Frank was initially disappointed that I wouldn’t be spending the holiday dinner with our family, but given how well Christmas went, he eventually came around to my way of thinking. Last December, he and I went to see Mom and Dad in Newfoundland. A whole year after I’d moved out, and the visit was still a disaster.
Frank never visited the house in St. John’s when Tessa was sick, nor in the two years that followed. He was a little bit shocked. Tessa’s sickroom was still perfectly preserved, for one. Only the borrowed equipment had been returned, and everything else, from the collapsible wheelchair in the corner to the tilted lampshade, had been left untouched. My bedroom was pretty much the same, too: no door—not since Dad busted me—and a heavy lock on the window.
The four days we were there were punctuated with three fights, one storm-out on Mom’s part, and Dad’s awkward probing into how ‘serious’ things were with ‘that boy’ I’d been seeing. Turns out that even with everything they’ve been through, my parents aren’t exactly good at seeing the person behind the disease. They wouldn’t even call Jem by name. Frank took my side in that fight. He doesn’t exactly like Jem, but he knows that Jem brings out the best in me, so…
Jem falls asleep on the couch while I wash and peel carrots. Frank comes home a short time later, looking a little too well put together, having just come from Doug’s house. I can still see the fresh lines where he combed his hair and he smells like soap.
“You’re trying way too hard,” I tell him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s a little weird, how hard you try to hide it when you get laid.” Frank gives me a nasty look for that one and steals a carrot slice off my cutting board.
“That’s none of your business.”
“Doesn’t make me wrong.” I toss another carrot his way. “Besides, you guys have been together for years. Mom should already be pestering you to get married and adopt a Chinese baby, or something.”
“Precisely why she never needs to know.”
Frank attempts to walk away from the conversation, but two steps into the living room he comes back for more conversation.
“I told you to call if you two were going to hang out alone here,” he says, gesturing over his shoulder to Jem’s sleeping form.
“I knew you’d be home soon.”
Frank still gives me a disapproving, borderline-parental look. I get the once-over for signs of mischief, and when Frank finds none he goes back to glowering at Jem.
“Since we’re on the subject of relationships, are you being safe?” He gives me one of those looks, the ones that scream condom and pill and you’re too young to have a bun in the oven.
“Dude, it’s not like that.”
“What do you mean it’s not like that? I am neither blind nor stupid, Willie.”
I just shrug. I don’t think Frank really wants the dirty details.
“He’s not religious, is he?” Frank whispers.
I almost laugh. “You know he’s not. That’s not it.”
“Is this part of your resolution to stay clean that I don’t know about? Because I’d probably sleep better if you just told me.”
“No.”
“Then you’re lying.” Frank throws up his hands. “You’re nineteen. Of course you’re having sex. Come on.”
“Frank.” I have no idea how I’m going to say this with a straight face. “There’s uh…an issue with nerve damage…sensation and stuff. We just, uh, do other things.” We’ve had ‘real’ sex a few times, but it’s difficult to manage sensation. We both enjoy ourselves a lot more when we focus on foreplay and let ‘normalcy’ go hang.
My brother looks like he’s about to choke. After a few moments he composes himself like a good guardian, and I get that stern look again. “Well you still need to be safe doing other things.”
“I know. I am. We are.”
Frank blows out a breath and shakes his head. “Jesus, Willie.”
“Call me that again,” I dare him. Frank takes a few minutes to digest the conversation, pacing in the kitchen and stealing a few more carrot slices. Every so often his face turns red, and I know he’s thinking of some embarrassing thing to say.
“Are you really okay with that?” he asks. He looks over his shoulder at me, too embarrassed to have this conversation face to face, and fiddles with the peeling decal on the microwave. “With no… I mean, if it’s really a permanent issue you have to think long term—”
“Dude.” I hold up my hands, pleading. “I might just puke after I say this, but I really don’t think you’d leave Doug if he couldn’t get it up. You’d just get creative. And that’s still pretty…great. Okay? Are we done now?”
Frank takes mercy on me and nods. “Sorry.” The silence that follows is spectacularly awkward. Frank keeps opening his mouth to say something, but he’s got nothing.
“Hey,” I say brightly, “you were born during one of these.”
My brother is not amused.
“Next time you call me if you guys are going to hang out here alone,” he says gruffly.
“Fine, fine.”
“I mean it.”
He tries to take another carrot and I slap his hand. “You left Tessa on the key rack again.” Frank and I both got the same thing for Christmas—a pendant urn with some of our sister’s ashes, each with a chain. I rarely take mine off, but Frank is prone to leaving Tessa’s remains wherever.
“Fine, fine, I’ll move her. I’ll be in the garage if you need anything.”
“I’ll write down the directions for the veg for you.” The response I get is an unintelligible mumble—one of the noises Frank makes when he doesn’t know what he’s expected to say. Most of his daily life is a performance, saying the polite things to acquaintances and misdirecting things when people look at him and Doug too closely. I live with the guy, and we’ve only had an honest conversation about his personal life once. It was at the airport in St. John’s, waiting for our flight home after Christmas. Surrounded by strangers in that stuffy airport lounge, he indulged my questions about how his relationship with Doug began, and how it had changed over the years. He wouldn’t speak about their plans for the future, but his eyes were smiling, so I’m sure there are plans.
