James

Tofu and Connections

He comes home now, every so often, but without warning. He just walks though the front door, quietly turning the knob so it doesn’t slam, and creeps up behind me. I am used to this now, and to his "hi" I reply "hungry?", and he always is. And we head out to the health food store. I ask him if were any crazies on his bus ride over, and whether he beat his latest video game, and we bake bread, or make tofu stir fry or experiment with obscure brands of soy cheese, which we eat on the floor of my room even though there is more than enough furniture. It gets late quickly and sometimes we open up the liquor cabinet and the refrigerator and make drinks, not to get drunk, but just because we can, but the available combinations are uniformly pretty bad. Then we settle down and talk about the real stuff. We know that we are too similar. That it can not all be by coincidence. That some things go without saying, like twins, except years apart. So we talk about life and the people and the situations and connect them to the things that have happened and to our parents, so that everything is tied together, neatly packaged. We force it to make sense, even if it can’t. And when we convince ourselves that we know why (if not what) things are in our lives, and we remember what it’s like to be around each other again, we can go to sleep.

Crab Apple

Crumbly bricks were stacked on twisted roots, and the old cat, who was young then, looked on. Long red scrapes covered our forearms, and the tree filtered the summer sun. James and I boosted each other to the lowest branch and scrambled up to hang like Koalas from the Crab Apple. Swinging down, we grasped handfuls of leaves from the bush below and made wishes to them or messages to the sun, like the phone messages that came in the pods of sugar snap peas. The yard, perpetually overgrown, was a cat pee scented forest of our very own; a bluestone floored jungle. Fence slots revealed the arm swinging that accompanied the arguments of dysfunctional neighbors, and the motions of a clothesline being filled with oversized underwear, the squeal of the rope and wheel repeated by a mocking bird. Here we turned the hose to the soil, because we knew that mud helps to keep pigs and hippos cool in the summer heat.

Shortline, Round Trip to Ithaca

He had been gone for three months. I tried not to look like a runaway as I navigated through Port Authority. I bought orange juice in the Hudson Newsstand, and pushed my way to the surface. Emerging from the subway and into the bus terminal I could see it was already dark. I sat on my backpack and listened to travel music and watching people pass. As I waited for my bus, I decided the red hooded sweatshirt was a poor choice. I filed into the bus. Then, hours later, exited alone as the bus made its final stop on Cornell’s north campus, which was silent and deserted, lit by pools from streetlights. I clutched a little square of pink paper, on which I had scrawled directions. I wandered to a tall building and found the window with the Rebel Alliance symbol painted in the window. A beer bottle landed two feet from me. It was impossible to tell which noisy open window produced the glass at my feet. I ventured into the dorm, finding the door that belonged to the window and knocked.

"Hey Sis, what’s up?"

James took me to the library and the vending machines and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. James’s roommate liked the rubber fish, plastic brain, and other items that I had stapled with stamps and dropped though the mail. Though he never responded to any of these items, they were all hanging from his ceiling.

Duck Hunt

Squinting over the crosshairs, I tilt my head a little to the left, and pull the sweaty trigger. "Aaarghhhh," I scream, dropping the gun and flopping onto my back. "I hit it. I really did. This thing is broken." James smiles at me.

"You should probably be playing video games with Grandma. You’re about in the same league." I am regularly told to ignore him in such situations, so tried not to listen. "Can you hear me? Helen Keller Child. . ."

I whip around, smacking his arm, leaving behind a small hand print, pink on white. He sits and stares at me, but doesn’t blink for a long time. "It’s time to take a break," he says, slowly wrapping the cords around the purple and gray plastic guns, then flipping the switch on the new Nintendo, so the TV screen turns to fuzz- snowstorms and ant races. "I noticed my controller was a little off too, you just have to learn to compensate."

We head for the kitchen.

Computer Literacy

When my older brother asks about my computer, I know this means: I haven’t spoken to you in a while and I need to connect. The computer itself is full of connections, wires, ports, peripherals, though those are all clearly labeled with little pictures: a phone, a speaker, a keyboard. James knows computers. He knows about the new programs and options. He knows about operating systems and programming short cuts. This is what he does. When I catch him on the phone, or see him in person and I ask how is girlfriend is, or whether he is going to grad school, he, instead of answering, asks about my computer. Has the printer stopped making that noise after the settings were changed, and does my modem respond more quickly now? If I install this program, he will be able to see what is on my computer screen, and talk me though more modifications. He always explains the computer stuff without me needing to ask, and he uses a voice that is not too preachy, like he is telling me about his day, not showing me what I don’t understand. He starts sentences with "This is kind of cool. . ." as if it is; something he wants to share, not a bridge in the gaps of my computer literacy.

