Big Brother

“Thing that really gets me in New York these days,” he went on, Parmesan pasted in the corners of his mouth, “is this obsession with ‘tradition.’ Some of the younger cats, they sound like fuddy-duddies. Studying all these chords and intervals like those mindless fucks in madrassas memorizing the Koran. Ornette, Trane, Bird—they were iconoclasts! They weren’t about following the rules, but tearing them up! Personally I blame jazz education. Sonny, Dizzy, Elvin—they didn’t get any degrees. But these good doobies coming out of Berklee and the New School—they’re so fucking respectful. And serious. It’s perverse, man. Like getting a Ph.D. in how to be a dropout.”

We didn’t usually have wine with dinner, but tonight was an occasion. Edison had opened the second bottle—which made Fletcher’s jaw clench—helping to explain why my brother was dropping consonants, slurring vowels, and adopting a drawling cadence like the honorary African-American he considered himself to be. Most of the founding fathers of jazz were black, and Edison claimed being a white guy was a disadvantage in the field, especially in Europe, where “real” jazz musicians had to look the part.

“… See, what Wynton’s done by bringing in Jazz at Lincoln Center is cast the genre as elitist. As high culture, high art. Elitist, can you believe it? A form that came straight outta whites-only water fountains? But that’s the drill now, man. Middle-aged boomers hit the Blue Note when they’re too out of it to keep up with hip-hop and figure they need to ditch pop for something more sophisticated. It’s a pose, man …”

As my mind wandered, I considered the script for an Edison doll:

I’d have been famous, man, if only I was black!

I’ve played with some heavy cats.

Jazz prodigy my ass! Sinclair Vanpelt couldn’t play “Chopsticks.”

Yeah, as a matter of fact, Travis Appaloosa is my dad.

I can’t believe no one recorded the Harry Connick jam.

Yo, pass the cheese.

Well, that last line would be a recent addition. I collected the plates, while Edison heaved from the maroon recliner—again—to head to the patio to smoke. So Tanner had once more to get up, push his chair in, and maneuver out of the way. It was chilly for the end of September, and each lumbering departure and reentry lowered the temperature by five degrees. The central heating couldn’t keep up, and Cody had to slip upstairs to get us both sweaters. I was reconciled that Tanner and Cody had to negotiate a world in which people smoked. Given that my brother was not only chronically short of breath but also himself a heavy cat, the kids probably wouldn’t view him as a role model. But Fletcher tensed every time we went through all this brouhaha for an unfiltered Camel. He didn’t want anyone smoking around the kids.

I unveiled my pecan pie. Fletcher wouldn’t have any, but it used to be my brother’s favorite dessert as a boy. If glutinous with corn syrup, the pie was already baked; besides, look at him: what difference did it make? Although I guessed that’s what he routinely told himself.

“Edison, you want ice cream with this?” I called plaintively. But I knew the answer.

I lay on my back in bed while Fletcher folded his clothes, which without the maroon recliner he had to stack on his dresser. Finally I said, “I had no idea.”

After slipping between the sheets, Fletcher, too, lay in a wide-eyed stupor. We seemed to be experiencing a domestic post-traumatic stress, as if recovering from an improvised explosive device planted at our dining table.

“I’m starving,” said Fletcher.

A bit later he said, “I rode fifty miles today.”

I let him get it out of his system. After another couple of minutes he said, “That polenta dish was huge. I thought we’d have scads left over.”

I sighed. “You should have had some pie. Before Edison finished it off.” I nestled my head on his chest. For once his build seemed not a reprimand, but a marvel.

“What happened to him?”

I let Fletcher’s question dangle. It would take me months to formulate any kind of an answer.

“I’m sorry,” said Fletcher, stroking my hair. “I’m so very, very sorry.”

I was grateful that he opted for sympathy over judgment. Sympathy for whom? For his wife, first of all. For Edison as well, obviously. But maybe—in a situation I’d unwittingly gotten us into and had myself contrived as horrifyingly open-ended—for everybody.

chapter five (#ulink_7f3ed8bf-1343-537e-af4d-c7cfa70a9273)

I shuffled downstairs the following morning, a Sunday, to find Edison in the kitchen, which Fletcher and I had swabbed down laboriously the night before and was once more a melee of mixing bowls.

