by Jane Urquhart

Author's Note:  If you've read the story that finally was posted as "Janey's March," then you know that it has absolutely nothing to do with this one.  When I first started writing, I knew what my first two stories would be, then Lord Malinov's Island party gave me the subject for my third. Then I had to start thinking: what would I do for "Janey's March"?  This is the third try on a story I never finished. Why not?  You know how snotty characters can be to their creators.  Well, Janey finally simply told me that she wouldn't even consider having sex with her brother-in-law.  No way.  That put the cap on this one, so I had to start all over.  I like parts of this and probably will use them at some point in some story, but this one's never going to get written. Pity.
 

Beth, my little sexpot friend, was in great form when we had our regular weekly lunch
early this month. She kept wanting to talk, loudly and at some length, about our February
adventure, the one my husband keeps referring to as "swingin' in the rain." Now, when
you eat at the Trident, you aren't exactly in a private space--it;s more like eating in an
elevator. The food;s good, but you'd better not care whether the people at the next table
hear what you're saying, because they're only about two feet away. So I kept shushing her,
and she kept starting off again.

 I finally got her to change the subject by complaining about my husband's brother,
who came night before last to spend a week with us while he attends some kind of
conference.

 "He acts like a major depression case," I said, "and, so far, he treats me like I have
leprosy. The kids and Bob had already left, so it was just him and me at breakfast.
He ate with his nose stuck in the paper and barely said two words. Did the same thing
this morning. And last night neither of us got in 'til late, so I barely saw him."

 "Well, what's matter with him?" Beth asked.

 "How am I supposed to know?" I said. "I've only met him two or three times,
when we've gone back to Iowa to see Bob's parents for some holiday and found him there
with his wife. He seemed o.k. then, and Bob says he was a big joker when they were
kids."

 "Good looking?" Beth asked.

 "I'll say. He's not as tall as Bob, about my height I guess, wide shoulders, flat
stomach, clean-cut looking. Yesterday morning he wore his uniform to the first day of his
conference and he looked like a poster boy for the Army. Badges, ribbons, razor-sharp
creases, the works. Today he wore a polo shirt and a jacket and looked like a movie star."

 "Ummm," Beth said. "How do you want him to treat you?"

 "Like a human being, for God's sake!" I said. "He could at least talk to me. He acts
 like I smell bad or something."

 "You wouldn't like a little schmoozle, maybe?"

 "Oh, God, you only have one thing on your mind, don;t you! This is my husband's
 big b-r-o-t-h-e-r."

 "I say it;s best if you keep it in the family," Beth said, primly.

 "Forget it," I said. "I just want him to be civil."

 "You want my advice?" she asked. "You're a trained therapist. Do therapy. Show
him a little skin."

 "That's not exactly what Carl Rogers would recommend," I said.

 "If you were some old psychology guru it wouldn't work. But it works for me and
it'll work for you."

 "Come on."

 "No, I'm serious," she said. "He;s a male. They're not complicated. When you want
something from a male, you make it worth his while, or at least make him think it'll be
worth his while. So give him a little taste and imply there's a banquet waiting. You could
start off by asking him why he's such a prick. That would get his attention."

 "Maybe I will," I said, then went back to my omelette. Beth started trashing the
Boston Ballet and we forgot about nasty old Henry.

     --------------

 I called Bob that afternoon from my office.

 "What's with your brother?" I said. I described two days of lousy breakfasts.

 "I don't know," Bob said. "He acted a little like that with me, too. Nothing much
to say. I haven't really seen him since the divorce. Maybe he's got problems."

 "Well, if he didn't yesterday," I said, "he does now. I can be just as nasty as he
can."

 "Please don't," said Bob. He knows I can be nasty, and I could hear him cringe
right over the phone. "Why don't you play therapist, instead? He used to be a nice, happy
guy. I used to worship him. I don't know what's wrong, but what you describe isn't the
Henry I knew ten or twelve years ago ."

 "OK," I said. "He's your brother, so I'll try. But he'd better loosen up."

