Ahead of the Curve

About a week ago my older brother called me up, a rarity given how gifted Daniel and I are at avoiding each other.

“Do you often dream about how different everything could be if you were just a better person?” Daniel asked.

It was four in the afternoon and I was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen linoleum floor drinking wine from a mug and stroking my golden retriever Frank’s gorgeous head. Frank kept shoveling his nose against my arm, asking me to rub his ears. I didn’t mind: Frank’s earflaps have the transcendental power of shifting my whole being into a safer realm.

“I love to imagine how a better-me might handle certain situations,” Daniel added.

“Same,” I said. “Along with what life would be like if I could turn into a golden retriever.”

“I miss you, Carly,” Daniel said. “Come see me tomorrow.”

The next day was Wednesday, when I’d promised myself I’d finally give Frank a bath. I leaned down and sniffed him. His reek had reached a whole new level, like a heap of compost in August.

“I have better things to do,” I told Daniel.

“And I’m Miss Universe,” he said. “I’ve got something exciting to share. Come see me.”

“Don’t trick me.”

He hung up.

~

By the time Daniel called, the double whammy of divorce and unemployment had led me to a life of stubborn isolation. Inside was my preferred state. Frank had grown accustomed to finishing my bowl of cereal in the morning. I wore terrycloth exclusively: my favorite bathrobe while at home and, when I absolutely had to leave the house for rations of Science Diet and box wine, I put on Andy’s old sweats—a red pair I’d bought him as a Valentine’s gift the first year we got married.

Daniel insisted we meet during his lunch break at the artsy coffee shop/bookstore combo where he works. It’s the kind of establishment meant to collect and display pretty people. The whole place was humming with edgy, feathered youth preening and sipping lattes when I arrived. I spotted Daniel standing behind the espresso machine, banging silver gadgets around and seeming hard at work.

I came up and leaned on the other side of the coffee bar. He didn’t even look up.

“I’m kinda busy right now, Carly.”

The execution of this whole affair—me showing up at this place just in time to catch him still in full shift—stunk of Daniel so badly that I was tempted to turn around and go back home.

“It’s 2 p.m.” I wrapped my knuckles twice on the counter for emphasis. “As you requested, sir.”

The cashier next to Daniel was an angelic-faced man with dyed-platinum hair and an impressive patchwork of tattoos up his arms. He leaned toward Daniel and whispered into his ear. They exchanged snarky smiles.

“Yep, that’s her,” my brother said.

“It’s so nice to meet you.” The blond waif slid a thick slice of coffee cake toward me. “On the house.”

“No, thanks,” I mumbled, sucking in my cheeks and trying to look bored. “I’m on a diet.”

Daniel sighed. “Just chill at that open table.” He pointed to an empty two-seater in the corner. “I’ll be there soon.”

I sat thumbing through magazines for another 45 minutes before Daniel at last joined me, a cup of coffee in each hand.

“Yours has no cream and sugar,” he said. “Because, you know, the diet.”

There’s this feeling I get whenever I’m in front of my big brother for the first time after a while. He wears crisp button-ups, folded at the elbow and just the right amount of leathered jewelry. His hair is usually slicked back and secured at the top of his head in a tidy knot. He’s just always been the sort that can melt lifelong squares like me into pools of embarrassment. I understand I should be too old for this, and yet a nasty edge of envy will still creep into me at times, a skunk’s stench through the car window.

Daniel dragged his eyes down my terrycloth tracksuit. “Why are you so . . . absorbent? You’ll have to promise to change that if you join me.”

“Join you?”

He took a small envelope from his front pocket and slid it across the table.

I was suspicious.

I picked up the envelope and opened it. Inside was a single turquoise ticket to Royal Cruises, set to leave out of Galveston in two days.

“I won it in a raffle here at work.” Daniel leaned closer towards me. “Think about it,” he whispered. “Fantasy. Luxury. Escape. Your ticket to ride, little sister.”