Before I went to college, he showed me how the new laptop worked, burned me a CD of useful things, didn’t touch the computer, but talked me through their installation and use. The icon on the desktop was a picture of his face peering over a CD. "Stuff from James." " If you have any questions about this stuff, you can email me because I check my mail all the time, and most of this stuff is pretty simple to talk through," he tells me. "Oh, and there’s this website that has really good MP3’s, but first you might want to make a Netscape alias on your desktop." And by the way, Laura is having another breakdown, and the cat is dead, and it is awfully strange to see you leaving home for the first time.

The First Year

Ms Lorenzo was petrified that the television mounted on the wall would fall on her head as she scrawled on the board. She turned the entire class backwards so she could teach from the rear of the room and avoid the horror of the TV. Ms. Lorenzo was completely insane, but most of her freshmen students were still not fully aware of this fact (though they suspected). Her senile French mumblings were uninterrupted by the open and close of the front (now back) classroom door.

"You don’t need to go to this class, you know."

"Hey."

Still unaccustomed to the smells and routines that were different from Junior High, there was comfort in an unexpected visit. James’s extended bathroom breaks from Comp Sci, were always appreciated.

"Lemme see your schedule. I’m gonna go make a copy so I can find you." And he did. After school, and took me to the lighting booth, where his senior friends watched after school cartoons, and played music through the theater sound system. These friends all called me James’s sister, possibly an upgrade from James’s little sister. At least here all the teachers didn’t know him by name.

Whipped Cream

James felt obligated, years later, to explain to guests why our cats were named Whippy and Sunny. "I was five," he would say, "it made sense then." They were born in the backyard to a stray, Momma Cat. A cardboard box full of tiny mews was held outside the Key Food, so people passing by to grab a can of tuna or a carton of milk might fall in love. We each picked one of the kittens to keep, but James named both of them. Whippy was his and he called her Super Cat, and he immediately set to work on her training. Paws were placed one after another in a walking motion step after step. Cracking linoleum stairs with metal edges still hold tiny scratch marks. Too slippery for kitten claws and too sharp for stair luge. The bunk bed that long ago fell apart also sported these marks from many sessions of placing her on a high rung of the ladder, then boosting her to the top. Sounds of cat, scuffling up to the top bunk would lull me to sleep me years later. After a period of settling, the loud purr of cat sleeping on person’s face came from above. Sometime in the middle of the night, a thump usually woke me- the sound of a thirsty cat headed for the toilet.

Sunday Night

"Hey, James. It’s me. How are ya?"

"Good, wait, hold on a sec."

"Ok, I’m back, hi, so what’s up."

"Just checking in. How are your classes?"

"Good, I’m building a submarine."

"A real one?"

"No it’s an engineering competition."

"Oh. How’s Laura?"

"She’s a real pain in the ass. She just comes in the room and sits there staring at me. And she says I don’t listen to her."

"Do you."

"What? Oh sometimes."

"If she doesn’t make you happy, maybe you should break up with her."

"I can’t do that, because I know I’m not the easiest person to live with."

"That’s reasonable. I think."

"I’m a reasonable guy. So what’s up with you?"

"Mom’s being annoying. The usual. I’m trying to cram things in my schedule in the months I have left before I leave for school, tie up loose ends, do things I’ve been meaning to do. I think I may go clubbing."

"I don’t think I know you anymore."

"Maybe if you came home every so often. What, because I’ve never been clubbing, and I’m curious?"

"No not that. I don’t know. You got weird."

"I could say the same about you."

"Look I gotta go, this is not a really good time for me to talk. Give me a call later."

"When? I’ve noticed you don’t check your messages."

"Not Tuesday or Thursday nights. I’m usually out then."

"Uh, ok. Will I be seeing you for Thanksgiving?"

"Probably. Possibly. I’ll get back to you on that one. Goodnight, Em.’

"Goodnight."

Belly Laughs

Bright red and doubled over is the way Mom describes the belly laughs that only he caused. As an infant, many people could make me giggle, she tells me, but only James made me laugh from the inside out. It would only take a silly face a game of peek-a-boo, or a squeaky noise. There is one photo where we are in some natural place, at a picnic table, in front of a lunch, and I need to be propped up to watch James knocking over a soda bottle, and I am hysterical. In another, I am not even a year old, wearing a pink jumper, completely bald. And we are play fighting on a heavy cotton black and white couch somewhere. James’s feet are right against my nose, and I am flailing, crimson, but clearly, laughing.