Brody
Sitting in the corner of the sofa, Brody wanted to find a sappy old movie to watch. He needed a good cry. His mom was gone. Dak was gone, and he was worried that Lacey might run off with Seb and leave him without his best two employees.
Brody made a ham and cheese sandwich with an extra thick layer of mayo and piled potato chips on the opposite side of the plate. He poured himself a glass of milk and carried it all to the living room. Setting it down on the coffee table, he stared at the plate and glass and realized that he wished he was a kid again.
Unlike the stories he heard from many other people, Brody’s high school experience was positive. He hung out with friends every weekend, and that meant Dak was there most of the time. Brody glanced at the living room bookcase and saw the four yearbooks he’d stuffed in next to his mom’s Jane Austen collection when he unloaded boxes. He decided that looking at high school photos of Dak would either make him smile or break down completely. It was like picking at a scab to see if it was healing yet.
Brody tugged at his sophomore yearbook, and it caught on something in the rear of the shelf. He tugged again, and the yearbook slid about an inch forward but then caught on something again. Brody didn’t want to pull hard because he was worried the entire shelf of books would tumble into the floor.
Methodically, Brody started further to the left on the shelf and began removing Jane Austen novels. After he took down the third volume, he saw what was causing trouble. A small soft cover book with a dark maroon cover was wedged into the rear of the shelf behind the other books. A plastic laminate cover protector was coming loose in a corner and stuck to one of the yearbooks.
Brody reached his long arm deep into the bookcase and tugged the small book out. The cover was leathery, and the ruled pages inside were yellowed. He carried it over to an easy chair and held it under the side table lamp to take a closer look. Brody gasped when he opened the cover. It was his mother’s diary.
He began to leaf through the pages. He recognized the dates. It started the day after she married Brody’s father, and it ended the day before she entered the hospital for the last time. Brody asked himself, “How did she keep this from me all those years?”
As he leafed through the pages, he noticed that she skipped up to months at a time without writing new entries. She also had periods in which she wrote a new entry every day for a few weeks.
For a moment, Brody wondered if he should just close up the diary and tuck it back into the back of the bookshelf where he found it. Diaries were meant to be private, and, after the discovery of Great-Uncle Clyde’s story, Brody believed that his mom had secrets that she wanted to keep.
Brody whispered, “Secrets…” He thought about the relationship with his father. Brody knew that he couldn’t resist reading. He opened the diary to the first written page and read the words of his mother gushing about the beauty of her wedding.
An hour later, Brody was still reading, and the sandwich and milk on the coffee table were untouched. He wiped tears from his eyes when he read about his mom’s fears about being alone near his dad. When he couldn’t read any more of their story, he skipped ahead.
The pages were filled with expressions of love for her son as he grew up. Brody read about her pride at his good grades in school, and she mentioned a friend named Dakota. She talked about helping Brody’s friends on school projects when she worked in the library, and she interrupted recounting events to list favorite recipes and talk about the cooking process.
About halfway through, Brody found the primary section he was looking for. His mother wrote:
“Spent an amazing afternoon with Uncle Clyde and his new boyfriend, Wiley. We took a picnic to Sawyer’s Grove Park and listened while Wiley sang and played his guitar. I pulled out the camera to take photos. They are so happy. It breaks my heart that they can’t let anyone know.”
Brody choked up as he read it. Knowing Wiley’s wealthy background and the fact that they lived in small-town Minnesota in the 90s, Brody was not surprised that they needed to keep their relationship secret.
Brody leafed through more pages about school activities and the everyday work life of a librarian. He skimmed two more years of entries before Clyde appeared again.
“Life is cruel. Uncle Clyde has the disease. Wiley found the marks, and they received the diagnosis today. Uncle Clyde made me promise not to tell anyone, not even our closest family members, about the disease. I’m still the only one who knows about Wiley. I think Wiley is in shock. I held him while he cried.”
Tears filled Brody’s eyes. He closed the diary and set it on the side table. He knew that he couldn’t read more in the same night. His stomach was already tied in knots. His mother went to the grave keeping the tragedy a secret. Still, he didn’t understand why she couldn’t share the story after Uncle Clyde was dead. Wiley moved across the country, and Clyde left no descendants. Brody didn’t think their story could have caused any harm.
Brody turned to the sandwich and milk on the coffee table. He took the milk to the kitchen and rinsed out the glass before putting it in the dishwasher. He poured himself a glass of iced tea instead and returned to the living room.
Old sitcoms were the centerpiece of the rest of his evening. Brody put everything else out of his mind while he laughed along with the studio audiences. He bit into the sandwich and concentrated on tasting and chewing. He knew that any lapse in concentration might take him back to subjects that would generate more tears.