by Lily Foster
“Sorry, what?”
He looks over his shoulder, taking in my view. “I’m good, I promise,” he says softly. “So, I want to hear about you. How are your prospects looking?”
“I got the scholarship.”
If we were home, I’m certain Timmy would’ve let out a whoop and grabbed me into a bear hug. In this environment, though, you condition yourself, school your expressions. You never look to draw attention, so Timmy just nods and says, “I knew you would.”
He’s happy for me, and for some reason that hurts like a motherfucker.
“I’m leaving mid-August. I need to settle in and find myself a job before classes start.”
“Does the scholarship cover room and board?”
“Most of it,” I lie. I’m seriously stressed out about the amount of money I’m going to need just to cover my books and living expenses, but I’m not letting my mother in on that. She’s got enough on her plate already.
My mother takes my hand. “I’m glad you’ll be near Michael. And you could always live with him if you don’t like the dorms, right?”
“I’m sure the dorms will be fine.” I check with Tim and see he’s smiling too. “You have any access to social media in here?” I ask him.
“No, those sites are blocked. But Mike sends me letters, he’s been preparing me.”
“He’s careful about what he posts but it’s pretty obvious. I suppose he’s gearing up for a big announcement.”
“Yeah, like we don’t already know.” Timmy laughs, shaking his head. “I should just put him out of his misery…Ask him when the wedding is.”
The two of us are sharing a laugh as my mother looks between the two of us, lost. “What are you two talking about?”
Tim cocks his head to the side, fixing my mother with a smile. “We’re just wondering when Mike is finally going to bust out of the closet.”
She closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. “I know. He talks about his good friend Brandon all the time. Does he think we’re foolish?” She looks between us. “Does he think we won’t accept him?”
Both of us reach out at the same time and take one of her hands.
“No, Mom,” Tim says. “He knows we love him. He’s just gotta go about this in his own way. When he’s ready, he’ll tell us.”
“Well, I may be crashing at his place for a few weeks in August, so I’m thinking the cat’s gonna be outta the bag pretty soon.”
“I could wring that boy’s neck…Running off like that to Chicago.”
“Yeah, well, if I was gay, last place on Earth I’d want to live is Fayette County.”
“Simon’s right, Mom. People in our town made it clear his kind wasn’t welcome.”
“People knew in high school?”
“No one knew for certain, but people can be assholes.” Timmy looks off into the distance when he adds, “Can make your life miserable if they want to.”
The buzzer sounds, the loud jarring noise droning on for a full thirty seconds. I should be used to it by now, but it startles me every time.
“I love you,” Mom whispers as I fix my brother with a brief look that tells him the same. I see his face change, morph into an impassive mask. Showing emotion won’t do you any favors in this place.
As he lines up with the others, I notice a bruise blooming purple and yellow at the base of his neck, right in the back where his collar meets skin. I wish I never saw it. Knowing there’s nothing I can do to protect him makes me feel worthless.
Charlotte
Two days ago we buried my mother.
Two days, and the mourning period is officially over. My father announced he was taking the weekend, “heading to the casino,” and Christian is throwing a party at our house tonight.
Dad sat with me this morning for an uncomfortable minute, watching as I scarfed down a bagel before school, then asked if I was all right with him leaving. The question and the concern in his voice caught me off guard. My father doesn’t make a habit of asking for my permission.
And what was I to say? Please stay, Daddy. You just buried Mom. Remember her, your wife? So yeah, it would be uncharacteristically decent of you to stay home and comfort your children this weekend instead of fist pumping at the craps table and sucking down martinis with your barely legal girlfriend. Nothing would have convinced him to change his plans anyway.
The smell of his cologne turned my stomach. I took note of the brand new suit paired with leather sneakers, his shirt unbuttoned at the neck, no tie. He was going for upscale, hip yet casual. I could have laughed out loud. My middle-aged father following the trends, emulating the look his favorite ESPN commentators sported—men who were more than twenty years his junior. And stay or go, what did it matter? It’s not like the two of us would be spending quality time together anyway.
