Somebody's Fool, page 10
Hell, it wasn’t all bad until Dickweed showed up, right? We tried to warn her that he was a complete douche. Remember how we used to tease him about the Great Dick Divide, how nobody born after 1950 was called Dick but him? That was back when you could still tease him. Before they got married. Could be it was just me giving him shit. I don’t remember. You were too smart to do it to his face after that one time. I was the slow learner and I got the scars to prove it, right?
Sorry. Kinda got sidetracked there, didn’t I. Happens a lot these days, and not just when I’m drinking, either.
So. Where was I? Oh, yeah. The look on Pop’s face. I wish you could’ve seen it. Him just sitting there at the curb in his pickup truck, the engine still running, like he’s not sure if he wants to get out. Like if he stays right where he is, maybe I’ll disappear. Or he can just drive off and when he comes back I’ll be gone.
But wait. I know what you’re thinking. Pickup truck? Yep. You heard right. Can you believe it? Our old man—Mr. College Professor?—driving a pickup? I shit you not.
Anyhow, he finally turns the engine off and gets out. Comes up the walk. Me just sitting there, not moving, just watching him. Maybe grinning a little. When he gets to the top step and I finally stand up, he holds out his hand and says, “Wacker.” And I say, “Don’t nobody call me that anymore.” I say the words slow and make it sound all dumb-ass West Virginia, and he makes this face and says, Don’t nobody? And I say, “You want me to sound more like you, you should’ve stuck around.”
So, I hear you wondering. Did I shake his hand, right? Well, I did. I won’t lie. I did, Little Brother. Mostly because I haven’t figured out exactly how this should go yet. I mean, I know how it all ends. What we agreed has to happen. But I’m still working on the details, you know? The sequence? It has to be perfect. Can’t be no rush job. I hope that’s all right with you.
And see? I barely got started and already I’ve got things in the wrong order, talking about him recognizing me right off. Because when he pulled up at the curb, I was the one who didn’t recognize him. Part of it was the truck, but he also had this weird-looking guy with him, not somebody you’d expect Pop to hang out with. He looked like those guys you see over by the dumpsters in the Walmart parking lot, waiting for somebody to come along and offer them a half-day shit job for minimum wage. Pop must’ve told him to stay in the truck, because he didn’t get out. Fucker just sat there giving me the stink eye. Like he’s already decided I’m bad news. Even when Pop finally gets out of the truck, I’m still not sure if it’s him. You remember how he used to dress, right? Shirts with button-down collars. Khakis? Loafers? This guy coming toward me’s in jeans and work boots and a denim shirt, and who he reminds me of is—get this—Grandpa Sully.
Except wait. Do you remember him at all? Probably not. You were just a baby. To be honest, I don’t remember him that great myself. Mostly how he walked with a major limp because he fell off a ladder or some dumb shit like that. And his clothes were always super filthy, like he was a professional ditch digger or something. Anyhow, back then he was about the same age Pop is now, so that could be why he’s coming back to me a little, our grandpa Sully. Brother Will was his favorite. That I do remember, but he always did draw the long straw, didn’t he? Brother Will? Which means me and you got the short ones.
So you gotta be wondering about just how long that straw was, right? This place where our brother grew up and we didn’t? The town itself is mostly how I remember it. Nothing special, but not so bad, either. Pop’s neighborhood is the nicest. Bunch of big old houses and a few B and Bs set back off the road. Pop’s is actually one of the smaller ones, but it’s still pretty big and real nice, a lot nicer than anyplace we ever lived in. Two-story job. He asked if I wanted the nickel tour, so I said sure, and he signaled to the weird-looking guy in the truck that it was okay for him to get out now, so he did. Hopped out like a dog would that was waiting that whole time for somebody to whistle. Kind of pitiful. Anyhow, when he joined us on the porch, Pop says to me, “Okay, if nobody calls you Wacker anymore, how should I introduce you?” So I say, “Well, you named me Thomas, so how about that?” “Not Tom?” And I say, “Nope.” It was on the tip of my tongue to say, No, only my friends call me that, but I didn’t. “And this is Rub,” Pop says, meaning the weird-looking guy, and I say, “Good to meet you, Rob.” And Pop corrects me. Like it’s important his name is actually Rub and not Rob. Like we gotta clear this hurdle before the next thing can happen. “Rub,” I say, getting it right this time. “What kind of name is that?” And Pop just shrugs and says, “His.” The whole time this Rub character is looking at Pop, like it’s his job to explain this shit.
