Everything Upward

One afternoon in September, when the worst heat of summer had faded, I hiked through town, past crumbling bungalows and three-story apartment buildings in various states of decay, to visit my brother.

Paul lived in a cheap and dirty building nestled in the student ghetto three blocks north of campus. Here, bikes went missing from porches and parties raged at night. The news reported occasional shootings and assaults. Crumbling houses, facing off across the street, squatted next to suggestively naked lots as they waited for more thin-walled housing to be built. Occasionally windows still displayed For Rent signs a month into the semester, like neglected horses left on the carousel after the ride has started, bobbing alone, forlorn.

I sighted Paul’s building with relief. The piece of paper mapping out directions to his apartment had gone soft in my damp hand. The straps of my backpack cut into my shoulders with the weight of my high school textbooks: geometry, Shakespeare, history. I felt swollen with heat. But I wanted to see where my brother had landed after he fled our parents’ house, taking his sparse furniture and set of acoustic guitars with him. He’d always been headed somewhere else, even if that somewhere was only five miles from my parents’ house.

I rang the bell and Paul buzzed me in. The building’s hallway smelled pungently of old cooking grease and unfamiliar spices. His was the first apartment by the front door, awarded to him for his position as on-site manager. He earned a rent reduction for this service, which seemed to involve routing complaints up the chain and keeping the hallways clear of garbage and vomit. Sometimes he’d clang away at someone’s pipes before telling the landlord to call a plumber. His studio, I saw when I stepped inside, consisted of a tiny kitchen, a main room, and a bathroom. The only window looked onto a wide overgrown yard on the side of the building, with a dog that barked maddingly. 

The lights were all off in his apartment. The dog was outside, a skinny, neglected black lab with an overturned water bowl and a falling-down doghouse with moss growing on its shingled roof. For the moment, it lay quietly on its side in the shade by the fence, panting.

Paul gestured to a pellet gun on the windowsill that he used when he couldn’t take it anymore.

“It’s so stupid, it doesn’t even know I’m the one shooting at it,” Paul said as he picked up his cigarette from an ashtray on the windowsill. “I go outside, and it comes running, it’s so desperate to be loved. But it shuts the hell up when it hears my window open.”

I dumped my backpack on the floor and pulled my shirt away from my chest to fan myself. Paul had pushed the window all the way open while he smoked. A breeze came through, pushing the cigarette smoke from the burning end back into the room. He tapped the long ash out the window. It made me nervous when he did that. I imagined the burning embers blowing back inside and falling on the mottled carpet, sparking a quick flame from the ground-in dirt.

Somewhere a car honked, and the dog sat up abruptly and barked.

“Shut up, ya fuckin’ mutt!” my brother yelled out the window.

The dog stopped barking as its head swung in our direction. Paul took a drag on the cigarette and blew it in a practiced way out the side of his mouth.

His swearing embarrassed me. Dad never allowed us to swear at home. His rules didn’t allow for a lot of things—swearing, smoking, talking back, not going to college—all of which Paul chose to ignore. I wasn’t brave enough to do what I wanted anyway and deal with the consequences, the way Paul did. Now he worked at Waldenbooks and lived in this tiny apartment surrounded by his guitars, cassette tapes, recording equipment, and posters of Nirvana and Van Halen in various states of musical ecstasy, arranged artistically to cover the dings and gouges in the walls. His life revolved around working and recording his music. He rode his bike everywhere, careening down sidewalks with plastic bags of groceries balanced on the handlebars. Freedom.

Paul waved his cigarette vaguely at the carpet, which I took as an invitation to sit.

“What’s Dad up to these days?” my brother asked.

I shrugged. It wasn’t a real question. Dad was never up to anything new or interesting. But Paul wasn’t looking at me. He was staring out the window again. I studied his face and noticed dark hairs above his lips trying to form a mustache and a series of red bumps along his jawline. 

In a lot of ways his appearance was still as vulnerable as a fourteen-year-old’s. He’d been flabby through adolescence and high school, but he’d leaned up since he started riding his bike all over town, open shirttails flapping above T-shirts and baggy shorts, black sneakers with white socks stretched to his knees.

He snuffed out the cigarette, flicked the butt out the window and snapped the screen shut.

