Brother and Sister Read Online Free Page A

David was three, it dawned on her in an unspecified way that he never asked
     for anything. He might demand, incoherently, that she feed him, or insist on sitting next to her, or insert himself in her
     line of vision, but it was perfectly plain to her that he didn't want anything from her in return, he didn't want anything
     except to be in her close company for his own satisfaction. And because he didn't talk—couldn't? Lynne worried, or, even more
     worryingly, wouldn't?—he articulated no need or wish for reciprocity. He just wanted Nathalie there. Like her, he might have
     been chosen, but he hadn't had any choice himself. Like her, he'd been given something he was expected to be thankful for,
     he'd been handed a lottery prize at random and told he was very fortunate to have it. But unlike her, he'd decided that in
     all this avalanche of not choosing he was going to select one thing he liked, one thing that carried no requirement for response
     or gratitude. And this thing was Nathalie.
    And then he grew beautiful. To Lynne's astonished delight, this lumpy, ill-proportioned, almost bald toddler grew into a beautiful
     little boy, the kind of little boy whose looks somehow penetrated the indifference of even bank clerks and supermarket checkout
     girls. Taking David about became a matter of intense pride rather than one of defensive apology, a matter almost of competition
     between Lynne and Ralph. Ralph even took David to his chess club, where he sat on the knee of the club's best player, a senior
     master who had written an acclaimed book on the strategic challenges of the end-game, and was given a king and a queen to
     hold. Ralph came home replete with pride. He set David on the floor as if he was a rare piece of statuary.
    "He'd charm the glaze off a doughnut," Ralph said.
    David's charm lay in his beauty and his passivity. The obtuseness he had seemed to demonstrate as a baby could now be seen,
     more acceptably, as compliance. He could be left to play for hours with the same two cars on the rug whose stripes made useful
     roads; he could even be trusted on the rocking horse Ralph made him, rocking and rocking, and rocking, with an absorption
     Lynne saw as simply being good. It seemed especially good, compared with Nathalie. The older Nathalie grew, the more she seemed
     to need to do what Lynne's American friend, Sadie, called "acting out". She became provocative and touchy and unpredictable,
     sometimes clinging, sometimes rejecting Lynne's proffered cuddles. She made intense friendships at school and then gratuitously
     destroyed them and sobbed wildly over their demise.
    "I don't like it," Lynne said. "I don't like the child she's becoming."
    Ralph was mending a toy which David had uncharacteristically broken. He didn't look up.
    He said slowly, "What you don't like, dear, is that there's a pain you have to live alongside that can't be made better."
    Lynne froze. She looked at Ralph's bent head, at his deft hands among the bits of bright plastic. Then she went back into
     the house and stood by the washing machine, with her fists clenched under her chin, and gave way to a rage that was murderous
     in its brief intensity. How could he? How dare he? How dare he remind her of her abiding disappointment— hers —in his lack of potency?
    Later that night, she shouted at Nathalie. It was over something entirely trivial, a matter of not brushing teeth or hair,
     and she horrified herself. She waited, in the midst of her despair, for Nathalie to be horrified too, for tears and trembles
     and consoling reconciliation. But they didn't come. Instead Nathalie looked at her with an expression that darted between
     triumph and relief, and then she turned and padded into David's room and climbed into bed with him. Lynne saw David turn to
     look at her, amazed and pleased, and then she felt she must look no longer, she must leave them there together, saying nothing,
     side by side.
    "At least," she said to Ralph later,