The Little Brother

by Victoria Patterson

  She seemed to consider my question seriously. “Not really,” she said. After a pause, she added, “We, like, party together, but that’s about it. She’s always been really, really, really”—she paused again, grimacing, as if searching for the right word—“weird,” she said at last. She didn’t say it meanly, but in a philosophical way.

  She nodded toward one of Gabe’s friends, whom I hadn’t met before, a guy named Kent Nixon. Tall, athletic, angular facial features, humorless, tough, on the football team with Kevin Stewart. I thought of them after, and still do, as the Ks.

  “She, like, thinks that’s her boyfriend,” she said. “But he doesn’t even like her. He had sex with her in her car last week, right in front of his house. He told me. She brags about giving him road head. She doesn’t know they make fun of her. They all think she’s a slut. No one wants to be her boyfriend.”

  I took another sip of my Budweiser and watched Tove. Her head was back in a laugh, and then it moved forward and she gave us a sideways glance with a glimmer of antagonism.

  “Does he know,” I asked, “that she thinks he’s her boyfriend?”

  She shrugged. “He doesn’t care what she thinks,” she said.

  LATER, AFTER MIKE arrived and after the sun went down, Gabe and his group of friends left for the garage to play pool.

  Mike and I stayed and drank a few beers, swam a little, since the party we’d decided to go to didn’t start until nine (varsity girls’ volleyball team; the party started when they came back from an away summer practice game), and we had time to kill before it.

  Dad came home, turned off the stereo, stuck his head out the open sliding glass doors, and asked if everything was okay. He and Nancy had been at some fund-raising barbecue with Krone and his buddies.

  “Yep,” I called back. Mike and I were in the Jacuzzi, the water bubbling. The bridge of Mike’s nose was peeling from a sunburn, and he kept picking at it.

  Behind Dad I saw Nancy leaning over, standing, moving around purposefully as she cleaned, throwing away cans and empty potato chip bags. Just seeing her set off my memory-smell of her perfume.

  Dad gave a prolonged reprimand in his gruff voice—“When you leave the doors open, insects get inside the house. Don’t forget to turn off those pool lights when you’re done. Last time, someone kept them on all night. Keep the noise level down, and make sure to tell your brother to do the same. We don’t want more noise complaints.”

  A few weekends ago, a cop had arrived at our door and in an apologetic manner had asked us to “tone it down, please.” An anonymous phone complaint had come from one of our neighbors.

  We figured it was Mrs. Libby, the old widow who lived alone in the giant mock Tudor. The one time I met her, she’d offered me an ancient, frosty-looking piece of green ribbon candy from a crystal candy dish by her front door. Though she kept the curtains closed, I often saw her silhouette vacuuming the living room in slow motion.

  But later we found out that Mrs. Libby was partially deaf. It was the lawyer couple two houses down. We rarely saw them, since they left at the crack of dawn each morning for the gym and worked late.

  Ever since the complaint, Dad had been reminding us about our noise level.

  “Okay, Dad,” I called back. “Have a good night.”

  “You, too,” he said.

  “Hello, Mr. Hyde,” said Mike, with a big wave. He liked to make fun of the fact that Dad didn’t usually remember his name.

  “Who’s that?” said Dad, squinting.

  “Mike,” Mike said.

  Dad nodded.

  “Hello, Nancy,” I called out in the same spirit, knowing that she would prefer to be left alone.

  She peered at me from behind Dad’s shoulder for a second. A quick smile, possibly my imagination.

  Dad slid the glass doors shut and retired to his bedroom with Nancy, on the opposite side of the house. I watched their dark forms as she followed him down the hallway, holding his hand.

  Later Dad claimed that his weekend had been consumed by an epic migraine, and he’d sought refuge in his bedroom. The migraine, he maintained, had prevented him from properly supervising Gabe and his friends.

  I don’t know if he had a migraine that weekend or not. But I like to believe that he did.

  DRESSED AND READY for our volleyball party, Mike and I went to the garage, the center of Gabe’s universe. It was only 7:30 PM; we still had about an hour to kill.

  “We can play pool,” Mike said, “and if it’s too weird, let’s leave.”

