Emily
I walk through the city in a state of profound shock. It’s like I can feel the spinning of the earth. Every time I walk by somebody, I expect them to stop me and ask if something is wrong. I feel as though I must look like a lonely, wandering woman. But people just brush by me and that suits me fine. I don’t want to talk to anybody. I don’t want to have to explain how I’m feeling to another person. They’d never understand; nobody would. How can I explain to another person that I’m distraught because my abusive brother is dead? But distraught is the right term for it.
I walk for a long time through the sunlit streets, past honking cars and bustling businessmen and frantic parents dragging along even more frantic kids. I walk until my legs carry me, by accident, to Central Park. I don’t think. I just plunge into the park.
I pass by a man and a woman holding hands. The woman has a wide smile on her face as she leans across and kisses the man behind the ear. The man turns, kisses her on the cheek. The love between them is almost physical, reaching across the park and nudging into me. I stop for a moment and imagine that I’m that woman, that life is carefree, that fear and pain and longing and regret and confusion are alien to me. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t completely put myself in that woman’s shoes. She’s one of the smiling, happy, loving women, the type I’ll never be.
I reach into my pocket, meaning to take out my cellphone, but I forgot to bring it with me.
I press on, deeper into the park, until I reach the pond. I go to a bench and throw myself down on it. My mind is filled with memories and not all of them are bad.
Sometimes, Patrick was a good brother, and right now the good seems to massively outweigh the bad. It doesn’t help that I know it’s a skewed point of view. It doesn’t help in the least.
I remember once, after we’d moved out of the orphanage and into our first apartment, I had recurring night terrors. I would dream that I was standing at the edge of a cliff, rooted in place as you often are in dreams, and behind me there was a huge, lumbering beast. Every night, the beast loped at me, slowly. I could hear every step, its breath as it got closer, its claws tearing up the earth. I looked down at the rocks, jagged and razor-sharp. Soon, I thought, the beast will push me over the edge and that’ll be the end. Despite the pain, I didn’t want to die. I always woke just as the beast smashed into me, sending me toppling over the cliff edge.
I would scream and spasms would course through my body. I would pound the bed with my fists. I would claw at the sheets.
I remember Patrick coming into the bedroom. I fell silent, a hand of terror gripping me. He’d hit me now, I thought, and no matter how many times he’d done it before, the pain never became less, just easier to accept. I shrank to the other side of the bed, arms at my face in a pathetic attempt to shield myself. But he didn’t hit me. He crawled onto the bed and wrapped his arms around me.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, stroking my hair. Stroking my hair with hands that would, the next day, bruise my face. “You don’t have to be scared. I’ll never let anything happen to you.” Never mind that all the bad things that happened to me were his fault. “You’re safe.” A lie, because I was never safe with him. But in that moment, with the phantom of the lumbering beast in my mind, I didn’t care about the other things Patrick had done. All I cared about was how safe he made me feel. He kissed me on the forehead, tucked me into bed, and sat on the floor as I fell asleep.
That’s what people on the outside never understand, I reflect as I watch the ducks drift across the water, leaving ripples in their paths. The ripples spread outward and create more ripples until the whole pond is shimmering in the sunlight. There is no such thing as just bad, or just good. There’s always an in between space. But nobody ever sees that. They think a devil must be a devil and an angel must be an angel. They never stop to consider that sometimes devils wear halos and angels sprout horns.
And yet . . .
I allow another part of myself, so far ignored, to pour its feelings into this potent brew.
And yet now, I will never again have to fear him. I will never again have to shrink in terror as his huge, lumbering body comes at me. Because the truth is, Patrick was the monster in my dream. He was the monster and he was the protector. He’s dead. I never have to fear him again. I don’t have to be scared anymore. But he’s my brother. But he hit you. He’s dead. Be happy; he sad. Be strong; be a good sister. See him for what he really is; sometimes he was a good man.
“Ah!” I snap, picking up a stray twig from the bench and throwing it into the water. I mutter under my breath: “Why can’t life just be simple for once?”
“It rarely is.” The voice comes from behind me.
I leap to my feet, spinning.
The man doesn’t make a move toward me. He’s large and soft-looking, wearing an old-man overcoat which covers his knees. He’s short, squat. His face is squashed and he wears wire-framed glasses. A crescent of grey hair frames a bald spot on stop. His coat is pulled up around his neck, but there’s something under there, marking his skin.
“It’s not polite to sneak up on people,” I say, voice breathy. The tears have stopped flowing now, though, so that’s something.
“I didn’t mean to sneak up,” the man says, completely at ease. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a transparent bag of breadcrumbs. “I’m just here to feed the ducks. I couldn’t help but overhear.” He strolls to the edge of the pond, passing by me, and begins throwing breadcrumbs into the pond. The ducks gather around him at once.
“Well, you did,” I say, backing away to the bench and sitting down again. Really, I should go away, but my legs are aching from so much walking and this old man doesn’t seem to even notice I’m here.
For around ten minutes, I watch as he feeds the ducks. He takes a genuine pleasure in it, oohing and ahhing every time a new duck joins the fray. He even waves away some of the bigger ducks so that a duckling can get its share. When his bag his empty, he turns to me.
In his other hand, he holds one final pile of crumbs. “Would you like to feed them?” he asks.
“Uh, sure,” I reply, grateful for the distraction.
I take the crumbs from him and toss them into the water. Together, this kind old man and I watch as the ducks polish off the last of the breadcrumbs.
Then he faces me. “Are you okay?” he asks, gesturing at my eyes.
“I tripped,” I say shortly.
“Ah.” He nods knowingly. “I’ve known many women who tripped—”
“I tripped.”
He holds his hands up and wanders over to the bench. Without even thinking about it, I join him, dropping next to him. “I knew a girl once,” he says. “She was young, pretty, smart. Brilliant, really. She was eighteen years old and her father was a real nasty piece of work. Real nasty. The sort of man to kick a homeless person in the stomach whilst he’s sleeping. That’s not some random example. He really did that.” The old man sighs. “The girl had a boyfriend, but back then the boyfriend was too weak and pathetic to do anything about it.” He shrugs. “Long story short, the inevitable happened. The man beat the girl to death. By the time the boyfriend learned of it, it was too late. Not even killing the mean old bastard could do any good. He was half a man after that.”
“You’re talking about yourself,” I’m not sure how I know, but it’s so obviously true that I don’t question the statement.
The man smiles tightly. “Yes, I’m talking about myself.”
“Is there a moral to this story, old man?”
“No moral. There never are morals, not in life. Just decisions.”
“Are you a philosopher?” I ask, genuinely curious. He talks like one.
“No.” He laughs. “I’m just an old man with too much time on his hands.”
There’s a pause, lengthening, ducks quacking and kids giggling and wind rustling the leaves overhead.
“Was she scared?” I say. “The girl, I mean.”
“Right up until the end,” the man murmurs, voice choking. “Right up until the goddamned end.”
“I know fear like that,” I say. There’s something about this old man which allows me to open up, some disarming aspect. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never known a father.
“You do?”
I nod. “Too much about it, I think.”
He spreads his hands. “I have all the time in the world. Why don’t we talk awhile?”
I think: He’s a stranger. But I say: “Yeah, I think I’d like that.”