Chapter 3

“Mike didn’t think you’d want the family to know you were coming,” she explained. “If he took the day off to be here, your father would have known. He didn’t think you’d want to risk the welcoming committee.”

“I would have thought my Christmas presents told them where they stood,” I said. I’d sent a package of particularly nasty Christmas presents home. There was an ice-pack for my father with a note that said it should help with the swelling in his balls and a dildo for my mother, explaining that I was replacing the one I’d damaged. For Billy, I’d gotten a pamphlet on paternity tests and I’d sent Linda a morning after pill.

She laughed at that. “Yeah, that was memorable. I promise to stay on your good side. I don’t want you mad at me.” We went out to her car and chatted more comfortably. “Mike said Tony was interested in having you come back for the summer again if you’re interested,” she told me. “He said you can stop by anytime and he’d put you to work right away.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll probably head down there in the next few days. I’ll have to get a bike for the summer to get around.”

“Mike kept your old one,” she told me. “He got it ready to go last week.”

“Perfect,” I said. “That makes things easier. So how did you like Christmas with the family?”

“It was good. If I hadn’t known the background and hadn’t known about you, it would have looked like a perfect American family. Norman Rockwell couldn’t have done it more proud. I think they were trying to make it extra festive to distract themselves from you not being there. Your mother included you in her prayer when she said Grace.”

“That must have been before the gifts,” I said dryly.

She laughed. “Nope. Everyone else looked like they were ready to kill you, but I think she appreciated the gift you got her. Maybe she appreciates it regularly?” she teased.

“Next year, I’ll dip it in Tabasco sauce before I wrap it,” I promised. I was liking Mary more and more. She laughed at that and shook her head. “I can hardly wait to see what you actually do to them this year. It was hilarious, watching them open the gifts, filled with hope that you’d forgiven them. At first, your dad thought that the ice pack was meant as an apology for the kick, but when the rest of the gifts came out, he started to get pissed off. Your mom uses the ice pack though. She packs it in his lunch when he goes to work.”

I shrugged. “So long as someone’s getting some use out of it,” I said lightly. She hadn’t mentioned Billy and Linda’s reactions, so I didn’t know if they’d just rolled their eyes and moved on or if they’d blown up and she was keeping that part of the conversation from getting out of control.

We got home and I unpacked. The apartment seemed nicer and I noticed that there were a lot of little touches like a couple of pictures on the walls that made it seem less barren. Mary’s touch. I complimented her on the way the apartment looked and she smiled at that.

She was going to work, having just taken a couple of hours off to pick me up, so I was on my own. I had my key, my bike and no plans, so I wrote a note that I was gone to see Tony and went down talk to him about the restaurant.

He put me to work on the spot and asked me how many hours I wanted to work each week. “As many as I can,” I told him. “This is where I make my money to go back to college.”

He nodded and set me a heavy schedule. “I’m still looking for people for the summer,” he explained. “If it’s too much, let me know and we’ll ease back some.”

“No, it’s cool,” I assured him. “I’m only back in town to work and see Mike.”

He nodded and that’s pretty much how summer went. I worked six days a week, hung out with Mike and Mary a little, slept and read.

Mike had asked me to bring the ring I’d bought for Linda and in mid-May, he told me that he had the money for me.

“They finally raised the cash?” I asked, surprised.

“Nope,” he said. “I did. I want it for Mary.”

“You’re gonna propose?” I sat up, taking notice.

He nodded. “Friday night. I’m taking her out to dinner and dancing. I’m nervous as Hell.”

“Relax,” I told him. “She loves you. Besides, you can always threaten her. If she says no, I’ll get her a Christmas present.”

He laughed at that. “She still laughs about that.”

I nodded and passed him the ring. “No charge,” I said.

“No deal,” he said and handed me an envelope.

“Mike, you’re all the family I’ve got. I’m not using the ring. If I can do this for you, let me.”

“Don’t make me hide this in your luggage,” he said firmly. “Take it. You deserve it. I WANT you to have it. I also might just let it slip that I got the ring before Billy. He’s scraping together every dime he can find. I heard he’s up to $3500 and he’s been hounding Dad to loan him the rest before you go back for the summer.”

I nodded. “Then it’s probably better if you told him that I gave it to you,” I said. “That way, he’s not pissed off at you.”

He agreed. “Then this,” he held out the envelope again, “is a gift too. Take it or I’ll be insulted.”

I nodded finally and took the envelope, tucking it away in my luggage for now. We hugged and then I turned in.

Mary said yes. When they went to tell the parents, Billy pitched a fit about hearing that I’d donated the ring. That made me smile. It also earned me a very ardent kiss from my new sister-in-law.