Anyhow. Inside we go, the three of us. It’s like what you see in a magazine when you’re stuck someplace that doesn’t have any good ones and you pick it up because there’s nothing else. Fireplaces. High ceilings. Dining room separate from the kitchen. Bedrooms with deep closets you can walk into. Except for the front room, there’s no furniture anywhere. They’ve moved it all in there so it’s out of the way. Turns out Pop and this Rub guy are renovating the place so Pop can sell it later. “Then what?” I asked him. “Where you planning on going?” But he says he hasn’t figured that part out yet. I’m thinking, Someplace me and you won’t be able to find him, but I don’t say it. Instead, I go, “Well, jeez. Good thing I came when I did, then. Otherwise, I never would’ve got to see where Will grew up, and I always wanted to.”
That landed, you could tell.
The whole time he’s telling me all this, Rob or Rub or whoever he is is paying real close attention, like maybe Pop’s plans are news to him, and he doesn’t like it. Pop tells him to go on upstairs and finish up tiling the guest bathroom, and he doesn’t like that either, being told to go away, which makes me wonder even more who he is and how he fits in. I can see now that the plan me and you cooked up was based on what we knew, which wasn’t that much.
Anyhow. Guest bathroom. That kind of gives you an idea of what we’re talking about. Growing up, did we ever once live anywhere with more than one bathroom for the four of us? This place has two upstairs and three down. Our brother had his own, is what I’m saying, and twice the size of the crappy little ones we shared.
He asked about you, Pop did. I told him you were good. Made it sound like, why wouldn’t you be? He said he was glad to hear it. Not super glad, like you were real important or always on his mind. Not that kind of glad. More like he was glad you weren’t in jail or in Afghanistan. Too bad I didn’t bring you along, was how he put it. Like it was a shame you didn’t get to see what you missed out on your whole damn life because the two of us drew that short straw. But anyway, he did ask after you. Wanted to know what you were doing with your life, what your plans were. So I made up some stuff about how you were taking some courses at the community college. How you just started a new job, doing I wasn’t sure what, exactly. The kind of thing I figured he’d want to hear. He also wanted to know if you had a girlfriend, and I said no, you were gay, just to see how he’d react, then told him I was only kidding. He asked those same questions about me, of course, including the one about girls. I told him I got one in trouble a couple years back, but we’d taken care of it, so there was no need to worry. As if he might’ve, otherwise. Then I told him that wasn’t true either, which I’m pretty sure he’d already figured out.
You probably don’t remember this, but Pop never really laughs, at least not like me and you. Even when something’s really funny he just smiles and nods, and it’s not even that big of a smile, it’s more…damn…What’s the word I’m looking for? Wry. That’s it. It’s like there’s something in him that just won’t let him crack up like a normal person. Which is weird to watch. I mean, there I am, busting his balls pretty good, and the whole time he’s giving me that half smile of his, the one that says, Okay, I get it. Like he’s in on the joke. Or like he knows just how I feel, because he felt the same way, back when he was my age. He claims things were pretty much the same between him and Grandpa Sully. Growing up, Pop was always giving him grief about never being around. How his always being AWOL made Pop feel. Which is how he knows how I feel about him being AWOL. Like, if I’m pissed off, he can show me right where the line forms. “Except there’s a big difference,” I said. And he goes, “Yeah? What’s that?” And I point out that when he was growing up Grandpa Sully was right here in Bath, in this very house, in fact. Whereas me and you were five hundred miles away, in a whole other state. Which he had to admit was true. But then he gave me that professor look of his, the one that says Listen up. This next part is, like, really deep. “Distance,” he says, “isn’t just measured in miles.” And I’m thinking, Gee whiz, Pop. I never thought of that. Explain it to me, will you? Which he does, without me even having to ask. Sure, he admits, Grandpa Sully was just a few blocks away, on the other side of town. He wasn’t, like, completely gone. Sometimes Pop would spot him on the street even, outside the pool hall or the place where you can gamble on horse races, but he claimed that just made things worse. ’Cause he was both there and not there. That’s the part I’m not supposed to understand, I guess. This other way of measuring distance. So I go, “Fine, if you say so,” but what I’m really thinking is, Bullshit. I mean, would it really have been worse for me and you if Pop and Will had been living down in West Virginia, instead of up here, when we were growing up? All those times when things got bad between Mom and Dickweed? How would it not have been better to have someplace safe to go until things blew over? And I’m thinking about you even more than me, because you always take things to heart more than I do and Dickweed already suspected something.
