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impertinences) wrote2013-05-28 02:05 pm
impertinences) wrote2013-05-28 02:05 pm
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Usually, I write AU Brando and Emere with some full-fledged incest plot. I meant this to be like that, but it actually turned out more realistic than I had originally planned. I classify it as AU, but it’s probably a decent portrayal of how their relationship and lives went. Maine guest stars, of course. The ambiguous opening and ending quotes are taken from Shame.
This is the longest little thing I have ever written, I think. It’s eight pages. Eight. I feel proud. Woo. Maybe writing 20-page essays for grad school has made me less intimidated by length, although I still think it’s easier to do a theoretical analysis than a decently paced work of fiction.
Placed under the cut due to length! Enjoy.
“We’re not bad people. We just come from a bad place.”
--
Emere eats potato chips from the package, grease slathering her fingertips. Her hip is pushed to the side, and she’s balancing on her knees atop Juniper’s kitchen stool, elbows on the table, lazily flipping the pages of a fashion magazine. Occasionally, she rubs her palm across the top of her chest, brushing away idle crumbs. The ashtray beside her is nearly full. Her fingers should be tobacco-stained, but she’s lucky enough to have youth on her side.
From the half-curtain-covered doorway, with his vision obscured, Brando can trick himself into believing that his sister is happy. She looks, somehow, as happy as any other eighteen-year-old. Her acceptance letter from the university arrived two weeks ago; she has saved enough money over the years to get her away from this shitty town and into the city. She is beautiful – impossibly, tragically, glamorously beautiful – and she hasn’t even completely grown into the angles of her body. Hers is a face that could have been on billboards, a body that could walk runways in couture rather than street corners in fishnet. Instead, she will choose a high-rise office, expensive suits with plunging necklines, red-backed stilettos, and lipsticks between the color of cappuccino and dark cherries. She will achieve what their mother never could: success.
People have, in the past, mistaken Brando’s eyes for a brown that borders on red, the color of dried blood, but it is Emere whose eyes are open wounds. As soon as she glances at him, he knows the image he created of her was just that – an image, a falsity – cleverly constructed and purposefully placed.
He clears his throat and rubs his knuckles against the scruff of his jaw. “A little simple for someone of your tastes.” Brando motions with his eyes to the potato chips.
“Sometimes the simplest things are the best.”
“You don’t really believe that,” Brando laughs, but it’s more of a bark. “I’ve seen your shoes.”
His sister smiles with one corner of her mouth, pushing the chips across the counter towards him in offering before turning her attention back to the magazine. Brando eases into the air of relaxation between them; it is unusual for them both. He expects her to be barbed wire and cut, rusted silver. She expects him to be unbroken brick and painful silence. They are both surprised by the recent lack of animosity between them, by her new, if not somewhat distant, interest in his well being. Now that she is leaving, she has a reason to care. Brando catches himself staring at the silver bracelet dangling from Emere’s wrist as she flips another page, and his skin feels strangely tight around his bones. The dry and almost rusty sound of Emere’s laugh, the sideways slant of her smile, the jokes that she aims in his direction so only he will notice them—Brando finds it oddly distracting to think of losing those things.
He imagines the taste of her tongue with a sort of dry-mouthed thrill until her gaze, flicking to him suddenly, breaks his imagination. “I’ll—ah. I’ll write, if you want. To you. I’ll write, you’ll write?”
“I’ll write,” Emere says, after a pause, “but I’ll send them to the garage. I don’t want mom having my address.”
For a moment, Brando wants to protest. As a boy, his mother had shaped him into her soldier, a warrior whose sole purpose was protecting a wrongly slandered woman. He was supposed to be a prince, but he grew up into a young man who fixed cars and distrusted dark-eyed women instead. Rescuing is no longer on his agenda. Emere must sense his temporary emotional reflex anyway because the muscles in her arms tense; she winds back into herself like a cobra, and her dusky colored hand looks like something she might strike him with.
The territory they claim defines them both.
Maine barrels in with a suddenness that shatters the tension, her long arms full of groceries, Juniper following closely behind her, whistling a southern sounding tune. Neither of them seems surprised to see the Italians loitering in their kitchen. Maine pushes some paper bags into Brando’s arms as she passes him, telling him not to squish the bread, and Juniper asks if they’re staying for dinner.
