Her Brother’s Keeper
by David C. Metz
Growing up in the 1930s, they were taught loyalty to family and a fear of God by their Catholic mother, lessons Maggie had absorbed. Now, thirty years later, she looked at her brother Bill across the oval dining room table—short and thickset with an aura that made him appear bigger than he was, sleeves of his white shirt rolled past his elbows, thick fingers pressed to his temples—and decided it was time to make coffee. The plates and serving dishes had been cleared and washed after the last guests left, leaving a nearly empty bottle of scotch, four whiskey glasses and a bowl-shaped ashtray the color of strawberry soda. The glasses had a faded gold line around the rim and a black and red coat of arms imprinted on one side. Stubbed and twisted cigarette butts crowded the ashtray, which Maggie took to the kitchen to empty and wash, replacing it with one from a side cabinet.
Her sister-in-law, June, looked at her when she stood, but Maggie made a motion for her to stay. “I’m just going to make some coffee.”
June’s head bobbed in a half nod. Her hair was pulled backed into an unkempt bun, a few gray strands brushing against the sides of her face.
Maggie filled the percolator with water from the tap, measured enough coffee for eight cups into the basket and plugged the percolator into the outlet above the counter. She retrieved a fresh dish towel from one of the drawers and started to dry and put away the plates left earlier in the drain board. It wasn’t fair to leave Hank by himself with Bill and June for too long, but her husband had always been unflappable. She wanted to put the kitchen in order. Putting things in order lifted the spirits, her mother used to say. Poor June wouldn’t be able to manage, not today, perhaps not ever.
She had come every day since the accident to cook and keep things picked up and try to provide comfort. Each afternoon before she left she put on a fresh pot of coffee and sat at the kitchen table with June.
Maggie leaned against the counter and stared out the window above the sink. The backyard was a dark void except for the light cast from the dining room window, a narrow rim of land at the edge of a black sea. We wait in darkness for our children to return, she thought. Four days ago, they’d said good-bye to her brother’s oldest children, Bill Jr. and Diane, waved as they pulled away in a car driven by Diane’s boyfriend. A double date, drive-in movie and Fourth of July fireworks. Then she and Hank and Bill and June and the younger children packed the remnants of their picnic and found a spot to spread their blankets and watch the fireworks over the lake. It was well past midnight when Bill called with the news. An accident. A railroad crossing with no lights, no gate, just a sign that was all but invisible in the pitch black. The police said the collision instantly killed the four passengers of the car. In an instant.
She had come every day since the accident to cook and keep things picked up and try to provide comfort. Each afternoon before she left she put on a fresh pot of coffee and sat at the kitchen table with June. They said little, but Maggie squeezed her sister-in-law’s hand and June nodded. Lost and unalterably sad.
Maggie worried about Bill’s other children, suddenly unmoored, adrift in a flood of sorrow. Steve, fourteen and now the oldest, had come in after dark with Danny, her eldest, two years younger than Steve. Danny’s nose had been bloodied. A fight. Danny had shrugged it off, protected his older cousin, but Maggie knew what happened. Steve could be a bully, just like his father. When they were kids, Bill had teased Maggie about the way she wore her hair, the way she dressed, her quiet manner. “Mousy Maggie,” he’d called her.
“You are your brother’s keeper,” her mother used to tell her when she complained. “None of this petty squabbling will matter when you’re older.” It was not a satisfactory response, certainly not the one Maggie was seeking. But she took it to heart and tried to look for the good in her brother, even when his meanness was easier to see. She wanted to see the good in him, to share with him the closeness she believed all brothers and sisters should have.
***
Growing up, Maggie and Bill were lucky because their father had steady work. They weren’t rich, but as their mother liked to remind them, they never wanted for anything either. Not like the poor souls standing in breadlines their mother saw in the newsreels. She saw them in Sangamon too, lined up outside St. Peter’s. Sometimes hobos came to the back door of the house and asked if she had any chores they could do in exchange for a meal. Their mother always found something. She didn’t allow them in the house, and some days Maggie and Bill would come home from school to the sight of a shabbily dressed man sitting on the back porch eating a sandwich or a bowl of soup.
“They smell,” Bill had complained one time, wrinkling his nose in disgust.
He and Maggie were sitting at the kitchen table. Their mother was standing at the stove stirring vegetable soup. She spun around, clutching the large wooden spoon and leaned over the table, her face inches from Bill’s.
“They’re children of God,” she said. “And if I ever hear you speak that way again, I’ll have your father give you the belt.”
