Snippet of writing for the Original Work:
Tam [Trouve] meets Irenaeus
The man had a fire all round ‘bout his head and his face, hands size to blot out the sun and a height to him like a far flung mountain more than any of the rolling hills that surrounded the tomb mound where St. Mary’s had been built. Tomb, for that’s what they called the little town he visited that day, the one which Tam had known all his life and naught else besides. Red hair, deep like ocher and blood. Eyes made of hard ice, the sort a boy may slip and cut a gouge in his hands on when he caught himself to keep from busting his nose broken. When Tam saw him, dressed all a funny like a man out of time and place, the air tasted of ash and burnt meat. Offerings at Easter. But he’d come all the same and he’d spoke to the nuns and the nuns had shown him in, and then they’d closed the door with Tam and the man both inside.
Tam was five. He’d been five that day. His birthday. Just five and all alone with a stranger the color of an upsurge of orange and an accent that promised a posh upbringing somewhere in England. Where the betters came from.
“The fine women who run this establishment tell me you’re quite gifted,” the man said.
Tam’s own wariness was well tempered by curiosity, a sense of the familiar where it ought not have been. A sameness. Perhaps kinship.
“I haven’t got a gift on Christmas or even my birthday but once,” Tam said. He wanted the man to know he should choose his words carefully lest he offend those less fortunate than him in his corduroy suit and waistcoat.
“And what gift is that?” the man asked in a calm, agreeable tone, as though willing to humor the round about way Tam had chosen to set the tenor of the interview.
“A secret gift,” said Tam. “From the fairy lady.”
“The fairy lady?” asked the man.
Tam nodded. The room they were in was on the first floor, where all the visiting was done and it had a view of the yard out back, just enough to encompass the chain link fence that divided it in two, one half for mothers, the other for babies.
“With mats in her hair and an empty stare,” said Tam.
The man hummed a note of understanding. “Your English is quite good, Tom,” he said.
Tam pulled his eyes away from the fence. “English is easy,” he said. “And French too.” The man hummed again. “But the fairy lady speaks in whispers no one else can hear. That’s hard sometimes.”
The man’s thick, bloody eyebrows pushed down on his heavy lidded eyes, narrowed them beneath the rims of his spectacles. “Mother [ ] tells me you’ve a knack for tricks, Tom.”
“I’m not mean,” Tam said. “Only fair.”
“And how’s that?” asked the man.
Tam looked at him again, trying to gauge what response he’d get. “It’s the other kids,” he said. “The ones from outside. They pull tricks first, and mean ones too. None of the grownups do a thing. Put up their hands to hide laughs. Somebody has to get even.”
“And that somebody is you?”
“Sure,” said Tam.
The man picked his briefcase up off the floor and laid it across his lap, hands folded on top. “It’s only there’s been a complaint. And I only ever come so far to follow up such complaints. The teachers at the school said you did something not so nice to little Mary-Anne.”
Tam was not entirely surprised this was the line of questioning. Disappointed perhaps. He’d thought that twinge of kinship might make for more interesting conversation, but it was clear this interview would be mind bendingly dull. “Which Mary-Anne?” he asked.
A flash of rage passed over the man’s face. So quick Tam almost questioned if he’d seen it at all. “Don’t be obtuse,” he said.
“I’ve been told I did it,” said Tam. “But I can’t see how, and no one can explain how I did it, so I says I didn’t.”
“You say,” the man corrected.
Tam shut his mouth. He was growing very tired of this conversation and the room felt to be growing very small. “I say I didn’t.” Tam repeated, staring hard into a corner of the room, careful not to glare. Adults hated when babies glared. Without a proper mommy and daddy, there was no right inherent to a baby that let them glare.
“Perhaps,” said the man, “They cannot prove you’ve done it. But I am not so simple to fool and you won’t pull the wool over my eyes, Tom.”
“So you haven’t come to take me up in a real house?” Tam asked. He expected the man to show some guilt or shame in the face of this question when he turned to meet those icy eyes, but there was no softening there.
“No,” the man said.
Tam realized then that he regretted that moment of kinship he’d felt with this stranger. Obviously it had been a trick itself. A mirage of sorts like the sort they read about in bible studies when people talked about the desert and the wise hermits who lived there, scrying shadows on cave walls and talking directly through the fire to God. He did not like this man, and he would prefer if they had nothing between them which could be called common. No drop of water or salted earth.
