I imagine he sits in a wood-paneled university library, the kind with bronze statues and painted portraits, thumbing crumbly pages, sipping spiced coffee. My brother, the writer, guarding the privileged thoughts in his head and sharing only those he sees fit to spare.
He always packs more books than clothes; four t-shirts for a five-day vacation, one pair of torn jeans. But he never reads all the books, he just likes the options, I think.
“Which one are you going to read first?” I asked before last summer’s trip.
“The one you’ll be least likely to ask me about,” he said while shoving packs of Newports into his duffel.
Today he is sitting out on the balcony, scribbling violently in his moleskin, even though I know he hasn’t packed his toiletries yet and we’re supposed to leave soon. I consider packing them for him, but touching his things or bothering him to ask isn’t really an option.
I’ve finished first again so I move through the rooms of our apartment, searching for something random to bring. Last year I pulled the ten of hearts out of a deck of cards and resolved to keep it in my back pocket the whole trip. I lost it in the lake on our second day and later that summer my mom’s husband, Bill, kept asking if anyone had seen the ten of hearts from his favorite deck. When he couldn’t find it he said he’d just have to settle for my mother, her being the ten of his heart and all. I ended up stealing the card from a friend’s room to replace it.
The year before that I brought the cork to a really expensive bottle of wine, before that a peach pit. I don’t tell anyone I do this — I guess I like the idea of taking something from one place to another, displacing a meaningless object, keeping an inanimate companion.
The den and the kitchen and the screening room prove useless, so I climb the stairs to the office, where I find Bill stuffing legal briefs into a tennis racket case.
“No work. Mom said,” I say.
He sighs, doesn’t look up. “What’s it going to cost me this time?”
I scan the room and decide as quickly as I can.
“That paperclip,” I say, pointing to the chosen thing on his desk.
Bill finally matches my gaze, remains expressionless. He shakes his head.
“You do like to keep me guessing, don’t you?” he says and picks up the paperclip, tosses it to me. “Go help your mother? I think she’s having a crisis deciding which car game to bring.”
I turn away and walk down the hall to the storage closet, which is really a storage room, but Mom still isn’t comfortable with the idea of having enough money to afford such a luxury in Manhattan, so we call it a closet. I walk inside and find her seated cross-legged on the floor amidst a circle of packaged fun.
“I’m a lunatic, I know,” she says. “I should just accept the fact that I have two college-age sons who’d rather listen to their iPods on eight hour drives than play the license plate game with their mother.”
I walk over, place my hand on her shoulder.
“I know Trent probably has three audiobooks ready to go, but I for one refuse to miss out on…” I kneel and pick up a box, “‘Road Sign Bingo.’ Classic fun.”
Mom laughs and takes the game from me. “‘Road Sign Bingo’ it is.”
“And I’m not a college guy yet,” I say.
“But you will be in a few months, emptying what is left of my nest.” Mom stands, starts to gather the mess she’s made.
“Quit being so melodramatic, mom,” I say, “It’s so suburban.”
“Listen to you,” she says and kisses the top of my head, whispers into my ear, “I’ve taught you well. Your father would be proud. ”
“So what do you think the chances are we’ll actually get out of here on time?” I ask this question every year, and my mother’s response is always the same:
“Slim to none, darling. Slim to none.”
***
I’m bored and packing snacks. I only choose the stuff I know no one will eat, though, because the best part of long drives is stopping at crummy gas stations and buying junk food. Mom does the same thing when she packs the food, except she claims she just wants her family to eat healthfully (when really she wants an excuse to buy one of those day-old hotdogs smothered with Tobasco sauce). Bill usually gets frustrated with the assortment of options and settles for diet soda and sugar-free gum. I go straight for the generic packaged candy wall, the kind that always has some kind of trail mix or sour gummy worms.
I survey the pantry, and the Chips Ahoy stay, the health nut granola comes. I pour pomegranate juice into Trent’s Yale thermos because it’s his favorite and if he drinks it all he’ll have to pee and will complain less when the rest of us ask for pit stops.
I try to remember what it was like when Trent was actually fun to be around, before I saw what I saw and things were different. I go back a few years to when I was a freshman and Trent was a junior. I got into the same ritzy private school based mostly on his legacy and although I managed to graduate, I pretty much failed to live up to expectations in every way possible. Everyone pretends not to know this, though, which helps. But back at the beginning, Trent looked out for me. When I failed that first bio test he got the teacher to pass me by promising to tutor me at home every night. When I failed the second test a month later he actually did the tutoring. And then there was that time at the end of the year when that senior girl I rejected claimed I tried to roofie her at a party — Trent just told people about the time she gave his friend a blowjob for a joint and everyone forgot about it.
