The Only Brother

by Caias Ward

  ‘I guess,’ was the best I could push out of my mouth. I threw the picture into a box with piles of old clothing, putting it from my mind as best I could. All this would end up on eBay. I’d scan the pic at least, and save it. Every picture needed to be scanned now, all so that no one would ever forget William and his wondrous achievements.

  More packing, more loading, more junk. I can’t even imagine what the place looked like the first time Dad got here to get Will’s suit for the funeral. Probably takeaway containers as far as the eye could see, porn, and catalogues for theatre lighting equipment. Dad stayed at the apartment overnight that time; probably cleaned the place up as much as he could, so Mum didn’t have to see it all. She certainly wouldn’t have been able to handle the porn.

  Every once in a while, Dad stopped and stared at something: book, a shirt, a hat… something that reminded him of Will. I kept quiet; I didn’t want to get sucked into the gloom. I know it hurts him a lot, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill Will, and I shouldn’t always have his ghost haunting me.

  Don’t know how much I’ll forget, though.

  And then, Will’s old room, stacked with boxes I hadn’t had a chance to go through yet. It was easier when Mum was off selling homes. I could sneak out trash, keep the saleable stuff and put the pictures to the side. I knew what really would mean memories to the olds, what they could live without and what we could just throw away.

  Mum, on the other hand, didn’t have any idea what was worth saving and what was trash. She would have bought another house to keep everything. ‘No! It was his!’ Like throwing anything out was like throwing away a precious memory.

  Mum pulled at the painting. I let it go, not wanting to deal with the fallout if it ripped. It was finger paints on paper, ragged on one edge where Will tore it out of the big pad of paper. The head on the dog twisted impossibly off the black and grey stick figure body, blue ears and yellow teeth and not much else. Next to it stood a kennel, straight and tall with perfect angles and perspective, drawn in fine-lined ink. Under both pictures was Will’s illegible scrawl of a signature, sloppy even for a seven-year-old boy.

  Mum brushed it smooth, placing the painting carefully in a manila folder. This, she set aside, just like the sloppy fired clay pot, the sloppy tie-dye T-shirt Will made at a party as a kid, and the sloppy first draft of his university thesis written in four different pen-inks and stained with soy sauce. She didn’t care where she set it aside, not even noticing that it was in the way. I had to sort all of this, and get all the stuff sold, but that didn’t matter to her.

  ‘Mum, we don’t have the space for all of this…’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Mum shushed me, ‘I’ll find a spot. I always find a space for everything.’

  ‘What, so we can live in a house sale? Mum, there’s too much stuff to keep…’

  Mum sat down slowly and rested her head in her hands. She shuddered and then cried, her head shaking. I stepped away, not sure what to do. At the funeral, I hadn’t been able to get my head around the idea of hugging Mum, or holding her hand, or anything, really. Still can’t do it now after these few months. It just doesn’t feel right for me to do it. Like I said, I never really was a touchy-feely person.

  I didn’t even notice Dad in the doorway of the room. He moved quickly to Mum, wrapping his arms around her. She turned to him, holding on, shaking and sobbing.

  Why couldn’t I understand this? I just didn’t feel the same way about them as they claimed to feel about me. I thought about hugging them, or saying I cared, but then realised that I couldn’t say any of those things. How do you care about people that don’t care back? How do you care about people who always had a favourite, and it wasn’t you, not by a long shot? You don’t. You go, and to places where you are wanted, to people who want you just as much as you want them.

  Trevor was my ticket. He had a job and, more importantly, was old enough to drive. I gave him a quick ring, music blasting out of my phone when he picked up.

  ‘Andrew!’ Trevor’s solid Geordie accent boomed out of my phone, shaking my hand. Sara said it was like ‘an Irishman whispering’.

  ‘Quiet,’ I shushed him over the phone. ‘I need you to pick me up quick.’

  ‘I got a few in me, like, but I’m good to drive I think. We’re going to watch some footie. Hope Newcastle kick Sunderland’s ass!’ I covered my phone again as I loaded my laptop and drawing tablet into one of my bags. I had so much work to do and wasn’t getting any of it done.

