Chapter 1: When home is the only option

Ed picked me up at the bus station, shook my hand and talked incessantly. I pretended to listen.

He saw me looking at the side of his van as he tossed my luggage in the cargo area. "That was Jen's idea. She set up the web page and keeps track of how many hits it gets," he explained. The URL was printed below the telephone number, but that's not what had captured my attention. Above the telephone number was printed 'Ed Crumbly and Sons, Contractors'.

"It's my tool bin. Everything I need is here, secure and orderly," Ed said, as if he needed to explain his reason for graduating to a van. That's not what I wanted to know; why had he chosen to keep the name our father had painted on his truck the day I was born? Why didn't the name read: 'Ed Crumbly Jr., Contractor'?

Riding through town stirred something I hadn't felt in years. It started deep in my chest and pumped upward, like an artesian well. Ed assumed I was looking at the changes. I wasn't.

"That's Stew Mercer's sub-division. He built forty homes on twenty-two acres. I did the siding and most of the roofs, but he had to give Johnny Evans some of the work because I didn't have... you can't get qualified help any more. The kids the technical high school turns out need a year on the job before they're productive. You remember Stew, don't you?"

I nodded, recalling that Stew Mercer was in my graduating class although he had attended the technical high school while I had taken the college course. I had excelled in high school; apparently, Stew had excelled after graduation.

At twenty-nine, Ed's hair was beginning to thin and his forehead was showing a distinct set of worry lines. Is that what I can expect in four years? He seemed more animated than I remembered. Was it to mask the awkwardness between us?

"The old house looks the same, doesn't it?" he asked as we turned into the driveway. It didn't. In addition to the new, three-car garage at the end of the drive, the roof and siding looked like they had been replaced recently. Maybe he had forgotten how long I had been gone.

Inside, the house looked totally different than I remembered. I followed him upstairs to our old room. "Change into something comfortable and join me on the porch," he said as he set my two pieces of luggage down. The room looked the same as I remembered, small, bunk beds, a desk and a closet that was never large enough for our clothes. I quickly put on jeans, a sweater and sneakers before taking a final look at the room. It was the only place in the house that hadn't been updated. In the hallway I glanced at what had been Mom and Pop's room. Unable to resist, I opened the door and peeked in. That same ache hit the empty pit in my chest and rumbled around. They sleep here. The bed looks new.

I can't do it, I thought. Sleeping across the hall from Jennifer Hawley and her husband was going to be impossible. But I would have to make the best of my plight: I didn't have any place else to go.

"I suppose you noticed the kitchen? We did a major renovation last year," my brother said when I joined him on the porch. I was too busy noticing that the 'porch' was no longer a porch to respond. It was now a room.

"Oh this," Ed said when he saw me looking at the sky-lights, ceiling fan, carpeting and paneling below the windows. "I enclosed it a couple of year ago during a slack time. We use it three seasons. The windows open... say... I couldn't remember if you like to open your own beer... some guys are particular about things like that. I left the cap on yours."

What does he have to be nervous about? Why doesn't he shut the fuck up?

"For future reference, I don't have a hang-up about who opens my beer," I said as I extracted the cap from a cold bottle of Heineken. After taking a long swig from the bottle I had an urge to say more. "I have plenty of other hang-ups. Who opens my beer seems too trivial to waste time worrying about," I said, perplexed with my self for talking so much. What I had said was true though. I did have other hang-ups, like finding out my older brother had fucked my girlfriend the minute I turned my back.

Ed saw me looking at the rolling lawn and beyond where new homes blocked out the view of the lake. "We built houses on the land, Ben. Dad needed the money to pay Mon's medical bills. The project was good for him, too. We worked together until he got sick. I finished them after he died."

I nodded to show that I understood, hoping he would stop talking. I didn't need more explanation. Who was I to mourn the loss of the majestic view?

As I watched my brother take the empty beer bottles and leave the room, presumably to get two more beers, I realized that down deep, we loved each other. He was the consummate older brother, being a pain in the ass, always treating me like a dunce, while claiming he was doing it for my own good.

"Go for it, kid," he advised when I told him we were on the verge of having sex. It was Ed's advice that instilled the confidence in me to take Jen's virginity. She was my first, too.

Ed was always the giver; I was the taker, or so he led me to believe. He went to work for our dad after high school and financed my first three years at college. I don't believe he kept track of the amounts he shelled out; I know I didn't. I worked summers with Ed and my dad and used the money for incidentals, clothes and spending. Our parents sent money for my trips home, two holidays and summer vacation.

Jen attended a local junior college for two years and then went to work in a bank. We had a strict rule; no fooling around with anyone else. I never broke the rule and believed her when she said that she didn't either. We were each other's first and promised never to stray.