“Owen.” He waits until I focus on his eyes. “Big brothers don’t let little brothers handle shit like this alone. She’snotscaring me off. She’snotgoing to make me hate you, or quit being friends with you, or think less of you. Theonlything I want you to worry about today isyou. Donotstress aboutme. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.” It wants to slip out, and this time I don’t apologize for it.
He squeezes the back of my neck before he releases me and reaches for his seatbelt. But he’s smiling.
“I’m telling you, I like the sound of that. Haven’t been called ‘sir’ since I was in the Army.”
“I’ll call you whatever you want me to. Thank you for doing this today.”
He shrugs and starts to back out of the parking space. “Got to take care of my little bro.”
* * * *
We switch places at the gas station a couple of miles from their house, where we top off the tank. Mom and Austin live in a ritzy gated community east of downtown, where a low-end house probably costs over $500k. When Mom divorced Dad, we were living in an older but nice house in the College Park area, northwest of downtown Orlando. I had friends there, loved going out to play with them after school, before Mom would come home from work. Our tree-lined neighborhood feltreal, like generations of love and laughter had filtered right down to the roots. We had fun fishing in Lake Ivanhoe, even though we never kept what we caught, the few times we did catch something.
Once my parents divorced, and Mom met and married Austin, we moved. I was given zero input or advanced warning. I came home from school one day to find a moving truck parked in the driveway and that movers had already emptied my room.
Worse, some of my stuff was tossed in the garbage, older toys I hadn’t played with in a while, but wasn’t ready to relinquish yet.
That was my first hard lesson learned about not getting attached to things. I didn’t even have time to say good-bye to my friends in the neighborhood. It was a shocking flashback to how I’d come home from school one day to learn that Dad had moved out. I hadn’t been allowed to say good-bye to him in person, although Mom did allow a phone call every so often. It wasn’t until later I learned she’d used me as a pawn in the divorce, and had wielded their prenup against him with vicious efficiency.
The new house and neighborhood felt sterile and stiff but seemed to thrill my mother, allowing me to see a happy side to her I both envied and resented, because nothing I’d ever done in my life up until that point had ever elicited that kind of reaction from her. The neighborhood was newer, only built a few years earlier, so there were no large, shady trees anywhere in sight.
We were now living with Austin, too, who moved in. I found out then that they’d gotten married the weekend before at a small private ceremony at a local country club, surrounded by friends, while I was at a weekend day camp.
I had to attend a new school. My mother drove me the next morning and enrolled me, and I found out that she’d already withdrawn me from my old school the day before and didn’t bother to tell me. There I was, in the middle of a school year, staring down the barrel of a roomful of kids I’d never seen before in my life.
Another valuable lesson, to not get too attached to anyone.
To keep my mouth shut, nod, smile, and not draw attention to myself.
To work hard behind the scenes and make others look good, eschewing any credit for myself, and people would probably like me. Or, at least, not hate me.
Long, golden late-afternoon shadows paint the high-end housing development in rosy colors that conceal the truth about the virtual hell I grew up in. Like an emotionalSilence of the Lambsreveal kind of moment, except my mother constructs her person-suit out of slices she rips from my soul on a regular basis.
I’ve done my best to deny her any new yardage, but…
Here we are.
Pulling up to their house in the cul-de-sac means reliving a lot of painful memories that I tend to shove to the background and ignore most of the time. Hence why I love being away at college.
Also why I don’t return on weekends when I easily could.
There are already over a dozen cars filling their driveway and parked along the street. I park three houses down and before I shut off the car, Carter turns to me.
“Deep breaths, buddy.”
I nod.
“Remember—no matter what she says or does, I’m not getting scared off. You’renotalone. Okay?”
If I try to speak right now, I’m afraid I might puke, so I settle for nodding.
My stomach is a tight, painful knot I’m not sure can accept food. I long for the quiet, peaceful dorm room, or Susa’s living room.
I don’t want to be here.
I don’t belong here.
