Three Old Men

Dad tells this story at least twice a year, and as far as I can ascertain, there are at least a dozen different versions of it.  

The most common version goes like this: 

The island was hot and small. Thin trees grew sideways out of the water leaping for sun. On the northwest corner of the island lived a family: Winston Flowers, his wife, and their three sons. Mrs. Flowers had worked at a fried fish window for years, but after her third son was born, she stayed home to watch over the boys. She was known around the island for her delicious cakes, which she sold in white cardboard boxes stacked in the living room. Mr. Flowers owned a small mango farm near the house, which needed maintenance and protection year-round. After a few costly bad hires, the eldest son, Franklin, went to work for his father once he finished sixth grade. 

Franklin was large for his age, and continued to grow at a surprising rate. He wasn’t like his youngest brother Quincy, who stayed glued to their mother’s side, helping with her baking and poetry. Franklin wasn’t even like his other brother Harold, who despite being sent to the principal's office weekly for his classroom antics maintained top marks in mathematics and science. So, although Franklin missed the smell of his freshly ironed uniform in the morning, opening his brown sack lunch in the cafeteria, and walking home from school next to Irene, the tallest girl in the middle school, he was glad he was the son who was asked. 

By the time Harold graduated highschool, the country changed. International corporations built seven-story resorts in the center of the main island, and a whole industry of hospitality had been reborn — bigger than ever. Franklin loved his home on the small island, loved spending his days in the sun at first, then inside managing a small group of harvesters and planters. His father was an honest businessman, and treated Franklin with increasing respect as he aged. He never got tired of the taste of a fresh mango. 

For the other brothers, the island felt too small. You’d have to do laps to run a marathon. Harold wanted to take a ferry to the main island of the country. Quincy wanted to join him, then hop off the plane and step out in America.  

The only issue had to do with money: there wasn’t enough of it. Harold knew he could find a job on the bigger island. He had a high school degree, a handsome face, and, critically, a belief that there was no one in the world better than him. He simply needed money for the ferry, and a little more until he could get his first paycheck. 

After weeks of pestering, Franklin lent him half his paycheck: $200. Two days after Harold left, and when he returned a month later, he had a job as a porter at the largest luxury hotel. He paid Franklin back right then, and gave three hundred dollars to his parents. Then he gave them his wide and bright beam, and told them that it was “just from tips.”

When Quincy finished highschool, the country was bright eyed. Environmental groups were cleaning up the waters, artists established a national gallery, and chefs who had cooked in shacks for decades were opening sit down restaurants. The Flowers, however, were devastated. Winston had been sick for three years, and paying for treatment depleted their sense of comfort. Franklin took to managing the farm, and Winston moved to the main island with Harold. It was easier that way. The hospitals were better and Mrs. Flowers visited often. 

The two oldest brothers had promised each other in easier times that they would do everything they could for Quincy. He was too soft for their neighborhood, a quiet orb that would never glow so close to the hot, bright sun. So the two oldest brothers negotiated a loan against the farm and the house, and dared Quincy to chase his wildest dream.

The family watched on with pride as he accumulated degrees and awards they never quite knew the gravity of, and while he wasn’t becoming a doctor or lawyer, but rather an academic, he was shining, finally. 

Dad would pause at this point. Sitting back in whatever chair he’d melded himself into during the course of the evening, smile shyly as if he were a straight shooter, and ask, “Which brother is the smartest?” 

###

My sister called to tell me that she was getting married last night. 

It was the first time we had talked in a while, her voice unfamiliar in a way her syntax wasn’t. I was eight hours behind, or rather she was a night into the future, and I could tell I wasn’t the first or last call she would make that morning. 

I wanted to keep it brief, for both our sakes, but the shock slowed my brain. “How do you feel?” 

She snorted, which meant you always have some shit to say. “Happy, and other synonyms.” 

