On a hook were rolls of tape, and she took one down, found the end, listened to the tape cry as she pulled it free, then sealed that last box back up.
Joan yanked her hair out of its braid, rubbed her head hard until her black curls were flying through the air, rubbed harder and harder, trying to sink her nails into her skull, to reach the tough dura mater just beneath the skull, hoping to find some other viable solution, some other way to handle all of the next years, a way that would not, did not, involve her.
She felt wetness on her scalp, beneath all of that hair. She had drawn blood. She knew her Latin: Dura mater: tough mother. There was no protective covering in the brain that meant tough father. That sacrifice parents made, she guessed this was it, and she, the sacrificing, sacrificial lamb.
THE SEVEN-YEAR CYCLE
Saat barshiye ghatnakaram
21
In mid-December, Joan won a small battle with Eric. The house would be cleared of his Solve=MC2 staff, the computers put away, the electrical cords rolled up, the rooms restored to their intended uses, while Daniel was home for the holiday week.
Daniel had refused Joan’s entreaties during the semester to return for a weekend, saying, “I don’t want to get in the way of what Eric’s doing.” Meant to sound selfless, his words blistered with jealousy, the sibling rivalry that until now had flared only once, when Eric was deemed gifted, skipped from second to third grade. Joan had been an outsider in her own family, but an only child who had not experienced sibling rivalry. As a young writer, she had gained fame and success quickly, had risen to the top immediately, and it was only lately, in these months of upheaval, that she felt a tinge of envy when reading laudatory reviews about the novels or story collections of others. But she had her published collections to gird her up, Words of New Beginnings at the bottom of a box. She had a life to remember, a way to view herself as other than what she had become. Daniel did not. He was still nearly transparent, striving to figure himself out, unformed as he was supposed to be at this age, a phase Eric was avoiding entirely, his genius coloring in all the blank spaces. Eric lacked many of the skills and talents people required to get along, to get through life, but his genius was all that he needed. That’s what was being proven within the walls of their new house.
She knew Daniel’s first time home would not be what he rightfully anticipated—college freshman fawned over as the conquering hero, the family eager for every detail about how his first semester had gone, the classes he was taking, how well he had done on his exams, the swim races he had medaled in, the friends he had made. But at least the house could be cleared of the evidence that Daniel’s place as the eldest no longer meant much of anything, that Eric’s pursuits had reformulated their positions, had altered entirely the concept of family life.
From September through December, both boys had been cloistered, at school and at home, but there the similarity ended. While Daniel was trudging to his classes and doing whatever it was that freshmen did during all those other hours, his younger brother was in the second stage of development for his computer program, managing a team of people, not viewed as the teenager he was, but as a force, the head of a viable company, his age no deterrent to those taking their marching orders from him, or to the investors who wanted to be in early, on the ground floor.
*
“Hey,” Daniel said to Eric when he came in the front doors with Joan and Martin.
“Daniel,” Eric called out and flung himself at his brother.
Daniel allowed himself to be hugged for a few seconds, then stepped back, and said, “I’m going to swim, is that okay?” Joan and Martin nodded.
“Can I come too?” Eric asked, sounding like the eager younger brother he actually was.
Daniel shook his head. “Training, buddy. I’ve got a big meet in January as soon as I get back to school. Now’s not the time for me to be fooling around.”
Despite the snow that was falling, that continued to fall through his ten days at home, that included his eighteenth birthday, which he adamantly refused to celebrate in any way, Daniel spent as many hours as he could swimming in the heated saltwater pool. Joan felt his despair each time he was too worn out to keep racing against himself, came back into the house wrapped in a towel, dusted in snow, showered and dressed, and found himself with his brother. Joan could see his mental calculations, comparing himself to Eric, and Eric, oblivious as he had always been, nattering on to Daniel about what had happened already with Solve, what would happen in the coming months, the additional two million dollars in investments they had received after winning the incubator prize, never once contemplating that Daniel was not as delighted for him as he was for himself.
Joan found Daniel wherever he was, sitting quietly with him at the limestone island in the kitchen, insisting they go for a drive, or walk in the cold along the Potomac, or have lunch out in Rhome, engaging him in as much conversation as he could stand, asking for more information than she needed about his classes, his roommate and teammates, his professors, the girls he was interested in, the books he was reading beyond the curriculum of his courses.
Three days in, he allowed Joan to crack him open, and then they talked as they used to talk when he was a boy, about his life and his dreams. Regardless of Eric, he still intended to pursue a degree in business.
She heard him when he said, “I get that Eric has this inexplicable talent, but I’m just as smart in other ways, right? Plus, I have what he doesn’t have, good instincts about people, I’m sociable and he’s really not. Actually, Mom, I see myself as a dealmaker,” and Joan understood that he was speaking rhetorically, or, if not rhetorically, he wasn’t interested in what she might have to say, was determined to heed no one’s advice but his own. She knew he would ignore her, and so she said nothing, but she wanted to shake him awake, thoroughly discourage him, yell, “Daniel, you don’t belong in that world, you never have. It’s your brother’s world now, so find something else, pursue a different avenue!” But she knew she shouldn’t, and so she didn’t.