Chapter Seven
I'd walked away from the moment with Leah Walsh wondering why she hadn't given in to my seduction. Granted she was not the usual type of woman I pursued, but there was something incredibly sexy about the way she stood up to me and laughed at my lame pickup line when most women would have swooned. I liked her honesty and the way she'd felt, pressed against my chest. But I also knew that she worked for my father's company, and that our little encounter would be limited to the flirtation at my father's wake. I was disappointed, but I told myself that there would be others. There always were.
After the wake, Jimmy drove my mother and me back to the house in Brooklyn. We both spent the drive staring out opposite windows. Fighting back tears, my mother sighed and reached out to take my hand while I simply watched the familiar landscape pass by. I wondered how much longer I'd have to endure this hell.
"I've got your room ready for you," my mother said as she unlocked the door and turned on the entry lights. My brother and his wife pulled up in the driveway several minutes later, and I could hear them open the door and send their two small children running toward the kitchen.
"Grandma! Grandma!" the small boy shouted as he threw his arms around my mother's waist and hugged her tightly.
"Well, now who is this?" my mother said smiling down at him as she patted his head. "I don't think I remember you. You've gotten so tall!"
"Grandma, it's me! Joey!" the boy laughed loudly as he hugged her tighter.
"Ah yes, Joey. I believe I remember you," she grinned as she bent down and kissed the top of his head.
"Who is that?" Joey asked pointing at me.
"That's your Uncle Jack," Lincoln's wife, Jessie, said as she bent and picked up the little girl who'd been lost in the action and was now crying. Jessie smoothed the child's hair and soothed her saying, "Don't cry, Mimi. Uncle Jack is Daddy's brother. See? He looks like Daddy!"
"Hello," I said holding out a hand to Joey. "It's nice to meet you."
"You're tall," Joey said, staring up at me and completely ignoring my hand. "How did you get to be so tall?"
"Dunno, I grew, I guess," I said looking down at him. "How did you get to be so short?"
"It's because I haven't finished growing yet!" Joey shouted. "I'm not done growing! I need more nutrients!"
"Where did he pick that up?" I asked my mother. "Kind of precocious."
"Stop it, Jack," she said. "Joey goes to a Montessori School. They teach them advanced concepts according to their own learning styles."
"Wow, guess we missed out on a few things, eh Linc?" I said, looking over at my brother who practically looked murderous.
"Can it, Jack," he said, "Hey, Joey, I bet Grandma has some cookies out in the dining room for you. Want to go check?"
"May I have a glass of milk to go with them?" Joey asked.
"What's the magic word, Joey?" his mother said in a sing-song voice, making me want to vomit. The whole family routine was already getting on my nerves, and this little act was the last straw.
"Cookie!" Joey bellowed in a voice that sounded like it was designed to shake the foundation of the house.
"No, that's definitely not the magic word," Lincoln said. "Try it again."
"Linc, ease up," Jessie said, shooting him an irritated look. "He's 4."
"Never too early to learn proper manners," Lincoln shot back in an equally irritated tone.
"Come with me, Joey," my mother said, taking the child's hand. "I'll take care of the cookies and the milk."
"Thank you, Gamma," Joey said with solemn sincerity. My mother leaned down and hugged him tightly before leading him into the dining room.
"Long time no see, Jack," Jessie said as she held her daughter and smoothed her hair. The child had stopped crying and was staring up at me with wide, blue eyes rimmed in red. "How have you been?"
"Not bad, Jessie," I said. "Not bad at all. But then again, being away from this place often does a person good."
"Dammit, Jack," Lincoln said throwing his hands up in the air in premature defeat. "Can't you ever just let it go? I mean, seriously. Our father hasn't been dead two days, and you're already digging at old wounds."
"Who says they're old, brother dear?" I tossed back at him as I opened the cupboards, searching for a bottle of something that could take the edge off.
"It's out in the living room," Lincoln said pointing toward the drink cart my mother had set up in anticipation of guests. I walked to it and poured myself a healthy glass of scotch as Lincoln muttered, "Can't do anything in this family without drinking."
"And why, exactly, do you think that is?" I asked as I raised the glass to my lips and drank deeply. I had no desire to get into this mess with my brother, but if he was going to drag me into it, I wasn't going to fight him too hard.
"You haven't been home in almost a decade, and you're the one who is complaining?" Lincoln hissed as he poured himself a drink, following my lead. "You escaped. You're the lucky one. Why are you so resentful?"
"Why am I resentful?" I hissed as I moved closer to him so that my mother wouldn't hear us. "You've got to be fucking kidding me, right?"
"No, I don't get it," Lincoln muttered. "You got out and never looked back. I had to stay here with him. I got trapped in this hell hole, and now you come back acting all victimized by a situation you left almost a decade ago?"
I opened my mouth to argue with him, but my mother intervened before I could say any more. The look on her face told me that she wasn't going to allow this discussion to take place in front of the children.
"Do you boys want some of these cookies and a glass of milk," my mother asked. There was a sternness to her voice, and I knew better than to challenge her.
"I'd love some," Lincoln said, looking over at Joey who sat coloring on one of the big sheets of butcher paper that my mother kept stocked just for his visits. "I'm sure Uncle Jack would love some, too. Right?"
