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Richard doesn’t often visit. But when he does, Charlie pretends to be happy. It’s easy. Smile, laugh, be charming. He had perfected that act years ago. It was a bit like a science experiment, trying a new persona every now and then, seeing how the world reacts to every small detail.
Right now, Richard is uncomfortable. He taps the table, fixes his hair, fiddles with his cuff. His eyes dart from the window, to the clock, to the door. Charlie doesn’t look away. He lets his gaze linger, staring Richard right between his eyes, memorizing every flutter of his eyelids.
Look at me. Look at me. Look at me, you fuck.
Richard checks his watch again. He has a question for every minute of silence. What have you been reading? What have you eaten today? Getting along with everyone? Brief, simple answers will suffice. If Charlie isn’t careful, this might become a real conversation and Richard could relax. Charlie can’t have that. He nods, he shrugs, he shakes his head. A bead of sweat glistens on Richard’s forehead. The clock ticks, like a metronome.
Charlie wants to ask about India. Her name hovers on his tongue. He can almost feel it, like a hard candy puckering the inside of his mouth. He can taste whatever she tastes like, smell whatever she smells like. Richard, here, right in front of him, smells like nicotine gum and pencil shavings. His fingertips are smooth from running over drafting paper day after day, rough at the knuckles where his callouses grew.
He stays silent. So does Richard. Charlie can feel the smile fusing to his face, a mask melting into his skin.
What do you think about when you look at me? What is it that scares you so much?
Charlie thinks he knows, but it’s fun to ask the question anyway. He likes to imagine Richard's reaction. The panic blossoming on his face like a stain of red wine. It makes his smile broader.
I loved you once, did you know that? And I’m certain you loved me too.
When Richard and Charlie were young, their parents had gotten them a puppy for their birthday. Their birthdays were months apart, but mommy made it clear it was a gift for both of them. They named their gift Puppy, since it was perfectly descriptive. Puppy was a little wrinkled bulldog, purebred, expensive, and highly energetic.
Charlie and Richard played with Puppy for hours, at first. Charlie quickly got bored with Puppy’s unceasing enthusiasm for chasing the ball to the other end of the garden and bringing it back. Richard was more in love with Puppy. He was older, less interested in playing with the toys that occupied Charlie’s days and he loved to chase the dog through the garden hour after hour. Puppy loved Richard back and although he wasn’t technically allowed to sleep in Richard’s bed, he snuck in every night.
Charlie missed his brother’s attention. Sometimes, when Puppy was ready to gorge himself on kibble, Charlie would play a new game with him. He would lift the bowl off the ground and hold it above Puppy’s nose, out of reach of his drooling mouth. Puppy would whine and hop desperately, but Charlie only watched him, enjoying the struggle.
Charlie would get down on his hands and knees, like he was a little dog too, and stare into Puppy’s glassy black eyes. They were like huge marbles, hard and sparkless.
“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…” he would murmur. Puppy couldn’t talk back.
Charlie doesn’t think he can feel fear anymore. Or anything else. Perhaps more accurately, he feels everything all at once as one single, burning emotion. Fear, love, hate, lust all smoldering as a hot clump of feeling in his gut, in his eyes, under his skin like a cancer. It burns and burns, like chemicals corroding his bones. And then it’s gone. All at once, he is clean and empty.
Their parents weren’t very attentive to Puppy. They hadn’t even bothered to get him fixed. It wasn’t long before Puppy found a girlfriend. A little black terrier, a dirty, mangy thing, had wandered into the garden and Puppy had sniffed her out. Charlie and Richard had no name for her but “Puppy’s girlfriend,” which was perfectly descriptive.
When Charlie found Puppy and Puppy’s girlfriend in the corner of the garden one day, he finally discovered something interesting about Puppy again. Puppy had gotten on his girlfriend’s back, like he was trying to ride a pony. She kept trying to get away from him, but Puppy was stuck to her as if by glue.
“What are they doing?” Charlie asked Richard, because Richard knew everything.
“I can show you,” he said. “It’s like a game. A secret game.”
Funny thing about love, Charlie thinks. He loved India before she was even born. He loved her very existence. He loved every tiny cell. Every hair, every fingernail. He was part of her, and she was made perfect by it.