“I don’t mind, Dad.”
“Hey,” he said, waiting for me to look up. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m doing my best. We’ve all been dealt a crappy hand, right?” The asinine gambling reference nearly sent me over the edge, but I bit my lip and fought to keep from crying. He wouldn’t appreciate the melodrama. I focused on the poppy seeds dotting my plate, nodding repeatedly through the uncomfortable one-sided exchange instead. “You’re working this weekend?”
“Yeah…Saturday and Sunday.”
“Ok, I’ll see you.”
Without a backward glance he made for the door, our father-daughter moment officially over.
Now it’s past midnight, the music is cranking, and the intermittent sounds of girls laughing and guys yelling above the din have me convinced I won’t get more than an hour’s sleep before my alarm goes off at five-thirty. I’m crying tears of loss and fatigue when I hear a knock at my door.
“Charlie?” The door opens and Wes sticks his face into the small opening the chain lock allows. “Charlie, it’s me.”
I throw the covers off and pad across the room. My instinct is to lie there pretending to sleep until he goes away, but at the same time I don’t want to be alone. Sliding the chain free, I turn back and get under the covers again.
“What’s up, Charlie girl?” He closes the door behind him carefully and comes over to sit at the foot of my bed. “Aw, shit. I was just gonna ask how you’re doing,” he leans over and wipes a thumb across my damp cheek, “but I can see those tears. I told your brother he shouldn’t have people over but Christian’s a dumbass. Guess I don’t have to tell you that.” That draws a nervous giggle from me. “There she is,” he whispers, smiling.
“Why are you friends with him?”
“Who?”
“My brother.” I pull the sheet up, using it to wipe my eyes. “I can’t figure it out. You’re normal, you’re nice, and he’s—”
“He wasn’t always this way. I’ve known him all my life. You were only seven when your mother had the stroke. We were thirteen. He was a different person before your mom got sick. Don’t you remember how it used to be? He was always teasing you, yeah, but he was good to you, looked out for you.”
“Looked out for me?” I roll my eyes. “No, can’t say I remember that.”
“I’m not gonna lie and tell you I don’t want to beat his ass now and then. I see how he treats you and it kills me. I tell him he needs to make sure you’re all right, that he needs to keep an eye on you now that you’re grown.” Wes looks away from me when he adds, “You’re sixteen now.”
I scoot up, sitting back against the headboard. “I’m invisible to both of them.” And then I really start crying. No, I weep. I weep big, fat, ugly tears. He hands me a shirt from the floor to wipe at my runny nose and eyes. Catching my breath between words, I let it all out. “I’m all alone now. She’s gone, my father’s always gone, and Christian...I wish he was gone. I hate him.” Wes is shaking his head, but I’m not about to listen to him defend my brother. “I hate him. When you’re around, yeah, he’s rude and bossy, but when it’s just the two of us, he’s worse.”
“What do you mean?”
&n
bsp; “He barks orders at me, tells me to shut up, tells me I’m getting fat, tells me—”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I cross my arms over myself, ashamed of the way he looks at me now. I shouldn’t have opened my mouth. It’s better not to rock the boat, not to make trouble. I still have two years before I graduate from high school. Two years to save every penny I make so I can get the hell away from here once I have my diploma. Why am I suddenly confiding in Wes?
“Look at me.” Wes coaxes my chin so that I have no choice but to follow the command. “You’re beautiful. Please tell me you know that.”
I don’t answer because I don’t care. Whether or not I’m beautiful isn’t a question I wrestle with. I’m not like Sienna or those other girls. Even Daisy fusses over her outfits and hair in a way that makes her seem foreign to me. I’m in my own head most of the time, caught in the same kind of purgatory as my mother.
And she’s gone, so now what? Now I just keep on going. The thought leaves me feeling so empty, so isolated. My body shakes with the force of my sobs. He leans in and holds me close to his chest. His hands rub up and down my back slowly, soothing me as he whispers words I can’t make out.