 Henry is just two years older than Bob. They had the same parents, lived the same
places, and ought to have turned out sort of similar, but they didn't. Somebody handed
Henry a rifle when he turned up for ROTC class the first day he was in high school and
Henry fell in love. Somebody handed Bob a book before he even went to school at all and
since then he's tried never to be more than half an hour from a big library. So Henry's a
lieutenant colonel in the Infantry, and Bob's an associate professor of medieval history.

 I was ready when breakfast time came around. I didn't have to go into the city, so
I came down in my nightgown and robe to get the kids off to school and say goodbye to
Bob. Then Henry came down, dressed in casual civilian clothes.

 "Hi," I said, smiling. "You get your choice of breakfasts this morning because I
don't have to go to work."

 "Ugh, thanks," he said, looking off into the distance. "I'll just take whatever you're
having." He sat down and picked up the paper.

 Beth told me to do therapy. Bob told me to do therapy. I'm just a vocational
counselor now, but I've had the courses, I know the moves. Then I remembered Beth's
ideas on therapy. Of course, Beth's a five-foot-four bundle of sex waiting to happen,
while I'm a five-foot-ten, freckled-faced, messy-haired, slightly overweight faculty wife
with two kids. Still, she's no dummy. But if I wanted to follow her advice, I'd have to
approach the problem a little differently.

 Therapy began.

 "How would you like to arm wrestle?" I said solemnly.

 Henry looked up, puzzled. "Huh?"

 "I said, how would you like to arm wrestle? Come sit over here. I'll clear a space."
I picked up some dishes and a place mat and put them on the drainboard. Then I sat back
down and looked at him. "Well, come on."

 "I don't generally arm wrestle with women," he said.

 "Well, this isn't generally. Come on over."

 "What's this all about?" He said. He was beginning to look a little more alive.

 "I have this thing," I said. "I like for people to treat me like a human being, I just
thought a little arm wrestle would break the ice."

 He shook his head, wiped his mouth with a napkin and began to move into the
chair next to me. Then he got up and took off his jacket. His biceps came into view. I
thought I might lose the match.

 :He sat back down and put his right elbow on the table, ready to go. He smiled.
Maybe a couple of millimeters wider than anything I'd seen so far. I grabbed his hand.

 "O.K., I'll call the start," I said. And I did.

 Now maybe ;m female and all that jazz, but I'm not a ninety-pound weakling. In
fact, I  weigh a hundred and sixty. (Maybe a little more--you think I'd tell you?) I used to
throw the javelin and put a shot, and I still swim all the time. So when he kind of
lackadaisically pushed, I shoved his hand down within an inch of the table. He caught on
just in time. Then he started pushing back. It took him a long time, nearly a minute, to
pin me. Of course I nearly busted a gut. (That;s the athlete talking; I'm really a prim
suburban housewife, and such language never crosses my lips.)

 He let go and I whooshed, then smiled.

 "See? You touched me and I didn't break," I said. "You could probably take a
chance and talk to me. After all, I expect you could protect yourself  if  I'd start to eat you
up."

 "Yes, well," he said. Then he actually smiled a real smile. "I can't tell anybody
back at Fort Benning that you almost beat me. I'm a big hardass, you know?"

 "Well, on very short acquaintance I like the hardass better than the prick you've
been since you got here," I said.

 "Am that bad?" he asked.

 "Yes," I said. Then I just sat there and looked at him. Therapists aren't supposed
to talk; they make you talk.

 "I guess I am," he said. "I don't have much to do with women. The ones in my
battalion think I don't like 'em."

 "They think you don't like them?," I said.

 "Yeah. I kind of avoid them in the O-club, and I treat the ones who work for me
very formally."

 "You avoid them," I said.

 "I haven't had much to do with women since I got divorced," he said.

 "Since you got divorced?"

 "All right, you asked," he said, "so I'll tell you.