I ran my thumb along the edge of the ticket. “You’re not freaked by the water?”

Back when Daniel was seven and I six, we’d briefly taken swim classes together at the Y. I was delighted to discover I had a knack for swimming, and that Daniel was terrified of water. They strapped goofy floats on both of us, but I thought it’d be funny to yank Daniel’s safety gear off of him and pull him into the deep end while the instructor wasn’t looking. I don’t know what I was thinking to do such a horrific thing. I feel shame now to realize how, even at six, I was capable of letting this worst self control my actions. The second after I let go of him, Daniel dropped like a bowling ball underneath the water. I screamed. An adult rushed over, but Daniel still swallowed so much water the instructor had to clap him on the back to get him to breathe again. I’ve never known him to go near water since.

“No, not scared.” Daniel finished his coffee then reached across the table to drain the last of mine. He smiled. “But that doesn’t mean I forgive you for trying to drown me.”

~

Sweet in sibling love is never simple. Sweet from Daniel means the secondhand CDs he cleaned out of his car as a Christmas gift. A half-eaten cheesecake for my twenty-first birthday. At my bridal shower, he gave me a sequined lingerie set that belonged to a friend of his. But I’ve long ago accepted that Daniel’s half-ass investment in our siblinghood is as good as I’ll ever get. I took the ticket.

He made me promise to pack every photo I had of Andy and bring them with me on the cruise.

“What do you have in mind?” I asked. “Collage? An old-school burn-book?”

“Meet me at my place tomorrow morning,” he said, “and bring Frank. Joseph can watch him. I promise he won’t fat-shame the dog away from any cake.”

And so, we made the four-hour drive together to Galveston and boarded the first cruise ship of either of our lives.

~

Daniel has been out for more than a decade, but this was the first time he’d invited me so directly into his life. Our father was a tobacco-chewing redneck from Baytown. Descended from a long line of oil money (dried up) and hot-blooded bigotry (rushing strong), Dad was the sort of beastly Texan man who wielded his ignorance proudly. I was in high school when Dad called Daniel’s favorite geometry teacher, Mr. Kelly, a fairy over grace one Sunday supper. They both got into it. Daniel hit Dad. Ruthless in his anger, Dad pulled back his fist when my cries stopped him. Daniel was out of the house by the end of the month. For reasons not totally clear to me now, it took years before we caught up again. Our reunions usually took the form of random, tanked-up nights. Blame the booze or our inevitably fraught sibling dynamic, but one of us always seems to say something that blows the whole night up. When we met up about a year ago, what began as a pleasant conversation mutated into a screaming match about which one of us our father hated more. Surprisingly, we both swore Dad most disliked the other person. I said Daniel was more maligned for being gay. Daniel contended it was me because Dad always expected I’d stay nearby to take care of him as he aged. Neither of us made room to voice what we had in common—a hurt, a shared ache for our father, for his failing to give either of us the love and attention we so deeply, even after all these years, needed.

After that, it took a few months for my pride to cool enough to suggest another get-together, during which the conversation of my marriage surfaced. Daniel stung me with a series of prying questions about Andy, then concluded that he wouldn’t be surprised if Andy was cheating on me. Less than twelve weeks later, Andy moved out. Shortly after, I found a seventy-dollar bottle of Malbec on my doorstep with a Post-it note tacked on top: Better luck next time. Love always, Daniel.

The kicker is that in most things, my big brother is right. Andy was cheating on me. On his deathbed, Dad gave Daniel a handwritten letter and his prized coin collection. To me, he gave nothing. Our father did hate me more. I think that’s why I took the ticket. Perhaps Daniel was also right to invite me on this week-long gay cruise ship getaway down the Gulf of Mexico.