He had loved Richard in the same all consuming way, but Charlie wasn’t sure he had enough love left to spare for his brother, not anymore. Apparently, he had a quantifiable amount of love. Once a part of it was gone, it would drain away from the other parts, like osmosis in a dried out cell. And if and when he loved something, he loved it fully, with every part of himself. It was like cutting off both his arms, leaving him helpless.
Did Richard love India in the same way he had loved Charlie? As children, Richard had told him that was how families loved each other. Charlie would bet his life that Richard would love India in that way.
He considered how his own mother had loved him, with no affection at all. She fed him, clothed him, bought him toys, surrounded him in glass and gold and everything neat and clean. He was always clad in crisp shirts and smart trousers and little clip-on ties for Sundays. But no hugs and kisses. Hugs and kisses were for Richard and their time together in the garden.
When Charlie saw Puppy’s girlfriend again, she had gotten fat. Her belly was so big it scrapped the ground as she waddled on her little stubby legs. Charlie had a scientific mind, and he concluded that it was because of what Puppy had done to her. He had somehow infected her, filled her belly with poison. Now she swelled, like a festering wound.
He couldn’t stop his imagination, filling his head with pictures of his own belly swollen with corruption. His nightmares were full of it, his belly bursting open with black blood and pus. Did it only happen to dogs? To girls? To girl dogs? He thought about asking Richard, but he also wanted to find out for himself.
It was easy to corner Puppy’s girlfriend in the garden, behind a hedge. The poor thing couldn’t move very fast. When Charlie stabbed her belly with scissors stolen from the maid’s sewing kit, he had expected it to burst open like a balloon and spill out something white and sickly yellow. Instead, he found red, pink and glistening blue. Everything wet and steaming hot. Puppy’s girlfriend squirmed and squealed and scratched with little claws, but a few more stabs and she was quiet.
Charlie was amazed at what he found. Little deformed puppy things, more like alien babies than real animals. Their heads were big and bulbous, they had no eyes, no fur, no teeth. It was fascinating, a thousand times better than his other science experiments, burning ants and squashing frogs.
If anyone but Richard had found what he had done, things might have gone differently. But Richard cleaned up the mess and no one noticed a thing. Then he showed Charlie a book he found with pictures of babies and cross sections of women’s bodies, clean and clinical and bloodless. So Charlie learned that he couldn’t get pregnant like Puppy’s girlfriend and also that he could get in big, big trouble if he kept killing animals so obviously. So make it look like accident, Charlie thought to himself. That would be easy enough.
Secret games. Blood on the grass. Puppy barking all night outside Richard’s door. Charlie wonders if Puppy ever missed his unborn puppies. Did he have some instinct that compelled him to care for his mate and the lives they created together? Which is better, animal instinct or human love? Is there really any difference?
Charlie wonders if there is any intrinsic love between parents and children. If there is, his own parents must have opted out at birth. But they kept having kids anyway, as if they couldn’t help themselves. As if they wanted to fill up their beautiful home with a set of beautiful boys, to match the grand piano and Persian rugs. They had another little boy after Charlie, another perfect little boy who they loved just as much as the others, which wasn't much at all. Charlie loved him at first, the way he loved Puppy. But like Puppy, Richard loved the new brother better. Charlie knew what jealousy tasted like. And he knew how to make things look like an accident. He had practiced with Puppy. No one missed him much, Puppy had gotten old and boring. Brothers, though, were a little more dear and hard to miss. So little Charlie wasn't as clever as he thought he was. Doesn't matter. He's smarter now.
Charlie never questions his love for India. He wants to see her as a woman. He wants to see her as a girl. He wants to see her and love her at every moment in between.
Richard doesn't touch him. When he leaves, there’s no hugs or kisses or even a handshake, a pat on the shoulder. Richard looks at a place somewhere above Charlie's forehead when he says goodbye.
Charlie wants to hug him. He wants to whisper in his ear.
"I love you, and I love India. I want to love India the way you love me. The way families love each other."
He wants to see Richard's eyes when he says it. He wants to feel his body stiffen. He wants to hear his shallow breath.
But he doesn't. He smiles, and he waits. Charlie can be patient.