--
A few weeks after Emere leaves, Brando starts sending postcards rather than letters. He doesn’t know how to write her complete sentences and the short, scrawled messages within the four lines of a postcard seems more befitting than a mostly empty page of oil-stained notebook paper. He finds the postcards at gas stations and the one nearby Rite Aid. They’re tacky and brightly colored, depicting a New Jersey that was either drawn by a blind man or a surrealist. He thinks she’ll appreciate the distortion of reality and, besides, they barely cost a dollar. He sends them with cartoon-themed stamps on a whim.
Emere never responds. She keeps them in a stack on her desk at first, but they get ruined when a bottle of vodka spills over them, warping the words and images.
Brando stops writing after the third month.
--
Maine shoves her feet into Brando’s lap, complaining that her toes are cold, although she’s wearing mix-matching socks that are thick enough to be furry. She’s starting to grow her hair out from when she shaved it off, and the blonde scruffs look as warm as butter in the setting sun. She flips her sunglasses down over her eyes and turns the heat up another notch. Brando’s pickup truck is old, and the leather seats stretch and creak beneath their bodies but refuse to warm. Their breath causes mist in the air.
“Sometimes you smell like her.”
Brando smirks, crooked but not unfriendly. He’s been trying to roll a second joint for half an hour but his fingers are unusually clumsy because of the cold. “That’s the pot talking.”
“Nah. You’ve both got this weird salty, savory, tart thing going on … like ginger and lime.”
“That sounds more like a taste than a smell.”
Seizing the implication, Maine scrambles so quickly into his lap that he’s briefly reminded of a cat. She scatters the pot in her haste, slipping one of her cold hands behind his neck, giving him a yank that causes his mouth to collide with hers. It’s messy and sudden and their teeth clack against each other. He almost bites her tongue. She’s back on her side of the truck before he has a moment to truly react; she leaves a taste of powdered sugar and mint on his lips. He licks them as an afterthought.
“I guess you’re all right.” The blonde grins at him, foxlike, and nudges his thigh with one of her toes. “But I still miss your sister.”
He wants to say that he does too, but he’s not quite sure how. The words stick like taffy in his mouth.
--
The months go by until all the seasons have cycled through. Emere enrolls in her third semester, chipping away at the requirements for her Bachelor’s in advertisement. She signs up for a course, Graphics and Layout in Print Media, when Brando decides to end things with his latest girlfriend. They’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks now. She’s a strawberry-blonde with freckles that span the bridge of her nose. Her eyes are surprisingly dull, but he likes her soft voice and her timid laugh. She’s kindhearted and simple, but noticing all her good traits just makes him realize his own boredom. She has a name he won’t remember in five years.
Women like him. He has a strong jaw, calloused hands, a capable, reliable sort of look beneath secretive eyes and a firm mouth. He’s quiet, so women think he’s damaged and, illogically, presume he’s waiting to be saved or reinvented. Encouraged into a new shape after some coaxing. He is not mean by nature; he did not inherit his mother’s cruelty. He rarely drinks, distrusting his bloodline and genes. But too often he is aloof and withdrawn. None of the women he’s been in relationships with can claim that he has hurt them with anything more than his inability to show how he cares.
He begins sleeping with a Greek woman by the time Emere is taking Ethical Issues in Marketing and Desktop Publishing. It’s her last semester, and she graduates in May, and they’ve only spoken during the random phone call or two. Brando hears most of the updates through Maine, though the up-and-coming photographer throws out tidbits of information the way owners throw scraps to their dogs. She is loyal to them both, in her own way, and refuses to be caught in the middle of their dysfunction.
She shrugs her shoulders when he asks her if Emere even believes in family. “Sometimes it’s easier for certain brothers and sisters than it is for others.” She’s thinking of Van and their own closeness. “…And, you know, your sister is kind of a bitch. There’s always that.”
--
Emere’s third apartment is smaller than her second, closer to Brooklyn than Manhattan, but it has wooden floors and an amazing view. It came furnished since she rented it for a year while the original owners backpack through Europe. She keeps their pictures up in the living room and bedroom, enjoying the feeling of being watched. She drinks their wine and watches their movies, opens their junk mail, and uses up the expensive soaps in the bathroom. She doesn’t want to mistake herself into thinking this arrangement is permanent. She doesn’t want to love the vintage light fixtures or sterling faucets or the quaintly chipped coffee mugs in the cabinet.
Brando stands awkwardly in the living room, his hands in the pockets of his coat, a snow-sprinkled scarf wrapped around his neck. He is taller than his sister now, probably has been for years, but he is uncomfortable in such close proximity after so many years apart. It’s a small comfort when a cat slinks against his calf, nuzzling its warm face into his jeans. He bends to scratch the animal under its chin while Emere fixes herself a rum and coke.
