one piece

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One PieceAuthor(s): Jennifer EganSource: The North American Review, Vol. 274, No. 2 (Jun., 1989), pp. 34-39Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25125071 .

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34 June 1989



N A R

One Piece

A Story by Jennifer Egan

Jl or a long time, my brother built models for a hobby. From plastic pieces he made ships and airplanes, racing cars, those see-through human bodies where you put in the heart and stomach and things. I arranged the pieces for him. For years we had the same quiet days: lawn

mower sounds, children laughing on our neighbors' lawns, faint noises of TV from where Dad sat alone in his

study watching a game. Seven years ago, when Bradley was nine years old and

I was seven, our mother started the car to take us shop

ping. After backing out of the garage she remembered her

grocery coupons. We stayed in the car, engine running, while she went inside to get them. It was a hot day, one of those afternoons when bits of white fluff fill up the air and under everything you hear beating locusts. That's how I think of it now, anyway.

Bradley sat in front. While our mother was gone, he slid over and started fooling around at the wheel, making believe he was driving. The electric door to the garage was shut. When our mother came back with her coupon book she walked through the space between the garage door and the front of the car to get to her side. She was in a

hurry, I think. She had on a straw hat and her hair flopped out the front. Maybe because ofthat hat she couldn't see

Bradley. Maybe she saw him and thought it was safe to walk there.

The car jerked forward and hit the door. You wouldn't think a person could be so hurt from a thing like that, but she had bleeding inside her. They told us that. Some times I stare at those plastic human models in Bradley's room with all their different parts and wonder which parts of her bled.

I remember my mother like you remember a good, long dream you had. I imagine a beautiful shadow leaning

down, maybe over the edge of my crib. I remember her

singing a lot, silly songs when she dried me after a bath about friendly vegetables and farm animals speaking in

rhyme. She was in the choir at church, and we would walk there together through the snow on mornings when the sun was so bright I had to keep my eyes closed. I held her

hand, and she guided me over the ice. There's one time I remember best, like that part of a

dream that keeps coming back. She was leaving for the

airport, dressed up in nice shoes and panty hose, and I was

riding my trike. I must have been three years old. As she walked toward the car I rode behind her, faster and faster until I hit her ankle and tore the stocking and made her bleed. It wasn't an accident. I knew what would happen but I couldn't really believe it. I kept pedaling.

I remember the look on her face when she turned and saw me behind her. Her mouth opened, and she stood

touching her hair for a minute. Then she leaned down and

put her hand to the cut. I cried like I'd been hit myself. When I think of that now I still feel like it.

With Bradley in the car, maybe it was like that. I think about it.

Until lately, Bradley liked doing things that were dan

gerous. Stunts, I mean. He's raced motorcycles and

jumped from a plane in a parachute. He's run along the

top of a train, hang-glided and sailed alone on Lake

Michigan when a storm was due. I watched him do all of it. There's a secret we don't need to say out loud: having

me there keeps him safe. I keep my eyes on Brad no matter how far away he goes, and I hold him in place. It's a talent of mine, I guess. A kind of magic. When our mother

walked through that space maybe I looked the wrong way.

A few weeks ago the Belson family came to our house for a

picnic. I was in the kitchen making a pie with Peggy, our

stepmother since last year. Dad chopped onions for bur

gers. Outside, Bradley was pushing our stepsisters Sheila and Meg on the tire swing. Peggy kept looking out there like she was nervous.

"He's pushing them awfully hard," she said. Dad looked out and so did I. Sheila and Meg are six

and seven years old, Peggy's daughters from her first

marriage. Dad smiled. "Brad's always been good with kids," he said, knead

ing the chopped meat. "That's not what I said."

Dad was quiet. I stared at my strips of crust. "What do you want me to do?" he said.

Peggy laughed. "Nothing, I guess." She dumped her flour and sugar mix over a pile of apple slices. "If I have to tell you, then nothing."

