Like the meeting with your mother yesterday, this meeting with your brother has been arranged by Katie at the “new” house on Harrison Street where Lionel has been living following his release from prison. Elsewhere in the house your mother is lying down trying to nap and your cousin Trix is chatting on the phone with a friend.

  About time you guys got together, Katie said brightly.

  The casualness of you guys is encouraging to you. Maybe it has all been a misunderstanding on your part, the animosity of both your brothers? Maybe it had been mostly an accident, Lionel pushing you down the icy steps?

  You wonder if Lionel even remembers it. That time of confusion and unease, dread. When the arrest of your brothers had seemed imminent and yet, the arrest of your brothers had not (yet) occurred.

  You wonder if you are remembering the episode correctly: If the steps had been icy, possibly you’d just slipped?

  Lionel is having difficulty smiling. Moving his mouth. An effort. Ice pick eyes. Creased forehead of a much older man. Finally he manages, his smile is a shriek of pain.

  You think—He is trying to forgive. It is not easy for him.

  You have been smiling, too. Smilesmile as waitresses learn to do while hoping to be tipped.

  Awkwardly you speak together. Lionel is reticent, you will have to do most of the talking. Ask him questions that are easy to answer. No threat. No implied judgment. You have been told that Daddy helped get him a job at Neilson’s Lumberyard which is familiar to you from childhood, natural to ask him about that job, also if he has gotten together with friends from high school, though (it seems) that is not a great question since Lionel falls silent, grimacing. Of course, don’t ask him that! Your brother is an ex-convict. He has been shamed in the eyes of his old friends and of everyone who knew him.

  Your voice sounds hoarse too, thin and insincere. You have not been able to decipher all of Lionel’s words but haven’t wanted to ask him to speak louder for perhaps he can’t.

  Thinking if you’d glimpsed this man on the street it’s likely that you would not have recognized him.

  Passing him, you would avoid making eye contact.

  There is a plaintive look to Lionel’s face, an air of reproach, hurt. His skin has become coarse, putty-colored. He is heavyset and slow-moving where once he’d been lean and muscular, hyperactive and impatient. His eyebrows are thick and well defined. You can imagine that some women might find him attractive—except for the habit of derision into which his mouth naturally shifts.

  Lionel is thirty-one years old but could be a decade older. He has never lived alone. He has lived only in your parents’ house and in the maximum security prison facility at Marcy. Until recently he has never had to take care of himself as adults do: shopping for clothes and food, preparing food for themselves, driving a car. Katie has told me how when Lionel had first returned to South Niagara he’d seemed terrified of leaving the house. She’d volunteered to drive him to the mall to shop for clothes and other items and he’d virtually panicked, paralyzed at the sight of so many people of whom (he was sure) many were aware of his identity. He’d frozen on an escalator. He’d ducked into a men’s lavatory to avoid someone he thought he knew from his high school class. He’d sweated in a state of terror as Katie drove, flinching at intersections.

  Tragic, how Daddy died, so soon after Lionel returned home to live.

  He’d been stunned by the death, hid away in his room and refused to attend the funeral mass or visit the cemetery.

  Since then Lionel has grown more adjusted to the outside world. He has said he likes working at the lumberyard where he has no need to interact with customers, simply follows orders as he’d done in prison. He intends to acquire a driver’s license, soon.

  Defiantly Katie says, as if this is an argument she has been making, to her husband perhaps: we have to help Lionel. He’s my brother. Whatever happened is behind us now. He’s served his time.

  Served his time. There is comfort in such familiar words.

  This is true, you are thinking. You will help Lionel, if you can.

  Wildly the thought comes to you—Move back to South Niagara. Live with Mom and Lionel. Get a job here . . .

  You recall how as a boy Lionel admired and emulated his older brother Jerome Jr. but he’d also been intimidated by him, harassed and bullied. Without Jerr goading him Lionel would never have committed any crime still less such a terrible crime.

  As Lionel speaks haltingly in his hoarse cracked voice you are thinking these things. Wishing that you dared speak to Lionel openly. But there is this shyness between you, each uncertain what the other exactly remembers, and what emotions the other still harbors.