~

At first, not even a constant supply of booze and choppy waves was enough to help me forget my woes. Some booking mix-up resulted in Daniel and I sharing a king-sized bed with a round mirror on the ceiling. When we first saw it, I wanted to complain, but Daniel convinced me that keeping the romantic suite came with its own perks. He opened the mini-fridge and pointed to a complimentary bottle of Champagne and a box of chocolate-dipped strawberries.

“You and me in a plush room together on a gay cruise ship,” I said, a strawberry poised in the air. “I love imagining all the different ways this could offend Dad.”

“This isn’t a gay cruise line,” Daniel said. “It’s a straight line open to LGBT travelers. Not too many options out of Galveston.” Daniel looked up at the round mirror. “But, in honor of Dad’s rage, let’s only go to the gay events.”

We both waved up at our reflections.

~

It didn’t take long to fall into a rhythm of sorts. This particular ship’s 3,500 passengers seemed to fall into three main groups: nuzzling couples, roaming singles, and middle-aged women. The ladies all wore ridiculous hats and cat-eyed sunglasses and seemed to take a special, sexual pleasure from participating in any themed, gay dinner or show, where they’d sit as close as possible to the stage, bounce in their seats, and holler wildly at the dancers. Daniel and I both veered away from the couples. Daniel also shrugged off the advances he received from other singles.

“This is our week,” he said when I elbowed him for declining a free drink.

I didn’t say anything, but I could tell by the bear hug Daniel pulled me into how much he prioritized our sibling trip.

Instead, we made friends with Clarence—a reformed gambling addict who sometimes preferred our company to his crew of other gray-haired, retired men—and Barb, one of the more tolerable cat-eyed ladies. Reality began to warp into vacation time as our days took on a pattern: a lazy wake-up, followed by coffee and mimosas. Daniel liked to spend his morning jogging around the upper deck track while I nursed rum drinks by the Riviera pool closest to our cabin. Sometimes the sight of love-hazed couples and prowling singles, or the idea of Daniel fit with sweat as he neared the fourth mile of his run, would inspire me to actually jump in the pool and whack at the water for a few laps. But, inevitably, I’d feel more uncomfortable in the water than out of it, and throw my towel in to order another fruity drink. Lunch we spent napping in our cabin. Most afternoons we’d meet up with either Barb for a few hands of Hearts or Clarence to sit in on Speedo Bingo before going for seafood at the Blue Gulf Moon, one of the ship’s more subdued dining rooms.

It was an artificial reality, I knew. But it felt so right. Here was a place where I could literally float over my problems. Here was endless booze and shrimp and the lukewarm company of strangers who didn’t need to know shit about me to decide, hey, Carly’s A-OK. That I could simultaneously indulge in my drink and depression and be under the sun in a turquoise sarong, smiling at folks if I felt like it was, quite simply, incredible. If I weren’t so fucking sad, I would have been happy.

It wasn’t until the fourth day of our cruise that Daniel had me pull out all the Andy photos that he’d ask me to pack, then taped them all over our cabin. Next to each one he placed a black Sharpie.

“It’s a tactic I like to call ‘ripping off the Band-Aid,’” he said.

Above the toilet was a picture of Andy and me in Aruba for our honeymoon, glowing more with sunburn than fresh love. In the nook between the mini-fridge and sink was a collection of candids: Andy painting our living room in his underwear, a slash of ecru down his butt where I’d flirtatiously dashed him with the roller brush; neon lights reflecting off Andy’s glasses on the Fourth of July; Andy asleep on our plaid couch with Frank snoring on top of him.

I guess Daniel planned for me to become desensitized, that the pain of being surrounded by all these miniatures would give way to less ache for the absence of one, life-sized Andy. Instead, I skipped my morning pool time and got extra sloshed alone in the cabin. Daniel bounced into our room after his jog to find me several Bloody Marys deep and crying to a Christmas photo that it wasn’t my fault we couldn’t conceive.

“Christ,” he said when he saw me, clutching a hostile fistful of Sharpies.

“So that’s it?” I wiped snot off my face with my wrist and waved the Sharpies. “We’re putting Hitler staches on Andy and calling me healed?”