She stuck her hands in the bowl and started tossing the

June 1989 35



N A R

?

~~~

ingredients. Her wedding ring cracked against the glass. Dad's hands were still, covered with bits of meat. He was

watching Brad. "I trust his judgment," he said. "Me too," I added.

Peggy looked from one of us to the other and then out the window again. She shook her head. I hated her at that

moment.

As I rolled more dough I heard that heavy thump of a

person's whole weight. Sheila lay under the swing in a

heap. Meg was still holding on, looking down at her sister.

Nothing moved for a second but the swing, which sailed back and forth. The rope creaked. Then Peggy ran out

side, scattering butter and juice, and bent down over Sheila.

Dad went too. He's a big man, gentle most of the time. But today his face went red and his eyes looked small and fierce as an elephant's. He shook Brad by the shoulders.

"Dammit!" he said. "When Peggy trusts you with those kids ..."

"Stop it," I shouted at the window. Dad looked helpless and clumsy inside his body. He

shoved Bradley away but he did it harder than he meant

to, pushing him backwards onto the grass. Then Dad

paused like he didn't know what to do. He watched

Bradley get to his feet. He reached down to help him but

stopped halfway. Then he came back to the kitchen and

pounded both fists into the roll of meat. Sheila sat on the counter sniffling while her mother

wiped Bactine on her skinned knee. Dad shook his head and glanced at Peggy.

"It was an accident, okay?"

Peggy didn't answer. She leaned close to Sheila's knee and swabbed it with a cottonball.

"I'm saying he didn't mean it." "Of course he didn't, I never said that."

Dad kept watching her and Sheila, like something was still not settled.

"I just saw it coming," Peggy said.

Sheila paraded her skinned knee with its bandage and

orange stain for the Belson girls, who are close to her age. Peggy laid her pie in the oven and Dad put on his goofy chefs hat as soon as the coals were hot enough for grilling.

He and Neal Belson each sipped a Beck's and tried to

predict which teams would make it to the Superbowl. I leaned against Dad's arm. He has big, solid arms that

make you safe when he hugs you like you're inside a house with its front and back doors locked. His hand covers my whole shoulder like a mitt holding a baseball.

"Well look at you, Miss," he said, pressing a spatula down on the spitting meat. "This one's got my heart," he told Neal Belson, raising his Beck's. "Forever and

always."

They both laughed. "Who could blame you?" Mr. Belson said. Embarrassed, I pretended to rub smoke from

my eyes.

Sometimes I feel like the simplest things I do?chew

ing gum, cartwheeling across the lawn, even biting my nails, which I'm trying to quit?fill Dad up with hap

piness. His eyes get soft and I know no matter what I ask, he'll say yes in a minute.

"Do me a favor, baby?" he said. "Use your magic to cheer your big brother up?"

I tried to. I offered Bradley my pickle and bites of my burger even though he already had one. I told him a few

dead-baby jokes, which were the only kind I could remember. But his mind was somewhere else. He bit his

lips and stared at his hands like he was trying to figure something out.

"Is Bradley feeling okay?" Celia Belson asked Peggy during lunch. Peggy leaned over and whispered to her.

They gave each other a look that surprised me, like they both knew something they didn't need to talk about.

"How about a game of softball?" Dad said, wrapping his arms around me from behind and speaking to the

group. He had a good, warm smell of beer and bread. Dad likes games: football, soccer, Parcheesi, tic-tac-toe, if

there's nothing else.

Brad said he would sit out.

"C'mon, Brad," Dad coaxed. "We need your power hitting."

He looked big and helpless and friendly, like a kid who wants to make up but doesn't know how. His hands

hung at his sides.

"No, thanks," Bradley said. "Really." I caught another fast look between Peggy and Celia. I

think Brad saw it too. I sat out with him. I watched the rest of them play

while Bradley tore blades of grass in two. He piled the

pieces at his feet. Everything was wrong: Dad's shoulders

drooped as he stood at first base. Peggy scowled as she waited her turn to bat. Celia Belson kept glancing over at us. I stared at each one of them, like I stare at Brad when he's doing a stunt. But nothing improved.

