The house at the end of the block was covered in windchimes.

Hundreds of them. Like gangsters in West Side Story, they danced in slow circles. One got closer. The next one snapped. Then they jilted back a few steps and clanged against the wall. Echoes of tin reverberated off car roofs and satellites. Crept under my door frame and animated my hands to stroke the hair of my clammy lover. 

That was the summer I was eighteen. When the world was ending and my cheeks were slimming. My boyfriend was six years older but my parents liked him. I’m not sure why. He got me into menthol cigarettes and David Foster Wallace. I read to him. That was nice, lying shirtless with my ribs against his pelvis and my legs splayed open. I felt intelligent. One morning my mother walked in, I pulled a sheet across us quickly, preparing for a reprimand, but she just smiled and said there was a beauty in the continuity of mankind. When she left, Elliot agreed this was true, that what we were feeling all lovers had felt since the dawn of time. This just reminded me that he had felt it before and I slammed the book shut and opened the window, letting the chiming in and the salty scent of our bodies float away from us. 

Elliot had a brother who couldn’t speak. Armand was thirty and lived in a group home five blocks from my parent’s house. Sometimes I went with Elliot to visit him. 

In November I went alone for the first time. Elliot had started a job at a brewery. I was taking classes at the community college. On paper I was studying French but I’d filled my schedule with cooking classes. A croissant masterclass on Mondays. Tapa Tuesdays. I arrived at the group home buttered and powdery, carrying two loaves of olive bread.

Armand grunted his greetings and smiled. One evening after a long afternoon with both brothers, I told Elliot his life seemed easier than most people’s. “Maybe having to talk and talk is what makes us miserable.” This made him so angry he didn’t look at me until the morning. Proved my point, I thought.

“How’s it going?” I asked. Armand adjusted his large body into the sofa. It was a stuffy room, old cream carpeting turned beige and spotted. Cracked wooden furnishings pointed towards the TV static. He nodded. 

And that’s how it went. We looked out the window or at the channel four news. I’d glance at Armand every couple minutes to make sure he was okay. When Elliot was there he would ignore his brother completely. Flip through channels and put his feet on the table. 

“Your brother has a new job. He’s making beer.” Armand continued to smile. “I don’t see him as much. That kinda sucks.” His expression didn’t change. “But hey, your mom is back in town, I might finally get to meet her.” To this, Armand’s face contorted slightly. “Does she ever visit here?” He shook his head, broke open the bread and handed me a piece.

That night I went to Elliot’s apartment. 

“Claire.” He was chopping garlic when I let myself in. I pushed my shoulder against his. He pushed back.

“I visited your brother.”

He looked at me with surprise. “Really?’

“I know you’ve been busy, and–”

“You don’t have to do that.” 

“I wanted to.” I went to the sink and filled a glass of water. Drank it and poured another one. 

“How was he?”

I only nodded. “What are you making?”

“Um–” He looked down at the board for a moment, trying to remember. “Pasta.” 

“We made homemade noodles in class last week.”

“What happened to taking academic classes? You said you could add some half-term courses.” He added olive oil to a frying pan. Sparked the gas and lit a match. 

“You sound like my mom.”

Elliot shook the match until the flame went out. “And what do you say to her?”

“That maybe this is what I want to do.”

“Great.” He scraped the garlic into the pan. I pushed it around so it wouldn’t burn.

“Why are you so negative?”

He wiped his hair off his forehead. “I’m not sure.” 

“When will you introduce me to your mom?” He leaned against the counter and looked at me. He didn’t speak.

“How come she doesn’t visit Armand?”

“She does.”

“He said she doesn’t.”

Elliot grabbed a can of tomatoes. The opener was dull. He cursed at it under his breath. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but Armand doesn’t exactly talk.”

“We communicated.” 

“Alright.” 

That night he put on a movie he knew I wouldn’t like, and nudged my head off of his shoulder. He snuck out for work before sunrise. 

I woke up in pain. 

For my nineteenth birthday he bought me an umbrella. I'd told him that I’d never owned one of my own. I always just used other people’s. I didn’t mind that, in fact when I was with him, I preferred it. It meant huddling up together. Then, on Halloween it rained, and he snapped at me for not bringing mine. He wouldn't let me under his. When we made it back to my house my costume was ruined. 

That night, while he was sleeping, I’d written the pros and cons of our relationship. On both sides I wrote, ‘mystery.’ 

I got up and paced across his bedroom. In the corner he had two photo albums. We had leafed through them together, months before. But that was early in our relationship. I picked up the first album. 

Flipping through it was reassuring. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but everything was comfortingly normal. First days of school and soccer matches. It wasn’t until I reached the last page that I realized something. There wasn’t a single photo of Armand. 

I went back to the stack and got the other. Mother and son. Nordstrom Christmas photos. Still no Armand. 

I headed back to the group home. The secretary, a girl not much older than me, greeted me warmly. “Your bread made him very happy.”

