Post by larien on Jan 2, 2006 14:20:54 GMT -5
Moments
Summary -- A brother remembers his sister, a continent away, on Christmas Eve. Rated K
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He turned off all of the lights before coming down into the basement. In the darkness, he felt about for the box of matches, blindly piling logs and kindling into the fireplace grating. The match flickered when he struck it, a golden dot of light and warmth floating in the air. He watched as the newspaper curled in on itself, turning black and featherlike. The smoke carried sparks and bits of burning paper up into the chimney with it. Replacing the box of matches on the mantle, he curled up on the bench before the fire, tucking his knees beneath his chin.
Beside him rested the phone, a silent piece of plastic with glowing keys sitting in the shadow cast by his body. He could see the numbers on the buttons, gleaming green against the brick of the bench. He wished it would ring, so that he could answer it and hear her voice at the other end. His parents had gone out for the evening to do some last minute shopping, saying that they would phone her back if they missed the call.
He stared into the flames, remembering how she used to sit here when they were younger. She would claim to be doing her homework, then sit for hours before the fire, watching the flames dance. He would come down sometimes and play on the floor with the rabbits. She would shoot him angry looks for disturbing her, then chase him back up the stairs. He never really understood her, how she could sit in silence staring at nothing for hours upon end. He would wonder what went on in her head, what stories she was weaving. Sometimes she would take the laptop computer with her and type for hours, sitting crosslegged on the bench with her back to the warmth of the fire. He decided at some point that this was a high school thing, some mystery he would understand when he reached the omniscient age of fifteen.
There were days when he would catch her in a good mood, and she would agree to play a board game with him. She might read to him from whatever novel it was she had at hand. He caught snippets of everything from her – Huck Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Rings, Leaves of Grass, Dante’s Inferno and Paradiso were all stories he associated with those winter nights spent in the basement.But the binder where all that she wrote on the computer went was always off-limits. Sometimes he might catch her reading to herself from it, but it was always put away the moment he appeared. He would sneak into her closet looking for it, only to be caught and sent off each time.
There was only a four year difference between them, but sometimes he felt his sister was so much further away than that. And then there would be moments when she was nearly – but never quite – the same age as he. She had a way of pulling stories out of thin air when she felt like it, wild tales of orcs and witches that sent him trembling away. There were ogres that lived in the closet, wolves in the bathroom, pixies in the sinks, elves in the backyard. She would warm up to the story, start to gesture around the basement, indicating where great battles had taken place . . . and then her face would close up and she would turn back towards the fire.
When she left for college, he was only just beginning his freshman year of school. Not for the first time, he wished she were closer to his age, so that she could still be there to keep him company, at least for a year. She called every night and asked about his classes. She stories about each of the teachers – this one had lost her homework, that one had taken off points for writing too long and detailed of an essay. Eventually, the calls slowed down, every other day, then each Saturday. He got used to her absence and began spending less and less time in the basement.
When she graduated from college and declared that she was moving to Egypt, he wasn’t surprised. She had been talking about it since she was little – how she would work as an Egyptologist and spend her time by the Nile. Their parents were against it, they told her it was too dangerous, but she was a stubborn as ever. He could have told them that there was no way they could ever change her mind, but he knew that would only make them more frustrated.
A crash from the fire woke him out of his reverie. One of the logs had cracked and tumbled down the grating. He pushed it back in, feeling the heat of the flames against his face. He wondered where she could be, that she hadn’t called yet. She had promised to call when she told them she wouldn’t be making it back for Christmas. The airports weren’t safe to use, she said, but she would be thinking of them back in her little apartment in Cairo. He knew she was old enough to take care of herself, but he felt betrayed, as if she had left behind everything that she had stood for in his youth, and kept only the aloofness that characterized her every action.
Looking up, he saw her binder sitting on the writing desk where she had sat when she wasn’t before the fire. He rose to pick it up, taking it back with him to his seat. For a moment, he felt guilty, realizing that she couldn’t come to snatch it out of his hands as she had done every other time. But the feeling passed, and he flipped through the pages of computer paper. In the margins of each page were penned in notes, sarcastic comments and sketches demonstrating exactly what was crossing her mind at the time. Some were completely irrelevant, while others attempted to explain what she had felt as she was writing.
Some of the stories could only be about him, and he grinned to think that she would have been writing about him when he came bounding down the stairs, trying to read over her shoulder. In some, she was clearly irritated with him and had taken the moment to vent her feeling on inconsiderate younger brothers who felt that everyone ought to have time to play. Others were written when he hadn’t been around, and addressed memories she had of him, stories she had told him to get him out of her hair.
At the back were a collection of tales that he recognized, the orcs and battles that she had described so vividly had been fleshed out and written down after he had left her. He wondered at how obsessed she was with them, how she had written story after story, many with recurring characters. And he wondered what she thought now that she was trapped in the middle of a mess much like the ones she had created for his pleasure. Suicide bombers and guerilla fighters were what kept her from making her way home, weren’t they? Suddenly, the stories weren’t nearly as amusing as they had been moments before.
He closed the binder and stared off into the darkness, trying to ignore the bright spots left in his vision by the fire. The phone sat silent beside him as he sat beside the dying flames, waiting vainly for the phone call. Upstairs, his parents came home and filled the rooms with a cheerful, bustling sound. The last embers died out, leaving him in complete darkness. Finally, he groped about for the phone and stumbled up the stairs. Without pausing to eat dinner, he made his way upstairs and into bed, where he lay remembering the Christmas Eves he had spent in her closet, wrapping gifts and making cards.
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He woke early on Christmas morning and stumbled down the stairs, past the family room where his parents had forgotten to turn off the lights on the tree. In the half-light of dawn, he could see a bulky form curled asleep on the couch beneath the window. Pulling the covers back, he realized that she must have risked flying back from Africa. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been asleep here.
He turned and headed towards the kitchen, thinking that he could forgive her for not having called the night before. A last memory crossed his mind, and he grinned, realizing that she was going to kill him later. Letting out a whoop, he ran back into the family room and took a flying leap towards the couch. For a moment, he felt as if he were four, rather than twenty four. Especially when she punched him for having woken her up.