“I didn’t really give him the ring,” I confessed with a guilty smile when she let me go. “I just told him that he shouldn’t tell them that he’d paid me for it.”

“That was still a nice thing to do,” she told me. “You must have been tempted to take the opportunity to piss them off.”

“Oh, I’m sure they were plenty of pissed off when they found out that the ring came from me,” I laughed. “Telling them Mike raised the money would only have made them mad at him.”

Life wasn’t always fun for the three of us. The bathroom was small, crowded and in-demand in the morning. The walls were thin, so I was treated to an audio account of their sex life. For a guy that hadn’t been laid since high school, it was a little like torture. I started taking later shifts at the restaurant so that I’d be there instead of at home when the moaning started. It also helped ease the strain on the bathroom too. They’d get up early and get going and I’d still be in bed. I started working 2PM to 2AM regularly and Tony gave me a raise for taking the night shift off his hands six days a week.

I was making money at an amazing rate, but at the cost of being tired all the time. On my day off, I was sleeping as much as I could and helping out around the house the rest of the time. One thing I’d learned to do out in LA was cook. I was pretty good at it and Tony must have taken notice, because I started finding myself working in the kitchen instead of up to my elbows in greasy dishwater. I learned a lot that summer and earned another raise as I moved into the kitchen full-time. By the time August rolled around, I’d made $15,000 at the restaurant and had another $6000 from Mike. I’d been paying rent while I was there, but I still had nearly twenty grand to my name when I started packing.

I was in pretty good shape to graduate this year if I pushed and I was looking forward to that. I was taking Computer Sciences and I was wondering whether I could get some scholarship money to continue on to grad-school and get a Masters or whether I should move out into the job market and upgrade over time.

This year’s last minute olive branch from the family came from my mother. She showed up with a check similar to the previous year and begged me to let her back into my life. I took the check and shrugged at her plea.

“Truthfully, I really don’t hate you,” I told her. “Billy, I hate. If he needed a kidney and I was a match, I’d set myself on fire so he wouldn’t get it when I died. Linda, I hate. I won’t tell you what I’d do to her if I thought I could get away with it, but it wouldn’t be pretty. Your husband? I’m not sure. I don’t have any respect for him. I don’t have any love for him. He’s no father to me, but I don’t know if I hate him or just have nothing for him but contempt. I think you’re in a slightly better situation than him. I don’t hate you, but I don’t think I love you anymore either. I counted on you to look out for me, especially when I couldn’t look out for myself. I’ll never count on you again and that’s kind of where we are.”

“You have to understand,” she said, deeply troubled by what I’d said. “I was caught between two of my sons.”

I nodded. “I know. And you made the choice. I don’t have to like it, but it’s done and I might be able to count on you in just about every other situation imaginable, but you’ll always choose Billy. In my head, that’s the inescapable truth. So I refuse to ever put myself in the position to need you when Billy might demand something. Since he’s a spoiled little shit, he’s likely to demand Mommy anytime of the day or night, so I refuse to rely on you.”

“It won’t be like this forever,” she said. “Billy needed us. You were in LA on your own and independent.”

“What Billy needed was a beating for some of the shit he pulled. Mike had to bail him out at school more than once and I did too. He was our brother and we stood up for him when he was gonna get killed. Now, I wish we’d stood back and let him take his licks. He might have been a better person if we had.”

“Billy’s graduated now. He’s starting college in a few weeks,” she told me. “He’s talking about moving out and getting a place with Linda.”

I shrugged. “Good for him,” I said flatly. “That’ll make life easier for you. I hope you enjoy the downtime. Look, I have an early flight tomorrow, so I’m gonna turn in. Thanks for stopping by. I’m glad life is going so well for you.”

She looked crestfallen at that. She’d been clearly hoping that I’d take the olive branch and give out hugs and forgiveness. “Are you ... Will you come home for Christmas this year?”

“No,” I said. “This will be Mike and Mary’s first Christmas living together. I’m not gonna insert myself in the middle of that.”

“You could stay with us,” she offered.

I laughed at that. “Nope. If I stayed under your roof, you’d try to patch things up with Billy, Linda and me. Fuck that. I’d rather spend Christmas alone. Not to mention, I have no idea what your husband thinks of all this, but I’ve seen him carry a grudge for years, so I wouldn’t turn my back on him if you paid me.”

“Your father was angry for a long time,” she told me. “It took a lot of me explaining to him how he’d treated you to see that he pushed you to do what you did to him. I think he looks at it now as you standing up for yourself.”