“What’s his name?” He calls out, more out of curiosity than a need to break the silence.
“I didn’t give him one.” Emere returns from the kitchen, and the sight of her momentarily stuns him once more. Her waist seems sharp in comparison to the womanly curves of her body; her wrists are delicate, fragile bones, but her face is full and healthy. She’s still flushed from being outside in New York’s winter air, and her bottom lip is starting to chap. Her hair is much longer than it was as a teenager, spanning the small of her back, and effortlessly perfect. She looks like their mother, he realizes, or what their mother would have looked like before all the gin aged her.
“Names are important.”
“Are they? Is that why you were named after an obese has-been actor?”
Brando ignores her jibe and takes off his coat. He unwinds his scarf and lays his clothing over the arm of the couch. He looks sheepish when he realizes that he’s tracked snow into the apartment. There are little puddles of water and melting ice marking his path from the door to where he stands.
Emere takes a seat without offering him one. The cat stretches before padding its way over to her legs. It winds itself in and out between them, its tail wrapping around each one of her calves occasionally, brushing her feet. “How long are you planning on staying? There’s only one bedroom, so that leaves you the couch, and I’m not a good roommate. I don’t like sharing my space or my life.”
Brando laughs, a rumbling sound from his chest, half amused and half scornful. “As if I hadn’t noticed. I can find a hotel.”
“Are you crazy? They’re way too expensive. Take the couch.”
She smiles at him and he’s reminded of the girl she once was, so he says okay.
--
They don’t see much of each other for the first week. Emere works long hours; she has a paid internship from an advertising firm and a part-time job with a printing company in the city. She comes home late and gets up early, the smell of coffee lingering in the apartment whenever Brando wakes up. He spends his days wandering the city, learning the streets, enjoying the hustle and bustle of busy Northerners. He finds that he likes the anonymity that comes with city life, but he makes easy conversation with old men at the diners he stops at for lunch. He drinks his coffee black and dips his toast into over-easy eggs, scanning newspapers for available apartments.
When she stumbles in past midnight on Friday, she slips her boots off and crawls in next to him on the couch. The blankets are warm, and she curls into his chest, her hair smelling like cigarette smoke and the scent of vodka heavy on her breath. He makes room for her, draping an arm awkwardly around her waist, uncomfortable by the press of her breasts against him or the way she slides her thigh between his legs. His sleep is uneasy, and he dreams of ripped silk and bat wings.
--
On Sunday morning, Emere makes something she calls a grog. When the kettle on the stove whistles, she pours two cups. The tea is black and clove flavored; she adds an ounce of cognac and an ounce of dark rum, a teaspoon of honey each, and a pinch or two of nutmeg.
Brando asks if she ever drinks anything without alcohol, and she throws his cup of tea on the ground with a rage that sickens him. The cup shatters, and pieces of ceramic scatter, the tea soaking into the wooden floor. Neither of them picks it up, and the room smells like cloves for days.
--
Hotel sheets, Emere guesses, trying to get her bearings upon waking up. The unopened individual chocolates on the bedside clarify things for her, as does the not unpleasant ache between her legs. She stretches slowly, pushing her hair back from her face, and realizes the shower is running. David? Tom? Joseph? She thinks for a moment, unconcerned by her inability to remember, and flicks a condom wrapper from her ankle when she swings her legs out of bed. She checks her cell phone for messages.
Maine has left two. She can barely hear one – the sounds of the concert in the background are overwhelming, even though Maine is screaming. She catches the words flamingo and Prada. The second one is clear, quiet, and a reminder of their plans to meet during the week.
The last message is from Brando. His voice sounds different on her machine. “Hey, it’s me. Just calling to check if we’re still on for viewing that apartment in the city. It’s almost eleven.”
Another Saturday. She finds her dress and coat then leaves while the man whose name she can’t remember is still in the shower, irritated that it takes her longer than usual to find a taxi. Sometimes when they meet for martinis or dinner (usually the former, rarely the latter), Maine will look her up and down and tease her, saying, “Well, you’ll have no trouble getting a cab.” It usually makes her laugh because when has she ever had trouble getting anything? This day, she has to ask nicely; she even smiles at the driver when he stops to let her in.
Emere thinks that this is the worst part about the rest of the day after waking up in a stranger’s bed, as rumpled as a street cat - you have to smile more.
--
It takes him a month to find his own place. He settles on a street-side one-bedroom with water stained ceilings. It’s attached to a bar, and he can hear the music through the walls, the murmurs of drunken conversation that are somehow comforting to him now. Emere hates it. She makes comments about roaches and dangerous looking neighbors, but she pays for his deposit and first month’s rent without hesitation. Her generosity unnerves him.
