a coffee in the morning, bring her back one too.
He made plans, lists. Stuart loved lists. He filled an entire notepad he’d pulled from his mother’s bill-paying desk, first with things he loved about Emily, then things he hated. Then things he wanted to accomplish in life. These lists were supposed to calm him and make him feel in charge. Motivated people make lists. But even as he wrote them, he knew he couldn’t fulfill them. He’d feel his pulse rise as the list got longer, one task, two tasks, three…too many. Even writing something as simple as a grocery list could make his heart pound in his ears. What did he want to eat? What of all the possible choices did he want for himself for dinner? What did he want?
So he started writing other lists, nonsense lists, like the list of words so pleasing to the ear, it’s a wonder that you don’t hear them more often:
Demitasse
Melodious
Conundrum
Auspicious
Spectacular
Cantankerous
Extraordinary
Felicity
Doldrums
Forgiven
He was busting to get out and incapable of moving. He was frozen. He was a mess, and he needed something to get his life started. Stuart took a sip from the glass at the foot of the couch and listened to a young, wigless Elton John telling him that it was “lonely out in space”.
No lonelier than anywhere else, he thought. Yes, he needed something, but he didn’t know what it was.
He heard the doorbell and watched the colour drain from his mother’s face as she stammered, “Oh, I wonder who that could be.”
Stuart wondered if it was going to be an intervention. He knew his aunts had been calling, knew his mother had seen them on Sunday, coming back red-eyed and tired and saying cattily that she’d like to light a few candles, so he’d best not sigh so much, or the place might go up in flames.
He heard a familiar voice, very unfamiliar to this apartment. It seemed what his mother thought he needed was Graham. He must really be in bad shape.
“Hello, Mother.”
“Graham. Nice to see you.”
“Likewise, Mother.”
Graham had always called Glyniss “Mother”. She was sure he did it to irritate her, to embarrass her in front of the world. Happy children didn’t call their mothers Mother. It was Mom or Mammy or Mum. Mother was reserved for distant, imperious women, those who ordered, not reared. No one wanted to be called Mother. Mother was a big “Fuck You”. Stuart always called her Ma.
They stood another moment in the door, Glyniss unconsciously blocking entry with an arm on the doorframe. She took a breath as if to speak but released it in a sigh.
“May I come in?” Graham asked so politely that Stuart flinched.
“Oh, yes… What a question! You can always come in. It’s your home too,” his mother replied, jumping out of the way and looking at the floor as she said it.
Excruciating, thought Stuart. But Graham said nothing and walked passed her into the living room, taking a seat across from Stuart.
“I hear your life’s in the toilet, Stu.”
“Now, I never said that, Graham,” Glyniss said primly. “We just, that is Aunt Agathe and I just, well, Auntie Helen too, well, I just said I was worried to see Stuart so unhappy.”
“I’m here to talk to you about getting yourself together a little here, bud,” Graham said, seemingly ignoring his mother’s stammering, but softening his approach just a little. He did like his older brother, even though he had a world of reasons not too.
“Well, I guess you are Mr. Fixit, aren’t you,” replied Stuart. He regretted it instantly.
Graham was a carpenter. “Handyman” Glyniss called him. He hadn’t gone to school for it, just had the natural ability and lucked into working with a good craftsman. He’d done very well for himself, but it wasn’t the expected career path for a Lewis man. He had eschewed bland offices and button-down shirts and delusions of greater things to come, instead spending his time making beautiful things with his strong, hardened hands, things that left Stuart feeling fey and inadequate. Cheap shots were his only counter.
Graham just smiled. “Well, your tongue ain’t busted,” he said, falling into the stereotype, feeling no shame. He would do it to drive his mother crazy. He did it because he didn’t care what they thought of him. His had been a childhood more endured than embraced. He’d had to get through it, and working with his hands was how he’d done it, hiding away in the shed in the back garden, until Glyniss had sold the house. It was the reason he hadn’t run away at sixteen or ended up in jail or wrapped himself around a tree seeping oil and blood on its roots. His work had saved his life, and he was good at it and proud of it and didn’t need anybody to tell him he should be.
Glyniss responded to the exchange with a smile so tight, it threatened to crack her face. “Oh, you boys. Well I think I might just head out for a while and let you two talk,” she said through the grin. It was a little grotesque, but Stuart had to give her credit for trying.
Once she had left, the brothers looked at each other across what felt like miles before Graham shook his head, repeating, “Oh, you boys,” and started to laugh. Stuart joined in, and in a minute, they were roaring. A laugh full of wheezing and hooting and tears rolling down their cheeks. It was one of two ways of cutting the stress in the Lewis house, howls of rage or laughter.
“I can’t believe you’re here. They must be on suicide watch or something,” Stuart said finally.
“Yeah, kind of. I can’t believe you’re here. God, what are you doing?”
“She threw me out.”
“I heard. What’d you do?”
What had he done? No one had asked him that yet. Elizabeth and his mom had both taken the stance that the action was Emily’s, so the blame was Emily’s. Stuart quite liked that stance and had no intention of probing into what possible sins he might have committed to bring about his lover’s change of heart.
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Elizabeth’s? Agathe’s? Hell, I would have thought you’d call me and Jane first.”
“Yeah, but…”
“But?
“She doesn’t, you know, expect anything from me.” He realized it as he said it. There was no time to pretty it up.
“The hell she doesn’t.”
“She lets me be.”
“She lets you be, all right. Be sad and pathetic and drunk. That’s the way she likes us best. Listen, Stu, I’m sure you’re upset about Emily, but this isn’t doing you any good.”
“You’re not being fair. You’d damn Mom for nothing. I don’t have the same problems with her that you do. It’s not my fault that she worries about me. She’s supporting me.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Stuart, supporting you? In lethargy and self-pity and drinking in the morning. Doesn’t that strike you as a little bit familiar?”
“It was the easiest place to catch my breath.”
“And are you catching it?”
“I’m…surviving.”
Graham stood up from his seat, almost propelled from it. He wasn’t a big talker and didn’t have much patience for the gentle excuses his brother and mother made for themselves.
“Oh, come off it. Surviving? You’re subsisting at best. You’re not pulling yourself together here.