by Anthology
“Obviously they saved it. I’m every security’s nightmare though. Metal detectors hate me. There’s nothing but pins and rods holding it all together. Hurts like a mother fucker most of the time. Maybe they should have cut it off and I’d have been spared this pain and the need for medication.”
“Don’t say that Theo. You still have your leg and I truly believe that with time, and perhaps some regular massages, you might suffer less. You still get around and can do things. You drive, you can walk. You don’t seem to be in that much pain today.”
“It’s been nearly six years. How long does it need before it’s had enough time?” I snapped, regretting immediately that I was so harsh with her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped.”
“It’s alright. Did your doctor have any follow up care for you?”
I laughed a dry, humourless laugh. “Of course. Exercise within reason to strengthen it, and massages. Those deep heat creams help too.” I sighed. "I used to do all that shit but I lost all incentive after…after Adam.”
Autumn lifted a hand, curling it around the back of my neck and tugging gently, enough for me to comply and lower my head to her. Gently she brushed her lips against mine and I felt everything in that kiss that she wasn’t saying with words. She knew I didn’t want her pity and I now understood that it was sympathy, not pity, which she felt. I also knew that this woman made me feel things; strong, powerful emotions. I felt like I could trust her, that I could open my heart to her despite the short time we’d known one another. I wasn’t in love with her. I didn’t believe in love at first sight. Lust, yes, but not love. Still, as our lips parted and I met the brightness of her beautiful eyes, I realised that this was the woman I could grow to love.
“Tell me about your brother.” She said softly, her fingers trailing across my cheek, and I felt tears prick behind my eyes again.
“He was three years younger than me but we looked so similar people said we could almost pass for twins. He just wore his hair longer than me. He was the joker of the pair of us; the one who always seemed to love life. He never took anything too seriously.” I smiled as the memories began to flood my mind.
“He used to tell me I was like an old man, and that I needed to stop being so focused on work and the almighty dollar. When I had the accident he was even more determined that I focus more on living the dream, rather than living to accumulate material possessions. That was never Adam’s thing. He worked to make enough money to survive and pay bills. He had no desire to be a very wealthy man and yet he could have been. He was a brilliant photographer and worked freelance. He could have been so much more but that wasn’t him. He was born in the wrong time. You know what I mean? He was all for peace, love and harmony. That was Adam.”
“He sounds like quite a character.” Autumn said softly as she stared up at me.
“He was; and then out of the blue he told us he was gay.” I exhaled with a noisy gust of air. “It didn’t change anything for me. I couldn’t have cared less. If he’d told me he was going to have a sex change and become a nun it wouldn’t have made any difference to how I felt about him.” I grinned. “Well, maybe the sight of Adam in a habit might have been hard for me to take seriously.”
“I’m not sure nuns still wear habits, do they?” Tiny lines formed on Autumn’s brow.
“I don’t know but my point is: I didn’t care that he was gay. I guess I always suspected that he was but it’s not exactly the kind of question you just blurt out to someone over coffee or a beer. He never showed that much interest in girls in school whereas I was the typical teenage boy, trying to get in their pants any opportunity.”
“Ah, the struggles of a teenage boy.” Autumn teased.
“They were real.” I joked, before sobering again. “Adam had a feminine kind of way about him. He would talk of male celebrities he admired or found attractive while I was trying not to crack a hard on over a tiny flash of tit or ass from the girls at school.”
“When did he admit he was gay?”
“Not until he was eighteen. It was in the middle of the family dinner for his birthday. He jokingly said that now he was legal and could vote and drink, he could also come out of the closet and reveal that he was gay. Mum and dad were shocked. I wasn’t. As I said, I think I always knew.”
“Your parents weren’t supportive?” I could hear the question in her voice.
“They were shocked. Mum and dad are old school. I don’t think it ever occurred to them that the reason Adam never had a girlfriend was because he had no interest in girls. But, to answer your question, my parents were supportive. It took dad a little longer to get his head around the idea but they loved my brother. I was sure of that. They were devastated when he died, and didn’t stick around after the funeral. They’d sold the family home a couple of years before Adam’s death and were doing the grey nomad thing. After we buried Adam I thought they might stick around for a while but they didn’t. They said they couldn’t handle anything that reminded them of him. I haven’t seen them since we buried my brother.”
“Oh Theo; your parents left you at a time when you needed them the most.” I could see the sorrow in Autumn’s eyes when I looked down at her. She had seen the one thing that bothered me the most about my parents’ hitting the road again: they’d forgotten they had a son who needed them. I’d been grieving too and riddled with guilt over Adam’s death.