I’d settled on the floor on some cheap woven mats Paul had thrown there to cover the dirty carpet, but they’d long since turned dirty, too, embedded with soil and crumbs. I felt the grit from the carpet biting into my legs. He had no chairs, just some of those pillows with arms. The apartment had a deep, unwashed smell beneath the odor of cigarettes. Everything smelled like smoke, so different from our parents’ house, which smelled like nothing.

Paul settled on the unmade bed and picked up one of his three guitars. Dad liked Paul’s music—failing to notice the angry lyrics about oppression, mostly directed his way—but he always complained about Paul spending money on guitars. Money burns a hole in his pocket, Dad said. He never said anything positive without following it up with something negative. It was like superstition with him, downplaying the good so misfortune wouldn’t touch us. Paul was smart, but lazy. He had talent, but didn’t apply himself. His music was brilliant, but he needed to get an education and a real job.

My brother started plucking notes on the strings, watching me without actually looking at me, wanting an audience while also pretending to ignore it. He wrote his own songs but hadn’t played any for me in a while. I didn’t know if I’d heard this one before and I held myself very still, listening. Paul played casually, with feigned ease, striking chords softly, his hands moving over the strings delicately, the way a loving father might stroke the head of a child. Then he gripped the neck as his playing sped up, growing louder, his knuckles bent, his fingers pressing hard against the strings. He nodded his head and, rocking his torso back and forth, he started to hum. The playing became frantic, disorganized, but somehow intoxicating. I found myself sinking into its feeling of unrest, a dissatisfaction with the world that couldn’t be ignored. He stomped his foot to some beat I couldn’t hear, rocking from the waist like a hobby horse. My brother’s voice through his fingers demanded attention.

The dog began barking again, maybe at the noise, but either Paul didn’t hear it or didn’t care for the moment. I held still, letting his music wash over me and last as long as it could.

Abruptly he smacked his hand flat against the strings, ending the song in mid-vibration, and swung the guitar to the side of the bed.

“I almost forgot, Maggie. I got you something.”

He stood up and reached over to his dresser. He pulled off a plastic bag with the Waldenbooks logo on it and thrust it at me. I took it from him and pulled out one of those blank books, the kind with lined paper and a floral fabric cover.

“For your stories,” Paul explained.

I thanked him and flipped through the blank pages. I always looked at those books longingly every time I went to the store but never bought them because they were far too nice to scribble in. They were only fit for completed stories. The clearance sticker was still on the back.

“Mom came by the store the other day. She wanted to take me to lunch but I’d already had my break.” He stopped and studied me. “Was it her idea for you to come visit today?”

I shook my head.

“I think she’s waiting for me to come home,” Paul said. He rolled his eyes and grinned. “I’m not, by the way, in case she wants to know. I’m not ready to give up all this.” He swung his arms wide to indicate the tiny expanse of the apartment.

He played for a while longer, loud emotional chords, and I started to feel the weight of my textbooks again, all the homework I knew waited for me. I was hungry but equally sure I didn’t want to eat anything that came out of Paul’s kitchen. Dishes and pans were piled high in the sink. But Paul didn’t ask if I wanted anything.

Paul bent his head toward his guitar once more, its call pulling him back in. He plucked at the strings with tentative fingers, as if he suddenly lacked calluses for protection. His music sounded thoughtful, almost wistful, and I wanted desperately to know what he was thinking. I didn’t recognize the tune. It came from a different side of him, uncertain, like a question. Or a plea. His wide eyes seemed suddenly dark, large, and deep, like the pond near our house at night.

I watched his eyes focus on something above my head. He didn’t so much as glance at me and I fought the urge to turn around and see what he was looking at. But I knew nothing was there.

He hummed to himself, his chest vibrating with the music. Everything seemed to be rising: The sound, the early fall breeze, the sunlight in the room, everything upward like trailing smoke. Paul nodded his head, closing his eyes softly. I was witnessing something private: He’d forgotten I was there. I closed my eyes. The chord shifted and the music seemed to grow even softer, as though Paul were gradually exiting the room, stepping away and leaving me there. I didn’t know why I felt like crying.

ANNE McPHERSON ARTHURS

Anne McPherson Arthurs grew up in Carbondale, Illinois, and earned a BA from Southern Illinois University and an MFA from Western Michigan University. Her fiction has appeared in Ariel Chart, The Whitefish Review, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Embark Journal, and October Hill Magazine. She currently lives outside Chicago.