He Was the Air

4: On the Line

Fer and Sven grew up together with their mother and father in a small house in the city. It was pretty rough around the edges but comfortable nonetheless. They hadn't always lived there but that place was the one where they had their first sweethearts, where they played cards with friends in the basement on the weekend, where there was enough room to feel alone sometimes but never get stuck without adventures. They stumbled around the city mostly carefree, lingering at game cafes and diners, even in the subway common areas in the summer when it hurt to be outside. The memories from those days were pretty decent overall. It's not like anyone's life was perfect, Fer reminded himself diligently. He had started reminding himself of it a long time ago.

Fer only had a foggy recollection of where their family lived when he was born. It was hard to say whether that place had been better or worse, or if it was just different. Maybe it was that all of them had become different in the years between. The brothers got on pretty well from the beginning. It felt like Sven should take the credit for that. He had a kindly heart that made him easy to be around and perhaps uncommonly, it was accompanied by a certain reserve, a reassuring strength. Fer couldn't tell you what was like to be him. He imagined it was probably as challenging to be the older sibling as it was to be the younger. Fer tried to think of it respectfully, and never to encroach too far, nor ask too much, but Fer appreciated him.

In the first house, when they were very small, most of his memories revolved around Sven, and the odd little things you see and learn when you are first coming into the world. He remembered the little garden that his mother grew. She was a sweet person, even if she had some serious troubles. Regardless, when he and his brother were very young, the world still seemed weightless. Fer remembered eating snow peas off the trellis from that humble garden bed behind the house and digging around in the dirt with Sven, just the two of them, trying to find a cool beetle or some night crawlers to admire. The family had a cat too, named Tommy, and sometimes he would sit there with them in the sunshine on a springtime afternoon. Since that house was in the city as well, there wasn't a lot of room to get acquainted with nature, but it had been important to their mother that they get a taste of it however possible. Now understanding how those golden childhood days were already on borrowed time made Fer feel more fortunate than ever for that taste of comfort.

Their cat, Tommy, was pretty old when they were kids. Fer assumed their mother must have had him from before, maybe even before she had married his father. Even though Fer was small back then and didn't seem to remember much with clarity he remembered Tommy and his mother and how she loved that cat.

When Fer was seven and Sven was ten the house burned down. Tommy died. Fer felt absolutely sick every time he thought of it. He didn't understand at the time how a house could be perfectly fine one day and gone when you returned but it wasn't the first time something like that had happened since he had seen it on the news before. When their house burned they lost virtually everything. The effect was like a gigantic pickaxe thrown at the pane of glass that was his mother, their family, and the carefully stitched together marriage of his parents. It was a miracle that glass didn't shatter all at once but the cracks were undeniable. Even though times were trying after they lost the house his parents did the best they could. Their mother had a sister who didn't live too far away. Her house was close enough that their father could keep his job and so they stayed with her a while to get back on their feet. It was going to take time. Fer often recalled how overwhelming life felt those days, even if he was only a kid, and how he was sad because of it. He didn't know how sad Sven might have been because his brother didn't show it. Sven was the only one like that, and even though Fer needed him more than ever while they were living with their aunt he worried all the time about what Sven was feeling too.

Aunt Grace was very friendly, and her house was welcoming. She didn't have any children of her own, nor a husband anymore, but she had that house and seemed glad to extend her hospitality. The brothers had to share a bedroom for the three years they stayed, which wasn't terrible, it's just that as they started getting older it sometimes felt uncomfortable. Even though he could rely on Sven most of the time, there was no prevention for the consuming anxiety that would creep into Fer's bed in the middle of the night when nobody else was awake, twisting around him like a python. It was such an awful thing Fer inevitably faced, laying there painfully alert, alone in the way that you feel so truly forsaken and empty, even when the person you love most is right beside you.