4a.

2017, a Thursday, a journal entry

If you could write back to me, I imagine some days you would tell me to have a better reason to write to you. You’ve had enough of me musing on whether or not there is such a thing as objectively good music, or on the fragility of memory, or how personality only explains so much of other people’s behaviour and we can’t use it as a rule to solve our family and friends.

Well… rather than abstract ideas, I have a life update. I hope you’re happy. Although now it kind of seems like I’m characterising you, my journal, as if you were my brother. He wants nothing more than for me to be in love. You can make a triangle out of any three non-collinear points. It’s hard to know what the triangle of my brother, sister, & me would look like.

Before
I’m laughing as I write this because of mildly defiant absurdity. Her last message was ‘Ok so we’ll meet at the station at 10. Remember! no phones!’ We have this rhetoric we use when we chat after lectures, about phones being for “flakers” who weren’t truly present. When we are on our phones we drop into the two-dimensional world.



So there I was, waiting, looking around, fidgeting with my empty right pocket, chastising myself for looking around too much, walking away from the incoming train timetable boards to reduce anticipation (sometimes clarity is unhelpful), counting to ten and trying not to look around, feeling insecure about taking a risk, trying not to look as if I were staring at people, feeling insecure about feeling insecure about taking a risk, hoping that that person looking at the boards who seemed familiar was not someone who actually knew me or would come up to me, swapping my tote bag to the other shoulder, closing my eyes after a while, laughing with my eyes closed about it all, being unsure about the volume of my own laughter in public…, “hey”, and there she was.



“Hey”

She smiled this full-ish kind of smile, and you could see a small dimple, only on the left of her mouth.

“Where do you want to go?”

I smiled back.
“I don’t know”

Moments
In one of the parks we visited, a grassy plateau opened up onto a sloped area.

“Do you want to roll down?” She asked.

“Do you want to roll down?”

“Of course”

“I haven’t rolled down a hill since I was in primary school”

“Why does it matter what age we are or were?”
“ok… let’s do it”



I put my coffee and tote bag down and lay on my side.



Trying to catch her eyes whilst spinning was like an unexpected solo in an already good piece of music. Even if you are someone who say, always wanted to have a good reason for everything - which I certainly am - you just don’t need to know why there is a saxophone there. You don’t even ask why there is a saxophone there. It was freeing to not have to know why something is the way it is and instead enjoy it. No matter how dizzying.


Words
We were sitting at a different park, with different coffees, after a different train, looking out over the water, sometimes observing, sometimes talking. She turns to me and says “there are few things better than checking your watch and immediately having the moment ‘wait we were just talking. how did it get so late?’” I think there are few things better a person can give you than to take the risk to say the thing about your relationship that you’re too insecure to say.


After
She put her right hand on my side.
“Bye”
“Bye”

We waved as she disappeared.



I caught myself looking at the vacant space on my wrist.

I was buzzing. I am buzzing. I never have two coffees. It was dark. I asked someone on the train if I could borrow their phone. They said OK. Positive human interaction with a stranger is possible!



‘hey sis, using some very very generous person’s phone. [And it is at this moment I tilted the phone towards the owner and pointed at them and nodded so that they can see how helpful they’ve been. They nodded but didn’t smile. Damn.] i am not gonna make it home for dinner.’


‘Clearly.’
 Followed by ‘Why not?’
‘just tell them i was playing board games with some friends’


‘What were you genuinely doing?’


‘sorry, gotta give this generous person their phone back. i’ll tell you later :)’



They pointed at their phone “Your sister sent a message saying “Please delete this conversation from the generous person’s phone.’”



“I’m trusting you to do that generous person! Thank you so much! Goodbye.”


I jumped off the train. The generous person put their headphones on. I asked what they were listening to as the doors were closing. They pressed the glass on their phone.

I stopped by a late night pork roll place. I walked around the block a few times, waiting for the lights in the house to fade.


Now

I walked down the hallway and whispered “thank you” as I passed sister’s door. On the inside of my door I found a note 'coffee on Saturday morning?' I put my headphones on. I made a playlist. I wrote this. I smile.

4b.

sometime around the present

I stare at the paper, and it stares back. At least I think it has some passing interest in me. I look at my watch, not that its hands tell me what day it is. My phone says Thursday. Four days since discovering it. I run my finger over the split between brother’s row and my row.

the cry list

What am I supposed to do with this? Do I try ask what each of them were doing in 2018? Why does this even exist? What's her angle? Are there more of these, a catalogue of tears for every year of our lives? Why the tear between brother & I? And if she’s wrong about me….

Father yells “Time for family dinner son! Your brother is waiting.” He’s so urgent. I stuff the paper in a secret compartment in the drawer of my desk.

Walking the hallway, I lay my right hand on the closed door of sister’s empty room. I peer into brother’s vacant room, seeing old tech neatly piled in one corner and dad’s home office in another. I don’t look in my parent’s room. No Joyce tonight, and no sister. “No sister?” I ask. Working late on a project she supposedly did not want to volunteer for.

Dinner is going OK? No one uses the word cry or talks about 2018.

“He’s been gaming a lot recently” mum says as she punctures a potato with her fork.


“Who? Me?”


“Yeah.”


“Huh? Based on what?”


“When I’m about to go to sleep and I come down to say goodnight, you’re usually on your computer furiously clacking your loud keyboard. I know you’re not working because you never look that engaged with work.”

“And you’re a big FIFA-head” adds dad.