Bill spoke carefully at home after that, but at school he teased anyone who was different, which meant the kids who had less than he and Maggie and the ones who had more. He always said he was kidding, just having fun, but he got into fights anyway. He wasn’t big, but he had a mean streak and could hold his own.
***
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Bill was looking at Hank when Maggie returned to the dining room with the coffee tray. “What am I going to do?”
Hank turned towards Maggie as she set the tray in the center of the table. His rust-colored hair was thinning and crow’s feet appeared when he smiled, otherwise he was as trim and handsome as the day she met him. His light blue eyes were the kindest she had ever seen.
“Bill, you have a family that needs you.” Maggie took her seat next to Hank, squeezing his hand. “You have to take care of them.”
Bill stared at her, his head tilted slightly to one side, forehead and dark hair shining in the harsh light cast by the bare bulbs of the faux chandelier. “Thank you, Maggie,” he said, eyes dull, mouth pulled into a tight smile. “You always did know just what to say.”
June said, “Someone has to know.” She looked at the table. Her voice was soft, almost a whisper. She lifted her cigarette to her lips, fingers gracefully curved, and inhaled. She held the smoke a moment before exhaling in a steady stream and nodding, as if in agreement with herself.
“That’s what I think, Junebug,” Bill said. “Someone has to know. But not me. Goddamn if it’s me.” He ignored the coffee Maggie placed in front of him and instead drank what remained in his glass of scotch.
Maggie sipped her coffee. Bill lit a cigarette and tapped the end absently against the edge of the clean ashtray. Earlier that day when the guests arrived after the funeral, Bill seemed to be at the center of everything, shaking hands, exchanging hugs, accepting condolences. His dark brown eyes darted around as he spoke, always sizing things up. But now, slumped into his chair, jaw sunk into his jowls, eyes fixed on the curling smoke of his cigarette, he seemed to recede from everything.
***
Once when Bill was twelve and Maggie was nine he went with her and one of her friends to the Saturday matinee, a double feature, plus cartoons. They took the bus downtown and Bill had been very nice, no teasing. He’d found a seat on the bus for Maggie and her friend and stood next to them, laughing and talking. He bought their tickets and popcorn and a box of Jujubes for Maggie, her favorite. They watched the newsreel, saw footage of men lined up at soup kitchens, black-and-white versions of the men who showed up at their back door. Then came the cartoons. Bill craned his neck around from time to time, and just as the main feature was starting, he whispered to Maggie that he was going to join some of his friends sitting in the balcony. He told her he would meet her in the lobby afterwards. Maggie looked at him. He grinned and slipped out of his seat and up the aisle. She watched him until he disappeared through the door to the lobby.
In the lobby after the movie let out, he was nowhere to be seen. She and her friend waited for fifteen minutes before asking an usher for help. He led them up to the balcony and stood while they searched for Bill, but he wasn’t there. Back down in the lobby, Maggie realized they had no bus fare because they’d given their money to Bill to hold. She started to cry. The same usher asked them what the matter was and when Maggie told him, he shook his head. He took them to the office and let Maggie use the phone to call her mother. The usher told them they could wait in the office, but it was stuffy and smelled of cigarette smoke and stale popcorn. They waited outside instead, leaning against the gray stone building in the fading October light, sharing Maggie’s remaining Jujubes, until her father’s car pulled in front of the theater. They got into the backseat and rode home in silence.
When Bill came home that evening, he got the belt.
***
At the dining room table, slumped in his chair, Bill asked, “Why did this happen, Maggie? Do you know why?”
“No, Bill, I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.” His dark eyes grew watery as if on the verge of tears, but he laughed instead. “I asked Father Cummins why God let this happen and do you know what he said? He said it was part of God’s plan and I must pray for understanding. And I said I didn’t want to understand a plan like that.”
“He said it was part of God’s plan and I must pray for understanding. And I said I didn’t want to understand a plan like that.”
Maggie wished she knew what to say, but acknowledging God’s plan and praying for understanding were what her mother would have said, and her mother’s devout Catholic faith was the example Maggie turned to in moments of crisis. But her mother never lost a child, let alone two in the same tragic accident.
“I try to live a good life,” Bill muttered, “to be a good man. Am I a good man, Maggie?” He stared at her from across the table.
Maggie held his gaze for a moment before answering, saw his sunken expression and slumped shoulders. “Yes, Bill, you are. Now maybe you and June should try to get some rest.”
“And everything will be better in the morning?”