For the first few nights alone, he has dreams of serpentine women with dark hair. The skies are always wine red, and he wakes up with the taste of cigarettes on his tongue.
They speak on the phone occasionally until the act stops feeling so awkward. She meets him for dinners where she orders expensive salads but spends most of the time drinking martinis. They speak about nothing, feeling their way around conversation, accepting the silences between them for what they are. He learns more about her from what she doesn’t say.
She shows up late on a rainy Tuesday and finds Brando laughing with an attractive brunette. Emere sits down without an introduction, brushing her red painted fingernails across the broad line of his shoulder. She slips her hand across the back of his neck, and Brando thinks of Maine. The woman looks uncertain, confused, and smiles tentatively when Emere bares her teeth in a grin.
Brando clears his throat, speaking after he finishes swallowing his beer. “This is -- ”
“Emere.”
“My -- ”
“Decorator.”
The woman gives a wobbly laugh, reaching out to shake Emere’s hand while Brando’s eyes sharpen, saying her name is Allison and she hopes she isn’t interrupting. She has the habit of speaking unstoppably, divulging too much, in nervousness. The bad weather forced her into the restaurant – it’s impossible to find taxis at this hour, on this street – and she began a casual conversation with Brando after accidentally hitting his shoulder in passing.
“Must have been quite a passing if it’s making him drink.” Emere’s voice is dusky and syrupy and she flashes that grin again. A mix between a lioness and a shark. She leans close to Brando’s ear, her hair falling across her face, and speaks deliberately above a whisper. “Do pace yourself. You know how alcohol affects your family.”
The three make small talk, Emere dominating the conversation, Brando’s silence flush with an undercurrent of anger, and Allison’s unease steadily mounting. She declines the offer for another drink and departs while the rain is still pouring. Emere relaxes into her seat, lighting a cigarette, and watches the brunette flee. “She’ll have to walk two blocks to get a taxi still.”
Brando, his beer only half finished, runs a hand through his hair. “Why did you do that? You know she thought we were together.”
His sister smiles behind her cigarette. “Oh... Did she?”
They don’t meet again for dinner for a while.
--
Brando spends a week calling her, and she never answers. When he asks, Maine shrugs off his concern behind her sunglasses and camera lens.
After the second week, he goes to her apartment. He knocks three times and is startled when an unfamiliar man answers the door. He can hear the television and a woman’s voice from inside the apartment, and it takes him a moment to realize the face staring back at him is the one from all the pictures.
He’s unsurprised to hear that Emere has moved and, no, the man doesn’t know her new address.
--
He doesn’t see her fourth home, the loft she will keep for years, until Maine calls him at two in the morning with an uncharacteristic tone of seriousness in her voice. Thick with sleep but spurred by the panic in his gut, he finds a taxi that takes him to the address he hastily scrawled onto a crumpled napkin.
Maine answers the door, her face blank, but her eyes nervous. “I called an ambulance.”
He moves past her with a calm built from years of finding wrecked women in the bathroom. Emere’s curled herself into the corner, her breathing complicated, her lips an unhealthy tinge of blue, while the muscles in her body spasm. Her gaze is unfocused and there’s vomit in the bathtub. She’s spilled wine down her arms and he confuses the streaking lines of cabernet for blood. The inside of her elbow is marked with small bruises, needle pricks that are red and angry.
Maine chews her bottom lip, lingering in the doorway. Neither of them says the word overdose.
--
Emere spends a few days in the hospital. It’s Brando that takes her home, and Maine makes chicken noodle soup that is too salty. They watch old movies on the couch and nobody speaks. She doesn’t offer an apology or an explanation and when her hands shake too much she finds a bottle of vodka in the back of her closet.
She sleeps for long hours, and Brando carries her to the shower when she refuses to bathe. He turns the water on hot and puts her in while her clothes are still on. She yells and hisses and he slams the door to silence the sound of her screams turning to sobs.
His anger is something deep and dark inside of him. A bitterness he has trouble letting go of. It eats at him, chips away at him daily, until he stands in his sister’s pristine kitchen and screams until his throat is raw. He pictures ripped stockings and his mother’s waitressing uniform, the smell of too much gin, a pain he associates with the Mediterranean and absent fathers. He slams his fist into the wall until the plaster cracks and his knuckles are bruised. His insides are exhausted and he’s bone-weary of loving women who are beyond repair.
