It's All Relative

by J. M. Snyder

  “You’re easy to laugh at,” I admit. I keep my voice light and hope he sees I’m just kidding, but no, he’s in a mood—there’s no teasing when he gets like this. With a dramatic sigh, I run my hands through my hair to push the bangs from my face and tell him, “I’m only picking at you, damn. Lighten the hell up.”

  Without warning, he lunges at me. If Aunt Bobbie wasn’t down on the floor between us, he could’ve knocked me down, maybe run me into the counter, he caught me that off guard. Instead, he only manages to shove at me, the palms of his hands leaving painful imprints on my shoulders. Taking a step or two back, I glare at him and want to know, “What’s your problem today?”

  He doesn’t answer. That’s no surprise—he probably doesn’t know what he’s mad about, he just knows that he’s pissed. Angry myself, I level a finger at him and say, “You know, Ray, I’m not going to put up with your shit. Nothing I said or did made you drop your damn cereal in your lap, okay? So don’t take it out on me. It’s not my fault you’re a clumsy ass.”

  “Shut up,” he snarls again. His eyes are downcast as he watches Bobbie use his napkin to clean up the milk that’s spilled on the floor and he doesn’t look at me, which is fine. “Just leave me the hell alone, Mike.”

  From the other side of the table, little Trevor speaks up. “Aunt Bobbie,” he calls out in a sing-song voice, “Ray said—”

  My brother lashes out, one hand curled into a tight fist. He stretches across the pumpkin, aiming for our cousin, but Caitlin whacks his wrist with the flat of the knife blade. I wince at the sound, the dull slap of metal on skin, and he snatches his arm back, eyes wide. “Watch it,” she growls. “I’ll cut your fucking hand off.”

  Staring at Trevor, Ray points out, “She cusses like a sailor. Why don’t you tell Aunt Bobbie on her?”

  “Because he doesn’t like you,” Caitlin says simply. She turns back to the pumpkin, Ray dismissed. “He likes me. You look like you wet your pants.”

  When I laugh at that, my brother turns his hateful gaze to me again. “Shut up,” he says, like that’s his only reply. “Don’t you have shit to do?”

  “Aunt Bobbie—” Trevor starts.

  Rising to her feet, Bobbie nods. “I know, honey,” she says, distracted. “It’s fine. Why don’t you run along and play?”

  “I’m watching Caitlin,” he answers. At the withering look Ray shoots him, he sticks his tongue out and hides behind my sister.

  Aunt Bobbie dabs at Ray’s stomach, a good five inches above where the milk drenched his shorts. “Here,” she says, shoving the napkin into his hand. “Maybe you should get cleaned up, Ray. It’s after noon already, too late to be lounging around in your PJ’s anyway. I’m sure you have something else you need to do…”

  She trails off, hopeful, but Ray shakes his head as he wipes at the front of his shorts. Trying to help, I tell him, “Dad’s out in the shed. He could use a hand—”

  “That’s your job, isn’t it?” Ray asks bitterly. “Or wait, just your boyfriend’s. He didn’t want you out there.”

  “We straightened all that out,” I say. My anger is back, choking whatever banter I was hoping for between us. What, is he trying to piss me off? “Not that it’s any of your business. Is that okay with you?”

  He doesn’t answer, just wipes his shorts in quick, fast strokes. I watch him for one full minute, giving him ample opportunity to reply, but he doesn’t. He’s ignoring me. From the other side of the table, Caitlin stares at me, willing me to look her way, but I don’t. I’m not taking this any further. I’m not going to argue just because Ray’s in the mood for a fight.

  I turn away and take a step towards the closed door of the back room and the promise of Dan on the other side when Ray mutters, “Goddamn faggot.”

  My blood freezes in my veins and I’m not even aware that I’ve turned towards him until my hands fist in the collar of his raggedy t-shirt. “What the hell did you just call me?” I snarl.

  His face drains of color and his lips tremble as if he’s mumbling beneath his breath. “I didn’t,” he starts, but he loses the rest of that sentence and just shakes his head. “Mike, it wasn’t…I didn’t mean it like that.”

