All this time while talking and listening to Seamus, I was also hoping to myself that this man would not succumb to one of his narcoleptic interludes. For this especially was the time, true night and the light in the red library dreary and thin. Seamus was, I felt, a bit heated up over certain issues, issues that could be considered highly charged, emotionally charged and capable of sending my brother into the narcoleptic’s reflexive, precipitous sleep. It doesn’t take much in the way of sorrow or distress to knock him out. There was, for instance, that troubling question of Russel’s arm in relation to next Sunday’s match. This was clearly a source of worry for our whole team. Seamus, in particular, seemed to feel a heavy burden of collective anxiety. Russel’s injury was a reminder, to Seamus and the rest of us, of the sadness and frustration that accompany aging. Then there was Seamus’s repressed rage and disappointment with me for letting the team down in the past, not to mention the extreme tension that must have been occasioned by what I took to be a narcissistic dilemma. I’m referring to Seamus’s recollection of father’s admiration for my throwing ability. This must’ve pained my brother—notice his attempt to recover self-esteem by proxy: that unconvincing affirmation of Gregory’s team spirit. Probably Seamus’s upbeat assessment of Gregory’s personality could be attributed to “first drink” enthusiasm for the night ahead and all the fun we would have together in the red library. This, then, would explain the disillusionment and depression triggered by the sheer fact of Seamus’s barren, empty cocktail glass, his searching recognition of its watery emptiness.
As I was saying, it doesn’t take much to deliver my brother into a deep, imperturbable sleep.
Seamus’s eyelids fluttered. Men abroad in the room’s lamplit distance were indistinct wandering figures. Some idled in the shadows as dialogues went on concerning business transactions or the unsightliness of someone’s clothes or what hour dinner might finally be served since it was getting late, approaching eight already and high time for another round. “What’re you having?” could be heard, answered with:
“Gin.”
“Sherry, please.”
“A glass of white.”
“Another bourbon and water on the rocks if it’s no trouble, Clayton, you can make that a tall one.”
The festivities were gearing up. With the usual exception of the twins, groups of talking brothers were nebulous and permeable; in other words, drinkers with their drinks came and went from small cluster to small cluster until there were no more separate clusters, only a dense, chattering, semicontinuous current of bodies around the room and past the bar. Gentlemanly footfalls rumbled. Someone had turned the music loud but our voices rose louder. Who can abide these unquiet hours before dinner is wheeled out and arranged in trays on the oak table beneath the rose window that faces down on dead topiary?
Under moonlight our old trees take scary shapes. It’s better, I think, to stay away from windows and not look down on those twisted silhouettes of animals and birds that seem to scream at you from leafless perches. Of course it’s only wind screaming as usual through branches that creak, snap off, drop to the ground. I have suggested taking the ax—or a chain saw?—to the entire, warped grove, but no one will hear of this. “We could burn off the stumps, roll the grass, string a net, and play lawn tennis,” I once proposed to a crowd seated around a low table spread with foreign-language periodicals. To which someone, it was Forrest if I recollect, looked up from Italian Vogue and replied, “In this wind?”