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?”
“I wouldn’t know, Chris. I didn’t get to see him. I was stuck listening to Turley do his impression of a big city cop, rehashing shit that happened a hundred years ago because, apparently, you’ve been running off at the mouth and threatening to kill people. Now, do you know where this Pete is? Where he hangs out? There’s my phone. Make some calls to your buddies because his mother is worried.”
“You remember that summer we spent at the shore in Rhode Island?” Chris asked.
“Huh?”
“We went with Aunt Dee Dee and Uncle Chip, Mom, Dad. You were real little. Four, five. You remember that?” The fat, unnamed cat lay curled next to my brother, who stroked her absentmindedly, tufts of fluffy white fur coming off by the fistfuls.