Greenhouse

The green exterior now disguises the old island house almost entirely, and for Gary it is a long minute before he can see it there on the hill above him, though once he does the scene snaps into place: orchard, driveway, a chimney that is in fact not a lightning-blasted tree. He walks his bicycle up the gravel path which becomes so steep in places that he slips in his slick-soled shoes, and when he arrives at the porch he is panting and sweat has collected in his armpits. The green porch is empty, the green pillars of the porch support a green ceiling, the shingled walls are green, all is green, a madman's idea of décor, but this is a madman, after all, his brother, or was. The key is where the will had promised, in a false rock hidden beneath the porch amid a heap of other false rocks, another of his brother's mad willful cockeyed brilliant ways. The lock turns easily. Inside, the usual scene, books and papers and the familiar scent of David's anguished industry, plans for the apocalypse that did indeed finally come, if only just for David. From the front windows the view is of the gravel path down the hill, the water, the endless expanse of the Georgia Strait that streams out west and north, west and north, an open avenue to the ocean from which, any day, any goddamned thing might come, any moment. It is a sight enlarging in its emptiness, the imagination rushes to fill it with a monster, a comet, a great and final wave. And what is the project now before him, before this dutiful brother Gary? Poor Gary, Gary sometimes hears himself declaiming, if only to remind him who he is. Too old to start over but too young to have what he has, which is almost exactly nothing. Only now this house. He should have looked after David but David was having none of it, easier for both of them. Evidence of what his brother lacked is everywhere. Just two towels in the upper hall closet, a permanent chill in the bath where the ancient window has separated itself from the wall to admit a knifing winter breeze. And always that open mouth of sea to the north and west. And when six weeks later Gary has finally cleared out everything, has set up mousetraps and emptied them a dozen times, has located bank statements and every inch of necessary intelligence and fed all remaining refuse to the roaring bonfire, after he has done it all, done everything a good brother should do for a good brother, now that it is too late, it is this gaping view that will pin him to the house, will keep him there for the winter, waiting to see what comes, while he fills the pantry and putties shut the window and cycles his way around the island again and again, and one day what comes is a slanted gray storm, snow, thrusting itself down the vast channel, a slab of broken slate, and it is only then, once the storm has come and gone, and the day stands bright and empty, that from the bottom of the gravel drive Gary sees what his brother had perhaps intended, the green house standing on its snowy slope, a shining place of mad green brilliance, ridiculous, defiant, a problem, a clue, but also an unfading emblem of the unreasonable, burgeoning world. This is what it was like to be David, says David's green house to David's surviving brother: not all bad, not all bad, so do not pity him. A consolation. What he left.