--
“You trap me. You force me into a corner, and you trap me. I’ve got nowhere else to go… How are you helping me? Look at me. How are you helping me? You come in here, and you’re a weight on me. You’re a burden.”
This is the longest little thing I have ever written, I think. It’s eight pages. Eight. I feel proud. Woo. Maybe writing 20-page essays for grad school has made me less intimidated by length, although I still think it’s easier to do a theoretical analysis than a decently paced work of fiction.
Placed under the cut due to length! Enjoy.
“We’re not bad people. We just come from a bad place.”
--
Emere eats potato chips from the package, grease slathering her fingertips. Her hip is pushed to the side, and she’s balancing on her knees atop Juniper’s kitchen stool, elbows on the table, lazily flipping the pages of a fashion magazine. Occasionally, she rubs her palm across the top of her chest, brushing away idle crumbs. The ashtray beside her is nearly full. Her fingers should be tobacco-stained, but she’s lucky enough to have youth on her side.
From the half-curtain-covered doorway, with his vision obscured, Brando can trick himself into believing that his sister is happy. She looks, somehow, as happy as any other eighteen-year-old. Her acceptance letter from the university arrived two weeks ago; she has saved enough money over the years to get her away from this shitty town and into the city. She is beautiful – impossibly, tragically, glamorously beautiful – and she hasn’t even completely grown into the angles of her body. Hers is a face that could have been on billboards, a body that could walk runways in couture rather than street corners in fishnet. Instead, she will choose a high-rise office, expensive suits with plunging necklines, red-backed stilettos, and lipsticks between the color of cappuccino and dark cherries. She will achieve what their mother never could: success.
People have, in the past, mistaken Brando’s eyes for a brown that borders on red, the color of dried blood, but it is Emere whose eyes are open wounds. As soon as she glances at him, he knows the image he created of her was just that – an image, a falsity – cleverly constructed and purposefully placed.
He clears his throat and rubs his knuckles against the scruff of his jaw. “A little simple for someone of your tastes.” Brando motions with his eyes to the potato chips.
“Sometimes the simplest things are the best.”
“You don’t really believe that,” Brando laughs, but it’s more of a bark. “I’ve seen your shoes.”
His sister smiles with one corner of her mouth, pushing the chips across the counter towards him in offering before turning her attention back to the magazine. Brando eases into the air of relaxation between them; it is unusual for them both. He expects her to be barbed wire and cut, rusted silver. She expects him to be unbroken brick and painful silence. They are both surprised by the recent lack of animosity between them, by her new, if not somewhat distant, interest in his well being. Now that she is leaving, she has a reason to care. Brando catches himself staring at the silver bracelet dangling from Emere’s wrist as she flips another page, and his skin feels strangely tight around his bones. The dry and almost rusty sound of Emere’s laugh, the sideways slant of her smile, the jokes that she aims in his direction so only he will notice them—Brando finds it oddly distracting to think of losing those things.
He imagines the taste of her tongue with a sort of dry-mouthed thrill until her gaze, flicking to him suddenly, breaks his imagination. “I’ll—ah. I’ll write, if you want. To you. I’ll write, you’ll write?”
“I’ll write,” Emere says, after a pause, “but I’ll send them to the garage. I don’t want mom having my address.”
For a moment, Brando wants to protest. As a boy, his mother had shaped him into her soldier, a warrior whose sole purpose was protecting a wrongly slandered woman. He was supposed to be a prince, but he grew up into a young man who fixed cars and distrusted dark-eyed women instead. Rescuing is no longer on his agenda. Emere must sense his temporary emotional reflex anyway because the muscles in her arms tense; she winds back into herself like a cobra, and her dusky colored hand looks like something she might strike him with.
The territory they claim defines them both.
Maine barrels in with a suddenness that shatters the tension, her long arms full of groceries, Juniper following closely behind her, whistling a southern sounding tune. Neither of them seems surprised to see the Italians loitering in their kitchen. Maine pushes some paper bags into Brando’s arms as she passes him, telling him not to squish the bread, and Juniper asks if they’re staying for dinner.
--
A few weeks after Emere leaves, Brando starts sending postcards rather than letters. He doesn’t know how to write her complete sentences and the short, scrawled messages within the four lines of a postcard seems more befitting than a mostly empty page of oil-stained notebook paper. He finds the postcards at gas stations and the one nearby Rite Aid. They’re tacky and brightly colored, depicting a New Jersey that was either drawn by a blind man or a surrealist. He thinks she’ll appreciate the distortion of reality and, besides, they barely cost a dollar. He sends them with cartoon-themed stamps on a whim.