“How come you know my name but I haven’t got yours?” Tam asked.
“It would not be wise,” said the man, “To give my name to a fairy, would it?”
“And how will you?” Tam asked.
“How will I?”
“Prove it,” said Tam.
It was not a smile so much as a smile’s ghost which threw a pall over the man’s face. Tam knew it well, the silent crow of victory. It was a look he had seen on the face of many a mean cunt on the playground, gave the feeling of being raked over the shattered glass of the baby-house windows, cold as the eyes it shadowed. He set his tongue behind his teeth and he pressed until he could feel their points digging in, the tingling sensation that followed. The words the man said, he said slowly, almost as if each were a full sentence;
“I know your secret.”
There was one. A true secret. One Tam knew. The kind you don’t tell. He’d seen the bones in the hollow place. Deep under the ground where the memories of little babies drowned in sweet treacle only to rot waterlogged in their nappies. Little stack of bodies with the stench of death on the nothing that was left of them when the colic went cold. He knew that sometimes the nuns would do the nice thing and tuck them up so warm they couldn’t breathe to relieve them their burden. Gone so small even God did not want them so they could not be committed to any holy place. Sweet silence in the cistern where the worms crawl in and out. There were many voices wont to silence voices, many lips want to still lips. The knowledge that if another soul knew what he had seen there in that dark place, they would want him to be quiet too.
Sweet treacle. Choking on a wet lozenge as the warm fills you right on up and the world gets heavy.
But that wasn’t what the man meant. Even if for a moment in Tam’s mind it was all he could possibly mean, the only answer that could be anything. The man meant a different kind of secret. The sort that children like to keep not because they have to but because keeping it makes things more fun.
“You’re a boy like I was,” The man continued. “But we’ll cure you of that,” and he opened his brief case with movements so stiff and fluid they looked like those of a priest preparing the communion wine.
Hi y’all! Remember the little excerpt I wrote of Felix and Kieran beginning to have the conversation they’ve needed to have for four years? Well, I haven’t finished it, but I have written more than what I posted and I figured I should post it. So, it’s not pretty but its necessary and Felix is taking no shit.
If you feel so inlined, I would love feed back. Even a little comment on how you liked it, or if something rubs you the wrong way, or if there’s something they should delve more into -- I am all ears. Thank you in advance. You all are really lovely to entertain my bullshit at all.
Enjoy!
Felix was painting on the living room floor when Kieran walked in from therapy. Headphones on with music blaring and crunch-time tunnel vision, Felix didn’t pay his brother any attention - not when he slammed the door behind him, not when he was attempting to drown himself in the bathroom sink, not when he dropped face first onto the sofa. Felix was going to finish this portrait of Rosie that afternoon goddamnit. And Kieran’s post-therapy moping wasn’t going to distract him.
Not that Kieran talked about what went on in his appointments enough for Felix to find it annoying or distracting. Tidbits of conversations came out during take out dinners, car rides home, or at the grocery store when they remembered to go. Felix wouldn’t push his brother on these things, didn’t want to crack the seal unless Kieran started to himself. That wasn’t his responsibility. Although he couldn’t help but get the sense that Kieran really wanted to gush everything at Felix, wanted someone else to know, and wasn’t about to start unless he got an explicit affirmative to do that. And Felix knew he would never ask.
Felix tucked his current paintbrush behind his ear, picking up another with wider bristles to fill in some of the larger blanks. Rosie was coming to life in graying sepia tones, soon to be accompanied by colorful silk flowers glued to the canvas. The Garcia’s family photo gallery had inspired him — all the detail in those small black and white images, how he could see the vibrancy in them despite the lack of color. The still pride of these people, long dead, donning their best and posing for the camera had flooded Felix’s brain with ideas. Eli had been kind enough to loan him two of her grandmothers as children. Rosie looked like a healthy combination of both, so it was only right to emulate the photographs.
Felix skipped the song he was listening to and readjusted his sitting position, one leg tucked in with the other straight out in some sort of preschool gymnastics stretch. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, he knew. It beat staying stuck in the art rooms, slouching on an awful metal stool until his spine ached.
“Felix?”
