BROTHER

VILE SELF PORTRAITS, CHAPTER NINE

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Ryan opened the rattly screen door and joined me on the deck. My Uncle Tom walked right through the screen at a family party once. Said he didn’t see it. He wasn’t even my uncle. We just called him that.

"You all right?" Ryan asked.

He lit a cigarette and handed me one.

"Are you?"

He loved her just as much as I did.

Him and half the town.

"I dunno, kid, that shit was harsh. Why would she do that in fronna you… with your own brother? I’m sorry, man…"

He flicked the filter of his butt.

The ash slipped to the deck and disintegrated.

"Not your fault."

I lit up and took a deep drag.

"Fuck ‘em both,” he said.

"He’s my brother…"

"I’ve never seen him be your brother. I’m more of a brother than he is."

"I know."

The moon drowned in porous clouds.

"Gimme a swig of that."

I passed him a capless bottle of whiskey.

"Anyone else here?"

"Nah, I think they all left. I was gunna crash if that’s cool…"

"Yeah, that’s fine… I just don’t wanna go upstairs yet…"

"Let’s just chill and smoke a little."

"Okay."

He sat and took out a glass pipe and a cellophane baggie of weed. As he broke apart the buds, he looked at me and laughed: "She’s a fuckin’ bitch. Who does that?" He packed the bowl in with his thumb and lit up, coughing yellow smoke.

I threw my cigarette as he handed me the pipe. "Shit, I have to pick that up… and everything else… it’s not like Rob will." I thought about the week before when my father collected every butt in the yard and put them in my bed.

Under the sheets.

"I’ll help ya, kid."

"Thanks."

I hit the pipe and held it in.

Brittany moaned from the second floor of my childhood home and I choked. "Jesus, this is fucked," Ryan said, scowling.

I pictured our first kiss. My first kiss. At the now-demolished YMCA. In a stall. We were always in bathrooms. We had nowhere else to escape. Our lips met with a rush of euphoria. Warmth. She had braces. Tasted like watermelons. Laughed at my ridiculous jokes. Even told me she loved me.

She moaned again.

"Fuck this." I got a trash bag from the kitchen and started collecting the remnants of our party: beer cans, cigarette butts, red plastic cups, joint roaches, booze bottles, and ketchup-stained paper plates. Ryan just sat there dumbfounded. "Don’t listen to this, man. Help me."

"You’re right."

We cleaned in silence. And moaning. It was gloomy. The moaning stopped at some point, but I had already blocked it out. I went inside to take a piss. Ryan smoked and sulked on the deck. When I left the bathroom, she was there. She smelled like Rubinoff.

"Hey."

"Hi…"

"It’s really great seeing you, thanks for having me," she slurred.

"You should leave, Brittany."

"I’m sorry, are you mad at me?"

"Just fucking go!" I flung the front door open.

"I’m sorry." She fled into the night.

Ryan appeared. "She leave?"

"Yeah, she’s gone."

"Good," he said, exhaling and slumping onto the couch.

"I’m heading up. Just be out early, my parents will be home in the morning."

"Word. Thanks, man."

"Goodnight."

It was a dreadful walk.

My brother and I had bedrooms across from each other at the end of the upstairs hallway. His door was ajar, with light spilling underneath it onto the navy blue carpet. "Rob…" I inched the door open. A miasma leveled my senses. Rob was passed out on the bed. Supine. Vomit coated the bed and his face.

He was fighting to breathe.

Suffocating himself.

I stood still for what seemed like an hour. I wanted to let him die. He enjoyed hurting me. Physically and mentally. He hated me. I wasn’t his family. He had just fucked my first love. He was too drunk to remember her beauty. The mole on her neck she covered with her straightened brunette hair. The way she smelled like her mother’s cigarettes and watermelon gum, the sugar-free bullshit they sold at the 7-Eleven around the corner from her dilapidated house downtown. I used to walk there alone with all this hope I had no idea how to handle.

I shook my brother awake.

"What the fuck do you want, Joseph?"

He threw up on my foot.

"You were choking."

"Move!" He rammed me out of his path as he lurched past and took a dirty towel off the floor. He covered the vomit, fell onto the bed, and lost consciousness.

I propped a pillow under his back and left.

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