Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [212]
Frank lived in the middle of all this, in an old rooming house, situated above a noisy tavern. I had seen places like this before; it was like the places my father had taken me as a child, when he went to find his salesmen. It was the sort of place where new light or fresh air rarely entered. Instead, you found the accrued smells of old men who had come to bide out their time, watching TV, drinking, brooding. The place had a depressing impact on me that felt unexpectedly primal. For a moment, I wanted to run.
I climbed the stairs and knocked on the door that I’d been told was Frank’s. There was no answer. I knocked again, which brought the apartment manager’s attention. He told me that the man who lived there had gone to work and wouldn’t be back until mid evening.
WAITING UNTIL NIGHT TURNED OUT TO BE one of the longest waits of my life. I kept thinking about the place where Frank was living. I tried to imagine the reality of his life. Whatever problems I felt I had, I’d known comfort and social interaction. Life had been good to me in many ways—better than to anyone else in my family.
It seemed amazing to me that the lives of two brothers had taken such different courses. It also seemed terribly unfair. Frank had stayed home and taken care of my mother. Indeed, he was the only one of the brothers who had ever really tried to do the right thing. By contrast, I had simply escaped and looked after myself. I had never thought about taking on the burden of my mother and her problems. For his devotion, Frank had ended up with what looked to me like a devastated life, spent in the company of vagrants and other outsiders. Though I may not have ended up with some of the things I claimed to want in life, the truth is, I had not ended up with nothing. I went places, I did things, I had money in the bank. I was not about to end up in a rooming house.
There’s no point in flogging myself too much here, or apologizing. I don’t believe even now that I would have done anything differently in my life. I think I had to run away from my family in order not to be dragged down by its claims. Still, seeing where Frank lived gave me an idea of what his life must have been like in the last decade, and it did not make me feel good about the distance between us. Nor did it make me feel any better about the prospect of walking back into his life.
I SPENT THE REST OF THE DAY DRIVING AROUND, thinking about these things. I wondered what the two of us would have to say to each other after such a long time.
At about nine that night, I returned to the place where Frank lived. At the top of the stairs I nearly bumped into a man who was zipping up a parka jacket and pulling a stocking cap down over his ears in preparation for the cold outside. I studied the face quickly—a habit I’d picked up in recent months—and I saw something I’d seen so many times in my mind’s eye over the years: a face deep-cut with the lines that come from bad history. I saw the face of my brother.
“Frank,” I said. He looked up. I could tell he didn’t know who I was.
“Frank, it’s me, Mikal.” He stood there, staring at me, his face pulled into a questioning look, as if he didn’t believe what I said. I think if he had reached out and shoved me down the stairs I probably would not have resisted him. I would have thought it was okay.
Instead, he reached out and took me in his arms, and held me. In that moment, the squalor around us didn’t matter. In that moment, I felt like I was in the embrace of home.
A HALF HOUR LATER WE WERE SEATED in the warmth of my apartment. Frank hadn’t wanted me to see the room where he lived.
As he entered my place, Frank looked around, taking in the clutter of books and CDs, and the electronic and computer equipment. “Man,” he said, smiling, “you’re kind of like Mom. It looks like you don’t ever throw anything away.”
We sat on my sofa, sipping warm drinks, talking. Frank said he had heard I was married, and he wanted