Sometimes I have these thoughts. I imagine walking onto a battlefield where men are shooting at each other, and making them stop. Just by walking out there, just by looking at them a certain way and holding my arms up. I

imagine the quiet there'd be, like a scene from a movie where something happens to hundreds of people at once. In my scene the soldiers would drop their guns and slap each other on the back the way men do when they're glad about something. They would look at me in amazement.

"I'll get the pie," I said to Bradley. I ran back to the house and opened the oven. The pie

looked delicious, sugar bubbling along its edges. The dish was hot. I held it with the oven mitts and sniffed the steam that came from the top. It was just what we needed, I thought.

I hurried back up the lawn. There was sun in my eyes, and I blinked a few times because it looked to me like Brad was at bat. I couldn't believe it. I kept walking, holding the pie without noticing where I was headed. He looked mad as hell. I saw his jaw moving as he ground his teeth. I wondered what they said to get him out there.

Dad was pitching, his back to me. Everyone saw it at once. It happened both slow and fast, slow because there was enough time after Dad pitched the ball for parents and children to shout, "Holly, watch it!" and there was

enough time for Brad to get the most awful look on his

36 June 1989



JENNIFER EGAN

face, like he was seeing the worst thing on earth and he

couldn't avoid it. Like he was the one about to get hit. I just stood there, holding the pie. I knew what would

happen like I'd already seen it.

Bradley was shaking me hard then, so my head

bumped the grass. "Stand up," he hollered. "You're getting everyone

scared."

I was dizzy. From somewhere I smelled baked apples and sugar glaze. I heard people shouting, "Leave her

alone, for God's sake." But Bradley kept shaking my arm so it tugged in the socket. I stood and pushed the hair from my face. Bradley put his arm around me.

"See? She's fine," he declared in a thin voice. "F-I N-E. Fine."

The group stood in a quiet circle around us. Brad took

my hand and pulled me.

"C'mon," he said. "You need some water."

I tried walking, but something didn't work right. My feet were someone else's.

"Come on," Bradley urged, pulling my arm. I looked at his face and saw how his lips shook, how wide and scared his eyes were, and I tried my best to follow. But the next time he pulled I fell onto the grass and heard more

shouting, Dad's voice louder than the rest. "You get the hell away from her," was the last thing I heard.

I had a minor concussion, which was mainly just a green ish bruise near my temple and a bad headache. I stayed in

bed a few days, and each day Bradley would come to the

doorway and stand there looking at me.

"I'm fine," I'd say the second I saw him. "Completely fine." He'd nod and look at me like there was something he wanted to say but couldn't quite get.

One day he came in. He sat on the end of the bed and stared at my face.

"How well do you remember Mom?" he said. It was the first time he'd ever asked me that. I told him

about the shadow bending over, the singing. I wanted to tell him how I hurt her with my tricycle wheel, but I didn't.

"She was beautiful," he said. "Like an angel from

someplace." He leaned back on his elbows. He looked tired, pale. "Know something?" he said. "What?" "Dad's probably told you. Probably a hundred times.

But I never did." "What?" "You look the same. Like she did."

He was staring at me. There was a bluish color around his mouth, and his eyes had that spooked look you get when you stare in a mirror late at night. I watched the

sheets.

"No," I said. "Dad never told me that." I thought of pictures I'd seen of my mother and tried

to compare them. But I couldn't remember what I looked like.

"You're the same," he said. "No joke." I twisted the edge of my sheet, shaping it into the

head of a rabbit.

Brad cleared his throat. "Dad says I should stay away from you." "What?"

"He ordered me. He grabbed my shirt in front of

everyone. Like this."

He leaned forward and gripped the top of my night gown, pulling me toward him. I must have looked

shocked, because he let go instantly. "Shit," he cried, staring at his hand like it was some

thing he'd never seen. "Christ Almighty" "It's okay," I told him, leaning back against the pil

lows. But my heart was beating fast. Brad pulled a miniature lifeboat out of his pocket and

bounced it in his palm. He took a small, crinkled tube of