  ‘It’s one in the afternoon on a Saturday, Trevor.’

  ‘Been drinking since ten. Like you said, it’s a Saturday. What have you been doing?’

  ‘Sorting through my brother’s crap,’ I said.

  ‘That’s rubbish,’ Trevor bubbled. ‘You need to get a few in you, see some of the lasses coming over, have some fun, like.’

  ‘I have work to do. Just need a power outlet.’

  ‘Fine, fine, be all responsible,’ Trevor said ‘responsible’ like it would steal his beer money. ‘But at least you should come over. I’ll be there in ten.’

  He hung up, just as loud as he talked. Trevor’s not the brightest boy in the world, but he’s fun and a good mate in a fight. Finally getting all my stuff together, I worked my way down the stairs as quietly as possible.

  ‘Andrew!’ my dad yelled from the room. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Out!’ I yelled back, not even stopping. I heard him thumping down the stairs after me.

  ‘You can’t go out,’ he said, ‘we have too much stuff to do here. Your mother has two completions this week, and I have to fly out to Berlin. We need you to go through all this stuff.’

  ‘I have a lot of work to do, Dad. Trevor’s picking me up.’

  I stopped about one step from the bottom of the stairs, my father coming down fast. I backed my way down, wondering what my odds were of getting out without a fight.

  ‘That Trevor is a terrible influence! Dammit, Andrew, you have responsibilities now! We are expecting you to carry through…’

  Zero chance of getting out without a fight.

  ‘Expecting? Expecting?’ I screamed. ‘I’ve been doing everything left and right for years! I designed the prayer cards to save us some money! I stayed up late on school nights to get all that stuff listed on eBay so that we could pay my brother’s bills! I barely have time to study! And yes, I do have to work to get good grades, it’s not just a given!’

  ‘Andrew, do not use that tone…’

  ‘Every pay increase you got,’ I spat at him, ‘every commission Mum made, all went to paying Will’s medical bills and his big American university bill and his eating his way through a damn year of school because he was “sad”!’

  ‘Don’t you ever talk to me like that!’

  ‘My laptop, I earned! The tablet, I earned. I didn’t get to study abroad because of Will’s third operation! We spent three Christmases in a hospital where I got to hear everyone bitch about how I wasn’t being “festive”! I didn’t put him in there!’

  And now Mum decides to cry her way into the argument. I couldn’t understand her at first, but one word came out loud and clear.

  ‘Selfish.’

  Yes, I’m so damn selfish, getting barely anything for holidays because my brother needed something. So selfish that when I offered to help my brother on design classes because I’m a damn artist and might know what I am doing, he would still mouth off at me on the phone and in emails. So selfish that I had tried to help where I could, in the ways I could help best, but he and the olds hadn’t wanted any part of it.

  ‘I’m out of here, I’ll see you tomorrow.’ I made it to the door before a hand dug into my shoulder.

  Next thing I saw, Dad was flat on his back on the stairs, his nose swollen and bloody. I don’t even remember what happened, much. I must have given him a slap and done it right for once, since I didn’t hurt my hand. I don’t remember opening the front door, I don’t remember running down the driveway…

  Bu
t I was at the end of the drive in no time, running down the street in the direction I knew Trevor would have to come from his place. I caught him two streets early, throwing myself into his crappy Vauxhall Corsa with the dented side, and yelling at him to drive, drive, drive…

  Sitting in Trevor’s car, I couldn’t even focus on anything he was saying other than ‘like’ and ‘like’ and ‘like’ in that Geordie way. The past two months kept on pushing back into my head, two months of fights and shrinks and my life going to hell…

  CHAPTER 5

  How does that make you feel?

  Trevor was talking as he drove, the way he always does, nonstop. But my mind was back two months in the past. Bloody shrinks.

  ‘So, how does that make you feel?’

  Dr Thompson looked at me with his bug eyes, peering out from behind thick glasses that he constantly cleaned with a blue cloth. He was friendly enough for an ancient guy, I guess. But I’m not one for doctors, especially ones who want to load me up with medications. And the ones he prescribed for me would make an elephant pass out. Still, it was good to talk to someone who didn’t judge me, or everything that I did.