“Congratulations! How did Cory propose?” This was the natural path, but sitting in my dining room alone, facing the oven clock, I dreaded the changing minutes. I should have known her better: if I was cursory, she was transient. “With flowers, at the cafe near our first flat in Lewisham.” And where had flat come from? A lifetime molded in the same sun, and strangers after five years apart. 

The last time I had seen her I wanted to say everything. As the older sister, I inherited the pain of watching her flaws develop and dissipate in live time. Her face was splotchy and too aged—she wasn’t wearing sunscreen; and I could tell from her nails and hair she’d started smoking, tobacco of all things, and attempting to divert the smell with tacky perfume. But what could I have said then that wouldn’t have made her hate me in the moment? 

Conversing felt like pushing on a pull door, but we found comfort in our texts: making fun of Dad’s Facebook posts, forwarding an article we hadn’t read, observations about old classmates or teachers. 

So of course, then, I said nothing. And now it had been half a decade and she figured out foundation and weed. Who needs a sister when you have time as a teacher? Well, time and Youtube.  

“Do you know when the wedding will be?” The phone was cradled between my ear and my shoulder. I had begun to move a small crumb back and forth under my pointer finger, and noticed the nail polish was chipping. 

“Jesus, Laura, it’s been a night!” 

“Well, I don’t know what to say, don’t exactly have a lot of other sisters phoning telling me they’re engaged.” 

It was just our quiet breathing after that. Maybe, then, for the first time, she felt pity for me, saw me as some spinster wasting her fast fading looks in the most shallow, soulless city in America. But more disturbingly, the upper corner of my nail was missing a bright green mass of paint, and I would have to make an appointment in between some meetings tomorrow, before I saw Nour. 

“Sorry to call so late,” she had been trying to please people for years, but was naturally a rock. I was the opposite, at least in the family.

Should I make the appointment before work, knowing I’ll be late to both things, or squeeze it into my day? 

“Yeah Lucy, you caught me at a weird time.” I rolled my eyes, overburdened with myself. “Love you,” I silently thanked her for the merciful beheading. Quick and clean. My mind was elsewhere, anyway, eight or three? 

“Love you too, best to you and Cory!” 

Definitely at three; the meeting before always let out early anyway. 

###

It didn’t dawn on me until I told Nour. We were sitting drinking our juices in our favorite meeting spot, an artificially green garden with an incredible view of the most attractive people in the city. They’d strut past in their sparkling white shoes, chatting on their invisible phones and displaying their sparkling white teeth. We felt like private investigators, stuffy work clothes on despite the heat, the pressed juice a fake out. 

“You never even mentioned she had a boyfriend!” Nour hit my shoulder, surprised. She had straightened her already straight, black hair. It was crisp, verging on crispy, but smartly pulled back in a low ponytail. 

“Girlfriend,” I corrected mildly, “and I didn’t realize it’d have much importance.”

“I thought you two were close?” 

“Not really.” 

“But you’re, like, always talking about her.” The sun was suddenly oppressive, my dark slacks were burning on my legs, my dark cheeks hid their flames. 

“We talk almost everyday.” I knew I sounded defensive, but who was Nour to assume such importance in my life, anyway? I didn’t tell her about my nail appointment, or that I reactivated my dating profile last night. The bedsheets were cold. I couldn’t sleep, kept thinking about mailing back an invitation that left a blank space next to plus one?.

“Who talks on the phone everyday?” 

As if the universe chose favorites, a platinum blonde, in a purple Calle Del Mar top I had tried on three weeks ago, even though I knew I couldn’t afford it, passes us with her wireless headphones in, “No Dad, you’re not listening to me—I tell you each time, I tell you every fucking day—“ 

I raise my eyebrows and she shrugs back, laughing as I clarify, “Anyways, we don’t talk, I’m not a sociopath. I mean texting.” Sharing tweets, sending memes, whatever the youth call it.

“Well, how do you feel about your younger sister getting married?” She practically shrieked the last word. I didn’t know I was going to be required to have feelings about an event that didn’t immediately concern me. How did I feel about salads, or the big bang?