He asked about Mom, too, more out of curiosity than concern. Mostly he wanted to know if she knew I was coming up here. Whether she tried to talk me out of it. I told him no, I hadn’t let on that I was headed up this way. Said I didn’t really see that much of her anymore since getting a job and moving out. When he said he was sorry to hear that, I said, “Why?” And he just shrugged and said, “Well, she’s your mother,” and there’s a bunch of things I could’ve said to that, but instead I just told him I didn’t think me and her had that much in common anymore. He wanted to know if she was still married and I said, yeah, she was, and he said good. He was glad to hear it worked out. I about busted a gut at that. Basically, I think talking about her gave him the chance to explain his side of things, give us his version of how we ended up estranged. I kid you not. That’s the word he used. Estranged. Which apparently means something different from how come I abandoned you and your brother. He did admit it wasn’t all her fault. He was the one who fucked up by getting involved with that woman at the college where he taught. He didn’t blame Mom for being pissed off when she found out, or for not forgiving him or for wanting to get back at him. He guessed he had that coming. But he wanted to make sure I knew it was her that insisted he was no longer welcome in our lives, that he’d forfeited the right to have anything to do with me and you.
And get this! He says he sent us presents. Christmas and birthdays both. Claims Mom sent them all back with some sort of fuck-off note. How long did this go on? I asked—figuring maybe he was lying—and he admitted not long. Just the first couple years, because what was the point of him sending us things if she was going to just send them back? Anyhow, it turns out that maybe you were right. Remember that time when we got home from school and there was a package on the kitchen counter with your name on it, with a New York postmark? You got all excited because the next day was your birthday and you figured it was a present from Pop, and I said it couldn’t be because I hadn’t gotten one on my birthday and why would he send you one and not me? And then the package disappeared and when you wanted to know where it went Mom said she didn’t know what you were talking about, that you must’ve imagined it.
So…what do you think? Is it true? That she sent our presents back? Stuff we probably needed? I don’t know. I guess I can kind of see it her way. The things he sent us were probably nicer than anything she could afford, and she probably didn’t want us comparing his presents to hers.
Anyhow, it was right around then that she took up with Dickweed. Pop says she wrote to tell him how she was getting married again, and her new husband was all the father we’d ever need and the best thing that could happen to me and you would be to forget he ever existed. Which sounds like her. He says he tried to call, but the phone had been disconnected, and when he wrote, his letter was returned with no forwarding address. Anyhow, that’s his version. I’d ask her about it except these days, messed up as she is, she doesn’t even know what fucking day it is.
Anyhow, when the house tour was over, Pop says, “So, what brings you up this way?” Like he’s thinking, okay, this is where I’m going to put the touch on him. Why else would I be here, except to ask for money? So I came up with some lame horseshit about being on my way to Montreal. Told him I’d never been to Canada and thought I’d see what was up. Like wanderlust is my biggest problem in life. Like I’m forever just packing up and going new places. We’re back out on the porch now and he looks over at the Yellow Submarine and says, “You think that thing’ll make it up and over the Adirondacks?” I told him not to worry. If there was one thing the Sub was used to it was mountains, and he said yeah, he supposed that must be true.
