I knew what Davis meant. I knew what he meant by "lying."
Chris and I had been in love ever since that day he walked into my mother's house. There was never a moment when we didn't know we were doing something wrong, just as there was never a moment when we thought that our love affair wasn't going to happen or when we believed it was going to end. We would swear off each other; we'd promise ourselves that we'd stop. Then Chris would call or drop by, and it would start again.
When I went to college, Chris left Madison and rented an apartment near my dorm. Because he was a carpenter, and good at it, he could pretty much find work anywhere. After I got out of class, I'd go to his place and wait for him to come home. We'd spend the late afternoon and early evening on his bed, just a mattress on the floor of his cold room, as the New England winter sun went down early and the light turned charcoal, then blue. We were so happy being together, naked skin against naked skin. We were each other's drug and each other's dealer.
People who wonder why we couldn't stay away from each other and behave like decent human beings—why we couldn't get over it and move on—all I can say is that they never had something like that happen to them. It lasted—on and off—for years. Things got crazy. There were a couple of months when just looking at my mom and dad's wedding photograph would get me hot. How sick is that? Is there a twelve-step group for this? There is probably a group for survivors of everything that has happened in my life. Not that I would have gone.
Chris and I would agree: This isn't right. This isn't healthy. We're hurting people, hurting ourselves. We'd end it again, for as long as we could hold out.
It was during a period when we were actually keeping our promise that I met Davis. The ultimate nice guy, as long as you didn't cross him about a paint color or where the couch goes. How solid and sane and large-hearted he was! He cared about the planet, the future. He wanted a family, a house. He was so earnest, so sincere. He seemed to live in a bright, shiny world where people did the right things and didn't have sex with their half brothers.
I could even imagine—almost imagine—that Davis would be forgiving if I ever told him the truth about Chris. Assuming our affair was over. But I didn't tell Davis. And it wasn't over.
It would have seemed suspicious for him not to meet my brother. And he knew the story—some of the story—of how Mom and I learned that Dad had another family.
I decided their first meeting should be in a public place, which is what you're advised to do when there might be some kind of scene or conflict. I don't know why I thought there would be. The conflict was all in my head.
We went out to dinner at an old-fashioned Italian red-sauce restaurant in Brooklyn that Davis liked because it was authentic. Unchanged since Christopher Columbus.
Chris had a girlfriend, tall and blond like all the women he dated at the time. I think her name was Chelsea. Those girls couldn't have looked less like me. Maybe my brother was trying to show me that he'd gotten over me. But he was always so distant and cool with those girls; I was never fooled. I knew how he acted when he was turned on. When he cared. I wasn't even slightly jealous, though he wanted me to be.
Davis was not the kind of person who would imagine someone, his wife, a woman he thought he knew and loved, having sex with her half brother. And that evening, nothing happened that would have made anyone suspicious. Chris and I had gotten good at being undetectable.
Still, he and Davis got into a stupid argument about—of all things!—Frank Lloyd Wright. Davis was going on and on about what a genius Wright was.