“I don’t have feelings, it’s just a fact.” 

We sat in silence for a little while. She was a good friend to be silent with, or to be ridiculous. The sun was setting and Nour and her roommate had planned to deep clean their apartment that evening.  

“I wanted to time it for when the Bachelor came on.” I waved her off, making brunch plans for the weekend half-heartedly. 

I finished my juice down to the last dregs, chasing around pools of turmeric yellow with my slowly disintegrating paper straw. 

###

Sometimes Dad jumps right to the middle, forgoing the exposition and the requisite sympathies. We watch the pieces move with no idea of the hands behind them.

He tells it like this: 

The Flowers had never taken a family vacation until Quincy graduated from college. He would have a Bachelor’s of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley, in Anthropology. Mrs. Flowers was proudly phoning her church friends every night to relay this information. For a month they planned the details of the trip. Mrs. Flowers and Franklin would take a ferry to the main island on Friday, and spend the weekend with Harold. Then the three of them would take an airplane to Florida, then wait in the airport for two hours until their next flight, which would take them to San Francisco. 

Quincy met them at the airport in a van borrowed from a friend. They hadn’t seen each other since Mr. Flower’s funeral, which had been too short to really see anyone, and infinitely too long to grieve someone who had been dying for years. It was strange at first, to be just the four of them. Franklin, still the tallest man in any room, Harold with his confidence and good-looks, and then Quincy, who had inexorably changed. He had a measured assuredness. Maybe it came from knowing how to drive on the right side of the road or from knowing which restaurant to take his family on the first night. Franklin paid, and the other brothers pocketed smiles. 

Berkeley was overwhelming, especially in the early summer. The campus was emptying, but hoards of students with suitcases leaving the dorms added to the cacophony. Mrs. Flowers marveled most at the trees: how tall they grew here, how green it was all over, the streets suddenly blossoming in bright greens, pinks, and yellows. And did they notice how different the air was, cool at dawn and dusk, foggy from the overcrowding? The sky was further away, the sun was colder.

The three brothers were surprised at how good it felt to be in each other’s company again. Lacking the language to express his gratitude, Quincy grandiosely introduced his siblings to his closest friends and bought them endless cheap beers from the student bars when Mrs. Flowers had been put to bed at the nearby inn. They went on long walks and very intentionally didn’t ask what was next. 

Harold had already bet Franklin one hundred dollars that Quincy wouldn’t return to the island. Harold couldn’t say it then, but he knew what that ambition, that frustration smelt like. He had it in his blood as well. Even on the main island, even in the most luxurious hotel, he felt this idea nibbling away at him. He always knew he could be more than whatever he was. 

But then Mr. Flowers died, and Quincy and Mrs. Flowers required stability—they needed money. So he let the thought eat away at him without consequence. Frank in the fields, Harry in the hotel. And they wondered where will Quincy end up? With all of the world available to him? 

The night before the graduation ceremony, Mrs. Flowers cooked dinner for the family and Quincy’s roommates. She fried fatty pieces of pacific fish, set up peas and rice in the dutch oven, and produced a perfect baked macaroni. 

Quincy was a choked, purple mix of proud and embarrassed. His family was endearing, but clumsy. Mrs. Flowers kept her hair dark and straight, in a tightly brushed back bun. His brothers didn’t understand American style, they kept their clothes freshly pressed and their hair matched the tidiness. They felt awkward on a college campus, and upset when Quincy and his friends’ conservations moved into foreign territory too quickly. But still, it felt so pleasant to be in each other’s teasing company after all that time.

It was that night he told them he had been accepted into a program for five years. There was guaranteed funding, and at the end he would be given a PhD: he’d be a doctor. He wouldn’t be making a lot until he graduated, but enough to take care of himself, and visit home with a little help. 

