Thomas

I'm escorted to the office for the day. That's fine by me, it's quiet and I do my work and I honestly feel better having punched someone. When I do something like this, my dad shows up to pick me up, and he laughs. He'll mess up my hair, and say 'that's the Lancaster in you, boy', and then when my mom was alive he'd say 'we'll not tell your mother, you only take after me'. I loved it. It was a secret between us and by all accounts he ought to have been cross but he was never at all. And he was my tough dad showing up to pick me up and it was great.
Of course, that all changed since my mom died. And he's been sick. He can't always come when I'm in trouble anymore. So who does it? Harry. Harry who along with being taller than any human being ever, neatly takes care of any chores related to us children so that dad doesn't have to and the thing he misses is he's also technically a child. As much as me basically. But he's decided he's in charge of the world so he does it. He shows up all right. Every fucking time. Parent teacher night. Science fairs that I attempt not to participate in. Recall, we go to the same fucking school. They know who the fuck he is. It would be so, so easy to show up as my older brother, to these things, in a supportive older brother kind of way. Would it be embarrassing? Absolutely, it would. That would be a bonus for him I think. But no, he doesn't show up as himself, my older brother who has every single right to be here and claim me. Oh no. He does so something so much worse.
"I am Mr. Fonz, ze Lancaster's attorney," sashaying in, wearing a trench coat, for no apparent reason sporting an accent, that I do not think exists.
"You shithead," I say and he neatly decks me with the briefcase he's carrying. The principal is too busy shaking his hand to notice.
"And I am Mr. Poinz, of Poinz and Fonz," Ned, sporting a completely different, equally illogical accent, also for no apparent reason wearing a trench coat. Both are wearing hats, Harry's got false stubble applied, Ned a mustache, both are wearing deceptively thick make up and Harry has blue contacts in. Suffice to say, if you don't know they are absolute jerks and spend a lot of time hating them, you might be fooled into thinking they are adults who are not in fact them.
"Yes of course, thank you so much for coming," Principal Meres says,
"I vas shocked when I received the call. Ze boy knows better. He vill be disciplined, come, come child, you vill be shoveling coal for this," no I didn't say that they did this WELL, I said that people believe it and it's honestly sickening.
"I need therapy specifically because of you," I say, to Harry, as I gather my things.
"Ve shall talk in the car, boy, your fazer vill not be pleazed."
"If I murder you in your bed I think everyone would say it's justifiable," I say.
"We'll be telling his father, such a shame, such a shame, such a shame, the drugs were working so well," Ned says, leaning on the counter, prepared to stay and chat.
"Yes I suppose it iz back to ze drawing board oh vell," Harry says, ushering me out before I try to break Ned's, at the moment rather fake, nose.
"Do you have---any---sense of shame?" I growl.
"Ah, that never gets old, who were you punching?" Harry asks, lightly, in his proper voice.
"Just some idiot," I mutter, "Talking shit about dad."
"Good," Harry says, trying to pat my back, but I duck away.
"What? I came."
"After four hours!!!"
"I was out on errands, sorry, they had to call around to find me," Harry says, changing from his disguise as he walks, "We're in time for practice."
"You're absolutely horrible," I say, walking ahead of him.
"Why are you telling me things I already know?" he lengthens his already stupidly long stride to catch me. It works well. I take ten steps for every one of his.
"Do you want me to stay?" Ned asks, frowning. Hockey isn't his thing. It's not Harry's thing either but he's good at it like everything he tries except approximating a normal human.
"Nah, go on, we're good, come for dinner if you like," Harry says, walking backward to talk to him so naturally I try to trip him.
"I might," Ned says.
"Do we're having roast lamb—ow—what? Why are you cross with me?" he asks, succeeding in not tripping.
"You not knowing is the problem," I mutter.
"You realize if I could bring mom back I would?" he asks, his voice suddenly raw.
"Yeah that is the exact problem---you're constantly trying—to—do everything, for everyone—all the time, you're exhausting," I groan.
"What does that mean?" he asks, frowning, "You want me to do what exactly?"
"I want you to be real---that's all anyone really wants from you Harry," I say.
"I am—this is me—"
"No it's not—do you even like hockey?" I sigh.
"It's fine."
"Do you like it? Answer the question?"
"Okay, it's fine, but no, I don't overly like it, no," he says.
"So why are you on the team?"
"Because you are and you're my brother," he sighs.