 "You know how it is in the Army, right? You live here for a while, get transferred,
live there for a while, get transferred again and live somewhere else for a while. If you're
a regular, like me, you know a few people whenever you hit a new place, you've got a
new job you're comfortable with, you settle right in. But your wife doesn't know anybody,
so she's lonely until she gets to know a few people. As soon she begins to get
comfortable you move. Takes a certain kind of woman to put up with this.

 "Meanwhile, you go on maneuvers, you go on TDY--temporary duty--somewhere
else, you sometimes have to work a week or so without even getting home. Pretty often,
when you do get home, you're shot to hell and just want to sleep, not party. Some people
have kids--we didn't. So naturally she gets a job. Selling real estate is not unusual. Makes
pretty good money if you're in the right place, and we always were. She meets a lot of
civilians who don't go off to the boondocks all the time. Screws a few guys, just for the
hell of it. No big deal. Of course, I didn't know about that part.

 "I go off to Bosnia. She stays home, of course. I come home after a few months
really feeling lousy. Bosnia is a terrible place. I saw lots of guys and quite a few nice
looking women all blown apart. They kind of superimpose on all the dead Iraquis I saw a
few years ago. This gets on everybody's nerves, but if you're like me, you've got a place in
your mind where you put this stuff so it doesn't bother you. Good soldiers all have that
place--it's what keeps you from going nuts. Short-timers don't have it--they get PTSD. So
I put all that bad stuff  back there in the place I don't look. Unfortunately, when I got
home, I'd get all sexed up looking at Katie, she'd take off her clothes, ol' dick just shrivels
up. Then a staff sergeant I know pretty well tells me I ought to keep an eye on my wife.
What can I do? I do nothing. She gets sick of this after a while and moves out. End of
story. Only I came out of it not too happy with women, not very trusting, you might say.
Actually, not too happy with people in general. They seem to kill each other a lot. So
that's why I'm a prick. Ironic, the word you chose. Maybe lots of other things, but not a
prick.

 "But I couldn't just tell you to fuck off--you're Bobby's wife, and you listen and
keep your mouth shut, and you damn near pinned my arm, so I decided to tell you why
I'm not a very nice guy." He looked up at me and smiled crookedly.

 "Did you tell your wife about Bosnia?"

 "Not much," Henry said. "She was pretty busy, and she didn't like to hear about
bad things."

 "You know something?" I said. "We've all got a place like yours where we put
things we don't want to think about. I'm lucky--mine doesn't have blown-up bodies in it,
just things like a kid that got slapped when he shouldn't have, a mother hurt when I told
her to go to hell because she was trying to protect me, a guy I led on in a big way and
then dumped without even bothering to get back in touch, a couple of times I cheated
various ways, a husband I screamed at when he hadn't done a thing. Just little stuff,
compared to yours. I can keep it pretty well battened down. When I get to feeling bad
about something, though, all that stuff seeps back in and makes things worse. I can tell
Bob what's bugging me, and that helps. Or I can tell one of my women friends. Then I
can say, 'get on with it,'  and put the old stuff back out of sight. But you can't tell
anybody, can you?"

 "Nope," he said. "But I'm familiar with 'get on with it.'  I just can't seem quite to
do it."

 "Give me your hand," I said, reaching out to him. "Feel that? My hand? I'm all in
onoe piece, and you can feel the bones in there, all covered up with skin that will feel
pretty good if you let yourself feel it. The fingers work. It's all alive." I squeezed. "I could
squeeze hard and hurt you. But I don't want to, so I won't. Do you want to squeeze
harder?"

 He increased the pressure a little.

 "Yes, I'd actually like to squeeze harder."

 "Go ahead."

 He squeezed a little harder.

 "No," he said, looking at me, "I can't. I don't want to hurt you."

 "So we don't want to hurt one another?"

 "No."

 "Remember that. Now what do you want for breakfast? You've got to go to work."

 I cooked for him.

                       ---------------And this is where it stopped-------------

Janey98@hotmail.com

Read Jane Urquhart's completed stories:
http://members.tripod.com/files/Authors/jane/wwwy98
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Jane_Urquhart/www
http://annejet.pair.com/story/