“So that’s it?” Daniel parroted. “He left you because of the kid thing?”

“I guess so.” I reached up and pulled Christmas Andy off the wall. “Or it could also have to do with this ice-queen lawyer bitch from Texarkana with gummy teeth and a perfect rack.”

“Don’t be vicious,” Daniel said. “You’re not pretty enough to get away with it.”

He swiped my empty drink out of my hand and crossed to the mini fridge. I watched him move quickly: pineapple juice, ginger ale, and a splash of rum. Differences aside, at least we’ve both always understood what tempers pain best. He used his finger to stir the drinks, then handed me a cup and raised his up for a toast.

“Step one,” he said.

God Bless. Then another round, this time with more booze. I tried to tune the pictures of Andy out of my vision. Ocean light streamed in through the sliding glass door and Daniel hummed as he poured, ice cubes clinking sweetly while seagulls caw-cawed outside our window. Then he came to sit by me, side by side on the foot of the bed and, even though I couldn’t actually feel the movement of the Gulf churning us forward, our bodies swayed in unison.

“Step two,” I said to Daniel. We toasted again.

“I like Cruise-You,” I said.

“I like Cruise-You too, little sister.” Daniel sloshed his drink around and continued, “and I like not-Cruise-You too, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Dared I admit to feeling close to my brother.

There was nothing to do next but go to the Blue Gulf Moon for an early haul of seafood. The Moon had an elevated platform in the middle of its dining room that, 24/7, exhibited dancing men with caramel abs and nautical panties while guests ate. Daniel said sea-themed lingerie could cheer anyone up, so he scouted us a good table as I walked through the buffet line to load up a tray with oysters.

“Careful with the aphrodisiacs, Carly,” a familiar voice said next to me. “Gonna get all wound up with no place to go.”

I followed a line of beaded eye-catchers up to Clarence’s fleshy, creased face.

“I’m well aware,” I said to him.

Clarence patted me on the shoulder and chuckled. “Mind if I join you tonight?” he asked. “My usual gang got too yippy off cocktails at morning bingo and had to opt for an afternoon disco nap.”

Clarence and I found Daniel at a table in the back of the dining hall. We settled down and Clarence began lining up ramekins of cocktail sauce with businesslike efficiency.

“So,” he asked, sliding his gaze between Daniel and me, “how is my favorite duo today?”

“Somewhere between toasted and burnt to a crisp,” I said, attempting to wave a server over for a drink.

Clarence pulled a few shrimps through his cocktail sauce, then paused to scan over me.

“Watch it, Carly,” he said, a fat pink shrimp dangling out of his mouth. “Addiction will eat you up and define you. Some like to be numb. Some like to be alive.”

“I’m barely either,” I said. “I’m in need of resuscitation.”

Our server arrived—a handsome blond man with penciled brows and a Jesus fish necklace—and took our drink orders. When he returned, he set my vodka soda an awkward distance from me, sighing loudly.

“Do you think he hates that a straight woman is in here?” I asked the table after he left.

Daniel moved the drink closer to me. “No idea,” he said. “But you’re going to owe me a year out on the town with this tab we’ve got running.”

“Oh, poor thing is probably just exhausted,” said Clarence. “They work them to the bone on these cruises. Y’all make sure to leave a nice tip the last night.”

I selected an oyster, moved my fork around the shell, detached the meat, and let it slide down my throat, eyes closed. Heaven.

When I opened my eyes, Clarence was watching me, grinning.

“Better than sex, isn’t it?”

“Sure is.” I reached for another oyster. “Here’s to no sex, no job. Just oysters, decadence, and washboard abs.”

Clarence turned to Daniel. “What are you going to do with her?”

“I’m the family failure,” I mumbled.

Daniel rolled his eyes. “I’m fed up with you feeling sorry for yourself.”