Everyone was feeling a strange mix after that. And that feeling never went away, at least not between the brothers. When you’re young, the world seems infinite, and time moves very slow. As you age, you realize your world is smaller than your phone’s storage, and you bear burdens for the sake of your brother’s lighter load. 

Mrs. Flowers was making the phone calls in her head already, to Agatha, whose son was a doctor, but so stuffy, and living somewhere so cold, and Destiny, her cousin, whose second husband had a PhD. And she would need to ask Franklin later that evening, what exactly does that mean? 

The Flowers left shortly after graduation. They knew Quincy wouldn’t be coming back to the island, but Mrs. Flowers had reserved some hope, thinking he’d been planning a surprise and would say he’d be coming home for the summer. That he’d join her in the kitchen again, relearning the old recipes, and showing her something new he had learned all those years away from her. 

That summer Franklin helped rebuild the bathroom in the house he shared with his mom. Harold booked a hotel stay for her birthday, including breakfast and a one hour massage. Quincy called the hotel, and they spoke on the phone for her birthday for the first time since he took a ferry to the main island and didn’t move back. 

Finishing at an incomplete end, Dad once asked a question that gave no clarity and garnered no follow-ups, “Which brother is the kindest?”

###

The most common misconception is that we don’t care, when in actuality it’s that we are oblivious. Sure, there are moments that send a jolt of wake the fuck up to my prefrontal cortex, like having nothing to say to someone asking for a dollar outside the Whole Foods where I just spent ten dollars on a pint of local organic artificially in season berries, or when I visit back home and find myself fifteen minutes into a conversation with an old classmate before realizing we’re both going to leave the talk musing on how much of a boring, self-absorbed asshole the other person became. 

To put it mildly, I didn’t choose to become this way. Maybe it was my relative cowardice, but it’s easier to be the quiet majority schlepping along rather than the one to rise above the mundane absurdity of modern living. 

Besides, it’s not all bad. Sometimes there is a beautiful sunset on the rooftop of my favorite bar, and then everyone pulls out their phones, synchronized like Olympic artistic swimmers. And even if I miss that sunset, or that night of drinks with Nour trying to seduce the bartender, well then the pictures will live forever and it would be hard to say in fifty years whether I was really there or just behind the camera. 

It was a long period of adjustment, that first summer in Los Angeles. What was good was great. The weather makes it difficult to spend time alone indoors; the necessity of a car means freedom to roam. People made it easy to become immediately intimate, and I finally understood the phrase briefly friends. What’s hard here may be hard anywhere: drop a bunch of newly independent, ambitious and mannerless young adults in a desert and watch them flail in panic like ants under a magnifying glass. But my life up to that point had been made of a series of discomforts; an awkward childhood of false bravery, internally rebellious teenage years, and a typical dissociative period during college. Besides Lucy, these phases didn’t have witnesses. I was able to constantly reinvent myself, accountable to no-one besides that pesky blunt burn of internal ethics. 

Uncle Frank had come to visit at the tail-end of the summer when I was thirteen. I wasn’t too keen on rules already, and I had convinced Lucy to play spies, crawling down the beige carpeted stairs in our pajamas. We hid outside the entry to the kitchen, where Dad and his brother stood over opposite sides of the fake marble island, drinking tall glasses filled with ice and amber liquid. 

(Overtime, the real conversation got replaced by abstractions, changing in form and diction as I got older. I come from a lineage of storytellers: to paraphrase is an art in active imagination.) 

“Thanks for sending the tickets; it’s hard with Melinda pregnant. And the kids are growing, it’s—”

“Don’t worry about it.” 

“How much do I owe you?” Uncle Frank said bluntly. He took a long sip after that. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Dad repeated with a real casualness. I remember the melting ice accentuating his always watery eyes, the real answer implicitly the reverse. A lot, we owe each other a lot. 

###

I get the text at my three am: the wedding planning has begun. My sister followed up with a picture of a yellow legal pan and two gel pens, green and blue. There was a multi-colored list of names, some familiar, others seemingly random.

