by C.T. Millis
Chapter 4
Stephen was the youngest of four brothers. By the time he entered the world, his parents could no longer celebrate. Not only had they spent their good times on the other three boys, they also did not start off with many good times to begin with.
His first memory took place around Christmastime, although he only knew that it was Christmastime from his memories of trees and eggnog, not because he was able to know what Christmas was or how that time of year was different from any other time of year. This is how memory works at the age of two.
He remembered stumbling into a dark room where the lit tree was. He stepped on a remote that lay on the floor next to a man in a chair. Stephen knew the man in the chair as the man who tipped brown bottles into his throat in an eternal fashion.
When Stephen tripped over the remote control, the television screen went black in a short moment. Sooner than he realized, his foot created a chain reaction, causing the bottle-man’s hand to draw back and hit Stephen on the back of his head. Stephen would later learn that this was the strongest and most powerful man in Stephen’s limited universe.
The bottle-man was Stephen’s father.
The distinction between his father and his three brothers did not occur to him until later on because most of his brothers gave him a push or a punch from time to time.
His mother was different. Obviously afraid of the bottle-man herself, she coddled Stephen and deflected most of the angry energy that was aimed at him.
To him she was the most beautiful creature in the universe, and Stephen could never remember a time where her eyes were not red from crying or her body did not limp from the energy and pain she absorbed.
Most of his early life he spent hiding in the cupboards and waiting for his mother to find him so she could feed him or get him to bed.
His brothers picked on him, especially the one who was only a year older than he was, John. Feeling replaced, a day would not go by without John poking him in the eye, hitting him, or humiliating him in some other way. Stephen had to use all the malice he built up in his first two years of life to get his brother to stop. Stephen had to prove that he was stronger.
That is what his family was. A show of strength was a warning to anyone who dared to care. Their familial love was so heated that it could spill over into hate at any moment. The reason why his father sat alone in front of the television so often was to keep his energy locked in his own mind.
Stephen’s mom would bathe him and John together and would leave for long periods of time. Some nights, Stephen’s older brother would just splash him, other time he would him in the head with the bath toys or a shampoo bottle. One night, Stephen snuck a wash towel behind his back, and when it was heavy and wet he waited for his brother to turn around and select what toy he would torture Stephen with that night. He reached up and pulled the wash towel over his brother’s face and used all his weight to push his brother under the water. With his brother facing down in the water, Stephen started to bite his shoulders and use his knees to plunge as much agony he could muster into his back.
By the time his mother came back to wash them off, his brother tumbled over the low wall of the claw foot tub and was crying. He never bothered Stephen again after that humiliation. Instead, he began to follow Stephen around and soon became almost sure to obey any directions Stephen would indicate.
This is the way that Stephen learned to make his way in the world. He began to idealize his father. By the time Stephen went to kindergarten, he grew strong enough to fight the brothers who gave him trouble, but still quiet enough to fly under the radar of his oldest brother who spent most of his time breaking the law with a cigarette hinged behind his ear.
Stephen would only let himself fight as much as the other kids would as soon as a menacing glare began to suffice as self-protection. He knew the way his family lived was wrong. Sometimes he had trouble believing his life was really his. It was more like a movie most of the time. Stephen spent most of his time avoiding the attention of anyone who could stop the reel of film his memories etched themselves into.
His mother grew to be hunched over in shame, pulling every room she entered into a curved cave of itself. As Stephen grew, her apparent beauty shrunk. She began to appear weak and pathetic. Strength began to mean everything to Stephen. Though she took more beatings than any of her children, he thought she should have been able to handle it better.
By middle school, Stephen had John fully behind him. John ceased to keep up in height or strength with Stephen. John’s body was spun small like their mother’s, and his eyes avoided people’s faces in a way that Stephen grew to despise. The eldest of the four boys was in a detention center at the age of sixteen, and the other brother was on his way- with a cigarette behind each ears.
Stephen and John began to steal things from the gardens of the houses in the town and destroy them in the woods that blanketed the border of their town. After a while, neighbors and citizens stopped replacing garden gnomes and miniature plastic windmills.
So the boys started stealing small pets.
They would bring them to the woods where Stephen’s older brother would serve as a lookout while Stephen would destroy the animals in many ways. At school, seminars bean to address moral concerns of students because the town was convinced dozens of the students were responsible for the destruction of garden ornaments and animals instead of a set of brothers. Nobody except the brothers knew it was anything but a disturbing teen trend. There was a rash of articles about it in the town paper.
Stephen’s older brother did not remember the bathtub incident, but it was ingrained in him to obey his brother. When he was fifteen, he felt too weak to matter in his family, so he left. It wasn’t long before Stephen began to warm up to his mother, the woman who he slunk away from earlier in fear of inheriting her weakness. He picked her side because he wanted to put himself between his parents so he could manage to challenge his father.
He waited again until the right moment came. One night, he flipped the oven’s heat from 350 degrees all the way up to broil. The Lasagna baking within the oven filled the kitchen with smoke when it caught on fire. His father rose from the couch and beat Stephen’s mother with the battery-powered fire detector. He beat her with his fists after the fire detector broke against her shoulder.
As his father stood panting from the physical and emotional exhaustion it took to tear Stephen’s mother apart, Stephen took the chance to advance behind him. His teenage arms were taught but strong from mischief, and his eyes were sharp on the kill.
He grabbed a dishtowel off of the counter, pulled it over his father’s face, and pulled him to the ground. Stephen only had to stand up to his father to get him to leave. When he left, Stephen thought he would somehow inherit that strength, but he felt the safe after. Stephen started to let the hatred for the rest of humanity leak from his eyes after nobody at school or at his job feared or respected him any more than before he conquered his own father. His mom grew quieter and quieter, until she rarely said a word.
He began to want happiness. He saw strength as the way to reach it. He decided before he left for state college that he would construct the happiness in his life in a way he could control. He would use any strength he had to bend the world to what he wanted. No matter how small that world would be.
After Stephen left for college, it took his mom one year to remarry, and two years for him to reconnect with John. They had not spoken since high school.
Stephen was sitting in the library, studying anatomy. He decided he wanted to go to medical school and was trying his best to enjoy his decision.
Someone dropped a book, causing Stephen to look up, mid-sentence about muscle structure.
“John?” Their eyes met.
“I heard you were going to school here, too.”
“I’ve been here for two years,” Stephen stood up and walked over to his brother, almost hugging him. When he moved his arms, John flinched. This autom
atic reaction was planted by early defenses formed after almost being drowned, grown from hearing the sounds the animals made when Stephen would lead them with twine tied around their necks into the woods around their childhood home.
Stephen and John started tentatively spending time together. They started with sporting events, but moved on to running errands together.
One day, they were both grocery shopping. They would share a car to get there, separate to traverse the isles, and then meet up again at the checkout lanes. They were crossing paths in the cereal aisle surrounded by a library of breakfasts when Stephen saw her. She was talking to his brother, and she was beautiful. She laughed and tucked some of her hair behind her ear.
“Stephen, this is the girl I told you about, from my history class.”
“You never told me she was so beautiful,” Stephen said without a heartbeat passing before his words. He said it while looking directly into her eyes. John’s eyes lowered to what was in his cart. John knew he had no chance. She was practically Stephen’s girl already and she had not even said anything.
John could not hold conversation or attention the way his brother did. He fumbled at nearly everything he did. Often, he would stammer. He was chubby, maybe fat- Stephen looked like he was made of stone. There was no chance.
That is how Stephen met his wife. That is how Stephen lost his brother for the almost the last time.
