Work Text:
Natalie Goodman had a brother. But only sometimes.
She was really young, so for those years she didn’t know whether the reason it was sometimes was simply because she didn’t see him at certain points, or because she imagined him entirely. She aired on the side of not seeing him occasionally, because that made more sense to her.
The odd part was, her parents didn’t talk about him. She hadn’t paid the most attention to it at the time, but she still noticed it. There were moments when they’d be sitting around the dinner table and her brother would slip into the seat next to her, and not once would her mother or father turn to include him in the conversation. They’d speak to her; they’d chide her lightly for prodding at her food without taking a bite and Dan would cut chicken for her and Diana would smile almost tiredly, like there was something else on her mind but she didn’t want it to show in front of Natalie. But they never acknowledged her brother.
When she was really little, maybe two, she’d reached out with both hands and swept them vaguely toward the spot her brother occupied. She didn’t exactly know how to form the words, but she was asking if they knew he was there. If they were going to help him with his food, ask him if his favorite color had changed from the night before.
She got a blank look the first time she did it. The second time, Dan asked, “What’s over there, Nat?” with a lightness to his voice that suggested he was doing the typical parent thing where they humored their children and their whims but didn’t fully understand or believe them.
“Gabey,” Natalie announced with a bit of frustration. Because didn’t they know?
She knew. Her brother had told her his name once, when Diana was on a call with a doctor and Dan had stepped into the other room. It felt right when he said it, like she’d always known it belonged to him. She couldn’t pronounce it correctly, she hadn’t all the way figured out how to say certain letters at that age, and even her brother fumbled a bit over the same ones even though he was older than her. Natalie ended up calling him “Gabey-el”, because she couldn’t work her lips around the r in his name.
He’d been so happy when he heard it. A kind of happy that probably didn’t make sense, if he was her brother and he was family and they should have said his name all the time. But Natalie didn’t mind it. In return, she said her name was “Na-lie”, and her brother grinned and repeated after her (with the addition of the syllable she’d accidentally left out). Natalie held out a toy car to him and he scooted closer so he could take it.
But when she said his name that night, it didn’t feel the same. It wasn’t right. Her mother went very, very still and her father’s jaw tightened and even her brother didn’t like hearing it. He took in the looks on their parents’ faces and shrunk down in his seat.
Finally, Dan nodded, closed his eyes, and said, “Yes, Natalie,” in a tone that sounded nothing like agreement.
Natalie looked back at her brother. He was gone.
He’d probably left his seat when she wasn’t looking, but she didn’t know why. She didn’t think there was something that could have given him reason to leave. But she didn’t see him again for a long while, after that. And for the rest of the night, her parents seemed more subdued. Her mother turned in early and woke up later than she usually did the next morning. Her father washed the dishes in silence and didn’t say anything as he turned on the television and let Natalie pick the channel.
She was three when she was at the playground and she realized her parents were too distracted to pay attention to her.
She was climbing the wrong way up a slide and trying to keep hold of the hot plastic, and she heard a voice call out for someone to be careful.
Natalie perked up immediately. But that wasn’t Dan or Diana. It was another parent of another child, and right after the call she heard a lot of high-pitched giggling from the other side of the playground.
She pressed the soles of her sneakers hard into the slide and, with the clumsiness typical of her age, crawled the rest of the way up and kneeled at the top.
Her brother sat next to her. He’d been the first one up the slide, laughing at her when she said it was too steep to go up the wrong way, and he’d waited only a little impatiently at the top while she climbed after him. He was frowning like he knew what she was thinking.
“Dad’s just talking to someone,” he said. “It’s okay.”
“But Mom,” Natalie said almost questioningly.
Her brother paused. “I dunno about Mom.”
Noise exploded behind them, and her brother sat up straighter while she flinched. “Okay,” he amended. “I think that might be Mom.”
Somehow that made her laugh. Maybe it was the look on his face. Her brother offered to race her down the stairs and to the swings, and she scrambled to her feet because he was already running as he said it.
“You’re cheating!” Natalie whined, trying to stay steady on her feet and keep up with him at the same time.
He just laughed.
But he also said he’d push her on the swing, so she decided that made up for it.
“You can’t push me,” she declared anyway. “You’re too small.”
“You’re smaller,” her brother countered. “I’m so much bigger than you.”
“Are not!” Natalie cried. He was already pushing her, and she could hear him smiling as they argued back and forth.
“Are too,” he said. He pushed her extra hard on the next swing to prove his point. “You can’t push me. You’re too little.”
“Sure I can,” Natalie said. She dug her heels into the ground until she came to a stop and hopped out of the swing. “Look. You go.”
Her brother snorted but sat down. He didn’t have to pull himself up the way she had to, which annoyed her, but she was focused on pushing him at the moment. She put as much force as she could behind the first push. She was rewarded with a tiny swing, not nearly as high as her brother had gotten her.
He was already laughing before the swing was finished, and Natalie pouted because she felt it was her right as the younger sibling.
“You made me,” she accused him.
“I didn’t make you do anything,” he replied.
“You did.”
“Did not.”