glue and dabbed it on two plastic oars.

"Look, Holly," he said, "I'm sorry for that." I watched him glue the oars to the boat. He was

swallowing a lot. I wished he would go away. "You were there," he said after a while, looking up at

me.

"Where?"

He was staring in a way I didn't like, a weird, desper ate way that made me feel like I had something he

wanted. Then I knew where he meant: in that car, seven

years ago.

"What happened," he said, "I want you to tell me." "I don't know. I can't remember anything." Brad narrowed his eyes at me. "I think you do," he

said. "I think you're afraid to say it." "Well I don't." It frightened me to talk about it. I kept trying to catch

my breath and got dizzy. Brad looked more scared than I was.

"You saw," he said. "You know the truth about it." I should've told him then about the thing with my

tricycle. I should've said how the worst things happen sometimes on purpose, but it isn't your fault. I should've said the truth didn't matter, even if I knew what it was.

After that day, Brad made sure we stayed apart.

There's a wall between my brother's room and mine. In the time we didn't talk I knew exactly where he was,

standing up or sitting down, whether he was building something. When he walked I felt the floor shake under

me. I could almost see him, I guess the way blind people see things without needing to look. Sometimes I saw so

well I forgot what else I was doing. My friends would call. There were swimming parties,

tennis games, all the summer things. I hardly went. I

stayed in my room and listened to Bradley, the same as I used to watch him.

One time I knocked and went in. He was working on a

model of the Titanic, building the deck. I started arrang

ing pieces by their codes, E's with E's, G's with G's, different piles for small and big. I knew how he liked them.

"That's nice," I said, looking at the ship. He shrugged. I looked around. There were planes and

boats covered in shiny paint, racing cars and station wag ons. They hung from the ceiling by strings.

June 1989 37



N A R

"They're all nice," I told him. Brad frowned at the grey hull. He looked the same as

he did just before parachuting a couple of months ago. It was windy, and I stood at the side of the runway with long dry grass whipping my legs. He waved to me from the

plane before they shut the door, and his expression reminded me of astronauts I'd seen on the news, just before they went into space. You could tell they knew

they'd be heroes if they ever made it back. So when Brad came staggering toward me through the long grass after

landing, I clapped my hands for him. He had a streak of dirt on his face and was limping. He stood there smiling at me like he hardly ever smiles, and for a second I think he felt like he'd been to the moon and back.

"You know I do this stuff?" he said to me now, looking up from the deck of the Titanic. "And I have no idea

why?" He laughed like it wasn't funny. "I know what you mean."

And I did somehow. I knew exactly. But Brad shook his head like I was just saying that to cheer him up. He went back to his gluing.

The Belsons have a summer house. It's right on Lake

Michigan, with a dock and a little beach and lots of tall trees that stick out over the sand. If you climb high enough in one of those trees you see a whole new shore

with houses bigger than the Belsons' on it. Brad taught me climbing three years ago, before it got too easy for him.

"I'd rather stay behind," he told Dad the day before we were leaving to visit them.

The leather in Dad's chair squeaked. "Why not let's have a talk," he said. "I think it's time."

I was listening from the kitchen. "If it's about Holly, you can save it," Brad said. "She

comes in my room, I can't lock her out, okay? There's limits."

"I didn't mean about Holly." "I'm following orders," Brad continued more loudly.

"Keeping away like you said." He let out two hoots of laughter I didn't recognize. I

stared out the kitchen window at the tire swing hanging in the heat.

"You think I'm dangerous." "Now you're talking crazy." "You think I'm one of these people that causes disas

ters."

"Bradley," Dad pleaded. "Son, don't say things like that."

"And what if you're right? What if I am?" His voice was thin and high, a crying voice. "I walk in the room and Peggy flinches like I might hit

her and you know what? I want to! I want to beat her up I feel so goddam mad. I mean who knows? Maybe you're all

