Lamentation (3 page)

Turley poked his head out the door into the cold. “He’s all ready.”

“Who’s ready?” Jenny asked.

“Nothing.”

“Who was that? Where are you?”

“The police station.”

“Chris?”

“Yeah.” I knew I’d just hand delivered her the invitation she needed to tear me a new asshole. Half our fights were over Chris and what she saw as my coddling him. I was hardly the guy’s biggest fan these days, but you can’t let people take a shit on your brother, no matter how big a bastard he is. So I braced for what was coming next. Only, nothing did. Then I realized her silence was actually worse. You don’t waste your time talking when you’ve given up trying. I did the same damn thing with my brother. When I stopped bitching and got off his back, it wasn’t because I was suddenly cool with his fucked-up lifestyle; I just didn’t give a shit anymore. And it sucked being on the receiving end of that ambivalence.

“I’ll stop by tomorrow morning, Jenny. Promise. It’s Saturday, I don’t have any work. Maybe we can—”

“Okay, Jay,” she said.

“I have some money for you too.”

But she’d already hung up.

We bounced along old country roads in my battered Chevy without talking. Strapped with a ratty, brown backpack in which he carted his world, Chris had bummed a smoke when he first climbed in, but hadn’t spoken a word since. He looked like shit. I’d expected him to look bad; somehow, he looked even worse than that. Half his head was sheared in a bleached-out, homemade haircut, with crusted bloody slits around the ears, like he’d used glass shards for scissors and a toaster for a mirror. In the dim, blue-gray light of the cab, he resembled a cadaver, waxy, colorless flesh drawn tightly over protruding bone. His eyes, two vacuous pits, sat deep in the sockets with giant black rings around them, and his badly neglected teeth stuck out. When he sucked on his cigarette, he pulled so hard, you’d think his eyeballs might disappear straight through the back of his head and the whole thing would instantly turn to ash.

In the five or six months since I’d seen him last, he appeared to have lost weight. I’d seen cancer patients with more meat on their bones. Over six feet, he couldn’t have weighed more than a buck forty. Despite the long time apart, I felt no joy in our reunion. I’m pretty sure the feeling was mutual. We were brothers, blood on blood, and that counts for something. There had been a time, right after the accident, when we might’ve been close. But those days were long behind us now.

I steered up Axel Rod Road, past Tyne Machinery, where our father had worked. I could still recall the horror stories he’d tell. Hot solvents scarring the skin, limbs caught in gears, a Gothic novel nightmare. The factory used to employ half of Ashton, but went under years ago. Literally. The building had been abandoned so long that the crumbling
structure was sinking back into the earth. Crooked trees and unruly vegetation fastened onto the frame. Roots and weeds erupted from hard soil, sprawling up through the cracks, coiling around anchors and joists, latching onto studs and roof beams. Each time I passed the cracked foundation and shattered glass, I’d think of the tremendous sacrifices our father had made to give us a good home. Which, in turn, would only make me feel like a bigger bastard for not being able to do that for my son.

I glanced over at my brother. Chris didn’t have a coat. He wore the same threadbare T-shirt he always did, dark blue with a pair of faded cherries, from the old Pac-Man arcade game. Every time I saw him he was wearing it. What kind of life do you lead where you only own one T-shirt? His dirty jeans, coated in a slick, greasy sheen, stank like rank cheese and gasoline. With the heater in my truck not working, Chris must’ve been freezing his balls off—I was bundled in layers and could barely keep from shivering. I’d asked him a couple times if he wanted my coat, but he shook me off. I’m sure he’d been outside in worse.

Nothing but static on the radio, which was normal for these parts. CD player was broken and only made a clacking sound when you stuck in a disc. I had a new stereo Tom had given me, still in the box, shrink-wrapped and everything, but I hadn’t bothered opening the package. Which sucked, because I kept my entire music collection in the truck. Anytime I was in the mood for some tunes, stuck fruitlessly twiddling the knob, I’d gaze down at all the music I couldn’t play, and it only served as a reminder that I couldn’t get my act together.

Usually, I didn’t mind the quiet, but tonight, sitting next to my brother, the silence only amplified the distance between us.