“It’s nothing,” I said, suppressing a burp. “Just divorce. Mass embarrassment. General apocalypse.”

“When did you embarrass yourself?” Daniel reached for one of my oysters. “Except when you wear that balding terrycloth robe out of the house? Or when you talk about nothing but your decrepit dog? Or when you can’t get over yourself. Just like, oh I don’t know, right now?”

Since we’d been kids, this was a common tactic of Daniel’s. He’d tell me to get over myself, even after he’d left me alone with our sunken, angry father. Just leave, he’d said, even though I wasn’t as old as him, or as brave.

I took a breath to say something back, but Clarence put a cool hand on my arm first.

“Listen, Carly,” he said. “Life is ebbs and flows. Just like this water we’re floating in. If I were still a gambling man, I’d bet good money that you’re about to be on the up.”

I wanted to stand up, pound my fist on the table, and lay the whole situation down for them so they would appreciate the weight of the matter. But instead I just decided to eat the rest of my oysters in as much dignified silence as I could muster.

Meanwhile, Clarence began asking Daniel about his romantic life.

“Do you have someone to miss?” he asked.

“Well,” Daniel said. This uncomfortable smile stretched across his face as he paused to shift his gaze back to me like he was bracing me for something. “I actually have been dating someone for a few months.”

I didn’t know.

Clarence scooted his glasses up his nose and squinted closer at Daniel. “Oh, I bet he’s wonderful,” he said.

“He is.”

I thought about the king-sized bed in our suite. The timing of Daniel’s “present” to me—right when everything in my life was taking this grand nosedive. Daniel was looking at me now, his handsome face stretched into a goofy half-grin.

“Not the right time to tell me,” I said for him.

“Well, yeah.” He kept his eyes on me, serious. “But finding the right time with you is like waiting for a solar eclipse.”

It all made sense. This had never been Daniel’s and my trip. It was Daniel’s and someone else’s. Someone he loved.

“This was a pity trip,” I said. “You didn’t win these tickets in a raffle. You didn’t just want to hang out with me.”

“The divorce was nasty,” Daniel said. “Then, your job. It’s been you and the dog hiding away for months.”

The nerve of him to say that to me when he hadn’t called or checked in except to mock me. I looked at my mound of empty oyster shells.

“It’s a healing process.” I turned to Clarence for backup. “It takes time, right?”

I waited for Clarence to touch my arm again in comfort, but he had opted to stay out of the conversation and was now pretending to be absorbed in the show.

Daniel gestured to the oyster shells as if they were proof of my indolence. I watched his handsome face turn red and his eyes squint like they did when he was working through different options, trying to churn up the best possible thing to say.

“Joseph bought these tickets months ago,” he finally said. “But he donated them to you—to us—so we could spend time together.”

Joseph, I thought. I knew a Joseph. The platinum-haired guy from the bookstore.

“Well, Joseph is deranged if he thinks bringing me on a tacky, gay cruise ship is a good idea.” I stood up and tossed my napkin on the table.

Clarence chewed loudly on his ice cubes.

Daniel stood up too. “It was a nice gift, Carly. A healthy distraction. Maybe even something to get you into a better place.”

He stared up at the ceiling and I stared down at the table, my hands twisted around the napkin.

“Fine,” I said flatly. “Thanks.”

“Carly,” Daniel said. “Calm down. Try to actually have fun.”

“We are not having fun, Daniel,” I yelled. “I’m sunburned and my husband left me.” I couldn’t stop myself, and so I kept talking. “And I’m jobless and I’m always drunk and my fucking dog smells like death and you don’t actually give a shit about me and . . . it feels like I’m strapped tight into a roller coaster, clicking closer to the very top, until click click click,” I threw my napkin across the table at him, “I’m going to topple down and land Christ knows where.”

I sat back down.

Clarence spat the last of his ice cubes back into his water glass. “Well, will you look at that!” he said with terrible enthusiasm and pointed to the middle of the dining hall, where the floor had started to flood with dancers. “Ay caramba, baby!”