right."

"Brad, stop. Stop, Brad, this is nonsense." I heard Dad getting out of his chair. "We're spooked a little, all of us. God knows why. But this is getting too much."

His voice was wheezy, like he was wearing his collar too tight. "I want you to come with us to Lake Michigan,"

he said. "We need to straighten this out. Clear it right up."

Brad said nothing, but I knew he'd be there.

During the ride up we played twenty questions and license plate bingo. Dad started a contest counting gas stations, and Brad won it. When I looked in the rear view

mirror I could see Dad was smiling to himself. After three hours of driving we parked along a shady

road and crossed the soft ground to the Belsons'. Bradley helped Dad unload the groceries and sleeping bags from the car and bring them to the kitchen. He said he would take a swim before lunch. Sheila and Meg said they

wanted to come.

"I can't take you now," Peggy said, chopping an onion for Celia Carson's tuna salad. "Brad, would you

mind?"

She broke off. The room went quiet. Even the kids

stopped talking. Peggy stared at that onion, blinking at her wet hands. The screen door snapped shut as Brad

went outside.

"?taking them with you?" She finished, like nothing had happened.

I was so mad at Peggy that I bit my own tongue. I looked at the knife she was holding and wanted to take a

swipe at her arm with it. But when she looked at Dad I saw she was mad at herself, madder than I was, afraid of

what he'd say. "I'm sorry," she whispered. There were tears on her

face, but it might've been the onion. Neal and Celia Belson worked hard at gathering their trash into a bigger bag. Dad stood there a few seconds doing nothing. Then he came over and rubbed Peggy's neck. He told the girls he'd take them swimming when lunch was finished.

I followed Brad. Between the house and the beach there are dunes covered with tough reeds that scratch

your legs when they brush you. Brad was running over

those dunes, letting the reeds whip his calves. He

splashed into the lake and started swimming. He went straight out. I kept my eyes on him until he

was so small I would never have known it was a person if I hadn't already been watching.

"Turn around," I said out loud. But he kept going. In a hurry I ran to a tree we used to

climb, one that sticks out over the sand and has a few boards nailed to the trunk. Bark flaked in my hands, but once I reached the first limb it was easier climbing. I could see him again, moving out there like a spider on a big grey

web. I saw him better the higher I went, and I went so

high the ground looked miles away. The branches were

soft up there, and I heard lots of creaking. I straddled a

branch and leaned back against the trunk. I kept my eyes on Bradley, holding him up.

I saw Dad below me on the beach. He went to the water's edge and looked out. After a while Peggy came and stood beside him. She brought him something in a

napkin, but he took a bite and dropped it onto the sand when she wasn't looking. They stared toward the horizon.

I let them worry. I thought they deserved it. Brad was floating now, staring up at the sky. I glanced

38 June 1989



JENNIFER EGAN

up too, just for a minute, at the thin flakes of clouds overhead. When I looked for Brad again he'd disap peared. I stared at the spot where he'd been and held my breath, letting the seconds pass until I was gasping. At the same time Bradley splashed back to the surface. A big splash, like he*d gone a long way down. He started swim

ming in. Dad and Peggy were standing like before, Dad's

hands clasped behind him. "I see him," I shouted down.

They didn't hear me, so I shouted again. Now they whirled around.

"He's swimming back," I cried. When Brad left the water we were waiting for him. He

kept his head down. Dave gave his wet back a clumsy slap, and Peggy glanced at her watch.

"You've been gone an hour and a half," she said. "That's a long swim," Dad added, like he'd just

realized.

"I floated a lot." "You missed lunch," Peggy said. In the kitchen I pulled Brad aside, where no one could

hear us. "They were worried," I told him. "Were you?" I shook my head. "I watched you from the tree."

He smiled a little, brushed some sand off my face. "I knew there was some reason I kept on floating," he

said.

That night Neal Belson made a bonfire. He gathered sticks and branches and dry grass in a pile on the sand. His girls dragged over what they could, and he thanked them