  I considered his question for a moment. ‘Angry, I suppose.’

  I fidgeted in the chair. I always thought the crazy people were supposed to lay down on a couch when they talked to a shrink. But Thompson had directed me right to a big leather chair facing him. He warned me about my wallet chain scuffing the leather; I picked it up and brought it over my lap. It was about a half-metre of comfort to fidget with in an uncomfortable place.

  This guy had no sense of design: wood panelling, too much furniture in too small a room, three big leather chairs, a monstrous desk, a not-quite matching leather couch, and walls stuffed with bookshelves and diplomas.

  Dr Vernon Thompson, Class of ’74. Fellow of the Royal Medical College. Member in Good Standing of Blah Blah Blah Association. I’d done my own checking on the guy. He wasn’t a criminal or anything, had had some articles published. Dealt with adults mostly, but also grief issues, which is why my olds had dumped me here once a week for the past two weeks.

  The place even smelled old.

  ‘Why do you feel angry?’

  Because old people keep asking me stupid questions? How about my parents bitching at me over every little thing in the world? Oh, I know! What about getting outclassed by a damn ghost?

  ‘Everyone keeps on asking me how I’m doing…’

  ‘And how does that make you feel?’ he asked again.

  ‘Annoyed,’ I said. ‘I mean, almost everyone who asks already assumes they know the answer. About everything. At Will’s wake, my Uncle Alan started going on about how ‘close’ Will and I were. So I told him ‘well, no, we weren’t’. And he just shut up, didn’t know what to say at all. One of my cousins who asked me how I was, basically called me a liar when I said I was fine. I told him to go to hell.’

  ‘Do you think this was the right thing to say?’

  Well actually, yeah, sure I did. Uncle Alan saw my brother at holidays and picnics, so what did he know? I saw my brother when he came home pissed from a party, and vomited in my shirt drawer. Of course, this was after his first operation, so it was ‘OK’ then. At least that’s what my father said. As for my cousin, well, I’d been fine with him until he’d called me a liar. Again, what the hell did he know?

  ‘I really don’t care if it was right or not. I just said it.’

  I jangled the chain, counting links with my fingers as I watched Thompson exhale and wipe his glasses with that blue cloth. Why is it always something that I did that was wrong? Didn’t any of them think that what anyone else said could ever be the problem?

  ‘I’m sure your uncle and cousin didn’t mean to upset you, Andrew. They were grieving just like everyone else.’

  Not grieving like me. Nor hating. Or maybe just not loving or whatever the hell you could call it. Can’t any of them see that I’m just… well, confused that I can’t ever make anything between Will and me work now? I can’t start over, or get him to see that he was wrong about lots of stuff. Can’t get him not to bitch at me about how I look, or what I paint, or even just get him to go ‘hey, you actually know what you are doing’. I can’t ever make anything happen regarding my brother and the way he was with me. And all I’m left with is the memory that his last words to me were just more damn criticism.

  ‘Andrew?’

  ‘Huh?’ I’d been lost in my own bitter thoughts.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ I said. ‘Sure.’

  ‘I think that you might need to be a bit more mindful of the things you say to others,’ the good doctor said. ‘Communication is a two-way street, and if you want to get better reactions from people you have to take that into account.’

  I shrugged at him. It was all ridiculous…

  ‘How are your other relationships going?’

  ‘Alright, I guess. I have a few friends, and I get along fair enough with other people. Miss Sara a lot, though. The sex, yeah, but mostly I just miss someone who understands me and what’s going on in my life.’

  ‘Have you tried to build more local relationships, Andrew?’

  ‘Huh?’ I said.

  ‘What I mean is,’ the doctor said, ‘Have you tried to form associations with people near to you? Even just friendships? With people you can turn to?’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ I said. ‘But with all the stuff concerning my brother, it’s been hard to focus on anything.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Parents wanting me around for anything, everything, means I could never really find the time to spend with my friends. Besides, with the money situation, I’ve had to work and the best way is doing design work, layouts and stuff, online. So I couldn’t chill with anyone and I’ve kind of grown apart from people, and some haven’t taken it that well.’

