Between Brothers

Chapter 1-4

When my brother answers, he sounds groggy and impossibly young, though he’s only three years my junior. “Hello?” he mumbles into the phone.

I reply, “Did I wake you?”

He sighs in my ear, a sleepy, sultry sound that I imagine many women would love to hear first thing in the morning. “Brian, hey,” he says, as if we just spoke yesterday and there aren’t years between now and the last time we talked. “I was just catching a quick nap…” He trails off and I’m about to mention that most people don’t nap at seven o’clock at night when he gasps, “Oh!” Suddenly he’s wide awake, I can see him in my mind’s eye as he scrambles to sit up—he remembers why he called me in the first place. Without further preamble, he announces, “Mom’s in the hospital.”

“What?” The world wobbles beneath me and I have to lean against the wall to keep from sinking to the floor. “When did this happen? What for?” And more importantly, why didn’t anyone tell me earlier?

Joey yawns loudly in my ear. “She was just admitted today. Apparently she had some bleeding a few weeks ago, when she went to the bathroom? Thought it was spotting and didn’t bother to do anything about it—”

“She’s sixty-five,” I say, my voice wavering as it creeps up a notch or two. I try to remember when I spoke with my mother last and can’t. I want to call her now, and can’t. “Why the hell would she be spotting at her age?”

“I don’t know,” Joey concedes. He lowers his voice in a conscious effort to make me lower mine, too. “This is what Dad told me, okay? Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Struggling to keep my tone even, I ask, “Where is Dad?”

“At the hospital with her. Good thing you called now…” He trails off, probably looking around for a clock to see the time. “I have to pick him up at eight when visiting hours are over.”

“God.” Leaning back against the wall, I close my eyes and try to rein in the thoughts swirling through my mind. I’m all too aware of the fact that my parents aren’t getting any younger here. Sure, I knew it before, I’m not stupid, but for the first time, it hits home in a way that scares me. What happens when they’re gone? Who do I have left in this world then?

Joey.

I take a steadying breath that calms me, then another. “Where are you now?” I ask my brother. “Are you at the house?”

The house, as if there is only one. The house we grew up in, the house we grew apart in. My parents’ home on a wind-swept side street, two long, dusty blocks to the wooden boardwalk that runs the length of the island. The house in Wildwood, New Jersey, where I’m always welcome and very rarely go. The last time I saw my parents, I wasn’t with Timothy and didn’t have my master’s degree. The last time I saw Joey…

I don’t remember, it’s been a while. A long while.

“I’m here,” Joey tells me. “The doctor called me this morning. Get this—she finally went to her regular physician last week, right? He sends her to a specialist in Cape May, but it takes her another three days to bother to go. So she gets to the specialist, gets a colonoscopy…that’s where—”

Annoyed, I say, “I know what that is, Joe. I went to college, remember?”

If that stings, he doesn’t show it. “Yeah well, she has the colonoscopy this morning and whatever they found up there made them send her to the hospital. Only instead of sending her in an ambulance or something, they stick her in the car and give Dad directions to Burdette Tomlin. I get a call from the specialist two hours later asking why they haven’t shown up yet.” Joey pauses for effect, but I’m not sure if he’s kidding or telling the truth. Burdette Tomlin is one of the largest hospitals in south Jersey—both of us were born there, it’s not like Dad has never been there before. Before I can ask what took him so long, Joey sighs. “You know how he drives. Slow…” He draws out the word for emphasis, then tells me, “And his memory’s going, Brian. He denies it but he’s getting up there in years.”

With a bitter laugh, I say, “Aren’t we all?”

“So…” Joey trails off and waits for me to say something else, but instead I listen to him breathe in my ear. My hand has retraced its earlier course and now fists in the damp silk at the front of my boxers. I won’t let it do anything more than that, not while I’m on the phone. All of a sudden it’s like there’s a magnet in my damn fingers that draws them to my crotch. I need to get laid more often, I decide. Then I feel guilty, thinking about s*x when we’re talking about my parents here, when I’m talking to my brother, for Christ’s sake. But maybe if I kiss up to Timothy, he’ll open the bedroom door and we could cuddle a bit before falling asleep. If I say the right words, smile in the right places, touch him just right—

Joey breaks into my thoughts. “Brian, listen. I can’t do this alone. It’s…” He sighs and I picture him sitting on the edge of the blue and white pinstriped couch in our parents’ living room, the coffee table in front of him strewn with back issues of TV Guide and crossword puzzle books, his hair disheveled from sleep. My hand clenches in the silk of my boxers at the image. “I don’t know what the doctors are saying, you know how I am, I believe anything that’s said to me with a smile. They use these big words and I just nod when they want me to, you know? And Dad, he’s a handful all by himself. It scares me. I can’t do this alone.”

“What are you saying?” I know what he’s saying, it’s loud and clear in what he doesn’t say, but I want to hear him put it into words. I want to hear him ask.

“Can you…” Another sigh—here it comes. “Maybe you can come up here for a few days, if possible? I know it’s sudden but she just went into the hospital this morning.”

I wait—that’s not exactly what I wanted. Pleading, Joey adds, “Do you think you can come up here for me? I’d love to see you again, Brian. It’s been way too long and I need…I really need my big brother just about now, you know what I mean?”

There it is. How can I possibly refuse when he puts it like that?