicide. I can’t tell you how sorry I am for all not getting help sooner. For depending on you for everything. For not just letting you live your life-.”
You cut in, “that was mother’s fault, not yours.”
He continues, “I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. And what I’m going to do to make amends.”
You fiddle with the bow, lift it. Underneath is a handwritten tab that reads to Tabby, from Bradford. The simple wrapping tears in your hands easily. Inside is a jewelry box, but you know your brother wouldn’t give you jewelry. You don’t like it. The box is heavy, like it’s filled with lead. You lift the topper. Underneath a single sheet of filler paper, laying inside a wad of cotton is a palm sized slab of amber. Encased inside is an ancient plant. It’s so beautiful you can’t breathe.
Your brother asks, “do you like it?”
After a long time, you inhale. Of all the gifts you’ve received over the years nothing compares.
You brother says, “it’s an angiosperm and it’s like a hundred million years old. I’m told they’re really rare because of how few plants get encased in amber. They found it in Burma.”
All this you know already, but you let him talk because you’ve lost the ability to speak.
He says, “I cheated a little and pulled some family strings to get it,” he says, “it’s supposed to be at the Smithsonian, but I figured, what the hell, you deserve it.”
You want to pick him up like he’s a little boy again and hug him to you and squeeze the life out of him. Tears run down your face and finally you whisper, “thank you.”
After averting your eyes so long from the image on the screen you finally look at your brother. He’s still sitting there on the toilet leaning over and smiling like as if the boy you want to hug is there again. The one who’d once shit in mother’s soup and spat on father’s head at his funeral and tittered from a suitcase.
He says, “you’re welcome,” then, standing, he says, “you remember how you said you don’t own anything, or any kind of joy?”
You nod, carefully taking the fragile piece of forever out of the box and heft it in the palm of your hand. There aren’t even works of art this priceless. You don’t even know where to put it. You’re not even sure how to handle it.
He says, “that’s yours,” then, “I want it to be a symbol of the beginning of your new life.”
You set the amber back in the box and set the box on the windowsill next a newly replaced fiddle fig leaf. Chances are it won’t make it as a house plant, but you try anyway because why not? You’ve cared for tougher things. The tension of Bradford’s final escape from our old lives is over. Your boy his happy for the first time in his life and your reservations about how he’s doing it wash away for a little while.
You ask, “there’s no way I could ever find a gift like this for you.”
He says, “yes there is,” then, “apply to Walmart and work with me?”