“Why don’t you just come out and get it over with?” I asked him.
“Because I shouldn’t have to,” he said. “I should just be able to be and not explain myself to anybody.” It sounded nice in theory, but I still chuckled at him.
“Sorry, not even being straight will get you out of that. How many times have I had to explain my relationship with Jem?”
“You just justified my decision not to come out.”
It still bothers me a little bit that I allowed my logic to be so easily exploited. I walked right into that one.
“Does that make you a self-hating homo?”
Frank rolled his eyes at me. “I don’t hate myself.”
“I don’t think anyone would hate you if they knew,” I offered, in case that was the real issue.
“Tessa knew,” he said.
“What?”
“I came out to her when I was sixteen.” Frank smiled self-deprecatingly. “She was about to leave for college, so I thought she’d be a good first person so practice on because she was leaving soon.”
“So what happened?” To the best of my knowledge, Tessa was the last person Frank willingly came out to, and I wondered if her reaction had something to do with that.
“She was awesome about it,” Frank said. “It was kind of nice, having someone to talk to about stuff.”
“So why’d you stop with Tessa?”
At that Frank smiled wryly. “Because she taught me a valuable lesson: there’s a big difference between telling someone about your relationships and telling someone about your sexual preferences. There are things and details that your family never needs to hear about.”
“But you don’t even talk about your relationship.”
“It’s all
or nothing in this society. If you tell people about your relationships, they’re going to make assumptions about your sex life. I don’t want that. I just want privacy to enjoy being me.’
To be honest, sometimes I do envy the privacy he has with Doug.
I set the casserole of veggies in the fridge with cooking directions on top. Jem is still asleep on the couch when I finish tidying the kitchen, so I cozy up to him. He wraps his arms around my shoulders and pulls me into the nook between his arm and chest.
“Sorry to wake you,” I whisper when he kisses my forehead.
“It’s okay.” Jem gives me a squeeze and I can feel his lips curve into a smile against my forehead. “The sex is pretty great, huh?”
“You eavesdropping ass.” I flick him in the chest and he just chuckles at me.
“Didn’t feel it. Your aim sucks.” My flick hit his Hickman scar. The mark on Jem’s chest is small, but it didn’t heal well. The twice-cut skin is still pink and unnaturally smooth, with poor sensation in the surrounding area.
“Mulligan.”
“No.” Jem pins my arms to my body with a tight hug and rolls on top of me so I can’t get away. “We agreed no mulligans on flicking.”
“This is an extenuating circumstance.”
“I disagree.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“It’s an important matter of self-defense.”
I lift my head and begin planting kisses along his neck and jaw. Jem tries to lean away from me, but he can’t get far enough to avoid my mouth without letting go of the rest of me.
“This is totally unfair.”
“Like you’re really complaining.” Kissing his neck is a sure way to turn Jem into putty. I can already feel his weight increasing on top of me as he relaxes, letting himself enjoy it. He sighs into my hair.
“You’d better stop that before we get caught.” He makes a very good point—not that it stops him from gently pressing his hips closer to mine for more friction.
“Later,” I whisper. “We have to leave soon.”
Jem sighs and reluctantly lets me go. “Fine. But you’re all mine after dinner.” He gives me that sneaky smirk, and I know I’m going to enjoy whatever he has in mind.
*
Eric and Celeste are in town for the holiday. I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand why Jem dislikes Celeste so much, because she’s flawlessly polite to her hosts. She’s not exactly warm, but she’s not standoffish like Jem makes her out to be. She and Eric are watching TV in the family room when we come in.
“Dude, haircut,” Eric barks at his brother. Some days that’s all he says to him, now that months of calling him ‘Jemma’ have failed to properly motivate. Jem gives his brother the finger while Celeste snickers quietly. He grabs my hand and drags me to the kitchen, away from them.
“I can’t believe they’ve lasted a whole year,” Jem mutters when the couple is out of earshot. I smirk at his petulance and remind him that plenty of people must have said the same about us.
“You never know how these things work on the inside.”
Elise is on the phone in the kitchen, sitting on the island and playing with the salt shaker. She’s clearly talking to her boyfriend, which never fails to give Jem and creeps. He blames her summer away at camp.
Elise and Jem ran up quite a phone bill that summer, but a brother can only be so protective over the phone. It was an eventful eight weeks for her. Elise had a fling by the end of her first month at camp, and it wasn’t with the guy she’d been chasing since winter. It was another counselor named Alex whom Elise gushed about as being very sweet and sociable. She sent newsy letters to me instead of making phone calls, and it was implicitly understood that I wasn’t to share the information therein. I got a full page of what Alex looked like, and though it was completely boring, I couldn’t help notice that this guy was the exact opposite of her last crush. I thought she was done with Kipp for good until she sent me this:
He told me to look to him like a big brother if I need anything. It’s sweet, but I just left TWO older brothers back home. Why the hell would I want another one to annoy the crap out of me and be a buzz-kill? I didn’t tell him that though, ‘cause it seemed mean and he’s been really nice to me whenever the staff hangs out.