In hindsight, he did hear Kieran the first time, but pretended he didn’t over the music. Then a pink rubber eraser bounced off his shoulder. Felix glanced back, pulling one headphone back to expose an ear. Kieran was rolled on his side, studying the canvas past Felix through crooked glasses. The pink rim around his eyes, the arrangement of his hair, and the fact that his jacket was still on all screamed ‘exhausted’.
“You are so lucky I didn’t have my brush on the canvas.” Felix huffed. “What?”
“Can I watch you paint?” Kieran asked, voice hoarse.
Felix nodded. “Want me to move closer so you can see?”
Kieran raised an eyebrow. “You don’t mind?”
“Nope.” Felix shrugged and slid his set up over to the coffee table, propping the canvas up against it. He crossed his legs, positioning his paints, jars of brushes, and the pile of silk flowers behind him in a half circle.
The brothers stayed in those spots for almost three hours as Felix finished painting and placed each flower along the lines of Rosie’s piled braids. Felix even put Kieran to work holding up brushes he wasn’t using, balancing the mug of paint water, and laying out the flowers on his brother’s head. He was surprised Kieran let it happen.
Felix was felt the pressure of Kieran wanting to say something and getting stopped by his own brain. He tried to wait it out, hoping Kieran would move past it and just talk. Minutes ticked by, Felix replaced the canvas in his bedroom, and still Kieran said nothing. Just laid on the couch, studying the boxes of art supplies on the carpet as Felix cleaned up. Jacket and shoes stayed on. Felix had promised himself he wouldn’t push the issue. He really tried to stick to it. But three hours was a long time, and he had hidden Kieran’s booze stash weeks earlier. They both could use a drink.
Felix collected a bottle of cheap wine and two cups from the kitchen. He walked back to the living room, dropping cross-legged in front of the couch where Kieran stared on curiously. He poured two full glasses, shoving one into his brother’s face.
“Drink it. You need it.” Felix ordered. He swallowed a mouthful and unceremoniously dropped the bottle on the coffee table with a bang. Wherever they had picked this bottle up, they shouldn’t have.
“Felix, I don’t want—”
“You don’t want to risk anything, I know. Just one glass with me, Kier? Its been a fucking month.”
Kieran bit and chewed his lip, warily eyeing the glass of dark pink liquid. A resigned expression crossed his face. He handed the glass back to Felix and sat up, shucking his coat and shoes. Taking the glass back, Kieran ran a hand through his hair before taking a long drink, swallowing tightly as he grimaced.
“Gross…” Kieran mumbled, making a face. He pushed his glasses up and his eyes settled on Felix. “What’s this about?”
“Why don’t you talk to me?” Felix asked, perhaps more sharply than he intended. He tried to soften the effect. “You know you can, right?”
Kieran’s face went blank. ‘Talk to you about what?”
“Talk to me about what…” Felix grumbled, shooting his brother a withering look. “Now is notthe time for you to pretend to be ignorant, Kieran. Tell you what.”
“Fine.” Kieran huffed. “Why do you want me to talk to you?”
“Because I’m your brother and I told you I’d help you get through this.” Felix took a long drink to cover up his simmering annoyance. “You trust me, don’t you? Like, I know this is really bad, but we’ve been through worse frankly… Well, I have.”
Kieran shifted uncomfortably under Felix’s hard stare. He knew he should have talked more about all this, but he couldn’t bring the words up past his tongue. They just jammed in his throat behind almost everything else he’d wanted to say over the last five years. He didn’t want to believe that Felix could possibly understand any of this. Kieran almost asked him why he cared at all.
Instead: “I honestly didn’t think you’d want to hear it.”
Felix arched an eyebrow. Kieran knew the longer his brother held that expression, the sooner he would cave. And, frankly, he didn’t like knowing that he could be so easily swayed. He was vulnerable there, knew it and despised it, but couldn’t bring himself to leave. He promised Felix one drink, then Kieran was going to have one drink. If that involved having the conversation he’d been dreading most after Eli, then it might as well happen. Kieran stared into the cup, feeling nauseous from the sickly sweet smell wafting up. One more stilted sip and he felt ready. Well, readier. He wasn’t ever going to be all ready, he supposed.