  Groping, blundering at a reconciliation. If that is what this is.

  At last Lionel asks you about your life. It is an effort for him, you can see—he dreads to hear that you are doing well, and that you are happy; even as he seems to want to hear that you are doing well, and you are happy. You hesitate to tell him about Tyrell Jones but you are able to show him several snapshots of Brindle.

  Lionel peers at Brindle in miniature. What kind of dog is that? Some kind of rat terrier?

  Rat terrier. This is accidental, you think. This is not meant to mock or wound.

  You tell Lionel that Brindle is a miniature bulldog. A very sweet dog.

  Why didn’t you bring Brindle with you to South Niagara?—Lionel doesn’t ask.

  Reason is: if something happens to you here. If (as you’d thought, back in Mohawk) there was actual danger here, from Lionel. Better to leave Brindle with Tyrell, the two get along well with each other.

  Now, the reason seems silly. The morose man in front of you, your brother Lionel, slack-bodied, prematurely middle-aged, is nothing like the angry vindictive young man you’d been imagining for years. Preposterous to think that he’d ever wanted to kill you . . .

  You hear yourself tell Lionel that you are completing a degree in the School of Social Work at the State University at Mohawk. Your plan is to go to graduate school and get a master’s degree. You don’t tell him All I have lived through, in exile—I want it to have been for a purpose.

  Hoping that it doesn’t sound boastful, that you have been working as a (minimally) paid intern with Mohawk County Family Services. In this underpaid/understaffed office you have been entrusted with responsibility, perhaps you appear to be a trustworthy person. You keep late hours in the office, available if you are needed. You are the one who holds the frightened child’s hand, the one to whom the battered wife, daughter might speak in lowered voices. In your backpack are the better eyelid-wipes, not the cheaper eyelid-wipes available in most drugstores. In your backpack is a store of over-the-counter painkillers which you will provide as needed, sparingly. Because you look younger than your age and might (almost) be one of them, teenaged girls feel comfortable with you for you are not likely to judge them. Unlike your superiors you are not very verbal. You are likely to be quiet. As the battered are quiet. The intimacy of silence is natural to you. You know how harsh and abrasive speech can be, to the wounded. Better silence until the right words come.

  Guardedly Lionel is listening to you, or gives that impression. He has not exactly looked at you yet but rather has cast sidelong glances at you that seem wistful, yearning. You have been anxiously waiting for the fury to erupt but there seems to be none.

  He is tired. Beaten down. Is it all over?

  You put out your hand, to take Lionel’s limp, big-knuckled hand. It is not a decisive gesture—it can be withdrawn in an instant. You are trying to remain calm. Not to cry. You understand that, in prison, an inmate must not cry. A man must not cry. You want to give comfort to this wounded man but you are not fully at ease with him, not yet. You are cautious, fearful.

  Wanting to explain to Lionel how it had happened. Not why, you have no idea why. But how it had happened was too quickly.

  That morning. In the school infirmary. Your skin had been burning, feverish. You had not been thinking clearly. You had not thought of consequences. Strangers had questioned you, meaning to be protective and kind. In the confusion of the moment you had not known how not to answer them.

  Uttering certain words to a police officer. Not like uttering identical words to a priest. Safe now, Violet. You will be safe now.

  It is not possible to explain to Lionel. The words will not come. The child you’d been has been lost, can’t be reclaimed. Your brother is confronted only with you.

  Though you continue to squeeze the big-knuckled hand which neither resists nor yields to your own.

  In this pause, the visit seems to be over. In this silence, some understanding has been reached. Each of you is relieved, exhausted. Pent-up breath is expelled, you are feeling almost giddy rising to your feet.

  There is a moment when the two of you should embrace. It is up to you, the female, to clasp the male in your arms—though Lionel is taller than you by several inches, heavier by fifty or more pounds.

  He has not forgiven you. No.

  But you must forgive him.

  BUT THEN, AS YOU ARE ABOUT TO GET INTO YOUR CAR, LIONEL calls after you—“Vi’let?”

  And you turn, and see that Lionel has followed you from the house, blinking and smiling in the sunshine, relieved, giddy like one who has been released from a cave.

