Are You Sitting Down? (17 page)

That was the first time I can remember ever hearing my mother swear.

“I’m outta here,” I said slamming my chair back and getting up from the table.

For effect, I threw my tea glass on the floor.
Walking toward the front door, I heard the shattered glass settling b
e
hind me.
I felt a hard grip on the back of my shirt and knew it was one of my brothers.
Martin spun me around to face him and
then
slammed me against the door.
As if in slow motion, I tried to raise my arms to block him.
His fist moved in the rea
l
ness of time and landed across my face where Mom had slapped me.
I fell to the corner of the threshold and buried my face in my knees.

“Martin!”
Mother cried, still standing next to the table.

“Don’t ever disrespect this house or disrespect her like that.
She’s your mother!”
h
e screamed down at me.

It was anger I’d never seen before, not even in Dad.
Martin left out the back door.
Travis came over to help me up, but I jerked away from him.
With my
burning
face buried b
e
neath my arms
, I sat there in embarrassment and shame.
I could hear Mom sweeping up the broken glass.
I don’t know how long I sat there like that.

I don’t know why I still didn’t listen to any of them.
A
f
ter that, I kept drinking.
I kept smoking.
I occasionally sn
orted
a line at a party if it was offered to me.
But every sip of alc
o
hol, every joint I rolled, every grain of white powder sucked up into my nostril after that day was infected with guilt.
My Mom’s words echoed in my ears when there was a beer bottle in my hand.
Her face formed in the smoke I exhaled, but she wasn’t saying “I told you so.”
She was just looking at me and wee
p
ing.

No matter how much I drank or smoked, this time the guilt wasn’t going away.

Travis

I held the door open for Sebastian, watching him walk up the drive.
He was holding a stack of red envelopes
, probably Christmas cards for each of us.
He was never one to shop for personalized gifts.

“Hey, little brother,” I said to him as he walked in.

I expected him to ignore me.
I had not seen him since that day Martin hit him a few months ago right here in the doorway.

“Hey there.
Merry Christmas,” Sebastian said handing me an envelope with my name
scribbled
on it
in his scratchy penma
n
ship
.

“Thanks,” I said
taking it from him
as he stepped i
n
side.
“Yours is under the tree.”

“Hey, sweetie,” Mom chimed.

There was a much different vibe in the air today than when I’d last been in the same room with
Sebastian
and Mom.
Maybe it was just because of the holiday.
I sometimes felt like I was kept in the dark with
my
family, mainly because I was the only one who had moved away from this town.
Although I came back and visited regularly and spoke to Mom on the phone on the weekends, if anything happened in between no one made it a habit to let me know.
Being gay
probably
aid
ed
in making me the black sheep.
Today, Sebastian’s demeanor told me I’d missed out on something.
My Mom’s next words confirmed it.

“How is school going?”
s
he asked him.

“School?”
I said.

“Sebastian enrolled in night classes,” she said.

“When did this happen?”
I asked looking back and forth from Mom to Sebastian.

“A few weeks ago,” Sebastian said with a shy grin.

“What are you going to school for?”
I asked.

“Massage therapy.”

“Are you still working at Zero’s?”

“No, the manager wouldn’t let me come back after what happened.
I’m waiting tables again.”

“In a bar?”

“In a restaurant down on
the court square.”

“Wow, that’s great!
I’m proud of you,” I said.

“Hey, Sebastian, if you need someone to practice ma
s
sage
s
on, keep me in mind,” Clare spoke up from the sofa.

“Will do, Sis,” he said walking over to her and giving her a light squeeze on the shoulder.
He took Jake from her and held him up in the air to say hello.

“How’s my little nephew doing?”
Sebastian said pla
y
fully.

Although I’d just found out his good news, I was happy for Sebastian being enrolled in
classes
.
We’
ve
all had our har
d
ships the past few years, but Clare and Sebastian had provided quite a few gray hairs for Mom and Dad since high school.
Now that Clare was a mother and Sebastian was in school, I think their
course
in life w
as
finally leading them in a mature direction.

Sometimes I wondered if they thought we were boring.
Martin, Ellen, and I had all gone to college and established lives for ourselves after that.
For the most part, we stayed out of trouble and all landed steady jobs.