  He didn’t like Gabe’s friends much, either.

  The whole time, I’d been thinking about telling Mike that I knew Tove—imagining what I’d say: See that girl right there? Yeah, her, in the Marie Callender’s uniform. I know her. No one knows that we were friends. We used to play together as kids. We had this special class together, because we both read at an advanced level. Now she’s pretending she doesn’t know me. She used to be so different. I used to go over to her house. I know her parents. Her dad really likes me. I wonder what happened to her? I wonder how she knows Gabe?

  And imagining what Mike would say back: Go talk to her. Who cares if she’s trying to act cool? She’s just intimidated. Look at her! She actually looks kinda scared. C’mon. Let’s go talk to her.

  But I kept quiet and didn’t explain.

  When we entered the garage, Tove was lifting a bottle of rum to her lips, leaning against a wall near Crystal and Melissa, who were smoking cigarettes, and who both turned and stared at us. Melissa gave me a quick, unmistakable glare. Then she whispered in Crystal’s ear, and Crystal nodded with her eyes on me, so that I’d be sure to know that I was the subject of the whisper—Melissa was angry because I’d ignored her as soon as Mike had arrived.

  Kent and Kevin swung their pool cues at each other in a faux sword duel, and Gabe fiddled with a portable television that he’d brought to the garage, using wires to connect his Samsung camcorder. The Beastie Boys thumped loudly from his stereo.

  I looked at Mike, asking with my eyes if we should leave.

  He shrugged and moved toward the stand of pool cues.

  Walking past Tove, I felt a strange sensation, as if she were leaning against me instead of the wall.

  But we didn’t speak to each other. Not once.

  I was racking the balls when Gabe turned off the music and said, “Movie time.”

  He knelt next to the television.

  Everyone quieted down and watched. I glanced at Mike as he chalked his pool cue with a cube of blue chalk.

  It took Gabe a minute to get the television working.

  The screen flickered. A grainy recording, so at first I couldn’t make anything out, but then I realized—as Kevin and Kent hooted and hollered, “Oh, yeah!”—that two bodies were moving in discord, thrusting and jerking, having sex on a bed.

  I won’t lie: A shiver of excitement and pleasure fluttered through me.

  “That’s disgusting,” Crystal said, and Melissa said, “Oh, my god! It’s true! You did make a video! Kent, you weren’t lying!”

  “Tove, that’s so disgusting,” Crystal said.

  I couldn’t tell that it was Tove in the video, but my gut sank as soon as I heard her name.

  Tove looked stunned. Her skin reddened, and then she said, “Look at me. I’m a porn star,” in a sarcastic voice, trying to save face.

  My head buzzed with shame, even more so when Tove tried to deflect the attention. Then her head went down and she said, “Turn it off.”

  Kent said, “There’s, like, forty seconds left.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “because that’s when I figured out what you were doing.”

  “You know you like it,” he said, sidling up to her and putting his arms around her. “You know you wanted to.”

  She buried her face in him.

  Crystal pulled at Gabe’s arm. “He tried to get me to,” she said. “I told him, ‘No way, get that camera out of here.’”

  “What’re you talking
about?” Gabe said, pretending not to understand.

  Crystal laughed and said, “Sicko-freak,” nuzzling him. “I don’t want to be a porn star,” she said in a baby voice.

  Kevin walked over to Tove and Kent with a bottle of Jose Cuervo tequila. “Here,” he said, guiding the bottle to Tove’s mouth, “take a sip and you’ll feel better.”

  At first she swatted at the bottle, but then she drank, her hand moving to wipe the excess from her mouth, Kent holding her.

  “Good girl,” said Kevin, and then he took a swig.

  “Hey, man,” Mike said, “she looks like she’s had enough.”

  “Hey, man,” Kevin mimicked back, “why don’t you mind your own fucking business?”

  For a second, everything stilled. I wondered if Kevin would hit Mike, and whether I’d be expected to fight. Then Gabe broke the silence. “Let’s go swim,” he said, leaning in between them, using his rough monotone voice, similar to Dad’s but not as gravelly. I noticed that he adopted it around his friends.

