Page 22 of Life, Love, and Other Messes

“I’ll email you the list,” Kevin said. “I’m sorry.”

My brother was four years my senior. He stood six two and was broad like a football player, with big, long-lashed blue eyes, and dimples when he grinned. He was a gorgeous child, and I heard more times than I could count that it was such a shame that he was the pretty one. Now that he was forty-nine, he shaved his balding head and wore a graying beard. He also had pierced ears, a sleeve tattooed on his right arm, and was one of the last people I knew who still smoked cigarettes. He had since he was about twelve, so it was a wonder he was still alive, really. His wife Missy didn’t let him do it in the house or the car so I wasn’t sure why he hadn’t tried to quit, but it was not my business and I didn’t bug him about it. He was a master electrician and had a huge house and nice cars. Of course, one of them had to be an eight-seater minivan thanks to having six kids, but that was, after all, a choice he and Missy made.

We were both left-handed, allergic to bee stings, and were prone to drinking heavily when with my mother, but the similarities stopped there. While I juggled piano and academics handily, Kevin quit music lessons when he was ten and, although he did well in school early on, morphed into a classic slacker in junior high, complete with the long hair, wardrobe of ripped jeans, flannel, and heavy metal T-shirts, and the poor grades that came with cutting classes and ignoring homework. My mother, who abhorred all of those things, tried to fix him for a while, but finally threw up her hands and declared him a lost cause. He moved into the basement when I was nine and started delivering pizzas when he was old enough to drive. From that point on, we saw very little of one another.

Although we were never particularly close, he wasn’t a bad brother. He taught me how to skateboard, climb trees, cuss, and smoke. Although we had our share of arguments and scrapes, he helped bail me out of several fixes with nary an acknowledgement of how stupid I’d been.

One in particular stood out in my mind, and was likely just as fresh in Kevin’s memory. In the fall of my sixth grade year, I was home sick for a few days. My mother loomed most of that time, nudging crackers and ginger ale at me, frowning at the thermometer, but around the time I was feeling better, she finally left for a meeting at church. My brain was absolutely numb with daytime TV by then, so I took the opportunity to sift through Kevin’s room. Even Mom had given up on keeping it clean by then, and I hadn’t been allowed in there for years. After wading through piles of clothes over a foot deep, I perused his tape collection, something vaguely explosive-looking he was putting together at his desk, and a handful of firecrackers in a dresser drawer. Then, I hit pay dirt: under his bed were three neat stacks of nudie magazines.

At that point, I was still dutifully squealing after the boys my friends thought were hot, but I sat on the floor amid Kevin’s squalor, turning page after page, absolutely rapt. I’d never seen anything quite like those pictures before; it was sort of like being able to look in the locker room before gym class without worrying that people would notice.

For the next several months, I secretly visited Kevin’s stash for a few precious minutes as often as I could, usually when Mom sent me down to fold laundry and I was absolutely certain Kevin was off with friends. It was one of those days, a Sunday afternoon to be exact, since Mom was busy upstairs making something disgusting-looking for church potluck that night. Certain Mom was occupied and Kevin was away, I folded a few token towels, then slipped down the hall and opened Kevin’s door.

I left it open a crack, curled up in my usual spot on the floor next to Kevin’s bed, and began leafing through the February installment. I’d just unfolded the middle when I heard footsteps on the stairs. I panicked. I replaced the magazine as carefully as I could, but knew the door was too far away. I was trying to think of some excuse to explain to my mother what I was doing in there when the door flew open, so hard the knob dented the wall.

It was Kevin, not my mother. His eyes were wild and furious, and he went for me right away. There was a lot of yelling, but I don’t remember exact words because he shoved me hard enough that I lost my balance and hit my head on his dresser. All at once I was lying on the floor, there was blood everywhere, and my mother was barreling in the door to see what the fuss was about.

Mom just about had a coronary. There was more yelling, interrupted by Kevin’s muttered explanation: “The kid was in my room. Sorry.” Thankfully, Mom was so flustered and pissed that she never did ask what I was doing in there, just huffed and glowered for the next three hours as we sat in the emergency room.

Two hours after that, Kevin approached me as I sat on the floor in the hall outside the fellowship area, Mom’s potluck going on inside. I’d finished my book, the ice pack was warm, and the eleven stitches on my temple hurt like fuck. I didn’t want to talk to anybody, least of all him, but he handed me a Coke and cracked one open himself.

He sat a few feet over. “Does it hurt?”

I shrugged.

“You know I didn’t mean it.” His voice was surprisingly earnest. “I figured it was Mom.”

“And you would’ve decked her?”

Kevin grinned, fantasizing about that for a moment. “I just freaked, okay?”

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have been in there.”

“So were you looking for the pot or the Playboys?”

I swung around so fast it made my head swim. “You’ve got pot?”

“No. Of course not.”

He drove me home even though he only had his permit, sparing me from another hour of boredom. I was thankful enough for that kindness, not to mention the fact that he had essentially ignored what should’ve been a humiliating revelation. I figured that meant it was gone and forgotten, but later that week, I came across a brown paper bag tucked between sweaters in my drawer. Inside were three magazines and a note reading Do not let Mom find these. I got five more installments before Kevin moved out three years later.

Neither one of us had mentioned that particular day. I still had the scar from “my accident” as Catherine called it, and the carpet in what used to be Kevin’s bedroom was still discolored where Mom tried to clean up the blood. There had been no mention, but when I came out to Kevin six years later, his only response was to laugh gleefully about how much that would piss our mother off. In our infrequent phone calls and visits, he asked about my girlfriends, treated them kindly, and expressed genuine sympathy when they broke up with me. We might not see much of one another, sure, but it was always comforting to know I wasn’t in this mess all by myself.

Chapter Seven

I had great first classes on Saturday. I had eager students in both sections, and a few who I knew were going to be extra special. I had a man in my Women’s Lit class who taught high school English and wanted to diversify his lessons, regardless of what the district’s mandated curriculum told him. After Creative Writing, my heart exploded when a young woman working on her nursing degree came up to me and shyly told me she’d written since she was a small child and wanted to learn from a published author. Finally, I walked as far as the handicapped parking spots with an octogenarian named Mary who had taken up writing when she retired from selling real estate. She was nervous about sharing her work, but I assured her that we would all learn from one another.

I’d just bid her goodbye and started toward my own car in the far lot when I heard someone hurrying behind me. Even though the college was in a high-crime neighborhood, I didn’t flinch; it was broad daylight and the parking lot was well-patrolled. Maudie Simms fell into step with me.

“Hey! I was wondering if you’d have Saturday classes again this semester.”

I nodded. “I love my Saturday classes. Did you have a good summer?”

She shrugged. “Same old, same old. Didn’t do much. How about you?”

“I taught summer session, then mostly relaxed some.”

Maudie was one of the few lesbians I knew outside of my friend group. She was maybe a bit older than me and looked like Terri the poetry professor except her skin wasn’t quite so transparent. She taught in the engineering department and we often left the building at the same time on Saturdays. She had read all of my books, so her next question didn’t surprise me. “Did you get a lot of writing done?”