Maggie looked at her coffee, saw on the black liquid surface a reflection of the chandelier. “No,” she said. “But you still need to rest.”
Bill sat forward, his eyes cast downward on a spot in the middle of the table, as if they were too heavy to lift any higher.
Maggie sipped her coffee. Across from her June had made a pillow of her arms folded on the table and fallen asleep. Hank was nodding off. Maggie kissed him on the cheek and told him to lay down on the sofa in the living room.
“I’m going to check on the children,” she said.
***
June was once beyond Bill’s reach. She was voted the most popular girl in the Sangamon High School class of 1937, Bill’s class. Maggie was a freshman that year. Petite, dark-haired, considering herself a plain Jane, she thought June, with her chestnut hair, high cheekbones and azure eyes, was the most beautiful girl in the school. Bill had a wiry frame and thick black hair combed into a pompadour. Maggie heard girls say he was cute, and he always had a date on Saturday nights, but never with June. She later told Maggie that Bill scared her. He had a look, she said, like he wanted to possess her, and a reputation for being fast. Bill thought she was a snob because her father had money.
Three years after they graduated June had a nervous breakdown while away at college. She returned to Sangamon and was admitted to a private hospital where Bill was an orderly.
“She’s not so stuck up now,” Bill told Maggie. “Just another mental case like all the others.”
“I hope you’re nice to her.”
Her brother frowned. “I’m nice to her. I even gave her a nickname. Junebug. As in crazy as a Junebug, get it?”
“That’s mean.”
“No, it’s not. It’s funny.”
June was in the hospital for three months. Bill asked her out the day after she was discharged, although Maggie later learned he had flirted with her while she was a patient. They went to dinner and the movies and dances in the ballroom of the Grant Hotel in downtown Sangamon. Between dances, Bill kept his arm around June or held her hand. At first Maggie thought it was a tender gesture, a shield against the stares and judgments of others. June spoke very little, a fragile beauty content to be held. Bill had something to say to everyone. He told jokes and let loose full-throated, raucous bursts of laughter. “I’m crazy about this girl,” he’d say, giving June’s shoulder a squeeze, “but she’s just crazy.” He told Maggie he was protecting June, making a joke of her condition before anyone else could. Maggie wanted to believe him, but he said it too often, always with the same raucous laugh, until she realized he didn’t want June to forget.
***
Upstairs there was no light coming from under the closed doors of the children’s bedrooms. Maggie listened in front of the one her nieces shared, then carefully opened it. Her two nieces were curled together in one of the twin beds, leaving the other for Maggie’s daughter, Linda, who, at eight, was the youngest of the cousins, baby of the family. Maggie closed the door quietly and walked to Steve’s room at the end of the hall. After a pause, she cracked the door open enough to peek inside. The room was dark and still, except for the rhythmic sound of breathing, not snoring, but someone in a deep sleep. As she pulled the door shut a whispered voice called to her.
“Mom?”
From the bed nearest the door, the lanky figure of her son rose. They stepped into the hall.
“Is everything okay?” he asked her once the door was shut.
Maggie nodded. “Yes, I was just checking on you. Can’t you sleep?
Danny shook his head.
He was already six inches taller than her and hadn’t stopped growing. She touched his cheek and smiled. “C’mon.” They walked to the landing and sat side by side on the top step.
“Is everything okay between you and Steve?”
“Yes. We were just fooling around and it got out of hand.” He spoke quickly without looking at her. Still protecting Steve, even when it was just the two of them. She wondered how long his cousin would hold sway over him.
“All right,” she said, resting a hand on his back.
After a moment, Danny said, “He’s pretty upset. He doesn’t say much, but I can tell.”
“I’m sure he is. It was a terrible accident. I still can’t believe it happened.”
When her mother lay dying in the hospital, she had asked Maggie to say the rosary with her and now the final words of the Hail Mary came to her in her mother’s whispery voice
“Neither can I. It doesn’t seem real.”
She squeezed his shoulder.
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Is that why you can’t sleep?”
He nodded.
“Oh, honey.”
“I try to imagine what it was like for them.”
“Bill and Diane?”
“I wonder what it was like just before the train hit.”
It was a terrifying thought. When her mother lay dying in the hospital, she had asked Maggie to say the rosary with her and now the final words of the Hail Mary came to her in her mother’s whispery voice: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
“You should try not to think of such things,” she told Danny.
“Do you think there’s something wrong with me if I do?”
She gripped his hand. “No. Of course not. I just don’t think you should upset yourself with those kinds of thoughts.”
