And look here at Clay, in the backstory.
What can we say about him?
How did life begin, as a boy and a son and a Dunbar?
It was pretty simple, really, with a multitude lying within: Once, in the tide of Dunbar past, there were five brothers, but the fourth of us was the best of us, and a boy of many traits.
How did Clay become Clay, anyway?
* * *
—
In the beginning there was all of us—each our own small part to tell the whole—and our father had helped, every birth; he was first to be handed to hold us. As Penelope liked to tell it, he’d be standing there, acutely aware, and he’d cry at the bedside, beaming. He never flinched at the slop or the burnt-looking bits, as the room began to spin. For Penelope, that was everything.
When it was over, she’d succumb to dizziness.
Her heartbeat leapt in her lips.
* * *
—
It was funny, they liked to tell us, how when we were born, we all had something they loved:
Me, it was my feet. The newborn crinkly feet.
Rory, it was his punched-up nose when he first came out, and the noises he made in his sleep; something like a world title fight, but at least they knew he was alive.
Henry had ears like paper.
Tommy was always sneezing.
And of course, there was Clay, between us:
The boy who came out smiling.
As the story went, when Penny was in labor with Clay, they left Henry, Rory, and me with Mrs. Chilman. On the drive to the hospital they nearly pulled over; Clay was coming quickly. As Penny would later tell him: the world had wanted him badly, but what she didn’t do was ask why.
Was it to hurt, to humiliate?
Or to love and make great?
Even now it’s hard to decide.
* * *
—
It was morning, summer and humid, and when they made it to the maternity ward, Penny was shouting, still walking, and his head was starting to crown. He was very nearly torn rather than born, as if the air had reefed him out.
In the delivery room, there was a lot of blood.
It was splayed on the floor like murder.
As for the boy, he lay in the muggy atmosphere, and was strangely, quietly, smiling; his bloodcurdled face dead silent. When an unsuspecting nurse came in, she stood openmouthed and blaspheming. She stopped and said, “Jesus Christ.”
It was our mother, all dizzy, who replied.
“I hope not,” she said, and our father still grinned. “We know what we did to Him.”
* * *
—
As a boy, as I said, he was the best of us.
To our parents, in particular, he was the special one, I’m sure of it, for he rarely fought, hardly cried, and loved everything they spoke of and told him. Night for night, while the rest of us made excuses, Clay would help with the dishes, as a trade for one more story. To Penny he’d say, “Can you tell me about Vienna again, and all those bunk beds? Or what about this one?” His face was in the dinner plates, the suds across his thumbs. “Can you tell me about the statue of Stalin? And who was Stalin anyway?”
To Michael he’d say, “Can you tell me all about Moon, Dad, and the snake?”
He was always in the kitchen, while the rest of us watched TV, or fought in the lounge or the hallway.
* * *
—
Of course, as things go, though, our parents were also editors: The stories were almost-everythings.
Penny didn’t tell him yet how long they spent on a garage floor, to beat, to blow and burn themselves, to exorcise past lives. Michael didn’t talk of Abbey Hanley, who became Abbey Dunbar, then Abbey Someone-Else. He didn’t tell him about burying the old TW, or of The Quarryman, or how once he’d loved to paint. He’d said nothing yet about heartbreak, or how lucky heartbreak could be.
No, for now, most-of-truths were enough.
It was enough for Michael to say he was on the porch one day and met a woman out front with a piano. “If it wasn’t for that,” he’d solemnly explain, “I wouldn’t have you or your brothers—”
“Or Penelope.”
Michael smiled and said, “Damn right.”
What neither of them could know was that Clay would hear the stories in their entireties, not long before it was too late.
Her smile would be hoisted up by then.
Her face would be in decay.
* * *
—
As you might imagine, his first memories were only vague, of two particular things: Our parents, his brothers.
The shapes of us, our voices.
He remembered our mother’s piano hands as they sailed across the keys. They had a magical sense of direction—hitting the M, hitting the E, and every other part of PLEASE MARRY ME.
To the boy her hair was sunny.
Her body was warm and slim.
He would remember himself as a four-year-old, being frightened of that upright brown thing. While each of us had our own dealings with it, Clay saw it as something not-his.
When she played he put his head there.
The stick-thin thighs belonged to him.
* * *
—
As for Michael Dunbar, our father, Clay recalled the sound of his car—the engine on winter mornings. The return in the half dark. He smelt like strain, long days, and brickwork.
In what would later go down as the Shirtless Eating Days (as you’ll soon see), he remembered the sight of his muscles; for apart from all the construction labor, he would sometimes—and this was how he put it—go out to the torture chamber, which was push-ups and sit-ups in the garage. Sometimes it was a barbell as well, but not even heavily weighted. It was the number of lifts, overhead.
Sometimes we went out with him:
A man and five boys doing push-ups.
The five of us falling away.
And yes—in those years of growing up in that place, our dad was a sight to see. He was average height, slight in weight, but fit and tight-looking; lean. His arms weren’t big or bulging, they were athletic and charged with meaning. You could see each move, each twitch.
And all those Goddamn sit-ups.
Our dad had a concrete stomach.
* * *
—
In those days, too, I remind myself, our parents were something else.
Sure, they fought sometimes, they argued.
There was the odd suburban thunderbolt, but they were mostly those people who’d found each other; they were golden and bright-lit and funny. Often they seemed in cahoots somehow, like jailbirds who wouldn’t leave; they loved us, they liked us, and that was a pretty good trick. After all, take five boys, put them in one small house, and see what it looks and sounds like: it’s a porridge of mess and fighting.
I remember things like mealtimes, and how sometimes it got too much: the forks dropping, the knives pointing, and all those boys’ mouths eating. There’d be arguing, elbowing, food all over the floor, food all over our clothes, and “How did that piece of cereal end up there—on the wall?” until a night came when Rory sealed it; he spilt half his soup down his shirt.
Our mother didn’t panic.
She stood, cleaned up, and he would eat the rest of it shirtless—and our father got the idea. We were all still celebrating when he said it: “You lot, too.”
Henry and I nearly choked. “Sorry?”
“You didn’t hear me?”
“Ohhh, shit,” said Henry.
“Should I make you take your pants off, too?”
For a whole summer, we ate like that, our T-shirts heaped near the toaster. To be fair, though, and to Michael Dunbar’s credit, from the second time onwards, he took his own shirt off with us. Tommy, who was still in that beautiful phase when kids speak totally unfiltered, shouted, “Hey! Hey, Dad! What are you doing here in just your nipples?”
The rest of us roared with laughter, especially Penny Dunbar, but Michael was up to the task. A slight flickering in one of his triceps.
“And what about your mum, you blokes? Should she go shirtless, too?”
She never needed rescuing, but it was Clay who’d often be willing.
“No,” he said, but she did it:
Her bra was old and scruffy-looking.
It was faded, strapped to each breast.
She ate and smiled regardless.
She said, “Now don’t go burning your chests.”
We knew what to get her for Christmas.
* * *
—