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.
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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.