As I understood it, these staff hangouts usually took place at the beach, the only place within reasonable distance of the camp. She and her new boy-toy ‘swam’ and ‘sunbathed’ a lot in their downtime, so I sent her a care package with condoms. These things have a way of progressing faster than expected. She sent me a very brief letter back: WILLA! EEEEEWWWW!
I didn’t tell Jem any of this, of course. It would have freaked him out, and I was almost certain Elise wasn’t sleeping around. Her letters expressed more boy problems than pleasures:
Why are boys so freaking annoying?! Kipp has been a complete jerk all week, but he pretends that he’s being NICE. Women should just evolve so we don’t need guys anymore. It would simplify everything. Every time the staff hangs out now, he gives Alex these really rude left-handed-compliments and acts like nothing’s wrong with that. WTF? I told him he was being a good big brother—annoying as hell—and he got mad. Let him. I don’t care.
Her fling with what’s-his-nuts ended after less than a month. Elise wasn’t too fussed about it; she was getting bored of the whole thing anyway. She sent me a long and detailed letter about how she was swearing off guys until at least the end of the year and replacing them with dedication to schoolwork, the social planning committee, and debate team. That resolution lasted about a week before she sent me: OMG!!! WE KISSED!!! in giant, emphatic handwriting that filled the page with three words. I didn’t have to guess who had merited this eloquent note, but just for useless clarification Elise wrote (him) in the corner in tiny letters.
“You know that guy you’re sister’s into?” I asked Jem. He gave me a suspicious look.
“What do you know about him?”
“They’re sucking face now.” The news precipitated a brief, joint tantrum between Jem and Eric, consisting of the repeated statement, “She’s way too young!” and several creative death threats.
“What were you doing when you were her age?” I asked. That shut them up, but they weren’t happy about it.
At the moment, Jem can barely refrain from banging his head against the wall while Elise and Kipp share a drawn-out-goodbye, with kissy sounds. Elise hangs up the phone with a happy sigh and Jem groans, “Finally.”
“You didn’t have to listen.”
“You’re sitting in the middle of the freaking kitchen!”
Elise just rolls her eyes and turns to me, deliberately ignoring her brother. “Kipp’s driving back to school tomorrow, but tonight we’re going out after dinner and maybe—”
“You just saw him yesterday!” Jem snaps.
“Who asked you, Jemma?”
No good can come of staying in the kitchen, so I wrap an arm around Jem and ‘suggest’ that we go upstairs for a while. “Let your sister be a lovesick dork.”
“I’m not a dork,” she whines.
I wink at her over Jem’s shoulder and ask, “Still got that box of condoms I gave you?”
Jem’s jaw drops. “You gave her what?”
*
I try to talk him out of it, but I might as well be talking to a wall. Jem isn’t satisfied until he’s gone through Elise’s nightstand drawer to find the aforementioned box of condoms. It’s still unopened.
“Thank Christ.”
“You shouldn’t be going through her stuff.”
Jem gives me a serious look and points a finger at me. “Corrupt your own younger siblings next time. Eric and I have already damaged this one enough.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Tough shit.” Jem wants to take the box of rubbers away from Elise, but the argument for letting her keep them is a strong one. Better she have them if she needs them, if the alternative is getting pregnant at her age. Jem puts the box back in the d
rawer and walks away muttering, “She’s going to become a nun. She’s going to become a nun…”
I follow him down the hall, trying not to chuckle at his quiet rant about a life of religious devotion and chastity.
“What are you going to do when she gets married and starts having kids?”
Jem makes a strangled sound of frustration. “Can you please let me just live in denial and pretend that no one ever touches her below the neck?”
I have to laugh at him, because this is just too cute. “Sure, whatever you want.”
“Thank you.”
Jem flops down on his bed and stares at the ceiling. “Tell me.”
“Your sister isn’t remotely interested in boys and never will be.”
Jem sits up. “You think her relationship with that guy will last? It’s just some teenage thing, right?”
I shrug. “They’ve lasted long distance for this long, so…”
Jem narrows his eyes. “Can we go back to that thing where you lie to me for my own sanity?”
“How about we try that thing where you act mature about this?”
“Nah, fuck that thing.”
I sit down next to him on the bed and wrap my arm around his shoulders. “Change isn’t always a bad thing, you know. You’ve got to let her grow up. If you don’t…well, she might not want you to be involved in that process.”
Jem makes a face. He gets that look whenever he knows I’m right but doesn’t want to admit it. “I don’t have to be nice to this guy, do I?”
“Take it day by day.”
Jem gets off the bed with a long-suffering sigh. “This guy’s a bad influence anyway. He’s turning her into a mouthy little shit. She needs an attitude adjustment.”
“You’d be the expert on that, right?”
“Oh har har.”
“If it really bothers you that much, tell her not to call you Jemma anymore. She’ll probably listen.”
Wake Page 83