I turn and lean into him, wrapping my arms around his neck. At first he grips me tighter, pressing me into him, but a moment later he drops his arms and stands abruptly. I look up, the loss of his warmth like a blast of ice cold air. Wes walks to my window and presses his palms against the pane. He hangs his head, shaking it slowly from side to side.
“Wes?”
He looks at me with a pained smile before turning to leave my room. “You get to sleep. I’ll get rid of these idiots.”
I want to stop Wes, to warn him, but I don’t. The last time I asked Christian to turn the music down during one of his parties it didn’t go well. He grabbed me, and with one hand spanning the length of my jaw, he walked me in reverse, forcing me back into my room. I tripped over one of my books when he pushed me inside, so startled that I didn’t put my hands out to break my own fall. I had a lump on the back of my head for a week afterwards.
Wes peeks his head in a moment later. “Get up and lock the door behind me.”
I do as I’m told. My heart is beating faster, anticipating conflict. The music goes off. I hear people talking in hushed tones with a little laughter mixed in. No yelling. The front door opens and closes a few times and then the house is silent. I lie awake for some time, waiting for the fallout that never happens.
After my first trip outside to give Rudy his buttered roll and hot chocolate, I stay indoors. I take my breaks at a corner booth in the back, so tired that I rest my head against the table. Marley, the den mother of our diner crew, asks if I need her to cover my tables. I could go home early, take the next day off if I want.
I don’t want to go home.
Christian was awake when I came out of my room ready to leave for work this morning. He looked up at me, pausing as he cleared the counter of plastic cups and beer cans. His hair was messy and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked out the front window and said, “You leave this early? It’s still dark outside.”
“Um, yeah, the diner opens at six.”
“It’s not safe, you driving over to that side of town in the dark. I’m just saying, you could make extra money working with me and Dad.”
“It’s fine.” What was with the small talk, the sudden concern for my welfare? “I’m not working there, not working with Liza. I like the diner.”
He looked back down at the black trash bag nodding his head. I stood there waiting, thinking he might need me or something. He was grieving too, I reminded myself, and for a brief moment he seemed, I don’t know, remorseful maybe.
I startled when his head whipped back in the direction of the hallway. “Get dressed and get out,” he ordered the girl who’d suddenly materialized in his bedroom doorway. Her eyes were wide, her face smeared with last night’s eye makeup. She was shifting her weight from one foot to another, wearing nothing but my brother’s shirt. Clearly she had to pee. When she looked towards the bathroom door, he raised his voice. “I said I want you gone.”
As she scurried back into his room to get her things, Christian looked to me, challenging me to say something. I wanted to tell him he was being an asshole, that was obvious, but I also just wanted to ask him why he was so angry all the time. I felt sympathy for him in that moment, which made next to no sense.
On the drive to work, I tried and failed to conjure up an image of a happy child, a loving brother. I don’t remember the person Wes described to me. But his words ring true. My mother’s stroke, although I hardly remember the actual event, changed everything and every one of us. Home was suddenly a very sad and lonely place to be once she went to stay in the hospital. I knew it couldn’t have been easy on my brother. He saw it through the eyes of a teenager, so he saw more than I did. And then a few years later, whatever happiness remained was tied to his big dreams. Those were taken from him too.
A paper tablecloth, a giant tray of sandwiches wrapped in colored cellophane, paper plates, unopened soda bottles, a cake and a platter of cookies. Maybe it’s the memory of that night that keeps me from turning my back on my brother, no matter how hateful he can be.
The accident left my brother with a shattered leg, his all but guaranteed football scholarship shot to hell. I was only eleven and started staying after school most days, the tension in our home too much to take. I’d hear my father giving false, cheery updates to the college coaches recruiting Christian, only to hear him slam a palm into the wall once the calls disconnected. After the surgery, physical therapists came and went, Christian and my father dismissing every one that contradicted their mandate that Christian be back on the field before playoffs. My brother hurled a water glass at one, barely missing the man’s head before it smashed against his bedroom door. That therapist’s crime was telling Christian he should focus on going to college, not on playing college football.