“Brian,” he said to me later that day, “You know you don’t have to be me, right?”
“I guess, yeah,” I answered, not taking my eyes off the TV.
“No, I mean, it doesn’t matter if you’re good at school or whatever. I’m lucky my brain is just wired the right way for that bullshit. But that’s all it is… school’s one big game.” He walked over and sat down next to me for the next part, I guess to make sure I was paying attention.
“I’m just saying… you don’t have to be good at anything, except what you want to be good at, you know?”
“I know, Trent,” I muttered.
His face twitched the beginnings of a frown before he stood and left my room. I wish I hadn’t now, but I waited until he was gone to smile.
***
“Trent, you almost ready to go?” I overhear Bill saying in the next room.
“Just about,” Trent answers. “But I still don’t see the point of these fake family outings.”
“It’s good to get out of the city every so often, you know that,” Bill says. “And I booked the extra room.”
I can hear Bill pat Trent on the back and Trent is probably smiling. They don’t know I can hear them, but this isn’t the first time that I’ve caught them… together. I fiddle with the paperclip in my pocket, pull it undone, flatten it smooth. I wonder where Bill managed to find an extra hotel room though, considering our country house is in middle-of-nowhere Maine.
***
We’re in the living room, all four of us, standing around piles of suitcases. It’s about to start and we all have our happy faces on.
“All right, I vote for Mom’s makeup bag,” Trent says.
“Oh, that’s just cruel,” she gasps, slapping his arm. “And I’m sure that’d be far worse for you all than for me.”
“I’m sticking to my guns,” Trent says.
In order to cut down on the excessive amounts of baggage we always pack, Bill has forced us to play Survivor: Luggage every year since he married mom. Of course now it’s year four and we’ve all learned to pack in piecemeal, spreading the essentials out so we don’t get screwed without deodorant or a cell phone or something. We end up packing twice as many bags as we usually would, but Bill is relentless about the dumb game and I guess most family traditions don’t really make much sense anyway.
“Well I vote for Brian’s duffel,” Bill says.
“I vote for your tennis racket…” I say. Bill does a good job of hiding his reaction.
“No brainer. Sorry Brian, looks like the duffel gets the boot,” Mom says. She grabs the ceremonial candle snuffer off the armoire and taps my duffel. Luckily it’s filled with mismatched socks and video games, anyway.
“That’s it,” I say, making a show of groaning as I start to move the bag back into my room. “Next year I’m gunning for your underwear, mother.”
“Sentences that should not be taken out of context, for 200,” Trent says as he begins to gather his things.
“All right, let’s get a move on,” Bill says. “And hey, we’re only an hour and a half behind schedule this year, not too shabby!”
***
Everyone is downstairs in the car but I’m back upstairs grabbing the bag of food I forgot. I throw some year-old fruit leather into the mix for good measure and head for the door, until I notice Trent’s moleskin is still sitting outside on the balcony table. I go out and grab it without thinking, then realize that of course Trent will accuse me of reading it if I bring it back down with me. But he’d probably be more pissed if he had to go the week without it, so I pocket it and turn to leave. That’s when Trent comes at me.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he yells after I’m on the floor. He has put me there and I don’t try to get up.
“I didn’t read anything, I promise,” I say, my eyes down.
“Like shit you didn’t,” he says as he walks up to me. He squats and leans in close for the next part: “You keep your mouth shut, you hear me?”
“It’s not like I didn’t already know,” I say and realize this is a mistake, even before his fist connects with my face.
***
Trent only hits me the one time, but we’re both pretty sure I’ll have to go to the hospital. My eye is all bloody and we sit there on the floor for what feels like a long time.
“I’m sorry, Brian,” Trent keeps saying.
“I don’t tell anyone,” I say.
“I know you don’t. I know that.”
There’s another long pause and I wonder how long it will be before Mom or Bill come to check on us, since we’re not answering their calls.
“There’s just… there’s no one else to hit, Brian. Do you get that?” Trent says.
I dig my hand into my pocket and let the paperclip tear into my palm. I’m about to tell him that I know, that it’s ok and I know why he treats me the way he does. I’m about to forgive him.
“Fuck you, Trent,” I finally say, standing up.
I walk to the elevator with the moleskin and Trent doesn’t follow me.