The roads hadn’t been plowed, and the town wouldn’t send out trucks until the storm calmed. Couldn’t go faster than fifteen miles an hour or I’d fishtail into a culvert.

“Where we going?” Chris finally asked.

“My place, I guess. Unless you have somewhere else you need to be.” It was a dick thing to say, since we both knew he didn’t. As much as he disgusted me at that moment, I wasn’t kicking my brother out to roam dark, snowy streets in a T-shirt. I didn’t know where he slept most
nights. The bus station in Longmont? The Y on Kirby? One of the motels on the Turnpike? A crack den? No fucking idea. This was my flesh-and-blood brother sitting next to me, and the reality of his life was as graspable to me as ether.

Following Turley’s story down at the jail, I’d been anticipating nonstop conspiracy theories and antigovernment gibberish about all the ways the authorities were out to screw Chris. Which was a recurring theme in my brother’s life. Because it was always about him. It was pathetic how Chris tried to inject relevance into his existence this way. He didn’t understand that he was inconsequential, didn’t matter; that he was expendable. They could find my brother frozen beneath a tree in a park or with a needle in his arm in some skid row room, as they most certainly would someday, and nobody’s life would be impacted. Not even mine. In my more honest moments, I’d have to admit, if to no one but myself, that any sorrow I might feel for this loss would immediately be offset by the tremendous sense of relief.

Hank Miller had closed up the station already, so the tiny lot was pitch black. I parked my truck behind the squat brick garage, and made for the small apartment above it. This is where I’d lived for over a decade. What’s that? One-eighth of my life? Maybe more, depending on if I get cut down as early as my folks. Never really thought about it that way. Certainly hadn’t envisioned a future here when I rented the place just out of high school, but that’s what it became. My future. Like everything else in my life, a temporary plan that had turned permanent. My job with Tom. My situation with Jenny. My less than stellar start to fatherhood. Someday, it would all change. Someday, I would make it right. Only someday never comes, does it? I’d been in this same shithole for ten years. Three different women had lived there with me, including the mother of my kid, but, in the end, I always ended up alone.

I usually had a decent outlook on life, but anytime I hung around Chris, this is what happened. Another reason I avoided the guy. Nothing good ever came of it. I never walked away from seeing my brother, saying, “Gee, sure glad I did that.” His mere presence could put me in a funk that would last for days. Not to mention all the trouble he had caused in my relationship with Jenny.

I remembered the night she left, the night she packed up our son and moved out on me. I couldn’t shake the scene. Pissing rain pelting the roof. Aiden wailing in his car seat carrier. Tears streaming down her face as she pleaded with me to believe her.

Chris had stolen some pills from her purse, painkillers the doctor had prescribed following the birth. Just a few pills that she never touched but always knew were there. Until they weren’t. My brother had stopped by under the pretense of wanting to see his nephew and, somehow, he’d sniffed them out, snatched them from under our noses. Because if there was an unattended narcotic within a fifty-mile radius, Chris could zero in on that shit like a ’roided-up bloodhound.

Instead of calling out my brother like I should have, I abandoned Jenny in her accusation. Chris swore on our parents’ life that he hadn’t taken the pills, and, even though I knew he was lying, I backed him up anyway. That fight was about more than the pills. That night Jenny had needed me to take a side. And I did. I just picked the wrong one.

The light, a single, uncovered bulb, blazed in the narrow well leading upstairs. Creaking wood stretched and groaned, the hollow, winding winds rattling the whole decrepit building.

I unlocked the front door, which led into my tiny kitchen, Chris right on my heels, before he pushed past me like it was somehow his apartment too. I threw my keys on the table, next to the stack of red-letter bills I’d been ignoring.

“Got any beer?” Chris asked, dropping his backpack that reeked of bum shit on the same kitchen table where I ate.

I walked by him into the TV room. “Check the fridge.” I flicked on the television, searching for the Bruins game.

My nameless cat scratched on the porch. I didn’t even know how it became
my
cat. Belonged to the neighbors, I think, but it kept coming around. So I pet it, fed it. I’d wake in the middle of the night and somehow the fat thing would’ve scaled the drainpipe and I’d find her stuck on my second-floor landing, crying to be let in. This is what you get for being a nice guy. One day, I look out and the neighbors are gone, house boarded up with a “For Sale” sign, and now I’m stuck with the damn thing. That was over a year ago. Never got around to naming it. I’m not
too philosophical a guy, don’t like to get too heavy, but it was hard not to draw a correlation. I mean, I couldn’t even name the fucking cat I’d been feeding and taking care of for over a year because I didn’t want to get too attached.