“I don’t know where to start. All these appointments are helping. I’m fixing everything the therapist in Boston told me to do because eighty percent of it was all wrong. But we’re starting into stuff that I’ve never really talked about, stuff I don’t really want to talk about.” Kieran paused, deciding whether or not more wine would help.
Felix took advantage of the pause. “Like your mom?”
Kieran shook his head. “Not yet, no, but soon. Lately its been what I did to Eli, picking around my brain, and… well, and you.You and me and why everything got so fucked up.”
“Fucked up ain’t the half of it.” Felix mused. “Humor me, Kier. What about me? You know I love being the center of attention.”
Kieran managed a ragged sort of laugh. He couldn’t believe Felix was finding something to laugh about in all this. “Yeah, all about you and your art and how much we hated each other. Today we talked about, we - um - we started in on —”
“On that night?” Felix supplied easily. Kieran stared at him, awestruck.
“How can you say that so casually, Felix?” His voice came out barely above a whisper. It was all he could manage. “I mean, your left eye… You had surgery and you say that like it as nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, Kieran.” Felix snapped back. “You could have killed meand I do nottake it lightly. It took me two fucking years in the chair to be able to admit the whole thing was my fucking fault, okay?”
“What?”
“Don’t, Kier. I started it and you know it.” Felix bristled.
“No you didn’t.”
“Yes I did!” Felix burst, standing and throwing the dregs of his cup into his brother’s stunned face. “I pushed you! Don’t you remember?! I pushed you. Youwouldn’t have don’t a goddamn thing if I hadn’t decided to be such a little shit that day!”
Kieran was frozen in place. The wine dripped off his glasses, his hair, down his nose and cheeks, onto his neck and shirt. His face stung like he’d been slapped. He was sure it was a hot red flush burning through his skin. For the first time in years, he wanted to tackle his brother to the floor and lay into him. So what if Felix has pushed him? Kieran had pushed back. Kieran had retaliated. It was the whole reason Felix had ended up in the hospital to begin with.
“You were thirteen.” Kieran breathed.
“So?” Felix spat.
“You were a kid.”
“So were you.”
“The we’re both at fault.”
“You’re missing the point!” Felix was fuming. He clenched and unclenched his hands around the cup so it wouldn’t be the next thing to fly at Kieran’s head. “I’m trying to say I’m sorry, Kieran. I’m sorry! I was supposed to say that to you five years ago when I found you in the hallway at school. But I didn’t because I was chicken shit about it, so I’m saying it five years too late.”
Kieran blinked. “I remember. Didn’t you drive us home?”
Felix forced a bitter smirk. “Yeah, at fourteen and we got back home alive. Stop trying to change the subject.”
“Sure. Why didn’t you say it then?”
“I was only willing to do so much of what my shrink told me to do.”
That shook Kieran out of his fog. He didn’t care how angry Felix looked, how difficult this would be. He wanted answers. “You had therapy? When?!”
Felix rolled his eyes. “Like you didn’t know.”
“Would I be asking if I did?”
“Shit…” Felix exhaled. He dropped back to sitting on the floor before losing his cup and rolling onto his back. One question and all the fight had been sucked out of him “I thought mom told you.”
“I’m starting to think I missed a lot, Fee.” Kieran finally wiped the drying, sticky wine from his face. He reached for the bottle, topping off his glass and then Felix’s.
“I thought you were only having one?”
Kieran shrugged, wincing at the smell as he drained half his glass. “Feels like we’re gonna be here a while.”
“Cheers to that.”
The boys were silent, avoiding eye contact for the few minutes they lingered over the wine. Felix ran a hand through his hair before moving from the floor to the sofa. His brother bristled at the proximity, hunched forward onto his knees, but only for a moment. He wasn’t planning on drenching Kieran with a full glass. Not yet.
“How long did you go?”
Felix thought. “Almost two years. I asked to stop going after you started college.”
Kieran cast him a look asking ‘why’.
“It didn’t seem right to keep going when you weren’t at home to practice on.” Felix stared into his cup. “I also just wanted to move past it. You seemed like you had. If, If I had known —”
“You couldn’t have. I never told anyone.” Kieran wanted to touch Felix; reach out and yank him close, like he would have done with Eli before all this. Something held him back. Something kept his hands firmly to the glass.