Which reminded me. He did visit us in West Virginia that one time, remember? Him and Will? It must’ve been about a year after they split up. Before Dickweed. Why, though? Was he hoping to patch things up? Was he worried about us short straws? Man, there’s a lot I don’t remember. Did he warn Mom they were coming, or did they just show up at the door? How long did they stay? Where? Not with us. I would’ve remembered that. So…a motel? Or did they just head straight back to New York that same day they arrived? Mostly what I remember is Mom screaming at him and him telling her to calm down and her just getting more and more pissed off. Remember how they sent the three of us outside? Like we wouldn’t be able to hear them shouting out there?
You remember that backyard? How it was all bare ground and weeds? It had that rusty old swing set with no swings? Just the chains dangling? I remember Will taking it all in. He’d changed a lot. Remember how much bigger he’d got since we’d last seen him? But it was other stuff, too. I noticed how the clothes he had on were nicer than ours. How we needed haircuts and he didn’t. And that silver stopwatch. You remember? The one Grandpa Sully gave him? How proud he was of it? Man, I wanted that watch. Okay, maybe wanted is the wrong word. I mean, what was it even good for? Fucking thing didn’t even tell the time. You just watched the seconds tick away. I didn’t want it for myself. I just didn’t want him to have it, you know? It was like, as soon as I laid eyes on it, I could see how things were going to go. That our brother was going to have everything his little heart desired and me and you were going to have to scratch. Remember how he didn’t even want me to touch it at first? Like I might ruin it somehow? But I kept after him, saying, “Ah, come on. I just want to look at it.” You could see he didn’t trust me, but he’s thinking maybe I’d changed, too. He kind of knows better. Deep down, he’s got to know I’m the same kid that used to torment him. But he finally says okay, I can look at it, and hands me the watch. Remember what I did? How I didn’t even look at it? Just put it in my pocket? Jesus. The look on his face. Panic, right? I figured he’d just run inside and tattle to Mom and Pop like he used to. Sure, he was a year older than me and bigger now, but I figured he was still a pussy. The last thing I expected was for him to fight.
Not that it was a real fight, at least not at first. More like a game. Him trying to get the watch out of my pocket, me laughing and spinning away so he couldn’t. Even when he tackled me and we were rolling around on the ground, it was still more like a game than anything. You thought we were just horsing around, right? But then things got serious. Back on our feet. Pushing and shoving. Hard. Then harder, until I caught him a good one. It was his chin I was aiming for with the heel of my hand, but I got his nose instead. I can still see him standing there, blinking at me. Surprised. Blood gushing out of his nose. Good, I thought, that’s that. Then all of a sudden I was on my ass. I remember just sitting there, thinking, What? Because I never saw that punch coming, Little Bro. I blame you for that. Soon as you saw the blood, you started bawling, like it was your nose bleeding, not his. I must’ve looked over at you. That’s the only way I can figure it. Not seeing that punch. Anyhow, there I was on my butt, him standing there over me with his hand out for the watch. And me just giving it to him. Funny, but I was kind of proud of him. How he’d fought for what was his. Wondering when had he learned to do that? Also how? It couldn’t have been Pop that taught him. I mean, back when we were all still a family and I would pinch Will or punch him on the shoulder, and he would tattle, Pop would just shrug and say, “Punch him back,” but he never would. So, somebody else must’ve taught him. Grandpa Sully is my guess. I mean, who else was there?
You remember what happened next? How Will just stood there staring at the stopwatch like he didn’t recognize it anymore? Like maybe I’d pulled a switch on him? Substituted a crappy watch for his good one. And then he just hands it back to me. Says, “Here. You can have it.” Remember the look on his face? I do. It was pity, Little Brother. Or maybe shame. It was like, now that we’d fought, he understood what it all meant. The fight. The watch. The weedy backyard. The whole shebang. How Grandpa Sully had given it to him and didn’t give me anything. It was like he knew Mom shopped for our clothes and other stuff at the thrift store. How we didn’t get regular haircuts. It was like he’d just figured out that when Mom and Pop split up, there were winners and losers, and we were the losers. That’s what the watch meant. That me and you were the losers. Remember how I slapped it away when he tried to get me to take it? Said, “Fuck you”? I’m pretty sure that was the first time I ever used that word, and it was my own brother I said it to. And him just trying to be nice. You gotta admit, that’s pretty screwed up, right?
