Feature: From Genesis

By Peter Kusnic

It began with the sirens. The twelve-noon whistle on the roof of the high school had wailed that chilly fall day, pierced his eardrums with a spiteful cacophony, and, sitting down to dinner after a long hot shower, he could still hear them wailing—rattling the silver, the China cabinet, the dim-lit chandelier, the empty crystal wine glasses on the table. No one else could hear it. His mother piled the plates with roasted potatoes and garlic green beans, his father scanned the Sunday newspaper at the head of the table, and Victor and Lily, their hands entangled under the table across from him, beamed with conceit. No one knew. He felt giddy when he remembered that no one knew—just him. His heart was pounding, as if any minute the revelation might pour from the silver gravy boat—his lust, his misdeed—splash their faces, scald them, as it had scalded him that afternoon in the men’s room at the high school track when the sirens went off and so did he.
“Looks great, Dolores,” said Victor.
“Eat up,” she said. “Especially you, Edward. You’ve gotten skinny as a twig away at school.” She forked a grease-glistening hen carcass onto his plate.
“But I don’t believe in eating dead animals,” he said, smirking.
“Edward, now you and I both know that that’s not true,” she said.
The paper at the head of the table crinkled. “Edward, eat,” said his father.
“I don’t want to eat it. I’ll eat the other stuff.”
“After I spent all day cooking it.” Her voice thickened in her throat. “You’ll ruin your sister’s birthday,” she said, sitting down, finally, at the opposite head of the table.
“Eat the hen, for Christ’s sake,” his father said. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“Can’t I make my own decisions?”
His father slammed a fist on the table, and Edward jumped. “Eat.” His neck flushed purple. “Now.”
Lily clanked her glass with her fork, her eyes gleaming at Victor’s. “We have an announcement to make,” she said, but Edward zoned out, noticed Victor’s neck as thick and sinewy as a tree trunk, his bicep, peppered with fine red hairs and dotted with freckles, bulging his short-sleeved polo shirt and became disgusted.
The next thing Edward knew his mother was crying. He went for his fork; he did not want her to cry; but then he saw it glinting in the chandlier light. A ring. “A platinum-set, four-carat, princess-cut diamond,” said Lily. She had sprung from her chair, waving her hand before their mother’s hypnotized face. They were engaged to be married.
“Oh, Lily,” his mother said as if about to faint. She cupped her wet face with her hands. “Oh, my baby!”
His father put down the paper and reached over the table to Victor, shook his hand. “Good man,” he said.
Edward was quiet, the expression on his face most certainly one of disgust. Victor was a linebacker turned law student, and since he and Lily started seeing each other four years ago Edward never had anything to say to him. He hated football, detested law, and he knew his sister could do much better.
They passed and poured the bottle of red wine. Edward drank cranberry juice. He had a drive ahead of him back to school.
“Things are shaping up nicely for these two,” said his father as if they were not there, “with Lily’s new job at the accounting firm and Victor’s new position at the Law Review.” He paused. “Edward you should think about law school after next year.”
Lily put her hands together, gasped. “That’s perfect, “ she said. “Victor can help you prepare for the LSAT. And, you know, Edward, you need excellent writing skills to be a lawyer.”
“I’d be glad to help you, Ed,” said Victor. Of all things in the world, being called Ed got him most, seized him at the core and yanked out his entrails. “I know a ton of writers in my program.”
Staring down at the hen, Edward released a hot breath. “That is not the kind of writing I do,” he said, bitingly, and for a moment they sat uncomfortably in silence.
His father raised a glass. “To your children,” he said.
Edward shrunk in his chair, his fork laid on the plate of untouched food; he knew what was coming.
“To our grandchildren. To a promising future,” he continued, and Edward cringed. He hated toasts. He did not raise his glass. He did not say, ‘Here, here,’ with his mother, and he did not smile, he did not glow—not like Lily and Victor across from him, red-faced and exuberant, as they finished their wine with a gulp, leaving what looked like bloodstains around their mouths. The sirens returned, blocked out all that clanking silverware and obsequious conversation as they dug into their hens, breaking bones and slurping juices. He returned to his thoughts, to the lightning speed at which it shot out, struck his cheek, dribbled into his mouth, slid into his left eyeball and tried to impregnate it, to the way it burned and his eye swelled with salty sin. His stomach was turning. It was exhilarating, intoxicating—and no one knew. His left eye began to twitch. He sat up straight in his chair at the dinner table, pushing those thoughts out of his mind, worried his face might give it away. He was ready to go. Take off in the Buick. Head south down I-71 toward Flanders. He needed a cigarette.
His mother was eyeing him. “You know Victor and Lily met their senior year,” she whispered. “That’s right around the corner for you.”
“Right.”
He cut into the hen and released a plume of steam. He sawed off a chunk of meat, put it in his mouth, chewed. It took all of his self control to hold the vomit down.
Once the silver clanked with finality on the plates, Edward was ready to go.
“But your sister’s birthday cake!” his mother chirped. The sun had just set behind the explosive red trees in the picture window and he hadn’t had a cigarette since he sucked one down on his drive back from the track that afternoon.
“Mom, let him go,” said Lily. “He has better things to do, I’m sure.”
“It’s getting dark,” said his father from behind the paper. “Just go.”
Lily sprang from her seat and pattered barefoot into the kitchen. “I have something for you, Edward,” she yelled.
“Something for him,” his father said, “on your own birthday? When he didn’t even get you a birthday present?”
Edward looked down at the frayed ribcage of the hen, dispirited, as Lily pattered back into the dining room with a moleskin notebook.
“He’s poor, dad,” said Lily. “All college kids are poor.” She handed him the notebook. On the inside she wrote, Don’t forget to dedicate your first book to me—Lily. She pecked him on the cheek where it had landed. He felt all the blood rush out of his face, trickle cold into his full stomach. “So when you’re rich and famous you don’t forget your favorite sister.”
Edward laughed. “Yeah, right,” he said. “My only sister.”
“Lester, give him gas money,” said his mother.
His father groaned, peeled a fifty dollar bill from a gold money clip, and held it up between his two fingers.
Edward walked up to him. “This better go in your gas tank,” his father said, and gave it to him in a firm handshake.
When he kissed his mother’s mouth with those lips he had to go; it was too much; it was too close. “Bye, Victor,” he said, clacking down the foyer in his boots. “Good night,” he called, almost out the door, “good night everyone.” And the slam of the front door cut off his mother’s voice pleading him, “Be careful.”

Pete is a student at the University of Pittsburgh. He can be reached at ppk3@pitt.edu