So Many Times

Baby Brother Chapter 1

It is exactly one year since we heard the news. Mother and I buy a bag of mouse ear balloons. We draw faces on one side and write his name on the other side. We park at the bluff and then walk up a little hill. We blow into the balloons and they expand, circles of color bobbing up and down. We let the balloons escape from our fingers, but the salty wind does not carry them away. They fall onto the ground and pop.

Mother and I drive down to the pier and buy some tiny bait fish. We sit on the edge of the dock and pour them from a coffee can into the water. Little slips of silver return to the ocean. Goodbye little fish. Goodbye baby brother.

Mother cries. I hug her, but I am mute. What can I say to comfort her? How can I bring back her youngest son, my baby brother, thirteen years my junior, someone so like me and yet still a stranger?

I pick up the phone. It’s middle brother. Are you sitting? He asks. You need to sit. I perch on the end of the bed. Where are you? I ask. At the police station, he says.

Baby brother is at the bar with his new friends. His old friends call. His family calls. Baby brother is too busy to see us. He is too busy to have any of us over. Just another one of his spells, we say.

Baby brother gives his new friends his artwork. He gives a woman he fancies a sculpture he made of a girl with bugs and combs in her long hair. He gives another new friend his stereo equipment.

Baby brother cannot pay his bills. He considers filing for bankruptcy. He goes to the bar with his new friends.