“Steve said I was sick for thinking about it.”
“Is that what the fight was about?”
He nodded. “Yes.” He was a few months from being a teenager, a few years from getting his driver’s license. Then he’d be out on his own on Saturday nights, beyond her protection.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Danny. Nothing at all. If anyone has a problem, it’s Steve.”
“Don’t tell Uncle Bill, okay? I don’t want to get Steve in trouble.”
She leaned in and kissed his forehead. “No, honey, I won’t tell.”
***
At Bill and June’s wedding reception there were murmurs of “damaged goods,” an expression Maggie thought cruel and tasteless, not least because June’s father, who owned the largest department store in Sangamon, accepted Bill with calculated resignation, like a man cutting his losses. He seemed to flinch whenever Bill—-nearly half a foot shorter—-swung his arm up to clasp his father-in-law by the shoulder.
Bill moved through the reception like a man having the last laugh. He kept June on his arm, patting her hand, kissing her on the cheek. He said hello to old classmates, shook hands with the business associates of June’s father, country club men, part of what Maggie’s mother called “the Four Hundred,” even though there weren’t that many rich families in Sangamon. Maggie wondered where he got the courage, the nerve.
Later he asked Maggie to dance. He held her a little stiffly, like a boy dancing for the first time. She smiled and moved closer to him.
“I’m happy for you, Bill.”
“Thanks.”
“I hope you and June will be very happy together.” It was something she wanted to say, no matter how ordinary it sounded. Her mother said marriage and family were the source of true happiness and Maggie believed it. She had only recently met Hank but knew she was in love, knew she could be happy with him. She wanted the same for Bill and June.
Her mother said marriage and family were the source of true happiness and Maggie believed it.
“We will be.”
They found a rhythm, stepped more easily, turned. She felt his hand relax.
“She looks beautiful today.”
Bill nodded. “My little Junebug.”
Maggie frowned.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s just a pet name, Maggie, like sweetheart or honeybun.” His voice was petulant, but his eyes had a soft, pleading look.
“I just don’t want June to have her feelings hurt. She’s a lovely girl.”
“No one’s hurting anyone, Maggie.”
She smiled at him as the dance ended. He made an elaborate bow and offered his arm to escort her back to her table where Hank sat with June.
Hank stood to hold Maggie’s chair. June rose and slipped her arm through Bill’s.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said. “How’s my honeybun?” Winking at Maggie, he steered June onto the dance floor.
Bill took a job as a floor manager in his father-in-law’s department store. With a loan guaranteed by his father-in-law, he and June bought a house on the north side of Sangamon, where homes were older and cheaper. It had six bedrooms, a large dining room and an even larger living room, far more room than they needed, but Bill liked the idea of a big house and said they would fill it up. June was pregnant with Bill Jr. when they moved in.
“Welcome to our hotel,” she said the first time Maggie visited.
***
Downstairs, Hank was stretched out on the sofa, snoring softly. In the dining room, June was still asleep at the table, and Bill remained slouched in his chair, staring straight ahead.
“Come on,” Maggie said to him. “Let’s get some air.”
Bill sat on the stoop in silence, staring into the pitch-black yard. The tips of their cigarettes glowed orange and she could hear the heavy hiss of his breath when he exhaled.
After a moment he asked, “Do you think God is punishing me?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Oh, Bill.” She squeezed his hand. The sins of the father. And what about her, she wondered, her brother’s keeper? In the dark she felt him staring at her.
“I don’t think God would take Bill and Diane to punish you.”
“Then why? Why did this happen?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think we will ever know.”
She would remember this conversation the rest of her life. The ache in her brother’s voice, the quiet, unspoken fear they shared that God’s wrath, like his love, was personal.
***
Maggie visited Bill and June in their new house at least once a week. June told Maggie the house was so big it made her feel lonely. Once after Bill Jr. was born, Maggie sat with her while she gave him his bottle.
“He’ll be happy now, won’t he, Maggie?”
“Who?”
“Bill.”
Maggie leaned forward and touched her arm. “Oh, June, honey, of course he will. He is.”
“I hope so, but I’m never sure.”
“Has something happened? Did he say something?”
June shook her head. “No. But I always worry I’m not enough.”
Maggie lifted the baby from her arms and returned him to his crib, while June set the bottle on the night stand and adjusted the quilt around her waist. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t mean to bother you.”
It felt strange to be comforting her sister-in-law, who had everything Maggie wanted—marriage, a family, beauty to shield her from doubt.