I smiled back. “I’m glad. I’ll have to bring some for everyone.” We both looked at the other with the stiffness of two young people trying to act mature. “Well, I actually just had a question.”

“Okay.” She tucked her hair behind her ear, revealing a hickey, and then remembering, moved it back quickly. “How can I help you?”

“I was just wondering if Armand’s mom ever visits.” 

She looked at me with confusion. “Well, no. We couldn’t permit that.” 

I nodded, smiled, tried to act natural. “Why?”

She stared at me blankly. A nurse walked behind the desk pushing a wheelchair. “Jerry?” 

“What’s up?”

“When you drop off Candice would you mind chatting with me for a moment?” 

“Gotcha, boss.” 

She straightened the papers on the desk. “You're his brother’s girlfriend, right?” I nodded. “Okay,” she said, “how about you sit down for a few minutes.” 

I sat in a recliner by the front door. A woman across from me was sewing a quilt. It was beautiful. I told her that, and she looked at me with disgust. 

Finally, “I’m Jerry.” he reached his hand out.

I shook it. 

“Unfortunately, I can’t give any information about who is and is not permitted on our visitor list.” He looked at me sympathetically. “I’m sure you remember the vetting process. Many factors can prevent people from receiving that clearance.”

I nodded, uncertain what to say. 

“But Claire, this is something you should talk to your boyfriend about. I’m sure he can give you a better answer.” 

I stood on the sidewalk, in front of the windchimes, listening to the sounds of smokeless Decembers and summers of my youth. I felt myself at the precipice. There I was with a man. He stood beside me.

I’m not sure if he was headed to my home, or to Armand, or somewhere in between. “How about we visit him together. With your mother.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious. I’d like that.” 

“Okay.” He repeated.

  “How long has she been gone?” 

“My mom?” I nodded. “I don’t remember.”

  “Are you close?” 

“She’s my mother.”

“That’s hardly an answer.” 

“Claire.” His voice sounded tight. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.” 

“Why don’t you call her? We can make a plan. We could even go together and pick Armand up. Take him to dinner.” I looked up at him, trying to gauge his pinched face.  “I saw a resident being dropped off today. Why don’t you ever take him anywhere?” 

“You went back there?” He moved away from me. 

  “Call her, Elliot.”

  “You’re being weird.” 

I stared at him and felt the world breaking. “Call her. Please?” I needed him to not lie. I needed an explanation.

  “No.” 

“Please.” Elliot felt very large. I stood up as tall as I could. “Call her.” He stopped walking and stared at me. “Let’s make a plan,” I prodded. “I want to see your family together.”

Finally he reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. “Okay.” He put it to his ear. 

“Speaker, please.” 

Elliot looked defeated. He hesitated over the buttons. “Hello?” A woman’s voice came muffled from the phone. He hung up. “We need to talk.” I nodded. 

And so, on a windless night, with the chimes quiet, Elliot painted his childhood for me. His father leaving when he was two. His mother’s rage. Pulling Armand out of school. He was a bad student. “Some kind of learning disability,” Elliot explained. He couldn’t read. She moved them from Seattle to California. When Elliot turned five she enrolled him in school. But Armand never went back.

“Claire,” he said, and his voice choked and I, sitting across from him in bed, put my hands on his knees. “She never let him out of his room.”

“Never?”

“Never.” And his chest heaved and his head fell downwards. “I lived this totally normal life. I had friends. I was great at soccer. And then I came home and would hear her screaming at him. And him sobbing and banging on the walls.”

Oh my god.

“What kind of person is okay after living like that?” He looked at me.

“I don't know that you are.” He shut his eyes. It scared me. It all really scared me.

“You asked why I don’t ever take him out. I don’t have an answer. It never occurred to me. He probably would like that.” I nodded. 

In October six years prior, when Elliot had just left for college, “left for college with him still trapped there,” a neighbor knocked on the door to ask if their mother would trim her oak tree. She feared it would fall and “take us both out.” She said it with a high-pitched laugh, and the house — like a cacophony of chimes in the wind — echoed back. Armand shrieked until his lungs had tears in them. And then, within an hour, their lives were different. 

“The trial was awful. It was the longest I’d ever looked at him. I hadn’t realized he was a grown man.” Deep breath. “When I got up and said it wasn’t abuse, the jury looked like they wanted to kill me.”

Did I hate him? My stomach hurt. 

“She just got out of jail.” 

Tin melodies flooded the room. He was sorry he hadn’t told me. So sorry. I said I was too. 

And Armand. He gripped my arm tightly when I told him I knew. Whimpered. 

Then I took him to see the windchimes. 

He looked smaller in the big world. Sitting on the sidewalk on a breezy day, his neck craning to see all of them. His eyes aglow. The song made him laugh until his eyes were damp. Mine were too. I brought croissants. Tomorrow we make paella. 

When we parted he whispered, “bye.” I told no one. Our secret.