Authors: Dennis Liggio
Of course, he was a little unkind to those of us who are his friends too. Here's some of the things I want to set the record straight on:
Yes, we grew up poor and without dads. Yes, we sometimes live paycheck to paycheck. But us being poor kids from the wrong side of town isn't
that
big a deal. It's not
that
defining. Not for me. Not for how many times he mentioned it. If Szandor was writing Uncle Vanya, the characters would mention the gun every two minutes, pausing everyone five minutes to dance around and sing in the Yes We Have A Loaded Weapon Parade that would define the play.
No, I don't live in Chinatown just because I like Asian girls. I live there because the price is right and it's a step up from where we grew up. I have in fact only dated two Asian girls, Monica and Emma. Monica was even Korean, so there's no Chinatown connection there. And I dated them both because they were beautiful and awesome women, not because of some weird race fetish.
I admit I do like Chinese food, so I don't mind being upstairs from a Chinese restaurant.
I don't have a new girlfriend every few weeks. At least, that's not the plan. My relationships have not been working out how I want them, but that's more my problem than anything. I've mentioned already how that has been weighing on me.
I do let Szandor drive the Pork Chop Express sometimes. He doesn't ask very often. And he can't parallel park for shit. I think he doesn't drive because he's embarrassed when he has to ask me to take over and park the van. If you can't park a vehicle in the city, you shouldn't drive one.
Stop complaining about Hot Pockets. I love those things. And people who steal free food from their brother's freezer should not complain about what they get.
I know Suitguy's name, I just choose not to use it.
I'm not an unreliable brother. I strive to have his back. Always. That is maybe the depiction that hurt the worst of all of them. I know he didn't mean it, I know he wanted to make it a better story. It still makes me a little sad.
That's all for now, I'm sure I'll think up other things later. But the point is, he was already taking liberties with the truth, why make himself look like an asshole? He should have made himself look like a badass. Should he have saved puppies or something? I don't know. But why make himself look bad?
I love my brother, but for once I'd like him to crack a smile that wasn't at someone else's expense or even his own. For once I'd like him to recognize when things have gone his way and enjoy it. I'd like him to be something resembling happy and be aware of it for one single day of his life.
That would be my birthday wish for him.
Of course, before Szandor's birthday was another anniversary. A darker one. We had lost Mom years ago on this date. We'll always remember it. I don't know how Szandor ever has a happy birthday knowing that he'll always go through this anniversary before his birthday comes. Fucking April.
Mom was murdered by a revenant. That's the ugly truth of it all. We will never forget that. But don't say it's what made us become hunters. Don't cheapen the event to just a simple cause for what came after. It was fear and horror, death and loss. It's the worst thing that ever happened to us. Don't make it just a cause.
The day we left Tor's camp was the anniversary of her death. The timing was good. Even if we hadn't graduated his training, we would have taken the day to leave the camp. So now as we drove back to Avalon, we took a turnoff and stopped in Gracewood, a suburb just north of New Avalon, west of Glenntown. Mom was buried in one of the huge cemeteries out there, like many Avalon dwellers. More people die in Avalon proper, but more people are buried in Gracewood.
I parked the van in The Cook-Husker Cemetery parking lot. I turned off the engine but we still sat in the van for a moment.
"Are we ready to do this?" I said.
"Are we ever ready?" said Szandor. "You're going to be asking me that for the rest of my life and I'm never going to be ready. We'd be in this car until the end of time waiting for me to be fucking ready. But I'll man up and do it. Just like every year." He turned his head away so his manly pronouncement was not marred by the tear that started.
I nodded. I knew how he felt.
We knew the route to her grave well. We had walked it together half a dozen times in the past few years and I had walked it alone a few more times. There had been times when life had all been too much and I needed to come talk to Mom. I hadn't mentioned those to my brother. Though we both know it feels like our guts are falling out every time we do this, we both feel like it's weakness when we admit we came here. Szandor may have come here on his own but I've never heard about it from him. Dickie said he once brought Szandor here when really drunk; my brother cried on the tombstone. It hurts to just hear that, but I can't admit I know about it and give my brother the hug he surely needed.