  Mike and I went inside to the kitchen. “Your brother’s friends are assholes,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “That girl’s really drunk.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That video”—he had no words, shaking his head.

  The house was quiet except for the refrigerator’s ticking and the sounds from the others filtering in from outside. Through the kitchen window, we watched their dark figures at the pool.

  Tove, unsteady on her feet, made her way to the pool’s shallow end and sat on the steps in her pants. After a few minutes, she waded into the water, her work shirt billowing behind her.

  Kent and Kevin—the Ks—swam around her, kicking and splashing, the pool lights off (I’d followed my dad’s instructions, and Gabe and his friends hadn’t bothered to turn them on again).

  Tove came back to the steps, and Crystal knelt next to her, talking to her.

  Crystal and Melissa helped her to the garden area, behind some bushes.

  “What are they doing?” asked Mike.

  “I don’t know.”

  When they came back from the bushes, we saw that Tove wasn’t wearing her pants.

  “She must’ve had to pee,” said Mike.

  “Yeah.”

  “You ready?”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  We walked out the back way, past the pool. Dark sky, silver crescent moon, cool breeze, the smell of gardenias. Tove’s wet pants dripping on a deck chair. Near the back gate on the path, a curled wet sock, and to the side in the dirt, a black sneaker.

  11.

  JULY 4

  I WENT TO THE girls’ volleyball party with Mike and a bunch of people whom I didn’t know, and I woke up at Mike’s house, on the floor beside his bed. A blanket on me and a pillow beside my head.

  “Are you okay?” Mike asked, looking down at me.

  “Yeah,” I said, though I wasn’t.

  “You got really fucked up,” he said.

  “Hmm,” I said, gripping the side of his bed to stand. Black dots flickered in my peripheral vision.

  “I got worried, so I brought you home.”

  I sat on the bed next to him, taking deep breaths. Fragments of the night came back to me: a long-legged girl giving me a piggyback ride; shots of whiskey from a paper cup; making out with another long-legged girl in a room full of more long-legged girls and other people, mostly athletes, to claps and cheers; someone slapping my back; a close-up of a blue-tinted toilet bowl and my getting sick into it; riding in the backseat of Mike’s Datsun, the windows opened, a heavy, cold breeze on my face.

  “Do you remember what happened?” Mike asked.

  “Not really.” My temples throbbed.

  “You drank too much,” he said. “I tried to stop you.” He left me for the bathroom. I could hear him running the water, whistling a song I couldn’t make out, and then the toilet flushed.

  When he came back to his bedroom, I said, “Those volleyball girls know how to party.”

  “They work hard,” he said, “and party hard.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Who’s Tove?” he asked, sitting next to me again, the mattress collapsing a little with his weight.

  A coil of fear ran up my spine. I realized we hadn’t introduced the girls earlier, so he didn’t know their names.

  When I didn’t answer, he said, “You talked about Tove.”

  “When?”

  He yawned and ran a hand through his hair. “Last night,” he said, “in your sleep, after you passed out.”

  “What’d I say?”

  He watched me for a moment. Then he said, “You said, ‘Get out, Tove. Go home, Tove.’ Some things I couldn’t understand. And I don’t know what else, just the name. ‘Tove, Tove.’ I’m sure that’s the name. Who is it?”

  I lay back on the bed and groaned.

  Mike’s mom knocked at the door, cracked it open, and showed her face. “Good morning, boys!” she said. “How do you feel about scrambled eggs?”

  Mike stood up. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I echoed. It started as a joke, my calling Mike’s parents Mom and Dad. But as time went on, I took it seriously, and they did as well, granting me a place inside their home.

  “You know,” he said, when his mom shut the door, “you don’t have to eat Mom’s eggs if it’ll make you sick.”

  “I think it might help,” I said.

  He nodded. “Who’s Tove?” he asked again.

  It was a moment before I answered. “Just a girl I used to know.”

  12.

  JULY 4

  I CAME HOME FROM Mike’s, and after briefly talking to Gabe, I slept most of the day, facedown on my bed, oblivious. Gabe told me that he and his friends were going to the beach to meet some girls. The house was deserted, Dad and Nancy gone, no note.