Both Daniel and I looked at the dancers. It was corny. The troupe of men were in a conga line, cheering and snaking through the floor as more and more guests joined in. The energy of two hundred people cheering and dancing melded with the music. The walls around us vibrated and laughter rolled around the Pacific Gulf Moon’s dining room. I smelled salt, citrus, and fish. I was enveloped in briny ocean air and the exciting, husky press of bodies. Folks ran from all sides to join the dance floor, many of them dragging more reticent partners, but all of them looked open and gleaming with happiness. Daniel and Clarence got up.

“I’ll just sit here a little longer,” I said, but they’d already left. Daniel didn’t even look back over his shoulder at me, didn’t even wave his hands for me to join.

~

When I woke up the next morning, Daniel was lying on his side facing me.

“You’ve been asleep for thirteen hours,” he said.

I sat up and looked at the clock by our bed. It wasn’t yet 6 a.m.

“There’s no great lesson in this, Carly,” Daniel said. “Happiness isn’t a fight.”

He was wrong. There’s always a fight. There’s always a lesson, and a loser. He was just too far ahead of the curve to even be bothered by it. I lay my hand on Daniel’s face. He hadn’t shaved since the cruise started, and his beard hair bristled against my palm.

“Do I look rugged?” he asked.

“Very.” I turned to pull the photo of Christmas Andy off the wall. “I’m sorry Joseph isn’t here with you.”

“Same.” Daniel sighed. “You’ve been no fun.”

“Please just tell me what we’re doing with these,” I said. “I’m sick of them.”

“Sure.” He stood up and lifted the stack of pictures out my hands. “Now that we’ve been overloaded with mariachis in jeweled speedos and endless cocktails and dancing and you’re still not distracted enough from that piece of shit, let’s just do this.”

He spun around and slid our balcony door open.

“Oh, come on,” I stuttered, falling after him, “That’s littering.”

I met him at the balcony edge.

“Ha,” Daniel said. “You don’t really care about littering.”

“Yes, I do.” I snatched the pile of photos from him. “If I shove you off right now,” I said, “what will happen?”

Daniel looked down over the ship’s edge and back at me. “I’d die,” he whispered. “I’m a terrible swimmer. Remember?”

He was still smiling, but I saw a familiar flinch in Daniel’s eyes.

“Okay, follow me,” I said, tugging on his shoulder. “I know what I want to do.”

So I spun back through the cabin and out into the hallway, then through the closest open-air atrium, letting Daniel trot behind me. Outside the air was humid but cool. I heard the ocean around us. We got to the pool, lined with empty lawn chairs, and paused together to look up.

It was a lovely morning: a silver crescent moon still glowed big in the predawn sky as a few hazy gold fingers of sunlight were just beginning to stretch out from the east. The globe rose, purple and vast around us, and I suddenly couldn’t stop thinking about how terrifyingly small, and brief, I was. I dropped the photos and took Daniel’s hand. He is brief, too, I thought and, as if reading my mind, Daniel’s fingers curled against my palm.

“Let’s go in,” I said. “Forget the photos.”

Daniel frowned and took a step back.

“Together,” I whispered. “One . . . two . . .”

“Three,” Daniel said. We stepped together into the water. “It smells like chlorine,” Daniel said. “And feet.”

We both laughed. I kept ahold of Daniel’s hands as he waded deeper into the water. I’d never seen him in a pool since that day at the Y when we were kids. It was strange to watch his face now: a grown man tiptoeing through the shallow end in shorts, taking slow deep breaths.

He smiled at me then, and his palms released from mine and he stretched his arms out to spin in circles, the tips of his fingers dipped beneath the surface. For a few minutes, I stood still as the small waves from Daniel’s circle lapped against my stomach. Then I stretched out my arms, too, closed my eyes, and lay flat to float on my back, my brother next to me, sturdy as any flesh and bone could be.