"Can't think of anything I'd like more," I said with a fake bright smile. My mother gave us both a warning look and then went into the kitchen to pour the milk.
"After the funeral, we'll meet with the lawyer and settle this," Lincoln said.
"And once that's over, I'm out of here for good," I said. "I want nothing more to do with the mess that man created."
"So, you're going to leave us behind again?" Lincoln said. His face showed anger, but his eyes were deep wells of pain. "Great. Just fucking great."
"Gamma! Daddy said a bad word!" Joey yelled.
"I'm sure your daddy didn't mean to say a bad word, did he?" my mother said as she carried a tray of full milk glasses into the dining room and set it on the table. "Did he?"
"No, Mother, I certainly did not," Lincoln said bowing his head slightly. I caught Jessie's disapproving look out of the corner of my eye and knew that there was something else going on.
Lincoln took a glass of milk and one of the cookies my mother offered, and shot me a look that let me know this was far from over.
*
After Lincoln and Jessie and the kids finally left, I said goodnight to my mother and went up to the room she'd assigned me. It had once been the room that Lincoln and I shared, but after we'd gone to college and moved out, my mother had renovated and turned it into a permanent guest room.
I hated the room. It reminded me of an ice cream parlor, with the peach striped wallpaper running halfway up the wall ending in cream wainscoting. The upper half of the walls was painted a frothy peach color, which matched the bedding and all of the accessories. The room made me feel like throwing up.
I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes, trying to conjure the image of the room before its makeover—back when Lincoln and I had still been close.
We'd begged my parents to paint the walls navy blue so that we could hang bright, space-themed posters on the walls. We had ordered glow-in-the-dark stars from the back of a comic book and wanted to fix them to the ceiling. My father had ignored the requests until we finally drove him over the edge. He'd taken off his belt and punished us for having annoyed him then told us to take our request to our mother.
My mother's mouth had formed a thin, grim line when she saw what Father had done to us with his belt. She agreed to have the bedroom painted a dark blue. The painters came the next week and laid down tarps before they coated the walls in darkness. Lincoln and I had watched from the hallway as they worked, discussing the various ways we were going to arrange the posters and mapping out a pattern for the stars. The punishment had happened almost two weeks before, but Lincoln was still limping a little from it.
"You okay?" I asked as we descended the stairs in search of snacks in the kitchen.
"Yeah, I'm good," Lincoln said over his shoulder. "I just forgot not to stiffen my legs when he hit. It'll be fine in another few days."
I nodded and wondered why our father felt the need to punish us so severely over things that seemed so trivial. Once we'd gotten our snacks and taken them out to the patio, I worked up the courage to ask Lincoln.
"Why do you think Pop does what he does to us?" I asked as I took a bite of a peanut butter sandwich and followed it with a swig of milk.
"Dunno," Lincoln mumbled through his sandwich. He chewed for a few moments, swallowed, and said, "I think he's stressed out about something, and we're the way he works out that stress. Either that, or he's one sadistic son-of-a-bitch."
"What's sadistic?" I asked earnestly. As my older brother by two years, Lincoln was both my encyclopedia and dictionary.
"It means you like seeing other people in pain," he replied as he took another huge bite of his sandwich.
"Oh, yeah, that makes sense then," I said. "But he doesn't seem to be happier after he punishes us. Does that count?"
"It's not that it makes people happy, dummy," Lincoln said with a full mouth. "It's that he likes it."
"That's just weird," I said, popping the last bite into my mouth and chasing it with the last bit of milk. I liked it when things evened out just right.
"I didn't say it made sense," Lincoln said crossly. "I'm just saying …"
"Boys," my mother called from the kitchen window. "Did you leave this mess here for me to clean up, or were you planning on coming back and doing it yourselves?"
"We'll do it, Mother!" I yelled. "We were just really hungry."
"That's what I thought," she called. "I knew you didn't want your father to come home and discover your carelessness."
Lincoln and I looked at each other wide eyed as we quickly grabbed our dishes and headed inside to clean up the mess we'd made. By the time we were done, the painters had finished with our room and were cleaning up.
We surveyed the job in a state of awe as we looked at our plans for decorating the room. It was overwhelming to think that our vision of the room was about to become a reality. Lincoln stuck his hand out and touched the wall. When he drew it back, there was a print on the wall the size of his hand and his palm was covered in dark-blue paint.
With fear in my eyes, I looked at my brother who shrugged and stuffed his hand in his pocket.
"Dad's gonna kill you if he sees this," I whispered.
"Then we need to figure out a way that he doesn't see it, don't we?" Lincoln said in a way that struck me as oddly defiant. Up until then, we'd been partners in punishment, but Lincoln seemed to be rejecting that narrative. It seemed risky to me but, since he was the older wiser brother, I followed his lead and helped him plan how to hide the handprint.
Our plan had ultimately worked, and no one had been the wiser. However, Lincoln's pants had suffered the consequence of him shoving a handful of wet paint into the pocket, so he'd buried them in the bottom of his dresser drawer. We never spoke about it again.
Now, 20 years later, I opened my eyes and looked over at the wall where Lincoln's handprint had been and wondered how many layers of paint it had taken to cover the memories in this room—and how long it would take for me to leave the memories behind.