loudly and made a point of adding it. Celia brought out the potatoes in their foil and special pointed sticks for

roasting. All of us gathered around to watch it burn. Fire

wrapped around the sticks and leaves and crunched them to nothing. It made a sound like laughing. Mr. Belson put one arm around each of his daughters and Peggy held onto Sheila and Meg. She touched her palms to their hot faces. I leaned against my dad.

"Look at Bradley," he said. He shook his head. Brad was on the other side of the

fire, sitting alone. Heat twisted the air between us so it looked like water running. Dad stared over the flames and smiled hard at Bradley, telling him with his face to come

over, that he was welcome with the rest of us.

"Say it," I wanted to order Dad. "Call over to him." But Dad just kept smiling, and when Bradley didn't

move he looked down and smiled in that direction, like he and the sand were sharing a sad joke. Meg wandered over and he pulled her hair back and wiped the sweat off her

upper lip. I stood up. So many things were wrong I couldn't sit

there. I felt crazy, like worms had crawled inside my bones and started squirming. I went to the water and let it soak my shoes. Then I stomped through the sand so it stuck to my feet and turned them into blocks. I looked up at where firelight smeared the branches of the tree I'd climbed that day. I stared at that tree for a long time.

Then I walked toward the house, doubled back and

started climbing it from the side no one could see. I wanted to look down. I wanted to keep my eye on

Bradley. The first long limb was high above the flames and to

one side. I slithered along to its end and then, lying flat, I looked down. Smoke floated past me in a column. I saw that Bradley didn't watch the fire, he kept his eyes on Dad and Peggy and the Belson family. He looked like some one spying through a window at someone else's party.

Sweat was dripping down my sides. The fire made a

panting sound, but it looked smaller than it had from the beach. Watching Bradley and the rest I thought to myself: one piece, just one right piece will do it. Everything gets combined, I thought. But I couldn't think what piece I needed.

Then Bradley looked up. I don't know why, maybe he felt me looking at him. We watched each other a long time, neither one of us moving. Fire lit his face and made his eyes look hollow. The only sound was wood cracking.

I rose halfway to my feet and jumped. I stayed calm until the second my shoes left the branch and I saw that fire coming at me like a ball I couldn't dodge. People were

screaming. I heard the crash I made, and there was wild, rippling heat in my hair and clothes. Then I was on the

beach, rolled and pounded by a weight that was Bradley, pushing me into the cool sand, smothering flames with his

body.

Bradley's stomach got scorched. Not badly enough for the skin to be grafted, but red and blistered where he put out the flames in my coat. At Lakeside Hospital they wrapped him in white bandages and told him to rest. They said the scars might last. I think Bradley hopes they do.

My hair got burned, nothing else. It's short now, and when I lie in bed at night I think I can still smell the smoke in it.

Bradley stayed in bed a few days. I sat in a chair right near him. We didn't say much. It was peaceful in his room, with the cars and planes and trucks twisting quietly over our heads.

"What'11 you make next?" I asked him. He looked up, taking in all the years of projects. "I might quit for a while," he said. "Try something

new."

I glanced at the door and saw Dad standing there

holding a deck of cards. Brad was speaking for him, though he kept his eyes on me.

I had the oddest feeling then. I felt like our mother was there, like the four of us were together again in that room for the first time in years. I could see her like she was

sitting two feet away: her dark waves of hair, the thin gold coin she wore around her neck, her cigarettes that smelled like mint. I remembered her long hands and sliver of

wedding ring. What I noticed most, though, was how different I

look. My hair is pale and straight. My skin is darker and a little shiny. I have freckles on my arms, and when I try to

sing I hit every wrong note. I wanted to say this to Bradley. You were wrong, I

wanted to tell him, you imagined that part. But I had a

feeling he already knew it. D

June 1989 39



one piece

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