Only a modest headstone marked Mom's grave. She had died so suddenly and we had been so poorly off financially that we were unable to afford anything fancy. We wouldn't have even known how to bury her if it wasn't for help given by neighbors, both financial and psychological. We'll always be eternally grateful to everyone in South Egan and they never need to worry about asking us for favors.
I tear up every time I see the epitaph on the stone.
Beloved Mother
. She was so much more, but that title is enough. She was always the best of us.
We had brought no flowers, but due to the rain, any flowers we had brought would have been drenched and dispersed soon after we left. The rain also meant we were almost alone in the cemetery, the only other visitors were just a couple under an umbrella far away paying their own respects.
I never know what to say, even though I've been here before. This time I started with, "We miss you." The words were clumsy on my lips. It felt like a dumb thing to say. But... what do you say to a grave, to the spirit of a person who never answers back? No matter how many times, I knew no way to start talking to her that didn't make me feel stupid. Maybe I'm still not comfortable talking with her, even now. Then again, my brother suffers from the same affliction.
"Mom, I'm sorry," came his weak voice. "It was my fault."
Szandor says this every year. Once we're home, I remind him that he is wrong. It wasn't his fault. It had nothing to do with him; it would have happened no matter what he did. He never believes me.
I put my arm around my brother as he cried his tears.
"We're okay, Mom, in case you're worrying about us. If when you're looking down on us, you're not sure... if you wonder... just know... we're okay, Mom. We're doing our best," I said, pausing. "But sometimes it doesn't work out right. We want to make you proud, but..."
"We're doing our best," echoed Szandor, but his voice was more choked.
"Life is hard," I said. "It must have been harder for you having to raise the two of us alone. We've never been the best kids... But now that we're adults, we have to admit life is hard. It's hard to do what's right, it's hard to make it along in life without being horrible people. But we're trying to be the men you wanted us to be. Men who do what's right and do right by people. We've tried to go our own way with that, but I know it's not what you wanted for us."
"But we're the men you raised," said Szandor. "And we're trying to be better men."
"Yes, we're your sons and we have to stay true to who we are. I know you might not like us being monster hunters - hell, you might be looking down on us from Heaven and worrying about us every time we go underground. But we're doing it to help people. You taught us to always do our part to help people. And this is what we ended up being good at. This is the choice we made."
"And we don't want what happened to you to happen to anyone else," added Szandor.
"I know we say this every year, but we want you to be proud of us. More than nearly anything. And we want you to know that we have each other's backs. We're family. We're looking out for each other because there's no one else that can. You would have wanted it that way."
Szandor nodded solemnly.
"I guess we're just here because we wanted to show you we're doing alright. And that... that we miss you. You were taken from us too soon and we wish you were here. I love you, Mom. Happy birthday."
I nodded to her grave and then took a walk, tears in my eyes. I always try to walk away slowly, so I don't feel like I'm fleeing the scene or running from the feelings. My brother stayed at her grave. I knew he'd want some time with her alone. We're as close as family can be, but there are some expressions of emotion he's still too embarrassed to show in front of me.
We met back at the car, both of our eyes red, the tears wiped away. We took long sniffling breaths and tried to pretend we were as okay as we claimed we were in front of her grave. Coming here was always emotionally bruising. Even years later the loss hurts like it did the day after. I hugged my brother again. We were our only family left. And we were not going to let that change. I had his back and he had mine.
Some Nights
When we got back into New Avalon, it was just past dinner time. I dropped Szandor off at his apartment, reminding him that we were going to meet with Meat tomorrow about the new job. He nodded as he got out of the car. Of course, that was really a token statement. I knew I'd see Szandor at Twin Eagles, our favorite bar in our old neighborhood of South Egan. We both needed to see friends and we both needed to drink. And unsurprisingly, when I arrived at Twin Eagles about nine o'clock at night, I did indeed see him there.