  He has called you “Vi’let”—as your brothers called you, when you were a girl.

  So touched by this, you scarcely hear what Lionel says next.

  “I was thinking—maybe—we could walk over to the old house? Just to look? OK?” It is the most that Lionel has said to you, in a single outburst.

  Your half-formed plan is that on your return to Katie’s house you’d drive along Black Rock Street. Over the Lock Street Bridge. And afterward, you might drive across town to Howard Street, to see the house in which Hadrian Johnson once lived.

  These intentions, lurking in the periphery of your consciousness while you’d been speaking (awkwardly, haltingly) with Lionel in the house.

  So close to Black Rock Street! A five-minute walk.

  Each time you think of seeing your childhood house again you feel a leap of excitement. As a child might feel, daring herself to touch a wire that might give her an electric shock.

  In Mohawk, in Catamount Falls, in Port Oriskany for years you have consoled yourself, and tormented yourself, with the prospect of returning to your old, lost house. Most of your dreams seem to originate there, in the room you’d shared with Katie. Even dreams of the present are likely to be set in the old house. Where am I? Where is this? Oh—yes . . .

  Imagining Hadrian Johnson’s house is different. In life you’ve never seen it. Not once.

  Vaguely you’d known where the Johnsons lived—Howard Street. And the boy’s grandmother on Amsterdam. And there was Delahunt. But you have no actual memories of these places. All you have are feelings—excitement, anxiety. Forbidden places. Not for you.

  Of course, you’re not at all certain that Ethel Johnson still lives at 29 Howard Street. That any of the Johnsons still live there.

  But Lionel isn’t suggesting a visit to Howard Street. Just walking over to Black Rock a few blocks away.

  Katie has confided, once your parents moved out of the house on Black Rock a few years ago, they’d never returned to see it. Avoided Black Rock like the plague—Would’ve broken Mom’s heart to see it.

  You know from Katie that Lionel has few friends in South Niagara. He works at the lumberyard, comes home. Doesn’t drive his own car, rides with a co-worker. Sometimes eats with Mom and whoever is visiting with Mom, most often just eats up in his room, door shut. Plays video games, watches TV. Something of a recluse, if that’s what you’d call it. But now, smiling at you, Lionel seems eager, hopeful. His face is animated. His watery eyes shine.

  You tell Lionel yes of course—“That’s a great idea.”

  Lionel is dressed warmly for this balmy September day. Long-sleeved dark pullover stiffened with dirt at the cuffs, khaki pants with many pockets, thick-soled hiking boots which he’s required to wear at the lumberyard. His skin is even coarser, seen in the light. His uneven teeth are faintly stained, yellowish. The thought comes to you, sympathetic and repelled—He couldn’t brush his teeth very well. In prison.

  Lionel says OK but just one minute—he’ll be right back, has to get something—runs inside the house, returns carrying a brown paper bag, and inside three cans of beer cold from the refrigerator.

  “Like, if we’re thirsty. OK?”

  You notice that since he has become more animated Lionel is punctuating his speech with a nervous tic: OK.

  And you laugh and tell him: “OK.”

  At the curb Lionel asks about your car. Impressed that you own a car, have a driver’s license. As if Violet Rue has surprised her big brother, all grown up.

  “Did you buy the car new?”—Lionel can’t resist asking.

  “N-No. Not new.”

  From Katie you know that Lionel hasn’t (yet) acquired a driver’s license. If and when he gets a license he will have the use of your father’s car which is in the garage, not often used. For all practical purposes it is Lionel’s car now but you don’t mention this.

  Nothing to make Lionel think that people are talking about him. Nothing to provoke suspicion, anxiety.

  How surreal it seems to you, walking to Black Rock Street with your brother Lionel. Side by side, companionably, with the brother you’d feared for so many years. Badly you wish that your father could see you—the two of you.

  Trying not to despair, that your father has died before you could be reconciled. You have been hoping that your mother will confide in you—You know, Violet, Dad really had forgiven you. He’d said so many times.

  If Daddy saw you with Lionel, he’d have understood that Lionel has forgiven you. Why not, then, him?