Although Clare and Sebastian probably thought of me as a stiff, I certainly wasn’t without sin.
It’d been years seen I’d gone home drunk with a stranger after a night of partying.
I
could
count on one hand the number of times that actually ha
p
pened and have fingers left over.

Clare still played with dolls and Sebastian collected model cars back when I was living the life they are now.
I think it was easier back when I was gro
w
ing up, although that hasn’t been but a decade (or two) ago.

No matter how reckless their lives ha
d
seemed, I can’t help but be a little jealous of
what
they
ha
ve
experienced
so far.
I never drank a drop of alcohol before I was legally old enough, and I’ve still never smoked anything, not even a cig
a
rette to this day.
Both of them had done much more than that before they were eighteen.
To them, I
was
probably bo
r
ing.

With work hours to clock and bills to pay
, the rest of life quickly slips away from you.
No reason it
was
a never en
d
ing party for Sebastian.
Clare was too young to have a baby when she did, but she chose to catch up with the rest of us who’d entered that fuzzy part of
being
where we think we f
i
nally have everything figured out.
Maybe she always looked depressed because she was still clinging to those good old days, debating on whether or not to admit she was growing old like the rest of us.

We all couldn’t wait to get out from under our parents’ wings
back then
.
We wanted a car and a credit card, and our own place.
When I received my first credit card bill in the mail, or maybe it was the bill for the car loan, or when I wrote that first check to pay the rent, I knew there was no going back.
A
f
ter twelve years of school and four years of college, was this what I’d been waiting for?
Justin was my answer to that que
s
tion.

In all the ten years we’d spent together, I never knew lon
e
liness the way I do now.
It’s the kind of feeling that makes your throat sore from swallowing or coughing too hard during the night, that constant nagging at your insides during the day when you know you are about to come down with something. It’s always there, in the back of your mind, and all you can do is get through your day and wait for the worst to come. I doubt they’d ever been in love, but I wondered what kind of loneliness Sebastian and Clare felt.

Just then, the door bell rang.
Mom rushed to answer it.

“Trick or Treat!”
Robbie and Rachel yelled when Mom opened the door.

“Trick or treat?
Where are your costumes?
There’s no
Ha
l
loween
candy here
,
” Mom said, teasing them.

“Mama, we fooled Granny,” Robbie said, turning to Ellen who was walking up behind them.

“Granny, I have a gift for you,” Rachel said

“You do?”

Rachel pulled a can of cranberry sauce out from under her coat and presented
it
to her with a flourish.

“Thank you, sweetie
.
It’s what I always wanted
,”
Mom
said, playing along by taking it from her and clutching it to her heart.

She knelt to hug both of them.
They kissed her on the cheek.

“Merry Christmas, Granny,” Robbie and Rachel both chimed
as they pulled away from her and peeked around her to see who was inside.

“Merry Christmas to you too
.
Go inside and say hello to Uncle Travis, Uncle Sebastian, and Aunt Clare.”

“Hi, Mom,” Ellen said.

“How are you?”
Mom
asked
,
hugging
her
neck.

“I’m good,”
Ellen
said with a smile.

After hugging Robbie and Rachel, I stood behind Mom to greet Ellen.
It was good to see her smile.
I’m sure it came easier to her these days.
Mom, Sebastian, and me all accomp
a
nied Ellen to her car to help her bring in their things.

“Where’s Mark?”
Sebastian asked outside.

I hit him on the shoulder to get him to shut up.

“What did I do?”
h
e asked.

“I thought you would have told everyone by now,” Ellen said to Mom.

“Tell me what?”
Sebastian asked.

“Mark isn’t coming this year,” Ellen said.

“Shit, who am I supposed to watch football with?”
Sebastian
said.

“Don’t look at me,” I replied.

“You can watch football with Martin. Are you and the kids staying the night?”
Mom
asked Ellen, changing the su
b
ject.

“Yeah, our bags are in the trunk.
I hope that’s okay.
”

“O
f
course, everyone can stay as long as they like,” Mom said.

Who could blame Sebastian for asking about Mark?
He had not been here long enough for Mom to tell him.
I had never been really close to Mark since I didn’t live here, but I knew that both Sebastian and Martin considered him to be a close friend
.
I had always found him to be a bumbling heterosexual idiot.
I imagined he blamed himself for what happened to Ellen.
If he had not lost his job at the factory, she would have never gone back to work and been subjected to the horrible things that judge
did to her
.