Free Body Language by Michael Craft Page B

carried it to his bed and flumped down with it, setting it on the same plaid bedspread that had remained there for years. He blew some dust off the machine, rolled a piece of paper into its carriage, and started awkwardly but patiently pecking at the keys—his technique had improved some in the thirty-three years since I last saw him attempt this. Thad tapped his uncle on the shoulder, then placed the typewriter on a child-size desk at the bedside, as if to tell Joey that he could work more easily there. Joey smiled at his nephew, sat on the little chair, and continued to peck away. Moments later, he yanked the paper from the machine and rushed over to present it to me. It read, “Merry Christmas, everybody. Have a happy New Year, Mark,” printed half red, half black. I was surprised to see that Joey had spelled and punctuated his message correctly. While I still harbored some serious philosophical quibbles with the Catholic education that both Joey and I had been subjected to, I was forever grateful to those nuns for their unrelenting focus on grammar.
    “Excellent,” I told Joey. “I didn’t realize our family was riddled with writers.” He grinned proudly and showed his brief missive to the others in the hall, who wished him a merry Christmas in return.
    Continuing down the hallway, we stopped at the door to Parker’s bedroom. Joey rambled to the others, “…and this was my brother Mark’s room, but he’s dead now.”
    “Yes, Joey,” his sister Suzanne told him, “we all know that.”
    But Neil, Roxanne, Carl, and Parker all flashed me a quizzical glance—this was a detail of family history that I found difficult to discuss, that I had simply never mentioned. So I mumbled, “Vietnam,” a single, sufficient word of explanation that prompted the others to nod their understanding.
    In that quiet moment, standing there looking through Mark Quatrain’s doorway, I wondered what he would look like if he were still alive that day, if he were there with us to celebrate my move to Dumont. Would he still wear those khaki slacks that triggered my own lifelong fetish? Would he muss my hair again? Would I feel the same erotic charge from the touch of his hand?
    “Hey,” said Joey, popping up behind me. I froze, exactly as I had done on the afternoon when Joey caught me looking through this same doorway, staring at his older brother’s ass. “Hey!” he repeated, just as before. “Wanna see the upstairs?”
    “What is upstairs?” chimed Roxanne, who had not yet wandered up there.
    “I was wondering about that myself,” said Carl.
    “There’s one way to find out,” Suzanne suggested, gesturing toward the front staircase, which continued up to the third floor. “Follow me,” she said. “I’ll be happy to show it to you.” Then she stopped herself, adding, “That is, of course, if Mark doesn’t mind.” She had forgotten that, while this was her childhood home, the house had a new owner.
    “Of course I don’t mind,” I told her. “Do lead the way.”
    And she did, escorting the eight of us up the front stairs.
    But in my own mind, not far below the surface of consciousness, I was still staring into Mark Quatrain’s bedroom. Joey still asked, “Wanna see the upstairs?” He grabbed my elbow and started tugging me toward the steep back stairway.
    Barely above a whisper, I asked, “Are you sure it’s all right? Your parents acted so weird about it.”
    “Sure,” said Joey, “it’s not as if it’s locked or anything.”
    Even so, there was something sneaky about the way we climbed those back stairs. As he reached to open the door, I expected to feel a rush of cold air from the unused top floor, but it was plenty warm up there.
    To my surprise, the door led to a kitchen, which looked a lot like the one downstairs, but with a much higher ceiling. There was no food around, but there was a toaster and such on the counter, and you could see gold-edged dishes through the glass doors of the cupboards.