  Lionel has put on dark glasses, to protect his eyes from the sun. Like you, he walks with a slight limp, as if with each step he is resisting pain. You would never inquire of course but have to assume that he was injured in prison.

  Your injured knee has long since mended. You can walk swiftly, and you can run. But if the knee begins to ache you know better than to persevere. A day, two days without straining it—you are all right again.

  You wonder if Lionel has noticed the little star-shaped scar on your forehead? You’ve found a way to comb hair over it, at a slant so that it is almost invisible.

  Though Mr. Sandman had shrewdly observed: it is futile to try to hide your scar.

  Tyrell has not seemed to notice the little scar. Tyrell with his tucked-in smile and awkward poise. Have to assume, a black man in a white world sees more than he feels obliged to acknowledge.

  Here is a surprise: Black Rock Street. Turn a corner, you are there.

  How dismayed your father would be that houses on Black Rock Street have been allowed to deteriorate. A neighbor’s driveway is badly cracked, there’s a homemade FOR SALE sign at the curb.

  Several houses in need of paint. Roof repair. Trees needing pruning. You see with your father’s sharp eye, his instinct for imminent ruin. You have come to feel the burden of adulthood of which children and adolescents know nothing: the responsibility of maintaining property.

  And there at 388 Black Rock is our house. Stopped in your tracks, you stare and stare.

  “Fuck”—Lionel murmurs, shaken. He takes a can of beer out of the paper bag, opens it.

  The sight of the house. After so long. It does appear smaller than you recall though it is larger than houses on either side. And it is still painted your father’s preferred gunmetal-gray. Shutters, front door a lighter shade of gray. The roof appears to be in good repair.

  A new railing on the front stoop? Black wrought iron? You try to remember if the railing had been there, years ago. Not sure.

  Blinds in the windows are up, not pulled to the sills like the house on Harrison Street.

  Your heart is pounding rapidly, you can barely breathe in dread of seeing something awful—something that would injure your father’s pride. But nothing has much changed, you think.

  Fact is, 388 Black Rock Street is hardly a distinctive house. But it is well-kept, respectable. And the driveway looks new. Trash cans at the curb look new. New-model station wagon in the driveway, bicycles leaning against the garage.

  Lionel is staring at the house as he drinks beer out of a can. So distracted, or disoriented, it takes him a while to even think of offering you one of his beers but you say no thanks. Possibly not a great idea to be drinking on the street, and so quickly as Lionel is doing.

  “It’s so strange, isn’t it—that other people live there . . .”

  Your voice is tentative, wary. A spell has descended upon you and the tall thickset young man beside you panting as if he has been running.

  Lionel murmurs a vague assent. Or maybe just again—Fuck.

  An acknowledgment of surprise, unless the absence of surprise. Strong emotion, unless the absence of strong emotion. Lionel is drinking beer thirstily though (you guess) Lionel isn’t thirsty at all.

  Oddly—though it doesn’t seem odd at the time—you think it’s good your brother’s fierce concentration is directed at the house and away from you.

  The family house, sold to pay debts. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal fees. Punishment suffered by the family for the sons’ crimes.

  But Lionel isn’t thinking this, you are sure. If he feels unease, agitation, it’s for different reasons.

  “. . . it’s almost like someone could look out the window upstairs, and see us—and—wonder who we are . . .” You pause, not altogether certain what you are trying to say: “—I mean one of us—like Miriam—looking out the window and seeing us here—grown-up, and changed from who we were . . .”

  Though your words are nonsensical Lionel grunts emphatically: “Yeah.”

  Pausing, to swallow the last of the beer in the can: “Shit, yeah.”

  Your ally, you think. In this strangeness.

  For a few minutes longer you and Lionel stand on the sidewalk before the house, staring and blinking as if you could never get enough of seeing whatever it is you are seeing: a house like many others in the neighborhood, and in South Niagara; what might be called a family home, two story, neatly painted, scattered tall trees, evergreen shrubs, what appears to be a flower bed or garden alongside the house where your mother once tried to establish a garden. You find yourself smiling, recalling the groundhog that infuriated your mother, running with astonishing alacrity to its burrow, leaving behind a ravaged garden.