Too wired to sleep from a date that had lasted longer than I expected, I responded instantly. 

hottest draft picks of the season 

I watched her gray typing bubble ruminate across several seas. 

big brain sexy heterosexual sport jokes 

I reexamined the image, picking my name out rightly from the top, and following the blue penned names below. 

cousin maggie … did it hurt to write 

She was our slightly older cousin, and the greatest tormentor of my middle ages. A typical play-date would have the following agenda: dunking my head in a toilet bowl, convincing me to chop off half my hair, then earnestly calling me ugly until I was throwing up from crying. 

Maggie used to spend every summer, early June to late August, at our house. Those were her first experiences stateside, colored by the conventions of our strange, rootless family. Maggie’s voice reminded us of Dad and Grandma, and a whole inaccessible lineage. According to her, the summers in Oregon were erratic; smokey from fires south and just north, nights so cold she needed an extra blanket. On the island, it was better. The sun was a close-by friend, the ocean water was deliciously warm, even the fruit was juicier. 

If I was a meaner kid, more aligned with the social norms of my grade, I would’ve scrunched up my face and asked, “Then why are you here, eating my cereal, sleeping in my bed?” 

But I never did, felt indebted somehow, my connection to the island of my father so tenuous.

I hadn’t thought of her in a while, it was strange to access memories colored by my childish emotions. 

no one wants a boring wedding 

Lucy had a less traumatic relationship with Maggie, too young to have been bothered by our war. A few months after Lucy first started working, Dad asked her to send Maggie seven hundred dollars. He eventually paid her back, but for a while it added a strange tension to our relationship. Lucy dragged me into her conspiracies and rants; Dad, like always, answering questions with a long story or silence. 

i thought u were just gonna hire a dj… or like stripper 

dad would die could u imagine 

gotta maintain the brand. we are the liberal american brats of their nightmares xoxox

I could see it in Dad’s eyes sometimes, the embarrassment and the restraint. We are the blissful product of our unlucky ancestors. 

uncle harry vs my big fat lesbian wedding 

My bed was warm from my consciousness; my overly technical pillow and French flax linen sheets ploying to ease me into a deep, expensive sleep. My date, whose online biography proclaimed him as a part time programmer and full time surfer, spoke a lot about his emotional self. Obviously, he said he accessed it through surfing. I had already decided to sleep with him, when he sat down next to me and displayed his large white teeth and thick, long fingers. This pseudo-philosophy didn’t do a whole lot for my libido. 

Still, I couldn’t help but think of it as I laid in bed, negotiating the terms of my sleep. I realized I did absolutely everything in my power to never make contact with my emotional self. Things were working out so far. My sister was different: Lucy found a power in acknowledging things that always struck me as weak. As kids, we couldn’t help but become best friends. She was instantly endeared to me as we navigated the turbulent sea of American assimilation. The relative ages cast me as the natural captain. But when the storm cleared, and we had gotten a hang of the new climate, there wasn’t any natural order. 

We had gone to a cute wine bar in Los Feliz. Dating was always sporadic for me, while for Lucy, it was her natural state. I still didn’t know how to give just the right amount of space without the whole thing collapsing like a sad soufflé. 

I drank my brooding Merlot through a metallic straw, while he clumsily appreciated a Malbec. The waitress, sensing it was a first date, gave us the requisite distance. When the topic took the compulsory turn towards family, I startled myself by my detached retelling. 

Picture this, right. Two girls, immigrant parents. You get where I’m going. Did you see the show? It was on HBO, blew up on Twitter but only lasted one season. Oh, uhm, yeah, I don’t give older sister energy? Have you seen my planner? Ah, yeah. We’re close. She’s getting married next year. London, uh-huh. Well, yeah. Sometimes. She didn’t seem to mind. You want another glass? Oh, sure. How far is it from here? 