Maggie sat next to her. “You’re not bothering me, June.” It felt strange to be comforting her sister-in-law, who had everything Maggie wanted—marriage, a family, beauty to shield her from doubt. She smiled and patted June’s hand. “Everything will be fine. If my mother were here she’d say you just have the blues.”
She visited more often after Hank shipped out to the Pacific. It felt useful to help June with Bill Jr., and a little more than a year later, Diane. A slight heart murmur had kept Bill out of the service. Maggie didn’t resent it. She told herself it would not make Hank safer to have her brother in harm’s way. She was glad for Bill’s company, glad for the growing closeness she felt between them. She hoped they could be brother and sister the way she had always wanted.
On spring and summer evenings during the war, while June gave the children a bath and put them to bed, Maggie and Bill did the dishes, then went outside for a smoke. Bill spoke of how well the business was doing, how he was winning the old man over little by little, just as he knew he would. Maggie listened, her thoughts turning to Hank, hoping he would have some of her brother’s good fortune, enough to bring him home safe.
One evening when June, more tired than usual, had gone to bed right after tucking in Bill Jr. and Diane, Maggie and Bill sat on the porch with tumblers of scotch. They sipped and watched the yellow blink of lightning bugs in the dark. Maggie, who had received a letter from Hank that day full of corny jokes and expressions of love, was flush with whiskey and affection. After Bill had been sitting quietly for a while, she put her arm around his shoulder and asked him if everything was all right.
“Do you remember when we were kids and we did something wrong and tried to hide it and mom would say there was no hiding from God, God saw all things?”
She grinned. “I remember you doing things wrong. I was perfect.”
“But you remember her saying that?”
“Sure. Mom had a lot of sayings.”
“Do you think it’s true?” He glanced at her.
“I guess so. Why?”
“I’ve been seeing another woman.”
Maggie drew a sharp breath and pulled away as if she’d been slapped. Staring straight ahead, Bill told her it was a woman he had met by chance. He didn’t say how. It just happened. They had been meeting at the Grant Hotel. He said it didn’t mean anything. It was just that June was so often sad, and he needed a woman who could make him laugh.
“Are you going to leave?” Maggie asked.
He shook his head. “No. I could never do that.”
“Then why did you tell me?”
“I don’t know, I just felt like I had to tell someone.”
“You could tell a priest.”
He snorted, shaking his head.
“Or one of your friends.”
He looked at her. “I don’t really have many friends, Maggie. Not that I trust to keep a secret.”
“So, you put it on me?”
“You’re my sister.”
Is this what it meant to be her brother’s keeper, to keep his secret? She didn’t think so, but kept it anyway, rationalizing it was to protect June and the children not to spare Bill. She was ashamed of him, but he was still her brother.
***
As she and Hank drove home early the next morning, Maggie looked out the window and watched the houses and yards glide by. She looked at her husband behind the wheel, then at Danny and Linda in the back seat. She smiled at each of them before resting her head against the window and closing her eyes.
Maggie wanted to ask him if he thought people deserved to be happy, but he would know what she really meant: did they deserve to be happy? Could everything they had be taken away?
It was Sunday. They went to mass early and in the afternoon she and Hank took a nap. The children were somewhere in the neighborhood but would be home in time for dinner. As they lay in bed, she looked at Hank, whose eyes were closed.
“Thank you for last night,” she said softly. “I know Bill and June are not easy to be with.”
“They’re family.” Hank didn’t open his eyes, but smiled when Maggie leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
Maggie wanted to ask him if he thought people deserved to be happy, but he would know what she really meant: did they deserve to be happy? Could everything they had be taken away? She knew what he his answer would be. It was what three years in the Pacific had taught him—you can’t ask such questions or even think them.
As she drifted towards sleep, Maggie remembered the time Bill got the belt for leaving her and her girlfriend alone after the Saturday matinee. Their father had pulled him into the den and shut the door before giving him a dozen angry whacks across his backside. Maggie had been able to hear through the furnace register in her bedroom directly above the den. Bill didn’t cry, but he’d made a grunting sound, a kind of low moan. Knowing that it hurt him, Maggie had smiled.
The memory jolted her awake. She heard Hank’s breathing and through the open window, the distant shouts of children at play. She said a prayer for Bill and June and their children. Then she said one for her own children, praying that no matter what, they would be safe.
David C. Metz is a writer and a member of the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. His stories have appeared in several publications, including The MacGuffin, New Plains Review, Bull, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and Perceptions. Originally from Illinois, he lives with his wife in Damascus, Maryland.