Emere never responds. She keeps them in a stack on her desk at first, but they get ruined when a bottle of vodka spills over them, warping the words and images.
Brando stops writing after the third month.
--
Maine shoves her feet into Brando’s lap, complaining that her toes are cold, although she’s wearing mix-matching socks that are thick enough to be furry. She’s starting to grow her hair out from when she shaved it off, and the blonde scruffs look as warm as butter in the setting sun. She flips her sunglasses down over her eyes and turns the heat up another notch. Brando’s pickup truck is old, and the leather seats stretch and creak beneath their bodies but refuse to warm. Their breath causes mist in the air.
“Sometimes you smell like her.”
Brando smirks, crooked but not unfriendly. He’s been trying to roll a second joint for half an hour but his fingers are unusually clumsy because of the cold. “That’s the pot talking.”
“Nah. You’ve both got this weird salty, savory, tart thing going on … like ginger and lime.”
“That sounds more like a taste than a smell.”
Seizing the implication, Maine scrambles so quickly into his lap that he’s briefly reminded of a cat. She scatters the pot in her haste, slipping one of her cold hands behind his neck, giving him a yank that causes his mouth to collide with hers. It’s messy and sudden and their teeth clack against each other. He almost bites her tongue. She’s back on her side of the truck before he has a moment to truly react; she leaves a taste of powdered sugar and mint on his lips. He licks them as an afterthought.
“I guess you’re all right.” The blonde grins at him, foxlike, and nudges his thigh with one of her toes. “But I still miss your sister.”
He wants to say that he does too, but he’s not quite sure how. The words stick like taffy in his mouth.
--
The months go by until all the seasons have cycled through. Emere enrolls in her third semester, chipping away at the requirements for her Bachelor’s in advertisement. She signs up for a course, Graphics and Layout in Print Media, when Brando decides to end things with his latest girlfriend. They’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks now. She’s a strawberry-blonde with freckles that span the bridge of her nose. Her eyes are surprisingly dull, but he likes her soft voice and her timid laugh. She’s kindhearted and simple, but noticing all her good traits just makes him realize his own boredom. She has a name he won’t remember in five years.
Women like him. He has a strong jaw, calloused hands, a capable, reliable sort of look beneath secretive eyes and a firm mouth. He’s quiet, so women think he’s damaged and, illogically, presume he’s waiting to be saved or reinvented. Encouraged into a new shape after some coaxing. He is not mean by nature; he did not inherit his mother’s cruelty. He rarely drinks, distrusting his bloodline and genes. But too often he is aloof and withdrawn. None of the women he’s been in relationships with can claim that he has hurt them with anything more than his inability to show how he cares.
He begins sleeping with a Greek woman by the time Emere is taking Ethical Issues in Marketing and Desktop Publishing. It’s her last semester, and she graduates in May, and they’ve only spoken during the random phone call or two. Brando hears most of the updates through Maine, though the up-and-coming photographer throws out tidbits of information the way owners throw scraps to their dogs. She is loyal to them both, in her own way, and refuses to be caught in the middle of their dysfunction.
She shrugs her shoulders when he asks her if Emere even believes in family. “Sometimes it’s easier for certain brothers and sisters than it is for others.” She’s thinking of Van and their own closeness. “…And, you know, your sister is kind of a bitch. There’s always that.”
--
Emere’s third apartment is smaller than her second, closer to Brooklyn than Manhattan, but it has wooden floors and an amazing view. It came furnished since she rented it for a year while the original owners backpack through Europe. She keeps their pictures up in the living room and bedroom, enjoying the feeling of being watched. She drinks their wine and watches their movies, opens their junk mail, and uses up the expensive soaps in the bathroom. She doesn’t want to mistake herself into thinking this arrangement is permanent. She doesn’t want to love the vintage light fixtures or sterling faucets or the quaintly chipped coffee mugs in the cabinet.
Brando stands awkwardly in the living room, his hands in the pockets of his coat, a snow-sprinkled scarf wrapped around his neck. He is taller than his sister now, probably has been for years, but he is uncomfortable in such close proximity after so many years apart. It’s a small comfort when a cat slinks against his calf, nuzzling its warm face into his jeans. He bends to scratch the animal under its chin while Emere fixes herself a rum and coke.
“What’s his name?” He calls out, more out of curiosity than a need to break the silence.