Everything was set for a party, like we were expecting a crowd, but there were only four of us in the living room. Three really—I was hiding in a nook off to the side, silently taking in the awkward scene.
Christian was showered and dressed in clean sweats, even wearing his regular sneakers. He wanted Coach to believe that it was all good, that he was just fine, that he was ready to get back out there and lead the team to the state championship.
No one ate. Christian barked at me right before Coach knocked on the door, ordering me to remove his crutches from the room, so he couldn’t get up to make himself a plate even if he wanted to. But both Christian and my father were too busy to eat anyway. Too busy with the effort of plastering on their winning smiles, with making small talk, with putting a positive spin on Christian’s recovery.
I almost felt bad for Coach. It was clear from his expression that he knew the score, knew he had to focus his energy on the other boys who still had a shot at being recruited. He was only humoring my father with this visit. He begged off when they both gestured for him to dig in, my father making a show of slicing open the cellophane even as Coach made excuses, something about having to take his daughter to Girl Scouts. My father didn’t let up, making two plates and forcing one into Coach’s hands.
I watched my father take a big bite of his own sandwich, forcing himself to chew something that probably tasted like battery acid at that point.
Christian works for my father now. He dresses in cheap suits and sells cars to people who can’t afford them, offering credit with terms no sane person would ever accept. Knowing Christian, he lives for that part of the job, for that exact moment when he knows he’s succeeded at putting some sucker between a rock and a hard place. I’m sure he enjoys repossessing vehicles twice as much as he enjoys selling them.
He’s not a happy man, that’s plain to see. Without football, he had no need or desire to attend college—that’s what he tells everyone anyway. He likes to present himself to the world as Christian Mason, independently wealt
hy heir to an automobile dealership dynasty. As if. In truth, he had no aptitude for college, barely eked his way through high school. And our family business, while it doesn’t lose money as far as I know, isn’t exactly going to set either one of us up on Park Avenue.
Nowadays I try to avoid him in the mornings, leaving for school half an hour before I need to. He stomps around, cussing under his breath in a general state of dissatisfaction. Then Christian stands in front of the large mirror that hangs over the couch in our living room, yanking on the end of his tie as he works to make the knot. At twenty-two his middle has already gone soft, a small bit of fat pushing over the waistband of the pants he insists on buying. He needs a bigger size, but I’d sooner take up residence in a lion’s den than suggest it.
His mere presence sucks the air from the room. If I’m around, I become a target. The house is filthy (Christian and his friends make the mess). There’s no reason you shouldn’t be cooking dinner for the family at night…We work all day (my father never comes home for dinner, so I’d be cooking for Christian and Christian alone). You should stop wasting your time with that “dance shit” and start taking care of this house (yes, at sixteen being a homemaker is my dream). I’d gladly wake up at four in the morning if it meant avoiding a run-in with Christian. He hasn’t been my brother in a long time.
He’s like a simmering pot of water with the lid on, always threatening to bubble over. He can spin tales to his friends and to the stupid girls who try in vain to get close to him, but I see through the act. I know him. In his weaker moments, drunk and tired, he sometimes lets it out—the sadness that threatens to crush him, the disappointment of unfulfilled dreams.
I do feel for him, but if you listen to Christian tell it, Timothy Wade is to blame for every wrong turn his life has taken. And when he gets on that thread, no one around him is safe. There are nights he sits out back with his loser buddies drinking beer. I can sense when it’s about to happen, when he’s about to turn. Ribbing between friends becomes personal, his voice rises above the rest, the others try to pacify the petulant baby, and bottles invariably smash. He’s an angry drunk, my father says, shaking his head as I sweep up the shards the next morning. A chip off the old block, I’m always tempted to say back, but I don’t dare.