Passage I

PROSE FICTION: This passage is adapted from the short story “Bye Bye Brewster” by Steven Barthelme (@2006 by Southwest Review).

I hadn’t seen Brewster since he moved, about five months before. He was twice my age, but a bond had been fashioned out of necessity, because he was old and alone, because my life hadn’t turned out as I’d hoped— all I had was a job and this apartment. It hasn’t gotten any better since he moved. It seems strange but the time I knew him had become in my memory an oddly contented and happy time, one of those periods of one’s life during which one complains incessantly which later becomes a life sorely missed. There wasn’t anything extraordinary about those months: we had shared a lot of evenings, eaten together, played card games, talked a lot, awaited and then watched favorite TV shows every week, rituals of a friendship. He had lent me money and then forgiven the debts; I had helped him out sometimes. He said his son was in California, maybe Washington state. He never heard from him. I had had a father who was easy to disappoint, and after I disappointed him I took poor care of him, which maybe explains the Brewster thing.

For the two years we were friends I did everything that Brewster needed done, so much so that I got into the habit of knocking on his door when I got home from work in case there was some errand or muscle work he needed, so I could get it done before I settled in to watch the news and have dinner, so that I wouldn’t be interrupted; it was a practical matter. I would walk up an extra flight of the steel and concrete stairs at the apartments, past mine on the second level, up to his on the third, knock and wait until he came to the door, say Hi, as if I were checking on him.

Often he didn’t have anything for me to do. But sometimes he’d have some job he’d saved all day until I got home, hold this, drill this, cut this, move these over there and those where these were, do you know where I can find a good this, maybe you could accompany me there. He had been an engineer but his father had done millwork and fine carpentry, worked a lathe, skills Brewster had learned as a boy and used to make tables and shelving, cabinets, and small cases for things, beautifully crafted boxes made from wood and covered in fabric, although now at seventy-something his hands were unsteady and his eyes were shot.

“An old duck,” is what he called himself and any other old man he liked. A man he didn’t like was a “louse.” I liked him, in part, because he talked like no one else I knew, probably only a reflection of his age, vestiges of another time showing in his vocabulary, favorite expressions, a reserve of restraint which prevented him from using most vulgar language.

I still live in the apartment complex. He had been here for years—I never was clear on how many—when I moved in two years ago. When he was evicted from the apartments, he asked me to move in with him, to split the house he was moving to. I had sort of agreed; at least we had talked about getting a place at one time, so he had reason to expect it, but when it really came up, I couldn’t get over the idea of moving in with a seventy-year-old man. He was way past caring about how strange such a roommate arrangement might seem. I was afraid of getting still more tangled up than I already was, of his growing dependency, of making my temporary abandonment of social life with people of my own age and station into a permanent condition.

Splitting a house with Brewster might not have meant that, but at the time the prospect felt like being pulled under water I had been just sort of pleasantly floating in, expecting sometime sooner or later to return to land. So I guess I wasn’t much of a friend to him, when it came down to it, or at least had misrepresented the friend I was.

“You know,” Brewster said, “you could move in with me. Take half the house. There’re two kitchens over there. Four bedrooms.” We were standing on the concrete walkway outside the apartment he was leaving. He was serious. “We could split it up any way you want.” His body was short and heavy with a belly and thick forearms, still strong. His big, bald, ruddy face had round areas where the skin looked thin and stretched. He was looking at me. I should say something, I thought, but the only thing in my head was what I usually said to Brewster— “Sure”一and I didn’t want to say that. Finally I said, “Well,” and looked down into the courtyard, so obviously with nothing to look at that I almost stumbled into the railing. Brewster shrugged, and the light left his blue eyes. “Well, you can think about it,” he said, “House isn’t going anywhere.” He nodded to the door of his now bare apartment. “Play some cards?” We went in.