“I didn’t give him one.” Emere returns from the kitchen, and the sight of her momentarily stuns him once more. Her waist seems sharp in comparison to the womanly curves of her body; her wrists are delicate, fragile bones, but her face is full and healthy. She’s still flushed from being outside in New York’s winter air, and her bottom lip is starting to chap. Her hair is much longer than it was as a teenager, spanning the small of her back, and effortlessly perfect. She looks like their mother, he realizes, or what their mother would have looked like before all the gin aged her.
“Names are important.”
“Are they? Is that why you were named after an obese has-been actor?”
Brando ignores her jibe and takes off his coat. He unwinds his scarf and lays his clothing over the arm of the couch. He looks sheepish when he realizes that he’s tracked snow into the apartment. There are little puddles of water and melting ice marking his path from the door to where he stands.
Emere takes a seat without offering him one. The cat stretches before padding its way over to her legs. It winds itself in and out between them, its tail wrapping around each one of her calves occasionally, brushing her feet. “How long are you planning on staying? There’s only one bedroom, so that leaves you the couch, and I’m not a good roommate. I don’t like sharing my space or my life.”
Brando laughs, a rumbling sound from his chest, half amused and half scornful. “As if I hadn’t noticed. I can find a hotel.”
“Are you crazy? They’re way too expensive. Take the couch.”
She smiles at him and he’s reminded of the girl she once was, so he says okay.
--
They don’t see much of each other for the first week. Emere works long hours; she has a paid internship from an advertising firm and a part-time job with a printing company in the city. She comes home late and gets up early, the smell of coffee lingering in the apartment whenever Brando wakes up. He spends his days wandering the city, learning the streets, enjoying the hustle and bustle of busy Northerners. He finds that he likes the anonymity that comes with city life, but he makes easy conversation with old men at the diners he stops at for lunch. He drinks his coffee black and dips his toast into over-easy eggs, scanning newspapers for available apartments.
When she stumbles in past midnight on Friday, she slips her boots off and crawls in next to him on the couch. The blankets are warm, and she curls into his chest, her hair smelling like cigarette smoke and the scent of vodka heavy on her breath. He makes room for her, draping an arm awkwardly around her waist, uncomfortable by the press of her breasts against him or the way she slides her thigh between his legs. His sleep is uneasy, and he dreams of ripped silk and bat wings.
--
On Sunday morning, Emere makes something she calls a grog. When the kettle on the stove whistles, she pours two cups. The tea is black and clove flavored; she adds an ounce of cognac and an ounce of dark rum, a teaspoon of honey each, and a pinch or two of nutmeg.
Brando asks if she ever drinks anything without alcohol, and she throws his cup of tea on the ground with a rage that sickens him. The cup shatters, and pieces of ceramic scatter, the tea soaking into the wooden floor. Neither of them picks it up, and the room smells like cloves for days.
--
Hotel sheets, Emere guesses, trying to get her bearings upon waking up. The unopened individual chocolates on the bedside clarify things for her, as does the not unpleasant ache between her legs. She stretches slowly, pushing her hair back from her face, and realizes the shower is running. David? Tom? Joseph? She thinks for a moment, unconcerned by her inability to remember, and flicks a condom wrapper from her ankle when she swings her legs out of bed. She checks her cell phone for messages.
Maine has left two. She can barely hear one – the sounds of the concert in the background are overwhelming, even though Maine is screaming. She catches the words flamingo and Prada. The second one is clear, quiet, and a reminder of their plans to meet during the week.
The last message is from Brando. His voice sounds different on her machine. “Hey, it’s me. Just calling to check if we’re still on for viewing that apartment in the city. It’s almost eleven.”
Another Saturday. She finds her dress and coat then leaves while the man whose name she can’t remember is still in the shower, irritated that it takes her longer than usual to find a taxi. Sometimes when they meet for martinis or dinner (usually the former, rarely the latter), Maine will look her up and down and tease her, saying, “Well, you’ll have no trouble getting a cab.” It usually makes her laugh because when has she ever had trouble getting anything? This day, she has to ask nicely; she even smiles at the driver when he stops to let her in.
Emere thinks that this is the worst part about the rest of the day after waking up in a stranger’s bed, as rumpled as a street cat - you have to smile more.
--
It takes him a month to find his own place. He settles on a street-side one-bedroom with water stained ceilings. It’s attached to a bar, and he can hear the music through the walls, the murmurs of drunken conversation that are somehow comforting to him now. Emere hates it. She makes comments about roaches and dangerous looking neighbors, but she pays for his deposit and first month’s rent without hesitation. Her generosity unnerves him.