  I let his fingers scramble at mine for a few seconds, until his nails bite into the back of my hands, and then I let him go. “How’d you mean it?” I ask. “As a complement?” He glares at the floor and can’t even meet my gaze. I tell him, “Just because you’re my brother, Ray, doesn’t mean I have to take this from you. I won’t. If you have a problem with me, let me know.”

  That gets a laugh. “And then what?” he asks. “We sit down and talk it out and everything’s hunky dory? I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I look at him, confused. “Ray—”

  He shakes his head, he’s not going to hear me out. “You know, I’m glad,” he says, and laughs again. With another halfhearted swipe at the front of his shorts, he folds the napkin up into a tiny square and presses it to his mouth as if he’s going to be sick. When he speaks, his voice is muffled until he moves the napkin away. “You know why? Because it just goes to show that you’re not perfect.”

  Hell, I could’ve told him that if he just asked. I’m a far cry from perfect, believe you me. Dan might be—when we’re loving each other, we’re just a stone’s throw from heaven, and most days he’s up there with the saints in my book. Me, I’m just a pilgrim on this journey, a sinner seeking salvation, and God knows I’ve found it in my lover. The curve of his buttocks, the firm weight of his cock in my hand, my mouth…his kisses, the tender way he touches me in the morning, the feel of his body against mine while we sleep, that’s perfection. Without him, I don’t even come close.

  I didn’t think I had to point out that I’m not perfect, especially not to Ray of all people. But there's a wild relief in his eyes that scares me, and before I can say anything, he hurries on. “All my life, it’s been, why can’t you be like Michael? Why can’t you get the grades he gets? Why can’t you go on to college? Why can’t you get a job like his, or drive a flashy car like he does, or move out on your own? And now this.”

  This being my homosexuality, I assume—I don’t correct him or mention that for the first three years of his life, I wasn’t even around. “Ray, I didn’t know,” I murmur, I didn’t. My parents hold us up against each other like that? Not my dad, I’m sure, he’s not one to hound you into what he wants you to be, he’d leave that to…“Mom says this crap?”

  Behind me Caitlin laughs. “You have no idea,” she says. “Til Saturday you could do no wrong in her eyes.”

  I turn, surprised to find her still here. And Aunt Bobbie wiping down the table, a sad look on her face. And Trevor watching me with his Sphinx-like eyes. And Dan leaning in the doorway to the back room, when did he show up? His t-shirt hangs down over his open fly, the zipper wide on either side of the hem, his drab green Army-issue briefs hidden from view. He’s watching us, too, arms crossed, one foot over his ankle, but there’s nothing easy about his stance—it’s an alert pose, a ready position. Ray makes the wrong move, says the wrong thing, and my lover will cross the room in three, maybe five steps, he’ll come to my side. If he has to.

  “You know what she told me on the way up here?” Ray laughs, a strangled sound that he cuts off before it can run away from him. “She actually said thank God you’re not gay like Michael is. Like Michael. That’s all I ever hear—like Michael.”

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him. I am. What else can I say? Grudgingly Ray rubs at his nose and sniffles, which is the closest he ever comes to crying. For the first time I can remember, I feel a deep ache in my chest, I feel sorry for him, and I touch his shoulder in a comforting gesture, which isn’t much but is all I can think to do. I can’t take away my mother’s hateful nature. I can’t take away the years of hearing her compare him to me. As if I’m all that to begin with, I’m not. He said it himself, I’m not. “Ray—”

  He shrugs my hand away. “Leave me alone,” he mutters, and picks at the fr
ont of his shorts absently. In a tiny voice, he whispers, “I didn’t mean to call you that.”

  It’s okay, I almost say, an automatic response. The words are on the tip of my tongue but at the last second I bite my lip, keeping them inside. It’s not okay. What did he say, goddamn faggot? That’s a bit more than sibling rivalry, if you ask me. That hurt.

  He glances at Caitlin and then past me at Dan, who I know has stepped out of the doorway now, it’s in my brother’s calculating gaze, as if he’s measuring the distance between my lover and himself. I hear bare feet pad on the floor behind me—you called me a fag, I could say, and Dan would close the gap between us in double time, he’d grab my brother by the collar same as I did but this time it wouldn’t be just milk wetting his shorts. He’d piss himself scared if Dan came at him and I think he knows it, I see that fear in his eyes, ready to erupt. “I didn’t mean it,” he whispers again, and before I can reply, he adds, “Call him off me, Mikey. I said it without thinking. You know how I am, I do that shit all the time.”