Felix put his own down on the coffee table, pulled his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. “Its funny. I just remembered mom yelling at the nurses the next morning for leaving you alone for an hour.”
Kieran watched him from the side. “I didn’t know that.”
“She laid into them really hard. You were in shock or something, and they just dumped you in a room while they stitched me up.” Felix’s voice was run through with bitter mirth. “I was out cold for all that, but I heard one of the night nurses talking about you chewing your hand. I don’t think mom knew I was conscious for her rant…”
Kieran didn’t try to break the silence that collapsed between them. He leaned into it. He tried to picture his mother chewing out some poor nurse while he had been hysterical at home, vomiting in the kitchen sink. Kieran could imagine it, he really could. Uma had always been there when he needed her, but why had she never told him? She could keep her secrets, sure, was entitled to most of them. But not this one. Not this one.
Kieran let his brain tick through the number of times he could have used that image. How many times he could have propped himself up, knowing that she had been furious at him being left alone and scared. He felt the urge to chew on his hand, but forced it down. (He’d been desperately trying to quit that childhood bad habit.)
“Why wouldn’t she have told me that?” Kieran murmured, staring at the carpet.
“I don’t know.” Felix answered, sounding equally confused. “I still can’t believe you didn’t know I had a shrink. I mean, it was basically two years. Someone should have told you.”
“You could have told me.” Kieran shrugged. Another silence settled between them, tension riddled through it. Kieran felt the weight of Felix’s stare and turned. He found himself being thoroughly scrutinized. “What?”
“I couldn’t have told you if I had wanted to.” Felix spoke in an even, measured tone. Kieran could hear the anger at the fringes of his control and decided to keep his mouth shut. Let Felix talk when and for how long he wanted to. “I was scared of you, Kieran, for a long time. It’s not like we were close to begin with, as you kept to yourself… I couldn’t just waltz into your bedroom and ask to have a chatcould I?
“No I guess not.” Kieran took off his glasses. “I was avoiding you. I’m sorry but I thought I would hurt you again and…”
“And what, Kier?”
“I figured you had a good reason to hate me already so why even try.”
Felix exhaled sharply. “We should have tried harder. Back then.”
“We didn’t have much of a precedent to.” Kieran thought a moment before continuing. “But we were both going to therapy, so we could have. I guess you got there first though, cornering e at school. If it had been up to me, we still wouldn’t be speaking.”
“Then I’m glad I did. You’re kind of okay most of the time.” Felix shrugged. “But it took three weeks to even try that at school. No one really knew who we were but I didn’t want it to be a thing, you know? School was no man’s land and it wasn’t anyone else’s business.”
Kieran nodded. “I didn’t realize there was so much to that. I didn’t know you planned anything besides your art projects.”
“I mean I don’t. Not really. Spent a lot of time with dad working myself up to it.” Felix said. “Didn’t prepare me to drive home though. We somehow missed that part.”
“I don’t know how you could. Seems like the most obvious part of the plan.” Kieran snickered.
“Seriously.” Felix grinned to himself. He reached for his wine cup again, swallowing more than he should have. Kieran had all but abandoned his in his own hands. Art Brain took over and Felix was studying his brother like a portrait painter. He hadn’t ever considered Kieran as a subject for the exhibition, but could have. It would have been an excellent facial study. He’d call it “A Study in Exhaustion.” Felix didn’t understand why he was suddenly engrossed in his brother’s profile but here he was. Kieran looked older than 23 and like he needed to sleep for twelve years. He hadn’t been sleeping — that tidbit had come up at dinner with their parents the weekend before, the night Kieran came back to the apartment. — and Felix had heard him. Pacing in his bedroom, posting up for hours in the living room, even once leaving the apartment for a midnight walk. Felix wouldn’t pretend to know what Kieran was thinking about in detail, wouldn’t pretend to know where he went or what he was doing. But maybe this whole long evening would help. Felix wanted to hope so. It was certainly helping him — would help him poke his brother into more conversations or bully their parents into explaining themselves to their sons.
“Kier, I’m sorry.”
“Felix —”
“Just let me be sorry, Kier. Because I am.” Felix sounded mildly exasperated. “I didn’t know you were holding onto it after all this time and that you were blaming yourself for it all. You need to give me some of the blame. At the very least, you need to let me help you.”