“Morning, Panda Bear! Thought I’d earn my keep. Breakfast on the house.” He’d fired up our cast-iron griddle, above which he dribbled batter from a dramatic height. Once the batch began to sizzle, he pulled a cookie sheet from the oven that was towering with pancakes—chocolate chip, I would discover.

I usually had a piece of toast.

“Thanks, Edison, that’s very—generous.”

Tanner was not yet up, and Fletcher had fled to the basement. So I sat down next to Cody, who was parked before a stack of five. Thus far she had carved a single wedge from the top pancake and placed it on the plate rim. In a show of politeness, she cut a doll-size bite from the wedge and chewed elaborately. As well as pancake fixings—jams and sour cream—there was also a bowl of scrambled eggs, getting cold, and large enough to have decimated both cartons. If I wanted toast, that was on offer as well—piled and pre-buttered. I nibbled on a triangle. It oozed.

“Wow,” I said faintly as my own stack arrived—layered with more butter and drenched in maple syrup. Resourcefully, my brother had finished the open bottle and located our backup in the pantry. “Is there any coffee?”

“Coming up!” He poured me an inky mug-full.

I slipped up and looked in the fridge. I took my coffee with milk. The empty plastic gallon sat on the counter.

“Whatcha looking for?” Edison had already adopted a proprietary attitude toward our kitchen.

“The half-and-half.” Of which ordinarily I took a tiny splash on top of the milk, but straight would do for now.

“Sorry about that,” said Edison. “Needed some coffee myself, to power through the flapjacks. There wasn’t much left, and I killed it.”

I’d opened a fresh pint the previous morning. “Never mind, then. I’ll take it black.” I returned to the pancakes I didn’t want, fighting a burst of petulance. All I did want was my usual white coffee, and not this bleeding-ulcer-in-a-cup. I told myself he was trying to be nice, but it didn’t feel nice.

“Think I should take a stack down to Fletch?”

“No, he wouldn’t touch them. Not with the white flour, and especially not with chocolate chips.” My tone was a little clipped.

“I could make another batch with buckwheat and walnuts, no prob. We’d just have to get more milk.”

“No, please don’t make any more pancakes!”

Edison’s ladle froze; I might as well have slapped him. The rebuke rang in my ears, and I flushed with remorse. My brother had just gotten here and there had to be something terribly wrong for him to be looking like this and I wanted him to feel welcome and loved, which was the only way he would ever get a hold of himself.

I took my coffee to the stove and put an arm around his shoulders. It shocked me that it took a small but detectable overcoming of revulsion to touch my own sibling. “All I meant was—you should knock off all this work and join us for breakfast. I just had a bite, and the pancakes are terrific.”

The touch more than the verbal reassurance made the difference. “Vanilla flavoring,” he advised. “And you have to really watch these suckers, or the chocolate burns.” He insisted on finishing the batter, at which point Tanner emerged as well.

“Jesus fuck! This is fantastic!” Reviling his father’s preachy nutritional guidelines, Tanner exulted in white flour and chocolate for breakfast. Six pancakes would disappear down that scrawny gullet no harm done, and my stepson’s enthusiasm helped to turn the emotional tide. Edison basked in Tanner’s praise for his breakfast. I may have had more than I wanted, but that was a small sacrifice to make my brother feel appreciated, and Cody finally consumed half a pancake. Why, it seemed we’d have a garrulous, boisterous time together so long as we all kept eating.

At eleven a.m., aside from yet another kitchen cleanup, the day yawned. “So, Edison,” I ventured, “have you thought about what you’d like to do while you’re here?”

“Go cow-watching?”

“We don’t look at cows!” said Cody.

“Yeah, believe it or not the Midwest has electricity now,” said Tanner. “They’re even talking about bringing in something called ‘broadband’ so you can make contact with civilization right through the air—though I think that’s a wild rumor myself.”

“Tanner’s right,” I said. “There’s plenty to do in Iowa, you East Coast snob.” That said, I’d never been keen on activities for their own sake. I preferred work to play—a temperament I’d recognized on meeting Fletcher Feuerbach. I’d been catering a July Fourth cookout for Monsanto when a quirky, taciturn seed salesman fled the corporate chitchat to mind the grill. He helped clear and pack up, leaving me in no doubt that tying off trash bags and arranging leftover deviled eggs in plastic containers was his idea of a good time. Little wonder I brought him home, where he washed every single serving platter before he kissed me. For both of us, work was play.

“You can always practice,” I added. “Cody doesn’t monopolize the piano more than an hour a day.”