For the first few nights alone, he has dreams of serpentine women with dark hair. The skies are always wine red, and he wakes up with the taste of cigarettes on his tongue.
They speak on the phone occasionally until the act stops feeling so awkward. She meets him for dinners where she orders expensive salads but spends most of the time drinking martinis. They speak about nothing, feeling their way around conversation, accepting the silences between them for what they are. He learns more about her from what she doesn’t say.
She shows up late on a rainy Tuesday and finds Brando laughing with an attractive brunette. Emere sits down without an introduction, brushing her red painted fingernails across the broad line of his shoulder. She slips her hand across the back of his neck, and Brando thinks of Maine. The woman looks uncertain, confused, and smiles tentatively when Emere bares her teeth in a grin.
Brando clears his throat, speaking after he finishes swallowing his beer. “This is -- ”
“Emere.”
“My -- ”
“Decorator.”
The woman gives a wobbly laugh, reaching out to shake Emere’s hand while Brando’s eyes sharpen, saying her name is Allison and she hopes she isn’t interrupting. She has the habit of speaking unstoppably, divulging too much, in nervousness. The bad weather forced her into the restaurant – it’s impossible to find taxis at this hour, on this street – and she began a casual conversation with Brando after accidentally hitting his shoulder in passing.
“Must have been quite a passing if it’s making him drink.” Emere’s voice is dusky and syrupy and she flashes that grin again. A mix between a lioness and a shark. She leans close to Brando’s ear, her hair falling across her face, and speaks deliberately above a whisper. “Do pace yourself. You know how alcohol affects your family.”
The three make small talk, Emere dominating the conversation, Brando’s silence flush with an undercurrent of anger, and Allison’s unease steadily mounting. She declines the offer for another drink and departs while the rain is still pouring. Emere relaxes into her seat, lighting a cigarette, and watches the brunette flee. “She’ll have to walk two blocks to get a taxi still.”
Brando, his beer only half finished, runs a hand through his hair. “Why did you do that? You know she thought we were together.”
His sister smiles behind her cigarette. “Oh... Did she?”
They don’t meet again for dinner for a while.
--
Brando spends a week calling her, and she never answers. When he asks, Maine shrugs off his concern behind her sunglasses and camera lens.
After the second week, he goes to her apartment. He knocks three times and is startled when an unfamiliar man answers the door. He can hear the television and a woman’s voice from inside the apartment, and it takes him a moment to realize the face staring back at him is the one from all the pictures.
He’s unsurprised to hear that Emere has moved and, no, the man doesn’t know her new address.
--
He doesn’t see her fourth home, the loft she will keep for years, until Maine calls him at two in the morning with an uncharacteristic tone of seriousness in her voice. Thick with sleep but spurred by the panic in his gut, he finds a taxi that takes him to the address he hastily scrawled onto a crumpled napkin.
Maine answers the door, her face blank, but her eyes nervous. “I called an ambulance.”
He moves past her with a calm built from years of finding wrecked women in the bathroom. Emere’s curled herself into the corner, her breathing complicated, her lips an unhealthy tinge of blue, while the muscles in her body spasm. Her gaze is unfocused and there’s vomit in the bathtub. She’s spilled wine down her arms and he confuses the streaking lines of cabernet for blood. The inside of her elbow is marked with small bruises, needle pricks that are red and angry.
Maine chews her bottom lip, lingering in the doorway. Neither of them says the word overdose.
--
Emere spends a few days in the hospital. It’s Brando that takes her home, and Maine makes chicken noodle soup that is too salty. They watch old movies on the couch and nobody speaks. She doesn’t offer an apology or an explanation and when her hands shake too much she finds a bottle of vodka in the back of her closet.
She sleeps for long hours, and Brando carries her to the shower when she refuses to bathe. He turns the water on hot and puts her in while her clothes are still on. She yells and hisses and he slams the door to silence the sound of her screams turning to sobs.
His anger is something deep and dark inside of him. A bitterness he has trouble letting go of. It eats at him, chips away at him daily, until he stands in his sister’s pristine kitchen and screams until his throat is raw. He pictures ripped stockings and his mother’s waitressing uniform, the smell of too much gin, a pain he associates with the Mediterranean and absent fathers. He slams his fist into the wall until the plaster cracks and his knuckles are bruised. His insides are exhausted and he’s bone-weary of loving women who are beyond repair.
--
“You trap me. You force me into a corner, and you trap me. I’ve got nowhere else to go… How are you helping me? Look at me. How are you helping me? You come in here, and you’re a weight on me. You’re a burden.”