  I reach behind me without turning and my hand flattens across Dan’s stomach, he’s that close. “It’s okay,” I say, talking to Dan. To my brother, I add, “It’s not my fault she does that crap and you know it. I’m not the favorite one, trust me.”

  With a bitter snort, he concedes, “Not now.”

  “Not before now either,” I assure him. “I got the best grades and went off to college just so she’d finally pay some attention to me.” He rolls his eyes, he’s not buying it. “Honest. You’re the one she was always on about, Ray. You’re the one who was always in trouble. I didn’t think Mom would know I was alive if I didn’t compete with that somehow.”

  “Yeah right.” He wipes his nose again, picks at the front of his shorts, then balls up the hem of his shirt between both hands. “It’s not the same, Mike. You moved out years ago and it’s like you’re still living with us. It’s Mike’s doing this, Mike said that. Almost like you never left. It’s not the same at all.” When I start to apologize again, he raises his hand, he doesn’t want to hear it. “Just forget it, okay? If you can. Forget I said anything. Forget I was even here.”

  And he storms from the kitchen, down the hall, up the stairs. I hear tinny laughter, distant like a fuzzy radio signal. Ray yells at someone to shut up, just shut the fuck up—

  Whatever else he says is cut off by a door slamming shut, and when Dan touches my waist, I almost fall into his arms. Goddamn faggot. I don’t know how I can ever forget that.

  Chapter 41: Dan On Alert

  No one says anything at first—there’s nothing really to say. I lean back into Dan’s touch and frown at the floor, resisting the urge to meet anyone’s eye, particularly Caitlin’s. I can feel her gaze on me, weighing me down, willing me to look at her and I won’t. Because if I do, I’ll see the laughter bubbling within her, I’ll smile myself, she’ll giggle, and all hell will break loose. Ray calling me a faggot is nothing to laugh about. There’s nothing funny with my mom comparing him to me in everything he says and does. But the image of his jiggling ass through those thin boxers as he stormed out of here, that’s worth a laugh or two, and his damp front where he spilled the milk, and the way Trevor kept picking on him, Trevor of all people, barely five years old and already every inch one of us. Ray slamming the door shut upstairs, add that to the list. And if I look at Caitlin, I just know I’ll bust out, she’ll start in, Dan too. What’s my brother going to think if he hears us down here laughing at him?

  So I keep my head down and say nothing. But Dan—who came in late on Ray’s little snit, he missed the best part, goddamn faggot my ass—he presses his lips to the back of my neck in a gentle kiss and wants to know, “What was that all about?”

  The question is a catalyst that sets everyone else into action. “You really shouldn’t pick on him,” Aunt Bobbie starts, and right over top of her, Caitlin cries out, indignant, “I can’t believe he had the nerve to call you that!”

  “Caitlin,” I warn with a shake of my head.

  Too late. “Call you what?” Dan asks. When I don’t answer immediately, he turns me around in his arms so we’re face to face, and he asks again, “Call you what, Michael?”

  With a weary sigh, I start, “Nothing—”

  But Caitlin pipes up. “He said—”

  “Caitlin!” I snap at her. “He didn’t ask you.”

  My lover grasps my shoulders, his strong hands insistent until I raise my eyes to his. “I thought we talked about this,” he says softly. His voice is always like this, so damnably soft, how can I take offense at it? “This morning? About letting me in?”

  “We did,” I agree. But I don’t want to get into it here, with Caitlin just waiting for her chance to jump in and fan the flames. He called me a fag, I’d say, and I have a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to hold Dan back—my lover would race up the stairs two at a time like a one-man SWAT team, kick in the door Ray slammed behind him, and tear my brother apart for that comment alone, family or not.

  Or worse, he’d calmly bide his time, he’d wait, the silence in him coiled and deadly like a snake choosing the right moment to strike. Sometime when he can get Ray alone, he’ll sidle up beside him, take his arm, pinch that tender spot just above the elbow that makes you want to claw at the ceiling in pain. “I’d like a word with you,” he’d say in that same soft voice, and my unsuspecting brother would nod, sure, a word, he could do that, anything to loosen the grip on his arm. Dan knows just how to squeeze that nerve, and by the time he’s finished talking, Ray would probably never even look at me again.