Their banter kept on for a few minutes before her brother looked up, catching something she couldn’t see.
“I think Dad’s coming over,” he said. It was like a change came over him then, making his eyes dim. He stepped away from the swing. Natalie, having given up and switched places with him again, waited for the swing to stop while watching her brother for some sign as to why he was acting this way. “He’s with Mom, too.”
Sure enough, Dan and Diana Goodman appeared from around the playground equipment, Dan holding Diana by the shoulders like he was steering her away from something. Diana’s head was turned and she was shouting something over her shoulder with a too-wide smile on her face. Natalie watched them locate her and walk over. Her brother took another step back.
What happened? she almost asked her parents. She glanced at her brother, and he was staring at them, but recoiling just before they could make any sort of physical contact.
“We gotta go, Natalie,” said Dan. That was a bad sign. He didn’t often say her full name, so that meant that things weren’t going the way they should.
“Okay.” Times like these, she’d figured out she should probably agree and move on. She felt like it helped her father to worry about one less thing. She thought that he didn’t need a whining, protesting daughter at the moment.
She looked back at her brother to check if he was following them. He wasn’t there.
She was four when she was left behind in the grocery store.
She wouldn’t have called it negligence from Dan’s side, really. Or at least not totally negligence. It was partly her fault—she wandered while her father was paying for the groceries even though he’d told her to stay close, and she’d seen how forgetful he was during the trip. There had been several points where she’d taken the scribbled shopping list into her own hands and found parts of it herself, because Dan was tired enough to be pushing the shopping cart but not much else. A few people around her looked a little confused seeing a four-year-old commandeering the shopping from her father, but she didn’t care. They wouldn’t get anywhere if they didn’t get the eggs and cucumbers. And she thought she could help.
But maybe the fact that she got left behind wasn’t just childish wandering. Maybe part of her wanted to test how much things had changed. Natalie didn’t know much about it, but she’d been paying more attention lately. Her mother’s newest meds felt like they were making things worse rather than better. Her father was more stressed. She wasn’t asked the same questions at family meals. And she’d been left alone a lot more than usual.
Well, she wasn’t entirely alone. She had her brother. She hoped she’d always have him. Especially now.
He was nearly six by now, and he helped her when she started to get nervous. She wasn’t sure when exactly she noticed him there (and she didn’t remember him riding with her and Dan on the way to the store, so she had no idea how he got there), but she turned a corner down another aisle that looked just like all the others and suddenly he was next to her. He didn’t speak at first, but when she let out her first scared whimper he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer.
“Dad’ll come back for us,” he assured her. “You’ll see.”
Natalie squeezed her eyes shut. “What if he doesn’t?”
“He will.”
“What do we do till then?”
She opened her eyes and looked up at her brother. He was older than her, but he was still young, and it looked like he didn’t exactly know what he was doing. Like he wanted to comfort her, to help her the way he wanted to, but he didn’t know how to go about it. After a while, he shrugged, seemingly unable to come up with an answer. They kept walking.
They went down aisle after aisle together, waiting for Dan to remember he’d left something behind and come back. They found the freezers and her brother showed her how to draw pictures by using the condensation on the glass. They rated the chips on the snack aisle based on a scale of never eating it in my life to I would want this every day, every meal of the week.
It helped a lot to have her brother there with her. Deep down she was still a little panicky, but he continued to move her attention to something new before it got bad. He didn’t really know how to help in a situation like this with words, but he did it seamlessly with actions.
Natalie wasn’t sure how much time passed. It felt unbearably long, but she was a child who’d been left to wait and that always made stretches of time seem longer than they were. All she knew was that at some point her father was in front of her, nearly running toward her.
“Nat,” he sobbed into her shoulder as he reached her, pulling her into a hug. Her face was pressed into the fabric of his shirt. He smelled clean, the way he always did, like soap and linen. “Oh my god, Nat, baby, I’m so sorry—”
Her hand had been held firmly in her brother’s, but she felt him let it slip. She felt colder without his hand in hers. She tried to look back at him through Dan's arms and managed to glimpse him out of the corner of her eye. His gaze was locked on their father, eyes wide, and both his hands were cradled to his chest. There was an odd amount of distance between him and Dan.
Natalie watched him in confusion. “Gabey,” she said quietly.
She felt her father stiffen. He stood from his kneel and took Natalie’s small hand in his own, starting to lead her away.
“Let’s go home, okay, Nat?” he said, with a performed kind of brightness.
Natalie looked back at her brother, who stood frozen behind them. She caught his eye, and he smiled the way he usually did, but it didn’t look like a happy smile.
“Gabey,” she said again. “C’mon.”
He made no move to follow them. He shook his head.
“Sorry, Nat,” he said. His voice was small, smaller than she’d ever heard it sound. While she’d been the quiet child, he’d always been loud—starting up conversation, making up all kinds of voices when they played together, speaking when she couldn’t. It felt wrong to hear him, to see him, so subdued.
Sorry for what? she wanted to ask. Why are you sorry?
Dan turned the corner. Natalie turned with him, eyes still on her brother. He disappeared from her sight, hidden behind the aisle.
That was the last time she ever saw him.