  I got up and took a long, hot shower, trying to decide whether to go with Mike to another party that night, or just stay home and take it easy. Mike wasn’t a huge partier, but every now and then he went a little nuts.

  Peeling and eating three tangerines, I sat in Dad’s recliner and watched a special on CNN about September 11 with lots of sweeping, patriotic music; wind-rippled flags; close-ups of soldiers, children and babies; and fireworks shooting off. An earnest, deep male voice intoned: “September eleventh took away our innocence, but it didn’t take away our spirit. Our great nation is on the mend, and we’re coming back strong. Let’s celebrate this Fourth of July like none before. Let the fireworks become symbols of light that will guide our futures, and as the fireworks fill the skies, let hope, courage, and the American spirit fill our hearts.”

  I decided to call Mike.

  “Yeah,” I told him. “Let’s party.”

  BEFORE OUR PARTY, Mike and I went to a fireworks show with his family at the Back Bay. We sat in lawn chairs in the dusk on a bluff overlooking the water with hundreds of others also sitting in portable folding chairs or lying on blankets or standing. People around us ate, drank, talked, laughed, listened to radios, strummed guitars, napped, kissed, cuddled, and played with dogs. It smelled like dirt, beer, sulfur, algae, and barbecue.

  Mike’s parents and sisters sat nearby; we could see the tops of their heads in front of us—they’d let us go off on our own.

  “Don’t be strangers,” his mom had said.

  His twin sisters, Michelle and Melanie, in fourth grade, wore white shorts and red, white, and blue tops, with matching plastic beaded metallic necklaces.

  His youngest sister, Emily, in first grade, wore red cowboy boots and a plastic diamond tiara.

  When I watched television at their house, sitting on the sofa, or when I sat on the sofa for some other reason, Emily would move from where she was and come sit next to me, leaning her entire body into me, and hold my hand.

  Their mom would smile and say, “Emily, for heaven’s sake: Give Even some space,” but their mom knew that I liked it. It was as if they were all comforting
me through Emily, wanting me to be okay.

  Strange to think that Emily’s a high school junior now, grown from that little sober-eyed girl who leaned into me, sensing my sadness and loneliness.

  The stars began to prickle to life in the darkening sky. I took a sip from my Coke can, which had a touch of Bacardi 151 rum in it. One of our acquaintances from high school had offered it to us, stealthily pouring from a bottle into our cans, his sweatshirt covering the procedure, before moving on to find his group of friends.

  “I can barely taste it,” Mike said.

  “Yeah,” I said, but I was glad, planning not to overdo it again.

  At my right side, an older gray-haired woman sat with a star-spangled-sweater-wearing Chihuahua on her lap, and the dog stared at me, pointy-nosed and beady-eyed, its body shivering with intensity.

  I tipped my can in its direction, and it continued to stare.

  Patriotic music sounded from a distance, echoing in the expanse of the bay.

  In the dark sky, a blur of light shimmied upward, stopped, sparkled, and—a beat of silence—exploded, bursting into cascades of blue, red, yellow, and green, fizzling downward, illuminated in the water below. A boom went off, and then something that sounded like staccato gunfire.

  Oohs and aahs from the crowd.

  I leaned my head back, breathed in the smoky night, and watched the fireworks releasing, sparkling, and lighting the sky, falling in slow motion; changing colors from red to purple to blue to green; disappearing in puffs of gray smoke; evaporating further into nothing; sparks of light shooting out in a bloom, flaring, and dying just as quickly; great looping arcs of color fading, disappearing.

  I watched the backs of the heads of the people in front of me illuminated in the blaze of colors. One little boy had his ears covered with his hands and his face down. Near him, a line of senior citizens sat in wheelchairs, their heads tilted the same way. The Chihuahua huddled into its owner, its back quivering.

  I closed my eyes, sensing something in the fireworks, something of the danger in just being alive. Living and breathing and existing as a part of this crazy world, not understanding what anything meant. Trying to make sense, struggling. It felt as if I could shatter, and that then I’d be nothing. I’d felt this way a few times before, and it always terrified me, like my body couldn’t contain me—or at least all the feelings inside me. It wasn’t just the idea of being nothing that scared me, but what it might feel like to shatter.