The Apprentice Lover by Jay Parini Page A

believe.”
    â€œA mule?”
    â€œKicked in the head. Ages ago.”
    With that, she left me to myself, saying that if I wanted a swim I could join Rupert at the beach or use the pool, which they had repainted and filled only the week before. It would not be hard to find her husband at the beach, she assured me, pointing in the direction of the sea. “The water is chilly,” she added, “but then, so is Rupert.”
    I saw her pass the window as I settled, dazed, on the bed. Vera was unlike anyone I’d ever met, and the atmosphere at the Villa Clio was both intriguing and a little scary. But I was willing and eager to put my doubts on hold. I had taken the plunge, and I would swim.
    The cottage was tiny, but everything I could wish for was here: a double bed (made up, in the Italian style, of twin beds pushed together), a side table with a lamp for reading, an oak dresser missing several knobs, and a three-legged table by the window with two cane chairs. There was a fireplace, a bookshelf, a dilapidated wing chair, and a small refrigerator that had already been supplied with fresh milk and butter. A sink and small stove in one corner were a gesture in the direction of self-sufficiency, and I found coffee and sugar in the cupboards, plus a crusty loaf of bread and a bag of semisweet Italian breakfast biscuits. The bathroom, created from what had recently been a feeding trough for swine, was small but serviceable, with a toilet and shower. Vera had explained that I should make my own breakfast, but that lunch and dinner would be taken with them, in the dining room. Rupert, she warned me, considered these meals an important part of life at the Villa Clio.
    The first thing I did was put my letters from Nicky in the bottom drawer of the dresser. A manila envelope held the dozen letters from Vietnam that had become my secret hoard of pain, and a source of inspiration. I did not want anyone to know about the letters or Nicky. A large part of my life now was about forgetting, and I would become expert in the craft. Nevertheless, I often felt Nicky beside me, in broad daylight, watching. We met directly in my dreams, talking in ways never possible when he was alive. I wanted to put things right and make amends for my silly and cruel disregard for his intelligence and capabilities.
    My mother had marked him from early childhood as the lesser son, the one who would eventually cause trouble. In contrast, my father had been protective of Nicky, who was, like him, not an intellectual but “good with his hands.” When he went to Vietnam, my father had felt reassured, as if his years of standing by his son had been justified by this act of courage and patriotism.
    I tended to side with my mother. For years I shook my head whenever Nicky misbehaved, which was often. The more obnoxious and agitatedhe became, the calmer I grew. His blackness only whitened my whiteness. I had tried to argue with him, to explain that he was his own worst enemy, but he resisted me as he resisted my parents. Though I was the younger sibling, he defined himself against me; if I was getting good grades, he would get bad ones. If I went to catechism with enthusiasm, he played hooky, describing himself from the age of thirteen as an atheist, much to my mother’s horror. My quietness and tendency toward self-reflection only enhanced his chatty shallowness. That he demolished two cars by the age of seventeen surprised no one. He smoked cigarettes, drank with abandon, swore, and (as we learned after the fact) talked his pregnant girlfriend into an abortion during their senior year in high school. (Nicky could talk a mouse into hunting cats.)
    â€œDisturbed” was the word my mother used to describe my brother: one of those bland euphemisms families employ to disguise unnamable anguish and fear. Pegged by her as a child who would “come to no good,” his death in Vietnam had struck her as a logical development.