“Yeah.” I choked out the one word, emotion tightening my throat and tears burning the backs of my eyes again. I couldn’t look at her. If I looked into Autumn’s face I knew I’d fall apart.
“As I told you, my father took his own life because of his tumour and some hair brained idea that he could spare me watching him succumb to his illness; but do you have any idea what happened to make your brother think suicide was the only alternative?”
I closed my eyes, feeling the familiar pain surge through me. It was always the same. I felt like my body was under siege; every inch of me hurting from the pain of losing my brother, and the anguish and despair I’d felt when I found his body.
“I found him. He’d taken an overdose and, ironically, it wasn’t the cocktail of tablets in his system that did it. He choked on his own vomit.”
“Oh my god Theo.” Autumn’s hand came up to cup my jaw. “It’s the most horrid thing, isn’t it? To find someone we love so deeply…to find them…like that.”
“It is, and one of the things I hate about it is that’s the image I’m left with of my brother. Not him happy and smiling or anything like that. No, that image. I get so angry when I see him lying there, his skin grey, his lips blue and his eyes, god, his eyes open and unseeing. He looked surprised. That’s the thing that always gets me when I see him in my mind; almost like he was startled or shocked. I often wonder, if for a brief moment, did he realise he’d just made a bloody awful mistake but it was too late to change it? I know he was on medication for his depression, and it was a massive overdose of them they found in his system, but I will always wonder after seeing his face; did he have that short moment of clarity when he was choking to death…” I paused, sucking in a shaky lung full of air. “Did he at all think that he’d just royally fucked up? That’s one thing that torments me every fucking day. Every…fucking…day. He took away all our childhood memories, and even those memories as adults when he would give me shit all the time, and he left me with the image of his cold, lifeless body. At times I hate him for that. Then I feel guilty and just down right fucking bad that I could be angry with him for taking his own life. But I am. You know…I am and I can’t help that I feel that way.”
“I know exactly how you feel, Theo, because I feel the same way about my father. We had choices taken from us. I know the kind of man my father was and he was looking out for me, sparing me watching his body slowly being ravaged by the tumour and what it did to him, but I would have taken care of him and he denied me that. He took away my chance to spend those last months or weeks with him. I too have to live with the final image of
my father; the one of him in his car and that look on his face. Anyone who tells you people just look like they’re sleeping when they’re dead clearly has never seen a dead person. They don’t look like they’re sleeping at all.”
“You and I share a lot and, sadly, not good things either.” I said.
“So tell me, do you know what made Adam take his own life?” That was it. There it was; the question I’d dreaded hearing pass her lips.
“That is one of the hardest things to bear. He left no note, or not that I know of anyway.” I took a deep breath, letting it out noisily. “The thing is I knew something was wrong. Adam was always upbeat. Even after being diagnosed with depression - which was a shock when mum and dad told me, he always seemed happy and full of life. As I said, he was the joker of the family.”
“He never told you about his depression I gather?” I shook my head in response to her question. “So was there a change in him? You know the sad thing about depression is that those who suffer from it seem like the happiest people of all. They hide it well but they can be like ticking time bombs. Look at how many famous celebrities have committed suicide due to depression.”
I nodded. “That’s true. Adam had always acted like he didn’t have a care in the world. But then months before he died I realised he’d changed somehow. It wasn’t anything really obvious at first. He was just a bit quieter. Not as inclined to find reasons to tease and torment me. He would call me, asking if we could catch up sometime. Sure he’d done that before but he just seemed more intense about it, but, being the fucking selfish asshole I am, I kept putting him off. Work was flat out. I was dealing with new clients. Powerful clients; and the money I could make if I got it right for these people would be huge. I just kept postponing and telling him ‘soon.’” I sighed again, dropping my head back against the lounge, my eyes raised to the ceiling. “I fucking let him down. He needed me and I put him off. I put money ahead of my own fucking brother. It’s my fault he’s dead.”
“Oh Theo no, you can’t blame yourself. Seriously, I know. I’ve done it too. Despite Adam’s depression, he was on medication for it, so how could you possibly know that he was having suicidal thoughts? We aren’t psychic. We can’t predict the future. We can’t see what is coming.”
“It doesn’t stop the guilt though. Have you noticed that?” I asked. “You feel it, I know you do.”
“I do; but I think we both need to stop doing it to ourselves, ok? You are a good man Theo. You loved your brother. It’s not your fault he died and I’m sure if he could tell you to stop blaming yourself, he would. He sounded like he loved you and only wanted the best for you, and the best for you is not throwing the rest of your life away, blaming yourself for his death, and living riddled with guilt.”
I smiled down at Autumn, feeling the lightest I’d felt in a long time. “Perhaps you should practice what you preach.” I told her.