"Right, don't do me the favor," I say, walking away from him.
"What's wrong with spending time with you?"
"Why don't you write a stupid equation and make a stupid bar chart for it?" I shout.
"Fine, I will," he says.
I leave him standing there in the hallway, and storm all the way to the locker room. The rest of the team, the Bards, are in general friendlier than our student population. Harry's absence isn't unique so they say nothing at my coming in alone.
"How's your brother's malaria?" our coach, however, is not above giving me shit.
"How should I know?" I snap, "Why don't you ask him?"
"I'm asking you because we both know it's bullshit," Coach Bill says.
"He doesn't even like playing," I say.
"He likes winning though, and I kind of like us winning too," Coach Bill informs me, "Tell him his presence is valued."
"Tell him yourself," I say, tugging my things out of my locker and walking away.
Practice can't last long enough for my taste. Coach Bill runs us in skirmishes and soon I'm too sweaty and exhausted to think which is exactly how I like it. After a quick shower I change into street clothes, and realize I'm going to have to think about going home and my row with Harry. I know he doesn't deserve me to be mad at him when he is trying his best. But his best is infuriating and our dad is dying and our mom is dead and I would really like someone to be mad at. He doesn't deserve it, but he's here being infuriating so it's going to be him.
I expect him to send a car for me. But no. The Bentley is idling outside the school, Harry slumped a bit in the driver's seat writing in a moleskin notebook. Ever the good big brother. Too mature to go home and send a car.
"How was practice?" he asks, lightly, as I throw my things in the back. I don't know if it's meant to be sarcastic or not.
"Fine," I say, stiffly, climbing in the front. All the anger I wore off in practice comes tumbling back. And all the clarity in my mind about why I'm cross with him really or what to say to him returns.
"Cool, Ned's coming for dinner," he says, chewing on his pencil tip before making a final notation.
"What's all that?" I ask, as a peace offering.
"Business, nothing serious," he says, putting the notebook in the pocket of his leather coat. Leather coat, wife beater under it, blue jeans, he almost looks like our dad. I realize after a moment he's sweaty as well, the wifebeater is clinging to his skin and his hair is damp, his knuckles a bit red. He's been working out his annoyance as well, in the boxing ring no doubt. Except it worked for him. It clearly didn't for me.
We sit in silence. He fiddles with the radio. A song comes on and he turns it off, "You listening to that?"
"No," I say, though I appreciated the lack of silence.
"I was thinking when dad gets back, why don't you and I take the horses, go camping? Maybe Saturday night, there's supposed to be a meteor shower, we've not done anything just the two of us lately," he says, calmly, like we didn't argue earlier.
"Is that what you came up with?" I ask, "Worked it into your equations and it spit out an answer for you that you need to spend more time with Thomas to make him happy? Did that work out all right in the schedule you have planned for the next five years?"
"So what if it did? It doesn't mean I'm not doing it," he sighs, "What is it you want me to do here?"
"Be real," I say.
"What does that mean to you?"
"No, no, I'm not feeding you answers so you can work them into an equation of how to be an actual human person," I growl, "That's the point!"
"Maybe this is how I am a person though---and I'm trying all right? Doesn't that count for something?"
"Maybe it doesn't count for enough when it's easier to use a formula on how to be nice to people than to actually be nice to people," I say.
"What---fine," he rubs his face, "Just fine okay, why don't you tell me what you think actually being nice to people is because apparently I don't know?"
"It's doing things because you feel like it and not because an equation you wrote yourself tells you to!"
"Maybe that's how I feel like it," this is the most real conversation I think we've had in months. He's not denying he has mathematical formulas to deal with all of us.
"No, it's not, being nice to someone is wanting to spend more time with them so you think up that you and they should do something that you'd both like, not just making up an activity or joining a hockey team because you think you should," I cry.
"Why can't---why can't two things be true?" he asks, rubbing his face with one hand. "Just because I think it up because I think you're upset doesn't mean I don't want to do it."
"I want to do things with my brother because he thinks it would be fun and he wants to do it with me to spend time with me—"
"I do want to spend time with you!"
"So I'm not sad so you can tick some weird box you have set up on some extensive checklist that you make for mom who won't read it because she's dead and she'll never ever be pleased with how awesome you are so you can give the fuck up!"
"Shut up," he says, tears bubbling his eyes but he refuses to let them spill, "Don't talk about her like that. She's not this—"
"Yeah, she is because if she were alive maybe you'd know how to be normal."