My brother stood in the doorway, rail-thin arms up in a
T
over the frame, hanging there like a crucified, junkie Jesus. “No beer in the fridge, little brother.”

“Then I’m fucking out, Chris.”

The Bruins were down three with four minutes left, the Devils on a power play. I switched it off and dropped in the chair and pulled my fingers through my hair.

“Got any money?” he asked. “I’ll run downstairs and grab us some.”

You hand my brother money, and that’s the last you’ll see of him. He’d trade the warmth of a bed indoors for the chance to get high, every time.

Chris dropped from the frame and slinked over to the couch, wiry body shiftless as an underfed snake in a windblown field. He snared my cigarettes from the table, flicking a match and inhaling deeply, sinking into the sofa, whose stuffed cushions threatened to devour him.

“You going to tell me what that shit was about tonight?” I asked.

Chris gazed over expressionless, like he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

“Tonight. At the station. Where I was dragged down after a long day of work.”

Chris dismissively waved a hand.

“Turley said you’ve been getting in fights—making threats. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Fuck Rob Turley. I remember catching that tub of lard huffing paint thinner behind the Community Center. Now he wants to act like a big dick-swinging cop.”

I swiped the Marlboro Lights off the arm of the couch. “I think there’s some beer under the sink. Grab me one too.”

My brother brushed the wisps of peroxide blond back into that cockamamie homemade haircut and bounced up gleefully.

“Stick the rest in the fridge,” I called out.

I felt the money Tom had given me in my pocket. I ran through the math in my head. The envelope, plus what I’d managed to save these past few weeks, minus rent, bills, gas, food, I had enough to catch up with what I owed Jenny. Wouldn’t leave me much afterward. But Tom always had work for me, sooner or later. Question was, if it wasn’t soon, would I be able to hold out till later? It was a bad habit of mine. Whenever I got stressed, I insisted on making matters worse by mulling over finances. Working for Tom, I knew I wouldn’t starve or be homeless, but I sure as shit wasn’t getting ahead either. I’d never own my own house or be able to afford a vehicle that wasn’t used. I’d never have enough to squirrel away something for Aiden’s college fund, and even though that last one was a long ways off, the day would come eventually.

Chris handed me a beer, smiling. “Like ol’ times, eh?” He flashed his country yellow teeth.

“You look like shit,” I said. “When was the last time you saw a dentist?”

Chris peeled back his lips with grubby fingers. You could see black rot eating into the roots.

“It isn’t funny,” I said. “You’re going to need a root canal. Make an appointment with Dr. Johnson. Get a goddamn cleaning, at least. Have him send me the bill.”

My brother grunted that he would, though I knew he had no intention of seeing our old family dentist ever again. He tipped back the beer and sat on the arm of the couch, arcing his core forward like some yoga pose I once saw Jenny do when she was trying to lose the baby weight, not that she was ever bigger than a peanut.

Chris stared intently at the TV, as if despite its being turned off he could still see some riveting narrative unfold beyond the black glass.

“Turley says you’ve gone into business with a partner. You opened, what, a computer removal company?”

“Electronic waste,” Chris said. “E-recycling. You know how good Pete is with computers.”

“Sure,” I said, even though I didn’t know who the hell Pete was. Might’ve been this skateboarder dude with kinky hair and glasses I’d
met once. Maybe not. What difference would it have made? All these losers he ran with were the same to me. Some were shorter, fatter, darker; some had longer hair, better teeth. Didn’t faze me. I glossed over their existence the way you do the boring parts of a book.

“Aw, you don’t give a shit,” Chris said.

“No, not really.” I sucked at the warm suds. “But I
do
want to know why I had to go down to the station and bail your ass out. You fucked up my entire evening.”

“You didn’t have to put up bail.”

“I meant figuratively. I was supposed to see Aiden tonight.”

“Yeah? How is my nephew?”