So Many Times

Baby Brother Chapter 5

Are you sitting? He asks. You need to sit. I just got back from my bicycle trip through France. They called me from his work and told me they haven’t seen him. I went to his apartment and knocked, and baby brother didn’t answer. I broke into his apartment through a window.

Baby brother loves penguins. He makes greeting cards with penguins. He makes little clay penguins and big clay penguins. Then he makes clay figurines of friends. He gets commissions from rock groups to make clay figurines of them. Make me, make me, they clamor. Little comic clay rock stars parade through his room.

Baby brother moves in with a friend after his divorce. He cannot afford an apartment. The friend has rabbits. Rabbits run in and out of the rooms. He makes a little clay figurine of his friend on a couch with a rabbit on his chest.

Baby brother creates cartoons that are witty and intellectual and odd. He sends some to the New Yorker, but they are rejected.

When he is bored at work, and that is much of the time, he doodles cartoons of his co-workers. One day he will support himself on the art he loves, rather than on a profession he despises.