“I can’t remember the last time I played FIFA? Also it’s not a keyboard game.”
 Brother’s arms spring out in front of him “Maybe he’s chatting with a girl.” He turns his face to me “Do you have a girlfriend yet?”


“Ummm…” The silence does not shake brother’s eyes. “Why do you always have to add the ‘yet’?”

“I feel like that means ‘no’?”


“You’re implying something about how people’s lives ought to be.”


“Why do you never answer my questions?”

“Why do you always associate happiness with being in a flippin’ romantic relationship?”

Brother frowns and rises from his chair.

“Boys… just… settle down” says mum. Brother gets a beer.

“Maybe your brother enjoys the extra time he has to game?” Dad.
 I roll my eyes.

As brother finishes his beer, dad yawns.
 From the fridge, brother says “feel like getting back into the habit of losing?”


“What?”


“You said you wanted to play some FIFA.”


Decidedly not what I said… and yet “yeah let’s do it.”

I win the first game 5-3, after which he says “best out of three?” I say “sure”. In the second game, when I am up 2-0 he begins to start saying the names of his players in the context of dribbling, passing, or shooting in order to “take this single guy down.” My throat is drying up, and I want to say it’s because I’m nervous about asking why he was crying in 2018 and why that particular time was notable enough for sister to write it down. It’s probably from wanting to win. Trying does not look good on me. Sister was always better at convincing people she wasn’t trying. I lose 3-2 after brother takes a shot from way outside the box whilst saying “Alvarez is going to shoot this single guy into relegation.”


He pumps his fist in the air and says “I win” after the third game is finished. I shake my head. I miss the phase of life where our parents felt they needed to play too. Now I’m somehow both the 'gamer' and not even good at it. He slaps me on the shoulder. “Wanna play something you can’t lose at?”

The next game involves running a coffee shop slash jazz club together. I am managing the customer experience and music side of things, and he’s doing the menu and financing kinda stuff. I dart my eyes towards the drawer in my desk. Throat still dry-ish.

”I’m just going to get some water.”

Mum is at the dining table, squinting over a spreadsheet of sorts. Dad is presumably in bed. I open the fridge and crouch in the cold air whilst scribbling some ideas for ways to start this conversation on a notepad. The fridge beeps. I peer over the door. Mum is frantically picking up receipts, turning her head to the spreadsheet, and putting them down again. I crouch again and struggle to write what "the loudest noise" could be. After the second beep, I pour myself some water. On the way back into my room I close the door. Brother looks at me with his head tilted. “Just chatting to mum” I say.

We settle into a familiar rhythm. The business has begun to be profitable. I drink some water.

“Hey bro, do you cry much?” I stop myself from placing my hand over my face. I can’t remember the last time I used the word ‘bro’…


“Haha yeah buddy, I cried a couple nights ago in fact.”


“Oh… are… are you OK?”


“Yeah it’s pretty normal. It was a quick one. I just had this big day at the office and then Joyce and I had a difficult conversation at home…”
 I nod. Brother looks at me as if it’s my turn.


“Uhhh… what was the conversation about?”

“We’re trying to buy an apartment.”

“Oh… go on… if you want to.”


“Yeah we’ve talked about it a lot, we have mostly the same vision, but there are just lots of details we disagree about which sometimes makes it seem like we don’t have the same vision.”

"That sounds difficult."

He pauses the game. "It's not easy."

“Were you guys like this before the wedding?”

“Yeah, there were a lot of tears in 2018. I feel like when making all these decisions, so much money, people telling you different things, social drama: it raises the emotions in the small stuff.”

“That makes sense. Didn’t you have that problem with the DJ or something?

“What are you talking about? The DJ was amazing. The problem was that we cared about the decisions and how the other person felt about those decisions, more than we cared about the other person.”

I put down my glass. “Do you feel like you’re better able to work through the disagreements this time around?”

“Man, I hear everything Joyce says and I love listening to her.” He pauses. “But when she disagrees with me, it feels like the loudest noise. You know? It pierces me, not because it’s cruel or anything like that, and not because she’s wrong - she’s usually right. But…” He pauses. These sound like words that usually don't get the chance to breathe. I slide my chair over and put my arm around him.

“You feel that kind of asymmetry that only the truth from someone you care about can cause?”

“What?”

“Uhhh.”

“OK… I feel like I don’t really know what you just said. But I do know that I haven’t told anyone what I just told you. Other than sister. Thanks for listening, bro.”

Sister?

He keeps talking. He resumes the game. He laughs once or twice.

How did I not know that sister knew about brother like this? I feel as if a mirror is being held up to my room, and in it I can see all the things I’ve ever said or done with sister, except it's not me doing those things, it's brother.

“Man, you suck at this game! Everyone knows you never get those guys to play at the coffee shop on a weekend - that’s the busiest time and they’re terrible.”


“…sorry” I offer.

He laughs. We play a bit more.

“So when did you tell sister this stuff?”

“I feel like it was before the wedding, because that's the most stressed I've ever been, so middle of 2018?”

I say nothing. Did brother and sister have shared google docs? Did he ever write letters that he never sent to her? Did they used to share playlists and headphones and describe moments in their shared history as if they were certain songs?

“Joyce sometimes worries I’m not as close with you guys because of her, so thanks for this.” He says as he sets up the pricing for some new products at the shop. I fumble through the words "thanks for sharing" just as I fumble through the in-game calendar, arbitrarily scheduling which groups are playing next month.

He stands up. “I gotta get out of here before these patrons put this single guy out of business”

“We’re on the same team.”

“The patrons know mate.”

What?