She smiled; “Touché, Theo,” before reaching up to drag my head down for a kiss.
Chapter Fourteen
One Week Later
“Samson, leave Autumn alone.” I frowned at my elderly Siamese cat who was circling around on her lap, preparing to make himself comfortable. Damn traitor he was. Barely gave me the time of day and treated me with great loathing and disgust but, of course, he adored her. “Glue factory buddy.” I warned him. “Glue factory.”
Autumn laughed. “Oh leave him alone. He’s a sweetie.” She said, rubbing her nose over his soft fur, and the traitorous bastard responded by butting his face against hers and purring loudly.
“Look at him sucking up to you. Asshole. I feed him and all I get is clawed and treated like I’m little more than the hired damned help.” I glared at the purring fur bundle now tucked up on her lap.
“Theo you really need to stop thinking of your cat as a person. He isn’t trying to attack you or humiliate you, or lay in wait for you, or half the things you accuse him of doing. He is a cat though and they do tend to choose those they want to love, and it seems you aren’t his first choice.” She shot me a sympathetic smile as if it really mattered to me that my cat didn’t love me.
“Yeah, well, the feeling’s mutual.” I snapped, before walking to the large dresser at one end of my living room and digging out the photo albums I’d promised I’d show Autumn of Adam and me. As I dragged them out I spotted a framed photo of my brother that my parents had given me from his apartment. I’d been so upset about his death, and so consumed with guilt all this time, I couldn’t put the photo out where I could see it because it would be a constant reminder of how I’d let him down.
As I made my way back to where Autumn sat on my lounge, the photo began to slide and, with my hands filled with heavy photo albums, I couldn’t stop its momentum and it fell, the glass shattering on the wooden floor.
“Fuck!” I yelped as I lurched, jarring my sore leg with my efforts to save the framed photo.
“Jesus Theo, are you ok?” Autumn leapt up, rushing to me. “Here, let me take those.” She reached for the albums.
“I’m fine baby. Watch you don’t step on the glass.” I warned as I moved past her to place the albums on the lounge. When I turned back to her she was bent down, picking up the photo and the frame, minus its glass which was in numerous pieces on the floor.
She straightened, sidestepping the glass shards before pausing, frowning down at the photo in her hands. When I moved towards her to see what had caused her reaction, I could she had separated the photo of Adam from the frame and was staring down at another photo that must have been sandwiched between the photo and the heavy cardboard that backed the picture frame.
“Do you have a sister or something, Theo?” Autumn asked, her eyes still on the photos in her hands.
It was my turn to frown. “No, what are you talking about?”
When I reached her side she handed me the photo of Adam. I remembered when it had been taken. It was at a party he’d gone to with his boyfriend a couple of years before he died. His name was Jeff, I still remembered that. They’d split up after nearly two years together and Adam had been pretty upset about it for a while.
I smiled at the photo. Adam had his arm around Jeff and he had the biggest grin on his face as he stared at his boyfriend. Someone had captured the photo of them together at the perfect moment and they both looked so happy. I never did find out what had caused them to split up. Adam might have been open about all aspects of his life but not about why that relationship had ended.
“This photo was hidden inside the frame, Theo. Did you know?” Autumn’s voice dragged my gaze from the photo I had to the one she still held in her hand.
I reached for it, taking it from her and staring down at it. As I stared at the photo I felt my heart leap and begin an erratic beat behind my ribs. My body started to shake; a mild tremor at first which increased until I was shaking so hard the photo quivered in my hand.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Autumn’s voice, filled with concern, came to me as if from a distance. “It looks like…” She trailed off. “Hang on, there’s something written on the back of the photo.”
I could hear Autumn’s voice but I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t take my eyes off the photo I held. It was Adam. I knew it was him despite the long-haired wig he wore, with masses of bouncy waves that framed his face and fell to his waist. He was fully made up, right down to blood red lipstick on his lips, and, as my eyes travelled down his image, frozen forever in the photo, I took in the fitted red dress he wore that hugged the curve of his breasts. Breasts, he had breasts; fairly large breasts in fact. The dress fell to just above his knees and he wore high-heeled red strappy shoes. His legs were hairless, so he’d either shaved or waxed.
I stared at his smiling eyes, the flash of his teeth that looked so white against his lipstick, and I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t fathom what I was seeing. I also couldn’t believe how good my little brother looked dressed as a woman. Had he been going to a party? Was this something he did but never told me about? S
o many questions flooded my mind. Questions I would never have answers to now.
“Theo? There’s writing on the back. What does it say?” Autumn’s voice penetrated my thoughts again and I dragged my eyes from my brother’s image, and flipped the photo over.