I shrugged. “That’s only one of the issues. I don’t want anything to do with Billy or Linda. I don’t want to sit down and talk it out. I don’t want to shake hands and say ‘Merry Christmas’, I don’t want to sit around the table and pass the potatoes. I just want to be left alone. You got Linda as a daughter. It only cost you a son you weren’t using anyway.”

“Don’t talk like that,” she wailed. “I’d never trade you for Linda. You’re my boy and I love you.”

“Thanks for that,” I said, mostly keeping the sarcasm out of my voice. “The only person in the family that I’ve felt was on my side in all this is Mike. I appreciate you saying that you love me, but Mike and Mary are my only family since that happened. You and your husband sided with Billy and you had to know that I’d never forgive him for taking her.”

She nodded. “We were all furious with him when we found out,” she said. “You were gone to college by then, but they’d been together for months at that point. We talked about grounding him, but we couldn’t ground her. We thought about calling you, but we were worried that telling you would ruin your studies and you’d be out there with no one to help you through it. I thought they were going to tell you at Christmas, but they didn’t. Then you couldn’t come home for spring break and we were all relieved that we wouldn’t have to do that to you then. I made Billy promise to tell you when you came home for summer though.”

“Yeah,” I said darkly. “He decided to show me instead.”

“I grounded him for a month for that,” she said. “I refused to let Linda into the house to see him or let him out for a full month.”

“How awful that must have been for him,” I said flatly. “To have the woman he loves torn away like that. I can only imagine.”

“What else was I supposed to do?!!?” she snapped. “He’s not exactly small enough to spank anymore. I yelled at him every day for a week and then wouldn’t speak to either of them for the rest of the summer.”

“Does he even care?” I asked suddenly. “He ruined my life, destroyed the family and did something so selfish and rotten that no one in their right mind would ever trust him again. Does he feel bad about any of it?”

It was the first time I’d asked about him on any level and it must have taken her by surprise, because she had a great deal of difficulty trying to come up with an answer. “I don’t know,” she admitted finally. “Sometimes your name comes up in conversation and he looks troubled. Other times, he just rolls his eyes and tries to change the subject.”

“Then he probably cares about the consequences to his life, but couldn’t care less about what it did to me,” I supplied. “I wouldn’t count on any Christmas presents I send to be any more loving than last year’s. I’ve been told that of the four I sent, you looked like you appreciated yours most. I suspect Linda’s got used at some point and the ice pack is seeing regular use. Billy’s gift was probably not appreciated as much as the others, but that’s okay.”

She didn’t have an answer to that, so she changed tactics. “I tried to send you something, but it came back,” she told me.

“I don’t live in the dorms anymore,” I told her.

“Oh,” she said. “Where do you live now?”

“I have an apartment,” I told her, but didn’t tell her where.

“You don’t want me to know where it is?” she asked perceptively.

I shrugged. “It’s near school,” I told her. “If you really want the address, I don’t see that being a problem. It’s a little far for any of you to drop in casually.” I wrote down the address and gave it to her. I figured that if they made a nuisance of themselves, I was only there until graduation, then I could move anywhere in the country.

That made her happy enough to make the whole visit a success in her eyes.

“Surprised that you let her know where you were living,” Mike told me after she’d gone.

“If she abuses the information, I can move after graduation,” I said and then really did turn in.

Mike took me to the airport and saw me off. He had another envelope for me, but I shook my head. “I’ve done pretty good this summer,” I told him. “Put that toward the wedding and the honeymoon.”

“Just take it,” he said and put the envelope in my hand with a smile. We had an affectionate goodbye. It was less emotional than last year, but that was understandable. We were both more comfortable with our situation.

The year went well. I called Mike for Christmas, got a card and a check from Mom. She explained that she didn’t know what I could use or even want, so she wanted me to get something nice for myself. I put it in the bank with the rest of them. I’d told Mike that I was planning to graduate this year, but hadn’t shared that with the rest of the family. I didn’t want them at the ceremony, brimming with false pride like they’d done anything to participate in my success. I’d sent presents back for Christmas and this year was like last year. My father got an athletic supporter that boasted “Baby on Board”. Mom had gotten a card instead of a present. In it, I told her that I’d thought about getting her another sex toy, but decided to meet her partway instead and stop antagonizing her. Billy got an assortment of penis-shaped chocolates. Linda’s gift was a stud-finder, with a note telling her that since instinct had failed her, she should turn to technology. Mike had kindly explained what the device was called. I was told that once again, my present to my mother had been appreciated and that everyone else was pissed off. I wondered what happened to the chocolates.