"Yeah maybe I fucking would, but I don't so this is what you get if you don't fucking like it I have ten other ways I can spend my Saturday then, fine," he says, angrily, "Happy?"
"Only if one of those ways is something you choose to do because you actually want to not because you think it's your divine duty or something," I growl.
"Okay, feel free to be far less preoccupied with what I do and how I am, because you're never going to figure it out and it's none of your concern."
"I'm never going to figure it out because I'm stupid?"
"You're never going to figure it out because I haven't yet," he parks the car in the drive, something he never does. He doesn't usually make the servants put it away. But today blessedly he just parks and we both get out. Our faces are flushed with anger but we wipe the glares away by the time we get inside.
Ned is there at the piano, singing and playing a duet with Blanche. Our mother had a rule in the house, if anyone was singing we all had to join in, and bursting into song if we recognized a song title in every day speech was highly encouraged.
Ned plays 'Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For', he has perfect pitch of course and it's infectious in this family. We all join in. Harry is soon spinning around the little ones, and sullen as I am I force myself to join in when little Edmund latches onto my back like a limpet and starts singing quietly.
Dinner is noisy and Harry and I avoid talking to each other easily. Harry initiates at least two more random songs and Jon does a third, before Harry tells us to bid each other goodnight and dismisses us to our rooms or two hours of quiet reading and homework and showers. He usually does his evening rounds after getting changed. I fully expect him to skip me, though, after our talk earlier. We do all of course visit each other now and again. Jon and Rey a bit more than the others but the girls bop in and out of each other's rooms too. Edmund and I are quieter and keep to ourselves. Harry of course doesn't sleep so he just says goodnight to everyone and goes off to be a vampire. I expect to be skipped tonight.
But he's disastrously mature. He does stop at my room but he does it last. He's freshly showered his hair all curly and wet, wearing a loose black sweatshirt and soft grey jeans, with house shoes.
"Homework all done?" he asks, staying in my doorway.
"Yeah," I say, finishing stacking it on my desk.
"I don't think you're stupid."
"Yeah, you do."
"I'm your brother that's my prerogative. I don't think you're stupid in the same way I think—I don't know—anybody else in the word is stupid," he says, shaking his head a little and almost cracking a smile.
"You just wear me out," I say, quietly, because it's as close to an apology as I can manage.
"I've been informed I have that effect---I don't mean ill-will this is just—," he shrugs, gesturing to himself.
"I know. I just miss you sometimes."
"This is who I am," he says.
"I don't believe that," I used to have a brother, before our mom died. But I don't know how to say those words yet. I don't want to hurt him more.
He sighs a little.
"Come to hockey practice if you want," I say.
"Do you want to do something on Saturday? Dad will be back—we could practice driving? Just drive on the highway—go somewhere, anywhere you'd like," he says.
"Is that what you want to do? Or something you thought up that I'd like?" I ask.
"What does it matter?" he sighs.
"If mom weren't dead would we be having this conversation, Harry?" I ask.
"You can't go there it doesn't exist," he says.
"It should though!"
"Clearly not, we had her for the time that was allotted. We can't mourn that it's too short it's what God gave us," he says.
"So you think Richard and Anne being dead is God's plan?" I ask. We both know I mean our dad killing them when they were like a mom and dad to us.
"I think that Ned's more qualified to answer that but—something like all that being beyond our powers of comprehension," he says, shaking his head a bit.
"And dad being sick?"
"He himself will tell you his faith is strong," Harry shrugs, "I wish I had these answers I don't. I'm just doing my best, Tom."
"I know, that's the problem."
"How is that the problem?"
"People don't do their best all the time sometimes they do their worst and that makes them more them," I say.
"That doesn't make sense," he sighs, "I'm sorry all right? I don't know what I've done, I'm sorry."
"That's the thing! You don't need to be sorry you didn't do anything!'
"Then why are we rowing!?"
"Because you're supposed to be my brother not my mom!" I cry, finally, tears bubbling up in my eyes.
He swears, leaning his head against the door frame.
"And now dad's gonna die too and I lost half of you when mom died I can't lose the rest I need you to be my brother, not them," I sob, as he comes over and hugs me.
"Dad isn't going to die," he says, giving me a good squeeze.
"You think so?" I ask.
"Yeah, the cancer's gonna be scared of him," he says, smiling, "He'll go down swinging if he does. And he's got fight left in him yet. He's not dying on us."