  Dan’s waiting, watching me, an air of silent alertness about him like the quiet that descends over a hunter in the bush, gun ready, listening for his prey. “Not now,” I tell him. When he starts to object, I shake my head. “Not here. When we’re alone, okay, baby?”

  At first I think he’ll protest—he wants to know now. But it’s the baby that stops him and he sees the promise in my eyes, I’ll tell him later, he knows I will. He has ways of getting it out of me, ways that include his tongue on hidden flesh, his lips over secret skin, his hands on my body, in me, he knows just where to touch to bring me out. “Later,” he says, almost asking. I nod, yes.

  “You should tell him now,” Caitlin says, a pout in her voice.

  “You should mind your own business,” I reply.

  Caitlin doesn’t let up. “It was an evil thing to say. If I were you, I’d tell him.”

  Frowning, Dan asks, “Was it that bad?”

  She’s making this worse, can’t she see that? Getting him worked up like this over nothing. “Caitlin, shut up.”

  “Do I have to kick some ass?” Dan asks, only half-joking. I glare at my sister but she’s back to her pumpkin, impervious to my irritation. With one gentle hand, Dan turns my face towards his and prompts, “Michael?”

  My gaze holds his for a moment then trails down, over the firm muscles bunched beneath his taut shirt, his biceps, his pects, down lower over his hard, flat stomach, down lower…“Look at you,” I admonish lightly, slipping my hands beneath his shirt to tug his open jeans closed. “Hanging out all over the place.”

  His lips are hot and damp as he nuzzles my ear. “I was under the impression that we were going to pick up where we left off,” he teases. I laugh at his warm breath, ticklish along my neck. Nimbly, I thumb the button on his fly shut and try to ignore the eager hardness that responds to my touch when I zip him up. “Did you talk to your dad?” he wants to know.

  Another issue I don’t want to share with my nosy sister present. From the corner of my eye I can see her leaning intently over the pumpkin in concentration, fixated on her carving, but the knife doesn’t move, she’s too busy hanging on my every word. “Dan,” I sigh. He makes a small, annoyed sound in the back of his throat and his hands bunch in my shirt—he hates being put off. “Yeah,” I admit. “We talked.”

  Pulling back slightly, he frowns at me and asks, expectant, “And?”

  Caitlin gives up
all pretense now—she’s watching us openly, the knife stuck into the side of the pumpkin like an afterthought. With a nod in her direction, I tell him, “And I’ll tell you about it later.” I tuck his shirt into his pants, my fingers brisk like a mother getting her child ready for school. But my blood rushes at the feel of his stomach through the thin material, my fingertips burn where they brush against the beginnings of an erection coiled at his crotch, and if I don’t move quick then I’ll linger, my sister doesn’t need to see that. “We’ll talk about it,” I promise, not meeting Dan’s eyes. “When we get a few moments alone—”

  He catches my wrists in his hands and pulls me towards him. “We can be alone now,” he says, taking a step back in the direction of our room. The door stands open behind him like temptation. It would be that easy. “If he’s not expecting us to come out and help him…”

  “He’s not.” Dan takes another step and I follow. Wasn’t this what I had in mind? I have a feeling that, despite the amount of work we still have left on that back room before it’s cleaned out to Penny’s specifications, we’re going to get very little done once that door is shut. Not that I mind. Another step, another. I like the gleam in his eyes, the wicked little way his mouth turns up in one corner. With a shy smile of my own, I murmur, “We’re supposed to be cleaning out that room.”

  He stops and I find myself in a sudden embrace. “We’ll clean,” he swears. “Eventually.”

  When he leans in for a kiss, though, Caitlin interrupts…again. “What did I tell you they were?” she asks.

  I turn towards her, about to ask what the hell she’s talking about, but then Trevor speaks up. “Horny asses,” he declares, so matter-of-factly that I just stare at him. He glances at us, gives me a tight, thin-lipped smile, then leans onto the table, dangerously close to the pumpkin and the knife in Caitlin’s hand. With one small finger he shoves his glasses up the bridge of his nose and nods as if confirming it. Beneath his breath, he whispers it again, slowly, enunciating each syllable until the phrase sounds prim in his little boy voice. “Horny asses.”