  ‘But you managed to fit Sara into your life?’

  I shrugged. ‘Yeah, I could squeeze her in.’ With no olds here except her host family, she could make the time for me. I kept up with Trevor, but he didn’t give a damn if I disappeared for a week or a day; he was just around. But Sara, she didn’t expect anything, especially what I couldn’t give.

  ‘I’m not a strong fan of this relationship,’ Dr Thompson said. ‘It seems very distracting to the building of real relationships, that is to say, local ones.’

  Did he just say that my relationship with my best friend wasn’t real?

  ‘I understand your emotional attachment to her is strong,’ Dr Thompson said. ‘But have you considered cutting back on the work you are doing and trying to resocialise with your other friends?’

  ‘I’m not exactly the most popular guy with them right now.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Thompson asked.

  Um, because, because kids my age are bitchy and turn on people in a moment? You’d think he’d know that.

  ‘I didn’t have the time for them, so they took it personally.’

  ‘I do think,’ Thompson rubbed his glasses again, ‘you should consider focusing on other relationships. As always, some relationships fade in and out. Your friend Sara is very far away, so it might be best to focus on people near to you as well.’

  ‘So you want me to ditch my best friend?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I just think you should find relationships that are closer to you.’

  Alright, this is the last time I’m in this office.

  ‘But our time is up this week,’ Thompson said, pointing to the ugly clock on his wall. ‘I’m going to keep you on the medication for another two weeks. Just let me know how they make you feel. Any reactions so far?’

  ‘Yeah. My sex drive sucks and I can’t focus.’

  ‘Hm,’ he huffed. ‘We’ll give it a few more weeks and work from there. OK?’ He smiled at me through his beard.

  Yeah, right. Nice knowing you, grandpa.

  GraphicAndrew: *falls over onto a sofa*

  HaveYouSeenMyPan
ts: that tired, love?

  GraphicAndrew: just drained. Haven’t been able to focus on anything lately

  HaveYouSeenMyPants: *cuddles up with you*

  HaveYouSeenMyPants: *bite*

  GraphicAndrew: God, I can’t even think of playing now…

  HaveYouSeenMyPants: OK, where is Andrew and what have you done with him???

  GraphicAndrew: J

  GraphicAndrew: just the new meds this doc has me on. Ragged out completely. And I don’t trust him. I’m going to see if I can get a new doctor. He doesn’t like you. :(

  HaveYouSeenMyPants: screw him. He doesn’t even know me. I’m sure that if he met me he wouldn’t like me at all, but at least let him judge me face to face. :)

  HaveYouSeenMyPants: so what did the witch doctor put you on?

  GraphicAndrew: Xanax for anxiety, lithium for my supposed mood swings, except my moods aren’t swinging anywhere

  HaveYouSeenMyPants: oh God…

  GraphicAndrew: what?

  HaveYouSeenMyPants: *hug*

  GraphicAndrew: what?

  HaveYouSeenMyPants: you need to get off the lithium. That stuff will turn you into a zombie!

  GraphicAndrew: I’ve noticed. It sucks

  HaveYouSeenMyPants: I told my parents to go to hell once I looked up what it did. I’ll email you all the links I put together on it, in case yours fight you on it

  GraphicAndrew: ‘in case’? Of course they are going to fight me on it

  HaveYouSeenMyPants: just show them all the stuff and I’m sure they won’t keep feeding you all those pills

  GraphicAndrew: what about the Xanax?

  HaveYouSeenMyPants: that’s alright. Just takes an edge off the panic attacks and the anger stuff. How are those going?

  GraphicAndrew: a bit better. Don’t feel so wired. I can actually get some work done

  HaveYouSeenMyPants: that’s good

  GraphicAndrew: yeah

  HaveYouSeenMyPants: *poke poke*

  GraphicAndrew: hehehehe

  HaveYouSeenMyPants: I miss you, you know that?

  GraphicAndrew: yes