Sleep had come, and I woke up with a strange pang in my chest; a useless childhood sorrow for the impact of my random temperaments on the cadence of Lucy’s life.  

Nah, I didn’t catch it. Was it good? Is she older or younger? Are you tight? Where? Damn, that’s far! Do you miss her? Do you visit? Oh hey, listen, I’ve got a sick Australian red back at my spot. I’m close by, 15 minutes at this time. I’ll call the uber. 

###

Dad only told the story like this once, at least while I was around. Lucy was too young to remember, crawling over my legs as he spoke.

In the northwest corner of a small and hot island, three brothers met for the first time in nearly a decade. The oldest brother, Franklin, turned darkest by his proximity to the harsh sun, had lived on the island his whole life. The mutual familiarity was intimidating for the other brothers, this adult version of themselves unknown to the setting of their childhood. Had everything always been that small? 

The funeral for Mrs. Flowers was a large, emotional affair. Like a concave curve, those who knew her barely or almost entirely were silently inconsolable; however, attendees who loved her, but could maintain a bit of perspective, were able to celebrate her earthly time and have faith that she would be well received in what came after. 

The sun, her subtle companion, was shy behind half a cloud, the grayest sky in a long time.  

Quincy remembered when he knew her best. The secret pineapple tart she would save for him, wrapped in paper napkins. He saw the back room of the kitchen with all its lights on, her industrial mixer fighting a forming dough. There was no regret for a past he knew had to leave, but it felt unexpectedly bitter to return when it’s meaningless to the person you are really coming home to. He flew alone from Eugene; the act of booking a roundtrip felt like a cruelty. 

Sandwiched between his wife and young son, Harold too, couldn’t help but think of his boyhood. 

It had lasted longer than most. His naivety sheltered by the absence of Frank’s. There was never a question of understanding; he had never felt known and had never expected it nor did he seek out hidden depths of others. Love is a slice of warm, buttered bread and cold milk afterschool. It’s an investment with an expectation in return. An unpayable debt he’d gladly shoulder, but never mention. 

Frank wouldn’t imagine the next time they’d meet, as now tragedy became the only tie they had. Three old men buoyed by grief, kept afloat by circumstance. Silence can only build further silence, the restraint they had carried all those years. The practice of unvoicing the desires deepest in you, and bonding despite, or because of this, had only created emotional strangers. Frank imagined how nice it would have been to grab the hands of his brothers and say, “Do you remember when you needed me? Do you remember that I was there?” and leave things at that. It would be enough. 

But it was an untenable thought. It could be both so simple to achieve and perfectly impossible. 

After the church service, they hosted a repast at the Fish Fry. Peas and rice, browned from thyme and tomato, baked macaroni with crispy edges, and flaky, salty grouper. The brothers were able to return to smiles then, tentative, then hysterical. Like young boys again, laughing at Aunt Lia’s ridiculous weeping hat, the memories of trying to swim and nearly drowning as kids, their parents gawking in the background. With a rush, scenes that hadn’t surfaced in years came back, lightening up more, like a stupid cloth to a ridiculous match.

It couldn’t last, the sun gave up. A forceful wind bringing rain brought everyone inside, the commotion ending the cloud of childhood recollection. When they parted for the night, it felt more final than it was. Tomorrow the three brothers and their families would still be in town together, but more than one moment had passed. They’d shuffle back to their regular routines, the places they’d come to inhabit would be filled by themselves again, a little different, a little less defined. 

I remember a cloud of dead air setting in before Dad spoke next. His voice had an unfamiliar quality, one I haven’t heard since. Which brother is the happiest?

Alexandrea Watson grew up between Southern Ohio and Nassau, Bahamas. She has since lived in Portland, Paris, Beirut, and London. Curious about language and power structures, she earned a BA in Linguistics and a MSc in Development Economics. An assistant editor the literary magazine Wallstrait and a writer, she enjoys works that explores how place operates as a portal and how people are composed of fractalized histories.