I wanted to relax and see friends since we had been gone from town for a while. I was meeting Lem. If you didn't consider Szandor, Lem was my best friend. We'd been best friends since a young age and we just stayed friends no matter how much things had changed. We're in such a comfortable friendship because we accepted each other for who we were. When he came out as gay, I just shrugged and said it didn't matter. When I told him I hunt monsters that most people don't believe exist, he also shrugged and said it didn't matter. He's since seen some of the things I hunt and I've seen his boyfriends, so we know we're both on the level.
Lem looks like a Detroit rock city metal head. Long dirty blonde hair, stubble, and an endless supply of shirts of old school guitar god bands. He doesn't exactly look respectable - granted, neither do we. But he looks almost like an anachronism left over from the Seventies or Eighties. Despite his look, he's doing better than both Szandor and I. Though he shared our roots and our lack of college, he taught himself programming from books. At this point he had a great job programming something strangely called Ruby on Rails, which didn't sound at all like computer stuff to me. He hadn't moved to the west side of Avalon and gotten an attitude, though. He had too much family and too many friends in South Egan.
In fact, he had just helped his aunt relocate. While she lived in South Egan, she was close to the North Egan border. Too close. North Egan was one step down from a disaster area since explosions had destroyed nearly a whole block and damaged a fair amount of buildings. That on its own was terrible for all Egan residents. For days there was an almost noxious stink in the air from the smoke. But then came the construction crews. Like ants descending upon a picnic, in just a day there were corporate barriers and signs proclaiming an Avalon renovation.
North Egan has always been kind of a bad area. South Egan is kind of a poor neighborhood, but North Egan was poor
and
crime-ridden. The city had failed to do anything about it, so of course it never got better. But that construction company was coming in to rebuild North Egan. They want to make it a stunning example of what Avalon could be. Big condos, mixed use, a shopping mall, an organic grocery and a yuppie hipster heaven. Sounds great, right? And it probably is... if you don't live in an Egan neighborhood. If you lived in North Egan before, you were probably renting. Guess what, even if your home survived the destruction, it's still getting bulldozed. Your landlord sold out. And you're never going to be able to afford to live in North Egan when it gets rebuilt. So you have to find somewhere else to live.
Even South Egan was feeling the effects. The north end was getting a lot of noise and smoke from the construction. But those landlords were starting to sell too. Real estate adjacent to the revitalized area would be worthy of mid tier renovations. We were not sure if that trend was going to continue south and change all of South Egan, but it was a fear. Where were all those people going to move on their income? They might not be able to stay in the city. They might need to move out to the cheaper suburbs like the Ville... assuming they can afford it.
Again, for those who lived in most of South Egan, that was intellectual. But for Lem's aunt, right on the border, those were real concerns right now. So Lem helped his aunt move. It was more expensive and Lem was helping with rent, but he found her a place in Riverside. Not too far from her home, but far enough away that the wages of progress would take much longer to catch up with her there, if they ever did.
Greeting Lem, I gave him a good hug, he offered quick condolences, and we ordered a couple of pints at the bar. Lem cocked his head, "Your brother sure is festive tonight."
I looked over to a table where my brother and his friend Dickie were sitting, a small collection of empty glasses in front of them, their arms around each other's shoulders, a drunken song tumbling from their lips. They made quite a pair too. My brother, pale, thin, dark punk hair, piercings, tattoos and a ripped Black Flag T-shirt with his arm around Dickie, a light skinned black kid with a wide, warm smile in a green army jacket and a short bright orange mohawk. They were stumbling over the words to Sid Vicious's version of "My Way". Well, they were until they got to a verse neither of them could remember, then it died out, much to the delight of everyone else in Twin Eagles.
Just as Lem was my closest friend who wasn't blood, Dickie was Szandor's closest friend. They had even been in a punk band together, one whose name escapes me because I honestly never cared. That was until Szandor got the Spider-man Syndrome and decided that monster hunting was too time consuming and he couldn't have a personal life. He said he'd be letting the band down if he always had to run off. I personally had counted once, maybe twice where he needed to cancel on band practice, so I thought this explanation was bullshit. Maybe Szandor was afraid of failure or afraid to let someone besides me down, I don't know. It put a strain on their friendship but thankfully didn't kill it. Szandor needed more friends, not less.